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Leadership and Innovation in the Profession with Jeremy Clopton & Heath Alloway
Jeremy Clopton and Heath Alloway of Upstream Academy and The Upstream Leader Podcast join host John Randolph to discuss innovation and sustainable careers in public accounting on Episode 46, part one of a special two part episode. As influential thought leaders with more than a quarter of a century of accounting experience between them, Jeremy and Heath stress the importance of intentional leadership, creating a vision and culture that you actually stick to, and fostering a sense of community within your firm. John brings insights that connect with his Talent + Advisory offering, particularly focusing on the need for intentionality in leadership. They all emphasize how important it is for leaders to take ownership, be purposeful, and connect with their teams to drive engagement and success.
Transcript:
Thanks for joining me today for another episode of the CPA Life Podcast, the podcast that shines a bright light on those 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 I’m pretty excited for a lot of different reasons as we are joined by two, yes, two guests for today’s episode. Jeremy Clopton and Heath Alloway are both directors and leaders with Upstream Academy, and that is a solutions focused training and development firm that’s focused on helping accounting firms find innovative and proven solutions for today’s challenges while proactively planning for tomorrow. So Jeremy and Heath, welcome to the show today.
Thanks, John.
Thank you, John. Looking forward to it.
Hopefully, I got the intro of Upstream Academy pretty close to what you guys do.
Yeah, no, you nailed it. You are right on track.
We’re off to a good start, John.
That’s always a good thing! We’re going to dig into a lot about Upstream and some of the ways that you and your cohorts are attacking many of today’s challenges that the leaders In the public accounting space are facing, but to do that, before we get there, I want to learn a little bit more about each of you, your backgrounds, how you got into where you are today with Upstream, and if memory serves me correctly, you both started with very traditional paths from college to large national public accounting firms, correct?
I’ll say I ended up at a firm, but it might have been, there’s a couple of years in there that maybe we’re a little non traditional. Jeremy’s maybe a little more traditional.
Yeah, I wanted to be an accountant from an early age. So we’re talking like middle school. Hey, I want to be the accountant and let’s figure out how to make it happen. So much more traditional path for at least, I’ll go the first 12 years of my career.
Oh, wow. So you knew at an early age that this was the path that you wanted to head down?
I did, yeah. I had uncles that were both accountants, and one of them in particular was working on investigations and all kinds of really exciting things, so I decided early on, I don’t only want to be an accountant, but a forensic accountant, and really just follow that path right on. So I spent a few months in audit. I say that I dabbled because I really didn’t even do, I think the nine months that I was technically in the audit practice, I spent half that time doing consulting work, but yeah, jumped right into the forensics and spent 12 years at a national firm on the forensic side, doing investigations, primarily leveraging technology and then branching out into the consulting side.
Oh, wow. And Heath, where did you, as you say, end up in public accounting?
So, John, whenever I finished college, I was not planning to go to a public accounting firm whatsoever. Just like, I guess, maybe some other early 20s, I was not sure what I was going to do. And so I bounced around a little bit. I actually had my Series 7 and Series 6 and some insurance licenses and did some retirement type work and realized that probably wasn’t what I wanted to do. And by the time I landed at an accounting firm, I just needed a home and a job to get started, get my foot in the door. I was not a CPA. And I started out in a firm for about, gosh, it was over a year, probably closer to 14 months, making 30 to 50 phone calls a day. I was not doing any kind of audit or tax work. So it was somewhat of a unique start in the profession. And now here I am almost 20 years later.
Now, making 30 to 50 calls a day. For those that don’t know, I send out a questionnaire to guests on the podcast to learn a little bit more about them, and you had made a mention of that, and I wanted to ask you about that, because you’re right, that is not traditionally the path that people go into when they go into public accounting, where they’re put on a phone and said, hey, make 30 to 50 phone calls a day. What were you doing?
I asked myself that too, John. It was not my dream job, but you know what, John, I learned so much during that time. And I was working and we were, again, a fairly large firm at the time and we were reaching out to prospective clients for the most part. So I’d work with a partner that had, you know, a focus out of a certain office or a service line. I would get a list of their prospects and I would get on the phone and start calling and try to set up meetings.
And as part of that journey, it was probably about six months in, there were a couple of the partners that I worked with that said, Hey, why don’t you start coming out on some of these meetings with me? And that way you can learn a little more about what we do and the whole process. It’ll help you do your job better. So I learned a lot about the firm. I learned a lot about different industries. I learned a lot about different service lines. I learned a lot about handling rejection, and realizing that it wasn’t always personal because you heard the word “no” a lot. But yeah, it was a great foot in the door and a great learning opportunity.
