richard kopelman: aprio’s plans for global conquest | accounting influencers | part 2 of 2

from $70 milliion to $450 million: the power of positivity, strategic planning, and going international.

accounting influencers
with rob brown

see part 1: richard kopelman: inside aprio’s bold makeover | more accounting influencers with rob brown | aprio sells majority stake to charlesbank capital partners  | cited: mindset: the new psychology of success

more about richard kopelman

richard kopelman, cpa, cgma, advises cpa firm owners and managing partners on strategy, capital raising, and mergers and acquisitions. inside the firm, kopelman works with aprio’s board and leadership teams to continuously advance the people, diverse cultures, capabilities, clients, and communities. kopelman’s specialty is advancing the growth and profitability of professional services firms.

since 2013, kopelman has led the transformation of his firm from ha&w, a regional accountancy firm delivering tax and audit services, to aprio, a top 50 firm that provides a growing list of specialty services to clients in all 50 states and over 50 countries.

kopelman started his career at 13 as the youngest pre-need funeral salesman in north miami beach. kopelman made cold calls to help his mom with her funeral sales job.

transcript

(unedited)

rob brown 

hey, rob brown, here on the accounting influencers podcast part two. in a couple of interviews, we’ve dealt with richard kopelman, managing partner of aprio. richard, great to have you on the show again.

richard kopelman 

great to be here. thank you for having me again.

rob brown 

richard, we don’t have many guests on twice, so congratulations on that. the aprio story is pretty game changing. just give our audience who haven’t heard that first episode a quick 60 seconds of the aprio story.

richard kopelman 

alright, 60 seconds or less. so 72 year old overnight success plotted along for quite a while. we did our first merger. we were 60 years old in 2007. we were 55 years old, 2007, we did our first deal. we did two. we took a hiatus. 2016 we changed the name from h, a w, which stood for habif arogeti and wynne, to aprio, which means head and heart. we drew up, created 31 fundamentals of behavior to back up the aprio brand. since then, we have taken the business from $70 million in revenue, which was in 2016, to $450 million of revenue, going into 2024.

rob brown 

about 60 seconds

richard kopelman 

and by the way, we went from one office 350 people in atlanta to 2100 people in 25 offices in the us, philippines and medellin, colombia.

rob brown 

and you’ve pretty much led to charge you. you’re something of a formidable personality. would you say you’re a pioneer?

richard kopelman 

oh, i would not say i’m a pioneer. i’m a great steward of our business. i had an amazing team that that is on this journey. we’re on this journey together, and i’m just doing what our founders set out to do, which was create opportunity for the next generation.

richard kopelman 

do you have a personal philosophy for success?

richard kopelman 

my personal philosophy is stay positive and never give up.  i’m not very good at taking no for an answer.

rob brown 

okay, so belligerent and stubborn, man,

richard kopelman 

i guess in british terms, yes, that’s not a bad trade when you’re leading a vision. can i take that? i can just label myself. would you say belligerent and stubborn and stubborn? okay, we’re going to take that belligerent and stubborn. that’s going to be my new my new title. well, the point is, as a leader, you can waver, because there’s so many voices speaking into the vision, so many people have an opinion and an agenda and a say on which way we should be good and how we should do it. so good leaders do need an element of stubbornness, or strong will, strong mindedness to stick to the plan. you do need to stick to the plan. you need to have a plan. first, i find that a lot of people don’t have a plan. we’ve had a a very well written plan since 2015 that we continue to update every year. we’re in the process developing our 2030 plan, and we are sticking to, sticking to our strategy. it’s never, of course, a straight line. there’s plenty of zigzags along the way. there has to be that’s just business. we have our north star, though, well defined, and we’re, you know, focused on that, and it’s really around how our client needs to be served and wants to be served. growth, scale.

rob brown 

everything you’ve achieved is not a straight line. good leaders pivot. there are giants. they change their mind on things. is there anything in particular that you’ve had a u turn or change your mind on in the last few years?

richard kopelman 

probably a longer list that we have time to cover.  i’ll go back a little bit further. we had a event that occurred that caused us to really rethink our wealth management business and how we were serving clients. we did that very effectively. and that business, i’m glad to say,  is growing. we, of course, have had businesses that we have started and gotten into, or service lines that we determined weren’t the right fit, and we had to, you know, lay those off the west coast. entry for us was not something that was planned, but it was an opportunity that arose. the cultural alignment was phenomenal. the practices and the client fit was perfect. and although we were not focused on going to the west coast at the time, we decided to charge forward. and we’ve gone from zero to $30 million on the in the west region just in the last two. last 18 months,

rob brown 

fortune favors the open minded. that’s where the opportunity comes.

richard kopelman 

this is good. it goes with that growth mindset.

rob brown 

in terms of your own philosophy. there are no perfect jobs. you seem very passionate about what you do, and you you’ve got longevity in this game. you don’t look like you’re giving up to play golf and go and be a consultant anytime soon. so you’re in it for the long haul. but as managing partner and ceo, you’re in a unique position to talk about the the leadership structure of a firm. a lot of people say the managing partner role is becoming redundant because partners cannot be managed, and the c-suite type approach, the corporate approach is coming in a lot more. seems like you have a foot in both caps. where do you stand on that?

