Episode 131: Get In Your "Zone" Of Leadership: Envision What Doesn't Exist with Allan Koltin
Interview with Allan Koltin, CEO of the Koltin Consulting Group. In this episode, we discuss how he learned relationship building and got into his zone of leadership by watching his parents, who worked in hospitality and real estate industries. He breaks down the skills needed to achieve the success he has had through his childhood, being the number one chess player in the country and an accomplished basketball player. We also discuss the lessons that he has learned to take the pivots in his career to envision what is possible and help others see their vision as well.
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Get In Your "Zone" Of Leadership: Envision What Doesn't Exist with Allan Koltin
Welcome to this episode where I interview Allan Koltin. He is the CEO of the Koltin Consulting Group, a Chicago-based consulting firm that specializes in working with professional and financial services firms in the areas of practice growth, practice management, human capital, and mergers and acquisitions. He is highly sought after for his ability to engage and inspire audiences and enjoys delivering keynote addresses at conferences throughout the professional services industry.
For 22 consecutive years, he has been named by Accounting Today as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the accounting profession. In 2022, he was listed as the Third Most Influential in the profession and was also voted one of the 10 Most Recommended Consultants for the 20th straight year in the Annual Survey of Firms conducted by INSIDE Public Accounting. For the past decade, Allan has also been named by CPA Practice Advisor as one of the Top 25 Thought Leaders in the profession.
In 2016, he was inducted by CPA Practice Advisor into the Accounting Hall of Fame. He was also one of the first to be inducted into the Accounting Marketing Hall of Fame by the Association for Accounting Marketing. He has also been a recipient of the National Association of Certified Valuation Analyst’s Instructor of the Year Award and winner of the Journal of Accountancy Literacy Award. Previously, he was recognized by the Illinois CPA Society with the Distinguished Service Award for outstanding service and commitment to the profession.
From a personal standpoint, he also attended the University of Wisconsin Madison and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee and received degrees in Accounting and Marketing. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Sharon, his three children, Jack, Brian, and Julia, and his two dogs, Bucky and Cody. His hobbies include travel, chess, and all sports.
We talked about all of this on this episode with all of those accomplishments that Allan has. In his interview, we talked about how he learned the skill of relationship building by watching his parents who were in the hospitality industry and real estate industry as he grew up. We also got into his background in chess, which was fascinating, and how he was the number one chess player in the country growing up. He was also an accomplished basketball player, which he's been able to keep up throughout his life.
We discussed the lessons that he's learned, that he has been able to achieve success because of these lessons over time, and envision what is possible. By using that vision and strategy, he helps others define their own vision as well. I hope you enjoy this interview with Allan as much as I did. There are so many nuggets of great content in here to help you when you're thinking about strategy, when you're thinking about your future, and how you think about your back stories and how it's helped you in your success.
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I'm so excited to be with my friend Allan Koltin. To get started, if you don't know Allan, which I'm sure you do. We'll have Allan introduce himself and what he does.
I'm excited to be with you. I live a boring life. I'm an accountant, but it could be worse. I could be an actuarial. In the 80s and 90s, we were in Chicago, one of the country's fastest-growing accounting firms. In those days, to go from 0 to 50 million and be the 13th largest in one market was unheard of. That's what we did. We sold the accounting firm in 1998 to H&R Block as you know they wanted to go from the low end of the food chain to the high end.
We started a company in the 80s called PDI, eventually PDI Global, and we became the largest consultancy publishing company and training company for accounting professionals. We had about 1,000 CPA firms as clients. We did everything from sales and leadership training to publishing industry newsletters and year-end tax guides and did training on what we call now the soft skills.
We had a program on how to become a profit improvement consultant, how to facilitate meetings, and all those kinds of things. Bought the company back in 2008 from H&R Block, and then sold it again to Thompson in 2011. Since that time, I have been consulting pretty much the top 500 accounting firms on strategy, growth, compensation, profitability, governance, partner stuff as we like to call it, leadership succession, and M&A.
Quite a journey. I'm very excited to get into it. I'm sure our audience is as well. Why don't we start in the beginning? Where did you grow up? Tell me a little bit about your family. What'd your mom and dad do?
This is so cool. You're going to love this. They are my guiding light. My mom had those magical nine words. They're still alive this 2023, 93 and soon to be 94. She always used to say, "Allan, you can do it. I know you can." I sometimes cry when I say this because I can't tell you how many times this kid of below-average intelligence failed and failed again. As a sidebar, I have two records in the state of Wisconsin. As I'm told by the Dean of Wisconsin, I have the record for the most number of flunked CPA classes, and I have the record for the most number of times failing the CPA exam.
How many?
