A Vision for Breaking the Mold in the Profession

Transcript: 

Today, our guest is Alan Whitman. Alan is currently an advisor and coach to CEOs. In his past life, he was CEO and Chairman of Baker Tilly and held that role for many years. Very much experienced, obviously in the profession that we all love—hopefully most of us love—but there’s some things Alan wants to do to help us all love this better. Before we jump in, Alan, welcome to The Unique CPA. 

Thanks Randy. I’m really happy to be here and we will talk about some good stuff about how I would think we need to change the profession if it’s going to be sustainable long into the future, be more attractive—modernize our great profession. And I do love the profession. I’ve been in it since I got out of university. It’s done great things for me. And I want to help it do great things for many others long into the future. 

You know, that’s the exact same thing I say too. It’s an awesome profession, and it took me a long time to realize how to do the profession right, at least in my mind, but there’s so many things we can do different. So before we jump into that, ’cause I’m going to set the stage here a second: You and I talked a few weeks ago, and I knew more about you then, you know, going into the conversation. But if I was originally going to talk to a CEO of a large accounting firm, I would have had a complete bias probably in a different direction than the conversation we had. Because when you and I started talking—and I knew this was the things—you talked about, it was like, yeah, we need to change this. There’s things we can do better. There’s. Archaic things that we’re doing in our profession, that is hurting the profession. And those are my words, you didn’t say that. But I’m just thinking, you probably agree. And so you actually have come out and you’ve trademarked and you can tell me if I got it right or not, but, you know, “breaking the mold,” is it “breaking the mold in the profession” or “break the mold?” What is the term that you’ve done? 

Well, certainly. It’s “break the mold.” That’s what I’ve trademarked, and it’s breaking the mold in the CPA profession, but actually more generally in just professional services. You know, people-driven businesses, you know, it leaves the building every night in the elevator, or when you turn your WiFi off. It’s where I grew up, certainly the CPA profession that’s near and dear to my heart, I know about that the best. But all of what I’m talking about applies to professional services in general. 

Okay. And I’m going to want to get into that, but I want to give you an opportunity to expand on my little teeny intro I did there. Why don’t you give us a little background on you, and maybe your journey to a CEO and chairman of Baker Tilly and then what you’re doing today?

Yeah, well, like everybody, I was a bright eyed, young associate at one of the Big Eight back in 1987. And so I’m a public accounting brat. I grew up on the tax side, I joined a couple of firms and then left the Big Four and joined what is now Baker Tilly and was immediately asked to build an international platform. And neither my predecessor nor I knew what that meant. We both looked at each other and said, well, we’ll figure it out along the way. I enjoy existing in the abstract and I enjoy existing in things that are “Let’s figure it out,” frankly. We need to build it as we’re going down the road. 

So I did that for a number of years. I had the great fortune of traveling around the world, meeting people throughout the network, the Baker Tilly network, and it made me who I am today. I understand different cultures. I’ve learned from thousands of people, tens of thousands of people around the world, and that’s made me who I am today. And it’s made me a person that’s really, really curious about what’s next. It’s made me a person who’s really curious about, well, why do we do it this way? Isn’t there a better way? And then I was elected by the board of Baker Tilly in I think the fall of 2014, I began leading the firm when my predecessor became the chairman of the AICPA, Tim Christian, great mentor of mine, became the chair of the AICPA in June of ’15. And that’s when my run began. 

It was a glorious experience. It was a wonderful run that many people had a hand in. We took the firm from $475 million in revenue to $1.5 billion when I recently retired from Baker Tilly last winter. And [we] did a number of acquisitions, entered new markets, became a global organization, elevated the people aspect of the business from the high level it was when I became the CEO, and we had a great time doing it. And along the way, you know, as I like to say, you know, executing strategy is running the business and transforming it, not “we stop transformation when we got to run the business,” it’s, it’s a both/and. 

