Thriveal | A community of like minded firm entrepreneurs

Weird Flex But Ok

Barrett Young — Fri, 05 Jun 2026 12:13:35 +0000

Take a piece of AI-generated work you recently created or received. An email, proposal, analysis, social post, financial summary, whatever.

Then paste it into a new chat with this prompt. After it responds, answer the questions yourself as you revise the work.

YOUR PROMPT:

Pretend you are cross-examining the person who approved this work. Do not critique the grammar or formatting. Instead, identify: what assumptions this output makes, what context may be missing, what sounds confident but may not actually be verified, what a true expert in this field would question immediately, what parts feel generic or interchangeable, what business, legal, financial, or relational risks could exist if this is wrong. Then ask me uncomfortable questions about whether I actually understand and stand behind this output.

Against the grain.

I think the interesting tension here is that the anti-AI crowd is accidentally revealing what they think the value was all along.

“Not written with AI.”
Okay… and?

That’s a little like a CPA advertising: “We prepared this return without tax software.”

“Every depreciation schedule calculated by candlelight.”
“Hand-keyed straight from the shoebox for authenticity.”
“This email was printed and overnighted via FedEx.”

We don’t admire architects for refusing CAD software. We don’t admire surgeons for forgoing the MRI in pre-op because “real professionals don’t use machines.”

That’s not craftsmanship. That’s just voluntarily removing leverage.

But this backlash exists because people are reacting to something real. A lot of AI-generated work feels smooth to the point of sterility. Bland. Average. Same cadence. Same structure. Same fake confidence “quietly” doing something.

My bot talking to your bot about nothing particularly earth shattering.

Luxury brands especially depend on taste, scarcity, and point of view. If AI makes everyone sound like an enthusiastic LinkedIn intern with a thesaurus subscription, then “human-made” starts sounding like “small batch bourbon.”

The mistake is assuming the tool is the problem.

The real divide isn’t AI vs no AI. It’s ownership vs intellectual outsourcing.

Anyone can buy UltraTax. Anyone can buy ChatGPT. Anyone can produce an output.

But can you explain it? Defend it? Explain why you’ll sign your name and your reputation to it?

That’s the line.

The suspicious accountant in 2030 won’t be the one using AI heavily. It’ll be the one who can’t explain the return without the software open. Same for marketers who can generate endless content but can’t explain why a message works, what emotion it’s triggering, or what customer tension it resolves.

We already respect this distinction intuitively.

We admire the chef who uses modern equipment but still understands flavor. We admire the musician using digital tools who still understands timing and phrasing. We admire the CPA who can estimate tax impact in a conversation nowhere near a computer.

Because fluency matters more than which tool we use to get the job done.

And honestly, AI will increase the premium on fluency, not reduce it.

When everyone can generate outputs cheaply, judgment becomes the scarce asset.

Not “Can you fill out a tax return?” Can you defend the position?
Not “Can you write copy?” Can you feel that something will move hearts and minds?
Not “Can you generate analysis?” Can you connect the numbers to the predictably irrational behavior of the owner sitting across from you?

That’s where a lot of the current backlash feels shortsighted. They’re defending the process as if effort spent automatically grants more value to the idea presented.

The future probably belongs to people who use AI aggressively… but refuse to become intellectually dependent on it.

Professionals should dig deeper into their professions.

The calculator didn’t kill math. But it absolutely exposed who understood math before the calculator showed up.

Originally published in the Against The Grain newsletter by Barrett Young.

Letting Go to Lead: A Conversation with Grant Niman of Niman & Associates

Jason Blumer — Mon, 25 May 2026 16:07:01 +0000

For nearly 15 years, the Thrivecast has been one of the most honest voices in the accounting profession about what it actually takes to build and lead a firm. In one of our final episodes, Jason sits down with Grant Niman, founder of Niman & Associates in El Segundo, California — a 45-person firm serving high-net-worth clients, family offices, and the entertainment industry through tax, business management, and estate and trust work.

