Culture as a Strategy: Leadership Lessons from a Thriving CPA Firm

Transcription – Culture as a Strategy: Leadership Lessons from a Thriving CPA Firm

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Welcome to the Proof Point Podcast where we decode digital success one click at a time. We share key takeaways fueled by data and insights that your team can implement today to drive growth. Now, let’s get started.

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This is Stacie Porter Bilger, your host for the Proof Point Podcast, where I feature B2B and D2C businesses and thought leaders, sharing marketing, data tactics and sales strategies and leadership insights that will kickstart your growth in this rapidly changing digital space. This episode is brought to you by Proof Digital. Proof Digital is a strategic and creative performance marketing agency.

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We partner with companies to create data fuel marketing sales funnels and overall growth strategies. Visit proofdigital.com to learn more. I’ve known today’s guests for a long time. They’ve been a partner of (0:58) ours for over 10 years. I would have to say they’re one of the most innovative business models and businesses that I have worked with. And I love how they have grown and had smart growth over the last decade.

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They know that the most important piece of their business is their people. So they’ve had smart growth, they’ve been innovative and they’ve really embraced talent and culture as far as part of their business. Our guest today is BJ Lippert and Jeff Donovan.

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BJ, a proud Butler grad with both a bachelor’s degree and master’s in accounting. He recently became the managing partner at Donovan CPAs, where he also leads the assurance services group. BJ works with clients in a wide range of industries and is passionate about mentoring young professionals and building a culture of support and growth within Donovan.

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Joining BJ is Jeff Donovan, the new visionary at Donovan CPAs after a successful run as managing partner. Jeff started his accounting career with KPMG in Guam and in Saipan, gaining international experience that’s shaped his approach ever since. He brings deep expertise in investments, business strategy, valuations and forensic accounting.

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BJ, Jeff, thanks for joining me today. Glad to be here. Thanks, Stacey. That’s awesome. Awesome. Jeff, I want to start, if you don’t mind, your legacy of Donovan.

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You’ve been in business since 1972, I believe. What are you most proud of during your tenure, but also as a company? Okay, so for as a company, I like that we have an entrepreneurial bent to what we do. So everything we do, you know, we are business owners, right? So we carry that into our consulting and our strategy making for our clients.

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We feel what it’s like to struggle with cash flow from time to time. All businesses do. That’s a tangible feeling. And so we can relate. You know, we’ve seen many different industries. We’ve seen the ups and downs and the economic cycles.

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And all of that creates a little bit of anxiety and fear. And because we are entrepreneurs, we feel that too. And we convey that to our young entrepreneurs, people who are starting up businesses, to people who are seasoned veterans who’ve had their businesses for long periods of time.

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And it’s that ability to relate, to say, look, I feel where you are. That is probably my, I guess, my proud accomplishment. We just think a little differently than most CPA firms. Now, as far as my personal accomplishment, I think the thing I’m most proud about is that I’m no longer the managing partner. I practiced what I preached, which is business succession. And I’m very happy about that, because I was able to be the managing partner for 14 years.

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I’m proud about that. I’m proud about the fact that we went, we grew 4X during my tenure. And now I’m stepping out of the way to allow somebody, BJ Lippert, who is way better at managing the business, the internal business than I am.

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And I’m, you know, he’s well groomed and well positioned. And so he is the right person to be the managing partner of Donovan CPAs from this point to whenever he’s ready to begin his succession as well. So those are the things I guess I’m most pleased about with the firm.

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And our succession, the succession from my father to myself, that was a very big accomplishment, a very big deal. And another, I guess, feeling that we can, that I can personally relate to our clients and situations that they have, they’re moving from one generation to the next. And then, then, but then we’ve done, you know, that my succession to through BJ, and I just, it gives me a lot of peace of mind to know that he is now at the helm doing, doing what he’s doing best.

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And me elevating to the visionary role. That’s, that’s actually my happy spot. So I’m, I may never retire because now I’m having too much fun. No, knowing your skill sets and knowing where you, where you belong in the company is the first step of leadership. It really is. BJ, as a non-family managing partner, the first of this company, what are your thoughts? Oh, goodness, what are my thoughts? I got so many.

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First of all, thank you for that really kind introduction. I have to make one small correction, though, because we have a phenomenal partner named David Lemler. David is actually in charge of the assurance department right now.

