Charlie and Josh have taken two very different careerjourneys in the FI industry, but they agree passionately on this: anentrepreneurial approach to serving banks and credit unions is what sets CLAapart. Together they lead our FI practice, which now boasts $70M in revenue,more than 250 staff members, and roughly 1,500 clients. Let their stories ofgrit and success inspire your own industry specialization path.[John:Welcome CLA family to this podcast designed to tell the stories behind the CLApromise. I’m John Langan, chief industry officer for our regulated industries.We create opportunities when we live our culture as entrepreneurs, owners, andleaders. At the center of the CLA promise is our why: to create opportunities.Behind the CLA are a set of core beliefs. One of them is helping verse selling:A belief that specialization enables us to focus less on ourselves and ourpractice service specialty and more on our clients’ needs and opportunities.[Aswe get to know our clients better and help them more it will in fact result ingrowth for CLA. That’s industry specialization at CLA. Industry specializationequals growth along with better quality, profitability, and more inspiredcareers. But how do you get started? And how do you build a succession plan foryourself? To answer those questions, we’ve invited two industry specialists,financial institutions leaders MPI Charlie Cameron from our St. Louis officeand Josh Juergensen, an FI principal in the Minneapolis office.[Charlieand Josh, welcome. You represent two ends of the industry journey, so exploringit from both of your perspectives will provide real insight to our audience.Let’s start with your personal stories. How long have you been with the firm?Tell us about your career and what you have that brought you to this place.And, Charlie, let’s start with you.[Charlie:Thanks, John. I’m in my eighth year now with CLA. I actually merged my legacyfirm in at the beginning of 2012 when we first began operating at CLA. Afterspending a few years with the Big Four at the beginning of my career, I workedfor 12 years for a regional bank holding company in St. Louis. After that bankwas sold, I purchased a small niche bank consulting firm and ran it for 12years. By hiring some good people, many of which are still with us today, wewere able to grow consistently and establish a good reputation in themarketplace.[In2017, I began transitioning into my current role FI. Our FI practice nowstretches across the country, as totally revenue approximately $70 million, andconsists of about 250 total staff members.[John:And I’ll bet as you started in this industry you had no idea you’d be sittingon top of revenue of that size.[Charlie:Absolutely no idea. It’s been a great ride.[John:So, Josh, tell us about your story.[Josh:  Thanks, John. I followed the more traditionalcareer path starting right out of college coming to CLA back in 2007, currentlyin my 13th business season. By dumb luck, I happened to be placed in thefinancial institutions practice and here we are today. It’s been a crazy ridesince 2007 coming right out of college into the largest economic crisis of–atleast in my lifetime working with community banks.[Ijust assumed that every board around a community meeting consisted ofdiscussions running, raiding off a number of bad loans or discussionsregulators closing banks. Thankfully that’s not the case and here we are todaywith, like Charlie said, a very large and successful FI practice.[John:So you’ve had baptism by fire through the 2008 financial crisis.[Josh:  Yes, definitely.[John:So you’ve both taken interesting journeys to get where you are today. And so,Charlie, what are some of the key decisions that you’ve had to make along theway, both planned and unplanned, as you moved along your desired career path.[Charlie:Well, John, I would say first that just being entrepreneurial back when Ipurchased my legacy firm and then, after being a sole owner for 12 years,making the decision to join what would become CLA. After being a sole owner, Iknew that we had more growth potential, but that we needed the resources of alarger firm to continue that growth and to offer better long-term careeropportunities to our people.[Thenin 2017 accepting the leadership role at FI that I serve in today and, youknow, in short I accepted that role because I believed in this strategicplatform of our firm, and I knew that the key to FI could continue to besuccessful was just executing on the core principals of that strategicplatform.[John:So, Josh, Charlie had his own practice and brought it in and he had all theexperiences that went along with that. You said you took the more traditionalroute right out of school coming into what has become a very large firm. How doyou build off of the experiences you’ve had but also some of the ones youhaven’t to sort of round out your experience as you try to build your career.[Josh:  Yeah, I’ve been very fortunate. From thestandpoint of when I started, this was already an established financialinstitution practice. Learning from people like Terry Yanger and JerryFerachelly and Neil Falken and now Charlie and others, they played a big rolein developing what we have here today, but now it’s on myself and a number ofother younger leaders in our FI practice to continue the momentum that they’vestarted and to continue to allow us to grow.