Future-Proof

11 years ago, when Sebastian Terry was 24 years old, he lost a friend. The sudden death shook Sebastian to his core, to the point where he re-evaluated his own life and asked himself, “Am I happy?”  His answer was, “No.” Sebastian started looking for more happiness in his life. He wrote down a list of 100 things that he thought might make him happy — 100 things that he wanted to accomplish an...

With everything that’s going on in the world today, it could do us all some good to spend more time on positivity. Gretchen Pisano is co-founder and CEO of pLink Leadership, a group that combines strategy, leadership development, and coaching with a focus on the “link” between the practice of positive psychology and better business results. She’s a professional certified coach, she has a master’s...

Tracey Golden is the new chair of the American Institute of CPAs and the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. She’s also a CGMA and an audit partner with Deloitte. In her acceptance speech, after her election, she used the COVID-19 crisis as a backdrop for her thoughts on the role CPAs play as trusted advisors who will help lead us on a financial path forward and throug...

Robbie Kellman Baxter has written the book—quite literally—on the Membership Economy and subscription-based business models. This is the way the world is going. In fact, it’s already gone. And it’s only a matter of time before it makes its way into the CPA profession and starts impacting accounting and finance. In some ways, it already is. Robbie recently released a book called “The Forever Transa...

The work of associations is right in the name: It’s about connections, it’s about relationships, and it’s about networks. These are the things that associations are designed to provide, and this is the time — a time of true crisis — in which those things are more important than ever. To explore all that an association can do, we sit down with Tom Hood, President and CEO of the Maryland Association...

Mark Koziel has been one of the most prominent voices at the American Institute of CPAs for nearly 15 years. He is executive vice president of firm services for the AICPA and a fixture on Accounting Today’s annual list of the most influential people in the profession. He’s been at the forefront of the profession’s response to the COVID-19 crisis—advocating on behalf of CPAs everywhere when it come...

Inclusion remains a huge problem in our profession. As of 2016, just one percent of CPAs employed by public accounting firms were Black. And 0.3 percent of partners at those firms were black. Meanwhile, roughly 13 percent of our country’s population is Black. And the numbers for other people of color weren’t much better. We want our profession to look like the public it serves, but it isn’t close...

What should we be doing with our money, with our investments, when things are as unpredictable as they’ve been lately? There’s a lot of advice out there — some of it good, some of it bad — and we wanted to speak to someone who knows what he’s talking about to sort it out. Lyle Benson is president of L.K. Benson & Company in Baltimore and a MACPA member who has been at the forefront of advancin...

Daniel Burrus is all about one word: Anticipation. How can we anticipate future trends, how can we spot them early, and learn to take advantage of the opportunities those trends provide us? He has written about this skill in his bestselling book “The Anticipatory Organization.” He has built a learning system that’s designed to help us learn how to become more anticipatory.  In spite of all of...

Before the coronavirus, we talked about disruption as something we had time to prepare for — advances in technology, future laws and regulations, and what will happen when all of the Boomers are gone and the Millennials take over for good. These are things we knew were going to happen, but it seemed we had time to prepare for them. David Bray was one of those people talking about disruption. In Ja...

We are all facing trying times right now — whether you’re working from home, out of a job, or still working in public in the midst of a pandemic. This is a time when humans need to connect more than ever. We’re going to talk about all of that — how to make sure your teams are holding up, that they’re well, that they’re productive, and that they have all the resources they need in this very difficu...

Emmanuel Gobillot is one of the world’s leading experts on leadership. He’s the best-selling author of a number of great books, including “ Leadershift ,” “ The Connected Leader ,” “ Follow the Leader ,” and “ Unleash Your Leader .” He has also recently co-authored a book specfically for this moment in time: “ Crisis Leadership: Principles and tactics for success when your world turns upside down...