I enjoyed it so much. I did the experience four times.
I did too.
You did? Thank you for making me feel good.
At the time, you had to pass 2 and get at least 51 of them or something like that. The first time I passed two, but then get the right failing grade on the fourth one. It's important to say it because so many people that go through the test think they're the only ones. Once you're a CPA, you just say you're a CPA.
That's it. I thank you for sharing that because it's good to know, but it didn't seem like a conspiracy. Whatever you studied, they didn't have on the exam. It was something completely foreign. Milwaukee is where it's at, even though I've lived in Chicago for 40 years, that makes me a cheesehead for life. I'm a diehard Packer, Badger, Brewer, and Bucks fan. That's my roots, so I love it there.
What did your parents do? What were their occupations?
They were in sales. My dad was in the hotel hospitality business for some time and then he was in home remodeling for a while. My mom went back to college after the kids grew up. She went and got her real estate license and sold residential real estate. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the 1980s and interest rates were 20%. The sky was falling. They said, "We'd love it if you could be a doctor, but if you're not smart enough to be a doctor, at least be a lawyer. If you're not shrewd enough to be a lawyer, at least be an accountant, because you'll always have a job." They were right.
I had a plaque over my bed that said, "Don't tell your daughter to marry a doctor or lawyer. Tell her to be one." How much were you involved with what your parents did and their occupation?
I wasn't that involved, but clearly sales skills. I watched them closely. What I watched is probably them do it the right way, never selling a product or service, but being committed to helping people. The adage, "People don't care how much you know and how much you care." They were always what I admired. After the sale, they stayed in touch with those people because they built friendships. It was almost like friends first, business second. That became a mantra for me of people I was going to meet in business. Build a personal relationship. Otherwise, you're just a vendor and there's no special sauce there.
People know you care. You're in it for their personal interests, not for your own.
I've read everything you've ever written, all of your books. Pretty soon now, Hollywood will come in and will be doing a movie. It starts with a dream. It comes to reality through a book, and then a movie.
Do you have siblings?
I do. I've got an older brother, Howie, who's turned 69 this week. As a little kid, Howie was the number one chess player probably in the country. I can't remember where he ranked. He took me under his wing and taught me the game of chess growing up as a kid. Ultimately, I would win the Wisconsin championship in nationals, if you ever saw Queen's Gambit on Netflix or any of that.
I did. I started that.
What it teaches you is the power of being able to visualize and think ahead 3, 4, or 5 steps, anticipate what competition is going to do, create a decision tree on almost everything you observe and see, and attach a probability to it. Some say it's not surprising you went into accounting with that linear thinking, but the way they would train you is you'd close your eyes and you'd look up in the sky. There were 64 squares and you had to know where everything was and where the game was going. In business, you don't skate to where the puck is, you skate to where it's going. It's a blessing and a curse to have that skill because at some point, you have to make a decision and the paralysis by analysis can set it in some time. You got to balance it.
Do you still play chess?
I do. I'm proud to say both my boys, Jack and Brian, have now beat me. Matter of fact, they can kick my butt right now. It's different. They can play on the internet all day long. There's always someone to play a game. The days of getting them on the 2-move and 4-move checks might don't happen anymore.
Isn't that interesting though, on something as traditional as chess that technology helps people build the skill where you would think that's taking away from the human side of it?
It's so interesting you say that because great chess players can still beat the computer. Not always, but sometimes. Sometimes creativity, the ability to dare to be different defy gravity, and the ability of logic can beat the algorithm. It's a crazy thing.
We've talked a little about your brother and his life before the two of us. Does he play chess?
Not anymore. Although I have a hunch that if he played, he could still beat me. He's become more of a spectator fan.
You had a brother. Did you have another sibling?
Howie's the older brother. Kathy's the younger sister. She's the famous accountant, as we like to say. She was in public accounting and private industry. One day, the state of Wisconsin called her up and said, "We want to bring a non-government person in to run the business." She elevated and did that. Now, she reports directly to the governor and runs the administration of the state of Wisconsin. It's interesting because it's all states. There's the Democrat side and the Republican side, and they all like her because they say she's one of the few that can read, understand, and interpret for them budgets and financial statements. She was an accountant by background.
That's the goal of a trusted advisor, not just the numbers.
That's so kind of you to ask me about family. Nobody ever does that. They do some germane business topics.
It all makes us who we are in business. These are the things that are our fabric and our quilt that create who we are now. You can see, before we even get into other things with chess, how much that had an impact on your career as well as your parents.
I know you're going to ask about my wife, Sharon.
Yes.
