Episode 110: Creating A CAS Plan Means Being Entrepreneurial And Agile With Jodi Bieber & Brian Long
In today’s business landscape, Client Advisory Services (CAS) is a fast-growing area. But what does it take to create a next-level CAS practice? Today, Brian Long and Jodi Bieber from JC & Company join Amy Vetter to discuss their journey as a practice and developing a new service line, what mindset it takes to create a CAS practice, and how to continue to grow and scale.
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Creating A CAS Plan Means Being Entrepreneurial And Agile With Jodi Bieber & Brian Long
Welcome to this episode where I interview Brian Long and Jodi Bieber from JC & Company. Brian is a partner in the Wealth Management, Healthcare, & Tax services groups in the Lancaster and Hilliard offices. Brian joined the firm in 1989. He is an experienced member of the firm’s Wealth Management, Healthcare, & Tax services group and has worked with companies in a variety of other industries, including real estate, construction, hospitality, and restaurants. He has worked with many middle market and private companies with JCC’s client base. During his career, Brian has gained extensive experience in serving physicians with practice management.
Jodi is the leader of the CAS practice at JC & Company. She loves jigsaw puzzles and because of the use of puzzles, she has been great at creating workflows in the accounting process so that every piece fits into place, revealing the path for the clients to reach their goals. Over her career, she has worked extensively in developing payroll services and accounting so clients can focus on their business. During my interview with Brian and Jodi, we discussed the journey as a practice for developing a new service line, such as client advisory services, or we call it CAS, what mindset it takes to create this type of practice, and how to continue to grow and scale. I hope you enjoy this interview with Brian and Jodi.
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Welcome to this episode. I am very happy to have Brian Long and Jodi Bieber from JC & Company. Before we get started with our interview, I would love it if each of you could give a brief intro on yourselves and what you do. Brian, do you want to start?
I am Brian Long. I am with JC & Company. I am our CEO of the accounting firm. A little bit about myself, I have been practicing for many years and am involved in the firm. It is one of those where I always say, “I am really smart or I am really dumb.” I started with the firm on a Friday many years ago. I graduated Friday, started on Monday, and I have been here ever since. One of the best decisions I have ever made.
It is good to love what you do. Jodi, do you want to give a little background on yourself?
I am Jodi Bieber. Unlike Brian, I was not born at JC & Company. I have been with the firm for many years, mainly in payroll initially and bookkeeping and accounting. I have evolved over the years and have a big role in trying and grow the advisory practice side of our business.
I have met Jodi and Brian as part of the CAS workshops that we do, putting business plans together. I have been so impressed with the process that they have gone through and the change management that they are still working through. I wanted to start first of your journey. Brian, we will start with you. Why did you get into accounting in the first place? What was it that you liked about it? Were there accountants in your background of the reason why you got into it?
I will start with my family are all engineers. I am one of those fallen engineers. I never went into engineering, but I was like the stepchild for a while that did not get a chance to ever want to be in the engineering field and went to college thinking I was going to be an attorney. I was going to go into Political Science, worked at the state house as a page through undergrad, and then decided, “If I do not get into law school, what am I going to do?” I took some business classes. I think I changed my major 3 or 4 times from Political Science to English to this and still got out timely. One of those where I took a couple of accounting classes while I was still working and liked it. It clicked.
It must have been that pseudo math brain from the engineer side of things. What I like more than anything is, as an accountant, even though stereotypically, we are not allowed that to have a personality. Accounting gave me a personality and that I was allowed to talk to clients and help them with their businesses. That has always been my focus and why I ended up, ultimately, on the accounting track and doing taxes. It even ties into wealth management with me moving forward.
First off, why did you want to become an attorney?
More than anything, I wanted to get into politics someday. Related to that, my mom always told me that I was the stereotypical Philadelphia lawyer where I could argue my way out of anything. She said, “Your goal in life should be you need to become an attorney and you need to do what you do best.” That is how it ended up.
Once you got into it, you took business classes just in case you did not get in. Was there some reason you thought you were not going to get into law school or you are just an overachiever?
Being an attorney, there were so many of them at the time and thinking about that, and then I thought, “Politics is a tough game. I do not want to know that I want to be out in front at all times and scrutinized at all times.” I took a Computer Science, MIS, Management Information Systems class. I did really well in it. That’s when you had to learn how to do Lotus 1-2-3 type thing prior to that. It set me in the right direction. I did not even do well in my first accounting class, but it came to me eventually.
