The .001 Percent Solution

Last week I chronicled my battles with the climate and walking distance during the AICPA ENGAGE conference in Las Vegas, of which I’m admittedly still recovering. During the four-day confab, I received a voice mail from a firm that unknown to me was less than a mile from my office.

The owner, an affable man in his late 50s outlined what he thought he needed to get his practice where it needed to be and despite having no one on his bench to assume control and the fact that he wanted to work just five more years full time he had the perfect solution – acquire a smaller firm with young CPAs.

Ah, yes! I told him he had determined the best strategy to right his firm. Now, I said instead of engaging me to help, he’d have more success not to mention less expense, just rubbing the magic lamp and waiting until the genie appears.

It took him a while to get the joke which was not a good sign.

So, I painfully went through chapter and verse of a speech I’ve given perhaps 300 times since I came aboard this company. I explained that if regional firms generating 20 times his revenue were having trouble hiring, what makes him think his firm would be a sudden magnet for talent?

He wasn’t done.

His alternative solution? Merge with a similar sized firm.

Now mind you he had at least two CPAs in the firm who were older than him. So, I asked the uncomfortable question of where was the capacity going to come from to replace his two older workers when they stepped back from full time? Not to mention the possibility that a merger partner may have folks who were going to exit within two or three years as well.

Then I explained in simple terms he’d basically be doubling his problems.

He nodded politely in the way someone does when they agree with exactly nothing, you’ve told them.

He promised to keep in touch, which over the years I’ve learned is business-speak for “don’t call us we’ll call you.”

I wished him luck and resisted the urge to tell him that I didn’t have to be Kreskin to predict what direction his firm will be headed in the upcoming years. Nor did I tell him that some of the local antique shops carry vintage lamps.