We started breaking the mold. We started breaking down the preconceived biases, “we’ve always done it that way,” to try to build a new model, because in my mind, the profession, as wonderful as it is, has gotten a little stale. And why is it stale, Randy? I believe it’s stale because the firms haven’t modernized themselves. And so, you know, I’m sure you’ve done quite a bit of research and, and interviewing on the CPA shortage coming out of university. 

Yes.

I have the honor of sitting on the ICPA board. So I’m in my second of three years of the three year term, and we talk about that a lot. And I am consistent in my comments to the board and the leadership of the AICPA that, yeah, there’s all sorts of issues with education. I know the 150 hour issue is out there. I believe that the onus is on the firms to become “sexy” again, if you will, in order to attract more CPAs into the profession. Because as I see it, there’s a lot of professions that work hard. Think of investment banking, think of private equity, think of becoming a doctor, becoming a lawyer. There’s a lot of professions that are tough and where you work a lot of hours. So it’s not about hours in my mind. And those professions are getting plenty of people coming into their profession. So why are they, and we’re not? 

And I believe it’s frankly, it has to do with many of the archaic ways in which we run our business, the CPA profession, runs its business, and that needs to change. And so that’s the premise of break the mold, That’s the premise of really my, you know, who I am as a person, as an advisor, as a coach, as a CEO. And I’m still bullish that we’re going to get it done.  

Yeah, that’s great to hear because I am too. I am very excited about, and I think you and I may have talked about this a few weeks ago—what I’ve seen, and I’m seeing these younger startup firms just doing things so much different. They’re breaking the mold where the older legacy firms, I don’t think as much—hopefully are. I assume, you know, with you and at the helm Baker Tilly, was looking at things differently while you were there, were there certain things that you implemented there that you think fell into that break the mold?

You know, I want to—I’ll answer your question in a second. I want to step into what you just said about smaller firms. I was at a meeting with a number of council members, AICPA council members, and I made a comment to a young guy who bought a small CPA firm and I said, you know I think the larger firms have a better chance of doing this than the smaller ones. And he actually very appropriately corrected me—he said, you’re not right, Alan. The smaller firms are the ones that don’t have the biases. We can shift very easily. And I sat back, I’m like, well, duh. Yeah, of course! You know? 

And so it actually flies right into—one of the ways that I look at how to solve complex or complicated situations, and that is whiteboard—get rid of all of the influences, the negative influences, and just, if you were to build it from scratch, whatever it is, whether it’s a promotion, whether it’s a new business line, what have you, if you were to build from scratch, how would you build it? And then layer on all the intricacies, and all the yeah buts, and all the, well, this is going to upset this person or that person, etc. That’s how you break the mold as opposed to try to start from where you are. You’ll never get there. 

Right. Right. I think we are, and you’ve mentioned it, we are very, very much a SALY profession, you know, but, but it’s also kind of ingrained in us—consistency, this is accounting and that. And so I think that kind of somewhat holds us back. It’s also, you know, I mean, this profession, we can do very well in it. I mean, the money is tremendous. And so I think people get the mindset, well, you know, hey, I’m making, you know. Whatever, $700,000, a million dollars, whatever the numbers are. Why do I want to change anything? This is, I mean, I’m doing well. Like the next generation can change, right now, I just need to get through the next 10 years. I don’t want to change. So boy, I’m kind of probably jumping ahead of myself, but do you believe that mindset or just the fact that we can do so well, and “why make a change” is holding us back from breaking that mold? 

Oh, without question. Yeah. Well, I, you know, I’m ready, but you go first, right. I’ll change, but you go first. So yeah. And I appreciate that, and that’s why the profession or anything needs bold leaders to say, yeah, I get that. We’re still going to kind of push the envelope. And look, it’s not either/or—I’m either going to change or I’m going to keep my compensation. Maybe it’s a both/and: I’m going to keep running the business in an optimal way and transform it. We have to have a both/and mindset. You know, you asked me a few minutes ago, you said what were the things that we were trying to begin when I was at Baker Tilly? 