It is funny about engineering. My son is in engineering and I have met a lot of engineers and I am like, “They do more accounting than the accountants.” They do not warn them about that. My son was purposely not going into accounting. I am like, “You are doing accounting.” Jodi, about you? How did you get into accounting?
When I was younger, I always wanted to be a veterinarian. I take my stuffed animals and I cut them open, I take their stuffing now, put them back in, and sew them back shut. I cut their hair with scissors. My mom says, “You are making a mess, stop it.” I stopped it. I have always liked puzzles. To me, accounting is always like a puzzle. I always enjoy finding out how to make things all work, how to make things fit so that everyone is happy with the end result and it means something to them.
It is not just a matter of just putting some numbers on a piece of paper, but it means something. That has always been my view and approach to accounting. I used to want to be a teacher, but after I took Calculus in college, my very first semester, along with Political Science, which was a terrible first semester in college. I get a D in political science and a C in calculus. I thought, “Maybe I do not want to be a Math teacher.”
I think it is a misnomer too about accounting so much that it is about math. It is so much more than that. There is so much more complicated math and accounting. It is about balancing. Everyone thinks you have to be good at math. Do you still do puzzles?
I do puzzles. I try to do a couple of them during tax season. It is my way of decompressing where I do not have to think about work. I just think about the puzzle pieces and whatever is on the TV in the background is background noise. I tone everything out. It works out well. Everybody else in my family, including my husband, is all very crafty. I can follow a recipe and I can follow directions, but I cannot come up with that on my own.
Brian, what was your trajectory with this firm? You started right out of college.
I was a staff accountant for two years and then I became a senior accountant. It is super typical in the accounting firm, two years as a senior, a year as a supervisor, two years as a manager, and then partner. My whole goal from day one was I knew going into it, I was going to go into this field and I liked it. I wanted to be a partner. It was always a goal of mine.
Why was that?
CAS Practice: Find out how to make things work and how to make things fit so that everyone's happy with the end result and it means something to them.
My dad had his own engineering firm, obviously, being an engineer. He was always entrepreneurial. My parents were both entrepreneurial. Whatever field I decided to go into, I wanted to be an owner, help run the business, help decide what is going on, and get involved in steering how the firm will move and where it will go moving forward.
A lot of times, at least with the firms that I work with, I find that that is not a skill that people realize because a lot of people get promoted to the next level, but it is not really about entrepreneurial thinking. It is about your skillset. Once you get into those roles, you have to think like an owner and entrepreneur versus a specialist. How was that mindset shift for you? How have you seen yourself being able to do that in a very traditional accounting firm?
It is funny that you say that because I am thinking back. My brothers would tell everyone that since I am the eldest, I was bossy anyway. You typically think of someone that is in charge as bossy, which is not always the case. I was always one of those. I always had an idea of where I could, at least, explain what I wanted done, but you are exactly right. It is one of those where if I were to go back to college today, the course that I never had or learned was how to run a business. Where do you start? What is involved?
I know that you need to know the underlying mechanics, but beyond that, it seems like it is an innate thing that you just know. You are one of those people or you are not one of those people. I hate to say that because I always want to say, “I can train good managers and good people,” but sometimes, it is those that are the ones that are going to drive a business. It has been in their background or it has been in their blood.
You said both your parents were entrepreneurial.
Yes. My dad, more so because he had his own business, but my mom was always trying to do something that she could make money at. Same type thing.
What businesses did she have?
At one point in time, she was a piano teacher and was trying to get that expanded into other areas. Believe it or not, I was raised on a sheep farm where we tried to raise and sell sheep. We always had the farm where you had corn and beans. It was more in that realm than anything.
What skills do you think you watched with them or were involved with that you now have like, “I remember them doing this,” or gave you confidence to do it?
With my dad and the engineering firm, it is funny. My parents were divorced. In order to see him, he lived in New Jersey and we would spend the summer with them. We would get paid 25 cents an hour to run the blueprint machine for new buildings that were built and everything else. We got to be there with him, watching him in action. I still go back. This will put tears in my eyes because my dad is gone. As it relates to that, in the evening, he would not come home until 10:00, 11:00, 12:00 at night. If we stayed up, we got to go run with him.
