Episode 39: Trust & Communication: They Rise And Fall Together With Richard Kopelman
Trust and communication are the foundations of any solid business relationship, which consequently helps businesses thrive and succeed. Someone who is living proof of that is Richard Kopelman, CEO and Managing Partner of Aprio. In this episode, Amy Vetter sits down with Richard, where he shares his career journey with us—from helping his mom as a teenager with cold calling to spending the majority of his career at Aprio. During this interview, he opens up about what he learned along the way that helped him achieve success as a leader and transform a firm to be ready for the future. Significantly, learning how trust and communication rise and fall together allowed Richard to really care about what matters most: the people. He tells us how he values that through his personal and business relationships, bringing not only his expertise to the table but also his heart.
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Trust & Communication: They Rise And Fall Together With Richard Kopelman
Welcome to this episode where I interview Richard Kopelman. He's twice named as the most admired CEO in Georgia and who's who in the accounting industry. He serves as CEO and managing partner of Aprio LLP, a nationally recognized CPA-led business advisory firm. Prior to his role as a CEO, Richard served as a business advisor to clients doing business domestically and abroad in more than 40 countries. He built and led Aprio’s manufacturing and distribution group increasing revenue by 800% in fourteen years. In addition, Richard had the opportunity to serve on the corporate side acting as a CFO of a tech startup. In 2010, Richard founded Next Generation Manufacturing, a business for Southeastern manufacturers to exchange best practices relating to innovation, people and processes to create the next generation of manufacturing. In my interview with Richard, he shares his journey from helping his mom as a teenager with cold calling to spending the majority of his career at Aprio. During this interview, he opens up about what he's learned along the way that helped him achieve success as a leader and transform a firm to be ready for the future.
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I'm here with Richard Kopelman. Richard, do you want to give a little background on yourself before we start?
Thanks for having me. My name is Richard Kopelman. I'm the Managing Partner and CEO at Aprio. We are a Top 50 CPA-led advisory firm headquartered in Atlanta with offices in North Carolina, New York, Florida and Alabama.
Thanks for being here with me. I've known your firm for a long time even before the name was Aprio and seeing all the evolution. I want to start with your story. Give us a little background on yourself where you grew up, what your family was like, what were your hobbies, that sort of thing when you started out? Did you want to be a CPA?
I was born in New York and my parents got their moving papers early. We moved to Florida before they turned 65 or 70 years old against the norm.
What part of Florida?
North Miami Beach, South Florida. For the most part, I grew up in a single-parent household. My parents got divorced when I was very young when I was thirteen years old. I always credit my mom for my selling skills. She was selling pre-arrange funerals to the elderly that lives on the beach in Miami AKA God's waiting room. I was her secret weapon so when I came home from school, I had a script and a list of names and phone numbers. I was her appointment center at thirteen years old in the early ‘80s. I guess she was violating child labor laws, but I got paid well and I learned to accept rejection including people who would say, “No ma'am, I'm not interested.” It's a little tough to take as a thirteen-year-old boy. I went to the University of South Florida. I moved to Atlanta after I graduated. My dad had lived here and my brother was here and some family. I came up and joined then Habif Arogeti and Wynne or HA&W.
This was your first job.
I worked for a small firm in Tampa for a year while I was in school. Principally, this has been the only place that I've worked as many of our partners. We have been with the firm our entire career. I finished my 28th year.
You don't hear that as much anymore. Why did you choose accounting? It's funny, I have a similar background. My mom was in insurance and I would have to do the cold calling. She had me call out of the phone book and when I call, I'd have to say, "You told me to give you a call back this week.” They’ll be confused like, “Did I tell you to call back this week?” I hated it so much.
The funny thing is that it is still used. I still get those phone calls.
You're then like, “I didn't tell you to call me back this week.” How did you end up in accounting?