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And I’m more than happy to pass on that work to him. He and I kind of, so you mentioned that we’ve had some, some growth. And we have over the past, I’ve been here 10 years officially, June of 2025, my 10 years at Donovan.

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We’ve had a lot of organic growth, but we’ve also had acquisition growth. We had a kind of a big run of acquisitions at the end of 2022. And along with that one, one of those acquisitions, merger actually was with the Lemler group, the David Lemler.

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So he loves auditing. If you ever have a conversation to talk with this man about auditing, he, he bleeds debits and credits, which is not my skill set. So what I do, he and I kind of co-led the assurance department for a few years, and it, it didn’t work.

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He and I have two kind of cultural different approaches to how to do things. And we heard that from our team of like, Hey, just one way or another, put one person in charge. So David’s that guy, which frees me up to be the managing partner. Yeah. So you, you touched on it. Our, our firm has been around for more than 50 years.

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And for all but four months of that 50 years, it’s been led by somebody with the last name of Donovan. I’m the first non Donovan to be managing partner of CPAs, which speaks a lot, I believe, to Jeff and his leadership of, you know, a lot of sole practitioners can, we use the term hang up, hang up their shingle, right? You put a shingle out on the side of your building and start a business. A lot of people can do the technical side of the work we do and start a business doing the technical work.

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What Jeff saw his dad do was build a pretty successful business, but it relied heavily on Bob Donovan personally to get it done. Jeff came in as a partner with his dad and kind of started to fall into some of those same routines of, well, this is how my dad has always run the business. So I’m going to do the same thing.

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And eventually he got to a point and realized this isn’t sustainable. The hours that are required of me. There’s really no succession here. There’s, there’s no one to take over for me when I’m done being managing partner. So about 10 years ago, Jeff made the difficult decision to bring in some other people, some other minds into the firm. One of them is our partner, Rex Miller.

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And then I was kind of shortly after Rex, but he, he had the vision to say, the firm that I want to build requires additional support, additional brain power, and I can’t do this on my own. So he brought us in and really was, was willing to let go of the reins, welcome some other people into the partnership and, and truly treat us as equals. I never once felt like, you know, you’re, you’re part of the team, but you’re really not because of your last name.

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It never felt that way. Jeff has been grooming me for the past, I would say three years or so to take over in the managing partner role. And it really, it coincided with this time where our firm was, we’d grown to a point where Jeff was leading the firm in two different roles, essentially.

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He was, we were asking him to both think three to five years down the road, doing visionary things, as well as focus on the here and now in the today of running the firm. And you can’t do that. You can’t do that.

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That’s like trying to drive a car, looking out your windshield and looking at your dashboard at the same time. You can’t do it. So it came a time naturally in our firm’s history where we were ready for somebody to be fully focused on looking at the future of the firm and somebody fully focused on the interior, the culture, the day to day, the communications of the firm.

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So we got to a point where Jeff could do the things that he wants to do best. I can do the things that I do best. And it’s been, I know we’re four months in, in 2025, but it’s been a really successful start to the year so far.

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Right. I would like to. Before you go on, Stacie, I’d like to add, 10 years ago, when we brought in Rex and BJ, that was actually the third try. So I made the decision to bring some non-family members in well before 10 years ago.

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It’s just that 10 years ago was the first time it was successful. Well, first, I appreciate that honesty there, Jeff. But as an entrepreneur, too, and those who listen, and I work with a lot of companies, your story here is really important because that process.

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So what did work? I mean, maybe it was the talent there, Jeff, what were some things that kind of changed at that point in time, 10 years ago that that you were able to turn? Well, I fortunately was introduced to Rex Miller. Okay. It’s our personalities clicked.

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Even though we disagreed on many of the management style things, we were able to be, you know, professionals about it. And, you know, I listened to his perspective, he listened to my perspective, and we pretty much went with what Rex said. I know Rex, and you’re lucky to have him.

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He was bringing a fresh perspective, because he’d been a partner of a larger firm, a larger firm. And then he’d gone off to be, he was a, he was in industry for a few years, and then came back to the Indianapolis market and area. And then that’s how we became, somehow we were introduced to each other.

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And, and then, of course, Rex had a relationship with BJ being at the previous firm that they were together. And then BJ had a previous time that he worked with our new COO, Jeff Curiel. And I, you know, now that, you know, Rex and I are kind of stepping off the scene a little bit out of the day to day, BJ and Jeff are now tag teaming and have all this almost super, superpower strength between the two of them.