We would go run in the dark for 2, 3 miles and just chit chat and talk about nothing type thing. That is one of the things I remember most. You see a parent putting in extra time. Now, we all talk about how do we do things quicker, smarter, easier so do not have to do them. We can have a family life. I grew up knowing that work was super important if you want to do well in life.
I would think there are two lessons in that. Work is important. My mom had a business and I remember late nights because there were no computers to bring home. You have to work in the office. He’s making that time to still do his hobby, but with you guys and talk about things that were happening. It is so important. What about you, Jodi? What was your start with this in the firm?
My start in the firm was my husband and I was moving back to Ohio after living in Kansas for six years. I went back to the old firm I worked for and did not feel like it was the same atmosphere environment. I dropped off my resume, got the phone call, interviewed, and started out as a professional and mainly done bookkeeping and payroll services. It took a while to let everybody know what I could do, letting people let things go so I could show them that I could do this. It took a while for that. I had my associate’s degree in accounting and I thought, “I want more.” I went back to school, got my Bachelor’s degree in Accounting, but then I wanted more.
I wanted to be an expert in something. I went and got my certified payroll professional certification through the American Payroll Association and use that to help get the payroll department that we have in our firm up to where it is. We do things successfully. We have a streamlined process and set procedures that we follow and pricing packages, and then continue to show what I could do and take charge of things. I am a supervisor at the firm and have my hands in a lot of different pieces.
I think this is important when you said, “I needed to show them what I could do.” As an example for others, because a lot of times, when working with staff people, they want you to notice and we have to advocate for ourselves, manage up and talk about the things that we want and how we work there. Not complain about the things that we want, but more about how do we open up those doors and opportunities? You can talk a little bit about how you got them to take notice.
I have experienced it on both ends of the spectrum there. When I was hired, a lot of people were overwhelmed, had a lot to do, and did not want to give it away or maybe they had somebody before who did a crappy job. They did not want to give it away again and have to go back and clean it all up again. I am in exactly that same position. I am overwhelmed. I have some things to do. We have some staff. Maybe I just lack a little bit of trust in somebody new and, “Can they do it? Do I have to spend and invest a lot of time in helping them get there?” Both ends of the spectrum there.
Having to tell somebody, “Do you have anything I can do?” I remember walking around the office, going from person to person, “Can I help you do something?” Finally, somebody said, “Can you do this? It is a little complicated.” “I have done that before.” It took me doing it for them to say, “This is great.” I want them to know I can do it.
Tying in with Jodi, Jodi and I have a lot of the same personality traits. We do not knock heads, which is good. Normally, a lot of times, the same personality traits knock heads. However, Jodi is very good at being assertive in that, “Brian, you got a couple of seconds?” She is sitting at my table and she is telling me, “Here is what we need to do.” She does not take no for an answer. Not that that is a bad thing at all, “Here is why,” and she comes with her ducks in a row, all prepared.
I think that is so important because what gets lost a lot of times between staff and leadership is that you think that they know. When you come prepared with an agenda and the outcomes you want, the actions you want, then it is easier for a leader to say, “Yes, we can do that. No, we cannot do that. We have to wait on this.” It is much more of a productive conversation than to go, “I want a promotion. I am not getting a chance.”
CAS Practice: Work may not come first, but work is very important if you want to do well in life.
I have learned over the years to try and be organized. It makes things go a lot easier if you are having a conversation and organized and what you want to accomplish from that conversation.
I would love to get both of your perspectives, but client accounting services is such a big area in the accounting profession. It has been around for a long time, but not everybody is taking advantage of the opportunity. As I see with a lot of firms, as they get into it, they get in trouble very fast because they are trying to do it like they do at the tax department or the audit department. How did you get started with it and why?
For me, there is something we had talked about a little bit before about what we wanted to do with growing some of our boss services or back-office support services. Doing some of that, I am thinking to myself, “I want more. I want something different. I want something better. I want to have a better experience.” I am happier going to the office and working, and the client is happier with what they are getting. That is where my mindset has been. The pandemic seemed to accelerate that more because it changed the relationship between us and our clients and how we work together in all these changes.
