Change Your Mindset

Today I’m excited to be talking with Hayden Williams, a national leader in CPA education. Hayden is Chief Financial Officer and Vice President of Education at the Washington Society of Certified Public Accountants (WSCPA). Hayden started as a CPA almost 20 years ago. He was a staff accountant at a small firm in Arizona before moving to Director of Finance at the Arizona Society of CPAs. Following his dream to live in the North West, Hayden became CFO of WSCPA. After two years with WSCPA, Hayden transferred to Vice President of Education. Hayden and the education department at the WSCPA provide about 1000 webcasts and webinars to their members. 300 are live programs, and the WSCPA actually webcasts about 100 of those live programs. There are also 15 conferences, 5 of which are webcast. “In the last seven years, education has changed dramatically with the introduction of the Internet. The Internet was always here, but when the downturn in the economy came … there was an onslaught of education being provided via

Today’s guest is Tami Gaitten, an integrative nutritional health coach with over a decade of experience in the IT field. I didn’t know anything about integrative nutrition health services before this conversation, and I learn a lot. Tami went to school for computer science. She did well in the IT field, and eventually moved from programmer to business analyst, which is essentially a liaison between the programmers and the end users. In the meantime, she was taking care of three children – fast food, struggling to get them all in bed, then working until 2 AM. “By the time that fourth baby came along, we were pretty broken.” Tami decided to stay at home, something she though would be easy after handling major projects at work. “Boy did I have a lot to learn. They pushed all my buttons. I realized nothing was going to go as planned. But we were able to get healthy.” Tami developed a passion for nutrition, and she went to The Institute for Integrative Nutrition to earn her certificate as a health coach. At about

I’m really excited to sit down and talk with Jack Park, Certified Speaking Professional, Corporate Advisor, Football Radio Commentator and Best Selling Author. He has some powerful thoughts about what makes a good leader, plus a bunch of fun stories about football history. Jack formed the business Financial Insights more than 20 years, which does leadership training for corporations and associations across the country. For the past 38 years, he has been a radio commentator for Ohio State Football, with weekly and daily segments when the Buckeyes are in season. About 10 years ago, Jack married his two passions, football and leadership training, and he created The Leadership Secrets of Football’s Master Coaches. It is a leadership program that explains how to develop leadership within an organization or association based upon what made the greatest football coaches of all time so successful. “With almost no exceptions, the great coaches were great coaches because they were even greater leaders than they were co

My guest this week is Bret Johnson, Director of Channel Management and Development at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). For the past 20 years, he has worked to build partnerships and grow businesses, especially in the learning space. Bret was hired by the AICPA to focus on partnerships and business development. His team looks for different routes to market, handles licensing, works with publishers and grows state society relationships. “Anything that we create in number learning and competency, my team helps to take up.” The Director of Channel Management and Development did not exist at the AICPA until Bret was hired in February 2014. “Even though Channels is a practice that has been around a long time, in a lot of cases, it’s sort of a little incubator inside of a different organization. You could say I’m in constant startup mode.” Bret’s biggest challenge at the AICPA is internal education. “There’s a certain amount of fear when it comes to working with partners. You have to t

I’m excited to have my long-time friend and colleague, Jennifer Elder of SustainableCFO.com, joining me today. With her on the show, you’re guaranteed to walk away with many nuggets of wisdom. At the Sustainable CFO, Jennifer works with smart business leaders who are interested in developing strategies to ensure their businesses are around for the long haul. Today’s CFO’s and CEO’s can get so overwhelmed with putting out day to day fires that they don’t think about what’s coming in the future. Jennifer’s role as a coach to CEO’s and CFO’s is two-fold: Supporter and confidence builder – With Jennifer in their corner, they don’t have to go it alone. She aids them as a confidant and sounding board for ideas that they can’t bring up to their teams in the workplace. It helps to know that Jennifer has “been there, done that” with anything that might be causing problems. She offers a different perspective – she doesn’t see things the way the others in the organization do, she has an experienced outsider’s perspecti