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So it’s just, it’s, you know, like, like I said, Rex was the third iteration of trying to move from a family business to a non family business. And I finally found somebody who I could rely upon to do that. I mean, it’s all about the people, the right people.

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What did it look like three years ago? You mentioned that, that, that process BJ and have really started, I mean, you took over this year, but that it didn’t start this year started three years ago. What did that look like? I mean, I asked this question, because I know how many companies I work with that don’t get that vision, day to day separation soon enough, and it holds their company back. There are no, there are no playbooks for these sorts of things.

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You can read all the books you want. There are a few that are specific to our profession on how to lead a CPA firm. But it almost feels like a cop out saying this, but you learn by osmosis.

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So I spent a lot of time with Jeff, I spent a lot of time with Rex, I’ve learned a lot from the partners we brought in, through through the acquisitions. And I’ve been open minded. And there’s there’s a level of humility that comes with this of being willing to say, I don’t know what I don’t know, but I’m willing to learn and grow over time.

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And I mean, even in the past four months, the amount of growth and development that I’ve done, stepping into this role has just been exponential from what I expected it to be. One of the things that that I tell people, though, is, I’ve learned to rely on other people’s opinions of me more than I rely on my own opinion of myself. So when I have people that I trust, like Jeff, who says, you’ve got this, you’ve got the skill set, I trust you, I believe in you, that gives me the confidence to step into that role, and do it.

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So Jeff, Jeff and I are in regular conversation almost daily, we’ll catch up with each other, we, we survived COVID together and navigating all that. And the times that my my natural inclination when something goes wrong is panic and fear and overreaction. And Jeff has 15 years more experience than I do it in this role.

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And often when I get to that point, I’m like, I’m a little overwhelmed here. My first call is always Jeff Dunn and say, Hey, what do I do? And he’s like, well, step one is you breathe. It’s all going to be fine.

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But that’s part of that is his personality style. And part of it just just came with time and experience. So for the past three years, I knew that he believed in me, I knew that this was my role when the time was right.

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And I’ve been picking his brain along the way. Jeff, how would you handle this situation? Or I’m dealing with that? Or what do you think about this trend that’s coming up? And I’m really relying on the smart brains around me that that’s one of the main benefits, I believe, of growth and scale, is we brought in a lot of smart people to our firm. And I don’t have to have all the answers.

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My job is to coordinate the smart people and get the best answer out of them. So to have that humility of I don’t need I don’t need the answer. But I need to know who to go to to find that answer is it’s really freeing.

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That’s what I love doing is coordinating and collaborating. And that’s really what this. Right. And I mean, I saw your company really put out there people first, within the last couple of being very intentional about that.

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And that’s really the forward thinking, right? That’s the forward thinking of your company. And that’s really Jeff, even back 10 years ago, that’s what you realize, too. It was the people that would scale your company.

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Sure. The challenge with service businesses and accounting is a service business is that all your assets go home every night. And, you know, they commute back to where you know, and you’re left with, you know, an empty shell of a building, a few computers and some furniture.

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And it’s really, you know, there’s not much there. The asset is the brainpower of all those people that call Donovan home to where they work. And so, you know, I’m a slow learner, but it dawned on me a few years ago that, you know, golly, we better we better really focus on our team.

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And, you know, the business model has always been or in the public accounting world had always been, you know, clients first focus and then you focus on the firm and then the employees or the team members, they got the third priority on the on the on the on the line there. And so we decided to turn to flip that upside down. And we’re going to focus first on the team, on the people, second on the firm, and then give the clients the third priority.

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And you think, oh, boy, that’s really not very good customer service. Jeff, why would you ever want to do that? You would never you’re not going to keep your your your clients. And the answer is actually a dichotomy.

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And it’s counterintuitive because if you focus on the people and they’re happy and they’re engaged and they’re working hard and they don’t have the stress or drama at the office, they’re going to serve the clients better. They’re going to step up. They’re going to elevate.

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They’re going to want to be more engaged with the clients. And in the long run, and it is a long play because it takes time to change culture, but the clients are served way better. And it kind of goes back to, you know, it kind of goes it kind of goes into more of a psychological mind shift that I’ve kind of been slowly down a path from, you know, you start, you know, a friend of mine told me, he said, you know, fear and control our roommates in a house.