Yes. 

Look, and some firms have already done this, right? You know, disconnect days was something that Baker Tilly put in place. And that came out of COVID and basically shut the office down where nobody feels like they needed to answer an email. And, you know, many people are like, oh, I can’t do that, my clients won’t allow me. Well then tell your client we’re doing it for the benefit of the people and for their culture and for their psyche. They’re people too, they’ll get it. We started talking about four day work weeks. We started the process of rather than production, meaning hours, let’s shift from production to outcomes—to value. 

Oh yeah. 

Look, that was a hard one, but as some of the people started thinking about it, well, wait a minute, in busy season, I have, let’s say I’ve got 15 audits to do, or a hundred tax returns. I know the fees for that. So putting in hours, all that is, it’s an accounting entry so that we can do percentage of completion basically, right? And my link back to that is with the realization of the writeups that occur, how do you know it’s right? And I know how many hours I put in as a young associate. I didn’t know anything. I just, you know, I just charged. It doesn’t mean those hours were good. So how do you know the input is even good?

Right. 

And so then we get to the point of, well, maybe we need to be better project managers. I’m like, ah, there you go. And unfortunately I’m a tax guy—tax guys or gals are not that great at project managing. It’s just fill the funnel, get it done. And thank gosh we have a deadline, otherwise it would take us forever. So we started down the path of envisioning going from a production business model—inputs, hours—to an outcomes, value. 

I love it.

Interestingly, I had dinner with the number two, second in command, at one of the Big Four last night. We meet every couple of months. And we talked about going from production to outcomes value. And he said, Alan, the firm that solves for that will win by a landslide. And he said, I don’t know who’s going to do it, but somebody will figure that out. That will be the biggest shift in the profession in the last three decades. Because people don’t want to get that email, Randy. “Well, you’ve got to have 55 chargeable hours because it’s January 15th.” So they’re not developing. The only thing they’ve got going for them is they’ve got to get hours. 

Well, if we’re a people centric business—I hear this all the time. We’re people-centric, right? Well, what does that mean? No, you’re not. No, you’re not. You’re not people-centric because you have dog insurance or pet insurance or you, you know, you have a company store that you give credits for, coupons. That’s not people-centric. Being people-centric, Randy, is building bespoke development plans and not having, like I did, not having somebody work six hundred 1040s. You stop learning after the hundredth, maybe, but the reason you do six hundred is because, well, you’ve got to book the revenue. I’ve got to have the hours. Those are career non-value added hours. And if I’m people-centric as an organization, I should be focusing on you, Randy, to make sure you’re developing the right way, not just punching hours. 

Well, it’s too late for me, but somebody else.

Fair enough! Fair enough.

So I like that, that the whole, I mean, I had a conversation yesterday. We recorded a podcast with someone, Geraldine Carter. Don’t know if you know Geraldine at all or not. 

I think I do. 

Geraldine deals with small firms. She just wrote a book about—Down to 40 Hours—and it’s value-based billing, and it’s a niche practice, and she deals with smaller—but the concepts in the book, I think translate to any size firm in reality. We were talking about this yesterday and I said, so you need to get out there and you need to go out and start talking about this, get involved with state societies, the AICPA, whatever. And she goes, “Yeah, but my audience,” I go, no, it doesn’t matter. Your audience, your audience is small firms right now. That’s who you talk to, but your concepts don’t have to stay there. They can go elsewhere. So I’d like her to get out and talk about that more. 

But, let me ask you this then your, your buddy just told you the firm that solves this, that, that figures it out is going to take over. Do you have ideas? I mean, how can we do this? How can we change? And we see it—I see it at the smaller firm level, but they operate differently. 

They do, they do. And so I’ll answer the question. I’ve got a point on the Down to 40. Also, you’ve got to start in one practice, a pilot, one part. 

Yes.

