The profession is seeing wholesale shifts in generational approaches across a range of areas, say Bob Lewis and Doug Lewis of the Visionary Group, as they dive into how best to navigate all those changes.
Transcription:
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Dan Hood (00:03):
Welcome to On the Air With Accounting. Today, I'm editor in Chief Dan Hood. There's enormous changing of the guard going on as the baby boomer leaders of the country's accounting firms look to their retirement, but they're running up against a number of challenges, not least the fact that there's much less in the way of the next generation of firm partners and leaders. On the other hand, there are more ways to manage this transition than ever before. So it's a complicated issue with a lot of ups and downs here to talk about all of it as a powerhouse duo from the Visionary Group, which advises accountants on m and a transitions growth and much more. So with us, our visionary director, Doug Lewis. Doug, thanks for joining us. Thanks
Doug Lewis (00:33):
Thanks for having us. Dan, always fun chatting with you.
Dan Hood (00:35):
Yeah, it's great. We've also got visionaries leader, Bob Lewis. Bob, thanks for joining us.
Bob Lewis (00:40):
Dan is always special when we have the opportunity to be in the session with you.
Dan Hood (00:46):
We love having on Well, let can take back. Come on. Yeah, exactly. None of this is legally binding, but I should say that in addition to talking to you here, we're going to be talking to both of you at our firm growth form. You're also going to be talking to the audience there. A lot of things, a lot of topics, important topics going on there. We're looking forward to that May 21st and 22nd in San Diego. If you like what you hear from Bob and Doug today, you'll be able to hear them plenty at our firm growth form in May. If you don't, there will be opportunities to avoid them all over place. It's a big hotel, so if you don't,
Doug Lewis (01:18):
We're out. Right?
Dan Hood (01:18):
Yeah, exactly. It's not a form. Yeah. But if not enough people listen to this podcast. But no, I think, as I said, we've had you guys on before. We love having you, and I'm sure that after you hear 'em today, you'll probably want to go sign up for the firm growth form immediately. But let's dive into today's topic because It'ss a big issue. I mentioned we've talked about the changing of the guard that's going on. And Bob, maybe just to level set for us, can you define that?
Bob Lewis (01:43):
Well, a couple things going on. We've got obviously the painfully obvious baby boomer aging transition going on, so there's a guard right there, but it's not just that, and this is a really good example between Doug and I, to be perfectly blunt, Doug, Doug, this younger professional, looking at an older professional who's been in this area for a while, how much longer do I have? Who knows? But one thing is the baby boomer is when and how to get out. The second part is we're looking at a surgeon technology, and the reason I kind of bring this up is the technology demands inside a firm Now, inside any business are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And if I peel back and you look back years ago, technology used to be Excel spreadsheets and in some cases manual paper sheets. Everything's digital now. So the younger professionals, everything's a push all digital, a hundred percent digital. They grew up on it. Those are two major changes right now. It is the old guard starts to leave the new guard coming in. They've got a different vision, a different way they think some of this should roll out, and it's natural. We see this. I think this cycle never really ends, but right now we're at a pretty critical peak in this accounting industry.
Dan Hood (02:58):
Gotcha. It's the circle of life, as you say, it's a natural progression, but there are so many changes and so such big changes going on. I mean, the baby boomer generation is so big and represents such an enormous portion of the leadership of firms that for it to be looking for its exit, it's going to put on some stresses. And the changes in technology are enormous in a way that they haven't been at some points at many points in the past. So thank you for that definition. That helps us out. And I know now, as I said, the visionary group, you guys have been helping people for in all aspects of this transition and in growth and all kinds of things for a long time. Doug, maybe you want to weigh in here and how are things changing? How are you seeing that transition aspect of things changing?
Doug Lewis (03:38):
So that's pretty interesting. Father time is undefeated, and I think we're finally starting to see that play out right now in the accounting profession. We talk about changing the guard, different opportunities, staying independent, looking at outside investment like private equity, traditional m and a transaction. There's so many options out there right now, and honestly, it's changing. It's such a rapid clip that, I hate to say it, Dan, I really do. By the time some of the listeners hear this, it might already be different, and it's not just structures and cash and who's doing what investments in technology like Bob was getting into a little bit there. There's so much more behind it from a mentality standpoint. I mean the battle over remote and hybrid work, the work-life balance, compensation challenges, the lack of talent all over the place. I mean, this is all just coming to a really perfect storm right now, and there's no way to really predict where it's going to end up. But the one thing is constant and that is change, and it all is changing faster than we've ever seen it before.
Dan Hood (04:46):
Excellent. That is why we tell people that they have to listen to the podcast immediately. We can't guarantee that anything we say now will be true in 20 minutes. And similarly, it's a reason for everyone to show up at the firm growth forum. In two months, we'll be able to update you on everything has changed. I promise. That's the last firm growth forum promo. I'll do. Sorry about that. But I mean, I take your point is hugely important, right? Change is enormous. It's going on levels and with a wide reach that we haven't ever seen really before. Bob, anything that's changing that you wanted to add?
Doug Lewis (05:15):
Yeah, okay. So to tag onto all of this, there's an emotional element in play here. So the older guard, which I will call myself in that category, so I think it's
(05:27):
Free. Sorry, the seasoned guard.
Bob Lewis (05:29):
The seasoned guard, yes. More mature,
Dan Hood (05:32):
Seasoned guard. The veteran. The veteran guard. Well,
Bob Lewis (05:34):
I feel like a food spice right now, but okay, so the seasoned guard, they're also looking at protection. You're in a different stage of a career than a younger professional. So if I'm looking at young leadership in a firm, in more mature, seasoned leadership in a firm, the more mature people are concerned about protection, what they currently have and maintaining it and making to the end without losing what they've got. Or the younger professionals are looking at how do we blow the doors open and start really growing this up quicker, faster? So there's that pull that's occurring too right now inside a lot of firms, and I get it because at when you're towards the end of the career, it's harder to really go back and change it if there's a mistake you made at the end. So being a little more conservative is not a crazy idea
Dan Hood (06:26):
And you don't have much time for course corrections. I don't want to be blunt about it, but if you're older, you're likely to die soon, and then you don't have much time to fix things before that. But you bring up the point of the different viewpoints of the old guard, the seasoned guard, sorry. And the younger guard, the less seasoned guard, and they have different, the fresh guard. There you go. Season
Doug Lewis (06:48):
Fresh,
Dan Hood (06:49):
Seasoned versus fresh. I like it. All right, perfect. They have different perspectives part because as you said, Bob, there're at different points of their career, but there's also generational differences just between baby boomers and Gen X and Y and millennials and everybody else. Let's talk a little bit about that in terms of let's explore that differential a little bit more. Things that the new guard is demanding, the fresh guard is demanding. The season guard may not be prepared to give up things the season guard need that the new guard may not understand. Are there specific examples of that you can give where you say, this is a red line for the seasoned guard?
Doug Lewis (07:28):
So I don't know if it's necessarily a red line or a hard line in sand or anything like that, but the differences in the work life balance are probably the most prominent that we do see that cause a lot of friction when we start talking about change in leadership, change in management, and all this fun stuff that we're starting to see play out inside of these firms. And we are seeing, of course, the younger professionals who are starting to take over leadership roles of firms of all sizes are starting to push for much more inclusive environments and all these different pieces that hybrid versus in-office, some people are fully remote. There's all these different mentalities when it comes to leadership and growth and training and everything like that. And we are seeing a little bit of resistance from the seasoned guards I'll call it, who are near or in the twilight of their careers right now. Still very important but seasoned nonetheless. And it's just a lot of friction. But I think a lot of it really comes down to more of the soft skills, I'll call it, or the way that they approach how people are really integrated into the workplace. That's probably the largest challenge that we're seeing right now when we do see the actual changing of these guards.
Dan Hood (08:39):
Right. Well, sorry, go ahead Bob.
Bob Lewis (08:42):
Get onto that, Dan, the investments, let's assume again, based with Facebook making a five-year investment, a significant investment in whatever we're doing inside the firm or any business, and it may be five years before I really start to see payback. At that point, I'm reducing my compensation over the next three or four years to make that investment that I won't see a payback on. And by the time that payback comes, I may be out. I think that's one. The second thing is I've been using the same set of work tools, whatever you want to call it for the last 25 years. I don't necessarily want to learn a new system, which is probably dire and needed at some point. I'm juggling too much. The thing about us more seasoned, mature professionals is we're also juggling a lot more relationships and a lot more pieces, and adding all those new elements into the mix can be a little bit overloading, and then you find yourself getting paralyzed a little bit. And I just throwing that out, what
Dan Hood (09:45):
Are your thoughts? You spend 30 years doing something and then someone wants you to change for the last three years of your career. And as you say, you're jugging a lot of extra responsibilities, but it seems like that's a big problem there is that the people who are in the position to make the long-term decisions, the long-term investments, the important changes to firms, it sounds like they're the people who least want to do it or at least
Doug Lewis (10:10):
Incentivize, right? Yeah, that's really easy to jump and say that. And believe me, coming from the fresh perspective, it's really, really easy for me to say that, but that's not the case across the board. That's not a one size fits all. Again, we're talking about a big group of FERBs here, all heading in different directions, different levels of expertise and experience. It's not uncommon for us to see very seasoned leadership teams who are willing to make all the investments that they will necessarily reap the rewards of. That's not uncommon, but it is a point of, again, coming back to kind of the point of friction that we do see right now with all of this change happening in what's leadership,
Dan Hood (10:49):
Right? Well, that's encouraging. I would say maybe a little bit of selection bias, people who are coming to you are looking to improve and to make changes and they're open to that kind of thing. I certainly don't want to suggest that accounting firms everywhere are reactionary and unwilling to change and that older partners are no good for anything. That's certainly not the case, but it is a difficult thing if someone's saying, if the person who is tasked with these things is the person who says, I won't see most of the benefit from them, that can be a little, let's put it this way, it can be a disincentive to change. And it's something to bear in mind as we talk to firms.
Bob Lewis (11:25):
The upper understand is all these firms are making all really good money right now. It's also hard to go, well, let's change what I know things are broken, but let's make some changes and stop making the money we're making right now when we fix these changes, it's a tough call. And
Dan Hood (11:44):
If we're making this amount of money, how broken can it be? There we go.
Doug Lewis (11:48):
Pitching radical change when there's really no pain at the leadership level
Bob Lewis (11:52):
Can be, wait a
Dan Hood (11:53):
Minute, and that's the problem. It's the best time to make it. Make those changes is when you have it is you've got excess cashflow, you've got money coming in you can afford, put it this way, you can afford to make a couple of mistakes as you fix things. So it's interesting and it's interesting, and this goes back to, you both mentioned this, but Doug, I think you highlighted, is the enormous amount of changes that firms can and may need to address. They're just in so many different aspects of what they do and who they serve and how they serve them and how they build them and all the different aspects of the firm are all being changed. And that can put it this way, another disincentive. There's so many things to change. I don't even know where to start. So I'm not, there's so many investments to make that're going to cost the come out of my pocket.
(12:39):
So going to, I again, don't want to portray it as no one wants to change. It can be easy to avoid it and it's difficult to know where to start. We can go on this one because it's a fascinating topic and there's a lot of different points to it, but I want to narrow down for a moment into get a little bit more specific on one aspect of it. And Bob, I think you brought this up as the notion that there's a lot more options for specifically sort of transition, generational transition of firms is however you want to describe it, sort of partner exits that sort of thing. Used to be pretty much your options where you had internal succession, you raised up partners internally or you sold m and a into another firm or sold up to another firm. But nowadays there's a million more options you could sell. The number of people you can sell to is much larger. You can take PE money. We've seen ESOPs, we've seen just in the last four years or so, an enormous explosion of the options that firms have when it comes to deciding how to arrange a transition. And I want to ask how can, which is rate for your firm? Are there any of these where, yep, for this kind of firm, this is appropriate? Or how do you decide which avenue to approach? Bob, maybe you want to kick us off on this one.
Bob Lewis (13:54):
Okay, so I think the first thing you need to do is you need to assess your position. So a lot of people want to pull off an internal succession, which is great. They want the legacy to continue or the people that have gotten to where they've gotten to continue to participate in old, maybe the problem becomes if you don't do the assessment and you're not sure that you can pull off the internal succession, you need to know that you need to be able to go, okay, that door's closed, or if it's not closed, what do I need to do to make it work? The second thing you have to look at too is I really think you have to open up your mind a little bit on what is the traditional route. We see a lot of firms coming at us and going, well, I've got this great book of business.