I'm told I robbed from the cradle. There's a nine years difference. I did not get married until I was 37, which by those standards, and even nowadays’ standards, is a long time to be out there. I saw her at an event. I said to my friend, Mike, "I'm going to marry that girl someday." A couple of years later, that happened and it's been 29 years this 2023. It's been a great journey. Jack and Brian are the older boys. Julia, my prized possession, my beautiful daughter is an incoming senior at college.
Besides chess, did you have any other hobbies when you were younger?
Hoops and basketball every day on the playground. I loved it. I'm told by my peers I was a great shooter and a terrible defensive player. They were right. It was like the DH in baseball, but it was before anybody fought like that.
How long did you play basketball?
All the way, believe it or not, up until my 50th birthday, I played full court. We then reduced from age 50 to 55 to what we call Sunday Morning for the Old Men in our backyard. Two broken arms and a couple of hamstrings pull enough.
What can you think about chess that helped you in basketball?
I never thought of the connectivity but in terms of passing. You see it in the NBA and college basketball, even high school. I didn't have the skillset, but I knew that you could pass to where they should go, and eventually, they could figure that out too. You could know that learned habits in certain situations where the opportunity would be and pass the ball there when no one was there, but knowing that they would be there.
That's not much different than closing your eyes during chess. You're visualizing where the ball needs to be. You're just relying on some other person to get there.
I'm loving this. It's like a therapy session. You've asked questions that, in my entire life, nobody's ever asked. That is interesting. I've never thought of the connection too.
That's an incredible skill to learn at an early age because it's like training your mind. In the accounting profession, this is one of those things that a lot of accountants don't think they're creative. You have to be creative all of the time to solve business issues, to innovate, and like you said, to close your eyes and see where's it going. What do I need to do to get there? What is the strategy to get there? We don't give credence to that creativity because it's not painting or singing but it's still creativity. Where you can find that master skill of how you use it in other areas of your life is so huge.
I know you want to ask the questions, but I do have to ask one of you, how did you become such a fabulous public speaker? Was that natural? I've sat and watched you. Most people, when they speak, no matter how many times they do it, there's a level of nerves and anxiety, and relief after you're done. You stay in the flow of whatever you're doing. Before you go do that, you go do something else, and it comes so naturally. Was it always like that?
I have gone back to thinking about speaking. In my childhood, I played violin. The violin is one of the most exposing instruments you could possibly play. To prepare for recitals, you'd have to play by yourself. There are no frets on a violin. I started playing piano when I was three in Baldwin classes with headphones. Learning the art of performance, not just playing, but also the slow, the fast, the loud, and the quiet.
All of that has helped me in bringing all of this together later in my life. That's what I would go back to because to get comfortable playing violin is hard, even when you think you're having a good day. Thank you. That was very nice. Where did accounting come in? You didn't have much of that so far, I'm seeing in your background. Was there a relative that was an accountant?
I was blessed. I had a couple of mentors. If not for them, I wouldn't be sitting here. The first one was an individual named Howard Schnoll. He had a CPA firm in Milwaukee called Nankin, Schnoll. It eventually became the BDO Milwaukee Office. He called me. If I can tell you the story, you'll probably crack up. It was six months after I'd been there.
Accountants are nice people. They never tell you when you're not doing a good job. I thought I was doing a pretty good job. I got summoned into his office and he says to me, "How do you think you're doing?" I said, "I'm doing pretty good. Are you thinking of promoting me from staff to senior?" He goes in his desk drawer and he pulls out the partnership agreement. I'm like, "Wow." He says, "Why don't you take a look at paragraph sixteen?"
Zone Of Leadership: Accountants are nice people. They never tell you when you are not doing a good job.
I go through it and I get the paragraph sixteen. I see the header and the header says, "Mandatory retirement age of 65." I said, "You gave me the wrong paragraph here." He says, "It's the right one. You asked me the question, Allan, how long is it going to take for you to get from staff to senior." Based on your age, 65, you're into retirement, you're not going to make it. He says, "I've got good news and bad news. The bad news is you're the worst accountant we've ever had. You're fired." I said, "What's the good news?" He says, "I want to hire you back on Monday in a new capacity."
This is the early ‘80s. The Bates decision has just passed in public accounting. You can now do advertising as long as it's not misleading, false, or deceptive. He said, "You've got some special skills. They're not in accounting, but I'm going to make you the assistant to the Managing Partner. I'm going to also put you in charge of sales and marketing." In those days, those positions didn't exist. What he did was he taught me the business of accounting, which I consult on now.
In those days, I was able to take those sales skills that Mom and Dad had and apply them. In those days, if you were willing to knock on the door of a bank, a law firm, or a potential client, no other accountant was out there that was doing the work. One day, I remember he called me in his office and he said, "I've got a problem with you." I said, "I know what it was. I went to that restaurant with that banker."
