Episode 106: Being A Leader Means Being Open, Honest And Real With James Metzler
What exactly does being a leader entail? We find out from this interview with James Metzler, CPA, CGMA and founder of the Metzler Advisory Group. James has been coaching and helping emerging leaders and partners to develop the leadership skills they need to be successful in a CPA practice. During this interview, he talks about his journey to becoming a CPA, the pivots he took during his career, the importance of a 360, and the lessons we learn as leaders when we are open to the process. Find out his inspiration and what keeps him motivated in this episode by staying tuned!
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Being A Leader Means Being Open, Honest And Real With James Metzler
This is the episode where I interviewed James Metzler, a CPA, CGMA, and the Founder of the Metzler Advisory Group, a consulting firm that provides services for the CPA profession and that serves the profession. Jim has dedicated this phase of his career to helping emerging leaders and partners develop the leadership skills to be successful in their CPA practice. He also mentors a number of recognized national leaders and CEOs in the profession as well.
Prior to that, he was the Vice President of small firm interest for the AICPA and a member of its senior management team. Prior to joining the AICPA, he spent 32 years with Gaines Metzler Kriner and Company CPA in Buffalo, New York, where he was a partner and was also a Cofounder of GEMKO Information Group Inc, a successful technology consulting arm of the firm. He spent three years as Cofounder of the ConvergenceCoaching, a national consulting firm dedicated to helping CPAs prosper.
During this interview, we talked about his journey to becoming a CPA, the pivots he has taken during his career, the importance of a 360, and the lessons we learn as leaders when we are open to the process. I hope you enjoy this interview with Jim. Share and like it to whoever could use this advice and stories during their day in their leadership skills and also re-energize and reset.
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Welcome to this episode of the show. I am very excited about my guest, James Metzler. Jim, do you want to go ahead and give a little background on yourself before we get started?
This is going to take a while because I have a long background. I will start where I started as a CPA. I will start from now and work backward. I am Founder and sole person in Metzler Advisory Group but I advise CPA firms and coach managing partners. I spent a ton of time coaching emerging partners and new partners in firms and leadership. I get into performance compensation, partner agreements, relationships, selling, and all those things that I have learned over my career.
Before that, I was in the senior management team of the AICPA, reporting directly to Barry Melancon, a partner of small firm interests, which is all firms except for the big four in the profession. It was a great job and experience. Before that, I was a Cofounder of ConvergenceCoaching with your good friend, Jennifer Wilson. It was truly one of the coolest gigs I have had in my career, being big partners with Jen. Before that, for all the readers out there, that all sounds like I had never touched a spreadsheet or four-column pad but I spent 32 years in public accounting as a partner in the CPA firm in Buffalo.
We started with five people. When I left many years later, we had about 70 people. I founded a technology company there and did a lot of things. I'm an active volunteer. The good old Buffalo CPA was a family-held business client with 32 tax seasons for all youth CPAs out there. It was a lot of experience. I reflect back and look at that now and all the exposure that I have had. I'm just not a Buffalo guy. I'm a Buffalo CPA. It has been unique. Now that I'm semi-retired, I'm so thankful for that and the people like you, Amy, that I have met in my life.
It is so awesome to see the pivots. It's great to be able to look back at a career in the accounting profession as a leader and the pivots you take in your career. I was at a university event with accounting students. When you are starting your career and looking at all these leaders in the profession, you are like, "How did they get there? What do they do?" It's one of those things where your career takes these turns and being to this turn.
I have been looking forward to this interview with you because you have made such an impact on the profession. We are going back to the beginnings of where you began, where you grew up, and what your family was like. I would love to know your story and how you lean into becoming a CPA. Do you want to talk about your parents a little bit and where you grew up?
I will tell you why I became a CPA. It's comical to a certain degree. I grew up in the City of Buffalo. We were a middle-income family at that time. I have been a paperboy since eight years old. That was my first business. My dad eventually bought a franchise of a Western Auto store, and I'm a car guy. I love cars. My dad, I never realized at the time, working in a retail store, that he taught me how to sell, how to ask questions, and how to decipher what people needed.