[Wehave over 1,500 financial institution clients across the country that, when wewalk into many of those institutions, they know who we are just by namerecognition alone. That wasn’t necessarily the case when I started back in2007. At the end of the day, it comes down to serving our clients and givingthem the opportunities with our support. For me, it’s always been very importantto have that entrepreneurial mindset and “how can we help ourclients.”[Andthat’s one thing that I’ve learned over the years from Charlie and others cancontinue doing that as we go forward in the future.[John:And what I can hear in your voice is the energy and the passion behind doingthat, and I think that’s probably a big part of being able to be hungry, tohave that business even though you weren’t in a position where you had to buildthe initial firm. So, Charlie, as important as industry specialization is and akey strategic priority of the firm, the service mix, the services that we bringto those clients to become a true professional services firm are equally asimportant.[Sotalk to me about how you looked to leaders like Josh to employ thosedisciplines in terms of building a more holistic platform.[Charlie:Yeah, John, our service mix is clearly shifting. Today, insurance and tax makeup already less than half of our FI revenue and that percentage continues todecline. Due to industry consolidation and other factors, we know thatachieving 7% growth in the insurance area is going to be difficult. Ourindustry greatest opportunities lie in the consulting and outsourcing areas. Soexecuting on seamless integration is really paramount to our FI practice.[Sowe’ve asked young leaders like Josh and others to connect in a greater way withour key service side leaders within their growth networks to plan, setstrategy, and go to the market as one coordinated team, one firm.[John:So, Charlie, you said it’s going to be difficult to get 7% organic growththrough the insurance and tax compliant services, but if we’re honest, it’salmost impossible.[Charlie:That’s exactly right, and our recent history shows that, John.[John:Right. So, Josh, your service concentration at this point is audit. How do youapproach clients, prospects, and financial institution centers of influence toincorporate a more holistic approach to our service platform?[Josh:  Yeah, John, the seamless integration of allthose services is something that’s got to be very important to us. For me,personally, it’s all about relationship building. I spend a lot of my timerecruiting on campus with a lot of students, and we frequently get the question“what do I enjoy most about my job?” And for me, it’s working withall the clients that we have. If you go through my sent items box, there’s alot of clients that I’m addressing as “hey buddy” or “good tosee you again,” things like that where we’ve got a much closerrelationship than just as a client.[Idon’t want to be viewed as their auditor or as their tax preparer. For me, it’svery important that they view us as their strategic partner. We want to be thatfirst person that they call any time that they’ve got a question from afinancial standpoint surrounding their business because we are working withthose key decision makers. When I’m looking at financial institutionsspecifically, many of our clients–at least in the community bank inside–theyare the majority shareholder.[Theyare the owner of the bank, and we’re working directly with them to help themmanage the largest financial asset that they have. So I don’t want to be thattax preparer or that auditor. I want to be that first person that they look atas a strategic partner to help the success of their organization into thefuture.[John:So, Charlie, we’re throwing a lot at young leaders like Josh that we didn’treally have to do as we came up. We were very concentrated in our serviceareas. So what is some of the advice that you might have to Josh and otheryoung leaders about how they sort of block out the noise and stay focused onthe key areas because there’s so many things you could be doing but trying tofigure out where you should put your priorities in a very busy world can bedifficult.[Charlie:Yeah, that’s a great question, John, because it’s a fairly frequent topic anddiscussion with our young leaders. Our leaders all naturally get involved in avariety of initiatives, internally and externally. But there’s an old sayingthat if everything is a priority, then you don’t have any priorities. So we allhave to deal with those challenges, but I believe that’s it’s really importantthat we stay focused on the why and the how of our firm.[Whenyou break it down, our ability to bring opportunities to our people and ourcommunities really starts with delivering first-class service to our clientsand creating opportunities for our clients. And, of course, we do that byknowing and helping our clients through deep industry specialization.[Somy advice to our young leaders is that, you know, our activities need to becentered around the why and the how for our firm, and if we keep that focus anddevelop our daily, weekly priorities, et cetera, around that focus, I thinkthat can lead you to a successful career at CLA.[John:Absolutely and, Josh, I had always that financial institution professionalswanted to be with Big Four firms serving publically-held clients. Why did youchoose to build your FI career at CLA and where our profile client is typicallynot public and decidedly smaller?[Josh:  Yeah, John, when I started with CLA back in2007, we didn’t have name recognition to go out and get in front a lot of thoselarger institutions. Back when I started in ’07, we had about 800 or soemployees across the entire firm, and now we have more than that in just theMinneapolis office alone. So as we’ve grown the number of opportunities we’vehad in front of those larger institutions has presented itself more frequentlythan it has. So I grew up on the community banking side.[Nowthat being said, I really do enjoy the fact of working directly with theowners, like I mentioned before. You’re working with those key decision makersto really have an impact and an influence on where their organization is going.To put into perspective when I started back in 2007, our average bank size wasprobably around $250 million in assets or so. As I look to where we’re attoday, we’re probably around a billion dollars in average asset size for manyof our audit clients that we have today.[Andthat number is only going to increase. We’ve got a stated initiative withinfinancial institutions that we’re going to specifically target with largerinstitutions and get in front of those more often, really driving home theoutsourcing opportunities and the consulting opportunities that Charliementioned. But I really have enjoyed the smaller institutions because you canreally get your arms around that organization and really capitalize on all thedifferent service lines we have to offer to our clients.[John:And while our profile client size is getting larger, I think it is fair to saythat there’s just more of them, and they typically are underserved. Is thatcorrect?[Josh:  100% correct. There’s not a lot of other firmsthat are out there specifically connecting with community banks. For example,we have spent a number of years–I believe it’s over 20 years now–serving withIndependent Community Bank of America, the largest trade association forcommunity banks, and they have been a great referral source for us and a greatrevenue generator for us as well over the years.[John:That’s great. Yeah, I like to say that, in a very big organization that hasgreat controls and full complementive resources, all they’re really doing isbuying our letterhead, and that’s not very fulfilling. But these smallermidsize and growing-in-size clients have more need and that provides moreopportunity for them and for us. So, Charlie, specifically, what are some ofthe services that you’re trying to drive through FI?[Charlie:There are many, John. We really do have a very broad array of consultianoutsourcing services that FI delivers. Probably the easiest way to describethat menu is just to think about the different risk areas of our clients, andmost of those risk areas we’re delivering on a variety of services. So thoseareas would include regulatory compliance, credit risk management services,information systems, security, strategic services, et cetera.[Youknow, John, now we have approximately 100 FI staff members that specializeoutside the traditional audit tax areas. That’s about 40% of our FI staff. SoI’m really excited about the career opportunities that we are creating for ourpeople in these consulting and outsourcing service lines.[John:That’s great, Charlie. Josh, FI had double digit growth in 2018.Congratulations to both of you for that. But it brings its own challenges. Sowhat are you and the FI industry group doing to elevate and accelerate thecareers of the FI professionals and build a practice base on effective clienttransitions and succession, which I know is critical to building a successfullegacy practice?[Josh:  Like many other industries, I would have toassume, we do have a challenge with succession planning within FI as we look toour existing leadership group. We’ve had a number of retirements over the lastcouple of years, and we’ll have a number more as we go into the next three tofive years.[Charlieand the strategic leadership committee of FI have done a great job of givingmyself and a number of other younger leaders within the practice theopportunity to lead various committees and get involved as much as we wouldlike to be involved in a number of things across the group. As an example,Charlie has asked me to lead the FI learning and career development committees.[I’malso working with David Heneke, another partner out of our St. Cloud office, tolead our financial service innovation committee, where we really try to take alook at some of the things that are going be disrupting the financialinstitutions industry to go forward.[We’realso putting emphasis on educating many of our younger and up-and-coming leadersin the organization as well. I’m talking about people that are in the three tofour to five to six year range, giving them opportunities to try to educatethem about what all we do because if they’re not educated about what we does asa firm, it’s going to be tough for them to create opportunities for boththemselves and their clients.[Sowe’re really trying to be proactive in that and giving those people that havestepped up and set themselves apart, giving them an opportunity to grow theircareer at the pace that they want to.[John:Charlie, Josh mentioned earlier about thought leadership and the importance ofthat and building yourself as an industry professional, making yourself a“famous person.” In FI, how do you go about challenging your leadersand giving them that opportunity to become that famous person?[Charlie:Okay. Well, first I would say, establishing yourself as an industry expert isbecoming increasingly important for our young leaders. We’ve already talked,John, that the insurance opportunities in the marketplace due to industryconsolidation are declining overall. So I believe that if you’re a relationshipleader in FI, becoming that strategic advisor for your clients is the key toopening the door to execution of seamless.[Soproviding thought leadership is a big part of becoming a recognized industryexpert. You know, that can look different for different leaders. We don’tnecessarily dictate approach, but we certainly emphasize to all of our youngleaders getting involved in thought leadership.[John:And that thought leadership, I assume, would be around industry associations,articles, white papers, speaking, and doing, I guess, in a way with yournon-charge hours so that you can balance your life at the same time.[Charlie:Absolutely and one of the tools that some of our folks have really done a greatjob of developing is a blog for FI.[John:Yeah. Yeah, congratulations on that. So, Josh, one of the things that comes upa lot with all the things that get thrown at us on a daily basis is how do westay on top of our business acumen? You know, the charge it, bill it, collectit, the really nuts and bolts of this business. As a young leader with all thatyou have coming at you, how do you and your peers kind of look at that and makesure that you’re covering that expectation?[Josh:  John, the beauty of working with financialinstitutions, the collective part is generally pretty easy ’cause if there’sone thing that banks and credit unions have is money. So, generally speaking,collecting our invoices is usually not an issue for us. But from a chargingstandpoint, I have been very proud with how our group has adopted the dailytime reporting mentality. When I grew up, that wasn’t necessarily the case, theexpectation that you had to do that on a daily basis.[Andas we’ve transitioned into that, I’ve been very proud of how our group, by andlarge, has adopted this. We do have frequent conversations about the importanceof working efficiently and charging for what you do. By no means do we everwant anybody eating their time, but we want to make sure that when extra timeis necessary that we’re billing it appropriately and whenever that iswarranted. From a billing standpoint, we made a concerted effort though overthe last 6 to 12 months, John, of really trying to get some of our seniorassociates involved with billing.[Ithink that does a great job of getting them a better understanding of thebusiness side of what we do, and it also helps give those individuals a littlemore insight of the importance of efficiency because when you’re in thereactually working on creating the invoice and allocating the whip as needed,when we’re having to write off time it really puts into prospective theimportance of working efficiently and really gets them up to speed quickly onwhy we do continue to talk about being efficient and recording our time in asmuch detail as we possibly can.[SoI think that’s really kind of a good summary of where we’re at with this andI’ve been really happy with how people have stepped up and adopted some of themindset that we have had surrounding charge it, bill it, and collect it.[John:Yeah, well we’d love to get you to help us get to a tipping point on the dailytime entry and “don’t write off my time” mentality. So, Charlie, I’m goingto give you the last question, which is really, as you get to the top of thestretch in terms of your career, what does success look like?[Charlie:Well, John, I would say that the goal is to establish the resources and developthe young leadership within our growth networks, so that we can consistentlyexecute on the market opportunities that lie in those regions. And, although weare in an industry of disruption, I’m a big believer that disruption andinnovation needs opportunity. So like many of our other industry practices atCLA, FI has become large enough now that we really are dependent upon stronggrowth network leadership.[SoI believe that my job for my remaining years at CLA and really the job of ourother FI strategic leaders is to create strong growth networks, to developleadership within those growth networks and the resources that they need sotheir position to identify, create, and execute on opportunities. And, John, ifI can, let me just say that I’m confident that we can make that happen becauseI think our greatest strength in FI is our young leaders.[Wehave one of them today in Josh Juergensen, but it’s terrific to see the type ofyoung talent that we have in our FI practice.[John:Absolutely. Couldn’t agree more. It’s been quite a journey for both of you anda testament to creating opportunities with inspired careers, industryspecialization, and the entirety of the CLA promise being realized in FI. Sothank you both for joining us today.[Josh:  Thank you, John.[Charlie:Thanks, John.