Ric Payne – Page 2 – Ric Payne's Blog: The Consulting Accountant

AI and the Future of Advisory

Under the direction of Accounting Today, the 3.5 Version of ChatGPT sat the CPA Exam and failed, rather badly it turns out! However, as Rick Richardson notes in a recent (Sept 28, 2023) article in CPA Trendlines “The most recent Version 4.0 [of ChatGPT] averaged 85.1 out of 100 and successfully completed all four sections of the exam, in contrast to the prior Version 3.5’s average score of 53.1. The chatbot received an 87.5 in the part that rated highest, auditing and attestation (AUD).”

This is a very interesting development for several reasons.

The Way a P&L is Formatted Drives its Value as a Management Tool

I recently had cause to check out a bank website that was promoting lending services for small businesses. It is probably a great lending institution but its attempt to explain a P&L statement is patently wrong …. In my view.

Ten Typical Characteristics of Intelligent People

Here are 10 characteristics that will help you figure out who are the smart people.

The Relationship between Price, Cost, and Value

“Unfortunately, markets have been more volatile recently, which makes it more expensive for us to buy and sell currencies — so we need to raise our fees to cover those costs.”

Understanding the challenge is the challenge

Challenges in business and life typically manifest in the form of a symptom of a deeper cause. For example how often do you see someone say “businesses fail because of cash flow issues.” When this is identified as the problem it’s logical to see the solution simply in terms of injecting more cash.

10 Keys to empathetic listening that will help you sell more

We are born with two ears, two eyes, and one mouth. Very early on we combine these endowments in creative ways to get a message across that helps us survive and in the early days, our most useful tool for getting what we wanted was our mouth. It turns out that for many (perhaps most) people their mouth continues to be the most used device. I find this interesting because compared with your ears and your eyes, your mouth has the least sophisticated connection with the brain and for some people it seems there’s no connection at all.

Mindset, Success, and Serendipity

Success in business – and to make it simple I’ll define that as achieving a significant improvement in profitability and business value – often comes bundled with a big serving of luck. Of course, you may say luck is where preparation and opportunity intersect, and one definition I particularly like is luck is putting yourself in the way of serendipity. But at the end of the day luck takes many different forms, for example a roulette win is pure luck because it’s a game of chance. On the other hand if you win at poker it’s due in large measure to your skill relative to that of your opponent(s). There is also luck in the game of business but it’s more complex and is the result of preparation, opportunity, and serendipity.

How to build relationship capital as a foundation for building your firm

Ed Mendlowitz, a frequent contributor to the US CPA Trendlines Newsletter, recently wrote a short piece on the 8 ways to charm a client and noted, correctly in my view, that our performance gets assessed largely on the small things. I totally agree with his sentiment but have modified his suggestions somewhat to reflect what I think charms clients.

This is how my journey into advisory started

In 1972 I was employed as a research officer in the wool marketing section of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics in Canberra. A Kiwi colleague of mine suggested that we start a retail store that sold sheepskins and related products. We were joined by a third friend and we each contributed $300 and it turned out to be very successful with revenues of close to $1million in its first year.

Visually Thinking about Strategic Intent

Formulating a business strategy is essentially about making choices that will give you confidence that you’ll achieve a challenging goal which, if you’re intent on being the “best” in your class, that might be achieving an industry-leading ROIC from having created a sustainable competitive advantage. Of course, nothing is sustainable forever which is what makes formulating strategy a “forever” job of management.