Grant started the firm in 2008 after decades in the profession, including time at major regional firms and PricewaterhouseCoopers. But when Thriveal came into the picture — discovered by his daughter Lauren, who now serves as the firm’s project manager — Grant was running a 45-person firm the way you run an eight-person firm. Sleepless nights, hands in every barrel, and a head about to explode.

What followed was a multi-year transformation that Grant describes as both uncomfortable and undeniable. Installing an accountability chart, deploying project management, stepping out of manager meetings, and allowing leaders to grow into the spaces he vacated — none of it came easy. Grant admits he pushed back, felt sidelined, and sometimes just wanted to move faster than the work would allow. But the results speak for themselves: their most successful tax season in years, a team that operates as a team, and a firm that kept humming while Grant took three weeks in Southeast Asia with a 16-hour time difference.

This conversation is a rare window into what real firm transformation looks like over time — not a highlight reel, but the full arc. Grant shares what it means to be a heartfelt leader who had to learn to get out of his own way, why he’s building for succession rather than sale, and why, 43 years into the profession, the journey is still very much going up.

Mentioned in the Show

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Lauren Day
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason founded Thriveal in 2010 as a way to help entrepreneurial CPA firm owners connect, learn, and grow. He serves as the Visionary and CEO of Thriveal, and his partner Julie Shipp serves as the Integrator and COO of the organization. Since 2010, Thriveal has helped many small firms grow by providing a community, coaching services, webinars, firm consulting, monthly growth groups, and live events. Deeper Weekend is the annual live event by Thriveal, now in its 10th year.

Jason is also the CEO of Blumer & Associates, CPAs. The firm was one of the first to move from a traditional office to a virtual environment in 2012, where they serve as an advisory firm for the design, marketing, and creative agency services niches. He and his partner focus on business consulting and coaching with the owners and partners of firms and agencies, while their team meets the technical and financial compliance needs of the customer.

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs

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From Firehose to Firm Foundation

Michael Blanco — Mon, 18 May 2026 18:41:38 +0000

I’ll be honest — I wasn’t sure I was ready for Thriveal. But somewhere between drowning in tax season and finally coming up for air, I realized that joining was one of the best decisions I’ve made for my firm.

Let me back up.

How I Found Thriveal

I’d been listening to Jason’s podcast for a while. I knew of him, knew his work, and respected what he was building. But what finally made me upgrade my membership to the Ascent program was simple: the offering felt like it was designed for a firm like mine. It wasn’t generic. It wasn’t one-size-fits-all. It felt targeted — like Jason and Julie actually understood where we were and where we were trying to go.

The Disconnect I Didn’t Know How to Fix

Before Thriveal, my biggest struggle was the disconnect between the operational side and the technical side of running an accounting firm. If you’re an accountant, you know exactly what I mean. We’re trained as technicians. We learn a workflow, we master it, and we assume that’s the right way — because it’s the only lens we’ve been given.

What I didn’t have was a bridge between those two worlds. Jason and Julie became that bridge.

Being Pushed to Think Differently

What surprised me most about being part of Thriveal wasn’t the content or the tools — it was how much Jason and Julie challenged me. They pushed me to think outside the box, to question assumptions I’d held for years, and to genuinely consider what running a business looks like versus running a practice.

That distinction sounds small. It isn’t.

One of my biggest “aha” moments was realizing that the operations side of the firm deserved to be treated as its own equal side of the business — not an afterthought, not something the technicians managed on the side. Bringing in Janel as our operations person and elevating that role as a true equal has been a shift I didn’t fully anticipate but absolutely needed.

The other mindset flip? Business first. Not technical first. That reframe changed how I see almost every decision I make now.

The Hard Work Nobody Talks About

I won’t sugarcoat it — there were moments I wanted to quit. Tax season while simultaneously trying to work on the business felt like drinking from a fire hose. I was still sitting in the technician seat, and it was a lot. I remember thinking, I’m done. This is too much.

Julie saw it. She called it what it was — a black hole. And she was right.

But that’s also what accountability looks like. It’s not always comfortable. It’s not always convenient. When we were building out our organizational and accountability chart, Jason and Julie pushed back hard. They weren’t going to let me check the box and move on. It took more time than I expected and it was genuinely difficult — but we got to a workable product because they held us to a higher standard.