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And, you know, when when when you fear, you fear of you fear letting go because somebody else may not do the work the way you do it. Because the way I do it is the best way, right? I’m guilty of it. Yeah, it’s actually not true.

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So fear. And so you want to control everything. When you’re living in the house of fear and control, you want to control everything because you’re afraid of letting go. And and so I’ve been down this, you know, personal growth path for several years. And it’s just kind of, I’m really steaming forward now. But I’ve moved into the house of surrender and freedom, who are also roommates.

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And the surrender is letting go, it’s let it’s trusting your team and letting them make mistakes. What we’ve told our people, time and time again, is please make mistakes. Nothing we do is going to kill anybody.

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And everything we do can be changed and fixed. And so we encourage our team to make mistakes, don’t make them twice. But make them and so you can learn so they can learn from those mistakes and move forward.

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And that is where the house that now we’re in the house of surrender and freedom because you’re encouraging people to make mistakes, which is just crazy. But it really works and it develops people that you can rely on to perform very well. Right.

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And when we started this conversation, you talked about, I mean, there are upturns and downturns. And there’s some, you know, some rockiness now in the marketplace. And a lot of people are nervous.

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But if you’re in the house that you’re in, you’re looking at it from an innovation standpoint, looking at it from an opportunity standpoint. So that helps your clients to not, not be in the house of fear. And then because if you’re in that house, you’re not going to be successful long term.

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So I think it applies not only to growing your company, but where we are today. Right. It certainly does. And this is my new sermon, right? From the house of fear and control and going down the street to the house of surrender and freedom. It’s what I did is how I made my way to the visionary role. And I, I, it’s kind of, it’s the promised land, right, of business ownership.

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It’s, it gives me the freedom to do what I need to do. I’ve now elevated BJ to do what he’s best at. David Lemler is now in charge of the insurance department.

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He’s doing what he is best at. We have really got people, I believe we finally have people in the right seats at, you know, in the top echelons of our company. Keep preaching, keep preaching there, Jeff. I’m listening. I’m consuming. I need to hear it more.

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That’s for sure. BJ, back to you. How do you, because you’re in the day to day, how do you continue to foster youthfulness and innovation in the company culture on a regular basis? Yeah, you’re, you hit the core of exactly what I love to do, which is, it’s, it’s, it’s building up the team to build something special.

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And again, back to what I said earlier, it’s, it’s not about me having all the answers. It’s about me coordinating the smart people we have to come up with the answers. My, my role for my C right now, as managing partner, I, I have a very limited number of things that I’ve charged myself to do.

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Stay, stay on track with our strategic goals for the year is one. Repeat the vision, vision and values of the firm until people are sick of it and can recite it in their sleep. From my perspective, if you haven’t, if you’re not sick of saying something, you haven’t said it enough.

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So I constantly reiterate our mission, your vision and values. And the third thing that I do that I think is super important. This is not a typical CPA skill, but there’s something inside me, words are important, communication is important, and systems are really important.

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So every every Friday, I write an email to just my partner group and our COO. That’s, I mean, single space, it’s ridiculous. People read, people read these things, like come over and give them a gold star and like, say thank you.

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But, but in that, in that communication to the partner group is, here’s everything you need to know that’s going on at the firm. This, this is what I see from my seat that oversees the whole firm, all the departments and our admin team. And here’s what’s coming down the pike within our profession.

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Like this is what I think is important for this week. Every Friday, our partner group gets that. And then every Monday, our team gets a not as long, but about half as long email, something culture related.

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And we talk, and it’s usually something that’s on my heart, something that that came up in the past week, it’s relevant to what we’re talking about. But we we talk candidly about things Jeff just mentioned, failure, and growth that comes from failure. We talk about vulnerability.

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We talk about what we say the word culture, what does culture mean? And how you how can you bring it to life? We talk about supporting your teammates being there for one another. We talk about how leadership isn’t just from the partners down, it’s from every seat you can you can lead. So, Stacie, innovation flows from that, when you’ve opened up the lines of communication.

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I’m signaling to them, I’m being being vulnerable with them saying, here’s what’s on my heart, here are the things that I think are important. And then the information starts flowing back to me, in other ways. I might be giving an update about the tax department.

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And somebody from our CAST team reads it and says, Oh, I didn’t know they were dealing with that. I’m actually I have this resource over here that could help. Or I could write something about culture to our broader team.

