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What would change if your employees understood how the firm makes money? For Kristen Rampe, seeing revenue and realization figures gave her something to work toward. She could see the profits her work helped generate, and her partner gave her greater autonomy as a result. An MP of Rosenberg Associates joins Rob Brown to explore how firms can give employees that same grounding. They discuss what to share about partner compensation, how profitability can benefit the team and why prospective partners need time to understand the business before buying in. Kristen also offers a manageable starting point: share two years of revenue, explain the next growth goal and connect it to employees’ work. Her book, The Business of Public Accounting, helps introduce those concepts early in an accountant’s career. Explore IPA’s 2026 Practice Management reports: https://insidepublicaccounting.com/about/ipa-practice-management-reports/ Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c

What makes someone stay at an accounting firm after accepting the offer? Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown launch our new series, The Talent Behind the Firm, with a look at compensation as a whole package: salary, raises, bonuses, benefits, time off, development and a visible career path. Drawing on IPA’s 2026 Human Resources Report data, they examine why higher pay alone cannot answer every retention question. The conversation covers benefits that fit employees’ lives, the culture behind usable PTO and the value of asking people what keeps them at the firm before they decide to leave. They also discuss how a total rewards statement can help employees understand the investment their firm already makes in them. Listen for practical questions to bring to your next conversation about compensation and retention. Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c

Best of the Best firms pay more, but their equity partner billing rates are nearly identical to those at IPA 100 firms. How do they make the numbers work? Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown close IPA’s Best of the Best series by following the money: what firms charge, how they assign work and where they spend. Chelsea connects team structure to the profits available for compensation. Together, the hosts explore why hourly billing remains common and how protecting a profit margin can lead firms to postpone a needed hire. The conversation also looks at the different spending patterns of small and large Best of the Best firms, with questions to bring to your next partner meeting about funding raises and planning investments. Explore IPA’s 2026 Practice Management reports: https://insidepublicaccounting.com/about/ipa-practice-management-reports/ Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c

What needs to change when a successful accounting firm grows, and what should stay the same? Chelsea Summers speaks with Smith + Howard CEO Sean Taylor about sustaining performance through growth and two private equity partnerships. The firm has appeared on IPA’s Best of the Best list for 17 consecutive years. Sean explains why the firm built its leadership team before pursuing acquisitions, brought a defined strategy to investors and adopted an acquired firm’s process. He also reflects on giving leaders more time to absorb major changes. Listen for lessons on delegating decisions, retaining people and preparing your firm for its next stage of growth. Sean’s podcast, The Worst Advice I Ever Got: https://www.smith-howard.com/worst-advice-podcast/ Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c

Your partners want more time to lead. Is your firm set up to give it to them? Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown continue the Best of the Best series with a look at how these firms organize their work. Partners report fewer chargeable hours, while firm-wide utilization is close to the average across participating firms. They discuss how service mix, delegation and stable teams support the operating model, along with the role of offshore capacity. Chelsea explains why more revenue per equity partner reflects the team’s work and what smaller firms can learn from the comparison. Listen with your partners’ calendars in mind: does their time reflect the firm you want to build? Explore IPA’s 2026 Best of the Best Analysis: https://form.jotform.com/260045789028159. Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c

What does it take to earn a place among IPA’s Best of the Best? Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown open this new series on the 75 firms recognized in 2026. Chelsea explains how IPA evaluates firms across 35 performance metrics and why strong profitability alone does not guarantee a place on the list. They explore the range of firms represented, from small practices to national organizations, and what decades of repeat recognition suggests about leadership and succession. Chelsea also considers what the survey can measure and where culture and client relationships require a closer look. Listen for a fuller picture of the designation and what your firm can learn from it. Explore IPA’s 2026 Best of the Best Analysis: https://form.jotform.com/260045789028159. Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c.