I’m excited to have an old school friend on the podcast today – we’ve known each other for nearly 50 years! Kevin Tipton is a professor of Sport, Health and Exercise Science at the University of Stirling in Scotland. Prior to Kevin’s appointment in July 2010, he was a Senior Lecturer in Exercise Metabolism in the School of Sport and Exercise Sciences at The University of Birmingham from 2005-10 and an Assistant Professor, Department of Surgery, University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston from 1997-2005. Kevin was involved in some of the seminal studies involving human muscle protein metabolism in response to exercise and nutrition. Kevin came by to discuss: How easy and effective it is to be active – Whether you’re an entrepreneur or working for a corporation, it is easy to get a quick, productive workout, and it is an effective way to increase productivity. The “Yes, and” mindset and teaching – Kevin had an improvisational mindset when he started teaching, and this helped him develop techniques that mak

I’m very happy to introduce my friend John Barlow today. He is a brilliant thinker, an empathetic automotive engineer and a masterful practitioner of the “Yes, and,” mindset. John is an accidental engineer. He started his career as a principle engineer at Honda 22 years ago, while pursuing a career as an acoustic engineer. He doesn’t exactly fit the stereotype of an engineer, and he brings an empathetic perspective to the engineering and design process. “I think you can train your brain to use both sides of the brain simultaneously, but if you try to do two tasks with one side at the same time, I don’t know it works so well.” John shares the different aspects of his unique perspective on engineering: Have a wider viewpoint – Learn the different ways people want to use a vehicle (or any product), even if they can’t tell you how they want to use it Be empathetic to other people – Be empathetic to how people do things, use things and want to use things. John has tactics for imparting empathic processes upon hi

Pam Devine has graced her presence as the guest on today’s show. She is from New England but now has her life in Baltimore. Her favorite quote is from Tom Hood that is, "L is greater than or equal to C." She has been part of the Business Learning Institute, an affiliate of the Maryland Association of CPAs. This organization focuses on leadership, strategy and communication, the skills that make better business professionals. Learning is what give the organization a competitive advantage and has the saying "The learning curve is truly the earning curve." The organization gives the team within an opportunity to grow by attending various conferences. The organization is also redesigning their office environment in a way wherein it can promote a more collaborative open learning environment expose to different levels from CEO to junior members. One of the important conferences in topic was the Bersin Conference, which talked about leadership. It talked about learning architecture and how learning has changed from

I’m happy to have Karen Young of HRResolutions.com on the show. She’s a purposeful HR person who believes in creating drama-free workplaces through purposeful communications and a “Yes, and…” approach. Just as she discusses in her book, ‘Stop Knocking on my Door,’ Karen believes that drama occurs in the workplace when we fail to communicate fully with our people. If we have to say “no”, this is our opportunity to have a courageous conversation and explain our reasoning to them. There are a few key aspects to having courageous conversations: Practice with someone – become comfortable with what you have to say in your role as a leader Write your talking points down – this will keep your conversation on track and ensure you hit all your important points Don’t beat around the bush – the sooner you have the conversation the easier it will be Karen’s a big proponent of the idea of “hire slow, fire fast.” She recommends taking your time in finding the right person for the job. To aid her company in hiring, she’s i

Steve Sacks is a right-brain thinker in the left-brain world of accounting. I first met him when he attended one of my workshops in Las Vegas, and since then we’ve had many spirited discussions centered around leadership and communications. It’s great that we’re able to continue our conversation here for the audience. Steve’s always been more enamored with what happened to generate the numbers in accounting rather than the numbers themselves. To him, a financial statement a few months after the fact doesn’t add any value, and because of this he got into consulting. Through consulting, he can offer real help to his clients in the form of advice or direct action steps that need to be taken. He’s looking to differentiate himself from other consultants in the field. He wants to go from just offering advice and a report to helping the client implement and get to the next level. “Identifying problems is not enough.” Steve believes that the accounting profession is really a relationship building profession. When you