Right? You’ve got to have a commitment that you really want to break the mold. You want to be the firm that leads the league. And so every firm wants to climb the league tables, right? They want to be bigger. They want to be in the top 10. They want to have a great net promoter score. They want to have great turnover, the right level of turnover. Why can’t a firm—there’ll be a firm that says there’s a, there’s a fifth and this is, you know, getting rid of the, the chargeable hours. At the end of the day, they’re just nervous that they’re going to miss something. 

I know.

That’s the thing. That’s the thing. And listen, your comment about going to 40 hours and I’m sure the book is great and I appreciate what Geraldine is talking about. I’ll go back to my comment earlier that there are plenty of professions where they’re not working 40 hours, they’re working 60 or 70 and they’re working in a context that’s much more fun, much more inspiring. So to me, it’s not quantity as much as it is quality. 

Okay.

However, you got to clip the peaks and fill in the valleys of busy season, and there are plenty of ways you can do that with offshoring, with automation, etc. It’s not extreme. I, again, I think we just need to change the way we work, and then we may get to the point where people are willing to commit even more effort along the way. 

Okay. And I think, like you said, it’s why are these other industries sexier than accounting? I think a lot of it’s just a perception problem. I just don’t think we’ve done—I mean, I think it’s reality, you know, and this is my, I’ve never been Big Four, but in my mind, Big Four just, you know, burns and churns through you. Now I can be completely wrong there, but that’s my perception. So if I have that perception, I’m guessing others have that perception as well. And so somehow it’s almost a marketing as well. Hey, we have to market ourselves different. We have to show that we’re having fun, that we’re really living, the fact that we are helping people have that work-life balance, that they are people that an auditor, a tax preparer, a tax advisor, their title is not who they are. They are something else. They have a life. 

And I think the perception is we’ve got, you know, and I’m old, so this is, you know, back in the day, you know, when somebody’s sitting at their desk 80 hours with the glasses, with the tape around it and the pocket protector and all that, but that still, I think, permeates some of it. So, I think perception, I mean, reality has to happen, but I think perception is something we need to work on, and maybe AICPA has to, you know, start helping with that. I don’t know. 

Well, I know that the AICPA and one of their divisions is working hard on the branding aspect of that. I think you’re spot on, Randy. We need to show them that it is a fun career, profession. Look, the relationships that I have built over the years, I wouldn’t trade for anything. 

Oh yeah!

Right? And the acumen that I’ve been able to develop over the years has been, the people I’ve learned from, it’s been fantastic. And you know, what’s really interesting is, remember I was having dinner with effectively a competitor last night, and lo and behold, we’re actually helping one another. So it’s a really interesting profession. 

It’s a collaborative profession in general. I believe it is strong from that standpoint. 

Right. Well, the AICPA and CPA.com put together the DAS project, which is Dynamic Audit Solution and 40 major firms, you know, under the Big Four, the Major Firms Group, came together and crowdfunded, I don’t know, $40 million as the co-chair with Chris Schmidt, the former recently retired CEO of Moss Adams. We crowdfunded $45 million to team with CPA.com to build a platform for audit the next generation. So we are looking to push things forward, and we are looking to work together. You’re right: Messaging is critical. Weneed to do a better job of. Showing the what and the how of It is a good place to be. 

Yep.  And that’s, I’m not on the committee, but I’ve been helping out a little bit with this, the National Pipeline Advisory Group, Jennifer Wilson is in that, so I’ve been promoting that. I got it in front of my university to have the students take the survey there—things like that to find out what is going on too. Why is there a pipeline issue? I’m actually doing my own, I guess, benchmark survey right now, just to find out what’s going on in the profession. What’s happening. Are people leaving? We know they are. Are they not coming in? We know why. So trying to set a baseline, and then over the next few years, trying to expand on that to get deeper. We’re hoping to have results in July. So I’m very excited about that coming out as well. 