I didn't realize it that time but that was a tremendous lesson. I worked at a store. I was a tire, battery, and muffler guy as well. I was waiting on people. I was never afraid to get my hands dirty there. As things progressed, I went through high school. I majored in fun in high school. It was when the Vietnam War was hot and heavy. I got refused by every college except for a two-year junior college. I went there and took Business Administration. My marks were low. I majored in fun. There was a high demand because the affirmants for Vietnam in the Army were if you went to college.
I took the two-year thing in Business. It was heavy in accounting. I was lit up and was able to get high marks and transferred to Canisius College for great accounting school. I can recall going to Canisius. The people I graduated from high school with said, "What are you doing here?" I said, "I'm majoring in Accounting." They said, "That's difficult. How are you going to do that?" I did great. I had distinguished alumni awards and all kinds of things over the years. I was very active at Canisius. I started their program and information technology for accounting and that thing. That was my background.
I was going back to my days as a paperboy and working in my dad's store. As a people person, I loved accounting but unusual that I was an extrovert and sought to do a lot of things. I was lucky. At my wedding reception, I talked to a loan, and probably because of that and sealed in that forever. It turned out he was a partner in a CPA firm. I got back from my honeymoon and took him in for an interview. That was the beginning of the change in my life. I took the job, $100 a week in a firm of five people.
That's pretty amazing that you ended up in Accounting in this two-year school. I want to pause on that for any students reading this blog because what you said is important. For a lot of people, if their grade point isn't the best, they feel like their future might not be what they had hoped for or their parents hoped for and so forth, look at your career. There's always hope when you put your mind to it, try new things, and see what you are good at. Let's go back to the two-year college. Maybe you can tell me a little bit about why you chose Accounting when you got there. How did you even find it?
Accounting is the language of business. This is the funniest story piece. Here I was when I was a senior in high school. My buddies on the block all decided that we wanted to go over to Canada to a place called Crystal Beach and go swimming and have a good time. The girls at that time came with us. One person, Jane, had a sister who could drive. She was old enough to drive over to Canada. She volunteered to drive.
As we were about ready to pull out of the driveway, comes James and his sister's father with a big roll full of cash. I found out later he was an underworld guy. We all said, "Jane, what does your father do for a living?" She said, "He's an accountant." When I took Accounting, I thought of my dad's background as a retail store. It seems so valuable, impactful, and widespread of that information. I love that, and I still love it now and a couple of years later. It was the one thing that changed my life. Who knows?
It sees a lot of cash.
In those days in my life, I had never seen that much cash.
It's interesting too. We never know what impacts. I interviewed Kimberly Ellison-Taylor on here. That was the same thing. She had an accountant come to the school, and she's like, "They manage the money. They must have money. I want to be an accountant."
Maybe that was an influence. I loved the clients. Amongst the private company boards, I had former clients. The notion of relationships has been a key driver in my advice and the notion of the depth of relationships, this debate we have in a profession, value billing, and all that. First, you got to understand what value is and what clients or business people value.
Being A Leader: There's always hope in the future when you put your mind to it, try new things and see what you're good at.
Since I'm semi-retired and left the AICPA, being back in the business community here, wherever I go, I ask people what they like about their accounting firm. Business people would be at the country club, the church or whatever. I play golf. I drive people crazy. I have been a real student of the value notion in our profession. I spent a lot of time and spoke about this with emerging partners and young partners and being able to get the depth of relationship to get close enough to clients and in their life enough to understand how they perceive value.
Before you can value-bill and have a platinum, gold or whatever level, understand where they feel pain. When I was with the AICPA, I commissioned a fellow by the name of Leo Pusateri. He wrote a book called You Are the Value. That was very good. That emulated everything that I had brought up. It's that background about connecting with people.
Nowadays, those connections continue to give me great rewards. I have mentored some of the top people in a profession, and it's all about relationships, being honest, open, understanding oneself, self-honesty, which can be an ugly thing sometimes, and being real. That's why I like your message so much because you write a lot about that notion of body, mind, who you are, what you are about, and how you show up. It's where success is.