If your firm’s partner income falls below a benchmark, where should you look first? Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown end the series Running the Modern Firm with nine measures associated with partner income in IPA’s 2026 Practice Management data. They examine why revenue per partner, leverage, partner billing rates and revenue per full-time employee deserve attention alongside hours and utilization. Chelsea walks through how to prioritize gaps in your firm’s results and recognize whether pricing or staffing needs a closer look. They also discuss how firm size, client mix and ownership affect the comparisons. Choose one meaningful gap for your next partner meeting, with a plan to revisit it. Explore the 2026 IPA Practice Management Report: https://insidepublicaccounting.com/about/ipa-practice-management-reports/ Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c

What is AI actually changing inside CPA firms? Chelsea Summers welcomes Donny Shimamoto of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies, who helped design the AI questions for IPA’s 2026 Information Technology Survey. Together, they examine what participating firms report about adoption, investment and results. Only 3.2% describe AI as fully integrated into their operations, while 42.9% report no measurable impact yet from their AI tools. They discuss how firms can define success before a pilot, evaluate vendor claims and put governance in place before purchasing software. Donny also explains why better client service and employee experience belong in the assessment of AI’s value, alongside financial returns. For leaders planning their next investment, the conversation offers a practical starting point: establish where the firm stands, what it wants to change and how it will know whether the investment is working. Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c

Firms are investing in offshore capacity to expand their teams and technology to improve efficiency. But the value of those investments depends on what happens to the workflow around them, including how work is staffed, handed off, reviewed and delivered. Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown examine the gap between adopting new resources and redesigning the workflow around them. About half of participating firms use offshore FTEs, and 56% of firms already offshoring plan to increase that capacity next year. Yet offshore staff still account for only 2.6% of total personnel across all firms. Chelsea explains why firms can add cost and complexity when technology and offshore teams are treated as separate initiatives. The firms positioned to capture more of the margin benefit redesign how work is staffed, handed off and reviewed, with technology and offshore capacity built around the same process. The episode closes with a practical starting point for firm leaders: choose one workflow this quarter, map it from start to finish and identify whether new technology or offshore capacity actually changes the work. Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c

Recorded live for the first time, this special Q&A episode of the INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast has a slightly different feel as Rob Brown and Chelsea Summers tackle questions from firm leaders and advisors about some of the biggest issues shaping the profession. Drawing on IPA data and conversations happening across the profession, Rob and Chelsea discuss where independent firms should place their biggest strategic bets, what outside capital can (and can’t) buy and when scale becomes an advantage rather than a distraction. They also dig into the evolving firm operating model, including the role of compliance alongside advisory, moving beyond the billable hour and how firms can embrace AI and offshoring without losing the experiences that develop future leaders. Plus, they explore partner visibility, leadership development, transparency with employees and why succession planning may need to offer more than the traditional path to equity partnership. It’s a wide-ranging conversation about the choices firms are making today and what those decisions could mean for the future of the profession.

Stable turnover does not necessarily mean a firm’s talent strategy is working. Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown examine what sits beneath the profession’s 11.8% staff turnover rate. Nearly 70% of turnover is voluntary, yet firms remain almost twice as likely to conduct exit interviews as stay interviews. Chelsea explains why leaders should ask their strongest mid-level people what could make them leave, what would make them stay and whether the firm’s reward systems recognize the full scope of their work. They also discuss turnover differences by firm size, mentoring programs that work better on paper than in practice, actual PTO use and the limits of using chargeable hours to evaluate performance. A final reminder: Join Chelsea and Rob live on YouTube this Thursday, Sept. 24, at 12:30 p.m. Eastern / 9:30 a.m. Pacific. Click “Notify me,” then leave your question in the comments: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFmuXWuOqcA Earn free CPE with Earmark! Listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: https://www.earmark.app/channels/c5717392-a994-407c-9f27-7f09a08a4b7c