You know, that’s great, Randy. You know, it’s interesting as I sit here and listen to you, I’m  familiar with the pipeline, Sue Coffey, Lexy Kessler, and others are leading that. You know, we’re worried about the people that aren’t coming into the profession and we’re worrying about the people that are leaving. Maybe we should start focusing on people that are staying. Right? Because look, all the firms are growing leaps and bounds, right? 

Oh yeah.

Even with the limitations because of automation or because of what have you. And there are thousands of people around that we need to do this for. And you know, it’s like, if you build it, they will come, right? So let’s build it now. And then hopefully the students will come. 

Yep. And that actually is part of what—we’re finalizing all the questions right now—but that is part of it. Why are you in the profession is, is one of the benchmarks we’re looking at. And what is it? And then, sorry! I’m giving away all our data right now. But we’ll release this in July then after that. 

Right, okay, good. Yeah, right! That’s fair. 

But back to the “break the mold” then, I mean, hours are a big part of it. The thing that you want to see and figure out if there’s a way to change it. What are other areas that  need to, and we talked about the perception of the industry and, and you showing we’re from, but what are other mold areas that we want to see changed? 

What about development? CPE development, most of the development is elective. I mean, there are certain things you need to take: auditing and ethics, etc. But then the rest are—we pull the data or the or the systems to us. What about if the firms push it? And what if, you know, again, looking at you, what if we put a bespoke plan together for you? Now,  lot of firms say, well, we can only do that to the, for the hi-po’s, the high potentials. Why? Well, it’s expensive. Well, yeah, okay, it’s expensive, but think about the benefit you’d get if you really develop people and be intentional about the way you develop. 

Right. 

And so rather than. I use a buffet example. You know, you go to the buffet in Las Vegas and you get to, you get to pick whatever you want, right? And you can sit in the fried food section. You can sit in the pasta section. Well, maybe you need to sit in some other section, and maybe the firm needs to develop you intentionally. Think about all the administrative stuff. Think about all the billing and collection stuff that people do: the layers and layers of administrative, and as I like to say the career non-value added tasks. They didn’t come into this profession to learn how to bill and collect. They came in to be tax professionals and advisors and consultants. Well, let’s let them do that. Why do they need to do all this other stuff? It’s probably because the people before them did it.

Exactly. 

Let’s reinvent the experience when you’re in public accounting in a CPA firm, totally. It’s about them developing as a practitioner, not as a biller or a collector or an administrative person. And so let’s move those tasks to the right person. They’re important. Maybe it’s not important for a tax consulting senior associate. And so we need to become much more intentional about how we’re developing people rather than have it be, “we’ll go to the library, pick your courses because you need 80 hours, and never shall you really think about building your career.”

Yeah. I love what you said there because allowing people to find their passion, to find the thing they like and be able to concentrate on that, and the things that they don’t need to be doing, or they can delegate. So the conference we’re having in July, everything goes back to July, that’s why we want to announce the results then. But it’s automate, delegate, collaborate. So there’s so many things that somebody loves doing that I hate doing. Why would I do it then? Why would I spend time? I think that’s kind of what you’re trying to say, right? I mean, not trying, you did say, I’m just trying to make sure I understood it. 

Yeah, no, it’s exactly. And again, I didn’t come into this profession to do all that stuff. I came in this profession to be the best—early on, the best tax professional I can be. And in turn, all this admin took away hours of my development time. And so, again, I think we need to take a much more intentional view on this. Another thing about intentionality, an old colleague, a former colleague of mine, her name is Francesca Rainieri. She’s a wonderful L&D specialist. During COVID, we were talking about, how do we get in front of our people? How do we deal with virtual work, which is here to stay? 

Oh yeah!

You know, it’s just a new way. She coined this phrase: We need to go from proximity to intentionality. So rather than proximity being, I’ve got to see you, I’ve got to be in the same room with you, etc., I’ve got to be intentional about how I connect with you. That’s the goal. Proximity to intentionality. It’s not about whether we’re in the same room. 