The depth of the relationship is greatly rewarding. When you turn that into even prospective clients, contacts to the community, lawyers you know or everybody being able to converse in as powerful questions like that, it naturally increases your business, gets you new clients, and gets you to a good place. It’s because we are CPAs, we had a tremendous opportunity to know people at that level.
I want to stay back in your history a little bit before we get there. With your father's business, I know that I was working, and my mom's business was growing. Besides seeing your friend's father, I know it was a struggle for my mother, who wasn't an accountant. They didn't have the computerized systems that there are nowadays for business owners. Did your father ever give you any advice about accounting and what he thought about it with his own business?
I ended up giving him advice. He enjoyed doing the bookkeeping. He had a Western Auto store and their own bookkeeping system, which was weird. After I started learning accounting, I started probing him. He used to have his receivables, and his ledger never agreed with his receivables, inventory, and all that. It turned out that it's hard for a franchise business like that to make money. He didn’t understand why there wasn't money in the bank. I did more of that. My dad was primarily about those relationships.
I never realized until decades later that he taught me all of those things. He took pride in the people he knew in this neighborhood and the City of Buffalo, and they took pride in knowing him. They knew that Bill, my dad's name, would help them get through their problems, whether it be with our car, fixing plumbing, that kind of thing. It was in my blood that way. It got me all the way up to the senior management team of the AICPA and talking to Amy Vetter. The journey continues.
Your uncle offered you the job in his firm. Tell me a little bit about that firm and how you started with them.
That was a cousin. We’ve got to go back to my wedding reception. There was a note in the mail to come for an interview. I went for an interview because I was just back in the military. Lo and behold, I got the job for $100 a week. A small firm is a great place to learn. For a small firm, they had tremendous clients, long-time family-owned companies in the City of Buffalo here and surrounding areas. It made it extremely interesting. A partner there, Ken Gaines, took me under his wing for a lot of years. He grew me socially. I didn't know anything about country clubs or joining organizations.
I never took a speech in my life. He asked me if I would do a client seminar. I stuttered a lot initially when I was growing up. I took that on as a challenge. Forward years with the AICPA, I was doing about 80 speeches a year. The moral of the story is to find somebody who can take you under their wing, not just teach you technical things but show you how they relate.
What I mean is Ken Gaines, if he called a prospective client, he would take me with him. We like being together. I was like, "Take me with you." I watched and learned. I made a big giant decision in my life to leave public accounting because I was lit up from volunteering in the profession and formed Convergence with Jennifer. That was another revelation and learning process for me.
Were you at that same firm your whole career?
It's for 32 years with the same firm.
It's that firm group from 5 people to 70.
We had an IT group. One time, we had 50 people in the IT group. My relationship with IBM was big.
Do you focus more on the IT side?
I did, but that was when computers were first coming into the profession. I wrote a book, How to Build a Million Dollar Technology Consulting Practice, which focused all over the place and how to build a technology practice. That's when I first met Jennifer Wilson. She has been with AMS going way back. That was my entrée. I left the firm to coach firms and how to build their technology practice. I quickly became the grim reaper of IT practices because I tell firms, "You need to get out of this. The hardest ones weren't in it. There are all the issues.”
Being A Leader: Find somebody who can take you under their wing, not just teach you things, technical things, but show you how they relate.
I focused back on practice management. I find that the issues with forming an IT practice in a firm were no different than any practice or personal financial planning and get down to selling and practice management as a whole. We melded. Jen and I got off the technology track and got into practice management more and more, and we are loving it.
We found out it was very valuable. I had the good luck to have a great leadership coach by the name of John Engels, who got to know Leo Pusateri very good. I had been through leadership training, and Jennifer had. We met up to form Convergence shortly thereafter. We had a great knowledge of self, the good, bad, and the ugly. We continued on and learning.
What did you learn about yourself?
You go through these 360s and leadership training, which could be unflattering. You learn your strengths but the unflattering part is when you get your peers, friends, workers, and spouse to describe relationships and how you show up in front of them. It's making me ugly. You think you see yourself 20/20 but you don't. It's taking that information, being self-honest, and showing up and functioning differently in your leadership.