I arrived at school because that's what you're supposed to do. You're supposed to go to college. I knew right away that I was not doing science. I ended up in the business school and I called my dad. He was a small business owner his entire life. He was always in retail and I can remember the conversation. He said, “You can do accounting. You can always use it, no matter what you do. It is the language of business as we know. You have to understand the numbers and those that don't usually struggle.” That's what happened. I decided to go into accounting. It turned out that it was something that came to me fairly easily and naturally in school. I figured I'd give it a shot. I never thought I would be in accounting 28 years later because in Atlanta in 1992, anybody who knows the Buckhead area was amazing. It was an amazing place to be single. I was here to have fun.
It's interesting because my mom, prior to being in insurance, was on maid services. She would take me to networking events and I remember asking the people she was networking with, "What do you think I should do when I go to college?” They said the exact same thing that when you understand accounting, you understand how the business runs. Since that time, I've rethought that and been like that means accountants aren't helping the way that they should because if another small business owner thinks you have to get a degree in Accounting, then we're not truly being advisors. We've got to fill that gap so people don't feel like they have to get a degree in Accounting to understand.
It’s an interesting thought and it sounds like you come from a lineage of entrepreneurship, which is great. That explains a lot about you.
Also you because you've been entrepreneurial in a CPA firm.
We're doing our best.
What was your track? You went into HA&W at the time.
In those days, most firms are of that size. It was about $9 million or $10 million in revenue. It was an eat what you kill book of business firm. I went to go work with a partner who's retiring the end of 2020 fully by the name of Rick Rubin. He is and was a phenomenal mentor. He taught me everything I needed to know about how to care for clients and how to be their advisor. I went to work with him and we've been through several evolutions since I've been with the firm. The first one was to go into industry practices. I ended up at our manufacturing and technology practice. I ended up focusing on manufacturing. I've spent the last fifteen years prior to becoming managing partner 80% of the time serving manufacturers with a little bit of transaction processing in there as well mixed with the distribution. That's where I spent most of my time and I started a nonprofit many years ago called Next Generation Manufacturing. Someone once told me, if you cannot find a place to market to the segment you are looking to market to, then you'll have to create it yourself.
I joined together with six other people or seven of us in total. We were the founding sponsors of this association. We've hosted thousands of C-level executives from manufacturing companies mainly across Georgia and the Southeast. We’re helping them figure out what's the next generation of product process and service look like in their businesses. This is an interesting time because COVID-19 about where we'll be able to as an association helps these companies figure out where to pivot. It's a great community like the CPA community, a lot of sharing that happens.
Trust And Communication: There's a balance between being arrogant and confident and being focused.
I want to go back to one comment that you said about the eat what you kill. This is an area of professional development and the accounting profession that's not discussed as the sales side and the business development side. We come in as subject matter experts. We increase our technical expertise, but not everybody is taught how to sell. It sounds like you had a good mentor, but what were some key things that helped you in that area besides your background of understanding how to sell because of your parents. This is one of those things that aren't talked about.
Throughout the time I was thirteen until I got to college, I called for my mom. I had a car wash and wax route when I was 14, 15 years old. I used to ride around the neighborhood on my bicycle with buckets on the handlebars and then I went into the valet. I worked for a valet company. I guess the statute was passed on this, but I used to drive people back and forth to the airport from condos on the beach. I always was into different things and in college I waited tables, which I always felt like I was self-employed. For me, it’s the great way to make money.
Because you're making so much money as a college kid than normal, it was hard to give that up. I remember asking another waiter that I worked with once, I said, “Are you in college?” He said, “I took a semester off six years ago.” Many people get trapped in it because it's hard.
It’s good money for fun, lifestyle, partying and after the exams are over at night. Those were interesting times. From day one when I came into the firm, we've always supported and provided training on business development. Even when I started, we had a head of marketing back then and several people in the marketing department. I think we have about twelve people now in sales and marketing for the firm. It was something I did from the beginning. I remember watching some of my coworkers go to lunch with each other. On the one hand I felt left out because I wish I were going with them. On the other hand, I also said to myself, “Why are they doing that? They're never going to get business from somebody that they work with.” Some of those people, with the turnover that happens in public accounting, they end up in decision-making roles later and you can get business from them. I didn't see that at the time. That was something that I missed. Instead, I was spending my time meeting with our clients, their bankers and their lawyers. It was early in my career that business started coming in within the first 2, 3 years
Did anyone tell you to do that?
