Episode 159: Lead With Optimism: Inspire Others And Set The Bar For Success With Gary Thomson
Leading with optimism is the key to navigating uncertainty and inspiring lasting success. In this episode, Amy Vetter sits down with Gary Thomson, founder of Thomson Consulting, to discuss his journey from growing up in a ministry household to leading one of the top CPA firms in the U.S. Gary shares how his background shaped his leadership style, the challenges and benefits of firm acquisitions, and why vulnerability and openness are essential traits for impactful leadership. He also reflects on mentorship, navigating change in the accounting profession, and how leaders can inspire teams by setting the bar for success. If you want to lead with optimism, clarity, and purposeโespecially in difficult timesโthis episode is packed with wisdom and actionable insights.
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Lead With Optimism: Inspire Others And Set The Bar For Success With Gary Thomson
Welcome to this episode where I interview Gary Thomson. Gary serves as an advisor to CPA firms in critical areas of succession planning, partner compensation, leadership development, and more. After beginning his career with an international firm, Gary started his own practice. Over a 30-plus year period, through organic and M&A, Gary became a leader as the firm scaled from a local to regional to national top fifteen firm. Pursuing a passion to impact the future of public accounting, Gary launched Thomson Consulting in 2019.
During my interview with Gary, we went over his personal background from growing up in the ministry to leading one of the top CPA firms in the United States. We explore the challenges and benefits of his firm's acquisition and the importance Gary has found in sharing his experiences of vulnerability and openness in his leadership roles. You are going to find so many nuggets here to learn from.
I'm so excited for you to read this interview with Gary. For those of you who are on your Work-Life Harmony journey, I am even more excited to be able to provide you with a workbook where you can go and do this yourself following the workbook. It's free. Go to the BusinessBalanceBliss.com/workbook and you can start your journey.
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I'm very excited to be here with my friend Gary Thomson. Gary, before we get started, do you want to give a little background on yourself and then we'll get right into it?
Thank you so much for allowing me to be with you. For those who don't know me, I'm a big fan of Amy's and I have had the privilege of partnering with her in some leadership development, so I couldn't be more excited to be part of this, Amy. Thank you. I'm one of the old gray-haired guys in the profession. I started my career several years ago in Atlanta with a big eight firm, which dates me a little bit.
I had the privilege of moving to Richmond, Virginia and starting my own practice in 1989, and to be able to see that grow and scale, which I'm sure we'll talk about a little bit. I have the privilege of retiring in 2019 to do this, which is to partner with folks like Amy to help be a thought leader in the profession and to use some of the experiences in the past to help guide and advise firms. A very dynamic time in the profession was a great time to make the move over, and what an exciting time for our profession in general.
The respect is mutual. It's been awesome getting to know you and all the amazing things that we are able to share and teach, and I have been in the room to watch it. It's very cool. We are going to start from your beginning. Where'd you grow up? What did your parents do? How many siblings? Give us the background.
Early Influences: Growing Up In The Ministry
I grew up as a minister's son, so it was a bit of a life of a vagabond. I was born in South Carolina where my dad was in seminary, and then through a series of moves, Tennessee, several places in Virginia, rotated, among various places. It's interesting. My life has always been defined by the three years. I was somewhere for the three years of next place. I can think of life in those buckets, but blessed to be in a family of 4 siblings, 3 sisters and myself. Unfortunately, 2 of those sisters are deceased now, but the older two are still around and blessed to have mom and dad around.
Through a series of events, they ended up back in South Carolina, so none of us are from there. My family's from Maryland, Pennsylvania, DC area, but from seminary to where my dad pastored churches, we moved around the South and Southeast quite a bit and met my wife when I was fifteen, which is why we ended up back in Richmond, which is her hometown. Great family, in-laws, as well as my immediate family.
Give me a little background on your father. How did he become a minister and where did that interest come from?
My grandfather, his dad, was in the military Navy for 32 years, a code breaker in World War II, code breaker post-World War II, and so my dad followed his dad into the family business. My dad was in electronics, radio, flew in spy planes. He went to high school and went right into the Navy. While he was in the Navy, through a series of events, his chief petty officer, a very religious, faith-oriented man, convinced him to spend more time in diligence and studying faith.
My dad, as the language that would be in our religion, was converted while he was in the Navy. That chief petty officer was convinced that my father should dedicate his life to ministry. Almost sight unseen, he believed him, got out of the Navy and immediately went to South Carolina and had never visited the college where he ended up going, but it was by his chief petty officer's recommendation to do it. He wasn't like some crazy fool that had made a wreck of his life. He was someone that was pursuing what he knew, which is what he had learned from his father, and became convinced that God had other plans for him. That's what he made in life.
What do you think it was that the chief petty officer saw in him to guide him in that? Did he ever talk about that? That's quite a recommendation for somebody.
I think my father is an intellectual when it comes to the way that he approaches and studies. He expressed a deep curiosity in expanding his knowledge of his faith, and that expression and then that interest probably showed for his officer that he needed to go and get more prescriptive faith-oriented learning and that faith-oriented learning, led him into the ministry. I don't know if it was like day one. I wanted to be a minister, but it was more of his curiosity to learn, which drove him to going to a religious affiliated school, which then led him to believe that God had ministry life for him.
Had he already met your mom at that point?
