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gear up for growth
with jean caragher
for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
leadership in accounting firms requires a shift from technical expertise to guiding and empowering teams. jason blumer, founder and ceo of blumer cpas, discusses the journey of embracing leadership roles, overcoming self-doubt, and fostering a service-oriented mindset on gear up for growth,
gear up for growth spotlights the best strategies for smart and efficient growth in today’s competitive landscape. more gear up for growth every friday here | more capstone conversations with jean caragher every monday | more jean caragher here | get her best-selling handbook, the 90-day marketing plan for cpa firms, here | more 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 videos and podcasts here
blumer is no stranger to innovation and leadership. recognized as one of accounting today’s 100 most influential people in accounting and a cpa practice advisor. with over two decades of experience leading a thriving cpa firm and coaching accounting entrepreneurs, blumer’s expertise is a beacon for those navigating the challenges of leadership in today’s fast-paced industry.
“effective leadership involves creating future leaders and tackling difficult conversations head-on,” blumer says. “it’s about fostering a culture of accountability and trust while confronting the discomfort that often accompanies leadership responsibilities.”
blumer encourages firm owners to view themselves as leaders despite initial doubts and embrace the sacrifices and challenges of guiding a team. his approach includes coaching team members to take ownership of their roles and cultivating a new generation of leaders within the profession.
blumer also highlights strategic planning as a cornerstone of successful leadership. “planning is about deciding your future and having the courage to set goals and measure progress,” blumer shares. by combining accountability with adaptability, leaders can overcome operational challenges and prepare for growth.
other highlights include:
- leadership is both a journey and a responsibility that requires continuous self-improvement and adaptability.
- leaders are required to prioritize the needs of their teams and remove barriers to their success.
- accountability, both personal and team-wide, ensures that plans are executed and creates a culture of transparency and continuous improvement.
- growth requires embracing the journey, including failures and learning opportunities, not just striving for the end result.
- addressing generational shifts and preferences is critical for engaging younger workers and fostering a culture that aligns with modern expectations.
- modern leadership must adapt to evolving workforce preferences, such as remote work and flexible schedules.
about jason blumer, cpa
jason m. blumer, cpa, is the founding partner and ceo of blumer cpas. he took over this role from his father, h. marcus blumer, in 2003, who started the firm in 1997. they worked out of a few bedrooms in the back of his dad’s house until they opened a brick-and-mortar office in greenville, sc. in 2012, when the firm moved to the cloud, they closed the office and began learning how to lead a virtual firm.
blumer serves as the firm’s visionary, leading the strategy on which markets to serve and how to approach the industries they serve with creativity and purpose. jason got his bachelor’s in accounting from wofford college in spartanburg, sc. his nearly 30-year career has been so varied he’s performed every function in the firm and many other companies he has worked in. from controller to national payroll manager, to audit manager, to tax specialist, to consultant, he has gained the experience to lead all aspects of the firm into great growth.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
jean: hello, thank you for joining me for gear up for growth powered by 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. i’m jean caragher, president of capstone marketing and your host.
our guest today is jason blumer, ceo and founder of blumer cpas. and he also leads a network of firms called thriveal cpa network along with his partner julie. he is a podcast host and founder of two monthly podcast shows since 2011, the thrivecast and the businessology show.
jason has been named by accounting today as one of the 100 most influential people in accounting and as a cpa practice advisor thought leader.
jason, thank you for joining me today on gear up for growth for an in-depth discussion about leadership in the accounting profession.
jason: i love it. thank you, jean. i’m going to be on here with a lot of great guests, so i’m very pumped to be on here. thank you for having me.
jean: so excited about this.
so let’s start off. you know, i’ve read your bio online and part of that stated that you call people to become the leader you know is inside of every entrepreneur your firm serves. how do you do that? tell us more about that.
jason: well, that probably comes from my own journey and i think a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of firm owners, we call them firm entrepreneurs. i think they don’t really believe that they are leaders. they don’t think they’re good at it and i had that thought too and there’s a lot of proof points a lot of times when you fail trying to run a business, you go see, i’m not a leader. you think you have proof points to do it, but that’s not true. running a business, failure is a part of it. that’s kind of part of the journey. so those aren’t proof points that you’re not a leader.
