“When you chart out demand versus supply of people over time, what that math tells you is that ten years from now, 2035, every CPA in the profession will have to be 2.7 times more productive on a revenue per employee basis than they are today. That is crazy.”
David Wurtzbacher shared this projection on a recent episode of the Earmark Podcast. As the founder and CEO of Ascend, a private equity-backed platform that’s completed over three dozen firm acquisitions in just over two years, Wurtzbacher offers an outsider’s perspective on the profession.
His background scaling Lightwave Dental from 7 to 80 locations taught him how private equity can either destroy professional cultures or transform them for the better. Now he’s applying those lessons to accounting, where the numbers paint a sobering picture: demand for services keeps climbing while fewer people enter the profession each year.
To put this in perspective, a typical well-performing firm today generates around $200,000 in revenue per employee. Wurtzbacher’s projection means that number needs to approach $600,000 per person within a decade. Even scarier? By 2035, roughly 85% of the profession will consist of people with ten years or less of experience in an industry where most say you can’t even make partner in that timeframe.
But Wurtzbacher isn’t just highlighting the problem. Through Ascend’s model of preserving firm independence while providing enterprise-scale resources, he’s showing how firms can achieve these seemingly impossible productivity gains through three key transformations.
The Leadership Evolution: From Managing Partner to True CEO
The biggest barrier to 2.7x productivity isn’t technology or talent. It’s how firm leaders spend their time. Most managing partners remain trapped doing client work while trying to run their businesses, creating a fundamental ceiling on growth.
“The very first place we go is to the leader of the firm,” Wurtzbacher explains. “We want to help them through a transition to become a true CEO, defined as them having one client, which is the firm.”
This leadership trap stems from what Wurtzbacher calls the “fiercely independent” culture of accounting. During his research, he consistently heard from entrepreneurial CPAs who valued their independence: the name on the door, community reputation, caring for people and clients their way. But this independence prevents the changes necessary for breakthrough growth.
The problem runs deeper than time management. The client service orientation that defines quality accounting actually caps leadership development. With seasonal demands and constant client pressure, managing partners find limited windows for strategic work throughout the year.
The real breakthrough requires confronting a limiting belief. “When you’re close with your clients, you believe nobody can do the work but you,” Wurtzbacher observes. “No one else can have this client relationship.”
Consider Lee Cohen from LMC in New York, who exemplifies this transformation. Cohen was initially stressed, unhappy, and heavily involved in client work. Through Ascend’s CEO transition process, “Cohen literally became a different person. He would tell you that,” Wurtzbacher says.
Fifty percent of Cohen’s transformation came from a mindset shift. The other fifty percent came from bringing in a Chief Growth Officer—not a traditional business development role, but a general manager from outside the profession. “A lot of them have MBAs, but they are hungry, humble, smart people that come in and create visibility for that leader about what’s going on in the business and where there are opportunities.”
This operational support, combined with the mindset shift away from client dependency, sets leaders free to focus on what only they can do: building and directing their firms.
Creating an “Irresistible Offer” for Top Talent
Even the best leadership transformation can’t solve the profession’s talent crisis through traditional methods. When quality candidates routinely field six, seven, or eight job offers, firms need something fundamentally different.
Wurtzbacher’s solution centers on creating an “irresistible offer,” and it starts with better recruiting. “So many firm recruiters grew up in the profession, and they’re trapped with the baggage of old ways of doing things,” he explains. Ascend built a team of professional recruiters from outside accounting who understand best practices for finding candidates and closing deals.
But the real breakthrough is compensation innovation. While the profession is “very base salary heavy,” Ascend developed an off-the-shelf bonus program that lets firms pay more cash than competitors. They also extended equity ownership far beyond traditional partner levels.
“We have well over 100 people across all our firms that are managers or senior managers that are investors in Ascend. They own Ascend stock,” Wurtzbacher reveals. These employees invest $10,000 to $50,000 annually in company stock—typically funded through the enhanced bonus program—essentially dollar-cost averaging into equity appreciation throughout their careers.
This creates what Wurtzbacher calls “a different cultural energy.” When people understand how equity value creation works outside the traditional partnership model, they connect their daily work to long-term wealth building. The psychological shift from employee to owner fundamentally changes commitment levels.
The design also solves a collaboration problem. Because everyone owns Ascend stock regardless of which firm they work for, “it creates a one team attitude across all our firms” that unlocks knowledge sharing across the platform.
The results speak for themselves. Firms that described capacity as their “#1 issue” now consider that problem solved. “Our big issue now is how do we go and get all the right kinds of new business that we want to keep our great people excited and motivated,” Wurtzbacher notes.
Technology at Enterprise Scale
Achieving nearly triple productivity requires more than incremental improvements. It demands systematic transformation through AI, global teams, and automation that individual firms cannot afford alone.
But there’s a gap between AI hype and reality. “There is so much more hype and future forecasting than there is reality in this area,” Wurtzbacher observes. For firms feeling behind, “that’s just not the case.” Most firms implementing AI are saving perhaps two hours per person per week, and that’s only for the most advanced adopters.
This creates both opportunity and strategic imperative. While individual firms struggle with overwhelming AI options, they lack technical expertise and capital for truly transformative capabilities. The solution requires enterprise scale.
Ascend illustrates this advantage in action. They’re building a 30-person software engineering and AI team by year-end. “No medium-sized or smaller firm is going to be able to do that,” Wurtzbacher explains.
Their strategy operates on two fronts: strategic buying versus building. For general needs, they purchase existing products. For capabilities essential to their workflows, they invest millions annually developing proprietary AI solutions.
One promising area addresses what Wurtzbacher calls the client context problem. Years of relationships generate institutional knowledge typically trapped “in your head, in spreadsheets, in work papers, in your inbox, and some other tool.” Their AI team works on aggregating this context into accessible systems that transform practitioners from information gatherers into true advisors.
Global talent represents another productivity component. Ascend’s acquisition and transformation of Sentient Solutions, a global capability center exclusively serving US accounting firms in Hyderabad, India, demonstrates sophisticated global team integration. But this isn’t simple outsourcing; it requires developing playbooks that elevate rather than replace domestic work.
Even basic infrastructure offers huge opportunities. Practice management systems in accounting are “so messed up,” Wurtzbacher notes. Before AI delivers transformation, firms need fundamental technological foundations for tracking work and maintaining institutional knowledge.
The Choice Facing Every Firm
Survival depends on three interconnected transformations happening simultaneously: leaders evolving from client servers to strategic CEOs, revolutionary talent approaches through equity ownership, and enterprise-scale technology investments individual firms cannot achieve.
This is a watershed moment for professional services. The mathematical reality of 2.7x productivity gains will separate surviving firms from those becoming obsolete. When 85% of the profession will have a decade or less experience by 2035, traditional models don’t just fail; they become mathematically impossible.
But there’s reason for optimism. Firms embracing these changes discover that freeing leaders from client work unleashes strategic energy, equity ownership creates cultural transformation beyond salary increases, and enterprise-scale technology delivers impossible productivity gains.
Wurtzbacher’s personal timeline reinforces this long-term vision. At 37, he tells people “this very well could be the last thing I do. So I’m thinking of Ascend in terms of decades.” While typical private equity investments last three to four years, his commitment spans the time needed for real transformation.
For accounting professionals, this is an existential threat and an unprecedented opportunity. The mathematical moment of truth has arrived. The question isn’t whether change is coming. It’s whether you’ll lead it or be overwhelmed by it.
Listen to the full conversation with David Wurtzbacher on the Earmark Podcast to hear more about Ascend’s approach to transforming accounting firms while preserving their independence.