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And somebody might say, Hey, I hadn’t thought about what you just said here. Maybe we could change the way we do things over here to actually help alleviate that. So, again, I’m no innovation expert.

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But what I do and what I’m passionate about is bringing the best out of the people that we have. And I feel like the more we can be vulnerable, regular cadence, regular open lines of communication, the better ideas are going to come out of it. So that’s, that’s what I do.

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Yeah, that’s, that’s awesome. How have you systemized that a little bit? I mean, I mean, you get the Friday piece? I mean, how have you systemized that leadership for your day to day? Just kind of curious. Yeah, I, I’d be lost without my Outlook calendar.

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There was one we switched, we switched it providers not long ago. There was, there was a one or two day period where my Outlook calendar got wiped. And I was, I was panicked. Because I didn’t, I had no idea. I didn’t know like what, I have to be reminded to put socks on some days. So, but, but it’s, it’s all about those systems though, Stacie.

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Like I know, Monday morning, when I show up, you can’t leave the office until you’ve reached out to your team. And I know on Fridays, you can’t leave until you’ve reached out to your partner group. But beyond that, it’s just thinking critically about what you, you can’t do everything.

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There are so many things. And so few hours in a day. It’s, I think it’s one of the hardest things about leadership that people don’t talk about, is separating the best ideas from the really, really good ideas.

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Yes. And the same thing applies to these systems that I try to build is how do you separate the best use of your time from a really good use of your time. And I’m trying to focus on what are those best uses of my time.

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And for me, it’s the things we’ve already discussed, the regular cadence of communication, and it’s sticking true to our strategic objectives, our mission, vision and values. And another thing that I do is we’ve got a cadence of checking in with, with our partners and kind of a mentoring partner playbook kind of cycle three times a year. And I’ve, I’ve committed to them, you will hear from me at least three times a year with feedback, both positive and room for improvement.

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You know that that’s going to come from me. And this is hard for me. I don’t, I don’t like giving critical feedback, but I owe it to you to be vulnerable, to send you that information and communicate it.

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So it’s, oh, gosh, Jeff, you might remember, what’s, what’s the quote Jeremy Clopton used in our managing partner group was something about, it was consistency beats intensity every time. Yeah, yeah. Consistency beats intensity every time.

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A guy we really look up to in our profession who kind of helps guides firm like ours. Consistency beats intensity every time. And the meaning of that is, I could, I could come out in this role as managing partner January 1st, and I could sprint.

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And I could, I could work 80 hour weeks. And I could try to do all this stuff and implement all these things. And chances are, by the time tax season ends, I’ll be burned out. I won’t have any energy left to give to anybody else. Or what I can do is what we just talked about before is find a path toward consistency. Think about what the best uses of your time are and commit to those things.

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Right, right. People know that every January, every May, every September, you’re going to be getting feedback from me. Every Monday, the firm’s going to get a cultural email, email from me. Every Friday, the partners are going to know what’s going on. And that’s the consistency component of it for me. Right.

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And chances are, Stacie, if we had this conversation a year from now, I might be doing different things. But that’s just, that’s, that’s an indication to me that we’re growing, we’re developing, maturing. If I’m doing the same things a year from now that I’m doing this year, then I will fail because I’m not developing as a leader.

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But for right now, I think this is where I need to be and where I need to direct my efforts.Right. But you’re obviously focusing, you know, you’ve identified, okay, these three things I got to be consistent with. I’m going to do my best not get hijacked by these other ideas and say, I’m guilty of the swirl. Way too much, BJ, just doing a little bit of, I’m going through therapy right now, to be truthful, but listening to you all. Jeff, what is your day look like? Now, I will tell you, I, I think companies need to think sooner of dividing division and the day to day than they typically do.

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So what is your day to look day look like? I think this is a winning formula that you got going here. So I probably I don’t have a typical day. So every day is different, which that that suits me very well.

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I don’t like routine. I if I had to stick with a routine, I would, I would need to find something else to do. So my my typical day there, there is no typical day every day is new, exciting, different.

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But what I have, I’ve done exactly what BJ has done. And I wasn’t able to do this with my kind of role as visionary slash managing partner. So it’s only been the last four months I’ve been able to do what I’m going to tell you. And that is I now focus on seven things. Okay, I only have seven things to do. And then add on add on to that a layer of, you know, a sub layer of client service.