so i don’t know, sometimes we have to convince people and so we do a lot of coaching and consulting with firm owners and business owners and a lot of times we’re trying to convince them that they are a leader. sometimes we do that in tricky ways. we’ll set up a team structure and we like, well, if you’re the leader, would you take the title of ceo? that’s always a really strong way we can get them to deal with that issue because they’re like, “oh no.” it’s like, well, why not? so why wouldn’t you be that chief executive person? and so that gets us into conversations about what they believe about themselves and then we’re starting to have the right conversation about whether they believe they’re a leader or not.
jean: so a lot of it… that’s an interesting answer because we’re talking about people who were thoughtful enough and brave enough to create a business or a public accounting practice, yet they weren’t viewing themselves as the person who everyone would follow.
jason: yeah, yeah. and i think they start out as technicians, you know, that’s our profession. they start out as technicians. so they start a business doing taxes and what they don’t realize is you start hitting five to eight team members. you’re going to have to, on purpose, move into a leadership role, which means you have to move out of a lot of the technical work and revenue generation. and when they don’t do that, that gets harder and harder. they really bog down their business. so what they didn’t realize a lot of times is they did start a business that will require a leader to operate it. and so they’re like, i can do taxes, so i’ll start a business. but, you know, doing taxes is different than running a business that does taxes. those are completely two different things. so we have to convince them of that.
jean: right. so what leadership qualities do you believe are critical to cpas today?
jason: yeah, it would be the qualities that would be really critical for anybody. it’s a real sacrificial role. it is really, really sacrificial. so it is not… i mean, you are the boss, of course, but that’s understood. so you don’t ever have to go around saying you’re a boss because you just are by default because you own the business. what you have to do and what you don’t necessarily have to do is serve people. so it’s a lot of service. so when you get into those leadership roles, my job is to make sure our team have no barriers to service. they have no barriers to their growth. there’s no barriers in their way for them to love to be in our firm. and so me and my partner have to eliminate all those barriers. so if they need us, we’re there, you know, so there’s a lot of service to it. and sometimes that really is hard on us because service is not easy to do. sometimes it’s 9:00 o’clock at night and i don’t want to serve anybody. i want them to leave me alone. but sometimes they’re upset. they’re struggling. there is some blow-up with a client and that’s the time they need us. so service to people is really hard. and a lot of times that means choosing to not do what you want to do and instead choosing to do what’s better for another person. and that’s tough. but that is the service that’s required from a leader. now, that’s just one. there’s a lot more.
jean: right. and i’ve got other questions related to that. but, you know, something i hear a lot is that the best thing that a leader can do is to create future leaders.
jason: totally. yeah, i do believe leaders should always be creating new leaders. that is what they do. and that’s also hard. and that will mean if you have a leadership team, you’re actually letting them feel the weight of their role. that’s what we say a lot when we’re consulting. make sure your team feel the weight of their role because it has value, so it has weight to it. and that means a lot of technicians try to not make the team member do the hard thing that they didn’t do.
so team members can be trained to reverse delegate and give you the hard stuff. and so it’s hard to push back and go, i need you to go figure it out. i’m going to let you go figure it out. i know it’s late and i have to have it now by 2 p.m. tomorrow. so if you need to stay up late tonight or work on saturday, i’m going to need you to figure that out since it’s in your role. and that’s hard to do. right. that’s kind of a little somewhat confrontational. but what that does is it really helps that team member understand a lot of things. it’s their responsibility. they can do it. they have the mindset to do it. they can research. and so leaders are always doing things like that. they’re pushing some of those tasks in leadership back onto the team member where they belong. is keeping everybody in their lane. that’s really, really important. and that is uncomfortable to do a lot of times.
jean: yeah. so what i’m hearing is that perhaps some leaders don’t like feeling the discomfort of being a leader.
jason: totally. i don’t.
jean: because it’s hard, right? i mean, not every… gosh, we could go on and on. because i think one of the fallouts of this is the number of firms that we see being acquired or merged into a larger firm because the leader hasn’t grown or created those future leaders to take over for them in their retirement age and they’re trying to figure out, hey, how am i going to get paid out? like, how do i get to retire?