I also did something I almost never do: I shared the firm’s finances with Jason, Julie, and the Thriveal team so they could help me build a quarterly financial report. That kind of vulnerability doesn’t come naturally to me. But leveraging their experience to look at how we could do things better? Incredibly valuable.

Going Virtual — A Decision Thriveal Made Possible

Here’s something I haven’t even shared with Jason yet: I recently decided to close the office and go completely virtual, at least for the foreseeable future. The team is excited. I’m excited.

Would I have had the courage or the framework to make that call before Thriveal? I honestly don’t know. But thinking business-first, building a stronger operational structure, and having coaching support behind me made it feel like a real, considered decision — not a leap in the dark.

What I’d Say to Anyone on the Fence

If you’re working 50-plus hours a week, if there’s even a slight disorganization in the flow of work inside your office, if you feel like there’s a disconnect between how things are running and how they should be running — you don’t really have another option. You need someone outside the fishbowl, someone neutral, to observe and give you real feedback.

Accountability, better time management, better organizational flow — that’s what Thriveal offers. And for accounting firms especially, where we’ve been trained to see everything through a technical lens, having Jason and Julie come in with a business-first perspective is exactly the kind of outside view most of us have never had.

I’m still growing into the community — I’ll have even more to say about that after our upcoming event, The Summit. But what I can say right now is that Thriveal has already started reshaping how I think, how I lead, and how I see the future of my firm.

And that’s worth a lot.

The Start of a New Beginning

Jason Blumer — Fri, 01 May 2026 16:06:45 +0000

Something new is happening at Thriveal this summer — and I couldn’t be more excited to share it with you.

This season marks a genuine new chapter for our community. Not just in what we’re building, but in how we’re telling the story of what it means to grow a firm with intention, surrounded by the right people.

What’s Coming This Summer

Over the next few months, you’re going to hear directly from the people who make Thriveal what it is — our members.

We’ll be publishing a series of member testimonial blogs throughout the summer, where firm owners share what growth has actually looked like for them — the real moments, the hard decisions, and what changed when they stopped trying to do it alone.

And as we close out the Thrivecast, we’re doing it the right way — with a series of member interviews. These are the conversations that have always been at the heart of what Thriveal is about, and we want to honor that by ending this chapter with the voices of the community itself.

What It Means to Be a Thriveal Member

If you’ve been on the edge about joining — or if you want a reminder of what’s available to you — here’s what membership in our Venture and Ascent programs actually looks like:

The Summit Event is our signature gathering where members come together in person for deeper connection, learning, and the kind of conversations you can’t have anywhere else. The Summit Event is open to any member in our monthly Mastermind groups, either Venture or Ascent.

Monthly Venture Group Meetings with CPE bring your monthly cohort together every month for real discussion, accountability, and continuing professional education credit — structured around the challenges you’re actually navigating. There is teaching in each member meeting from Jason Blumer, CPA & Julie Shipp.

Bi-Monthly Ascent Group Meetings with CPE are designed for firms at the $1M+ revenue level, going deeper into the leadership and strategic challenges that come with building at that scale. One-on-One Bi-Monthly Coaching with Jason and Julie gives Ascent members direct, personal guidance — specific to your firm, your goals, and where you want to go. In Ascent, we also perform advisory financial services quarterly on your firm and teach you from an advisory perspective what we see in your firm’s financials.

Our Community Communication Platform means connection doesn’t stop between meetings. Members stay engaged, supported, and in conversation with each other all year long.

This summer is the start of something new. New stories. New learning. New people stepping into the community.

If that’s you — we’d love to have you!

Come Grow With Us.

Venture → for firm owners leading a team of 5+

Ascent → for firms with $1M+ in revenue

Structure, Courage, and Clarity: A Conversation with HKB CPAs

Jason Blumer — Sat, 25 Apr 2026 22:39:52 +0000

In this episode of the Thrivecast, Jason Blumer sits down with Rhonda Butler and Trey Touchstone, partners at HKB CPAs in Louisiana, for one of the final episodes of the show. The conversation is a candid look at what real CPA firm transformation looks like — messy, non-linear, and absolutely worth it.

