Back in the 1970s, Citrin Cooperman and Co. started with two young accountants who had two rock bands as their clients.
Still in their 20s, the firm”™s founders, Niles Citrin and Joel Cooperman, started a small firm based on the trust the bands placed in their skills as accountants. Citrin Cooperman is now celebrating its 35th anniversary in business with six offices, 140 partners and 600 employees, having grown and expanded by nurturing a culture that emphasizes positive interaction with clients, having a well-trained staff that is encouraged to think entrepreneurially and stressing community involvement.
“Going out and trying to build a book of business in your 20s is quite a challenge,” Citrin Cooperman managing partner Alan Badey told the Business Journal in an interview at the firm”™s Westchester Avenue office in White Plains. The partners realized for most bands, the glory is fleeting, and they needed to grow the firm from being accountants for rock stars to accounting rock stars.
“When you go out and talk to a complicated manufacturer or a complicated publisher or health care organization or real estate organization,” Badey said, “they”™re not going to go to a six- or eight-person firm that has 24-year-olds running it.”
So, looking to bring in what Badey called “gray hair,” they looked for accounting practices to merge into the firm and thus expand the business, and by the late 1990s, the firm”™s growth was reaching new heights.
Badey said that as business has gotten more complex, so has accounting, with more and more accountants directing their practices toward distinct specializations.
“The days of the general accountant are slowly going away because of the complications both in the tax law and the accounting principles,” Badey said, noting that computers also simplify a lot of the work that accountants used to perform in decades past.
“We”™ve got a lot of great people that are producing great new relationships all the time,” Badey said. “And we”™ve also acquired a lot of firms over the years, and that brings in technical expertise.”
Bringing in technical expertise has enabled Citrin Cooperman to build a staff that can serve a client base that values the ability the firm has to provide for their accounting needs.
“The firm is nothing without our staff,” said Badey, who told the Business Journal that the firm extensively trains its employees not just in accounting, but works on developing their so-called “soft skills,” giving them the skills to succeed. “The most important thing we do is service our clients, but equal to that, it”™s giving our staff the capabilities to continue to be successful and the third is our commitment to the community.”
Above and beyond the firm”™s commitment to its employees and clients, Badey said that Citrin Cooperman”™s active engagement in all of the communities surrounding the firm”™s six offices is a mainstay of the firm”™s culture.
In Westchester County, Citrin Cooperman is a co-founder, along with the Business Journal”™s corporate owner, Westfair Communications, of the Doctors of Distinction Awards and the Above the Bar Awards, honoring the county”™s top doctors and attorneys.
Since 2012, the firm has also shut down for one day each year, with employees using the day to volunteer with organizations such as the Boys & Girls Club of Stamford, Community FoodBank of New Jersey, Feed the Children, Habitat for Humanity and Ronald McDonald House of New York.
“A lot of our partners and staff are involved in organizations, whether they be professional organizations, business organization or charitable organizations, it”™s very important to have that interaction,” Badey said. “At the end of the day, this firm is part of the community, and we rely on the community, and hopefully, they”™ll rely on us.”
