For this article, I interviewed Andrea Sohns, Principal at CliftonLarsonAllen (CLA). Here’s a bit more about her:
Andrea has spent 15 years at CLA working with privately held and private-equity-owned manufacturers on audits, company sales and acquisitions, and owner transitions.
She’s a UW Whitewater grad with a degree in accounting and finance.
Andrea is also involved in Women in Manufacturing, helping to relaunch its SE Wisconsin chapter.
It rained the whole way there.
I wasn’t sure what to expect on this journey, this day.
I was headed to a CPA firm to talk about audits, manufacturers, and private equity (PE). All things that fascinate me, but not exactly the usual tech beat.
Or so I thought.
Then Andrea sat down across from me and called tax season “opportunity season.”
I mean, us non-CPA types dread tax season.
So when she dropped the light-hearted euphemism, I knew this would be fun.
What does a CPA do?
For Andrea, the busy season is January through April. There are audits, reviews, financial statements, and everything else banks and PE firms require.
But her day-to-day is different.
She helps companies buy or sell other companies. She helps business owners work on what comes next, whether that’s a family handoff, a sale, or something else. All wrapped up in a strategic planning kind of way.
And she told me she hasn’t built a financial statement in years. She reviews them, but mostly she builds relationships.
“That’s not how I pictured my career would go at all,” she said.
$500M put me in the room.
Here’s what initially caught my attention and my outreach to Andrea (thanks for the intro Lori Highby!).
I read that CLA was investing half a billion dollars into technology.
So, I asked Andrea about that.
She said CLA’s CEO indeed had pledged the $500M tech investment and here’s why.
There are fewer CPAs entering the profession. CLA wants to automate the data entry that eats up so much time in January through April and empower the team to focus on more value-add efforts.
As Andrea says, “No one wants to work 80+ hour weeks anymore.”
But isn’t AI coming for CPA jobs?
I mean, these are the headlines we’re all reading, correct?
Well, I heard the opposite from Andrea.
The $500M investment, she told me, is meant to bring more people into the career. If you take out the work few people really enjoy, the profession looks more appealing to someone deciding what to study.
Though it’s too early to see how this all plays out, it’s a better scenario than what the headlines are portraying these days.
What the heck else did we talk about?
The owners (and founders) who plan early, win.
Women in manufacturing.
What Andrea says to young women thinking about a career in finance, accounting, or manufacturing.
But you’ll have to listen below or on Spotify for all of those details.
Andrea is actually a self-described introvert.
But she was grateful we were sitting at the table talking. So was I.
I drove out there in the rain, not sure what I’d find.
I picked up some wisdom and a new friend. Totally worth it.
Love you, Milwaukee.