Trey and Rhonda share how they discovered Thriveal, what pushed them to seek outside coaching and consulting help, and the specific changes that moved the needle most: building an accountability chart, rewriting job descriptions, assigning clients to specific team members, and creating a dedicated project manager role. They talk honestly about what those structural changes freed up — mentally, operationally, and strategically — and why firm transformation still took longer than they thought it should have.

The episode digs into the personal side of leadership growth too — how becoming more accountable leaders inside the firm spilled over into how they lead their families, develop their teams, and make faster, more confident decisions. Rhonda and Trey reflect on what they wish they’d known before starting the consulting process, and why trusting yourself and taking imperfect action beats waiting for the perfect answer.

The conversation closes with a look at the future: fewer clients, deeper relationships, a young and talented team to develop, and a firm neither of them wants to retire from. If you’re a CPA firm owner thinking about making big changes to how your firm is structured and led, this episode is for you.

Mentioned in the Show

Become a Thriveal Member!
Discover BILL
Connect with Trey Touchstone and Rhonda Butler
Watch the episode here

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Lauren Day
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs

Visit Website

From Burnout to Breakthrough: Barrett Young on Firm Transitions and Purpose

Jason Blumer — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:17:17 +0000

In this episode of the Thrivecast, Jason Blumer sits down with longtime friend and CPA leader Barrett Young to talk about the messy, honest journey of building a firm—and the transitions that shape us along the way.

Barrett shares his story from becoming a CPA, to launching his own virtual firm, to eventually closing it and joining an 80-year-old accounting firm where he is now a partner. Along the way, he wrestled with burnout, the pursuit of “freedom,” and the deeper realization that purpose, culture, and meaningful work matter more than simply escaping the traditional model of public accounting.

Together, Jason and Barrett explore what it really means to be an entrepreneur in the accounting profession, why lifestyle firms and scaling firms often create tension in the industry, and how leaders must filter advice to build the firm that actually fits their life and calling. They also dig into Barrett’s work helping business owners with succession planning and exit strategy, highlighting the uncomfortable but necessary conversations family businesses often avoid—and why ignoring those conversations can destroy both companies and families. This episode is an honest look at leadership, vision, failure, and growth. If you’re building a firm, questioning your direction, or navigating major transitions in your career, this conversation will challenge and encourage you.

Mentioned in the Show

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Vlad Ungureanu
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs.

Visit Website

Defining (and Leveraging) Alignment — Part 2: Your Clients

Jason Blumer — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:29:10 +0000

In Part 1, we defined alignment and applied it to your team. We established that alignment is not agreement — it’s a foundational orientation built on clear shared commitments, mutual trust, and a matching of how you lead with how others want to receive that leadership. We also established that alignment is what makes leverage possible, and leverage is what gives leaders reach.

Now we turn that same lens on your client relationships. Because the misalignment that quietly drains a firm’s energy doesn’t only live inside your accountability chart. Much of it lives in your client base — and most firm leaders never stop to assess it.

The Client Relationship Is a Leadership Relationship

Here’s the reframe that changes everything: your relationship with your clients is not just a service relationship. It is a leadership relationship.

When you take on a client, you are not simply agreeing to deliver a set of services. You are entering into an alignment agreement — a shared orientation around how you will serve and how they will receive that service. The “how” matters just as much on the client side as it does with your team. You have a way of working. You have a model, a philosophy, a standard of service. The question alignment asks is: does this client trust that model enough to follow your lead?

If they do, you have alignment. If they don’t — if they resist your process, question your judgment at every turn, ignore your recommendations, or pay reluctantly — you have misalignment. And misalignment with clients costs you far more than just revenue. It costs you the leverage you need to grow. And as a leader, you have to fix that problem.

Alignment Is Still Not Agreement

Just as with your team (as discussed in Part 1), client alignment does not mean the client always agrees with you. It means they trust you enough to move forward together even when they don’t. A truly aligned client can push back on a recommendation and still implement it. They can express concern about a price increase and still pay it. They can have a hard conversation with you and still show up next month, committed.

What they cannot do — and remain aligned — is fundamentally distrust your expertise, resist your process, or treat the relationship as purely transactional. That’s not alignment. That’s a vendor relationship. Vendor relationships cannot be leveraged. They can only be serviced.

The shared page with a client looks like this: both parties understand what has been agreed to, both parties know their role in making the relationship work, and both parties trust each other enough to return to that shared page when things get hard. When a client goes off-page — missing deadlines, ignoring recommendations, resisting your model — alignment has broken down. And a leader who understands alignment knows that this is not a service delivery problem. It’s a relationship problem that requires a leadership response.

Why Client Alignment Creates Leverage

The firms that grow are not necessarily the ones with the most clients. They are the ones with the most aligned clients. Here’s why.

An aligned client consumes your value. They implement what you recommend. They engage in the planning sessions you schedule. They trust your expertise enough to act on it. When a client does this, your work compounds — each engagement builds on the last, the relationship deepens, and the value you deliver multiplies. That’s leverage inside a client relationship.

An unaligned client, by contrast, absorbs your time and energy without multiplying your impact. You do the work. They ignore the recommendations. You follow up. They miss the deadline. You deliver the value. They don’t consume it. Month after month, you pour energy into a relationship that never compounds. That’s a tough client to grow with. Ultimately, that’s a drain on your leverage.

The chain looks like this:

Trust is the root. Alignment is the trunk. Leverage is the branch. Reach is the fruit.

A misaligned client base caps your reach just as surely as a misaligned team member. And a leader serious about growth has to be willing to assess both.

The Four Parameters of Client Alignment

Just as we score team members across four parameters, we assess clients across four parameters — each one revealing a different dimension of the alignment between your firm and the people you serve.

1. Belief / Same Page This parameter measures whether the client trusts you and is genuinely aligned with what you believe about your service. Do they trust your expertise? Do they follow your recommended processes and platforms? Do they engage with your model rather than resist it? A client who scores low here consistently questions your judgment, second-guesses your recommendations, or tries to work around your process. This is a trust deficit — and without trust, no alignment is possible.

2. Clientship This parameter, listed as an alignment principle on our own firm’s website, measures whether the client owns their role in the relationship. Alignment is a two-way orientation, and the client has a part to play. Are they collaborative? Do they provide information on time? Do they show up to meetings prepared and engaged? A client with high clientship is easy and enjoyable to work with — not because they’re passive, but because they take the relationship seriously. A client with low clientship consistently drops the ball on their end and expects your firm to compensate for it. Over time, these clients erode your team’s morale and eat into your capacity.

3. Value Consumption This parameter measures whether the client actually absorbs and uses the value your firm produces. This one matters more than most firm leaders realize. You can deliver exceptional work to a client who never implements it — and that client will eventually blame you for their lack of results. A truly aligned client is what we call transformationable — they are open to being changed by the work you do together. They implement your recommendations. They grow. They add services because they’ve experienced the value of the ones they already have. When a client consumes value, the relationship deepens and your leverage inside that relationship grows.

4. Profitable This parameter measures whether the client has been priced appropriately and whether their payments reflect a genuinely profitable engagement for your firm. Alignment with a client who is chronically underpriced is fragile — your team will eventually resent the work, and the firm will subsidize the relationship at the expense of its own growth. A profitable client validates your pricing model, pays without friction, and represents the kind of engagement your firm can sustain and scale.

Assessing Your Client Base

Beyond individual client assessment, it’s worth stepping back periodically to evaluate the health of your entire client base across four dimensions: Sustainability, Alignment, Recurrence, and Profitability.

Sustainability asks whether your client base is structured for long-term health — are you reviewing clients annually, managing concentration risk, tracking growth potential, and making intentional decisions about who stays and who transitions out?