He said, "No. We asked everybody in the firm to put a list of their contacts, business owners, bankers, and attorneys that they know in the Milwaukee market, and you have more than any of the partners have. How could it be?" I thought about it and I said, "I've worked at a country club shining shoes. Every business owner, banker, and attorney, I used to shine shoes. They would call me from the shoe shine room up to play basketball when they only had nine."
There you go.
I thought about how it came naturally versus where accountants sometimes, put pressure on themselves like, "I got to go to this event. I got to go meet people. What do I say? I don't want to sound pushy. Give him a business card." Nobody ever told me that you're not supposed to do that. What did he do? He married my skills in sales and marketing. Eventually, that grew, and eventually, a firm in Chicago that was a young startup called FERS saw this other dynamic.
Irwin Friedman who was a visionary beyond incredible brought me in there, took me under his wings, and taught me the business at a much bigger and more progressive firm. Together, we started PDI Global, which was that consultancy, publishing, and training company for the accounting profession. I always think back, if not for that Accounting degree and the torture, the failure that I put myself through, I would never have run the right to sit where I sit now, and probably do this with you.
Many times, in college, they put it in a box of tax or audit. Now, in this day and age, it would've been exciting to graduate in accounting. How many other areas with consulting are available to get experience? You come out thinking it's one thing, and an important thing that Howard did for you was say, "I see potential. It's not here, it's here." There are so few people that stop and look up to see where people's potentials are. They'll just be like, "They're not good at this. We need to get rid of them." We need to make that time to give that time to people.
This is incredible. You're doing a dive here. I feel like I should send you a check or something for this. Mom and Dad framed it. They provided, "You can do it, Allan. I know you can. If one person believes you can do it, you do it." Howard saw a skillset that was untapped, took advantage of it, and then Irwin took it and put it on steroids.
You had the drive to go after it, too. A lot of people, if they're told, "I'm not a good accountant," might be like, "Screw you." Instead, you were like, "I'm going to go after this." You have to have both. I talk a lot about this with mentorship. Sometimes we think mentorship is one way, but if there's no business decision together of how you're both going to work toward it, it doesn't work.
Engagement, yes. As I'm reflecting on my story, I know this is about me, not you, but my story is nothing compared to your story. If anybody's tuning in and you haven't read Amy's books including the most recent one, it is an absolute must-read. If you ever thought you were having a bad day, you thought your life was tough or you didn't like the deck of cards you got dealt, read Amy's book. You talk about your resiliency, your persistence, and never giving up no matter what. That's admirable. Everybody raves about you as a person, but when they read the books, they see the reality of what you dealt with.
Thank you. That's the point of this show, too. They see you as this major broker in the world of the profession and may think that just came to you. There's such a journey there, and you didn't have anyone doing that in your background. It's not like you took over a firm that was doing this. This was a progression in your life of people seeing where your gaps are, where your strengths are, and you going after your strengths. The evolution you've had is awesome. It's so important for people to see that. How does someone get to where they are at?
When luck hits you, you have to be able to take advantage of it. I was a consultant. M&A was not in the repertoire. It was a firm known as CohnReznick. Back then, 1/2 of it was called J.H. Cohn. Tom Marino, their legendary CEO, and Dom Esposito, who's since passed, he was a great consultant to the profession. Eventually on the other side of Reznick was Ken Baggett, who has also since passed. They said to me, "Could you help us find opportunities?" I said, "I don't think so. I've never done it before." They said, "You have all these relationships. Surely you could make a couple of calls or make a couple of introductions." Little did I know that that was the tip of the iceberg. I always wonder, if they hadn't planted that seed, that would never have happened.
Zone Of Leadership: When luck hits you, you should be able to take advantage of it.
That is another big teaching point. There are so many times in your career that you're offered an opportunity and you're like, "I've never done this before." You may feel like, "I should turn it down," instead of saying, "How would I go about this?" and go after it. That's such a great example of, "This is what I know I've got. I do have relationships. I may not know this, but I can open the door." That's step one. Instead of making it this big thing that I can't get over this hurdle, I can't take on this new opportunity, you focus on what you can do and keep adding to it.
The biggest sin that accountants have, and I talk about this all the time, is we're so busy being busy that we don’t see the light of day and figure it out. It becomes like a trap door. They think goal setting is something the firm does or the practice area does. We have to say, "No, this is you." What they do is they talk to you about production numbers and statistics. Manage poker business, billable office, and realization. I'm like, "No. What about your skills, your dreams, and your passions? Forget about the numbers. When are you in that zone where you say, 'I love this?' I would do it. Even if I didn't get paid, I could do this for the rest of my life." That's the breakthrough. Many practitioners miss it. They're almost like electricians practicing the trade.