What was your biggest change from that?
Good people thought I had a hidden agenda, somewhat greedy at times. It's all about me, the ego, and that kind of thing. It's those things that stung a lot. I'm awesome. I didn't have an ego problem. I took that on tremendously. Jen Wilson had learned it through Landmark Leadership. I learned it through this guy, John Engels. Barry and the senior management team brought John Engels into the AICPA to do leadership training. Now he's a one-on-one coach with Barry Melancon, which is pretty good.
I got more real, honest, and open. I disclosed more about myself as I did about that to you. The leadership has strengthened that. He can get in front of people and say, "I felt the nervousness. I'm nervous now speaking. I worried that I wasn't going to have money." I had all that as well. You had all that as he had. It's being able to speak from that perspective and then shifting that to clients who continue to speak to me after I leave the firm. In that sense, the big a-ha for me was the depth of that relationship, going deep in connections and understanding.
In leadership, it's hard. It's not something you say, "Here's my top ten. I'm going to do this," but learning the skills, being in the moment, being able to recognize people's emotional issues, and recognizing your own emotional issues first. They open up value opportunities if you want to put them in a value mode. At the end of the day, they say, "Jim and Amy have my back. They watch out for me. We do this together." That's the ultimate trusted advisor notion.
How did you get comfortable to do those things? That's a big shift. You weren't doing those things, and now you are being more authentic and honest about what your weaknesses are and open about yourself. Did you practice it first? Did you start it with a core group of people you trusted before you expanded out? How did you go about that process?
I realized the way I spoke and acted when people thought I had a hidden agenda that I was excited about something and wanted to do something. It is a hidden agenda. I took that information. Whenever I would go back into a partner meeting, I would meet with a potential client. I was cautious of how I could easily show up as more able to discern my good, bad, and ugly and apply them at times. The reality-based approach got me in front of the biggest regulators in our accounting profession. I'm just telling them how it is here, and they think it's brilliant.
I spent time reflecting on it. Self-honesty can be an ugly thing. I realized through that whole process that I didn't want to be in public accounting anymore. It was huge. I wanted to work in a profession. I am loyal to the nth degree and my firm. I remember coming home one night sitting on my deck, having a glass of wine with my wife. I said, "I'm going to leave public accounting." She said, "You finally admitted it." I did. I was lucky. It was easy for me to leave because I knew Jen, and we had formed Convergence while I was at the firm. I thought of the firm's interest in Convergence, so they bought me out.
It was good in that, the 360, and taking that seriously. I don't know what in me made me take that seriously, maybe because of people that I loved and valued like my wife, spouse, and partners like Ken Gaines. I realized the way I showed up wasn't in my heart. It wasn't real of knowing what it was all about. I talked a good game but going deep and understanding leadership from the science and discipline that it is, is a lot about making other leaders, mentoring them and myself. Having the luck to work with tremendous leaders in our profession, Jen Wilson, Barry Melancon, all the people around the senior leadership team at the AICPA, and people in the profession all ended up for me.
For those of you that don't know what a 360 is, you are allowing people to evaluate you that work for you, work with you, or you work for. It's a full circle of people around you. I have interviewed one partner before. He did a live 360, where he went to a conference room. People, through his face, gave him feedback as well, which was a very humbling experience. What he learned as far as transparency and what people also misinterpret were things that they think he's not telling them.
He's able to give them the reason why. It was a nice back and forth. I know a lot of people are very uncomfortable with doing a 360 because the subjects come up. How did you get past that? How did you see your other partners getting past that when doing it? It made a big impact for you but do you feel like when you have seen it put into play that it was a powerful thing for people?
Part of the 360 processes was that after you get the written report of everybody, which are the good, the bad, and the ugly, you go around to your partners and say, "Why would somebody say I'm greedy?" They would tell you, and that was helpful. What was helpful was Jen Wilson, who I reconnected with, out of the blue, I went to Nebraska and got down with her. She had gone through the same thing. Both came out of it with humility, change, and different people finding that this was black belt level leadership training and doing more reading on it. I took it very seriously. I didn't have the DNA to get offended.
