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Gale’s book, At the Crossroads: The Remarkable CPA Firm That Nearly Crashed, Then Soared  is a delightful parable about a sleepy, uninspired CPA firm that transforms into an accounting powerhouse.

Meet managing partner Joe Abriola who has just learned that his partners are on the verge of mutiny. How does the firm recover and thrive? Spoiler alert—Gale’s growth model swoops in to save the day! The book is an instructive tale that’s filled with valuable insight on achieving growth despite the odds.

The Research Call – Low-Tech Tool

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. For years, I’ve been talking about, writing about and, yes, some might even say nagging about a tactic that continues not only to deliver, but to dazzle. The focus of my attention is the Research Call℠. It is nothing more, and nothing less than an interview, ideally in person,…

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What is Product Management and Why Should You Care?

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Innovation is a sizzling hot topic in our industry, the subject of countless articles, conferences and memos from managing partners. Much of what I read and hear, however, focuses on how to be more innovative, and fails to address the foundation upon which innovation is built. And that is product management.

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How’s Your Harvest?

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. A client recently shared a story about a magical desert oasis where apricot trees flourished and merchants harvested the abundant, low-hanging fruit, weighing down the low tree branches. One day a new merchant appeared. He was an ambitious young man who started climbing the trees, seeking and harvesting the…

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Check Your Watch. It’s Innovate O’clock!

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today.  One of the hottest concepts in business these days is “disruption.” In fact, a KPMG survey found that three in four CEOs surveyed worldwide said their companies are striving to be market disrupters. In many sectors, effecting dramatic change in how business is done (disrupting) is a deliberate pursuit.…

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Motherhood, Apple Pie and Thought Leadership

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. If thought leadership was not a contender for phrase of the year in recent times, it should have been. It’s a motherhood-and-apple-pie-flavored bite of business jargon defined by Business News Daily as “the honest and admirable ambition of being viewed as a credible industry expert, one who cuts through…

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Is This the Year You Become a Consultant?

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. You’ve attended the conferences and participated in the webinars, so you know that current best practice favors the evolution beyond just a practitioner to a consultant. It’s one thing to acknowledge the apparent logic of such a shift. But it’s another matter to successfully transform from CPA who collects…

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Understanding Power And Politics Elevates Business Development

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Published by Inside Public Accounting, May 2018. Reprinted with permission. Relationships precede revenue. While accountants prize their deep connections with clients, relying on them for referrals is no longer enough, says Gale Crosley, an IPA Most Recommended Consultant. Crosley believes that building new business in this global, mature marketplace is complicated but manageable. Business development…

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Do You Really Want to Land that Big Fish?

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. It drives me crazy to hear complaints about lost business opportunities, when there was very little understanding about how to land that big fish. If you’ve got something of value to offer and are approaching the right buyer, reeling in the big ones isn’t rocket science. It’s a proven…

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Fuel Growth with an Early Adopter Program

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. In our profession, the word practice typically conveys a fairly narrow meaning, as in “the practice of accounting.” But successful niche development, which I consider an essential tool for growth, requires a different type of practice – practicing to perfect a new niche or service line. The most successful…

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The Audit of the Future

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Reprinted with permission from Public Accounting Report. By Gale Crosley CPA, president, Crosley+Company/Atlanta   By Alan Anderson CPA, owner, ACCOUNTability Plus/Minneapolis   Any discussion of “revolutionary moments in audit” would have to include the first known mention of audit activity in Mesopotamia, thousands of years before Christ. It would note the appearance by the fourth…

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The Key Client Approach – Part 2

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today.  “The first step is to establish that something is possible, then probability will occur.” The tech and business giant Elon Musk may not have been talking about leveraging large client relationships when he made this observation, but it resonates beautifully. Not only is it possible and probable to boost…

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Recognized as one of the Most Influential People in the Accounting Profession

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Accounting Today recently released its list of Top 100 Most Influential People in the accounting profession, and two OSCPA members – Rita Keller, president of Keller Advisors, and Gale Crosley, CPA, CGMA, president of Crosley + Company – are featured. Besides Keller and Crosley, the list includes recognizable names like Ken Bishop, president and CEO…

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Are You Ready to Change Your Pricing Model Yet?

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Michelle Golden River, CPF President of Fore, LLC How do you know if your firm is ready to stop billing for time and start pricing in advance? Though nearly everyone perks up at the idea of escaping the downward-fee-pressure spiral the CPA profession has gotten itself into, rationale for a change this big isn’t so…

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Wait, blockchains need audited?!?

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Published on December 21, 2016 Jeremy Drane Chief Commercial Officer at Libra We’d like to get out in front of a topic that’s coming into focus for many in the DLT industry: auditing blockchains. In doing so, we hope to add a bit of our thinking on the future of audit, as there appears to…

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Leading Growth in Today’s Complex Marketplace

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. From the outside it might appear that public accounting is much the same as it has always been. CPAs pursue traditional activities such as tax, audit, and consulting services. To build their business, they lunch with lawyers and attend after-hours cocktail receptions. Yet beneath this familiar scenario, our profession…

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The Key Client Approach

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. “The secret of getting ahead is getting started,” Mark Twain sagely advised. But where to start, and how, when your goal is driving revenue? I tweak this Twainism by advising firms to start with an understanding of which clients are contributing the most revenue, then developing a program focused…

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It’s a Small World After All

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today.  If you ever visited a Disney park in years past, you’re probably familiar with the ride, It’s a Small World. Created as a tribute to UNICEF during the 1964 New York World’s Fair, it featured hundreds of dancing dolls in traditional costumes from across the world. The lyrics, written…

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Sustainable Innovation

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. Everybody’s talking about innovation these days. The “i” word may be over-used, but when it comes to growing your firm, I’m an unapologetic believer in the power of innovation. This is especially important for mature service lines. Let’s start with a working definition. I love the one offered by…

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Beyond Marketing

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today.               The next time you’re in a Starbucks, conduct an informal survey of the Millennials sitting and sipping around you. Ask their college major, or the field they’re working in currently. I’d wager that in the time it takes you to order and consume a Grande Iced…

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From ‘Dull’ and ‘Commoditized’ to an ‘International Star’

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Reprinted with permission from Accounting Today. It’s official. Client accounting services (CAS) has come into its own. This once ho-hum commodity has evolved into a promising service line with solid value for clients and strong upside potential for accounting firms. One of the most accomplished practitioners in this space is Ian McBane, partner in the…

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