I got paid to do it because we still do and we did then pay origination bonus to non-partners.
Did they tell you that on your orientation?
I don't remember when I learned it. I started on January 6th. I didn't start at a normal time so I didn't have a normal orientation. I knew that I was going to get paid for that and I had been on commissioned waiting tables and always have been. I was like “That's a no-brainer.” In those days, I can make extra money working longer hours and bringing in business so why not do both?
Did you ever shadow anyone that was a manager, partner, and watch how they ran those meetings?
I did and I learned early to dangle out the meat, so to speak. Our founding partner, Merrill Wynne and Jimmy Arogeti both worked at the firm for a while. In fact, Merrill Wynne still works with the firm. I had the opportunity to work with them and they were brilliant rainmakers especially Merrill Wynne. He was phenomenal. Everybody in town wanted to get to him because of all of his contacts and relationships. When I got to the right level within a bank or a law firm, I would dangle him out like a carrot. I used to go to these cool lunches at nice places when I was quite young because I would connect Merrill Wynne or another senior partner. I use him as an example with let's say the head of commercial lending in those days at South Trust Bank, which is no longer in existence. We'd go to Veni Vidi Vici in Midtown Atlanta, which was a great Buckhead Life Restaurant and I'd get to watch them in action.
What did you learn from him?
He still does have a way of telling stories. The things I learned not only from him but from others are telling stories and focusing on solutions. Too much in our profession, we focus on the things we're doing and the things were issuing, audit and tax return, not the outcomes we're achieving for clients which are helping them achieve their dreams. They were helping them make sure they don't overpay their taxes, make sure we help them manage their risks so they don't end up in a situation where they have too much inventory, whatever it might be. We could come up with a list. I had a caller with a prospect and it was all about how do we help them maximize their sell price in the transaction they're going through versus the thing they called us about, which was can you do an audit?
It's getting to what they're staying up at night about.
We have 30 fundamentals that back up Aprio. We call it the Aprio way, and one of them is about the fact that we don't sleep when our clients aren't sleeping. It truly means we haven't slept for the last few weeks mainly because of the PPP loan process.
I know I was talking about that because people that aren't close to it are like, “Let's be forgiven.” I was like, "There's a lot going on with that.”
A lot of people are trying to figure out the forgiveness process.
When did the leadership start taking hold in your career? How did you adjust to that? It's a big difference between being an individual contributor and taking on leadership responsibility.
I would always set high goals for myself. There's a balance between being arrogant and confident and being focused. When I started with the firm, we were $10 million and now we should be somewhere between $120 million and $130 million. There was a point in time where I was working with a partner who decided to go work for a client. We were co-leading the manufacturing practice at that time. I remember I walked into the then Managing Partner Jon Miller's office. John was a phenomenal and perfect leader at the time he led our firm. I said, “Jon, Clays is going to be leaving as you know. I'll be happy to step into the role of leading the manufacturing practice and I'll take care of all of those clients.” He looked at me and said, “Okay.” I always believe in never selling past the close. I said, “Thank you.” I turned around, walked down, and went back to my office. I said, “How are we going to do this?” That was part of maybe the start of not just leadership but management and then started pulling people together to develop that as a service for the firm. I never went into a management role within the firm. I didn't run a practice area. I didn't run a team within one of our practices such as audit or tax. I ran this niche and I think I did it okay. I grew up significantly until I stepped out of that role and became a managing partner.
Three years before I became a managing partner, I joined the Vistage Group, which is a CEO peer group for those that aren't familiar with Vistage. It’s a national and international organization. I did that to be around other leaders and get exposed to things. Too often people are sitting inside their four walls. Sometimes I feel that way working from home now remotely. It’s literally sitting inside four walls. We spend a lot of time inside and we only know what we know. I've always been curious, sometimes maybe too curious to get out and ask a lot of questions and learn about a lot of different things that have nothing to do with accounting.
It will help you along the way.
It definitely informed my approach to the business, decision-making and direction.
Trust And Communication: If you cannot find a place to market to the segment you are looking to market to, then you'll have to create it yourself.