Some people get offended and quit. I didn't quit. I only quit because, being honest with myself, I said, "My partner says come in here and sell a business," so I would go to the firm. It's all kinds of business that go off. I do speeches and volunteer work within a profession, and finding that I love that. I realized that I was lying to them. I know some of the 360 brought this up. I would come in and blow the smoke in front of them. You would go back to doing what you want to do. You put all that together, and self-honesty is the key.
It's an important thing. As you said, it pushes you as a leader. For most people, especially in accounting firms, the leadership side is not trained. You get promoted based on your technical skill and what you do but you are a people manager, and there's not enough help on that side. It becomes very offensive when you get those because you are an expert and feel you are an expert. There's ego in your expertise.
Being A Leader: Relationships are everything.
To have anyone knockdown that other side, people put the walls up. I see that a lot. It's good for someone like you to be talking about it so openly because it is such an important education piece to allow you to know where your blind spots are. A lot of times, if you are truly honest with yourself, you know what those blind spots are. You are just not taking the time to look into it.
It surprised me. I'm not perfect.
No one is going to be perfect. Anyone who works for you or with you appreciates when a leader is also willing to change. There is so much problem when someone gets promoted through the ranks. There is less feedback to a leader as they keep going up the ranks because no one wants to lose their job. It makes it very hard.
They will allow you to beat into your head with the billable hour thing. They don't take time to visit your client and check-in.
You made this transition into coaching and then to the AICPA. What was that transition? How did that occur?
They found me. I was a volunteer. I was a member of the council. I was doing a lot of PCPS, committees, and spoke and engaged, which was practitioner supposed to do for multiple years, the IT, and tons of that. I was on the AICPA Council, and Barry Melancon spoke that they were going to hire somebody to represent small firms. Small firms hated the AICPA at that time. Alan Anderson, who is with AICPA, approached me. He knew that I had left my firm and was doing Convergence. He asked me if I would be interested. I said, "I will do it on a consulting basis because I'm doing Convergence full-time with Jennifer." He said, "Give me a proposal."
That's great news for a person who wants a ton of chargeable hours. I gave a proposal to do on a consulting basis. They came back and said, "We want more of your time." I was like, "This is awesome. There are all these billable hours here." He came back because it was a board committee. They said, "We want Jim. We will do what it takes to get Jim in the door." I love the AICPA a ton that I would volunteer. They made me an offer I couldn't refuse. Jen Wilson, I will tell you that they bought me. Maybe they did but I'm a CPA at heart. I love Jennifer Wilson. Jen is a type you can always be close to no matter what. I love her to this day, and off I went with her encouragement.
What did you learn from that role being on that side of the profession at the AICPA?
I learned that I'm not very good at being a corporate animal and being the notion of, "The client is everything. The relationships are everything." I got out with the firm right away. I got on the road and said, "I'm going to meet every member of the AICPA, get in front of every firm, and find out what we can do to make it better." I did that for twelve years. It got me a great recognition in the profession as being an AICPA person who was experienced and from the real world. Inside the AICPA, I could have done better with my relationships there to better understand the world executives were in and everything. I learned from that.
I learned the discipline of running a higher organization and reporting to Barry Melancon. I learned a ton from Barry. He was a very brilliant, dedicated, and humble individual as well. I also learned that I would go to these meetings with the regulators, ethics committees, and people that, in my eyes, were so high up in the profession that anything I had to say was about a Buffalo person. I was going to be cautious and not say it. I had raised my hand and said, "It's not like that for private companies." People go, "Thank God you're speaking up."
I learned as much as I downplayed in my mind and experience compared to the top of their profession. It was extraordinarily valuable. I'm now semi-retired, working as an old guy with wisdom. That is the practical education, being straight and not afraid to weigh in no matter how dumb you think you may talk. You are not dumb in the least bit.
It's listening to others, adjusting my own frame of mind, and compromising opinions. Barry used to tell me that no one person has all the answers. I learned a lot from that. He's great at boiling up an issue that makes it Barry Melancon's ideas but the culmination of the best of everybody of things you may not have thought of.
There are so many good lessons here. I would like to end the interview with some rapid-fire questions. Pick a category, either family, friends, money, spiritual or health.
All of the above. Let's do something different. I have already talked to you about family is great. Health is very good, which are mind, body, and mindfulness. Let's talk about health.
As far as health and wellness, what are the things or actions I don't have that I want to have?
I feel so blessed with everything I have had in my life. I would like to have hair again. I like to be proud and be better looking. I have had some health issues. That's why I brought that up but I'm fortunate that I'm recovering well.
I'm glad to know that. What are things or actions you have that you want as far as your health?
Being A Leader: It’s important to recognize and understand value not as you see it but as the client sees it.
It's energy and the desire to not look at my age but to look and focus on my activity versus numerical numbers. I have and want that. I had messed up this 2021, and now I'm getting my stuff back, the energy, working with my hands, working in the yard, and working on my car. Those are the things. That's so important. That's why I like what you do with mindfulness too. It's this notion of the profession coming out of tax season.
How can we make tax season better? I'm telling you it can never make it better. I have worked for many years. I had worst taxes than ever. The focus on health and being in mindfulness, your unique message, is where it's at. You tie that together with Generation Z, who don't accept the old guy's work until you drop but together with health and mindfulness and realizing this is an old guy talking that I shouldn't have done it the way I did it.
The sentence is a little off that last question. A pet peeve of mine so much in so many of the firms that I consult with is the answer is, "It's the profession. That's the way you have to work." There is a different way you can work if you open your mind to changing it and how you allow people to reset. It's not always the same way for everybody in the firm of how you work for.
These are different times, and they are exciting times. The profession, contrary to what it was years ago, has embraced technology. Now we've got to embrace the mindset of the more seasoned partners with the notion of trust that the work is going to happen better than they ever dreamed.
Is there anything that we didn't talk about that you want to make sure someone walks away from this interview with?
We have a lot but the notion of the role of every leader and CPA, of being that public company, independence aside, is the notion of value. I cannot emphasize enough going deep of being able to recognize and understand the value, not as you, the AICPA, and the state-society but how a client sees it. Never ever have an understanding that if you don't initiate the contact to get with clients, just check in, have a coffee, and be there. People say, "Make sure you call me in everything you do." That's so wrong. We should be talking to our clients and be in the moment with everything they are doing.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share your story. There are so many great learnings for our readers.
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For our mindful moments of this interview that I had with Jim Metzler, which I was looking forward to because not only has he been a long-time colleague of mine. I have watched his career, and he has been very helpful to me. He has a great story. During the interview, when we start our careers in accounting, we don't realize how much is out there that we can do with our careers.
When we are open to opportunities, we can take so many pivots in our career that we wouldn't have even known when we started in the profession, which is demonstrated by Jim's story. We have talked about how he grew up in Buffalo. He, in high school, had a lot of fun. He worked in his father's business and got experience in selling and making relationships.
It was because his grade point wasn't the best, leaving high school, he had a hard time getting into college. He started out in a two-year college. I love that he shared this part of his story because so many of us don't know what we want to do when we are younger. It is important to understand that we can find our way with hard work, perseverance, and taking the things that we are good at. What he learned through his father's business about managing the business through the financials, bookkeeping, and the importance of that.
He also told a story about seeing a friend's father, who was an accountant who had a lot of money. That drew him into looking into accounting when he started his career. He fell on the good fortune once he was getting married that his cousin was a partner in an accounting firm, a very small firm at the time with five people. He got his start there, and that's where he learned the depth of relationships and how important relationships were.
All of the teachings that he got through his father of building those relationships, getting involved with the community, and saw how that benefited his business translated into being an accountant. A lot of times, we don't realize how much our communication skills and personal skills matter when we are an accountant, CPA or in any type of professional service that it's not just about the work we do.
It's about how we deliver that work and how we spend time with those clients who take services from us and get to know them and so forth to get to know what they do at a deeper level. One of the things that he said on the side but is important is as a younger CPA, he went under the wing of this partner in his firm.