He had. He said, โMe and my wife are high school sweethearts in Maryland,โ and my mother is a nurse who has a twin sister who's a nurse as well. My dad met the two identical twins. My dad met the two of them, and he and my mom started dating, by high school, and stayed in touch through the Navy time. He got out of the Navy. Mom and dad got married on August the 13th, and then, as part of their honeymoon, went to South Carolina to visit the college where they would eventually go.
I look back on it because it was a conservative college, and I think, โYou went on your honeymoon there.โ They had known each other for a while and stayed in touch and dated through his Navy years, and then eventually got married. They were married in 1960. He had four kids while my dad was in undergraduate school and seminary. It was about a 7-year process, and 4 of us came along while we were all there.
Did she ever talk about when your dad said that this was the path he was going because that is very different from how she knew him? Was this a background of hers that she was like, โThis is the life that I want to have too?โ Usually, when you make a choice like that, it's a couple's choice of what they are going to have to do for the community.
I don't know. I have ever asked a question quite that way. My mom's family, maybe not as deep, but faith-oriented people. You and I both know back then, culturally, it was the what-he-decide end up being what they decide. I don't know if it was any big, lengthy conversation. I do know this. My dad wasn't some crazy hellion as we would say, but the change in my dad's life was something that was impactful to my mom and to them, and so, it probably made it easier to believe this is a journey we need to take together.
What was her role in the church with your dad being the pastor?
Lead With Optimism: I like the ability to articulate, particularly my faith, put thoughts into logic, and connect the dots on what otherwise may seem as an incongruent passage of the Bible.
The pastor's spouse, I'm Baptist and our religion is one of great support. She did a lot of counseling in the ministry. My mom still practices as a nurse most of our lives. Sometimes, it was internal, like our church had a school, and so she was the school nurse. By that time, she had practiced in the general hospital, it was one of helping take care of four kids. Supporting the family, being part of the ministry, particularly in a counseling way, those were her primary things.
I have such deep admiration for her because I don't know how they did it. Four kids, but mom always played a significant role as we got older, and we were all either in college or heading toward college. She spent more time in her career back in nursing, but for a while, it was less of a priority than what it had been in prior times.
What is that like to be a family that's leading a church? My outside observation would be that it's very public as a family versus like, if you are in the community, you can be more private as a family, but you are also having to be, even if you are the kids on, when you are there to be there for people, and probably taught how to do that too. What was that like? I'm not familiar with that.
It's an insightful place to go. This is the way of it. It impacted me pretty dramatically and even in a positive way because it made me acutely aware that all eyes are on us. It drove me into leadership-type thinking before I would have defined it as leadership thinking. As I mentioned earlier, they had three sisters and me. For some reason, there's a little bit more of a worry about how the boy is going to act back in that place. My dad would frequently mention that my actions impacted how people viewed ministry. Obviously, if you have a pastor who can't keep his house or his kids in order, what does that reflect about your leadership?
I did have this pretty strong sense of need for being a leader and being positive and not doing things that would effectively damage my dad's ministry, and then, as well, our church had a school. I remember our principal of the school frequently said to me, โI'm holding you to a higher standard 1) Because I believe you have leadership capacity, but 2) Because of the reflection on what we do if you are the one screwing up all the time.โ My words, not his.
At the same time, I think that one of the struggles that I continue to have is being authentic because it was a significant part of my life, both in growing up and, as you know, I had a great desire to enjoy public policy and politics that you can create a persona or an image that you feel that others need to see, but that may not always be you.
You need to be on, you need to have this visibility. You need to have this, even though you may want to be doing something else. That was the counter-side to it. Sometimes, you felt like you were living the life that others wanted you to have, and I'm okay with that because leaders have to do that. Leaders have to sacrifice, but I'm sure that most 10 and 12-year-olds think about that way. I did. That pressure certainly influenced me.
You were the oldest, right?
I have an older sister. She would express similar things. A big pivot point for me is that my dad was the lead pastor at churches, and then he became the number two pastor at a church, but he led a bible college. His primary role was as a leader of a college, and his secondary role was as the number two person at church. In a way, it gave me a little bit of a break as I was not the one, but then when I was 14, soon to be 15, my dad became a senior pastor at the church.
That was a super impactful moment for me because I had become a little bit lazy with these things, and now, all of a sudden, we have moved to a new market and new area. I was back to being the person. School and stuff like that had taken a backseat to basketball in my life. All of a sudden, I realized, โI need to get back on my game,โ and I came at an important time, the end of my freshman year of high school into my sophomore year where it made me get back to a little more discernment about a lot of things from the way I played myself, applied myself in school to how I demonstrated leadership. I'm not sure I have ever had this conversation with anyone. It's like I'm reflecting all this, I don't know whether I'm having PTSD or sharing authentically.
It's such a fascinating thing about you and how that affects the entire family, and like you said, that it developed leadership qualities, but then who are you at the same time being separate from the family and can you stand alone to be that person? When you say leadership qualities, what do you believe were some of the leadership qualities that it taught you?
Some of it was behavioral when you recognize it. In my view, leaders set a bar and generally speaking, followers are never going to go higher than the bar. You and I both say that in different ways than lead managing partners with the firms. People are going to follow you and generally are going to be somewhere below where you are. Whether it was the way that I approached my schoolwork, being captain of a basketball program, or things of that nature, I always felt like I owed it to set a bar a little bit higher as a leader.