Something I want to go back a little on when you said never sell past the close, you didn't know that you were prepared to take that job. You knew you wanted the job. I've had a lot of people that worked for me in the past where I wanted them to take the next role and they're like, “I don't know if I'm ready. I don't know if I know everything I need to know.” You learn on the job a lot of times because you've never done that job before. You have to be open to being vulnerable to the fact that you are not an expert when you walk into a new leadership role. It's an important thing for people to hear especially women as well that if we don't have all the boxes checked, a lot of times we don't go for the job because we're like, “Am I qualified?” and that sort of thing. It’s understanding that mindset of, “I want the job, so then I'll figure it out.”
You spoke at one of our leadership conferences where we had a lady come and speak to us about the growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. You brought that back, but whenever I am in front of our team and I'm talking about doing either some training or mentoring or I'm sitting in a group doing a town hall. If I get to a point where I'm providing some advice, a lot of times I'll come back and I'm not a very good artist, but I'll draw a stick figure with a box around the stick figure. A lot of people put themselves inside of a box with certain limitations. I'll draw two sized boxes. One close to the person and one far away. If I knew then what I know now, I might not have got it and even asked that question. I can think of that moment or the time I walked into someone's office that works for the State of Georgia.
I asked if I could speak at the Georgia Manufacturing Appreciation’s week luncheon that's held by the Governor. Where the Governor speaks at this meeting of 2,000 people. I might have been 32. I got them to allow me to speak and give the highlights from our Georgia manufacturing survey that we do with Georgia Tech. I got them to allow me to speak about that for fifteen minutes before the Governor went on stage. Back on that now, I probably had no business speaking there. Maybe I did, maybe I didn't, but they let me. If I did ask, I would never have gotten there. You have to back it up at the end of the day. You've got to take the chance and then you've got to back it up. It takes a lot of hard work but it can be a lot of fun.
I want to talk about two evolutions as far as your firms. I've been close to that stuff that you've been doing at your firm for a long time and I know you've been one of the ones who are trying to push into technology and even changed your branding, which I'd love to hear that story of the why behind it. There was the future that you had to lead a whole firm through and you've got traditional accountants versus ones that are progressive and how you bridge that, then we've got the second big change over the last few months of, "That's what we thought, and then this is what I'm running now.” Maybe if you can talk about how you've led through change because if any time, this is a huge moment with that.
I tell two stories about leading through change and then you can point me to a direction you'd like me to head. What is the branding change? Changing from Habif Arogeti and Wynne, HA&W, to Aprio, especially with founding partners or children of founding partners active in the firm is an interesting move to make. I credit all of those people for not just being cooperative but supportive through the process. When we walked into the room as a partner group for a partner meeting to vote on the name change in accordance with our operating agreement, the whole process took seven minutes. Why did it take seven minutes? I even stopped the meeting to say, “Doesn’t anybody want to talk about this?” They said, "We've talked about it enough.” I believe trust and communication rise and fall together. That works in personal relationships as well as business relationships. I've been focused on these changes on just communicating. For the name change, we had lots of small group meetings with partners to walk them through the why and the how. The why was simply as we want it to become and we are becoming something different than what we were, which is a global forward-thinking, disruptive advisory driven organization in how we're serving our clients and talking to the marketplace. We wanted to have a name that went along with that brand image. That's how we keep to this point.
What does that name represent?
Aprio comes from two root words and we had to drop off some letters and change some things around, but it comes from cap and aria. Cap is head and aria is the song of the hearts. It comes from many interviews that our brand consultants did with clients and stakeholders internally and externally about how they view the brand. How they viewed it was we bring our technical expertise to the table, but we bring our heart with us in terms of how we care for our clients. That's where the name was born.
Did you talk to staff during this as well or was it mostly from the partner group?
We interviewed stakeholders throughout the entire Aprio world, clients, vendors, partners, business partners, partners of the firm, all levels of people within the organization.
What benefits did you see from doing that? Did it change mindset?
