Bill Reeb does not mince his words, and anyone that meets him discovers that he is as good a listener as a straight-shooting talker. When asked what he does as a CPA, he very emphatically says, "I help businesses make money!"

This Austin CPA and self-made entrepreneur carries a full client load, speaks as often as 100 times annually for businesses and organizations, and volunteers to help guide some of the newest and most innovative endeavors for AICPA. He has a zest for life and a passion for his profession, and consistently employs a mix of strategy, sweat and verve into every endeavor.

Change Management Done the Old Fashioned Way
The buzzword in today's business marketplace is change management - but does anyone really change and what does this mean? Bill knows. Through his firm, Winters, Winters and Reeb, he has carved a market niche for his clients by helping them see the forest through the trees. He conducts strategy sessions-often in the form of management retreats-as a self-discovery process on what management can do to change their own mindset and improve the bottom line.

Motivator, judge or prophet? Sometimes a mix of all three, as Bill constantly thinks on his feet, is never afraid to provide an opinion and is looked to for advice. He takes a background mixed with technology consulting, accounting and entrepreneurial skills, and uses all three to push his clients to their limits, often telling them what they don't want to hear. The bottom line: a foundation of solid communications skills.

"A retreat can be a very confronting and hostile place, kind of like walking into a war," he says. "I like facilitating planning retreats because they demand every bit of skill I have as a communicator. I bring up the issues people would rather shove under the carpet than face, and it's my job to be the bad guy. Management can save 'face,' and often needs to keep everyone on an even keel. It's my job to make sure the tough issues are discussed and they have an action plan."

Change management often leads, says Bill, to reorganization. Nevertheless, he remains extremely sensitive in teaching his clients that they must tie any job-related change back to performance measurement. He believes that any time you try to get people to change their habits, you have to look at the underlying compensation system because people do what they get paid to do, not what management espouses as their "strategy of the week."

"The problems are almost always the same in any company," he says. "Every company has a communication problem, and most of them have a compensation problem. Management, for example, is always surprised when employees take actions contrary to management's own expectations because management 'incents' their staff to do the wrong things."

Value-Added Consulting
After the retreats or meetings, Bill often is engaged to help his clients map a management and technology-based strategy, relying on his CPA background time and time again. He says organizations tend to view strategy with a short-term view that focuses on cost, so it follows that his knowledge of systems and accounting intermingle to provide the basis of any consulting engagement.

Bill was motivated early-on to pursue long-range goals and was inspired through an untraditional career path. He spent his early work in sales for IBM, a position that he says provided him a strong understanding of marketing. He then left sales and went on to obtain his CPA, and along the way, started seven businesses, including a retail software company with revenues of $1.4 million, a real estate company and his present firm. He also has written numerous publications and articles for the nation's top accounting-related organizations and companies, and has designed many business-related software products.

His insight and experience led him to his position as chair of AICPA's Consulting Services Team, the oversight group that created the Accredited in Business Valuation (ABV) designation and now is working on several more that may be released next year. Bill also works at the state level with the Texas Society of CPAs as chair of the Technology Oversight Committee, and was the state society's delegate to the CPA Vision's National Future Forum. In fact, Bill even had a hand in writing the Vision statement.

"Being an entrepreneur gave me a significant amount of humility, and a lot of confidence in creativity and the scope of knowledge it takes to deal with business issues," he says. "The part I was missing was the CPA. There is no way to run an organization today without a financial understanding of what you have and where to go. In something as simple as technology, for example, there's no way to get a company to commit if you don't understand how finance and technology work together."