For all the visionary thinking that launched Eric Majchrzak into the role of CEO of BeachFleischman in January of last year, he never envisioned reaching that specific career milestone. Joining the Tucson, Arizona-based Regional Leader as a non-CPA chief marketing officer in 2012, Majchrzak had more humble ambitions. "My biggest goal was to become partner at a firm," he shared. "I assumed I would be an income partner eventually — that would have been a pinnacle. To even make equity partner at a firm is rare."
But he thanks some of his marketing peers — many of whom he has worked with in leadership roles at the Association for Accounting Marketing — for paving the way.
"The people leading that, on the marketing front — women really broke the ceiling to be appointed partner in this profession. As a marketing partner, I followed on their coattails, to be a partner and then equity partner. I never contemplated or considered CEO. But the opportunity was there and I saw it, and I think: 'I have a decent shot of this and the trust of my fellow partners.'"
The opportunity arose when previous CEO Marc Fleisch-man announced his retirement and the firm assembled a search committee of 10 partners. Fleischman had succeeded his co-founding shareholder Bruce Beach in the role in 2016, becoming only the second leader of the firm that the two founded in 1990. But the parameters of the position had changed in the intervening years.
"When [the committee] created the job description for the next CEO, the attributes needed to be based on everything happening in the world. As it turns out, they wanted someone that had a holistic view of growth, and somebody that understood and had a decent understanding of technology, the impact of technology. Someone that is more of a risk-taker and understood where the profession is headed and where the firm needs to be headed."
While Majchrzak's marketing experience and numerous awards from AAM — including induction into their Hall of Fame in 2018 — spotlighted his success in these areas, it was a proactive move he made that same year that proved he could fulfill those job requirements.
Majchrzak was still CMO in 2018 when the firm rolled out a new strategic plan. "One partner made the comment, 'We've had fine and dandy strategic plans in the past, but they sat on the shelf and accumulated dust,'" Majchrzak recalled. "I heard that and it didn't sit right with me. I thought, I'll own that then: the strategic plan and holding [the firm] accountable to move the firm ahead. I said, 'I think I'll become chief strategy officer, and own that plan.' That role was a nice foundation for becoming CEO."
Majchrzak was a self-described dot-connector. "In that role, I was making sure we were in alignment with decision-making, that decisions were aligned with our mission, vision, values. We were spending a lot of time on our purpose and mission and sticking to it, and decision-making aligning with where we need to be in the future ... I was omnipresent in the firm, sitting in department meetings, on the management committee, the compensation committee, and still overseeing marketing and growth of the firm."
Working together
One major pillar of this plan was collaboration. "If that's to be true, we have to talk the talk, and make sure everything we're doing — the service model, the business model, the way we manage the firm — is collaborative in nature," Majchrzak explained. "That translates internally to a collaborative management structure — not decisions made behind closed doors where they're calling the shots. A lot of firms do that and are successful, but it's not how we do it. We give people a voice."
One of the biggest projects spawned from this principle was transitioning to a value-pricing model, which the firm announced in 2018, and which Majchrzak projects will take seven years to implement.
"We are shifting away from hourly billing — there's nothing collaborative about that whatsoever. We made the decision to move away from the business model that relies on time as units of revenue to a more collaborative model of pricing work in advance … with the clients' say in how the pricing works. That's a collaborative business model."
While Majchrzak estimates that BeachFleischman is "somewhere in the middle of that journey," he emphasizes the importance of staying the course.
"The biggest idea in our strategic plan is to kill the old industry model; to acknowledge it is what made us successful up to this point but it will not carry us forward into the future," he said. "My point of view is that disruptive technology and extreme efficiencies are counterintuitive to a time-based business and revenue model. Those two can't coexist."
Build it and they will come
Majchrzak expects these kinds of large-scale operational shifts will help the firm recruit amid the profession's war for talent. "With change comes opportunity — the big idea to transform the business model away from time, so rooted in the history of the profession; to make the decision to move away from that is a significant opportunity for recruiting new talent. I don't like to say staffing shortage, because we have a business-model problem of not attracting people to the profession because of that. We have control over our own destiny. Let's change that. The profession hasn't done a good job of changing its 100-year-old business model."
In addition to doing his part to reshape that model within BeachFleischman, Majchrzak has recently overseen a restructuring of the firm and several transactions, including a strategic partnership with a third party to form a cybersecurity practice and a joint venture with a Mexican-based advisory firm to provide cross-border business services, both launched after the outbreak of the pandemic.
"COVID hit and there was panic across the profession," Majchrzak recalled. "I said, a lot of the partners' decisions we make now will determine whether we are successful and sustainable in the future. We have to look different coming out of COVID than going into it. We developed new capabilities and practice areas. We did not stick our heads in the sand."
BeachFleischman's recent restructuring from an S corp to a PLLC enables the firm to name income and equity partners where they previously could only appoint shareholders and equity partners, in another effort to boost recruitment and retention efforts. The logistics of this decision is an example of a few areas where Majchrzak acknowledges his limited financial expertise was a challenge, leading him to rely on his team of 25 partners and 190 total staff members.
But Majchrzak himself is a high-profile example of a growing number of non-CPAs not only joining firms but ascending the leadership ranks at a time the profession is starved for talent. He stresses the importance of his management team — and their technical and financial acumen — in his transition into the CEO role. And as more firms diversify their teams, they could benefit from this level of cross-collaboration.
"As new leaders come into firms with new skill sets, by nature of that, you'll see people rise through the ranks and become leaders in the firm," Majchrzak said. "And a lot of CPAs have these skill sets, not just non-CPAs. But the general consensus is firms need to change, and they require new thinking as we see the influx of new people and new ideas in the profession make an impact. We are casting a wider net and bringing in people with new skill sets and ideas."