Also, liking to just do the work. It is important to figure out also in your strengths, do you like to do the work? Do you like to work on the business? There are two different skillsets. If you're going to lead this business and you want to eventually be able to move your firm in these directions, you have to take those moments to close your eyes, or else you can't get there.
That's what a great mentor or great coach does. People always ask me, "What's the difference between leadership and management?” I say, “Leadership is seeing something like chess that doesn't exist and having a strategy to create where you've never gone before. Management, to me, is something different. It's getting results through others. It's getting people to a place they can't get on their own.”
You've evolved so much in what you do from sales and marketing to this type of work in the PE space which, as we've talked about, changed the profession so much so quickly. When we talked to you, you were like, "There used to be one or two acquisitions a year. Now, look at what's happening." Maybe talk about your journey and how you've been able to walk through this change and your knowledge in this area to be successful with it.
It's crazy. The adage, “Three strikes and you're out,” but there's also, “Three is a charm.” It's something like that. PE, we tried in 2007 and 2008. It failed dramatically. It didn't fail because of PE but it failed because of the great recession of the summer of 2008. The capital markets were closed and it died. We went back in 2011 and 2012 with a bigger PE firm. The 1st one was MidOcean Partners, and the 2nd one was New Mountain Capital.
They had a premise and they had the resources. The problem was accountants didn't need capital. They also didn't have the uber profitability that they have now and that fourth industrial revolution didn't exist. We could keep grinding and grinding doing compliance. Now, everybody's trying to build consulting, advisory, and outsourcing-type services.
2020 was the perfect storm. Everything came together. What also came together, which nobody could see coming, was the war for talent. I was at a conference and I heard two statistics that are real. I don't debate them, but in the last years, 10% fewer accountants have gotten their Accounting degrees. There were half the accountants coming out now as there were years ago.
The other one is for every four retiring partners, there's only one replacement part. You talk about the Baby Boomers all retiring. Until the next few years, what are firms going to do? Private equity nailed it because accountants had to change. They needed capital. They were profitable enough to figure out a way to do a meaningful financial transaction. They had to rebuild. They had to be something more than a compliance shop.
It was a new skillset. I didn't have a PE client. The last number is 57 of them. Everyone calls every week saying, "Where's my opportunity?" The problem, as you can imagine, is there aren't going to be that many deals entering the profession, although by the time there are probably will be about a dozen, what we call platform firms and firms of all sizes. Those will then go out and probably roll in the next firms.
Unlike the consolidators in the late 90s, H&R Block, American Express, and CBIZ, who was the lone survivor, private equity will be in firms of all sizes. Some are taking a wait-and-see attitude. Others are saying, "I don't have to wait. I can see the results of some of the ones that have been around like Citrin Cooperman, EisnerAmper, and Ryan Tax. It's working and doing the things they said.
How do you have to use some of these skills that you've learned along the way, watching your parents, building relationships, strategy, and vision, when you're dealing with two very different worlds? The way PE envisions business is very different from the way accounting firms envision business.
One of the things that I always think is awesome, but also hurts accounting firm partners, is we're a very heart-based profession. We hold onto clients forever, even if we're not making money on them because we've had them for 30 years. Where a PE firm's going to look at that same thing and say, "That's not the way we're going to structure business in the same way." How do you work between the two mindsets? You're the middle person to try to help explain what either person is thinking and how they think.
When I have the PE group meet with the accounting firm, and we start doing strategic planning to figure out culturally and strategically that we have an alignment of goals, I put up a little phrase. It's the balance between innovation and profitability. I say to the PE firm, "You're in it to make money. You want to grow EBITDA. You want to hold it for 5 to 7 years. By definition, that means you don't want to invest your spend. You want to create more profit.” I then look at the accounting firm and say, "The reason you're doing a PE deal is because you need their capital to grow and to get into new products and services."
I said, "Do you see right away the two of you have a different mindset?" It's almost like an offense and a defense. One says no to spending and one says, "We've got to build and grow." It's there where you figure out whether they can truly align and they put a plan together. As you would've guessed, more times than not, they end up not doing a deal. I always say, "Sometimes the best deals are the ones that don't happen because you're figuring it out."
What I've learned is, not every private equity group is created the same. There's a group now that says the capital markets are closed. The cost of debt is doubled. We're coming into maybe the eye of recession. We're out. There's a second group that says, "You know that LOI we gave you months ago? We can't honor it anymore because of that big upfront cash payment. We can't afford it because the interest is doubled on the money. We'll still make it up to you, but we got to spread it out over multi years now." There's a third group that says, "We made a commitment to you. The universe has changed. We don't care. We're going to honor it. Let's go get married."
