PeopleFirst: How Ascend Keeps the Talent Pipeline Flowing
April 1, 2024 (Arlington, VA) -- David Wurtzbacher (Founder & CEO) and Erin Stahmer (Co-Founder & Chief People Officer) launched Ascend in January 2023 with the goal of creating a new-age growth platform that would enable regional accounting firms with exceptional leadership, great cultures and strong fundamentals to overcome the challenges embedded in the traditional partnership model.
They set out to reimagine a bedrock industry struggling at every level, from the Big Four to the smallest Main Street firms. In their view, many of the challenges faced by CPAs -- from succession planning to building a CAAS practice -- could be traced back to one common denominator: talent. How to attract and recruit great people with top-notch skills and attitudes. How to build cultures that not only keep those great people on the team, but keep them invested in the firm’s, and their own, success for the long-term. How to cultivate and motivate the next generation of equity owners.
Their solution was to rethink the way firms are structured, their career development processes, and their compensation models. By almost any measure, David and Erin are onto something that resonates with firm leaders.
In Ascend’s first year of operation, eight highly successful regional firms left their traditional business models behind and pinned their future to the Ascend growth platform. Accounting Today ranked the company at 59 on its annual list of top 100 U.S. firms and named David one of the industry’s 100 Most Influential People, as Ascend crossed the $100 million revenue threshold.
PeopleFirst
What is driving the company’s rapid success is the ability Ascend gives entrepreneurial CPAs to stay independent while accessing the resources of a large firm to fuel their continued growth. That includes a world-class recruiting team, People Operations (HR) support, and expert coaches who facilitate firms’ adoption of Ascend’s Culture Model and PeopleFirst program.
“Getting great talent in the door and expanding client capacity is a critical way firms unlock revenue growth,” Erin says. “As a function, recruiting is not often built out in-house until the firm is quite large. We are setting up our partner firms for success by bringing them a talent team that can partner with their firm on Day 1, and as we further embrace AI and leverage offshoring, our partners will be in an even stronger position for sustained growth.”
Ascend’s Big Hairy Audacious Goal, Erin says, is to be a Top 20 firm with the most engaged employees in an industry the firm has revitalized.
“We want our people to be excited about working in a firm that is truly at the forefront of innovation in this industry at all levels, and to feel confident in saying ‘I know what my job is, I know how to perform well, and I am rewarded financially,’” she says.
To get there, Erin and her team are focused on creating an environment that gives people a reason to come to work smiling.
“The irresistible offer we’re making is that we are giving our people a stake in the business – an opportunity to become owners – years earlier than at any other firm, so they are building wealth as they progress in their careers. Even before they reach partner, they already have skin in the game,” she says.
Intentional Leadership
Another key differentiator in Ascend’s value proposition is its commitment to intentional leadership, both at the strategic business level and the individual professional level.
“One of the interesting things we’ve learned while recruiting is that strength of leadership and swift decision-making are key priorities for CPAs looking for a new firm. This can be hard to come by at other firms, since managing partners always wear multiple hats, partner groups can be large, and it is easier to let strategic planning take a back seat than to put off client-facing work. Within the first few months of joining Ascend, we introduce our PeopleFirst leadership program to our partner firms and guide them through a two-day workshop that allows them to emerge with a really clear vision and strategy, and system to engage their people around that vision,” Erin says.
“We replace the traditional partnership governance structure with a more classic business structure, where the MPs are now CEOs. Their main client is their firm, and their job is to maintain a culture of growth where everyone can flourish. We partner with them to create a strategic plan and support them in establishing a regular cadence of renewals with their entire team to reflect on progress and plan for what’s ahead, so everyone knows exactly where things stand and how they can play a role in what comes next. Being able to share this robust approach to intentional leadership with candidates has been a game-changer for our recruiting,” Erin says.
“We are also working to take the mystery out of the path to partnership. By introducing the concept of job scorecards within our firms, prospective candidates have a much clearer picture of how they will get from Point A to Point B. Each scorecard consists of transparent criteria, which shifts the focus from just putting in your time to performing at the necessary level for personal growth and advancement. Through all of these efforts, our goal is to make partnership more attainable and attractive to people earlier in their careers, and by doing so, we believe our firms will thrive.”
Best-in-class Candidate Experience
Ascend’s unique culture is baked directly into the recruiting process.
Ashley Nash, Ascend’s Director of Recruiting, says, “Candidates are looking for a new way of working. They want work-life balance, the ability to bring their whole selves to work, and the opportunity to do work that meaningfully impacts the lives of others. My team’s goal is to ensure candidates have a best-in-class interview experience focused on their long-term success.