Trying to always think about ways to evolve, not getting stuck in a rut, trying to improve how everything works and the whole system. To me, that is where it is. That is where I would like to be. That is where I want to put my focus on. We can tailor that. That rolls into every other aspect of our firm once we can solidify something and then it trickles down to everything else that we do. It makes a better working environment and better working relationship, and that is where I would like to have things be.
Brian, I know from a partnership level, that it is sometimes hard to think about where to put your investments with limited resources. Why did you decide to invest in this area of your practice and how did you come to that decision?
It was easier for us with me because my father-in-law was a cardiologist. I started dating my wife when we were seventeen years old and I saw the medical field and how physicians did not know how to run businesses. When I first got started, anytime one of our staffers would leave and they worked with one of our physicians in the firm, I took it over. It got to the point where I was going in showing the staff how to bill and code. I was going in showing the staff how to do their HR. I was hiring, I was firing. I was more involved in helping run their business, which ties right into client advisory services.
I would go in with ten items that we need to work on for this next month. It was part of our bullet points that we would meet. The pandemic changed that a tad. I used to be putting 25,000, 30,000 miles on my car each year. Now, I am able to, every few months, every whatever, and service clients better because we can do it through a Teams meeting or whatever, and everyone is comfortable with it. It was an easy entree for us because I was already in that space to an extent. It was nice to have someone else that wanted to venture out and know the nitty-gritty of a product.
It is a good point of the example you bring up. For a lot of people, it is hard to even get their heads around what the service is. It is more than bookkeeping. It is more than a write-up. It is the actual getting to know the business, the operations of the business, how you can help them and their strategy, and rolling your sleeves up. It takes a different type of skillset to do that. How do you know you have the right people to be able to deliver that service at your firm?
We are still learning that, in all honesty. We have added people in the last number of years. We have had some successes and we have had some failures. A lot of it was they did not have the technical aspects of what they needed to do, but we thought they had the right personality. Anyone can run numbers. That is my thought process. It is someone that can take those numbers and convey them to a client and help them see what they need to do or how to help them. That is the hard part. At our firm, even after the pandemic and Zoom and Teams meetings, we only have about three people that do meetings on a regular basis. We are still training the team and trying to beef it up and expand it.
It is an important thing where when I had a practice, I would have some people that were really good technically, but the clients just did not like them. You would be like, “Everything is right that they do.” If the client did not like them, it was never going to work because they did not have enough personality or was not good at communication. Those are the things that people do not understand about this practice. Sometimes, the technical skills are not as important as interpersonal skills in this type of service line. What do you think, Jodi?
The one thing we did during tax season was we surveyed our staff and asked them about ten questions we had. Some are point-blank, “What are your strengths? What are your weaknesses? What do you like about being here?” We want to know what that is. Sometimes, it is hard to have those one-on-one conversations. Brian might meet them, but it may not come from meeting with me about things. We can try to take advantage of some of those strengths and turn them into positivity things for our firm. As accountants, though, we also get stuck in a rut. We get stuck in just compliance, “I got to get this return and that return. I got to do this meeting.”
We want to expand that into just being mundane, “We have to do these returns.” We do not want that to be just a return. We want that to be a return with a conversation that shows the client, “If we do some tax planning this year, that gets you in a different aspect.” The client is not thinking, “I only talk to these people once a year.” Changing the relationship that we have to try and make the staff see how important for us to do that. It is not just about getting the tax return done. We do struggle with trying to get people to get out of that box and want to have that conversation. It is going to be ever-evolving for me. I do not know if it is ever going to be something we finally figure out and this is what it is going to be. It is going to be something that is going to evolve and change.
When you came into doing your roadmap plan, you already had a practice. What were some of the things that are the reason why you came in to develop a V2 of your plan for this practice? Where were you falling short that you thought you needed to turn around as a practice or for the firm?
The overall buy-in of the staff is what was needed. Jodi and I have already combined forces and made the decision, “Here is where we are going.” This is the wave of the future or what we should be doing with our clients, providing value-added services. Not just what happened in the past because we cannot do anything for them at this point. I tend to be the 30,000-foot view of, “Here is the ultimate of what we need to have.” Jodi gets stuck with the nitty-gritty stuff where, “Let’s plot the plan,” and then we work together to go.
We are working mostly on bringing the rest of the staff over to see how successful she and I are and how it is the wave of the accounting future. That is what we should be doing. Compliance is compliance. Anyone can do it. Someone can do it overseas for cheaper. You just never know. We provide value-added by speaking with the clients and getting involved in helping them make good business decisions.