jason: right. yeah. yeah. well, i mean, i think you’re right. and i think deep down inside, it’s really kind of selfish for me as the leader. it makes me uncomfortable to confront my team member or especially leaders in our firm, having them… because the leaders in our firm, really, we say they act as the proxy of me and my partner. so they don’t go lead the way they want to be. they lead in the way that we would lead. what julie and i would do. and so we have to teach them in our firm, this is what leadership looks like. so for that leadership team member, they have to go confront another team member on our behalf or go to a hard client meeting and teach another team member on our behalf and help them understand what they didn’t do well and what they did do well.
so, you know, sometimes we don’t want to push that leader or that team member to do that hard thing. and it’s really selfish on our part because we don’t want to have the hard conversation. so we’re just not pushing them to do things. and what we’re doing is we’re not letting them feel the experience that it takes to be a leader. we’re more thinking about ourselves and making sure we’re not uncomfortable. and that’s not good for our team at all.
jean: and having those difficult conversations is difficult. you know.
jason: it’s tough. it’s very tough.
jean: i mean, my personality, you know, i want everybody to be happy all the time.
jason: totally. yeah.
jean: but life isn’t like that. and there are times we really do need to take a breath and make that conversation happen.
jason: yeah, you do. and i think it’s a kindness to be clear, you know, be clear is very kind. and so leadership is never demeaning or yelling at people or saying, i’m the boss or do what i say. i think we all know that’s not leadership. but a lot of us have experienced bosses like that. you know, but, you know, that really just out of their own dysfunction and their own fear and really a lot of their own insecurity. they yell and scream to make people fear them. and of course, that is not leadership at all.
and sometimes we get mad as leaders because things aren’t working the way we want. and so we have to apologize and ask people to forgive us. but what we do get to do as leaders is expect respect. you know, that is… our team has to respect me and my partner. that’s not one of their choices to not, even when we do things wrong. and so that means sometimes we’ll challenge them to do hard things. and they have to trust us when we’re doing that. and that’s the job of the employee and the leaders that work for us. they have to leverage trust, to go, i’m going to follow their lead because they want to go a certain direction and i’m going to follow it. and that’s the trust they have to have. and that’s hard on the team member to just have that. sometimes it’s blind trust. they don’t know why we’re doing that, but they have to.
jean: i love these words that are coming out of this conversation, you know, like kindness and being thoughtful. all of these wonderful adjectives that we don’t hear enough.
jason: that’s right. yeah, this is part… this is foundational to leadership. it’s funny, my partner, julie, she tells a story sometimes when her kids were young, she would walk around going, “i’m the mom.” to her kids. “do what i say.” and her husband, who is a very wise person, is like, “hey, that’s understood. you don’t ever have to say i’m the mom again. that’s not a phrase.” that’s just kind of by default known and understood. so what else could we do? and i’ve always taken that to heart. you know, you don’t have to go around and say, and i’m the boss, i’m the leader. all you have to do is have a hard conversation and say, it’s not time for me to have that hard conversation with that team member or that client now, that’s your role. and i’m going to coach you through it. i’ll support you. but you’re going to go have that conversation. and that’s forming that person into the leader. and then, you know, sometimes it creates more work for us because they come back, we coach them. maybe they fail, but people did that for me. so we have to do that for other people.
jean: so there is a study that my colleague, rick telberg at 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间, and i did call the seven keys to successful cpa firm management. and one of the findings that we came up with was that the revenue growth of leading firms was 19 times more likely to surpass that of competitors. and when we looked into that, we found that the leadership traits of these firms included the 17 time more likely to follow a strategic technology plan. 15 times more likely to meet regularly to check the progress against a plan. 15 times more likely to have a marketing plan. 10 times more likely to have specific and measurable goals. what do you think about these results? and i think you’re going to have something big to say about planning. but that shouldn’t be a surprise that those multipliers are huge. and it raises the question of why more firms aren’t operating in that way.
jason: yeah. yeah, that’s huge. planning is huge in our life. my partner and i, we plan our calendar out a year in advance. we teach strategic calendar work-blocking courses to our members. and a lot of them embrace a lot of that that blocking. and so really what that is, is really just practically trying to own your future. planning is like deciding what your future is going to be. and we tell them you need the courage to do that, because it takes a lot of courage to think i’m going to start writing a blog post once a week in this new year. it’s like, well, i mean, what’s the first thing we think? well, what if i fail? you know. so we’re fearful of actually making the plan. so i think there’s a lot of fear in planning.
and then i think a lot of technicians who start firms are just very busy being technicians. so they don’t have time to plan. and planning, it is the total key to being a great leader. planning your technology. and then not only, what you said, not only planning what you’re going to do, but checking back in and go, is what i thought would happen, the right thing. did it happen the way i thought? and what that does is kind of like budget to actual financial presentations, right? with our clients. they set up a budget and then we compare what actually happened to what their prediction was for that first quarter. and we go, it’s not that you’re trying to set a budget to get the actual to match it perfectly. it is your stretch goal. but we’re trying to go, why did you not meet it? what were you thinking that you didn’t or why did you beat your budget? what were you? were you a little fearful in what you predicted?
and so our plans are like our budgets, right, to go, i’m going to implement this technology or this marketing plan. and when you don’t do it, it’s not a failure. it teaches you what you thought you were going to try to pull off and why you were not able to. that teaches you how to prioritize better. it makes you more of a sophisticated operator and owner and a leader. and so you just get smarter by comparing what you thought the plan to what actually happened. it’s crucial.
jean: right. i also think there is still, and i’m going to use the a word, there’s still a lack of accountability because having the plans in writing and all of this, especially when you’re sharing that plan with your team because you need that support and their participation in executing that plan. and when it’s written and everybody sees it, then i think there’s the moment like i really do. i’m expected to do this now. and so is everybody else. that’s part of that plan.
jason: yeah. no, accountability, i think we’re all a little fearful of accountability. right? and because it’s not that we don’t want to achieve things, it’s that we don’t want to see publicly where we failed, maybe. that’s it. because the accountability comes in just publishing the marketing plan. you know, i just gave ours to my partner and she’s got to review it and we’ve got to talk through it. and there it is. there’s the goals. and she’s the coo, so she’s going to make sure we have calendar blocks and tasks to accomplish that goal. and we may not exactly make it. and so what will you do then? you know, well, we’re going to assess why we didn’t make it. we’re not going to beat each other up for it because, you know, the accountability doesn’t mean you’re going to… you shouldn’t be beat up for not achieving what you’ve made publicly accountable. but the accountability does, it is a huge factor in you being successful, because if you make a plan and keep it private and secret, you are way more apt to not do it. obviously, you know this.
jean: nobody’s watching.
jason: right.
jean: yeah. and i think i know that we’re both going to agree that if we’re not failing, we’re not trying to do anything different than we’ve done for however many past years. you know, we’ve been in business or we’ve been alive. if we are failing, it means, gosh, you know what, we tried to learn a new skill or do something different or whatever that is. and there’s always a learning opportunity there.
jason: for sure. and, you know, you have to be the kind of person that wants to grow. and i do. i want to grow. i want to become better. i want to be a better leader. i know the places i really struggle as a leader. those are obvious because i’m in communities. i have a partner and i have leaders and they see very closely where i fail. and that’s not fun. but they’re kind to help me learn and grow in that process. but ultimately, i want to get better. so you have to want to get better. and if you do, then you’re going to open up a lot of that planning and places you fail out into public a little bit more. and that’s why thriveal was started. it’s a community for people to be a little bit more transparent and go, here’s what i’m going to try this year, knowing that they may fail. but it makes you better when you figure out why you didn’t achieve what you thought you were trying to achieve. that’s what we want to see.
jean: certainly. jason, what is a significant leadership challenge that you’ve faced as a cpa firm leader? you’ve touched upon it a little bit.
jason: oh, yeah, we have a lot. we’re always investing in our team. we have a lot of processes and training to do that. so that goes pretty well. we have some really great leaders in our firm and in our thriveal community. i think at our stage, we’re about 15 team members in our firm. and that’s kind of an area of a growth ceiling because we do a lot of consulting with firms, but we run a firm too. so we’re not consultants that don’t do the things we teach. we actually run a firm and our firm’s over 25 years old. and so i’ve been leading it for about 22 years. and so we hit the same market forces that everybody else does. and so we’re at a place where we’re going to have to push through some growth ceilings now. and we’re going to grow pretty significantly over the next few years with the team. and that may come through organic marketing. it may come through acquisitions.