Like accounting firms are all different, PE firms are all different. It's not just how they see economics. It's culturally how they're wired. Some are wired to truly be your partner. Some, they're wired almost like a bookie. On the vig, they want to make a profit and that's what drives them. My advice always to accounting firms is, "Do you remember real or Memorex? We have to figure it out because if we're going to get married, we're going to only do this once.
It's a good point that more of them don't work out than do because when something doesn't work out, you still learn from the process. A lot of times too, going through the process, you realize, "We want to stay independent, but we've got to change our business to stay independent. Now, we've gone through this process and this has been an eye-opening experience of what will it take for us to continue like this if we don't want to go down this path." If anything, you're going to evolve from going through the process.
All of that is a high degree of difficulty, but separate from that, you have what we lovingly call the dysfunctionality of the partnership model. Everybody sits around the table and by definition, a third of those partners are absolute non-risk takers, "Don't rock my world. I don't want to change. We're doing well." We've talked about, the only time change happens in the accounting profession is when the change itself is deemed to be greater than the status quo. The status quo is pretty good. You put all this together. I'm amazed sometimes that some of these deals get to a finish line.
Zone Of Leadership: The only time change happens in accounting is when the change is deemed to be greater than the status quo.
Like you were saying about basketball, if you don't look at where you're going to pass and make sure you're going to be there in the future, then you're going to get passed over as well. It's like insurance. When you need insurance, it's not there.
We talked about you with the violin, but we didn't talk about your favorite sport. What was that?
Now, it's yoga if you call it a sport, but I grew up as a swimmer.
I have to ask you a question. Any connectivity between what you learned from swimming and what you do as a world-class yoga instructor?
Swimming was very different. I would say the different part about swimming is it came very naturally to me. I would tell my kids this, "Keep trying sports until you find the one that fits." A lot of times, you keep pushing it. My older son loved baseball and he pushed and pushed. He was a good baseball player, but he was never going to be the best baseball player, no matter how hard he worked. It's like, you always find your thing.
Yoga was one of those that went against the grain of that. I wasn't naturally going to slow down and be alone with my mind. Also, I couldn't touch my toes when I started. I thought it was more you had to be a dancer or gymnast. That one's taught me separately. Similar to violin, practice. If you enjoy something or you want to be good at it, it's all about practice.
It's one thing I learned too late in life for sports. It's not just about practice. It's about perfect practice. A lot of times, you can go out and say, "I practiced basketball for an hour." If all you did was shoot a ball at a hoop, you didn't accomplish anything. If you broke it down to the skills necessary, the drills.
No one wants to do that. It’s the same thing with playing the violin. When you see an orchestra concert, you see the whole thing put together, but rehearsals are the most grueling. You're playing one measure for an hour until you get it right. Those are the things that no one wants to do because you want to do the end thing. What I'd like to do as a closing question is for you to pick a category and I'm going to ask you a couple of rapid-fire questions. The category is family and friends, money, spirituality, or health.
Family and friends.
Things or actions I don't have with my family and friends that I want.
More quality time together. I don't want to suggest it's not there, but it seems like we're always moving so fast. Another chapter is gone. It would be to have more quality time, and then to continue to find ways as everyone gets older, does different things, and goes to columns. As a family, how do we keep that momentum going?
Things or actions I do have that I want to keep.
Being there for your family and friends. Truly being there. Not because you have to but because you want to. It all stems from taking the time to understand them, listen to them, and truly care for them. Not just go through the motions. Be real. Old Allan Koltin had lots and lots of friends that was a quantity play. As you get older, it becomes more meaningful and it becomes a quality play of fewer but deeper relationships.
Zone Of Leadership: Be there for your family and friends, not because of having to but because you want to. Take the time to understand, listen, and care for them.
You might have answered the next question because that was, things or actions I don't have that I don't want.
The one thing that I try to do well is, not everybody is a class X. Sometimes people are genuinely jerks or not like. People roll their eyes and say, "Why do you spend time with them?" I've always had this thing, and my parents instilled in me is, believe it or not, there's good in everyone. When people say, “I can't believe you spent time with that person,” I said, "Look at it this way. You leave them and you get to live your life, but they're stuck being who they are." They don't intentionally sign up to be like that. It's just a byproduct. Let it go. Find the good in them and try to get them to a place of more good.
It's not about you.
That's huge. When they say, "Someone was such a jerk to me." I said, "We don't know what goes on in everybody's life. They may have just found out some terrible news." It's not you. They gain crossfire, as we say.