I always enjoy speaking with Karl Ahlrichs, a human capitalist consultant and a far-thinking and future planning individual. He comes on the podcast today to discuss some of the storms he sees coming on the horizon, particularly where HR and the next generations of employees meet. Even though our current economy is far greater now than it’s been in a while, Karl sees quite a few potential problems on the horizon that we need to be prepared for: Baby Boomers – due to the recession of 2008, many of these people delayed retirement to rebuild their nest egg. Many of them are now ready to leave and hit the beach. High Performers – they’ve driven the country’s productivity to unprecedented levels, but now they’re looking for the next challenge. They’ll be ready to migrate jobs soon, so we need to figure out our management style and plans so we can attract new ones and keep the old ones in place. Social Media – sites like LinkedIn will attract high performers away from you by enticing them with great challenging op

Ed Mendlowitz is a long-time CPA and a partner of prestigious Withum Smith+Brown. He’s also a member of many CPA societies and has taught financial and accounting courses for 11 years. He’s a firm believer in CPE and uses his CPE training opportunities to network with other CPA’s from around the world. He’s full of wisdom and insights and he shares many great nuggets with us today. Ed considers himself the last of the “expert generalists.” He started his firm a long time ago and the only way he could grow was to never say “no” and to do anything that came his way. He grew his first practice from two people to fifty before finally merging with WSB years ago. WSB does something that many other accounting firms don’t do; they create unique, fun and fresh videos that they use to promote their brand on the Withum1 YouTube page. The videos started as a way to chronicle their yearly ‘state of the firm’ meetings and to excite the staff. This has also had an added benefit of being a recruiting tool for new talent just

Tom Hood was a wonderful guest on today’s show. He’s a great forward-thinking leader in the CPA world and delivered great value to the audience with his insights into technologies and trends for the future.Tom just returned from a spring council meeting for members of the American Institute of CPAs. A big takeaway from the meeting is the sense that people are beginning to understand the impact of the exponential pace of technology. Big changes like continuous auditing of 100% of transactions are right around the corner, as well as automation within the financial world. Big ticket items will still remain with professionals, but the entry level tasks will be moved to machines soon. “We’re going to need new skills and need them faster probably than we think and we’re going to need to focus on things that computers can’t do.” The trust and relationship side of accounting are aspects that we need to leverage: we need to get better at doing what computers can’t do.Tom has been able to predict many of the things tha

I’ve been looking forward to this conversation with Michael Sciortino for a very long time. He has over 30 years of experience in the area of marketing, is a keynote speaker and trainer and is the author of ‘Gratitude Marketing.’ He comes to us with a wealth of marketing information and he shares some incredible techniques with us today. He didn’t get into writing his book like many authors do. Instead of writing a book then developing a seminar and teachings/trainings around it, he started with the seminar first. He put all the tools he’s used for years and what he’s learned from others around the country and tested everything out on live seminar attendees. The feedback and experience he received from this was massaged into a user-friendly format within the book. ‘Gratitude Marketing’ is about recognizing and developing meaningful, memorable relationships with the people that you want to work with for the long-term. “I’m about building long-term relationships and you do that by being concerned more with what

It was great having my longtime friend and mentor, Clarke Price, on the show with me today. He’s retired now, but he led The Ohio Society of CPAs for 40 years and has been a not-for-profit volunteer and leader during much of that time. He’s developed great leadership skills and influence in the not-for-profit world and he shares much of what he’s learned with us today. In the not-for-profit world, leadership can be quite different than in the corporate world. Great leaders spend a lot of time building a consensus and support among the organization for the direction they want the organization to take. It’s not enough to just have a vision and say, “This is where we’re going.” Great leaders have the ability to explain that their path is the right thing to do. This takes the power of persuasion and the willingness to tackle hard conversations with your people. You must have the ability discuss the unknowns, but to be able to convince supporters that they have the capacity to succeed in new endeavors. This of cou

Welcome to the Improv Is No Joke podcast! Please enjoy this short introduction episode where I explain the purpose of this show, and the value I hope to provide to my listeners throughout a series of interviews with many business leaders & entrepreneurs.   For more information on the show, head to www.petermargaritis.comLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices