As 2019 winds down, let’s take one last look back at the most popular MACPA / BLI podcasts of the year. Happy listening … and happy New Year!

No. 1: Navigating the twists and turns of your career, with Tony Nitti

Tony Nitti is a partner in RubinBrown’s Tax Services Group, a well-known contributor of tax content to Forbes, and a frequent speaker and trainer at seminars and webcasts across the country. What’s clear when you hear him talk, though, is that he’s just a guy trying to figure out his way in the world. But his journey has been amazing, and it’s something that all of us can learn from. Listen here.  

No. 2: Evolving with client expectations and the growth of Client Accounting Aervices, with Hitendra Patil

Are we evolving to meet our clients’ evolving expectations? Client accounting services is a case in point. More and more of our clients don’t want to deal with accounting, or finance, or payroll, or any of that stuff. They want to focus on what they do well and leave all of that other stuff to someone else. That someone else could be you, if you’re set up to provide that type of stuff. Listen here.  

No. 3: Mindbridge: Artificial intelligence for small firms, with Samantha Bowling

We've talked about artificial intelligence for years as a possible disrupter for our profession, as a possible job destroyer, as a possible opportunity generator. Well, you can officially take the word “possible” out of all of those phrases. A.I. is here, and it’s delivering as advertised. Listen here.  

No. 4: Critical thinking and strategic planning: Paths to future-readiness, with Jennifer Elder

We're talking about strategic planning and critical thinking here, or planning strategically and thinking critically, or critical strategy and planning to think – or whatever you want to call it. That is to say, it's all about looking ahead today; mapping a road to the future and then figuring out how to get there. Listen here.  

No. 5: The outsourced accountant, with Nick Sinclair

We all make time for the stuff that’s really important and valuable to us. And if we find ourselves really busy with stuff that’s not important or valuable … well, that just means, to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, that our priorities are way out of whack, and we’ve got to do something to get them back in line. Nick Sinclair has built a growing global business that’s designed to help accounting and finance pros do exactly that. Listen here.  

No. 6: Culture management, with Jamie Notter

Most of us probably haven’t given it much thought, but Jamie Notter has developed a definition of employee engagement that turns this entire conversation on its head and leads directly to a blueprint for creating a culture in which employees are much more engaged in their jobs – and which makes your organization much more successful by extension. Listen here.  

No. 7: Bringing innovation into accounting and finance, with Jordan Kleinsmith

We’ll be flattened by what’s in front of us if we don’t take the time to look for if -- if we don’t take the time to turn around and look for what futurist Andrew Zolli would call those “weak signals of disruptive change” on the horizon. If we don’t start training ourselves to look forward to what’s next as much as we look back to what’s happened … well, we’re doomed, to be honest with you. That's where Jordan Kleinsmith comes in. Listen here.  

No. 8: The excellence dividend, with Tom Peters

There's a school of thought — a pretty well-supported and powerful school of thought — that says in order to become future-ready, we really need to be doing nothing more than what we all should have been doing right from the start: providing excellence — excellence, certainly to our clients and customers, but just as importantly, to our employees. Leadership expert Tom Peters breaks it down in this memorable interview. Listen here.  

No. 9: Building tomorrow’s leaders today, with Emmanuel Gobillot and Katherine Thomas

This is a blueprint of sorts for how you can turn yourself into a great leader, teaching us what we should be doing today to improve our odds of becoming the leaders of tomorrow. Listen here.  

No. 10: Scaling our lives by seeing things differently, with Brian Solis

A key to future-readiness – to creating the capacity to become future-ready – is becoming more aware of what’s sucking the time out of our lives so that we can better prioritize what we actually want to and should be doing. Because let’s face it, a lot of our time today isn’t spent working – it’s spent being distracted. Listen here.