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So those seven things are, you know, the only thing that’s important. And for me, and, you know, it has to do with new business lines, or mergers and acquisitions for the firm, or just a whole, I could give you the list, but you don’t want to be bored with it. But it just, it keeps me focused.

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And it allows me, it kind of puts it puts me on a train track, you know, when he, if he, if you’re as gives me a direction that I want that I want to go. And it’s allowed me to focus. So you know, the freedom to focus, that’s a book and a very good, good read.

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It’s allowed me to focus on what’s important. And if it’s not important, if it’s not on my, it’s not one of my eight, then I can evaluate whether it’s important for me to do or not. Or perhaps it’s important for the firm, but somebody else should be doing it.

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Okay. Okay. That’s, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. You all have used something called EOS as as over the last several years. It’s, it’s really an entrepreneurial operating system is what it stands for.

(32:28 – 32:43)

How long have you been using that? And what does that tool been? How has it been used for your company? I began, I can start and you can we can, I’ll hand the baton to you, BJ. I read Gino Wickman’s book, Traction, several years ago, I don’t even know when. And I’m, and I’m, as I’m reading it, my, my, I’m starting to sweat.

(32:53 – 33:02)

And you know, my blood starting to run pretty quickly. And I’m thinking we must operate our business this way. And so after I finished the book, I ordered copies for the BJ and Rex and other people in the office. And I said, read this required reading. You must read this. And as they read as BJ and Rex and some others read it in the firm.

(33:12 – 33:25)

They were like, yes, this is this really makes sense. And it’s all it is, is Wickman just put together basically a, a process for running a business. And it can be any business, it can be any business, it can be an accounting firm, it can be a church, it can be a not for profit organization, it could be a large manufacturing company, it doesn’t matter.

(33:33 – 33:44) 

It’s, it’s just a, you business, every organization has certain things that have to happen. And if you, if you don’t pay attention to those things that have to happen, you’ll, you’ll be reactionary, you won’t be intentional. So I found intentionality was pretty kind of a good thing when you’re running a business.

(33:57 – 34:11)

And so then you don’t have to be reactionary, the tail doesn’t wag the dog, you can you can be moving forward with a with a known and expected direction, whatever that direction is. And it can be, oh, we want to grow to, you know, a $250 million company. Or it could also be, you know what, we’re pretty happy with where we are.

(34:21 – 34:37)

And this is where, you know, we know our market, we know, and, and, and this is where we’re going to live and reside. And it’s that either either decision growth, or not say, I wouldn’t say stagnation, but just intentionality with respect to what a business focus is, is fine. So it, the, the entrepreneurial operating system, which is the the system that Mr. Whitman described in his book, traction, is what we’ve adhered to, and we’ve been getting better at it for the probably the last, oh, I don’t know, seven or eight years.

(35:04 – 35:25)

As we’ve, as we, you know, become more dialed in and then roll the roll the entire traction model or EOS model out to the entire firm. How did you remain patient during that process? Because you probably wanted to implement it like you wanted to run like that right away. I mean, I have a little bit of my entrepreneurial challenges are I want things to move faster than they do. So did, were you patient with it? No, no, I was, I’m never, I’m the least patient person on the planet. Good. Well, then I feel okay then.

(35:27 – 35:47) 

But that my, my, my challenge was, and it’s not so much now that I changed my role beginning this year. My challenge was I was, I was too unfocused. I didn’t, I had so many things coming at me all the time. I had, I had no, I wasn’t patient with it. I just couldn’t focus on it. I couldn’t focus on implementing, you know, traction today, the way completely for the whole firm, the way it should be because I just didn’t have the time to, to, to, to focus on it by necessity, rather than being intentional.

(36:04 – 36:19) 

Gotcha. BJ, you want to add? Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff did a great job of kind of describing our journey. I like to say we’ve been using EOS for about seven years. We’ve been using it right for about four years. So, so Jeff, exactly what he said is, is true. He had us read the books. We came to our partner retreat, went to a sunny place and talked about it. And we had our partner retreat and we got so excited about it. And we’re like, yes, we’re going to do this.

(36:32 – 36:50) 

And it goes exactly back to that consistency versus intensity thing I was just talking about. We were intense with EOS for about three or four days while we were on a retreat. And then we came back and all the emails piled up and all the audits needed to be done and all the tax returns needed to be done. Right. And before you know it, a year had gone by and nothing had happened. So we’d go to our next partner retreat and we’d revisit the plans we had the year before and say, yes, those are good plans.