Isn’t it amazing how some of those roles that you serve in really kind of formulate an understanding of the bigger picture of a business regardless of what that business is?
Yeah, a hundred percent.
I think so many times we end up in silos doing what we do. You don’t realize the implications, not only of what we do that affects other people in an organization, but how those roles affect what you do in an organization, whether it’s from the front desk receptionist all the way up to the president or the CEO. I think that the ability to have a view. You know, the optics of what that person sees and what they touch and what they deal with is really something that’s pretty interesting as you try to formulate, hey, where do I want to be in my career and how does this impact other people in the organization? So, pretty cool that you got to do that.
It is now to look back on it.
Yeah, at the time you probably didn’t think so.
Yeah, it was challenging, but again, I did learn a lot.
One of the stints, when I was with a very large national staffing firm that, we had a receptionist for nine years that decided to retire, and we went through about 13 receptionists in about six to seven different weeks. So I made the decision that from that point forward for the next week, we had nine people in the office, for the next week, for nine weeks, each person was going to sit at the receptionist’s desk and be the receptionist so that they would get an idea of what that person does, because all of them were just ridiculously obnoxious in their expectations of that person’s job, ’cause they’d gotten spoiled with a person that had been there for nine years. And it’s amazing how, when you have them sit at that desk for one week, they start to realize the expectations of that role and how unrealistic they are. It definitely gives you different optics.
Yeah. It’s amazing.
Love the approach, John.
Yeah, it’s amazing what happens when you gain a new perspective. Rather than just assuming what the role is. And it’s such a powerful experience for someone to go through.
You know, I think that, and I didn’t intend to go down this path, but I think that sometimes as leaders grow in their career and they get farther and farther away from boots on the ground, that can be a challenge in understanding what your people are dealing with. And do you see that in some of the leaders that you guys deal with through Upstream? Do you see that as some of the challenges with more tenured, experienced leaders? And what they’re seeing coming into the industry that has, you know, either entry level to three, four, five, eight years experience versus someone that’s got 25, 30, 35, 40 years?
Definitely. We see it and it’s really interesting, not only the further you get from boots on the ground, as you said, but the other thing that we really see with leaders is the further you get from being new, the less you remember what it was like, not knowing. And, you know, there’s something that I, a phrase that I use with leaders, and I feel like I’ve used it a lot in the last six months, especially, is, stop assuming intentions and start understanding perspectives.
Yep.
Because so often you get a leader that says, well, they should just know that. Why would they do that? I can’t believe they’d take this approach. It’s like, alright, well, did you take the time to teach them that they should have taken this other approach? Well, no, they should just know. Why should they just know? Well, I’m sure I knew it at that age. Really? Okay, that’s been 25 years. You remember how good you, I very strongly believe that we believe at 23 we were much better than our supervisors would have said we actually were. And the further we get from it, the better we think we were. And it’s a disconnect.
And part of it is everybody’s so busy and that’s something that I know Heath and I, we talked to a lot of leaders about is when was the last time you actually, you know, everybody talks about how great it was when they started and people spent the time doing all these things to teach them and, you know, give them more opportunity and all this, it’s like, great, when’s the last time you did that for your people? Like, oh, I’m too busy to do that. And that’s their fault somehow. And it’s an interesting situation that we’re in where you nailed it—the further you get from it, the harder it is to remember what it was like to learn and grow. And you couple that with people being super busy and now it’s just like, well, it’s a bunch of should haves and not a lot of ownership over the impact they’re having.
Absolutely. Heath, do you see that when you’re having conversations with some of the leaders that you’re interacting with more than you would expect?
Yeah, John, I think there’s definitely a lot of conversations that, you know, revolve around that. The thing that I would just share maybe to expand is what changed my perspective is watching my son and my daughter in kid sports, and seeing how much they do want to learn and how they do want to compete and how they want to win, and they have that desire to do that. And I think that sometimes we forget that people we’re hiring to come into the profession. Maybe they were 4.0 students, maybe they were high performing athletes. They have that kind of drive, but to Jeremy’s point, we have to show them the ways. So my guidance to people is just assume positive motives until they give you a reason not to, and assume that they want to do well, they may just not know how to do it and they may have a different perspective on it.
And then figuring all that out, I think, can help bring out that competitive spirit and work ethic. That’s, it was, I don’t know, it just changed my perspective to watch that within my kids. And I think we forget that sometimes, that we naturally have that. Most people, not everyone, but most people naturally want to do well.
Absolutely. I don’t think people roll out of bed, sit there on the edge of their bed and put their feet on the floor and then contemplate for the first two minutes of the morning. Hey, how can I screw my job up today?
Never thought of it that way!
I just don’t think people do that. I’ve had a very simplistic view. Sometimes maybe probably too simplistic for probably the last decade of my career. A little bit longer that people don’t do things at work for one of two reasons. Either they don’t know. Or they don’t care. But I think 90 percent of the time to 95 percent of the time, it’s because they don’t know. And I always tell my staff, look, “I don’t know” is a perfectly simple solution we can fix. I will teach you, I will show you, I will mentor you. I will guide you. And if we get to a point of, you still don’t understand the why behind the what, then it’s my job to instill enough trust in you as a leader that even though you may not get the why, you trust me and you’re going to do it.
Now, if we get to a point that you don’t understand the what, you don’t understand the why, and you don’t trust me enough to just do it, now we have a disconnect. Now we have a problem that we need to address that’s bigger than just, I don’t really know about how to do this. But I think at the end of the day, it’s our job to give them the tools and the resources before we just say, you know what, they don’t care. They just don’t care. I don’t think that’s the default with people.
I would agree with that.
Yeah. It was interesting, John. There was an article, gosh, trying to think how long ago it was I read, that talked about that 70 percent of people try to find purpose in their work. So as leaders, whether we like it or not, that’s partially on us to help them understand that and find that purpose with what they do.
Yep. I think I saw that article as well. And one of the things that around the time that I saw those numbers, I was listening to a podcast, and it’s a podcast called the Fight Hustle, End Hurry. One of the guys in the podcast, a guy by the name of John Mark Comer, who wrote a book called The [Ruthless] Elimination of Hurry. And one of the things that they were talking about in the podcast is that in the world that we live in today, as compared to 50 years ago, one of the reasons why we have such strong opinions about social issues, politics, people leaving jobs the way that they leave jobs and disengage because they don’t see the purpose behind what they’re doing is because as a world today, the family unit is not as strong as it used to be. People aren’t spending the time within their families they used to be. Faith is not as strong as it used to be. So those ties that bind and that connective tissue that people had outside of work doesn’t exist like it used to.
So today, one of the places that people look to find that connective tissue is at work. And as you said, Heath, to find purpose for what it is they’re doing and as leaders, we have to understand that hole is still in each one of our hearts. It’s going to get filled, we want purpose. And if we’re not finding it outside of the four walls for whatever society is doing today, we’ve got to be able to give it to them within the four walls of our business. And that’s not an easy task. How do you guys approach that and have those conversations with leaders today?
So the first thing you’ve got to do, John, is what you have actually just done, which is taken ownership over the fact that as a leader, you play a role in it. And that’s one of the things that when I hear leaders struggling with people, whether it’s purpose or whatever it may be, the very first question that they’ve got to ask themselves, it’s a simple one, though, if I’m real honest, I hate asking it, right? The question is, what about my leadership is contributing to this situation or this outcome? It’s taking ownership for, okay, well, what am I doing or not doing, but what about me is leading to this? And then the follow up is, and what am I willing to do differently? to improve it.
And that’s one of the very first things when we’re talking with leaders that I’m always asking them is, okay, what are you willing to take ownership over? Because you can either take ownership over the fact that you’re contributing, or you can essentially outsource all that blame to your hiring department, which nobody wants to do, right? Because it’s one or the other, you either aren’t hiring the right people, or you’re not doing everything as a leader, or it’s some combination thereof.
Those are hard questions to ask yourself.
Yeah, they are, right? If you have the right people, then you’re not leading effectively. If you have the wrong people, you didn’t hire effectively. And you’ve got to figure out, okay, are we willing to tell our recruiters and everybody, Hey, it’s all y’all’s fault? I don’t think anybody is—sorry, that was my Ozark accent coming out with the “y’all” there, but it’s one of those where you really got to figure out what are you willing to accept the blame for as a leader and the ownership of versus how much you willing to push out?
And the other thing that I would say is, you know, one of the things that we talk a lot with firms about is, right, you’re trying to create a sense of community at your firm, because when people feel like they’re part of a community that’s doing something more, they show up even more than before, right? And though we may be uber connected today because of technology, it’s hard to believe that we have as strong a sense of community. And I’ve heard all kinds of great excuses as to why we don’t have community. The question though, goes back to what are we willing to do to build it?
