In a recent episode of Making Waves, David Toth, Chief Growth Officer of Winding River Consulting, sat down with Josh Beck, Managing Partner at MarksNelson Advisory and MPB | Leadership Accelerated Alumni. Below is a summary of their conversation.
Watch the full podcast interview here.
Since Josh Beck was elected Managing Partner of MarksNelson Advisory in 2018, the firm has grown rapidly. Today, MarksNelson Advisory is a Top 200 firm and has garnered a series of impressive accolades, being recognized as a Top Firm to Work For two years running and as a Regional Leader by accounting today. On top of that, this year the firm received the BDO Alliance Excellence Award for Innovation.
Since Josh joined the firm, MarksNelson Advisory has grown from $15m in 2015 to $40m today. In 2023, Trinity Hunt Partners invested in MarksNelson Advisory and the firm became the founding member of Springline Advisory, a group of like-minded firms building a new model in the accounting profession.
For Josh and his partners, it’s an exciting time. In this conversation, he reflects on his journey so far and shares his thoughts on how firms should approach conversations with private equity.
At just 39 years old, Josh's path to becoming Managing Partner at MarksNelson Advisory was far from conventional. His career began in economic development, where he quickly connected with his professional ‘why’. He explains:
“I saw what happens when businesses grow and are successful. They create jobs and economic security; they invest in public services like schools, parks, fire and police. They reduce poverty and lift up their communities – and all these wonderful things come from business growth.
After spending the early years of his career in economic development, Josh founded his own consulting firm. It was a formative professional experience: he gained not only entrepreneurial skills but also the experience of working closely with C-suite executives. During his time as an entrepreneur, there was one professional relationship he held especially dear:
“The relationship I had with my accountant was the most trusted relationship I had in business. We’d talk about so much more than accounting or my tax return; we’d talk about where the business was going. They knew all of my numbers and had such unique insights.”
As his firm continued to grow, Josh resolved that if he was ever to merge up with a larger partner, it should be an accounting firm. He knew first-hand the value his CPA provided him as a business owner and knew that with the right partner, his firm could have a much greater impact.
18 months later, Josh met the leadership of MarksNelson, and they immediately hit it off. “The principles of their business––to hire great people and really care about their success––resonated with me,” reflects Josh. “I was honored to join MarksNelson through merging my firm in 2015.” Three years later, Josh was elected Managing Partner of MarksNelson.
When Josh took the helm in 2018, MarksNelson found itself at an inflection point in its growth trajectory. The firm faced a choice: to remain as a boutique firm or to intentionally start the process of scaling into a much larger player.
In Josh’s view, the choice was clear: growth. Between 2018 and today, MarksNelson Advisory has grown largely through organic growth that Josh credits to doubling down on industry niches and expanding its advisory services. He comments:
“We didn’t want to have advisory services incubated in a way where we’ve got somebody dabbling with a service. We wanted to sell a great service from day one, led by people who are truly exceptional in their field. Sometimes you have to start putting infrastructure in place where you don't have economies of scale.”
It was an ambitious plan, but one that’s paid off. Josh credits much of the firm’s growth to its commitment to innovation: a trait that saw the firm receive the BDO Alliance Excellence Award for Innovation in 2024. Josh explains:
“We embraced innovation as a firm: we saw where our profession was going and really wanted to build that muscle. Our focus was on taking innovation from being something that we pay lip service to, to something that we take an intentional, programmatic approach toward.”
Josh is keen to call out the role leaders across the firm played in building what he calls an ‘innovation machine’. Initially, they met some resistance at the department level from leaders who were apprehensive about what these investments might mean for their P&L. So, Josh and his team set up a standalone innovation budget and created a system that allowed the firm to quickly test and measure new concepts:
“Our CIO did a great job creating a system that allowed us to score the various ideas we were experimenting with so we could identify the ones worthy of long-term investment. It really helped our management committee make good budgeting decisions and got us off the starting blocks and into a continuous process of innovation.”
In January 2023, MarksNelson Advisory embarked on the next stage of its growth trajectory, accepting investment from private equity group Trinity Hunt Partners. Today, MarksNelson Advisory is a founding member of Springline Advisory, a firm comprised of similarly-minded businesses all working with Trinity Hunt Partners. Together, Springline Advisory firms have revenues of $70m, and the group has its sights set on reaching $100m in revenues by the end of the year.
Josh and his partner group had always maintained it was a question of being patient and finding the right investor. He knew that MarksNelson had a clear path to growth as an independent firm and was in a strong position. After talking to several PE firms, he knew Trinity Hunt Partners would be a great fit:
“I took plenty of calls from PE firms. My first gut check was always culture. A PE firm is a significant partner. If it’s a bad fit, it’s not someone you should consider. Trinity Hunt Partners was different. We saw they were investing in people-based businesses and knew what it meant for the firm’s most important assets to go home to their families every night.”
The strategy is different from the way other PE firms are approaching the accounting industry. Trinity Hunt Partners’ approach wasn’t to create an independent alliance or to roll up firms into an existing entity: it was to create a platform of successful, growing firms with the goal of eventually bringing them all together under the Springline Advisory umbrella. For Josh, this was an attractive model:
“We’re proud to be a founding member of Springline Advisory. There are excellent firms joining us and we find that the opportunity to build something truly exceptional, for iron to sharpen iron, was really exciting.”
For Josh, it was an opportunity reminiscent of the one that brought him to MarksNelson in the first place: the merging of his economic development consulting firm. “When I joined MarksNelson, I saw it as an opportunity to create a better experience for my existing team and clients,” he recalls. “This is similar: we’re going to go further, faster, and we’re going to have a lot of fun along the way.”
A through line of Josh’s career has been his commitment to continuous learning. He’s an alumnus of MBP | Leadership Accelerated, an experience he credits with shaping his leadership style:
“I had two main takeaways from MPB | Leadership Accelerated: that you always have to keep learning and that you must be focused on relationships.”
From Josh’s perspective, learning needs to evolve throughout an individual’s career. Early on, it’s all about developing yourself and your skills. As you move into management roles in your department, the focus is on being more of a teammate and a leader. Once you make partner, the focus changes again as you need to learn how to grow and advance the firm.
Josh reflects that seeking out educational opportunities and putting his learnings into practice at MarksNelson has been key to his growth as a leader. He comments:
“Every time, whether it’s MBP | Leadership Accelerated or a program at Harvard Business School, I walk away with a better understanding of the playbooks that are out there and the knowledge that I don’t have to reinvent the wheel, I just have to apply it in a unique way at MarksNelson.”
Josh’s final advice for rising leaders? Stay focused on people. He reflects: “Everybody in your organization is going to go through something at some point. If you show up for them in those moments, the rest will fall into place. Never forget that we’re a people-centric business: be there and care for your staff and your people.”
Applications for the next round of MPB | Leadership Accelerated are now open. Join us in Chicago for a rigorous bootcamp focused on building the next generation of leaders in the accounting industry.
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