People didn't like falling at my feet and worshiping me. They didn't see that it wasn't who it was, but you realize that people were watching you. If I was a goofball, if I was not applying myself, if I was acting, talking whatever, inappropriately, then what they are saying is, โThis guy's the leader, and that's the bar.โ I had that acute awareness of that at a young age. I had that sense of whatever and, for good or bad, it impacted me. I grew up most of my formative years in the military area in Norfolk, Virginia. Think about having a minister's son. Most of my coaches that had a lot of impact on me were all military people, and they also had this high degree of discipline and leadership. It was a constant message that was either directly or indirectly there.
The Power Of Mentorship: Finding Your Path In Accounting
I do believe that someone can tell you to be that way, but if you don't buy into it from the, your inner soul, it's hard to buy into to show those leadership qualities. How did you end up in accounting with this background?
Purely by accident. I never knew an accountant. I laughed because the person who did my mom and dad's tax return was a local pharmacist. We would all go to his house, and the kids would get sent to the basement. The adults would stay upstairs. The drive home was always a miserable one because my dad, ministers, are self-employed. He'd always owe taxes, and now, โWe shouldn't have done this. We shouldn't have done that.โ
My memories of an โaccountantโ weren't necessarily all that favorable, but I was strongly inclined toward math. I decided that to enter college as a History, Social Studies, or Education major, thinking I would either go to law school or I'd be a college professor, something like that to teach History and Social Studies, which was my love. I love geopolitics and stuff like that. My freshman year of college, I took Accounting as an elective because I needed an elective. It was a three-hour course, and again, I like math. That was the significance of it.
I took modern dance as my elective because you could take it three times and be able to get credit for it. Not accounting. Accounting was so much harder than modern dance.
My freshman accounting teacher was in his first year teaching college. He'd been an old EY partner who had then gone to work as a CFO for a manufacturing company. He was from New Hampshire, and I couldn't understand half of what he said. I remember talking about the par value of bonds. He was saying par, but he was saying pa. I liked him. He came to me after the first semester and said, โI think you ought to switch your major to Accounting. Even if you want to go to law school, the degree is much more substantive than a History degree or something of that nature.โ I flipped over and did Accounting and History in both because I did want to continue my enjoyment of history and learning.
He asked me to be his teacher's aide after my first year. I started teaching students, and I found a great deal of meaning, and plus that it was economically rewarding to get paid to do that. Even going into my senior year, I didn't anticipate a career in public accounting. It wasn't something that I had anticipated. I had been asked about doing an internship my junior summer, and I wasn't interested in that. I went back to where I now live, stayed and worked for my now father-in-law so I could be with my now wife. We got engaged that summer.
I turned down the typical, โLet's do an internship at a big eight firm to do it.โ In my senior year, I started reflecting on what was next and decided that maybe an opportunity to go into public accounting and then have a few years of experience might lead to a better opportunity to get into a law school that I wanted to go to. I did it and enjoyed it and didn't look back. Not purely happenstance, but an elective led to a professor telling me I ought to reconsider and me saying, โHere it is.โ
Lead With Optimism: Dads are not the best at staying in touch. Dads are really good at trusting you to do the work and allowing you to take risks.
You fell in your father's footsteps of someone noticing in you where you should go.
Absolutely. A good mentor who made sense. It wasn't like I was blindly accepting it, but it sure made sense to me.
It's so nice when you can look back and see how someone put their print on you in your lifetime and they don't even realize it. You might have known them at the time, but they have no idea of the impact, these people along the way.
My father-in-law, who's an entrepreneur, had a good mid-level career at Pepsi Cola, came home and said, โI can't do this. I can't work for someone. I need to start not in business.โ Four daughters at the time, probably all under the age of maybe 8 or 9. He left his job there and started a construction, fencing-related business. His impact on me and thinking about business and entrepreneurialism combined with Mr. Monday's conversation around, โThis is what you ought to do,โ the two of those added up.
I know that you feel the same way, the ability now to be on the other side, the mentoring side of it, because I do realize that there wasn't some deep reflection that caused me to do that. It was the experiences I had from my father-in-law and seeing the way he approached business to someone like Mr. Monday who had this successful career who candidly gave it up to come to be a teacher at a college of like, โWhy shouldn't I listen to these people or follow their example?โ
You never had an interest in going to ministry?
Not really. I strongly believe that it's a call. I never felt that call. I never felt that interest. I will say, people will laugh at this when they hear me, although it probably explains a lot. I used to compete in a preaching contest. They have these contests where you would be asked to prepare a sermon as young people. I used to win these competitions. I like the ability to articulate particularly my faith and put thoughts in logic and connect the dots on what otherwise may seem as an incongruent passage to the Bible. Much like you and I like to do now in taking what seemed to be incongruent topics in the profession and connecting them.
I enjoyed learning, memorizing the Bible as an example, particularly the New Testament. In my life, I spent a lot of time doing that. Faith is a deep part of my core beliefs. A lot of people assumed it, because again, I enjoyed our expression and things of that nature, but you never had that belief. I practiced it. I have preached in our church. I have taught in Sunday school for young adults, classes to young couples and stuff like that, but it never felt as a profession or a vocation that I was called to do it.