richard kopelman 

yeah, it’s interesting. as we have evolved over the last seven years, in particular with this hockey stick growth that we’ve had, we have changed the organizational structure three times. we’ve rewritten our operating agreement three or four times, and they’ve all been as a response to where we’re headed and what we’ve accomplished and how we want to run, how we want to run the business. and i don’t think there’s, if you do it right, i don’t think there’s redundancy in the role we do. you know, call it ceo and managing partner. managing partner because of the operating agreement and the llc, our holding company, but the ceo title because of how we run the business. and i view we’re running a financial service, professional services business, and that means we’re not just running a bunch of practices, which i think is where firms run into this redundancy, and they have executive committees, and i think we do as a profession, have to move beyond that structure, and we need to let our people be great client service professionals, or great leaders, or sometimes a combination of both and and run it like a business, which means, you know, evaluating investments and growing through lateral talent joining the firm and through mergers and acquisitions and technology changes, automation, all, all of those changes that are occurring every day in our business require leadership, not management, and so my philosophy is hire great people and get out of the way and let them do their jobs.

rob brown 

that sounds good. i’m just picturing richard kopelman as a 16 or 18 year old thinking, i want to be a cpa. i want to lead a firm. i want a global domination. i want all the best. what was it like back then in your early days?

richard kopelman 

well, at 16 or 17, i was definitely not thinking about being a cpa. that didn’t happen until i was a sophomore in college, and i had a call with my dad because i didn’t know what i should do, and he said, accounting is the language of business, my older brother, one of my older brothers, who’s a partner here at the firm, mitchell, give a shout out to mitchell. he was already, at that time, a cpa, already here at aprio. and so that was my path in terms of deciding, and i’ll also mention that, and this was key. i had a professor, dr keith, so a little shout out to dr keith at usf that when my my dad passed away, when i was in college, i was a junior, and i dropped most of my classes that semester, but i kept my accounting intermediate class, and dr keith was about the only professor on campus that was compassionate about what i had gone through. and i’ve actually sent him some emails recently just to say hello and touch base with him. he had lost his wife a few years earlier, i don’t know exactly when, so he had experienced a loss as well that, i think, had a pretty pivotal emotional, you know, i probably had an emotional response to to that and, and i think that also locked me in, and, you know, continued my path in the in the accounting program.

rob brown 

would you say, it’s the best piece of career advice you’ve ever been given?

richard kopelman 

it was get the cpa exam out of the way. that was pretty, pretty important. well, i almost left aprio once, and my critical career advice was to stay right that i received from a couple of our partners. and i think the story is, you know, told now. so that was the right decision. that was a pretty key part of advice that i was given. i joined a ceo group, and that was advice given to me by a client that was pretty critical. i have lots of, probably little tidbits like. one time, i was with a client, and i said, why don’t you show up at some of these events that we had? and he looked at me and he said, if it’s that important, you are my accountant, you are going to call me and tell me what i need to know. and i think everything we need to know about client service is encapsulated in that statement,

rob brown 

what’s the biggest thing you’re working on right now? richard

richard kopelman 

initially the biggest thing i’m probably working on right now is top secret, and i can’t share it.

richard kopelman 

the biggest thing you’re working on right now that you can share,

richard kopelman 

what we are working on, is definitely going to be transformational. you know, it’s interesting. the biggest thing you asked was biggest thing we’re working on right now. in 2023 it was about bringing together aprio and a number of other firms, nine other firms in total, that more than doubled the size of the business, and that was pretty critical transformation. as i look forward to next year, institutionalizing process and moving to enterprise level technology and driving automatio.  and global teams are some of the things, big boulders that we are focused on looking forward into the next 12 months.

rob brown 

and final question, if i made you the global czar of accounting, worldwide, top of the tree, everybody, every professional association, society, governing body, every firm, every qualifier, everything answers to you. you are the top. i’m interviewing you right now with what question, what? what would you sort out first? what would be top of your priority list?

richard kopelman 

i don’t even know how to answer that question. if i was the global czar of accounting, what would i do first?

rob brown 

you’d have the chance to change anything you wanted. you’d have the chance, almost, to start from scratch or or change anything, because people would follow you. so,

richard kopelman 

i’ll give you something that is just it’s not possible. can i give you the possible?

rob brown 

the job’s not possible. so you can certainly give me a suggestion that’s not possible.

richard kopelman 

you know, it would be amazing if we didn’t have the restrictions that exist today in practicing globally. sure, and if there could be truly be firms that are just global firms. because although people think they’re global, we all know the profession, they’re not. but that would be a fascinating shift to to do that. and so that would be that that’s one. i’ll give you that one.

rob brown 

richard kopelman, that’s a great vision to end on. thank you so much for your time and you passion today.

richard kopelman 

thank you. i appreciate you having me you