Lack of self-confidence is a key reason why many of us don’t get what we want —  that promotion, that raise, that speaking gig. Our guests this week are trying to change all of that. They are Kate Boorer and Fiona Pearman, two leading Australian business experts who have joined forces to write a book aimed at helping people “own their talents, face their fears, and create their futures.” That...

This week we’re talking about the Paycheck Protection Program. A provision of the CARES Act — the massive coronavirus relief bill that was signed into law on March 27 — the PPP is a loan that’s designed to be an incentive for small businesses to keep their workers on the payroll. We know some of our listeners may be applying for it, and if you are, you probably have a few questions. So we sat down...

The world has been slowly transitioning towards remote work, but we are suddenly in an era where many of us have been forced to adopt remote work practices in a very short time. Some of us weren’t ready for this, and we could all use a little guidance in making the leap. Here to help us through that is Greg Rittler, the founder of Blue Ocean Ideas. We learn what it takes to lead a fully-remote tea...

Amidst all the chaos of the coronavirus, we are all trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy in our day-to-day lives. One way people are trying to maintain as much of the status quo as possible is through remote work. Our guest this week, Tina Garza, has some great guidance for businesses and employees alike when it comes to working remotely and returning to business as usual. To learn more,...

The coronavirus has caught everyone’s attention, and not in a good way. Most of what you read out there largely falls somewhere between paranoia and panic and — given the reliability of the “news” we see in our social feeds — that’s not good for anybody. Jennifer Elder of the Business Learning Institute has compiled a list of questions that business leaders can use to help their organizations prep...

When you’re talking about life in an exponential age, there are few skills that are as important as anticipation — the ability to spot future trends early, before they become truly disruptive, and take advantage of the opportunities they offer. One person who truly understands the importance of anticipation is our guest today, Rita McGrath. Rita is a longtime professor at Columbia Business School...

Bots are the name of the game this week. They are all the rage, and they’re setting their sights on the accounting and finance world. No one knows that more than our guest this week. Jody Padar built her “Radical CPA” brand as chief executive officer of New Vision CPA Group near Chicago. But then, in January she was named vice president of strategy for Botkeeper. We ask Jody about the potential of...

When we had a whole show highlighting blockchain last year, the hype around it was sky-high. It was supposed to transform our profession and, in fact, many professions. It seemed like there was no problem that couldn’t potentially be solved through the use of blockchain technology. Now, things have cooled off a bit, but people in our profession are still very interested in how blockchain might tra...

We spend a lot of time talking about exponential technologies and the disruptive impact they’re having on our world — but today’s guest turns the tables on the mindset and focuses, instead, on the importance of exponential thinking .  Jeffrey Rogers is the Principal Facilitator at Singularity University , which is a global learning and innovation community that uses exponential technologies t...

In this episode, we’re talking about innovation in CPA firms — and, no, this isn’t the punchline to a knock-knock joke. It’s happening, believe it or not, and on a pretty serious scale. Joining us to about it is none other than Jonathan Kraftchick. Jonathan is the partner of assurance services in the Raleigh office of Cherry Bekaert, where he is known (informally) as the firm’s Innovation Partner...

We spent last week talking about federal tax issues that you might need to know about as we head into this year’s Busy Season. This week, we’re going to do the same thing — but on the state tax side of the ledger. So we sit down with Peter Franchot, comptroller for the state of Maryland. We also asked some of our MACPA members what questions they have for the comptroller, and we got a ton of respo...

Settle in and relax, folks, because this might be your last chance to chill until April. Yeah, tax season is here. And yeah, you’re probably going to be busy — but today’s episode just might help. Our guest is Cari Weston, director of tax practice and ethics for the American Institute of CPAs. She down with our host, Bill Sheridan, at the 2019 Digital CPA Conference to talk about the issues that w...

Given the latest research within the profession — see our recent conversation with Lexy Kessler for details on all of that — there’s one thing that most accounting and finance professionals are thinking about: talent. How to find talent, how to keep it, and how to figure out what the best talent wants in the first place. This last bit is really important, too, because what younger generations want...