We could not have done what we've done over the last few years at the pace we've done it without changing the brand, the image, the name, and having the 30 fundamentals of behavior the Aprio way. All of that is guiding the mindset, the brand position, our approach, what we're willing to do, not willing to do, and what other people are willing to do with us. When I used to go out with the Habif Arogeti and Wynne to talk to firms about merging, they wanted to know if it was going to become Habif, Arogeti, Wynne and Smith. When you show up with the Aprio brand, it's not even a question.
What went wrong? What would you tell people to watch out for when you're going through something like this? The change management process. What are some things that people should watch out for when they are looking to do something like this?
This comes from others not from me. I think it went well. We definitely learned some things along the way. We probably could have done it a little bit faster. We could have ordered less stationary and envelopes in advance of the name change. We got stuck with a lot of inventory of business cards and things like that. We did our best to control it, but we didn't do it early enough because we saved money probably buying it in bulk in advance. The website or the digital assets was probably the thing that we could have done a better job on. We had to abandon the old name or the old domain completely. We kept the domain, but we pointed it to the new domain and there were certain things we lost on Google rankings and things like that and it took us a little while to fix. That was one thing we learned. I learned that we could keep a secret because no partner leaked it and when we went into the room in December to announce it to the entire firm, everybody was truly surprised. I learned that the partners could keep a great secret.
It goes back to trust and communication. With the branding, you started going down a route to move into a more digital transformation and advisory work. What were some of the things that you put into place or that you were trying to change too?
We've added a lot of new services within our advisory practice. Since the name change, we've completed either 6 or 7 mergers and acquisitions, four in the Atlanta market, one in North Carolina and one in Birmingham. We tucked in a partner and a couple of additional team members into the Birmingham office. We did a small transaction, the first one here in 2020. From an advisory standpoint, we've added things like treasury optimization. We've significantly grown our transaction advisory and private equity practice. We've added business technology consulting and financial consulting services. We've inked a deal which a press release. We have formed a joint venture to provide R&D tax credit services in the UK. These are some of the things that we have added and I can't leave off data analytics. Data analytics and robotic process automation are services we've added. We've also significantly increased the number of Fortune 1000 and publicly traded companies that we're representing in that advisory space over the years.
With all of this that you're listing. You changed your brand and then you've had about 6 or 7 mergers plus delivering all these services.
I left out digital marketing and we also acquired and are building out a content company called CEO Tools by Aprio. We even published a book. You can find that on Amazon.
What I'm hearing is a lot of mergers of culture. People were in all of these different firms plus you're doing this transformation in your own firm. How has that been to create any scale and consistency between all of these different practices?
It’s a lot of communication. Since COVID-19 broke and we shut down, we tested working remotely. I sent out a video to the entire firm that it worked well and you should feel comfortable staying home. We print principally at that point scaled back the office substantially, even prior to the official shutting down of the various states that we operate in and people working remotely on a mandatory basis. A lot of it's been through communication. We have a little bit of special sauce relative to how we roll out our cultures and our culture is something that we constantly work on. The fundamentals aren't not just on a card and it's not something that we have laying around. It is embedded in our language, our proposals, our website, our offer letters, and our day-to-day work. That is something unique to Aprio and how we're bringing these cultures together. I think COVID has without a doubt accelerated that in a big way.
As a positive because everyone had to change.
We're working across business lines stronger than we ever have. We were doing it well before, but we're doing it in an outstanding way right now. The team is doing amazing things.
Trust And Communication: In our profession, we focus too much on the things we are doing right and not the outcomes we're achieving for our clients to help them achieve their dreams.
What have you had to shift as far as your leadership during this pandemic?
We shifted to daily huddles in the morning. We have a leadership team that is cross-functional by practice area and by functional area within the operations of the firm. We have standing 30-minute meetings. Sometimes they last five minutes, sometimes they last 30. We’re very focused on what the problems are, what the solutions are, and how do we implement them, not just sharing information. We have various huddles happening around the firm. That's the start of it and then we shifted some people out of their day-to-day role into leadership roles for the PPP Loan Forgiveness and for the Main Street Lending Program so that we could educate everybody internally and our clients and get it out in the marketplace. We've held at least 30 webinars and we've had tens of thousands of visitors participating in those webinars. The largest one was 2,200 people.
It has been a thing that not everybody has grasped on to but what's important is the outreach versus waiting for a client to call you.