What would you say, Jodi?
Brian and I are similar in the fact that we attend a workshop or a class and we get highly motivated like, “We are going to do this. We are going to do this right now. This is exciting.” We have to tell you to take a step back. It is like, “We cannot do it so fast. We got to wait and see what we can realistically accomplish.” Brian’s other partners will say the same thing. “Here comes Brian. He comes back from his seminar for three days now. What is he going to do now?” I get the same way.
Making a joke with me that if I go on vacation, I cannot come back with new ideas.
You get easily motivated. There is always something out there that can improve in other relationships. It can improve our firm, make us be more profitable, and be more attractive to new talent. Keeping that open. Brian and I are definitely open to change and new things.
CAS Practice: Trust your people and you need good people. Otherwise, you're not going to get there.
What are some things that you have done based on your business plan? How does it help get people through that process of understanding where you are going and what you are doing? It is an important discussion, whether it is staff, whether it is other partners or managers, when you are making an investment in something like this. There is always the, “What is in it for me?” factor of, “Why would I put myself through this? Why am I going to add work to myself to make this change? How is it going to benefit me?” What have you seen that has helped the practice so far?
So far, for us, it is still evolving. We need to have the meetings and communication with the staff and how to show them the success stories that we have had. We have migrated clients into this platform and have not had any meetings with them and show them how it has changed the relationship with the client and made it better for everyone involved. We still need to have the staff meetings and it is going to take some longer than others. It is almost like burnout too. We have had the pandemic and all those tax laws have changed and PPP stuff coming in. Credits trying to get our clients to take advantage of and helping them survive through the pandemic.
Sometimes, staff are like, “We do not want to change anything else. We want things to be mundane for a little while. Can we please not have something different?” We got to keep that conversation ongoing every month, if not, every couple of weeks. It is not going to come quickly. It is going to be a system of change. Not only that but how do we communicate through our website and have their input because we can have their input there. Everyone feels valued and heard. That is important as well.
I think you will see very quickly where those compilations that we used to do are going away and should go away and should roll into our advisory services. It is one of those things where we have now looked at all the clients in the firm that we do “bookkeeping” for. We are saying, “What is the next step?” As in, is it a year from now? Is it six months from now? Is it two years from now? Any client that is not on that we feel like we are experts in and that we will deal with has that hard conversation with the client.
If they are not willing to be in our bailey wick, then, unfortunately, they will have to go elsewhere because we need to focus on what we do and do the best that we can do with those clients. It is this whole advisory space where we have made a conscious effort that we are going to get rid of clients in order to push forward with this direction.
I think that is really important and so hard for so many people, no matter what they do. It is understanding that whole, “I am okay with eliminating the wrong clients for the right clients,” but going through the process of who is the right client and getting centered around that. How did you get feedback to make sure you have the right client persona?
We surveyed our staff as we went through tax season. We had a one-page questionnaire about different aspects of each person. What industry were they in? Did they use technology? How do they communicate? Did they pay their bill timely? I think there was one more criteria. I cannot remember exactly what it was, but we asked staff to fill it out as they were working on the tax returns. It would give them a grade. We took all those and put them in a spreadsheet, because we love spreadsheets, and then try to see out who are our A, B, C, D clients.
It was funny how we all have our pet clients. There were a number of clients that picked on me. I know them. I like them. They are friends of mine. Even though they are awful clients, I gave them an A because they never follow anything we want to do. We had some of that. For the most part, it was productive.
Any overrides on those pet clients?
I think there were a few.
That always comes up so much like, “I know they will not pay what we want, but they are really nice.” You can only hold on to so many of those or else you never get to where you want to go.
On the flip side, you have the ones that are a real pain in the butt, but you charge them everything and they pay the bill. We keep doing it. There is a happy medium.
Just because you charge them a lot does not mean that they are the right fit for your practice. You need to understand the personality that you want and their industries. The other big piece of this is technology investment. How have you gone through the process of prioritizing the right technology and when? It is an evolution over time, but it can be a lot of investment as you are putting this practice together and figuring out what you need.