“We are very clear about how intentional leadership works. Everyone has a leader who promotes their individual growth. It helps bring clarity to the professional’s vision of their career path and empowers them to pursue it. During the interview process candidates not only meet with their prospective manager but also with partners and peers, so they can get to know who they’ll be working with and how we work. This backs up what candidates hear from our recruiters and gives them a really good feel for what it’s like to be part of an Ascend-backed firm,” Ashley says.
“Plus, they will be plugged into Ascend and all that comes with it – strategic career development, financial rewards including the opportunity for ownership, and the tangible benefits of PeopleFirst leadership firm-wide,” she says.
“Attrition in the accounting industry remains high. People are always seeking that ‘something better,’ which can create pressure to move quickly in the recruiting process. But firms also suffer from making mis-hires because they are stressed to keep their seats filled. We are helping our firms change their way of recruiting to improve success rates for candidates, which translates into better retention and more motivated teams,” Ashley says. “We are teaching them how to use data to drive hiring decisions, utilizing a structured scorecard to make sure we are being objective in our evaluation of candidates. We conduct both behavioral and technical interviews not only to assess whether a candidate has the skills to do the work, but also whether they will enjoy doing it.”
Ashley says Ascend’s data-driven interview process has returned a 90% success rate but attributes another huge part of their recruiting success to the award-winning culture at each of Ascend’s partner firms. She says Ascend firms’ exemplary cultures gives their recruiting team a great story to tell, and that is a major factor in helping them consistently win talent.
In fact, Ascend has gotten talent referrals from candidates who have gone through its interview process – even if they ultimately did not join the team. According to Erin, the firm enjoys a candidate recruiting Net Promoter Score (a measure of endorsement) of an almost unheard-of 100 percent. “It’s an amazing signal for us that our PeopleFirst culture is really shining through in the candidate’s experience,” she says.
“We have an incredible team that is driven by being at the forefront of change. We are not only helping our partner firms build their teams, we are also having a significant impact on our candidates. Extending an offer that helps someone grow to become a future leader is truly the best part of my job,” says Ashley.
Focus on Culture
Equally important as shepherding new hires, of course, is nurturing incoming teams. As new firms join the Ascend platform and integrate into the firm culture, the talent team puts a priority on easing their transition.
Erin says the mission is to honor, preserve and enhance the culture of the Ascend firms on the ground.
Brandon Smith is Chief Human Resources Officer at LMC, Ascend’s partner firm in New York City and a top 300 firm named a Best Firm to Work For by Accounting Today. He joined LMC just six months before the firm partnered with Ascend in May 2023, drawn largely by LMC’s strong people-oriented culture.
“I was looking for a firm that (1) was growing and that (2) cared about its people. People deeply care about each other both personally and professionally at LMC. So I was very focused on this when LMC decided to join Ascend,” he says.
“Ascend is a PeopleFirst organization. I was able to assure our team as we transitioned that anything Ascend would be doing would actually improve our quality of life and the overall employee experience. They have really been a value-add to our organization, but we are still LMC. They want us to keep doing what we’re best at, which is client service and growing our people. We still have our culture and our independence, and we still work on the same clients,” Brandon says. “We have had zero employee turnover since the transaction. That’s what has kept everything going for us.”
Ascend Together
“David and I both believe that an excellent business provides an incredible platform for improving and impacting the lives of many and the people it serves. It creates a rising tide. When you achieve big, hairy audacious goals, it creates big, amazing opportunities for everyone who works at or with the firm,” Erin says.
“We are not shy about having significant ambitions because the higher we set our sights, the more impact we will have when we achieve them. Our people 100% embrace that. They get excited about aiming high and seeing their efforts come to life.”
Ascend’s brand promise says it all: Stay Independent, Ascend Together.
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About Ascend
Ascend empowers entrepreneurial CPAs to reach their goals with an innovative growth model that brings their firms into the new age. Backed by private equity from people-focused Alpine Investors, Ascend is building a modern platform for regional accounting firms that enables them to stay independent while accessing the resources of a large CPA firm to help them grow. Ascend provides access to growth capital, robust talent acquisition, best-of-breed technology, a catalytic leadership system, shared back-office services, and modernized equity incentives so that firms can surmount today’s industry challenges and reach their full potential. Founded in January 2023, in its first year of operation Ascend was ranked 59 on Accounting Today’s list of Top 100 Firms. For more information, visit ascendtogether.com.
Contact: Julie Gross Gelfand, APR
(516) 729-8067