CPA Trendlines Podcasts

When you're too tired to lead, step aside.Gear Up for GrowthWith Jean CaragherFor CPA Trendlines“Leaders who realize they’re too tired to keep managing change should recognize that it might be time to transition to somebody who has that energy,” says Carrie Steffen, CEO of the Iowa Society of CPAs, during her appearance on Gear Up for Growth, hosted by Jean Caragher of Capstone Marketing. “The longer you hang on when you don’t have the energy for change, the more of a disservice you’re doing, not only to your firm, but to the profession as a whole.”    More Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | More Gear Up for Growth More CPA Trendlines videos and podcasts here In addition to highlighting self-awareness as a key leadership skill, Steffen offered valuable insights for CPA firm leaders navigating today’s dynamic environment. In her interview, two major takeaways stood out. 

Price discrimination segments customers by what they value most. Accounting ARC - Student-Led ConversationsWith Harshita MultaniCenter for Accounting TransformationOn Accounting ARC – Student-Led Conversations, host Harshita Multani interviews Ron Baker—author, educator, and sought-after speaker—about price discrimination and the psychology behind everyday pricing. Across coffee shops, hotels, streaming platforms, and movie theaters, Baker says the same principle repeats: value is subjective, so pricing must be, too.  MORE Accounting ARC: Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn't Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure | CPA Firm Ownership Under Fire | Walking Violation: When Showing Your CPA Gets You in Trouble | Audit Bags to TikTok Tags, Gen Z Talks Success | Students Challenge Accounting's Traditional Career Path | True Grit: Recognizing Struggles That Shape Our Successes |More Admins, Fewer Students, No Plan | What Career Advice Gets Wrong for Gen Z - And How to Fix It | Your Identity is Not a Liability | Burnout, Be Gone: Accounting Needs a Boundary Breakthrough Baker argues that pricing “behaves like art” because people don’t act like predictable particles. The goal is not perfect prediction, but rather constant testing: offering options, observing behavior, and refining strategy. That framing aligns with a growing body of hospitality research that shows how subtle cues—like removing the “$” symbol—change spending patterns. Cornell researchers find diners spend significantly more when menus list numerals without currency signs, a choice many premium venues intentionally make.  

“We didn’t plan to build a 100-person firm. We just wanted to work for ourselves.” Big 4 TransparencyBy Dominic Piscopo, CPAFor CPA TrendlinesWhat does it take to build one of Canada’s fastest-growing cloud accounting firms? In this episode of the Big 4 Transparency, host Dominic Piscopo sits down with Mike Pinkus, co-founder of ConnectCPA and host of the Growth Tales podcast, to unpack the bootstrapped, contrarian story behind ConnectCPA’s rise to over 100 staff and a fully remote, recurring revenue model long before it was trendy.  MORE Dominic Piscopo | MORE Private Equity | MORE Pay & Compensation Founded in 2014 by Pinkus and co-founder Lior Zehtser, ConnectCPA was born from a desire for more autonomy - both personally and professionally. “We just wanted to work for ourselves,” Pinkus says. “Everything else was a byproduct.” Yet within a few years, they found themselves leading a national, cloud-native firm with a deep bench of accounting, tax, and finance professionals serving scaling businesses across North America.The firm's early bet on recurring revenue and cloud infrastructure paid off, but the growth came with growing pains. As the client base exploded, the firm took on nearly everything that came through the door until the operational costs caught up. Pinkus openly shares how a lack of data visibility and over-hiring led to margin pressure and process gaps, eventually prompting the firm to hit pause, install time tracking for its accounting team, and rework its client roster toward a more focused ICP. 

Measuring impact—not hours—creates happier teams, better clients, and a stronger profession.The DisruptorsWith Liz FarrWhat will it take to kill the billable hour? Chris Vanover, founder of CPAClub, believes it’s not only “outdated and archaic,” but that today’s age of AI and automation “is a recipe for the death of the billable hour.”    MORE STREAMING: Kless: Profit Is a Result. Flourishing Is the Purpose | Whitman: Build Culture on 'Progress,' Not Change | Shein: No PE? No M&A? No Problem | Hood and Weber: Time to RISE | Proctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant Solutions | Carter-Gray: How 1 Poor Review Strengthened the Firm | Hartman: Upwork to “40 Under 40” in 3 Years | Telka: Transform Fear into Fuel | Woodard: Move Past Reports; Deliver Results CPAClub, formerly AuditClub, operates under a different model. As Hervochon explained in his first appearance on The Disruptors, CPAClub operates as a subscription service, where pass holders have access on a monthly or annual basis to a team of highly skilled auditors and accountants. This innovative business model undoubtedly contributed to the firm’s recognition as CalCPA’s Firm of the Year for 2025.  “CPAClub was launched back in 2022 with a mission to try to help improve the profession,” Vanover explains.  “Hours aren't necessarily something you want to buy, because ultimately, I could sell you 40 hours at a certain value per hour, but there's no guarantee that I would actually deliver anything with those hours,” Vanover explains.  

“A knee-jerk pullback can actually increase legal risk."MOVE Like ThisWith Bonnie Buol RuszczykFor CPA TrendlinesIn a climate where diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs have become political flashpoints, employment attorney Aislinn Sroczynski of Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld joins host Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk on MOVE Like This to unpack the facts behind the fear. The result is a grounded, no-nonsense discussion on how firms can remain inclusive, compliant, and confident—without compromising their values. MORE MOVE Despite the noise, Sroczynski reminds us that the legal foundation of DEI hasn’t budged. Title VII, the ADA, the ADEA, and the Equal Pay Act still form the bedrock of U.S. anti-discrimination law. “What’s changed,” she explains, “is the level of scrutiny.”That means employers should revisit—not rewrite—their programs to ensure they focus on fairness regardless of protected characteristics, not because of them.