With technology, we are heavy users of QuickBooks online and that is the main software we want to use for accounting services. We have our own payroll services within the firm. That works out really well. We do the payroll. We log into QuickBooks online and record the payroll entries for the clients. We already have that. As far as still on our roadmap, we still need to think about CRM. We still need to figure out how we are tracking our sales efforts and making those touch points, even though it might not work out for the person who sought out now, but maybe down the road, it will work out for them.
It is still trying to keep maybe a touch point in there. We still have to develop that and that is still developing. When we have those meetings with our clients, are we going to use Fathom to help the most KPIs that we want to discuss with clients or are we going to use something else? That is still evolving.
Brian, how, from a partner level, have you convinced your partner leadership to make these technology investments? What kind of process do you go through?
For a small to medium-sized firm, we are with twenty-some people that we have always been good about technology and not afraid to expand. For example, we use all the Thompson suite of items. We use Virtual Office. For the size firm we are, I think we adopted Virtual Office very early, in all honesty, because it is pricy to do that. The nice thing is one of my partners, that takes care of most of the technology, has always been good to go.
We have always had an IT company that we deal with that knows what we want. They have always been right on our side to help take care of things too. For us, it has always just been a cost of doing business. For example, our PCs, we change out every 3, 4 years primarily because they do not work as well. All these programs come with beefier things that they need in order to run properly. That has never been an issue, honestly.
It is a really good point you made about if you do not have it internally, making sure you have got a good partner for IT externally that can help advise the firm and the right tech investments. For people who have these practices and are struggling or looking to start it, looking back now, what advice would you give someone starting this practice that you wish you had done years ago?
CAS Practice: You may not know what you're doing, you may need to work some things out in order to get it there, but projecting that confidence helps you move in the right direction.
I wish that we had hired more people like Jodi and given them the opportunity to help fly and be free, for lack of a better term. Partners tend to get stuck in day to day running of the business as opposed to looking at the nitty-gritty of what is going on with clients sometimes or maybe get bogged down in that. It is really important to have the right staff or the right people on board who are willing to take chances, take risks, and try new things. We, as partners, then are beating them up because this one failed, but this one did well and rolled forward with it.
A perfect example is that we took our payroll company and had an in-house service that we were using our stuff. I will not say we outsource the service. We outsource the platform that we run on. We went on blind faith with Ms. Jodi over there in order to come up with something. It was bumpy, but we are getting there. Trust your people and you need good people. Otherwise, you are not going to get there.
I want to drill into that for a moment because innovation is hard and what happens a lot is people do get put in rules like that or something goes wrong and they are branded. It is bumpy. Doing anything new is hard when you are learning it. What do you guys do to make sure people can run within fences so that they are not branded badly and they continue to keep innovating?
We have a monthly partner meeting. Anyone that has a project, we meet with them and have them present on progress, “What is going right? What is going wrong? Do they need our assistance?” We are still small enough that we have open-door policies. If Jody is totally frustrated, she and I are across the hall from one another. She can yell across the hall at me. I would yell across the hall at her too, and Keith next door to us who is my other partner.
It is one of those where we have all of our people, for the most part, within a 500-foot radius. We are real collaborative with one another. You find that maybe sometimes we smoke and joke more than we should. It is one of those things that we know, like and trust one another. You got to develop that over time.
Jodi, what are some pitfalls that you experienced that you would suggest to others?
What I would definitely suggest is you cannot do everything. I tend to take on too much. I have always been that way. If someone says something about doing something in a meeting and everyone sits there and you hear crickets, I am like, “I will do it.” I want to make sure it gets moved forward. It gets done and completed, so I take on too much. Learning how to trust the staff that you have to do those things. They may not do it the same way you did it, but the end result is it gets done, and then having that feedback, offering the suggestions, but not feel like you have to do everything. You need to let go and know yourself, know what your limitations are and know other people's strengths are so that you can take advantage of all those things and everyone feels supported.
Having some processes, I am a big process person. Having some set, defined processes that people can follow is important because people do not feel lost when they are newly hired, having a good onboarding process where the expectations are known from the get-go. It is important to have that stuff in there and not just fly by a CD or pants.
Onboarding can be where everything falls apart.
We get in the door and they are like, “I do not know.”
I am good at selling it and bringing it in and saying, “Jodi, your turn.”
With that, there have been some great tips. I appreciate your journey of where you are going. Is there anything that we have not talked about or that you would want to stress for the people reading this a takeaway as an important thing that you want people to know?
