CPA Firms and the 50-Cent Coffee

This coming Saturday I will attend my first – and despite the imposing anniversary milestone – hopefully, not my last, high school reunion.

I won’t wax nostalgic and tell you it seems like just yesterday that after a small family barbecue in the backyard, I walked up to the podium on a beautiful late Sunday afternoon and much to my parents’ amazement, received my high school diploma.

No, quite honestly, it seems like a long time ago.

A REALLY long time ago.

Contrast that mild event to the bonhomie that today’s high school graduates enjoy, - multiple lavish parties and get-togethers and frequent shopping sprees (with their parents’ credit cards of course) at IKEA and Bed Bath & Beyond to furnish their dorm rooms.

Even the new students’ orientations at their colleges of choice are two-to-three day events.

Last week the bride and I returned from a grueling two-day session at my daughter’s university come August where they literally kept the parents matriculating from session to session from 7:30 am to 5 pm.

By the time we were ready to drive home, I felt like I had just competed in one of those “tough mudder” races. All I wanted was a shower, a cold compress and a comfortable place to lie down.

Do you know what my new student orientation consisted of?

My parents dropping me off in front of the old TWA terminal at JFK airport, wishing me luck and then driving away. Minor details like how I was going to get from the airport to the college, or navigating the registration process the next day was something they assured me I would figure out on the four-hour flight to Denver.

But that above-mentioned evolution is hardly limited to just graduations and the college-preparation process.

For example, in the late 1970s and through the 1980s could anyone envision willingly paying $4-to-$5 for a cup of coffee and waiting on a long snaking line for the privilege of doing so?

How about being employed at an accounting firm that was virtually paperless or working from multiple screens? Or a dress code so casual that several principals were sporting shorts and pastel-colored Converse sneakers as incredibly, I saw in one New York City practice I visited last week. For a moment I pictured myself at an ad agency in the East Village as opposed to a professional services firm with a fashionable midtown address.

Think about how well that would have gone over at say, Price Waterhouse circa 1980.

Conversely, I teach CPE on “The Firm of the Future” a number of times each year and it still astounds me when I periodically ask attendees if they’re doing A, B, C, or D, with regard to current trends, how few hands I see raised.

Or when I discover how many firms still operate with antiquated technology, outdated partnership agreements or a management team that looks like a Saturday afternoon meeting at the VFW hall.

I’m not suggesting that today’s firms adopt a dress code replete with True Religion jeans and colored kicks, or advocate they elevate employees to partner before age 30.

But if you operate firm the same way you did when coffee was 50 cents a cup, I can assure you there will be a highly charged and competitive CPA practice with the operational efficiency of a Starbucks who will not.