The first day we were officially all at home, we had a partner call. We have one every week. I have a board call every week and I have a partner call every week, and then we have a longer board meeting monthly. On the first two partner calls, I asked every partner between themselves and their directors or senior managers, but the partners at a minimum to pick up the phone and talk to every single client at least once. We've been doing that every three weeks where we've been on the phone talking to clients because circumstances for clients change. You could talk to a client one day and I remember doing this with an engineering firm and everything was fine. He was wondering, “What are you guys all worried about?” A week later, “The world is falling apart. My clients are canceling work and I need a PPP loan.” Things were changing rapidly. In some cases, they still are a little bit of maybe a leveling off but that was the key. It is communication. I wanted to make sure we were building that trust with our clients at a deep level during these uncertain times where they were in some cases deer in headlights and needed a lifeline. Sometimes they need someone to talk to.
That's being an advisor. This is where we began and whether it's a crisis or not a crisis, it's a good way for clients to proactively reaching out to them, showing that you care, that you're checking in, making sure things are okay. Usually, there's something on their mind. Most entrepreneurs have no lack of things to talk about with their business.
They don't have anybody to talk to inside the business. Unless they're part of a peer group or have friends that are in the same situation, they have no one else to turn to. That’s our role to business owners.
It's a matter of dedicating time on your calendar to do it because we can always blame being busy because there's plenty of work in this line of business, but it's prioritizing the time to do the outreach.
You have to make it a priority. We’ve made it and continue to make it a priority to be reaching out to our clients.
I want to ask you a couple of quick-fire questions. Pick a category, family and friends, money, spiritual, or health.
You spilled the beans earlier that usually everybody picks family and friends. Sometimes they pick money and spiritual but no one ever picks health. There are few people, so just for fun, I don’t know what it's going to be like, but I'll go with health.
Things or actions I don't have that I want with my health?
I haven't yet gone to get tested to see if maybe by chance I had the antibodies for COVID-19. I still don't have a completely flat stomach. I don't have that six-pack, so I'm working on that. I may be too old to get one of those but hopefully not.
Things or actions I do have that I want?
I got this coolest thing in 2019. I have a Concierge Doctor. It's the coolest thing to be able to talk to a physician.
That’s sad. This is what we're talking about with accounting. You have to pay extra for a doctor to get them to call you back.
It could teach us a lot of things in our profession about how we operate because it's a great way to have a relationship with a physician. I find it refreshing. I can text her on the weekend and she'll text me back. It's like when my mom had to take me to my doctors when I was eight years old because my brother jumped on the couch, I was underneath it, my chin split open, and I had to get stitches. You can't do that now. You can't call your doctor at home and meet him or her at the office on a Saturday or Sunday.
If you know you have fewer clients, you have more time to do this.
We could learn a lot. We should have a CPA VIP.
Things or actions I don't have that I don't want as far as health?
I don't want COVID. I don't want any kind of major illness.
Things or actions that I do have that I don't want?
Trust And Communication: It's a good way to proactively reach out to clients, showing them that you care, that you're checking in and making sure things are okay.
I have high cholesterol and I don't want high cholesterol. I have it under control. Now we've gotten way too personal. Now I know why people don't pick health.
It's amazing what you discover with these questions.
I should come up with another one. Can I replace that one? I had melanoma when I was 35 years old and my children were 6 or 7 at the time. It’s a scary time and I learned two important things that I want to pass on to everybody. That is buy as much life insurance as you can when you're healthy because when you have something like melanoma, you cannot buy life insurance. That was a scary time period. The other thing is I implore everybody to put sunscreen on and make sure you have a sunscreen that works that has the right kind of ingredients, not this crappy stuff that they sell at the grocery store. Good and high-quality sunscreen, and wear sun shirts because melanoma is a killer. I had to get chest X-rays every six months after that for five years. It's a scary thing. Anybody who's survived cancer knows that's a scary thing they have to do. Thankfully, I have never had another one since. I want to tell everybody, make sure you wear sun shirts, good sunscreen, and hats. Take care of your skin because it can show up in weird places. Everybody should see a dermatologist every six months or maybe once a year. Normal people can go once a year. I have to go every four months.