I know that, you know, coming out of the pandemic with the move to hybrid or remote and all of that is the number one thing that I hear in this. I probably have less patience for that than most, but the firm that I grew up in, in my career, I only had a couple team members that were in the local office that I was in. We were already a hybrid. We had some in office and we had some in other offices in other states. So we were already, you know, virtual, so to speak, as most people would define it today. But we still had a sense of community because we were intentional about it. Again, it goes back to, are you willing to take ownership for it? Or are you willing to just make excuses and blame other people as to why it’s not working? That’s the hardest thing in the world for a leader. Right? It’s easy to say, it’s hard to do.
Completely agree.
Yeah, John, the thing I would, so on, and I wish I could take credit for this, John, but I can’t. I’ll give Jeremy props for this, but he kicked off Headwaters, our annual conference last year, and talked about vision. And it was, if I remember correctly, Jeremy, it was a session that was rated the highest. It talked about You know, setting a firm vision and what does that look like? And some of the litmus test is like, can your people in your firm describe it? And does it excite them about having a better future in the firm? And if we’re not helping paint that vision and creating that excitement, they don’t see it as something better, you know, they might not be as tied into where you’re trying to go.
On the back end of that, John, I just think sometimes you mentioned like the busy society or the busy culture. If we’re not truly taking the time to connect with someone and helping them see how their efforts are impacting the bigger picture, I think your example earlier about having everyone sit at the reception desk and see the role that played. Everybody plays a role in that, but if they don’t see that connection or that they’re making a difference, they won’t be as excited about it. They won’t be as connected to it. So I think that’s a struggle from just the culture we live in, taking time to truly connect. If you’re having a coaching session, don’t check your email, don’t respond to Skype messages, you’re sending the wrong message to people. So that’s, that’s what I would add to that, John.
You know, it’s interesting you say that because I remember clearly distinctly remember, I won’t say the person’s last—I won’t even say their first name because they probably don’t listen to the podcast, but 30 years ago I had a manager and there’s so much of my leadership philosophy over the years that were formed from that, you know, everybody wore the bracelet for years. You know, WWJD, what would Jesus do? My mindset was, “what would ‘insert his name’ do,” and my rationale was, okay, think about what he would do, now do the exact opposite. Because I remember so many times early in my career being shown, logically, okay, this is what a leader doesn’t do, and one of those is what you just said, Heath.
It took me two and a half weeks to get my annual review done, because the first two meetings that we had, and this was one or two times a year that I had, supposedly, 100 percent of this person’s attention. And the first meeting we were supposed to have when that happened, something came up on his calendar and he had to reschedule. Okay. I’m all about grace, not a problem, life happens. The second time, we’re 20 minutes into it, a phone call comes, and he says, hey, sorry, I have to take this call. That call ended up into an hour conversation. I ended up just getting up and walking out, going back to my desk.
So, you remember those things in your formative years that say, I’m important or I’m not important. And let’s face it, you know, we were joking earlier about being, in our 20s or being in our early 30s when, you know, when we had all the answers and knew everything. Throw on top of that, if you got an individual contributor on your team that You know, and they know, and oh, by the way, the people around them know as well, this person is not only good at what they do, they’re above average to stellar, if you’re going to treat that person badly or disrespectfully, what does that say to the rest of the team about how you feel about everybody on the team? And I think those things say a lot.
My wife and I do marriage coaching, and one of the things that we talk a lot about with More is caught than taught when we’re talking about our kids, and I think our employees are the exact same way. More is caught than taught. They’re going to see those actions. They’re going to hear the reactions. They’re going to see the body language and they’re going to immediately grab those things and hold on to them. So your actions have got to align with your words.
And there are probably some that are listening, and I love that phrase, “more is caught than taught.” And I’m sure there are some that are listening saying, I don’t know, I model what my employees should do all the time, but they’re not doing it. There’s a good chance there’s a disconnect between the words and the actions, right? It’s, well, I’m telling them they should do this, and then I’m doing something different. And so often leaders, I don’t genuinely believe that most leaders do that with intent. It’s just, they fall into old habits and bad habits, maybe on behaviors, even though they know that they shouldn’t, but you’re a hundred percent on with that, John. It’s, I mean, you’ve got to model it for your team.