(14:36):
No one wants to really buy a book of business anymore. They want to buy a book of business that has staffing or maybe opens a niche or provides a platform as opposed to just tucking it in or working on it because the capacity issues are really difficult for firms to keep up on. And the other thing I keep in mind too, buy your book of business, Dan, and I'm going to sell my firm potentially later, either inward or outward, the clients you're bringing to the table, help me do that. Do they build my enterprise value or did they attract from it? And I think that's the biggest thing is the other thing is looking at the right advisors. And I mean this the right way. Look, everybody hears stories about how I sold my firm for this, or I did this or I made this multiple or whatever.
(15:16):
Every story has a backstory to it. So I could give you an offer a Dan of 11 times multiple on a transition, but I could make your EBIT a really, really small. So 11 times a really small EBITDA may not the value you want. So you got to figure out who's providing real advice and what's a realistic assessment of my value. I think that's the biggest issue is what's my value really worth and am I really ready to get out? We see that a lot. I want to sell to you, Dan, but I don't want to see my owner account reduced. It doesn't typically work that way, but
Dan Hood (15:54):
Yeah, you got to give something up right at some point. And no one is coming to buy your, no one is looking to do a deal with you or involve themselves with you solely to serve your retirement. They want something
Bob Lewis (16:05):
Out. It would be great if they would. I'm wide open for those. Anybody wants the three people listening to this could come and make an offer. We're good for that. Yeah, ready.
Dan Hood (16:15):
But otherwise an assessment of your internal worth or your worth to a variety. I just say, and that's the thing is all these different options come with are looking for different things from accounting firms. So you need to be sure that you're offering something to someone. Doug, did you want to weigh in on this?
Doug Lewis (16:30):
Yeah, I mean there's some general rules of thumb that specific firms can fit into from size, geography, age of staff, age of partners, all this fun stuff where you can kind of bought out which options are even on the table for your firm and seeing which options you even qualified for, whether that is pulling off the internal succession and remaining independent, whether you're looking at private equity or outside funding or looking at some of these new buyers that are entering this marketplace, whether it be it, wealth management company, a technology company, offshoring, outsourcing companies. We're seeing so many new players that are entering these account space as buyers. So there's a lot of these different options out there. And really understanding the basics about your firm and where you fit into this ecosystem, lay your options out on the table is the best way to start.
(17:18):
And once you really figure that out, by the way, happy to talk any further through this offline. This could be a three hour, we could dive really deep into the numbers and metrics and all this stuff, but it's unfortunately, once you get those options on the table and you really start testing them, figuring out what makes sense, it's a little bit of trial and error. You have to kind of talk to people. It's just like dating and figuring out which is the best path forward for your firm. So there is no one size fits all. Hey, what's right for my firm? It's a little bit of trial and error, figuring it out like cooking.
Dan Hood (17:52):
But it starts with that. And I think this is important, but the honest self-assessment, right? An honest understanding of what you bring to the table and what you're able to say to others, yes, it's reasonable for me to ask for 11 times because I deliver this, this, and this, and you want that, but you can't do that until you have an honest assessment. And I think, I could be wrong about this, but it seems like that might be a big role for the right advisor, the right person to come in and say, well, you think you're worth this, but really you're not offering the five things that most people really care about. So a certain amount of self-reflection is probably a crucial element to that.
Doug Lewis (18:30):
It is. And Dan, the biggest piece to cap that kind of thought process off is always have a contingency player. You got to have a plan B. And we see so many perms that put all their eggs into that one basket, and when it doesn't work out, they're kind of hung out to dry a bit.
Dan Hood (18:48):
Gotcha. I want to dive more into that kind of thinking, that kind of, Hey, what are you doing that you shouldn't be doing? What are the mistakes you're making? I'm sure you see a lot of firms maybe making some of these mistakes or trying things that aren't going to work, but we're going to need to take a quick break before we dive into that. So we'll be back in just a second. Alright. And we're back and we're talking with Bob Lewis and Doug Lewis of the Visionary Group about the changing of the guard that's going on across accounting and all the different ways that it's impacting the field. And we've sort of narrowed it down a little bit to the actual literal transition, the changing of the guard, right? In the terms of firm transitions as they look either to sell or to bring up internal succession or all the sorts of options they have there. And Doug, you mentioned before the notion that one of the problems you see is that firms go in with no contingency plan. They say, we're going to do X, we've got, this is our plan, this is what we're doing with no backup in case that doesn't come through and we assume we're going to sell. Well, what if no one wants to buy us? Well, we assumed someone would. What other kinds of mistakes are you seeing firms make that you're sort of noticing and going, Ooh, everybody does this, why do they do this?