Is there anything that you want to make sure people come away with from this conversation that we haven't covered or you want to emphasize as we close it out?
I think our profession is going to go through massive changes. COVID is going to accelerate it, technology, people and when I say technology, it's everything across the organization. It's not just where your data sits and what software you're using. It's the plumbing inside your organizations and how everything is or is not connected in terms of being able to analyze your business. That goes not just for us but for our clients. That's going to make or break businesses over the next 3 to 10 years. Those that can't adapt and adopt the mindset to move in that direction are going to struggle with those that can because the world is going to change.
We may have hit a peak in February of 2020. It might have been the peak in the world of the number and quality of face-to-face meetings that we will ever have had in the world. That’s because of travel and airplanes and everything. Sitting face-to-face with somebody as often as we did and as deeply as we did. We may have hit the peak of that in February of 2020 and if that's the case, and the low point was a few weeks ago where no one left their homes, what does it look like over the next ten years? It doesn't go back to where it was. I think about my thirteen-year-old who has only seen a few close friends. What is he going to be like when he's an adult? How is this going to inform his decision making, his mindset, and his approach? I don’t think I know we have to adapt and adopt. We have to unlearn everything we learned about how we run our business and communicate with our clients. We have to unlearn all of that and relearn it.
It's funny you say that about the future generations. I had this conversation with my fifteen-year-old saying this is going to affect many generations going forward. It’s like our grandparents with the Depression. They keep the money in the coffee cans in their house because they didn't trust banks. Future generations didn't understand why they were like that. This is going to affect mindset in a different way where their kids are going to be like, “Why do you do that? Why are you worried about touching somebody?”
It's going to affect everything. What is New York City going to look like in a year? Are people moving from not just New York City? I don't want to pick on New York City because I love New York. How does this impact urban spaces? There was this big flight to urban spaces over the years. We have plenty of clients that have benefited from that from a business and real estate standpoint. What happens? Is that a complete shift? What it makes look like post-PPP loans.
This has been a great conversation. There are many great nuggets for people to take away and learn. Thank you, Richard, for being on.
I had a great time. Thank you for inviting me. It’s always a pleasure to see you and spend time with you. Thank you for everything you're doing for the profession. I enjoy reading your blog. Hopefully, everybody's following you regularly.
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It’s time for Mindful Moments of this interview with Richard. I love the beginning of this interview talking about his beginnings and how it helped him later in business development by starting out cold calling with his mom and also working in Atlanta with his father. Learning what it takes as an entrepreneur and in business development to get things going is one of those skills that are left for people to figure out along the way and not realize that in most jobs that we do, we need sales and business development in order to be able to do our jobs well. Whether that means helping influence people to a result that we want to get or selling to customers, these skills are something that we can never get enough of and always are learning more along the way. We never know where they're going to pop up.
When Richard talked about his start, his firm is currently Aprio, but at the time it was HA&W, he started out with everybody else. What he talked about was how he saw his coworkers going to lunch together and felt left out because he was looking at how he could move business development even in the early stages of his career. It's an important observation to realize that no matter what level you are, this is an important thing to be looking out for, how you can develop business. It's not just our expertise that helps move us forward, but it's also when we're helping the business overall. I love his term about dangle out the meat. How he was able to get some of these corporations and leaders to lunch when he didn't have the same kind of titles. He was dropping that carrot about having his partner join them if they would have this lunch together.
All of us taking those risks and the worst that can happen is that someone says no, but in the opportunity that they say yes, how those kinds of relationships influence our success, not only in the present moment, but also create relationships into the future. We also talked about not only that introductory period of how you get someone to the table, but also not selling past the close. If you're setting goals for yourself like Richard was to move into leadership positions and get himself where he wanted to be. One of the things that we talked about was that you didn't have to have every skill or know how to do everything in order to take on that next job. When we talked about not selling past the close, it's he got his answer, he got what he wanted, and then it was time for him to figure out, “How am I going to do this?”