That's important too because that's your work-life balance where sometimes, when you take something that you enjoy and make it a job, you don't enjoy it anymore. When you can do it more as a give back, where you are still seeing value, but it's not your job, you can get more reward out of it possibly.
It influences a lot of how I coach and talk to people, not in an overtly religious way, because we all know we have to be careful. I don't diminish what I believe, but at the same time be careful, but it does influence things. An example, on Sunday, if I'm standing in front of a young adult class teaching about money and being wise with money and applying principles, I can use those same principles when I meet a new partner who, all of a sudden, starting to make money. I see so many of them go spend it and over-leverage themselves and overcommit themselves. There's a point in their career where they see an opportunity to pivot, take a chance, and do something else, but they are afraid to do it because now they are deeply committed.
On the financial side, I feel the same way. On the faith side, I see a lot of young people who are called to maybe do something else, but they have overcommitted their life financially. There's a lot of applicability to it, but it's done in a different way. One I can do in terms to a particular passage of scripture, on the other, I do more from the standpoint of common sense experiential principles.
The Entrepreneurial Spirit: Building A Successful Practice
You went into your accounting career. Where did you go from there?
You and I had this conversation. I went to Arthur Andersen, Atlanta, Georgia, 133 Peachtree Street. I still remember it. When I look back on that experience, again, many years ago when I walked in the door, I think about it and say, โThey taught me a lot in a short period of time.โ The focus on business development, being a well-rounded professional, not a good technical person. They thought differently. They allowed a lot of entrepreneurialism. Technology was starting to hit, what we were doing from the use of PCs to automated trial balances, the things like Lotus and WordPerfect back in the day.
Andersen was at the top of their game as it relates to culture, and thinking about it. Work hard, play hard was a balance. I couldn't have been more fortunate to have begun my career there and laid the groundwork for a lot of things that I would experience. I was primarily an SEC high-tech audit person. Very niche, very focused. Few clients, but clients that had pretty big demands on our schedules.
What led you to leave there?
If I were being diplomatic, I would say strong entrepreneurial spirit. If I were being direct, a father-in-law who wanted us to get to Richmond, Virginia. He offered me an opportunity to not only partner in his business but also to be able to start my own practice. We were in Atlanta. We knew we would eventually make our way back to Richmond.
My wife's family is very close. They are a big part of my life as well, and so the desire to get back to Richmond drove the conversation. Arthur Andersen had another Richmond presence, but it was a satellite office of the DC practice. It was a pretty heavy travel requirement, and at that point in life, I had already traveled a lot, and it was time to do something different. The main part was family, to be back with family and start a next career.
What was it like to start your own practice versus what you thought it was going to be like?
It was more difficult. I mentioned that SEC high-tech people, not many sole proprietors, get an opportunity to do SEC work, much less technology work. The big change for me was the level of work. I didn't know about 941s. Maybe we did a payroll reconciliation, but we were dealing with large publicly traded companies, and that wasn't the level of work we did. We didn't have that next level down a business.
I was so privileged to now begin working with entrepreneurials, particularly in the construction business. It was a lot of my focus because my father-in-law was so helpful in introducing me to his friends and colleagues and things of that nature. They were dealing with real-life stuff, how to get financing, how to make payroll, how to save taxes.
Lead With Optimism: We spend a lot of time in the profession talking about people and sometimes we forget that partners are people too.
I had not had much exposure to the technical aspects of it, but what I had that enabled me through the rest of my career is the ability to take complex matters and try to synthesize them into something to help business leaders. While I would never be described as the super technical person, I was a business person. I had a curiosity about business issues. I had a curiosity about how political and world issues affected my clients and by making the connection, I became their business partner, but the transition was they still wanted you to do their technical work.
That was a big challenge. The second challenge was just the pure economics of starting a practice and the third one which helps me reflect a lot as I work with individuals that are thinking about growth. I'm not a growth consultant, so I'm not suggesting that I am, but it was hard for me because I recognized that I could play a significant role with companies. I got to know them. I was doing a lot of business networking, but they didn't necessarily come my way overnight.
Changing CPAs is a significant event. There almost has to be a reason why, some pain, some type of issues, some type of, whatever, and I'm like, โWhy aren't these people who trust me, who are giving me opportunities to serve on their boards and stuff, why aren't they coming?โ I began to realize how long the sales cycle could be. Those are the impactful parts of my early career.
What about once you started getting clients and hiring people? When you go from being the person doing everything to having to manage employees, how was that transition?
It was different. I believe that most of the people who have worked with me say that I'm likely the opposite of the typical CPA who has trouble leveraging. I'm the other way around. I probably leverage without giving expectations. Leverage with an understanding that people are going to make mistakes and I'm okay with it. It was fun in a way to be able to begin leveraging, some of the people who worked for me would say, "Could you help give me a little more instruction?โ โHere it is.โ
I found it super helpful to have people added, and I felt comfortable leveraging work and giving people work to do. I was so blessed to have my daughter join the business and the one thing I said to her when we were talking about her joining my practice and what I do now is, โDad's not the best at staying in touch. Dad's good at trusting you to do the work, and Dad's good at allowing you to take risks. If you need me, you are going to have to come grab me.โ I don't say that at all in a bragging way, but I say that be responsive to your question. I always found it easy to leverage work. I didn't find it always as easy to stay on top of the help that they needed. No doubt people may have floundered a little bit working for me. I trust them. Figure it out.