Doug Lewis (20:00):
Well, I think the biggest one, not everybody does it, but a mistake that we do see quite often unfortunately, is a lot of firms right now are taking the wait and see approach. There's all this change happening. There's always options out there. Everyone's sitting back and figuring out their options. The firms that are not really putting together a concrete game plan right now and executing on it, whatever that path is, they said every path isn't right for every firm. But not having that game plan, sticking to it and starting to execute right now, and simply just waiting to see what happens in the market from a technological standpoint, from an m and a standpoint, from a succession standpoint, talent, all these things that are causing all these kind of fires inside of firms, the ones that aren't necessarily executing on a game plan today are the ones that honestly we are most
(20:46):
Concerned about in this marketplace.
Dan Hood (20:49):
Right? Well, I think everybody's waiting. They just assume within six months AI will have changed everything and we won't ever have to work again, and it'll be fine. But the interesting thing there is because if you're not working on a plan now, the notion that you can just start a plan up whenever you're ready to retire or ready to make whatever change you need to make in your firm, the problem there is that some of these changes may take a long time. If you're not, we talked about if you're not offering something that your potential partners or potential acquirers or potential upsellers, whoever it may be, if you're not offering what they want, you need time to develop that or to fix your firm. So yeah, that certainly makes sense that you would want to get working on it now and start thinking about it because circumstances may change. Before you're ready. Bob, any thoughts on that? Anything you're seeing firms do that you wish they would stop doing in this area?
Bob Lewis (21:36):
It's a very long list, but okay, so I want to put a little twist on this, Dan, as you guys were talking, thinking it all, it's not just about transition exiting, it's about changing of the guard compliance to advisory from in-house to outsourcing to legacy pricing, hourly versus value pricing and billing. These are all components of us. Look, firms that are maybe listening to this thinking, oh, this is all about just exiting. That's not really a hundred percent true, but to me the biggest things, I'm going to use the word mistake, but I don't really like the word, but fear of failure is one. So I've done it wrong before. It didn't work out. I heard this a lot with the outsourcing initially. We tried it, failed miser blade and we tried it again. It was great. So they rolled. One of the things that we see is it is the delays right now because of all the different variables that Doug was talking about, the fear that I'm going to make the wrong decision, and I hate to say this, but I'm also not sure if I'm the one qualified to make that decision.
(22:39):
So as an example in our situation here, I have other professionals, Doug and a few others here that know a lot more about what to look for in a technology change. I fully admit that, by the way. So I'm not going to try and go, let me lead the technology change that I'm really not qualified to make that decision on. And as a result of that, I may go, well, it costs too much, or I'm not sure if I want to make the change. So those are the things that kind of creep it into these factors. But I think the big thing here is when we're looking at that guard, expand the scope of the guard to all those other variables going on inside the firm, we see that biggest struggle is going from compliance to advisory. And I get it because you know what? An accounting firm is often very much trained to do technical training's, very technically oriented and changing to an advisory mindset. It's a whole different animal.
Dan Hood (23:31):
Well, and again, this goes to, I've been good at this for 30 years, am I really going to learn how to offer an entirely new set of services with an entirely new set of soft skills in the last three, five years of my career? Again, that disincentive to change that comes along. But as you say, that's a big change in mindset, a big change in sort of the idea of what does an accounting firm do That's maybe the biggest change in guard that we're thinking about. As you move from that backwards looking compliance focus to the sort of forward thinking advisory focused, that is a huge change. And not just generational, right? There are plenty of compliance focused young people and plenty of advisory focused older folks, and it's a mindset thing that the firms need to adjust to. Let's talk about that. I'll stop saying negative things about firms and all the problems they're having. Why don't we look, say firms that are looking forward, that are looking to manage this changing of the guard, whatever this changing of the guard may entail, if it's replacing time honored practices with new, more efficient ones, if it's a transition issue, whatever the case may be, what firms start doing now to secure this change in the guard to make sure it goes well for them. Doug, do you want to jump in for here first?