We don't usually see that with people. We don't know that side that's happening internally for leaders, taking on new roles when they're trying to learn it because we all have to put up this front. When you're looking at people that you admire, sometimes you think they must already know this stuff or how did they even know it? It's by experience and having enough faith in yourself that you can take on that next role and know that you will be successful because you're a hard worker and you know how to use your resources. Another big lesson in this discussion was the relationships and the networking that Richard has done along the way and even to now to ensure that he could close the next sale, but he could also be able to be successful in the different roles that he's had and leadership positions because you can never do something alone. You need people around you that support you.
That came into play when he was taking the firm into this rebranding of coming into Aprio. Having to ensure that everybody was going to support that, especially people that have been part of this family for years and years. The way that he talked about this was making sure that they trusted you and you over-communicated, communicate with people and small groups, one-on-one and bigger groups so that you give people the opportunity to communicate to you in the way that they need to communicate. Not everybody is comfortable communicating in a large group. Some people need that one-on-one time to get their ideas across or their concerns across. If you're going to try to work change into an organization actively, it's important that it's not a one-size-fits-all. He demonstrated that this was all about making sure that people were heard, that they over-communicated, and brought people along the way so that everyone felt good about the final decision of them moving forward.
The biggest thing that came out of this for me was truly the communication. Now that we're in this new way of working remotely, some of us have been working remotely for years and years, but when you're working with everyone remotely, that is different for us. Communication has become even more important than before. We have to find human ways to do that. He talked about some ways that he's implemented in the business about making sure that they have these daily huddles and that they have more education that's happening right now instead of less. A lot of times we get so buried in the work, we forget that people need to be supported all along the way. It's important that we are providing education and training opportunities at this time.
One of the most important things that I love that he was implementing is that he told every partner in the firm to call each client at least once every three weeks. That proactive communication is so important to make sure that people feel like you care and it's more than just an email. Email is nice but when you pick up the phone and extend yourself and are available for someone to ask questions proactively, that is when we are truly advising people that we're truly that trusted person in their business but also from a personal standpoint. They know whatever happens into the future that you were there to support them and you're also thinking about them at the same time.
Leaving this interview, think about how you can get back to over-communicating, which might seem over-communicating to you, but might be right for the other person. How can you make people feel that they're important and their ideas are important? When you take their ideas in, how you respond back to let them know that they were heard and what kind of change or no change are you going to make based on that. At least giving them the explanation, being transparent, and not forgetting about that human need of connection.
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About Richard Kopelman
CEO and Managing Partner
Twice named a Most Admired CEO in Georgia and Who’s Who in the accounting industry, Richard Kopelman serves as CEO and managing partner of Aprio, LLP, a nationally-recognized, CPA-led business advisory firm.
Richard’s strategic foresight into the future of accounting enables him to lead Aprio to its next generation of growth. With more than 25 years of experience in public accounting, Richard has earned a reputation for providing clients, from startups to billion-dollar enterprises, with the highest level of service, and establishing a diverse and collaborative workplace where Aprio advisors thrive.
In 2017, Richard championed an industry-leading rebrand that aligns the firm around a passion for guiding clients to what’s next. As leader of the firm’s merger and acquisition activity, Richard directed Aprio’s combination with Yeager & Boyd, the firm’s first expansion outside of the Atlanta market. He has also spearheaded the development of a new portfolio of service offerings that enable Aprio team members to serve clients as true business advisors.
“We invest in our clients’ success by investing in our own,” Aprio’s mission, grew from Richard’s personal mission as the firm’s leader. Richard recognizes the importance of a strong, team-oriented culture where opportunity exists for all team members and benefits all clients.
Prior to his role as CEO and managing partner, Richard served as a business advisor to clients doing business domestically and abroad in more than 40 countries, and he built and led Aprio’s Manufacturing and Distribution group, increasing revenue by 800 percent in 14 years. In addition, Richard had the opportunity to serve on the corporate side acting as a CFO of a tech startup. In 2010, Richard founded Next Generation Manufacturing, a business forum for southeastern manufacturers to exchange best practices relating to innovation, people and processes to create the next generation of manufacturing.
Richard earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from the University of South Florida and joined Aprio in 1992. His professional affiliations include:
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