Did that get you in trouble ever?
Yes. We have had political leaders in our country who believe strongly in hiring good people and letting them run, and you've seen some pretty big examples of that. I think back to the Reagan era and the Iran-Contra. That happened because the president leveraged and didn't necessarily oversee it as well, and so, yes. While I have never had an Iran-Contra affair, I'm not suggesting that but there were times where we made some mistakes that clearly, if I had been a little more engaged, would have helped. I believe strongly in business development being in the community, so my appetite was for that, and sometimes I put it a little bit at risk on the technical side.
Navigating Mergers And Acquisitions: Lessons Learned
As your firm grew, it eventually got acquired, correct? How did that happen? Was that something you were looking for?
No, it wasn't. The dynamics of where we are as a profession now with private equity and things of that nature correlate that discussion to what you asked me. Our firm was strongly independent. We saw a future for ourselves, but we had also gone through a process of thinking about the future and thinking about priorities that supported that vision for the future.
We also had this understanding of what we thought some of those priorities were going to cost us professionalizing our C-suite to investing in some technology and things that were going to help us. We went from a strong position of autonomy and independence to, in less than a year, having the unanimous vote to merge up. Now, the firm was probably 60% or 40%. It was a merge up. We were giving up independence, but it wasn't like we were going from a $20 million firm to a $1 billion firm.
The point was the effort we had gone through strategically to identify our strengths and weaknesses and what we needed made us aware that when this opportunity came to join, the firm was Dixon Hughes. We were Goodman. We could see in them a lot of the investments that we need to make. They were already there. They already had them done. They could see in us some markets, opportunities, and new services that matched. It was the same thing that kept us independent for a long time allowed us this introspection into what it might look like to be together. Nonetheless, a difficult decision to give it up.
What do you think you lost in that decision, or maybe what other people felt they lost?
You and I strongly value culture. We evaluated values and in looking at what we were both about, but we didn't necessarily strongly evaluate culture as much and the integration over the first six months to a year and a half was impacted by our failure to truly understand the cultural differences. One small example we used to use all the time, we were a moderate growth cost-oriented firm. We grew, but we weren't out there growing at tremendous clips. We also minded our nickels and pennies. The firm we merged with had a tremendous reputation for growth, and the exchange for growth and fast growth was, they allowed more flexibility and spending.
We would, as an example, if we sent people outside CPE, they may stay at the Holiday Inn Express, and eat at Chili's. They would stay at the Marriott Marquis and eat at Ruth's Chris or something like that, and those were cultural differences. We had some similarities and the bottom line we weren't that far off in profitability, but our thinking on how to get there was so different that it was an example of a cultural way that we lived it out. That became a struggle. We gave up some of that where we knew who we were and what we were about. We became a little more focused on KPIs and performance, and we certainly changed how we thought about some things in exchange for where we had been.
Is there anything you regret about doing it?
No, I believe when I look back on it, that our people benefited greatly from it, and our clients benefited greatly from it. Regret may be a stronger word than I would use, but there are some things about some of our partners who felt like maybe they got left behind that I would like to have a redo. It's easier, if that's the right term, sometimes to say, โYou are not cutting it. See you later,โ than it is to put someone on your back and say, โHow can I help you?โ
Now, in this second career, one of the things that's impacted me is that I look back at a lot of our good partners who didn't survive the merger very well. They ended up as sole proprietors. They ended up at other firms. I look back on that and say, โWhat might I have done differently to help them?โ Good people lived out our values of the firm, but we are having a hard time getting to the new level of performance standards. Sometimes that was on them, and some you have to call the question no doubt about it, but there were a few times that maybe I could have been a little more patient and helpful to get them there. It's not a regret. It's a reflection.
That's fair and this comes up a lot in the discussion now with PE and acquisitions of people that don't benefit from the merger as much as the partners that are more have been there longer and so forth. What would your advice be as far as firms looking at this, making sure that the people that have given their careers but are not yet at that level, still benefit from this, if that's the path that they go?
I think of that in a bifurcated way first and will think about partners. We spend a lot of time in the profession talking about people, and sometimes, we forget that partners are people too. We are so worried about our young staff, and we are going to talk about those in a second. We should be. Thinking about partners who have dedicated their lives to help grow our firms.
Lead With Optimism: If we don't do things that we enjoy, we are more likely not going to be good professionals.
The reflection on that is we as a profession, for about 15 or 20 years at least, had market partners and we had doer partners, and then all of a sudden some of the market partners, founder partners retired, we expected doers to be something we never asked them to be, and then we did a merger and they no longer had a place. We weren't fair in that and so it challenges our thinking around making sure that we have people doing the highest and best use. When we transition, if we transition into merger, PE, ESOP, whatever it is that we have our partners all synchronized on the highest and best use.
Point number two is directly to the people itself. The future of our profession or the people you and I enjoy talking to and how can we make sure that we have a balanced view that this isn't all about monetization of my retirement. I can't ignore that. We are a business and there are business imperatives to that, but making sure that some good people who've been a big part of our career are taken care of, are looked at or in distinctive ways, ought to be a major part of our fiduciary responsibility.