(37:02 – 37:15)

Let’s do them this year. And the same cycle would repeat itself. What really changed for us though, Stacie, was we hired a phenomenal resource. Her name’s Jen Ramo. Jen is a certified EOS implementer. And she has made all the difference.

(37:26 – 37:33)

She is a, she’s a bulldog. She’s a no nonsense, swears like a sailor when she needs to. She doesn’t let us avoid accountability in this process, nor does she let us do EOS lite. So we were kind of taking the bits and pieces of EOS that we liked, like, this is fun. Let’s do that. Like, that sounds hard.

(37:40 – 37:48)

We’ll ignore this part. She’s like, no, it works together. And the system builds on itself. You can’t do step three before you do steps one and two kind of thing. And to Jeff’s point, you can’t, you have to be patient with it. It took us probably two years, I would say, of doing it right before we finally felt like we were in a groove.

(37:58 – 38:06) 

And now after years three and four, we’ve got the firms we merged with, we’ve got them on the system, we’ve got them using the softwares properly. And we know where we’re going. That’s the exciting and the scary thing is EOS makes you set a 10 year goal.

(38:16 – 38:24) 

And we look at that 10 year goal and it’s ambitious. The scary thing for me, though, is that we’re on track to hit it. You know, well, it’s, it’s, it is scary because I don’t know, think about yourself as a kid and you could, maybe you wanted to grow up and be a movie star and live in Hollywood.

(38:35 – 38:41) 

That’s just a dream, right? Like, ah, one day it’d be cool. I’ll be in all these big movies or something, but you had no plan to get there.  It feels a little like that of we set our 10 year goal two years ago and we’re like, holy cow, that’s enormous.

(38:51 – 38:55) 

How on earth are we going to get there? And Jen said, well, I’ll tell you exactly how you’re going to get there. You don’t start with a 10 year goal. You start with a three year goal and break it down to a one year goal.

(39:02 – 39:15) 

And then you start talking about what you can do each quarter to hit that one year goal. So you sound like a rock star. She’s amazing. Yeah, she’s amazing. And I recommend her to anybody who’s even like, I’m asking for an introduction here after this. And she knows she’s a rock star and charges for it.

(39:20 – 39:26)

So I’m sure she does. She should, as she should, as she should, as she should, because we’d still be stuck in a rut if it weren’t for her. We’d still be kind of doing EOS light and not getting where we want to go.

(39:31 – 39:54) 

But Stacie, I’m proud to say that we’re we’re on track to hit our ambitious 10 year goal. And part of what EOS helps us do is remain accountable, stay focused to the most important things, ignore the squirrels, ignore the clutter and do those little things every day that accumulate to the one year success. And if you do the one years right, the three year success happens and then the 10 year success happens.

(39:59 -40:15) 

So it’s scary because it’s coming in like our firm. Eight years from now, we’ll look a lot different than it looks today. So we have to grow along with it. We have to adapt along with it. We’re not just going to do the same thing for the next 20 years and then retire. It’s right.

(40:23 – 40:47)

We have goals and we’ve communicated those goals to our team and we’re they’ve all kind of bought into the system. So now it’s on us to deliver. That’s that’s the scary and exciting part. I guess I gotcha. I mean, as you look ahead, what are those bigger opportunities? What are they? The overall the overriding driver for us, you know, you think, oh, you’re a bunch of accountants, you’re probably focused on the numbers. And, yeah, we’re pretty good with numbers, but that’s not what we’re focused on, to be honest with you. You are. Our. Our overarching.

(40:55 – 41:22) 

You know, above our mission, vision and values, our overarching desire is to positively influence a thousand lives. You think, well, OK, what do you mean by that? So what I mean by that is between our team, people on staff getting into you and getting a paycheck every two weeks, along with their spouses, their children, perhaps some parents who might be aging or maybe living under the same roof. But everybody in that in our in our families, households.

(41:27 – 41:45) 

Yeah. We want to positively influence a thousand people. And you say, OK, well, a thousand maybe maybe someday it’ll be 2000. But right now it’s a thousand people. And how do we positively influence? We give them we give our team a great place to work, which is super important to us. We we we provide them a no drama, no politics, you know, easy, good place to work.

(41:52 – 42:04) 

It’s not easy. The work we do is not easy. It’s technical and it’s hard. And some sometimes you have to work a little beyond 40 hours a week, but not a lot because we focus on our team and we want them to be healthy. Right. So we’re setting kind of top top in parameters on the number of hours that you work, for example.