Alignment asks whether your clients are actually consuming your value, the focus of this article — implementing your recommendations, using your preferred platforms and processes, and engaging as genuine partners in the relationship rather than passive recipients of deliverables.

Recurrence asks whether your revenue model supports predictability — are most of your engagements structured as ongoing relationships rather than one-time projects? Recurring revenue is aligned revenue. It reflects clients who have committed to the relationship, not just the transaction.

Profitability asks whether your pricing reflects the value you deliver — are you tracking margins by service line, reviewing pricing annually, issuing change orders for out-of-scope work, and ensuring that no single client represents a dangerous concentration of revenue?

A firm with strong scores across all four of these dimensions has built something rare: a client base that can be leveraged. One that multiplies the leader’s reach rather than consuming it.

The Leadership Move with Clients

Assessing client alignment requires courage, because what you find in these assessments will demand decisions. Some clients will score beautifully — these are the relationships through which your leverage flows. Others will reveal gaps that a direct conversation might address. And some will show you, clearly and honestly, that the alignment was never really there.

A leader who understands alignment knows that firing a misaligned client is not a failure. It is a leadership move — one that creates space for relationships that can actually be leveraged toward growth – for the good of the client and the firm.

The goal is not a full client roster. The goal is an aligned one. And when your team is aligned and your clients are aligned, you have built the foundation that every growing firm needs — trust that runs all the way from your culture to your client base, leverage that multiplies your reach, and the kind of growth that actually lasts.Trust is the root.Alignment is the trunk.Leverage is the branch.Reach is the fruit.

Jason Blumer, CPA is the founder and CEO of Thriveal, a coaching, training, and educational company serving entrepreneurial CPA firm owners. He also serves as CEO of Blumer & Associates CPAs. Through Thriveal’s coaching, consulting, and live events, Jason has guided hundreds of firms through strategic transformation.

What’s next for you? Join one of our programs and share your inspiration with other like-minded firm entrepreneurs.

Defining (and Leveraging) Alignment: Part 1 – Aligning with your Team

Jason Blumer — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 16:38:34 +0000

Like the word leadership, the word alignment is hard to define. And I believe it leads to a lot of practical confusion in growing service firms where alignment with your clients and your team are critical. In this article, we’ll tackle alignment with your team, then we’ll follow up another article on aligning with your clients.

If you don’t have a precise definition of alignment, you can’t grow your role as a leader or your firm. And if you can’t define it, you can’t leverage it. And without leverage, your reach as a leader stays frustratingly small — no matter how hard you work.

What Alignment Is Not

Let’s start with what alignment is not, because the confusion here is where most leaders go wrong.

Alignment is not agreement.

This is the most important thing to understand. When leaders conflate alignment with agreement, they either demand false consensus — everyone nodding along in the meeting only to quietly resist afterward — or they tolerate real misalignment because the team seems to get along fine on the surface. Neither serves a growing firm.

Agreement means everyone gets their first choice. While alignment means something deeper and more durable: it means all parties can fully support the direction being taken, even when the practical outworking includes things they wouldn’t have chosen themselves. You can be aligned with someone you disagree with. In fact, that’s often where the most meaningful leadership happens.

So What Is Alignment?

Alignment is a foundational orientation between two parties — in this case, a leader and their team — built on three things: clear shared agreements, mutual trust, and a matching of how you lead with how your team wants to receive that leadership.

Think of it as being on the same page. Not the same sentence, not the same word — the same page. The team knows what they’ve committed to. The leader knows what they’ve committed to. And when things get unclear or hard — and they will — both parties know where to return. That shared page is the anchor.

These shared agreements can get foggy over time. They can be forgotten, misunderstood, or misapplied in the daily grind of running a firm. That’s normal. What matters is that they exist, and that both parties know how to find their way back to them. Alignment isn’t a one-time event. It’s an ongoing orientation that requires tending.

The “how” of alignment matters more than any specific outcome. Two team members can disagree on the best approach to a client project and still be deeply aligned. What keeps them aligned isn’t agreement on tactics — it’s trust. Trust is the ingredient that allows alignment to survive disagreement, absorb friction, and keep moving forward.