you know, as we get larger, we’re a larger firm so we’re going to have more people, we’re going to have more services, more technical services, we do a lot of advisory, but just honing in on how we do advisory, because as the owner, i can’t do that advisory work anymore. my partner and i do coaching and consulting, but our team has to lead a lot of the financial advisory. so teaching them how to advise, those are going to really be challenges moving forward. i know we can do it because we have a lot of the right people and processes and community to do that in. but those are going to be challenges. so we’re going to be pushing through a very common growth ceiling that firms hit at a 15 to 18-team member size. we’re there.
jean: what advice would you give to younger cpas who aspire to take on these leadership roles?
jason: that’s a good one. i got a lot of benefit working for other people, you know, for about three to five years, because in this profession, it is a technical profession. so i really think you want to get that three to five years down. so you can, at least, feel technically able to serve, you know, but really if you want to grow as a leader, starting your own firm is, man, that just pushes you into the fire. and you really you’re going to figure it out or you’re going to sink that. and that sounds kind of scary. but if people really want to aspire to grow, especially people coming out of school or anything like that, i would work for somebody probably five years and then i would go start my own firm. yeah, i love it. do it.
jean: interesting. you know, i’ve had some other guests and we’ve talked about back in the 1980s, which of course now seems like forever ago.
jason: yeah, forever.
jean: and all of these firms were formed in the ’80s, early ’90s. partners, cpas or managers, you know, leaving their bigger firms, forming their own firms because, you know, they wanted to do things their own way. they were entrepreneurial. this is what they wanted. but i’ve not heard… so when i asked that, do you see this happening again? i’m mostly getting negative responses, but do you think there’s enough of an interest of those folks like gaining that basic, like that foundational five years that want to form their own firms? do you see it happening?
jason: yeah, that’s a great question. i don’t think we see it the way we did a while ago. so when we started thriveal, the community, that was almost 15 years ago. and the profession was different there. we did see people leaving those firms and jumping into their own firm. and i think we saw them do that more than we do now. now, it might be because the community we’re with are experienced firm owners. we work with a little bit larger firm. we work with firms about the two to five million dollar range that are part of our community. and so at those sizes, they’ve had to figure out a lot of things. so we don’t see a lot of startups. but i don’t have a sense that there are a lot of startups. and i think there’s a lot of younger people not going through school.
i think, i mean, it could be as deep as population growth is not even the same now that it was 20 or 30 years ago. so that might be playing into some of it. but we know there are fewer people going through an accounting program. fewer are sitting for a cpa exam, though you don’t have to sit for the cpa exam. but just fewer people are doing that. so i think i’ve sensed, too, that fewer people are doing it, i think.
jean: yeah. what does leadership need to adapt to engage the younger generations?
jason: jean, you’re asking the hard questions now. we have not figured that out, have we? i think we hire people that are in the younger generations. our firm’s been virtual since 2012. so that does allow us to hire people anywhere in the country, even people who travel around the world. so we have some team members that do those things. so i think some of those unusual ways of working, working at home, those are things we do have to allow for as virtual firms. now, if you’re a brick and mortar firm, you kind of probably want everybody coming to the office, you know. but i think, you know, if you’re a virtual firm, you have to understand people are going to work in different ways and in different locations, different places. now, we have a lot of protocol to how we want our team to work, how they block their calendars, you know, no distractions, you know, things like that. we do have some of that protocol and requirements, how they ask for time off. so those are required. but i think we do have to be open to people working in different ways. that’s just kind of part of the deal now, i think.
jean: yeah, because with covid, of course, everybody fled to their basements or wherever they decided to work. and we showed ourselves that, gosh, we can really do that. you don’t need to see them sitting with their butt in their seat for how many hours a day to know they’re working. and now we’re at the point that a lot of firm owners do want their people back in the office. they’re paying that rent. they’ve got all these expenses for that. but i think firms need to have some sort of policy of how often they could work from home, that to expect folks these days to show up five days a week in the office is a real turnoff and is going to impact retention and recruiting for those firms.