She needs to trademark that. 

Yeah. Yeah. 

I like that a lot because that’s, you know, when I go out and talk about culture in firms and why it’s important and all that, and, you know, often, obviously, the remote aspect of the business now, and just the world in general comes up a lot, and somebody that’s my age or older always brings up, well, how am I going to train somebody if they’re not sitting next to me in the office and, well, yeah, you have to be intentional about that. You can still do it. And how are they going to learn how to have face to face meetings with their clients? Well, honestly, the new clients are not going to be face to face anyways. This is not going away. You know, the new generation of business owners are not going to want you coming in their office, meeting with them all the time, and we just need to get past that.

Let me give you two things on that. So going back to our comment about small firms being able to really break the mold, I’ve heard about a firm somewhere, I think in the Southeastern part of the country that is a virtual firm, and they charge extra if the client wants them to come to the office. 

Okay. Yeah. 

Think about that! Because their fees are based on being a virtual firm, and if you want us to come in, we’ll come, but that’s not our model, so you’ve got to pay an extra 25 bucks or whatever. And so that’s a huge shift, right? Of being intentional. So another example. So you, you know that I, if you look at my LinkedIn profile, I’ve got a newsletter. I release posts every day, and I’ve got a weekly newsletter. I hired a young man to help me with that. I have never met him in person. He and his wife traveled the country in a mobile home type vehicle. 

Oh that’s right. I met him online. 

Right. You met Chad. He knew nothing about public accounting and the profession. So not only did I teach him, he’s my author. We write together, and I’ve never met him. So, but he’s intentional. We meet every Tuesday, every Thursday, he’s intentional about it. And it works fabulously. So it can be done. And he’s much younger than me. So it’s not like he’s been doing this forever, and you know, well, you know, he’s better prepared. He wasn’t prepared at all. And so he’s like a senior associate to me being a partner. So it can be done. 

Yeah. Oh, it’s, same story. My assistant lives in, Guadalajara, Mexico. You know, we get together twice a week. In fact, and right when you and I finish, she and I are getting on a call, we’re going over my emails, going over my schedule, making sure I’m not missing anything, if there’s follow up I need to do. And yeah, I mean, we actually have met, she’s come into town twice for, we, we as a company do, we’re a remote business, but twice a year we get together in a central location and bring all the employees into one spot and get together. So she came in for that last year and, and we’ll again this year. But yeah, same thing. You can do it. It’s possible. And you and I are not, you know, 25 years old or anything.

No, we’re not.

I want to keep going on this forever, but we’re going to have to wrap up soon. So let me give you an opportunity to just kind of—one, I want you to explain just a wrap up on, you know, why we need to change, you know, and just give your ideals on this and then, and then before we wrap, I want to get more information on what you’re doing and how people can get ahold of you as well.

Great, well, thank you. Every organization’s goal should be, amongst others, to be relevant and sustainable and you need to be relevant to class for your people, etc., and old archaic ways of doing things need to be tweaked. We can do it incrementally, but we’ll never really do it if we do it “from now forward,” meaning, you read a book from page one to the last page, you run a company or you transform a company, future and back. And so you need to set that future in order to get there. Otherwise we’ll make incremental, small, little tweaks. And frankly, that’s less effective than just leaving it alone, because you’re going to mess things up if you don’t go far enough. 

And so I’m a big believer that just because it got us here, won’t get us there. I think we’re at a crucial time in this profession’s storied history. And if we want to be sustainable long into the future, we want to continue having the franchise, if you will, of the CPA franchise, and the trust, and the interest, we need to come together and reinvent how we run our business because we’re being told—our customers, meaning our people—they’re telling us. If our customers that pay us, we’re telling us something so bold by not coming to us, we would change. So why aren’t we changing if our people are telling us by using their feet. It’s a conundrum that I can’t—I can’t figure out. 

But you’re going to. I have faith in you. 