He called and said, "Take me with." It's reaching out and looking for those people that you strive to be. It's not necessarily waiting for someone to be assigned to you as a mentor but being proactive and telling them, "I want to learn," and watching what they're doing that helped him build his career, leadership abilities, and relationships with clients as he grew in his career.
We also talked about how we started moving into IT and building a technology practice that took him in another direction. That's another important lesson that there are so many things in this profession that you can get involved with. It's keeping your eyes open to what sparks your interest and what you get excited about. You can start specializing and making your way into a practice that maybe you didn't think about when you first started with that firm.
You might've started in audit or tax but you did not realize there were all these specializations in other areas you can get involved with. We talked about one of the most important things he ever did as a partner and a leader. That was doing a 360. We spent a good amount of time on this because so many people resist 360 because it is hard to receive those results and not take them personally.
When we talk about personal brand, if we don't get honest feedback on how we are showing up, and our brand is not aligned with what we think people are going to think about us, then the problem is we are not creating the energy that we want. We are not going to get the results that we want. It is important to understand how people are feeling about you so that you can make the adjustments that will make an impact on how you want people to feel about you instead of letting it happen.
His focus was on getting real, open, and honest from that 360 that he needed to change how he showed up and let people know that he was nervous about certain things. He wasn't what they saw as egotistical, that he was maybe worried behind the scenes that they wouldn't think it was as good or as exciting as he thought it was going to be or worried that an initiative wouldn't go through.
Being deeper in your conversations and more open about your feelings creates more connections. Going all the way back to those relationships that he watched his father create, it has been such an important part of him being able to drive the other half of his career into coaching and consulting. When he went to the AICPA, he's understanding how to delve into what the small firm's issues were, and being very transparent in a corporate environment that was new for him, it wasn't something he was as comfortable with. He didn't even realize how much his opinion mattered.
When we look at the outside of people, we think everyone is confident. We don't realize all this is going on inside of them. We have to remember that everyone is human. The advice that Barry Melancon had given him was, “No one person has all the answers.” The role that he said, "Every leader needs to play," is to go deep and understand how your clients or customers see what you do, what they need, what is their pain, not how you do what you do, and keep pushing on with that. Truly understanding what those pain points are and being open, honest, and transparent with those people around you so that you can build trust and stronger relationships along the way.
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How to Build a Million Dollar Technology Consulting Practice
About James Metzler
James C. Metzler CPA, CGMA is the founder of Metzler Advisory Group LLC, a consulting firm that provides services for the CPA profession and those that serve the profession. Jim has dedicated this phase of his career to helping emerging leaders and partners develop the leaderships skills to be successful in CPA practice. He also mentors a number of recognized national leaders and CEO’s in the profession.
Previously he was Vice President/Small Firm Interests for the AICPA and member of its senior management team. In that role, he led AICPA initiatives aimed at serving the needs of CPA firms including their practice success, advocacy and issues in serving private company clients.
Prior to joining the AICPA in 2003, Jim spent 32 years with Gaines Metzler Kriner and Company CPAs in Buffalo, NY, where he was a partner, and was a co-founder of GEMKO Information Group, Inc., a successful technology consulting arm of the firm. He also spent three years as co-founder of ConvergenceCoaching LLC, a national consulting firm dedicated to helping CPAs prosper by assisting them in developing and implementing success plans.
Jim's contributions to the CPA profession include:
He is a frequent and recognized lecturer for the AICPA, State Societies and global CPA professional associations on practice management and success
Listed as one of 100 Most influential People in Accounting for 18 years running by Accounting Today
Named to the Winning is Everything Advisory Board Hall of Fame
Received the On the Edge award from Leading Edge Alliance
CPA Practice Advisor named Jim one of the Top 25 Thought Leaders for consecutive years
Jim authored How to Build a Million Dollar Technology Consulting Practice and numerous articles on practice management
U.S. Small Business Administration's NY District Office Financial Services Champion of the Year Award
Distinguished Alumni by Canisius College in Buffalo NY
Faculty member of The Rainmaker Academy and The Growth Partnership
Current member of the Board of a respected private company located in Western New York