I’ll Take Succession for $1,000 Alex

Last week, I spoke before a chapter of one of the large state CPA societies in the Northeast on one of my favorite subjects – the CPA firm of the future.

Prior to my presentation one of the attendees jokingly turned to a colleague and asked what I considered a terrific trivia question – which musical group performed the one-hit wonder The Night Chicago Died?

The truth be told I knew the answer immediately due to my penchant for storing multiple gigabytes of arcane and often useless information. Too bad I was rejected as a potential Jeopardy contestant on two occasions.

For those keeping score at home, the answer was Paper Lace and the year was 1974.

Think about that for a moment.

Richard Nixon was still President – albeit he would resign from the Oval Office in a matter of months. Gas was 53 cents a gallon, the average household income in the U.S, was just under $9,000 and the price of a Big Mac was 45 cents. Oh, and you could mail a letter for 6 cents.

So I asked the questioner how old he was when that song came out to which he admitted he was 18 and preparing for this freshman year in college. So if my math was correct he would be roughly 61 or 62 depending on which month his birthday fell.

Being in the succession business my next question naturally was how much longer he wanted to work? He told me he ran his own firm with two other partners with each of them being roughly the same as he.

He thought about it for a moment and offered an estimate of perhaps five more years and ditto for at least one of his partners.

And no, they had no one on their bench that could one day assume the leadership reins.

It was definitely one of those “see me after class” moments.

I explained that if he was old enough to recall a song (and he also knew the lyrics) that aired some 43 years ago just maybe he and his stakeholders should begin some type of succession planning in earnest.

He said they had been attempting (unsuccessfully) to recruit some younger talent to assume some of the workload and hopefully become part of the leadership team. (Cue eye-rolling).

I asked for his card and promised some information on succession planning would be sent his way by the close of business that day.

Before I left I had one more round of popular music trivia in me.

“Who sang Red Rubber Ball?”

“The Cyrkle, 1966.”

I told him the information would be sent within the hour.