I am advising everybody that I’m talking with, and Randy, so I’ll move to that, you know, as I, when I left Baker Tilly, I had a lot to say. I want to use what I’ve learned, the experiences I’ve had, the things I’ve, you know, I’ve gotten wrong to help others get there faster, you know, jump higher, run faster, etc. And so I’m not just focusing on large organizations like Baker Tilly was. I’ve got a couple of startups I’m helping. I’ve got a $15 million professional services organization that I’m helping with strategy and doing things differently. And I pushed them on, let’s think about things in a different way, I’m helping a $5 million firm because the owners are friends of mine. The goal is for me to impart my experiences and my passion for doing things differently, and reframing the conversation, changing the narrative, whatever you want to call it, so they can achieve more like we were able to at Baker Tilly.

You know, when I became the CEO of Baker Tilly, Randy, it was pretty much a first generation firm. You know, Tim had taken it from $30 million to $475 million, but in the modern era, that was really a first generation firm. And we reinvented it to be much more than a second generation firm, modernized it. So it can be done. And now I’m suggesting that more people do that and get more bold or bolder. The wordmark “break the mold” embodies all of that. Let’s break the mold because it’s a mold and you know, molds are solid. They’re, you can’t move, you gotta break it. You can’t just shave a little bit off. You’ve got to break the mold and build a new mold. 

Yep. I think that’s awesome. And that, believe me, this conversation, I don’t think can get me more excited that, again, as I said, at the beginning, somebody coming from a large—what’s Baker Tilly? Top 10, top 20, whatever it is—firm, is thinking that because in my mind, the big firms are not thinking “break the mold.” They’re thinking, let’s keep going the way we’re going because we’re making lots of money and we’ll do it that way. So that’s awesome. 

Before I ask for contact information, and believe me, I got a thousand more questions I want to go over. So you and I are going to have to do this again. I mean, even just, I wanted to start talking about firm structure. I mean, is the partnership still something, and I’m sure you have ideas on that. Maybe we’ll schedule another one down the road for that as well. 

Sure!

But before we wrap up then: You know, and we, and I alluded to it before, you know, we are not our job title, we are our outside of work passion. So I’m curious, what do you love doing when you’re not out advising CEOs? 

Yeah, well, I love being on the water. My wife and I and family are big boaters. So we’re on the water quite a bit. I love giving back to the community, so I do a lot of volunteering. I, you know, I’m a treasurer at a couple of different places. You know, I am an accountant. I like that. I like helping these, not-for-profits really become a business cause they still are a business. And it’s amazing how many not-for-profits don’t realize that they are. “Not for profit” doesn’t mean you don’t want to make a profit. You just, you know, it’s, you’re just not taxable. And so, I love traveling the world. I was very fortunate in my early years with Baker Tilly to get to a lot of places around the globe. Love traveling with my bride, Kim. And I love this weekend specifically, cause it’s Master’s weekend. So I love watching it.

Ah! I assume you play as well? 

Well, yes, I play golf. I don’t know if I’m a golfer, but I play it. And I remember the last time I was at the Masters, I was able to take my father who it was a year or two before he passed. And it was the first time he’d ever been there. So it was, this weekend’s a really special weekend for me, remembering him. So on the water and on really nice green grass. How’s that? 

That sounds like a good place to be. Alright, and then if people want to find out, we know LinkedIn, you’re out, you’re on there, you’ve posted every day. But if you want to get, find out more or get ahold of you at all, what, what’s the best place for them to look?

Yeah, my email is Alan@AlanDWhitman.com. My website is AlanDWhitman.com.

Alright. And we’ll put that in the show notes as well. So Alan, this was awesome. I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge and your passion surrounding this profession. And honestly, I’d really love to do it again sometime, so hope we can get it on the schedule. 

I would  too. I appreciate what you do for us in the profession and, and this was a lot of fun, which makes it even better. It was a joy to be with you. So good luck with your survey and the event in July and I hope we’ll talk again.