The Importance Of Authenticity: Embracing Vulnerability As A Leader
I want to get to the fact that you gave the law side behind, in this path that you went on. Were there ways that you were able to incorporate that love that you had for history, social studies and public service, all of those things? How were you able to still incorporate that or are you finding that you are doing it now?
I think a little bit of both. I believe that we all need to round ourselves out. If we don't do things that we enjoy, we are likely not going to be good professionals. The time that we spend on getting better as professionals, there's time we spend personally, and then there's time that we spend just expanding our horizons. I have done for a long time been involved in public service, public policy, and so those outlets have always been there.
What I felt though is that I need to demonstrate to my partners and others in the firm that those are bringing value not only because Gary enjoyed them, but to the firm. Whether I was enjoying politics, serving on boards, serving in the community, I wanted to find a way that there was an attribution back to the success of the firm.
That's been my focus. I want to do that. I want to do it in a big way and I have enjoyed doing that, giving and being part of those things, but I also wanted to be able to demonstrate it meant something to the firm for me, giving up the time to be able to do it. I have served on college boards, chairman of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce, served the state society as chairman, been involved heavily in public policy and politics, things from the American Heart Association, you name it. All those things make me who I want to be and how I did choose to live a life out.
Your life has been one of public service, even from the time that you were younger and being there for your community or your firm or the people at your church. When you said earlier, sometimes I had to ignore, maybe, who I was authentically. Now that you are retired, what does that look like for you? What would be different for you to be Gary?
It's interesting because when I made this pivot into the consulting world, it's like, โWhat do I free up? What do I give?โ I still say that I have instincts toward carefully picking and choosing how I articulate my thoughts on things. Candidly, I could look at Twitter or X for five minutes and I want to weigh in on almost everything that I see. I want to offer my opinion. Then I go, โDoes anyone care?โ Secondly, โDoes it benefit other things I'm trying to do by weighing in?โ I say I exercise a due amount of care on those things, but I probably now on the more authentic side, have more candid conversations with people, and share what's on my mind a little bit of our conversation.
I have mentioned, I don't think I have ever been asked a question and share, you ask why. When I deal with managing partners and leaders of firms now in this role, I can back up and say, โLet me tell you about some of the mistakes that I made and candidly,โ I didn't grow up in an era where you talked about your mistakes. You wanted to be seen as the โHe's got it all together,โ and now I can say to firms, you are going to benefit from my mistakes more than you will from my successes because you won't have to repeat them. That's a way where I'm not sure I would have been able to do that several years ago because I wanted to build this image, this persona of the leader who's got it all figured out, and now you go, โI didn't have it all figured out, and I can reflect on that and be okay with it.โ
Can you, so can you remember your first experience doing that because, for me, it was a journey the first time I was on stage to tell a story I have never told before. I could feel the whole feeling inside of me if I can't believe I'm doing this right now and then still show I'm fine on stage. Do you remember that point where it was a breakthrough for you to be able to do that?
Yes, I do. We had started a leadership program in our firm geared to clarifying the pathway to partners. It's often called the profession, and we call it the partner development committee. Amy and I had the privilege of partnering on something similar for an alliance. I remember it was by pure happenstance that our keynote speaker for an evening event and dinner event had a weather delay and couldn't get to us. You and all about that.
I remember we had a partner facilitating that, who came to me and said, โYou ought to be the keynote speaker.โ Part of that weekend or two-day event. I don't know if it's weekend or weekday, but part of that event was on leadership and authenticity and what it's like. I remember standing in front of the group. It was not completely unscripted because I probably had six hours of time, but my bullet points were around expressing some significant mistakes that I had made from a leadership standpoint where back to my earlier conversation where my predisposition to allowing people to run had cost me and what it looked like and visually how that felt to me practically, how it impacted it and how I overcame it. I'm not sure I would have done it if I'd had two days to prepare.
Think about it.
It was amazing how much people came up afterwards. These are people who knew me in the firm. These are twenty of our high performers and we are like,โWe thought you were the guy whose hair's always in place, always wearing the stark shirt, always prepared.โ The second time that I remember is I was always prepared for any type of communication to our people. I'm not a script person, but notes and rehearsing thinking it out. Our communication person says, โI think that you are almost too prepared. You need to be a little more whatever.โ
One day without any warning, she walked into my office with her phone and said, โI want you to give me 90 seconds on this topic.โ It was a topic that we were rolling out. โI don't want you to put your sport coat on, and I don't want you to worry about your bullet points. Just talk,โ and I did. She sent that message out, and it was some of the best feedback that I have ever gotten.
The one thing that kept coming through was that it felt more authentic or genuine. It was the same words I would have used, but It came across. Those two episodes, one with the leadership group where I laid bare, closed the door and talked about what I consider to be some failures in my leadership. First time I'd ever been that, if you want to use the word vulnerable, and then the second was a stupid video. Unprepared, no sport coat. I don't even remember what my hair looked like back then.
I'm sure it wasn't that out of place.
Probably not. It felt uncomfortable.
Those are the reps sometimes you need, and then when you see the response that people feel closer to you because of it not looking down on you and to break some of those beliefs of the past, like from growing up where you always had to be on stage and perfect to show that example that sometimes the bar is, โI am here, but I am human,โ and that's what you showed.