(42:10 – 42:18) 

The other thing we want to do is we want to pay at or above market wages for the services or for the team that we put together. We want we want our team to be well paid. We want them to be successful in life.

(42:22 – 42:56) 

We want them to build their own net worth, build their own value, you know, so that they can have a successful family. And that is our over overarching driver. Yes, driver of what we’re trying to accomplish. Awesome. What are some challenges that you see? And looking ahead, people, how long do you have? I know. No, it’s the same, right? There’s there’s plenty of work out there.

(43:00 – 43:15) 

I had lunch with another managing partner, a local CPA firm here in Indianapolis, and she expressed the same thing I did, which is there’s there’s more than enough work to go out there. We’re not Coke versus Pepsi trying to capture market share here. There there are so many opportunities and every CPA firm that I’ve spoken to is struggling with the same thing.

(43:22 – 43:41) 

We’ve got more work than we know what to do with. We can’t find the team to get it done. So in our mission, we have a people first mission, and I do believe it’s the right thing to do. But I’m blunt and honest with people when I tell them it’s strategic. Putting our people first is strategic. We want to the specific words or we want to attract, develop and empower our team because we’re not competing for market share here.

(43:53 – 44:19) 

We’re not competing for clients. We’re competing for talent. And if we do the things right that Jeff described really well, providing them the opportunities, compensating at or above market, providing drama free environment, that sort of thing. We will have the team in place and we know our competition is not doing these things that we’re doing to put people first. And in the long run, people are what’s going to move this firm forward. So there’s that.

(44:24 – 44:41)

I mean, to Jeff’s point, there are probably 100 other things we could talk about. But, you know, honestly. I think you’d be hard pressed to interview somebody on this podcast who didn’t say people is their number one priority. I think that’s why we’re here on Earth, is to connect with other people and develop ourselves and develop others along the way. And our firm’s no different about that. We’ve just made it a strategic priority.

(44:46 – 44:59) 

And it’s it’s working. We had our best. We had our biggest and best intern class ever this year. We’ve got interns lined up for next season, next tax season and the tax season after that. Yeah. Because of this intentional effort.

(45:02 – 45:18) 

Right. So I’m really, I’m really proud of the efforts there. But if I work for another 20 years, I know I’ve got 20 more years of losing sleep over people. No. I mean, to be truthful BJ, that’s why I started the podcast. I want to have more conversations with people.

(45:22 – 45:33)

What are they going through? What are their challenges? What do we need to work on together? How can I help them? And back to your point, Jeff, how can I elevate, you know, a thousand people? I don’t have that number. I need to actually sit down and look and put a number to it like you have. But that’s what these conversations are about and sharing insights.

(45:37 – 45:53) 

So those those companies we work with are individuals who are looking for a company like yours. And I think I said at the beginning, there’s not a company that I would recommend more to learn about than Donovan. You’re doing it right. Very kind of you to say. Thank you. No, you are doing it right.

(45:56 – 46:16)

You’re totally doing it right. You know, I’ve taken up a lot of your time here, but in closing, I mean, is there a point that, you know, that you would like to leave as we kind of close out? I usually end it at the proof point podcast, but it can be more than one point. Anything? Well, it depends on the audience, but if you’re talking to if you’re thinking about, you know, perhaps entrepreneurs or business owners.

(46:22 – 46:36) 

The point that I would emphasize is exactly what I said earlier. And that is to let go, which is a believe it or not, which is a key tenant of the entrepreneurial operating system. The EOS EOS system is letting go and allow people to step up, allow them to step, allow your team to step up and do the things that they’re capable of.

(46:49 – 47:04) 

Might need a little assistance, but they’re capable of doing. And that will free up the owner of the entrepreneur and make their lives a lot easier, a lot more enjoyable. That’s a really good point.

(47:07 – 47:15) 

B.J., let’s let’s end on that, because I agree 100 percent. Letting go and trusting the team around you is the number one thing that’s going to drive any business forward. And ours, yours or anyone else who’s listening today.

(47:19 – 47:37)

Awesome. That’s it. Nailed it. Thank you so much. We’ve been talking with B.J. Lippert and Jeff Donovan with Donovan CPAs. Thanks a lot. Thank you, Stacie. Thanks for listening to The Proof Point Podcast. We’ll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.