And again, it goes back to if you’re modeling the right things, you’re talking the right things, you’re, you know, doing everything and taking ownership and all that, and they’re still not catching on, it may not be the right person for the firm. And I realize in a tight labor market, that scares people. But I had a number of managing partners that I was meeting with, back at the start of the year. And in one of the groups, almost everybody said turnover was really low last year, mid to low single digits. And they said, frankly, it’s probably not a good thing. It needed to be higher. And it’s, you know, it’s just a testament to the fact that there are certain people that you just recognize they’re not a right fit, and, you know, keeping them to your point of, you know, treating the best poorly, when you drag along those that are low performing or they’re toxic to the culture, that also has an impact and says a lot to those, to the rest of the team and the high performers about what’s acceptable and what’s not.
Absolutely. It absolutely does. I want to, throw out a word that when I read some of y’all’s content on LinkedIn, there you go, y’all, you gotta stick with it. So just so you know, we’ll give some vernacular to the people that may not understand us. If we say y’all, we’re talking about one to three.
That’s right.
All y’all, it’s going to be more than three, okay?
That’s my key takeaway from our conversation, John.
Exactly. So in reading y’all’s content, in listening to some of your podcasts, I’m going to throw out a word here to you guys that is a huge word with me that I don’t think that we really, we say it a lot. And when I say we, I’m talking about in leadership. We say it a lot, but I don’t think that we put it into practice. And I think part of it is because we don’t understand how to, and it’s not easy: Intentionality.
You know, tell me Heath, when I say that, I mean, what, comes to mind?
So, John, whenever you said it, honestly, I kind of reflected on my own personal story and some of the things throughout the years of what I learned and, it’s been a while back, but I feel like some of my own habits and my own beliefs really drove the unintentionality of, you know, the trying to get everything done kind of mindset. And the more hours, the harder you work, those things, you know, I just felt like that was the path to what I’ve learned. And gosh, Jeremy, I think it was even in a, when we were in a firm together, I think you had mentioned or referenced the book, Free to Focus. And at the time, John, I read that book and I said, there’s, yeah, this all sounds wonderful, but it’s not really doable.
And whenever I switched to working from home and not tracking hours and everything like that, John, quite frankly, I personally struggled with that for several months. And I went back and had re-read Free To Focus and then I had started implementing Michael Hyatt’s planning methodology, and it really, it changed my mindset, it changed my own habits, and to be honest about it, John, I still struggle sometimes with it, but I have to keep a constant reminder, and part of that, what it does, the whole planning method is to focus on your big three and, you know, weekly, daily, monthly. And by doing that, it makes me step back and ask, what should I be doing, and what should I not be doing? And it helps keep me from going down those rabbit holes of feeling like I’m getting a lot done and checking things off the list to truly getting the things done that matter the most.
So that’s been probably the biggest impact. And then you asked how working with other leaders, taking those same concepts and helping them apply it to their own personal lives. I just think it’s important with the feeling of stress and overload that we see in the profession. So Jeremy, I’ll be quiet because I know there’s a possibility some of that may overlap with some of your thoughts, but maybe you’ll take it a different direction.
I’m going to go a completely different direction, Heath.
Okay.
When I think of intentionality, the very first thing that comes to mind for me is that you stop relying on hope as a strategy. I hope it’s going to work. It should get better. Well, you know, we’ve done the thing, so therefore we hope it will—stop. Just stop relying on hope and this misguided belief that if you keep doing the same thing, you’re going to get a better result. Intentionality, to me, means that you are very purposeful with what you do, why you do it, and when you do it. And that is, to Heath’s point, at an individual level, and I mean, I have very strong beliefs around the balancing of life and work and how it applies there, but it’s so much bigger as well: It’s the firm’s strategy, the firm’s vision, the firm’s values.
So to take it to the kind of the highest metal level, I guess, a firm’s values. Need to be intentional, which means there has to be a purpose. Why are they our values? And I’d find that even a lot of firms don’t even go that far. They’ll say, yeah, these are our values, I’m like, great, so if somebody asks you your biggest client, and let’s say they’re a $300,000 a year client, cause that’s meaningful for nearly every firm, right? You’ve got a big six figure client and they ask you to go against that value. Do you still uphold it? And if the answer is no, it’s not a value, right? It’s a nice to have, not a value.
So you’ve got to be intentional when you even create the values and it’s not leaving it for, well, it sounds good on the website and all the other firms in the profession have it, so that should be our value as well. No, if you’re not going to do it, you’re not going to, you’re relying on this strategy of hope that we hope people will do it, it’s not a value. If it’s a value, you’re going to teach people. You’re going to educate them. What do the behaviors look like that uphold that value? And that goes to your vision, to your strategy, to your hiring, to your firing, to your pricing, to your client selection.