You and I both know that leaders' words, even inadvertent, take on tremendous meaning sometimes. That always impressed upon me, this care every word, carefully, whatever, and then what you realize is that the downside of that can be this reflection on authenticity, and so a big lesson.
Lead With Optimism: Leadersโ words, even inadvertent, take on tremendous meaning sometimes.
Rapid Fire Round: Family, Friends, And Personal Growth
There are so many good things. I like to end it with some rapid-fire questions. You get to pick a category. Family and friends, money, spiritual or health.
We'll go with family and friends. We'll go with topic number one.
Iโm surprised you didn't say spiritual.
We talked about that a lot already.
Things or actions I don't have that I want to have with my family and friends.
Probably a little more flexibility. I feel like I'm a very forward-looking agile person, but at the same time. I'm still a CPA. I want things in a lane sometimes, and I enjoy being pushed, but sometimes, I'm not ready to be pushed. A little more agility and flexibility.
Things or actions I do have that I want to keep with my family and friends.
Candor. I have the ability to be candid and express myself well among friends and family. I got a challenge with that external to that group. I feel like I can be different in the room with the close-knit groups of friends. I like to have fun. I'm a jokester and those types of things.
Things or actions I don't have that I don't want to have.
I don't want to be close-minded. I look back to my comments earlier. I grew up in a religious environment that was very closed-minded and it limited, at times, our ability to think for ourselves, and I have always wanted to resist that. I don't have that and I don't want to ever get that, whether it's politics, with friends, in religion, or in business. I might not agree with you, but I don't want to be close-minded.
Last one. Things are actions that I do have that I don't want. I want to release it with my family and friends.
I'm too busy and I don't make the time and take the time for the things that are important. A couple of years ago, I had a little bit of a minor episode, a potential health thing that seemed pretty dramatic at the time. Fortunately, it gave me this awareness of the quality of time. Unfortunately, and I know that you know this, but you are more disciplined in this area. The hamster wheel is real and I pretty quickly find myself getting back on the hamster wheel and then I go there going, โI should have gone ahead and played golf with my buddies on Saturday. What's four hours going to hurt me as opposed to feeling like I need to do that or whatever it may be with my family?โ I don't always take the time to not be busy.
There are so many great things in your story, and thank you for being so authentic and open during this conversation. Is there anything that we didn't talk about or anything you want to make sure people take away from this conversation in closing?
I'm so fortunate to be around you, and one of my bully pulpits is that I feel that leaders need to be optimistic. There's a lot of heaviness in the world and that heaviness has been around for a while. It seems distinctly more than it has been in the past, and so they look for the Amys and the Garys in the world and other leaders of the world to be optimistic, excited about the future. I encourage people, even when things are heavy and even when you may not necessarily have complete clarity on the future, to know that we can get it done and people are looking to us for that if the inspiration is something that we need to provide and so it's important for us to have that mindset.
You are an inspiration, and you are also an example that there are so many people we encounter that think it's too late to make a change or too late to be open with yourself of what else you could expand on, and you show that every day. Thank you so much for being on and sharing your story.
Thank you and thank you for pushing me a little bit. That's been enjoyable.
โ-
Mindful Moments: Reflecting On Gary's Journey
Now from my Mindful Moments with this interview with Gary. There are so many nuggets here that I want to cover. Just for us to step back and think about how our life experiences have shaped us in the past, and there were two big things that Gary talked about from his past. One of coming from a family with a military background and how that affected Gary as well as the coaches he had and so forth. All having that same background and giving him that discipline in his life.
The second being his father, being a part of the ministry and we talked a lot about how that affected him personally, how that affected his family because what happens is that the whole family was in support of his father in order for his father to be successful as a minister. One of the skills that Gary learned very early on was that people were watching and showing up in the best way possible so that his father was reflected on well, his family was reflected on well. He calls that his leadership traits coming out very early, that he had it from the inside out, that this was important to him to be able to have the right actions to support his father and not do things that may embarrass his father as he's growing up.
He had the extra pressure of even the principal at his school telling him he needed to be an example, which was something that we talked about maybe later on as a leader. It's a big thing here is setting that bar high if you are a leader, that the people underneath you are not going to exceed the bar that you set, and so when you are thinking about the example that you want to create and you are trying to push initiatives into your organization, if you are not the example of that, if you are not living that, it's very hard for people to follow because they don't feel it's authentic.
That creates a pressure on any leader that is in front of people to show up in the way that they want people to interact, the values that they want people to demonstrate so that it is congruent with who they are and who the organization is or whatever you are representing, whether it's a family, a community, a school, and so forth.
Lead With Optimism: Be optimistic and excited about the future even when things are heavy and even when you may not necessarily have complete clarity on what is ahead. Know that we can get it done.
It was interesting, his path, that he had no accountants in his background, but he did have a couple of people that he looked up to. One being a professor that he took accounting from, and he took it as an elective, which I still pointed out was an amazing elective to take because that's a very hard elective. For him, he had an interest in it like he talked about with his father. He shares that curiosity of being a learner, and because math came naturally to him, he went into it and that professor took an interest in him, put the nugget in his head that maybe you should become an accountant. It's important that we think about that because where are we planting seeds with others who are younger to let them know where their gift is starting to shine?