Having a plan is great and having goals is great, but do not make it so critical if you do not meet that goal and the whole thing fails. Be willing to modify and adjust as things evolve because you do not know when a pandemic is going to start again. It is going to push off some of those things you thought you got accomplished because now you have to deal with new things. Being flexible, still keeping to the plan, but not so much that you are not realistically planning when things can be accomplished. It is okay if some plans can be pushed back a couple months, not two years. Be flexible with that.
The whole thing is you have it on a plan. Whether you shift the date of when it happens, at least you are not swimming around in your head going, “When will it happen?” it is documented. Everyone knows that is where you want to go. It is okay to move the deadline. What about you, Brian?
Mine is a little more anecdotal in that my wife always laughs at me because anywhere we go in the world, which is really freaky, that I get asked for directions. It is one of those where I always say you project confidence. You may not know what the heck you are doing. You may need to work some things out in order to get it there, but projecting that confidence helps you move in the right direction. It is funny how, just by doing that, again, I am at that 30,000-foot view, projecting that confidence to those you work with makes a big difference. They tend to buy into that confidence that, “He is fine with it. Why should we not be fine with it? I know there are a lot of little nooks and crannies we need to iron out, but we know we can do it. Here is why.”
Even when you got the plan, so you can at least know it is there and we have got a mission. You know that you are aligned with that then you can feel better as you are going through it, even on the bad days. Thank you both so much for sharing your story. I am sure, so many readers are going to be able to walk away with a lot of lessons. Thank you for coming on.
Thank you.
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For my Mindful Moments with my interview with Brian and Jodi, talking about their beginnings was very interesting. Brian first talked about how his family was all engineers. He went to college to be an attorney and then only took business classes in case he did not get into law school. He soon found that he loved accounting and he wanted to go into that field. Jodi, on the other hand, was looking to be a veterinarian. She loved taking care of her stuffed animals. I loved the stories that she has talked about, but she also had the hobby of puzzles, which she still does and has found that the work that she does in Klein advisory services is just like working on a puzzle. It is finding all the pieces, fitting them together, and coming up with a solution that feels good in the end.
We talked about how they started in this practice at JC & Company. Starting off with Brian, he always had the goal to be a partner. He had the example of his parents being entrepreneurial themselves. He wanted to run a business eventually. He always had the idea that he could transform the lives of his clients based on the experience that he had watching his parents' businesses and wanting to do the same for his clients.
His dad, when he was younger, gave him that first experience of learning what it is like to run a small business and see the type of hard work that his father put in to be successful. It gave him the belief system of how important work was and being dedicated, and he also took that time for his children when he would get home from work to be able to talk to them about their day and so forth.
We all know it is so hard to create that balance when we are trying to drive our career and also have a family at the same time, which is something as we are putting plans together that we need to consider and anything we are doing. We have got that time so that we can enjoy our personal life and our family and friends. Jodi started in bookkeeping and she over and over said this quote that, “I want more.”
She was internally driven to keep learning and find new ways to not only improve the practice but also improve the client’s lives as well. She had to learn how to manage up in order to start delivering new services within the firm. I think this was a really important discussion because we often wait for someone to tell us what to do versus speaking up and asking where we can help and show that we have the initiative to take on more work or learn new things. It was her assertiveness that Brian talked about how this practice got off the ground because of her passion for it.
When she started it and they started working on these Back Office Services or BOS is what they call their CAS practice, she started realizing that they could do more. She wanted to do more, give more to their clients, and try to find ways to continue to evolve that practice so that they are not stuck in a rut of doing the same compliance services for these clients. Brian’s background is in understanding the plight of entrepreneurs. He talked about his father-in-law, that was a cardiologist and taught him what client advisory services are.
It is beyond the numbers. The numbers are the things we need to do as a financial person, but going beyond that and really helping these small businesses have the discussions, answer their questions of things they want to do in their business strategy that they want to do, and also might be affecting the numbers that they have so that they can improve their operations or their results going forward.
The benefit and the exciting part of doing a practice like this that I think a lot of people do not understand when they get into it. They might think of it as write-up or compliance services but not realize that you are rolling up your sleeves with your clients and learning about their business in a new way, taking that financial data, and being able to become more intelligent about their business so that you can be that true valued partner with your clients.