This is also why alignment is fundamentally a leadership move. It doesn’t emerge on its own. It doesn’t happen because your team is talented or because everyone gets along. A leader has to build it, tend it, and — when necessary — make hard decisions about it. That last part is what separates leaders who grow firms from those who merely manage them.

Why Alignment Gives You Leverage

Here’s where alignment becomes more than just a healthy team dynamic — it becomes a strategic resource for leadership.

Leverage, in this context, doesn’t mean using people. It means the methodology leaders use to expand their reach into the places they are meant to have influence. A growing firm requires a leader who can extend their influence beyond what they can personally touch, manage, or execute. That extension — that reach — is only possible when the team is aligned.

Think of it this way: if your team isn’t aligned with you, every initiative you launch requires more energy, more supervision, more convincing. You spend your leadership capital explaining initiatives, fighting the team’s own perspectives, and trying to ‘convince.’ Instead of building toward the future, you are just getting more exhausted. You can’t scale what you can’t trust. And you can’t trust what isn’t aligned.

But when alignment is present? Your influence multiplies. Your team carries the mission into corners of the firm you can’t personally occupy. They make decisions you would have made. They represent the culture you’ve built. That’s leverage. And leverage is what turns a solo practitioner into a firm leader, and a firm leader into someone who can actually grow the firm larger beyond themselves.

The chain looks like this:

Trust is the root. Alignment is the trunk. Leverage is the branch. Reach is the fruit.

Break any link in that chain and growth stalls. A misaligned team doesn’t just create HR headaches — it caps what you as a leader can accomplish. Full stop.

Assessing Team Alignment

Because alignment isn’t intuitive, it requires assessment. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and you can’t measure what you haven’t defined. That’s why we assess team alignment across four specific parameters, scoring each team member on a scale of 1 to 7 — where 1 means “not aligned at all” and 7 means “completely aligned.” The scoring is subjective and reflects the team member’s current state, not their potential or their tenure.

Here are the parameters we use to score our team’s alignment:

1. Core Values Alignment This is a culture parameter. It measures the degree to which a team member innately embodies and consistently displays the firm’s published core values. This isn’t about reciting the values from memory — it’s about living them without being reminded. A team member who scores low here displays a lack of care for the mission, skips cultural meetings or retreats, and generally treats the firm’s values as someone else’s concern. It’s very difficult to make someone care about the mission of an organization. Great team members come with that desire already built in.

2. Mind/Emotions Alignment This is a distractibility and awareness parameter. It measures whether a team member consistently manages their personal life in a way that enhances rather than disrupts their work. The opposite of this alignment looks like a team member who “disappears” — taking surprise trips, going dark without warning, or consistently letting personal chaos bleed into their professional reliability. Leaders have limited ability to influence team members in their personal lives, which is exactly why this parameter matters so much at the hiring stage.

3. Work Efficiency Alignment This is a work production parameter. It measures the amount of work a team member consistently outputs each week relative to the salary being paid for that output. The opposite here is the team member you have to micromanage — the one who always needs reminding to do their actual job. When a leader is constantly chasing output, they are spending leverage they don’t have on problems alignment should have prevented.

4. Future Commitment Alignment This is a commitment-to-leadership parameter. It measures a team member’s innate belief in the future value of the firm, their belief in their leader’s future stated direction, and expressed through their consistent dedication to their work and the company’s direction. The clearest sign of misalignment here is what leaders often call a “flight risk” — someone you fear is quietly getting ready to leave. A flight risk isn’t just a retention problem. They’re an alignment problem, and they actively drain the leverage a leader needs to move forward.

What to Do with Your Assessment

Once you’ve scored your team across these four parameters, patterns will emerge. Some team members will score consistently high — these are your aligned core, the people through whom your leverage flows most freely. Others will show gaps in one or two areas, which opens a coaching conversation. Still others may score consistently low across multiple parameters, and that requires a harder conversation — one that only a leader who understands alignment as a leadership move will be willing to have.

The goal is not to build a perfect team. The goal is to build an aligned one. And alignment, once built, becomes the foundation for everything else a growing firm needs: leverage, reach, and ultimately, growth.