Sometimes, we can't even recognize it within ourselves. We can say, โThis comes easy to us,โ or, โWe like it,โ but not necessarily notice that this could be a career or this could be a future for us. This professor also asked him to be a teaching assistant, and so it brought him closer into his craft and skill and eventually decided to go into public accounting.
He also has said that his father-in-law, being an entrepreneur, was a great mentor to him as well, and it impacted him watching him be in business and understanding how business worked and what were the struggles and the risks that you take. As a business owner, the risks are much different than somebody that is getting promoted through the years.
Some risks go well, most don't, and not everybody knows all the risks that don't go well, but this is important that it was one of those things that he had someone to look to be able to draw upon that when he was in the position of leadership as well. It's important for us to identify those people that have made an impact for us in our lives and given us a view of another path, and it may not be the total path you went on for your career, but did it affect your life? Did it affect something outside of your life as well?
We talked about his transition from going from a big national accounting firm to starting his own practice. I remember having the same feeling when I started my own business that I would audit bank recs, but I'd never done a bank rec. When I opened my practice, that was an advisory services practice, I took on the first couple of clients myself so I could see what the work is.
I realized how hard a reconciliation can be for a business and where you had to find the ins and outs in order to later better consult. That was the same thing that he identified, and I believe as a leader, we have to roll up our sleeves sometimes and learn things that we don't anticipate. We have to learn as a leader in order to lead it with other people and be able to explain it and understand what it's like to be in their shoes.
The other thing was the challenge of economics, that everything is coming out of your pocket. You can't control what you can't control. The economy goes down, there's a political change, whatever there is, you can only business plan as good as you can plan based on the things that you know. That challenge of where the money's going to come from or where retirement's going to come from are a lot of the struggles that business owners encounter. He expected when he put a shingle out, that business would come. A lot of people feel that way without understanding what is their purpose, what are the types of clients that they want, and have a targeted marketing strategy.
I often do not see a targeted marketing strategy. It's like, โThrow this out. This is what I do. See what sticks and who comes,โ versus identifying who you want to come your way and being targeted with your marketing and networking activities to do it. One of the things because of his background that he was so good at, was that communication, being in a community, being involved in the community, and because of that, his business development side of his leadership was strong.
It grew very fast under his leadership, and like he talked about, eventually moved into larger and larger firms till they became Dixon Hughes Goodman, and we talked about the struggles of when businesses merged together and the good, the bad, the ugly, and who might get left behind in the process.
Some of his reflections of what things maybe they should have been asking that they didn't know or time they should have taken with partners that provided a lot of contribution when they were separate firms, but when they came together, their contribution was missed, and how you could have helped them to level up to maybe be able to make it in that environment, but then also understand that many people don't make it in larger environments, that they purposely go to smaller places to work. It is important to understand that.
I loved his moment of talking about that. Partners are people, too. A lot of times, when we look at leaders, we look at them and think they have it all and aren't thinking about the human side, the struggles that they go through and making sure that they are being helped, they are still being coached. We think that they need to have all the answers, but we also have to have coaching for our leaders such as sounding boards and so forth.
This led Gary to be able to create what he's created and look at some of the things that he did in the past that will now help organizations and, in the future, be able to understand those things before they went into it. One of the things that Gary talked about that became so important, and it's been an evolution for him, is understanding that he could show up authentically and that he didn't always have to be on and perfect in order to represent and be a leader.
People bonded with him when he was more authentic, when he was talking about the mistakes of the past or when he wasn't completely rehearsed or scripted. Those are important things for all of us to think about, that we want to know the human side of people, that we don't have to be perfect, and that when we lead our energy matters and our energy is everything.
We can say the words, but if we aren't showing we are optimistic or if we aren't inspiring the people around us, it's very hard for people to believe in the values that we are creating or the culture we are creating or the goals that we have if we don't look like we believe. It's important as a leader to show up in the way that you want others to show up and to demonstrate the values that you have as well.
I was so inspired. I'm always inspired by Gary. I enjoy working with him. He's so genuine and it's been awesome to see the contribution that he makes in the accounting profession. These are the things that can help you on your journey when you are looking to find that authenticity, that vulnerability in yourself. That's why we have the free materials that we talked about where you can go on our site BusinessBalanceBliss.com/workbook and get a free download of the workbook and walk through it yourself.
We have coaching programs on that site that are available to sign up for where we can help you through that journey of identifying who you are, what your unique gifts are, what your purpose is, and being able to better relate your brand to the organization around you or even to the people around you so that you show up the same way no matter where you are.
That energy is so important. When we are intentional with that energy, not only do we create a better life for ourselves, but we create a better life for the people around us. Thank you so much for tuning in and sharing and subscribing to this show. I hope that you share it with other people that you think it could be helpful for and make sure to join us for our next interview to learn your next lessons.
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About Gary Thomson
Gary Thomson, CPA, serves as an advisor to CPA Firms in the critical areas of succession planning, partner compensation, leadership development and coaching, M & A, strategic planning, culture, profitability, and innovation.
After beginning his career with an international firm, Gary started his own practice. Over a 30-plus year period, through organic and M & A, Gary was in leadership as the firm scaled from a local to regional to national Top 15 firm. Pursuing a passion to impact the future of the public accounting profession, Gary launched Thomson Consulting in 2019.