Thank you so much for sharing all your stories. You're so genuine always. That's why you've built such a great career and relationships along the way. Is there anything we haven't talked about that you want to make sure that people walk away with?
I want you to know that this was one of the best interviews I've ever participated in.
Thank you.
This was spectacular. Thank you. I feel like it was a therapy session. I got 24 notes here. Things to take away. We're like the mouse on the treadmill and the accounting gods keep turning it up. You were able to get me to slow down on that treadmill and think. You gave me a couple of things on my to-do list. For that, I thank you, Amy.
Thanks so much for being here.
Take care.
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Now, for my mindful moments with my interview with Allan. So many great things in this discussion that we had. Allan is one of the most genuine, heartfelt people that I have ever met in this profession. I always enjoy my time talking with him. There's so much you can learn. I loved that we began with his love for his parents. He called out a mantra, tagline, or anything that has given him the strength in his career to make sure that he found success.
He said that his mom always said to him, "Allan, you can do it. You know you can." That's so important to have that support even when you doubt yourself or to have the mantra that you need to tell yourself when things are hard, when life gets hard, and when things don't seem to be going in the way that you hoped that they would go. You can give yourself that pep talk to change your outlook to find that positive outcome.
We talked about him growing up and that his parents were in service-based industries where his dad was in the hospitality business and home remodeling, and his mom was in real estate. Watching them, he learned about sales. Sales from the side of being committed to helping people after the sale as well, building that relationship, and how his parents stayed in touch and became friends with the people that they sold to. Personal care is so important because people know that they can trust you. You're not just in it for the money. You're in it for their best interest. Whether their best interest is to do what you're trying to sell or not, you feel the same about them no matter what the outcome.
That is an important piece of what he has carried with him in his own life of being in the sales and marketing profession in accounting. His background was in accounting but started moving into marketing and sales as his strength and realized that was his strength early on. We started talking about some hobbies he had. I thought a nugget here, knowing that he was the number one chess player in the country. Growing up, he was taught chess by his brother, which is a cool thing that not only did his brother teach him that, where they had that bond, but he's now taught his children as well and plays with them. That's such a nice thing to have and share together.
All things that might be different about your personality, about your lifestyle, and about whatever you chose, you have this common place that you can come to, this common language. A common language of chess is understanding, as he talked about, how to visualize and think 4 to 5 steps ahead to make sure that you're making the right decision right now. It's not just about right now. When we think about business, so many times we're making a short-term decision. Things are going well right now. Why think about the future? Why change anything? Instead of visualizing that.
I loved what he talked about closing his eyes when he would go into chess training and have to picture the chess board and visualize that. There's so much to that. That is mindfulness training of truly allowing your brain to disconnect from a problem. Many times, when you've got a hard business decision or you're trying to come up with something at work or home and you keep pressing against it and you can't get the answer, I know for me I can go running and time just disappears. All of a sudden, while I'm running, I'm solving an issue that I didn't even intend to solve. I wasn't putting my mind to that. It was just opening itself up to that. We lose the power sometimes of stillness, disconnecting, and allowing ourselves to be okay to do nothing.
For him to talk about this skill in chess of closing your eyes and envisioning what you want to happen and how you get there, there are so many ways you apply that. We talked about how you have to figure out creatively to get to the end game that you want and think about different outcomes to achieve what you want.
The other thing we talked about was his basketball career growing up and how it's helped him as well in his career that he's had a common bond at different places he worked or with different clients that also enjoy basketball. Sometimes we don't spend time talking about the things that we enjoy outside of work and how we can collaborate with people that we work with in different ways where we get to know people differently, which helps us in business. The relationship has changed, and because of that change, we know people at a personal level and can help guide them differently.
He also talked about two mentors that were integral in his career that pointed him in the direction that he is now. We talked about how important it is to be as a mentee open to listening and not taking offense sometimes. When a mentor points out where your gaps are, but where your positives are, and maybe that wasn't your original intention, how do you walk toward that versus away?
He has been the example of walking toward where people were stopping, giving their time, giving him advice, and pushing him forward, but he had to want to push forward as well without putting his heels in the sand. A lot of times, we put heels in the sand because of fears that we have. We don't even realize what those fears are. It's important to identify if we're putting heels in the sand and not moving forward, why? Asking ourselves why. Closing our eyes and asking ourselves why.
This applies even in what Allan does now as far as working with private equity and helping firms be able to go this new route if they choose. How do you close your eyes and look at what's possible in your future? What's your vision? How are you going to get there? What kind of skillsets are you going to need to survive, whether you stay independent or whether you go this route as well?