Intentionality, if you are approaching your business, which yes, an accounting firm is a business—we don’t always run it that way and that’s a whole nother conversation for another day. But if you are going to approach your business with intentionality, it means that you have a purpose and a plan behind every action that you take. That’s where I go with intentionality.
Absolutely. You know, in our business on the recruiting side of things, CPA firm owners or candidates, I try to distill things down to as simple as I can get it, some of the most basic things in life that we deal with. And to me, that’s relationships, whether it’s a marriage, a dating relationship, whatever it can be.
And I was talking to a client a couple of weeks ago about the whole concept of intentionality, spending time because in our Talent + Advisory piece of our business, we really try to embed ourselves with our customers to not just focus on talent acquisition. To me, talent acquisition is taking NyQuil for the flu. We need to figure out what’s causing the problem. We could put band-aids on this all day long, but we need to figure out why you’re having turnover. Let’s stop the bleeding and fix the bigger problem.
Someone said to me once, well, if you fixed all that problem, then you won’t have a business. I’m like, look, if I don’t have repeat customers after a while, I’m okay with that, because there’s a whole lot of jacked up customers out there that we can just stay busy with, and we’ll just fix them one at a time.
But we were talking to this customer and we were talking about the concept of intentionality and we were talking about scheduling time. We were talking about not just hoping that I’m going to run into Sally in the hallway and say, hey Sally, how’s that project going? Or how’s your husband doing? Or how’s the kids softball? It’s scheduling. And he said, but I don’t want it to seem like it’s programmed. And I said to him, I have a question for you. I know you’re married. Yes. I know you have kids. Yes. So does your day at your house, your week at your house, your month at your house, does it just flow smoothly and your wife and you come together and you have dates just, they just happen. Or let’s get really personal, the personal time you spend with your wife, it just happens organically, right? Because I’ve been married now for 27 years, almost 30 together, and I can tell you when my kids were at home, those things didn’t just happen. We had to be intentional about those things.
We had to schedule time with a babysitter so that we could get away and make sure that our marriage was solid. We had to. We had a date night at least once a month. We had an overnight away at a hotel, at least once a quarter. Those things meant we had to plan. It was like, yeah, I guess, I guess you’re right. Me and my wife and I put this on the calendar and that on the calendar. Like, okay, why don’t you do that from an intentionality standpoint with your people? It’s a relationship that’s important to you, right? Yeah. Why don’t you do that with your people?
Because at this point, nothing is getting done. I’d much rather have something that seemed planned occur that tells that person they’re important to me than have nothing occur because I don’t want it to seem like it’s planned.
Thanks for joining us for part one of John Randolph’s conversation with Jeremy Clopton and Heath Alloway of Upstream Academy and The Upstream Leader Podcast. Part two will air August 21st. Head to CPALifePodcast.com for show notes, and be sure to subscribe on your favorite platform. We’ll see you next time on CPA Life.
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About the Guests:
Jeremy Clopton, Director at Upstream Academy, gained his accounting experience from his work at a top U.S. accounting firm, where he led a firm-wide specialty practice. During his 12 years there, Jeremy gained extensive experience in data analytics, fraud prevention, and business intelligence. He now leverages that experience to teach firms the potential that data and technology have to transform firm practice management, leadership, and firm culture.
Prior to joining Upstream, Jeremy launched his own consulting company focused on developing more successful cultures by asking better, more strategic, questions. He created the SQ Method, a framework designed to help firms overcome challenges and more successfully adopt new technology, analyze and utilize data, encourage innovation, and drive employee engagement. Jeremy speaks both in the US and abroad at industry events, as a faculty member for the ACFE and as an instructor at the Management Development Institute at Missouri State University.
Heath Alloway is a Director at Upstream Academy and co-hosts The Upstream Leader Podcast with Jeremy. Heath’s unique skillset helps clients thrive no matter the business climate. Driven by a passion for helping others, he works closely with leaders in the profession to position firms for success through people development, strategic growth, and positive change. He is a popular coach and speaker for firm and conference presentations.
Before joining Upstream Academy, Heath spent over a decade in a unique role in one of the top accounting firms in the U.S. In this role, he ran a firm-wide business development training program and led a multi-disciplinary team of 20, focusing on strategic plan development and implementation, and development and launch of new services and industry verticals.