"If they’re consistently uncooperative, they’re not a good CAS client, no matter how much they pay.”  It's Not Just the NumbersWith Penny Breslin and Damien GreatheadFor CPA TrendlinesIn the world of client accounting and advisory services (CAS), most firms focus on building internal teams, refining processes, and adopting the right technology. Yet, one crucial element often gets overlooked: the client. In a recent episode of It’s Not Just the Numbers, co-hosts Damien Greathead and Penny Breslin explore why clients must be treated as integral members of the team, and what happens when firms fail to define the client’s role in the process. Their conversation, drawn from decades of working with accounting firms around the world, provides a blueprint for CPAs and firm owners aiming to elevate their CAS practices.  MORE Penny Breslin and Damien Greathead | MORE Advisory & Consulting | BUY "It's Not Just the Numbers" Traditionally, accountants position clients as recipients of a service; for example, the client would deliver documents once a year, and the firm would produce a tax return. That transactional model doesn’t work in CAS, says Breslin. 

Automation isn’t replacing accountants—it’s exposing who can’t evolve.Accounting InfluencersWith Rob BrownArtificial intelligence isn’t a future disruptor—it’s already embedded in accounting. The profession’s survival depends on how quickly firms adapt.“The robots are coming—scratch that—they’re already here,” says Accounting Influencers host Rob Brown. “AI literacy isn’t optional anymore. If you’re treating AI as tomorrow’s problem, you’re already behind the curve.”The latest episode explores the seismic impact of automation on accounting and the urgent need for firms to transform their skills, strategies, and structures. MORE Accounting Influencers with Rob Brown Citing a McKinsey report, Brown notes that nearly 80% of organizations already use AI in at least one core function. “It’s pervasive now,” he says. “Reconciliation, data entry, transaction classification—AI eats those jobs for breakfast.”A 2023 OpenAI study even found that automation could impact nearly all tasks performed by accountants and auditors. Yet, surprisingly, the accounting job market hasn’t collapsed. “Two years into the generative AI journey, most jobs haven’t vanished,” Brown observes. “The danger isn’t robots replacing humans—it’s humans who fail to leverage robots being replaced by those who do.”

Growth doesn’t always mean moving on—it can mean moving deeper.Gear Up for GrowthWith Jean CaragherFor CPA Trendlines“I love Smith + Howard, and I loved marketing, but I didn’t think I was the person for that role anymore,” says Julie Barnes, chief of staff of Smith + Howard, during her appearance on Gear Up for Growth, powered by CPA Trendlines, and hosted by Jean Caragher of Capstone Marketing. “I didn’t want to leave; I wanted to do something different. I wanted to be valuable to the firm and create value in whatever role I landed in.”  More Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | More Gear Up for Growth More CPA Trendlines videos and podcasts here Barnes shares how her 30-year journey at the firm has evolved through initiative, transparency, and a culture that supports growth from within. Her story offers two powerful takeaways for professionals in accounting firms.

Leaders tie AI to real workflows, not wish lists, and adoption follows. Accounting ARCWith Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny ShimamotoCenter for Accounting TransformationAccounting leaders are accelerating AI deployment across tax, audit, and advisory—but three accounting veterans and hosts of Accounting ARC argue the difference between adoption and shelfware comes down to focus, guardrails, and relentless training. On the latest episode, hosts Liz Mason, CPA; Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, CGMA; and Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; dissect how large firms are approaching Microsoft Copilot and adjacent tools. They agree that leaders should start now, but do so strategically.  MORE Accounting ARC: Don’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn't Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure | CPA Firm Ownership Under Fire | Walking Violation: When Showing Your CPA Gets You in Trouble | Audit Bags to TikTok Tags, Gen Z Talks Success | Students Challenge Accounting's Traditional Career Path | True Grit: Recognizing Struggles That Shape Our Successes |More Admins, Fewer Students, No Plan | What Career Advice Gets Wrong for Gen Z - And How to Fix It | Your Identity is Not a Liability | Burnout, Be Gone: Accounting Needs a Boundary Breakthrough Patrick, CEO of VERIFYiQ and co-founder and educator at TB Academy, opens with a caution that resonates across enterprise tech cycles: many organizations feel pressured to adopt generative AI without clearly defining expected outcomes. He urges leaders to ask what success specifically looks like, whether that is fewer review points, faster cycle times on close, or reduced audit adjustments. 

Key changes to Sections 168 and 179 offer fresh opportunities for strategic deductions.Quick Tax TipWith Art WernerCPE TodayIn the latest Quick Tax Tip episode, tax expert Art Werner dives into one of the most talked-about provisions in the new tax bill: the restoration of 100% bonus depreciation.“Under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, bonus depreciation started to phase down from 100% to zero,” Werner explains. “For 2025, it was set at 40%. But this new bill retroactively restores 100% bonus depreciation — starting Jan. 20, 2025 — and keeps it that way through the end of 2029.”Click here for more Art WernerThat January date, Werner notes, is significant: “It happens to be Inauguration Day. So it seems the new administration is ushering in a new era for business expensing.”The move reverses years of gradual cutbacks and offers businesses renewed incentive to invest in equipment and property. According to Werner, this means tax practitioners can breathe easier — at least for now.