In Part 2, we’ll take this same framework and apply it to your clients — because alignment doesn’t stop at the edge of your org chart. It extends all the way into your client relationships, and what you find there may surprise you just as much.

What’s next for you? Join one of our programs and share your inspiration with other like-minded firm entrepreneurs.

Stop While It’s Working: The Hardest Leadership Decision

Jason Blumer — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:29:25 +0000

Kenji Kuramoto is the Founder and former CEO of Acuity, a pioneering outsourced accounting and fractional CFO firm that built and maintained financial functions for thousands of innovative entrepreneurs. Under his leadership, Acuity became one of Accounting Today’s Top Firms for Technology and a Top Firm to Work For, before merging into Sorren in 2025.

In this episode, Kenji joins Jason M. Blumer, CPA, to unpack what really happens when you step away from something that’s still working. He shares the full story behind Acuity’s 20-year journey, the decision to run a proactive merger process, and why he ultimately chose not to continue into the next chapter with Sorren—despite being Acuity’s founder and leading the proactive merger process.

The conversation explores the emotional reality of leadership transitions: identity loss, grief, relief, clarity, and the discipline required to not hold on too long. Kenji reflects on the surprisingly anticlimactic nature of closing day, the importance of timing your exit well, and how staying deeply connected to the profession helped him navigate life after stepping away.

Today, Kenji is an investor, founder, and advisor focused on reimagining the future of the accounting profession. He is the founder of 404 Invests, an early-stage investment firm backing Accounting Technology, SaaS, FinTech, and Crypto companies. Earlier in his career, Kenji served as CFO of an Inc. 5000 tech company and began in the assurance practice at Arthur Andersen.

If you’re a firm owner considering succession, a merger, retirement, or your own next chapter as a leader, this episode offers rare honesty and perspective you won’t often hear.

Mentioned in the Show

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Vlad Ungureanu
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs.

Visit Website

The Virtual Firm Revolution: Growth, Exits, and the Future of CPA Firms

Jason Blumer — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:40:59 +0000

In this episode of Thrivecast, host Jason M. Blumer, CPA sits down with Salim Omar, CPA—nationally recognized CPA firm consultant, author, and industry thought leader—to explore how CPA firms are evolving in response to changing demographics, advancing technology, and shifting expectations among firm owners. With more than 30 years of experience in the accounting profession, Salim has worked closely with firm leaders at every stage of growth, helping them rethink their firms, strengthen communication, and plan intentionally for what comes next.

Salim shares his journey from building and running a successful CPA firm to focusing on consulting, including his transition to virtual operations and the strategic advantages that come with it. Together, Jason and Salim discuss the real-world benefits and challenges of running a virtual firm, managing global teams, and maintaining strong team dynamics in distributed environments. A central theme throughout the conversation is the importance of understanding your audience—clients, team members, and potential successors—and how that clarity drives smarter decisions and sustainable growth.

The discussion also dives deep into the complexities of mergers and acquisitions within the accounting profession. Salim explains why many deals struggle after closing, often due to communication breakdowns, cultural misalignment, and unclear expectations. He highlights the critical role sellers play after an acquisition and why their leadership and engagement are essential to successful transitions and long-term firm health. ‘

Drawing from his book, The CPA Firm Exit Playbook, Salim offers practical guidance for firm owners navigating what he calls the “exit evolution path.” Rather than viewing an exit as a single transaction, Jason and Salim explore how firm owners can intentionally design their next chapter—whether that means selling, merging, scaling back, or continuing to contribute in a new capacity. The conversation also touches on leadership beyond traditional retirement and how CPA firm owners can align their professional futures with personal fulfillment.

The episode concludes with a forward-looking discussion on the growing impact of AI on the accounting profession. Salim shares why AI is both a powerful opportunity and a necessary adaptation for firm leaders, and how embracing technology thoughtfully can elevate advisory services, improve efficiency, and shape the future of CPA firms.

Mentioned in the Show

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Vlad Ungureanu
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs.

Visit Website