Doug Lewis (24:47):
Sure. The easiest thing to add that I could say is start so much earlier that you think you're going to need. It's so many firms. Just wait until the last minute to really figure out a lot of this change management, which is tough. I would love to just plug everything we do to help firms through this, but I won't steal that airtime from you. Honestly, assessing your current client base, that's the easiest way to start a lot of this because your clients tell the story of the entire firm. And when you start looking at the story of the firm, that all plays into value of the firm, whether you're looking to internal to that next leadership through your succession team, whether you're looking at external options throughout the m and a market or outside investment, assessing the client base where you are, all your pricing strategies, who you're going after the client experience, all this start to finish, that's the easiest way to conduct a health check on a firm. And we do a lot of this for burns. We run these market value accelerators and we actually, our team here at Chicago where we're all located act as the fractional COO firms across the country as well, getting them ready, walking you through all these different steps. So we see a lot of different options out there in the marketplace, but the number one piece of advice that I could really give to firms is start this process so much earlier than you think you're going to need.
Dan Hood (26:04):
That makes perfect sense. I wholeheartedly endorse that. Excellent. Bob, how about you? Any advice you would give firms as they look to this changing of the guard?
Doug Lewis (26:13):
Well, I kept the key ones with, to me the right clients. Also, just being open-minded as to how you do make a transition. If you look ahead where we're adding as an industry, and there's a lot of people with a lot of different opinions, but everybody thinks compliance is going to get automated, which I find hilarious that it's all going to get automated and go away. It will not. It'll just change its footprint. It'll go to a more digital footprint, more testing, less compilation. But the big thing is what does the client really want? So jokingly, which is really not a joke. I talked to somebody the other day about what I call a big box center. So you're going to see an accounting firm or some group, maybe accounting firms are part of it that I just go to with my company that's got everything.
(26:59):
It's got my technology, it's got my tax work, my accounting work, insurance, everything I need to buy to purchase to run my company. I can get out of one setter. And I do think that's the way things are going to start to evolve. And technology is going to be a huge backbone on that because the technology is going to be able to integrate all those pieces together. That is where if I were a firm, I mean, I see some of these firms opening up family offices, which is ingenious by the way, more firms going back into wealth management. Look at where you think the firm needs to go and what can make the most money for the firm and also accommodate the lifestyle. And one of the things, Dan, we have an article going out to you on this. It's my responsibility to make sure making enough money in the firm to make sure that the people in my firm are getting compensated and they have the lifestyle that they need for their families and my family. That's a big burden and it, it's hard for firms to figure that out. What is the direction? Very, very difficult to trace that through.
Dan Hood (28:02):
Well, and it's for so long, for so long, the path was very clear. We offer this set of services, their compliance are based blah, blah, blah. And now there's so many options, so many changes, so many different ways to make more money or to potentially be even more profitable. But it requires a lot of thinking and planning and getting ahead of these things
Bob Lewis (28:20):
And investments. I got a thousand plus clients. They have a lot of brother needs other than the tax services I provide for them. We don't do tax services. By the way, one thing I want to clarify, when I use the multiple of 11, in case anybody's listening this, no one's getting a 11 and a PE deal. So I throw that out. Okay.
Dan Hood (28:37):
That's an excellent correction. There were definitely, I mean, I understood that that was a wild hypothetical, but you're right. There's probably people going, wow, 11, perfect call.
Bob Lewis (28:47):
Nothing over 10.99, 10.9, call pe.
Dan Hood (28:51):
We're not rounding up here.
Doug Lewis (28:52):
Keep it to, no, we can get you the 11 multiple. We're just going to grind your adjusted EBITDA number down so low.
Dan Hood (29:00):
It's a multiple of 11 of whatever you have in your pocket right now. You have $2 and seven, 5 cents. We can get you an 11 multiple of that. Yeah, no worth clarifying there. As we said, there's a lot going on here and a lot more we could talk about, but unfortunately we're running up against time. So I want to thank you both Bob Lewis and Doug Lewis of the Visionary Group. Great stuff. Thank you both for joining us.
Bob Lewis (29:22):
Appreciate it, Dan. Thank you,
Doug Lewis (29:23):
Dan. Always fun.
Dan Hood (29:24):
And as I say, if you like what they were saying, and you should, because it was fascinating stuff. See, again, I said I wouldn't do another plug, but I'm going to anyways because it's my podcast firm growth Forum. May 21st, 22nd in San Diego, they're going to be there. A lot of other people going to continuing these kinds of conversations, talking about these kinds of issues for firms. So again, thank you Bob and Doug, and thank you all for listening.
Doug Lewis (29:46):
Thanks.
Dan Hood (29:47):
This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Adnan Khan. Ready to review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accounting today.com. Thanks again to our guests and thank you for listening.