jason: yeah, it probably already is, you know, affecting them in pretty major ways. and we get it. we’ve been virtual for so long. we miss our team. we don’t get to be with them, you know. and so being in an office community had a lot of benefit. but also we have one team member who was in an office and he says, it’s kind of nice being at home because in the office, there was just so much talking. and he’s like, i seemed to be the person people would come, you know, gossip to about everybody else. and he’s like, i didn’t get anything done. so one way is not better than the other. they all come with something. and so you can build a stronger culture when you’re sitting beside people, but you also can be distracted with each other. and then if you work at home, maybe you can be more focused. but some people are working in their bedroom. it’s a much more chill situation. they’re in their pajamas or something. and they just don’t feel as focused also when they’re at home. and so a lot of this has to do with sophistication of the worker. i think if workers are going to be okay with now working at home, they have to also be the kind of person who can really maintain focus and fight that distraction with people at home or with, you know, the things that take our attention at home.
jean: so i have two more questions. what is the most valuable leadership lesson that you’ve learned in your career so far?
jason: oh, boy. well, so people in our community will know this one. and it was probably something that my partner, julie, asked me, you know, over a decade ago, where i said, i want to grow. i was struggling at the time as a leader, really struggling to do what it took to grow. almost wanted to give up on the firm and thriveal. so i almost closed down. actually, i went through the process of closing us down and she’s like, i’ll help turn these around with you if you want to. but you got to get in here and you got to really make it a focus. and she said, do you want to grow? and i said, i do. and then she said, do you want what growth means? and i knew what she was talking about. and that was a hard question, because she’s like, you can’t just want the end point, that end result of growth. you’ve got to want what it means. you’ve got to also want the journey of growth means.
and so now we say that a lot in our community, that the thriveal members repeat that question. we even have t-shirts with that question on it. and it’s do you want what that means? it’s not do you want that thing? do you want what it means to have that? and so that, that was highly impactful to me as a leader, which was really that’s a huge accountability question. it’s like you can want growth all day long. do you want the journey and the ups and down that growth? that’s what it means. do you want that? and i had to say yes to that question, and i did, thankfully. but that was a massive change and turnaround for me as a leader, probably to want what it means, not just want it.
jean: i think everyone listening or watching can relate to that, you know, in one form or another. oh, my goodness.
jason: yeah. and it’s in all of life, too. you know.
jean: yes, it is.
jason: do you want it means to do that? do you want to get a new puppy? you want what that means? you know, it’s true.
jean: [inaudible 00:30:32] on the couch. you know.
jason: that’s right. that’s what it is. yeah.
jean: okay. so my last question is a bonus question. so your bio reads that your morning coffee is always ground, fresh, and hot.
jason: yeah.
jean: so what is your favorite blend or brand of coffee?
jason: well, i don’t necessarily have a favorite blend, but i grind my beans every morning. that’s my deal. and so i just got a new grinder for christmas because i wear them out every morning. so i really do. and i like it strong. so my son-in-law is a barista. he actually helped me figure out the water-to-coffee ratio that you actually use in a coffee shop to get the kind of coffee that i want. so he was teaching me and training me a little bit over the christmas holidays. so, yeah, it’s got to be beans. i got to grind them and it’s got to be dark. and i want my coffee to be really hot. i can’t do lukewarm coffee.
jean: my gosh. so how many of these delicious cups of coffee do you drink in a day?
jason: well, probably more than i should. yeah, three or four, probably. yeah, i’m probably used to it, but i could probably cut back.
jean: right. well, you’re doing a lot of other great stuff. don’t worry so much about coffee.
jason: there you go.
jean: well, i’ve been speaking today with jason blumer, ceo and founder of blumer cpas. jason, this has been so much fun. thank you for your time today.
jason: yeah. thank you for having me, jean. this is a lot of fun. i love talking about leadership. i don’t have it figured out, but i love exploring what it means and how i can grow more.
jean: well, we appreciate your feedback.
jason: thank you.
jean: and thank you for tuning in to gear up for growth. be sure to check us out next time when we focus on another topic crucial for accounting firms aiming for smart growth in today’s competitive marketplace. i’ll see you then.