We talked about what they have learned over time, having this CAS practice. It comes all back to staffing. I think a lot of times, what I see with firms, is that they look at the types of people they have hired in the past and put them in these positions with client advisory services. Maybe not give them the right training, but they might not be the right fit.
Knowing that interpersonal skills and relationship skills are so important in the work that you do in client advisory services, it is important to develop those job descriptions and then find the right fit for those jobs versus trying to place a person in there and make them fit into something that might not fit for them. I liked the approach they had during the workshop they were with me in when we talked about, “Are we working with the right clients?” Drilling into the client personas that they went and asked their staff to get involved in this process as they were doing work in the busy season, rating those clients talking about their personality.
All of the things that are so important to remember, you know it when you are in the trenches, rather than trying to look back at it. When it was fresh, it was the perfect time to get that feedback so that they could make sure that they were working with the right clients going forward. They asked their staff what they liked, what they did not like, what work they liked to do more than other types of work, and how they wanted to contribute their value to the practice. That has helped in order to get the right buy-in of staff, but also the staff that does not buy into it, finding the right spots for them as well.
Another tip that they talked about was making sure that you have continuous meetings and communication and talking about success stories that are ongoing every month. This is not a one-time discussion. You are constantly talking about what is happening with these clients. Everybody is sharing their experiences so that you can learn from everybody. They have also learned how to start working on the messaging of their website so that it was not such traditional accounting terms but the things that their clients are looking for as well.
Another topic that we covered was the importance of technology and they have placed importance on technology and putting the right investment in technology is important when you want to create a practice like this. To not look at it as a cost but the return on investment when you are automated and a more repeatable process is in place. Brian talked about how important it was to hire someone like Jodi, to get more people like Jodi, and to make sure that you are also developing those personas about the right people to be on board that are willing to take those chances and also create the environment where your staff feels it is okay to take chances.
He said that every month during their partner meetings, anyone who has a project presents how it is going, what is working, and what is not working so that it is very collaborative. They are able to give quick feedback, which I loved. Jodi came back and said, “Make sure you are being honest with yourself on what you can do and not take on too much, not say yes to everything. What are you going to say no to, to make sure that you do not overstress your staff or yourself, and you are focused on the right priorities.”
We left off with Jodi talking about that even when you put together one of these plans to make sure that your business scales that you should be willing to modify and adjust as needed and really be flexible in the process and confident in the fact that you have got a plan in place. Brian ended it by talking about how to project confidence as you are going through the process that knowing that you are going in the right direction, you might need to pivot here and there, but it is all worthwhile in the end.
Important Links
Jodi Bieber – LinkedIn
Brian Long – Facebook
Brian Long – LinkedIn
About Jodi Bieber
I love jigsaw puzzles. Finding how each piece fits together to reveal a beautiful picture is very satisfying. As a supervisor at JC & Company, I use my love of puzzles to create workflows in the accounting process so every piece fits into place revealing the path for clients to reach their goals. Over the past 17 years, I have worked extensively in developing payroll services and accounting so my clients can focus on their business.
My educational background includes a bachelor's degree in accounting from Franklin University in Columbus, Ohio. I am a Certified Payroll Professional and Quickbooks Online Advanced Certified ProAdvisor.
About Brian Long
Brian is a partner in the Wealth Management, Healthcare & Tax Services Groups in the Lancaster & Hilliard Offices.
Professional Experience
Brian joined the firm in 1989. Brian is an experienced member of our firm’s Wealth Management, Healthcare & Tax Services Groups and has worked with companies in a variety of other industries including real estate, construction, hospitality, and restaurants. He has worked with many middle market and private companies within JCC’s client base. During his career, Brian has gained extensive experience in serving physicians with practice management.
Education
BSBA, Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in accounting, The Ohio State University
Certified in Financial Forensics (CFF)
Personal Financial Specialist (PFS)
Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA)
Licensure
Series 7 and 66, Ohio Life & Health
Certified Public Accountant, Licensed in Ohio
Professional and Community Affiliations
American Institute of Certified Public Accountants
Ohio Society of Certified Public Accountants (OSCPA)
Lancaster Fairfield County Chamber of Commerce – Past President
Lancaster Rotary Club – Honorary Past President
Honor Flight Columbus – Treasurer & Board Member
Fairfield County Revolving Loan Committee – Board Member
Fairhope Hospice of Fairfield County – Vice President