What can derail a succession plan even when a firm has people who could eventually lead it? In part two of Rob Brown’s conversation with Ira Rosenbloom of Optimum Strategies, they dig into two places succession often gets stuck: the expectations current partners place on their successors and the way partners are compensated. Ira explains why future leaders need room to learn on the job, why partner compensation has to reinforce the firm’s priorities and why staff benefit from understanding the business behind the firm. They also look beyond internal succession. Ira shares when firms should start assessing gaps in their leadership pipeline, why five years of planning is good but 10 is better and how operations and HR professionals can play a larger role in building the next version of the firm. Missed part one? Start there for Ira’s case for beginning the succession process long before retirement. IPA will host a live Q&A on Sept. 24. Rob and Chelsea will answer questions about the 2026 data and the leadership issues explored throughout the series. Set a reminder by clicking “Notify me,” then leave your question in the comments. Earn free CPE with Earmark! Take your learning on the go and earn NASBA-approved CPE just for listening to The INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast. Simply listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate. Start now on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: INSIDE Public Accounting | Earmark CPE.

What would make the next generation say yes to ownership? In part one of this conversation, Rob Brown talks with CPA firm succession adviser Ira Rosenbloom about why leadership transitions should begin earlier. Ira explains his view that “55 is the new 65”: a time to shift responsibilities, mentor future leaders and begin transferring equity gradually. They also discuss flexibility, investment in firm infrastructure and developing entrepreneurial skills before succession becomes urgent. Part two arrives tomorrow with a closer look at partner alignment and external succession options. IPA will host a live Q&A on Sept. 24. Rob and Chelsea will answer questions about the 2026 data and the leadership issues explored throughout the series. Set a reminder by clicking “Notify me,” then leave your question in the comments. Earn free CPE with Earmark! Take your learning on the go and earn NASBA-approved CPE just for listening to The INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast. Simply listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate. Start now on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: INSIDE Public Accounting | Earmark CPE.

Accounting firms are changing how they staff, price and structure their partnerships. But are those changes working together? In the second episode of Running the Modern Firm, Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown use IPA’s 2026 Practice Management data to examine the operating model behind firm performance. They explore how leverage changes as firms scale, why adding capacity without adjusting pricing can become a treadmill, how offshoring is reshaping traditional productivity measures and why larger firms are building more layered partnership structures. They also look at why firms are concentrating compensation increases on professionals with three to eight years of experience. The larger question: Are firms redesigning their operating models intentionally or adjusting individual pieces as pressure builds? IPA will host a live Q&A on Sept. 24. Chelsea and Rob will answer questions about the 2026 data and the leadership issues explored throughout the series. Set a reminder by clicking “Notify me,” then leave your question in the comments. Purchase the 2026 IPA Practice Management Report here. Earn free CPE with Earmark! Take your learning on the go and earn NASBA-approved CPE just for listening to The INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast. Simply listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate. Start now on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: INSIDE Public Accounting | Earmark CPE.

The 2026 IPA Practice Management Report captures a profession facing slower growth but responding with sharper operations. Drawing on responses from 605 North American accounting firms, Chelsea Summers and Rob Brown open Running the Modern Firm, the third series of the season, with a look at the profession’s performance and the strategies shaping it. They discuss why organic and total growth slowed while net income growth accelerated, where revenue is still expanding, how pricing models are shifting, why M&A remains concentrated among large firms and what the latest partner data says about succession. IPA will also host a live Q&A on Sept. 24. Chelsea and Rob will answer questions about the 2026 data and the leadership issues explored throughout the series. Set a reminder by clicking "Notify me," then leave your question in the comments. Purchase the 2026 IPA Practice Management Report here. Earn free CPE with Earmark! Take your learning on the go and earn NASBA-approved CPE just for listening to The INSIDE Public Accounting Podcast. Simply listen, take a short quiz and download your certificate. Start now on the IPA channel in the Earmark app: INSIDE Public Accounting | Earmark CPE.