Make sure that you've looked at all the scenarios in your mind and that you press against the scenarios with other people and allow people to press against your outlook too. Be open to that feedback. If we want to be better, we have to be open to what each person has to offer and how we make something better together. That is this opportunity we have with what Allan was talking about during this interview of being able to see things that aren't there.
Sometimes we don't even know why we see those things. It's called our intuition, but we call it gut. The gut can tell us that something's off and the gut can also tell us that there's something more. We just haven't figured it out yet. Sometimes we rush that process of trying to figure that out instead of allowing ourselves to go on that journey without any pressure of time but making sure we are putting time against finding what those answers are. We're not just thinking it's going to happen. That we do disconnect enough to provide that stillness, close our eyes when we need to, and envision that future.
I want to thank you for tuning in to this interview. I'm sure you got a ton out of it. I love hearing Allan speak and all of his stories. If you want to find any more of our interviews, we've got tons of these interviews with leaders all over this profession and other professions as well. They're life journeys that you learned from. You can find us on any platform. Also, on AmyVetter.com, the Breaking Beliefs show is listed there as well.
If you also are looking to go deeper on this journey yourself, my book, Disconnect to Connect: Tap Into the Power Within You to Create the Life You Desire. It's released. It's an Amazon bestseller and it can help you start on this journey so that you can not only create the energy that you want for yourself, but the energy for those around you as well.
Important Links
Allan Koltin - LinkedIn
Disconnect to Connect: Tap Into the Power Within You to Create the Life You Desire
About Allan Koltin
Koltin Consulting Group, Inc. is a Chicago-based consulting firm that specializes in working with professional and financial services firms in the areas of practice growth, practice management, human capital, and mergers and acquisitions.
Highly sought for his ability to engage and inspire audiences, Allan enjoys delivering keynote addresses at conferences throughout the professional services industry. His passion is facilitating retreats and providing coaching for firm leadership and partners. His specialties include strategy, governance, profitability, compensation, growth, human capital, succession, and mergers and acquisitions.
For twenty-two consecutive years, Allan has been named by Accounting Today as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in the accounting profession. In 2022, he was listed as the “Third Most Influential” in the profession. Koltin was also voted one of the 10 Most Recommended Consultants for the twentieth straight year in the “Annual Survey of Firms” conducted by INSIDE Public Accounting. For the past decade, Allan has also been named by CPA Practice Advisor as one of the Top 25 Thought Leaders in the profession. In 2016 CPA Practice Advisor inducted Allan into the Accounting Hall of Fame. He was also one of the first to be inducted into the Accounting Marketing Hall of Fame by the Association for Accounting Marketing (AAM). He has also been a recipient of the National Association of Certified Valuation Analyst’s Instructor of the Year Award and winner of the Journal of Accountancy Literacy Award. Previously he was recognized by the Illinois CPA Society with the Distinguished Service Award for outstanding service and commitment to the profession.
A nationally recognized speaker and industry analyst, he has appeared on the CNN, WGN and Fox Television networks and has been quoted frequently in such media as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Financial Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, USA Today and New York Post, as well as Bloomberg News, BBC World Service, Business Week, Forbes and Reuters. He has also spoken nationally and internationally at hundreds of conferences including those held by the AICPA, international CPA associations and state CPA societies.
Previously, Allan was the President and CEO of PDI, Global, Inc. which was the largest provider of marketing materials for professional services firms. Allan originally sold PDI Global to H&R Block in 1998, buying it back in 2008, and then selling it again to Thomson Reuters in 2011. Prior to that, Allan was a Partner in the Chicago-based accounting and consulting firm of FERS, where he served as the leader of the Investment Banking and Law Firm Consulting Groups. At age 27, Allan had the distinction of being named the youngest partner in the history of the firm and was also a member of the firm’s Executive Committee. FERS was acquired by H&R Block in 1998.
He is a founding member of The Advisory Board, a think tank for the accounting profession. For the past 20 years, The Advisory Board has hosted the Winning Is Everything Conference. Allan has served on various advisory boards, including SS&G, Outsource Partners International (OPI), the Association for Accounting Marketing (AAM), the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts (NACVA), H&R Block (HRB Business Services) and ComplyGlobal.
Koltin is the author-editor of three books for professional services firms: CPA Firm Merger Strategies That Work, CPAs That Sell and the AICPA’s Marketing a Consulting Niche. He serves or has served on the editorial advisory boards of CPA Practice Management Forum, the Journal of Accountancy, Accounting Today, Public Accounting Report and Law Firm Management.
Allan attended both the University of Wisconsin – Madison and the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee and received degrees in accounting and marketing. He lives in Chicago with his wife, Sharon, his three children, Jack, Brian and Julia, and his two dogs, Bucky and Cody. His hobbies include travel, chess, and all sports.