Jeff Brovet, Managing Partner, TJT

Invest: spoke with Jeff Brovet, managing partner of TJT, about the region’s economic growth, the evolving role of advisory services, and the firm’s approach to AI and talent. “The advisory role is the part that I think has the most value in the relationship,” Brovet said.

What changes over the past year have most impacted your firm and your clients in North Carolina?

The continued economic growth in our community has certainly had an impact on our clients. Some of our clients, including our firm, are also seeing the early phases of the impacts of AI.

AI has the ability to do certain things really well, but there are areas where it still has room for improvement. As far as research and reading documents, it does an excellent job, but we have had instances where someone came up with an answer and found that AI was hallucinating.

How would you describe the current business environment for the companies you serve in the Southeast?

The higher interest rate environment has certainly had an impact on the construction industry. Our clients in construction and real estate have learned how to navigate this higher interest rate environment, and some projects are taking a little longer as they figure out how to make the projects work given the higher borrowing costs.

What financial trends are business leaders paying close attention to right now?

Labor markets have certainly had an impact on our clients. Some industries have experienced tight labor markets, while others have noticed a softening, particularly in the professional services sector.

Which sectors are showing the strongest momentum right now?

Construction and real estate have continued to bounce back, and the industry seems to be healthy in the Triangle area. In the homebuilder market, there has been a slight softening. Homebuilders are having to offer more incentives to sell homes than they had in the previous couple of years.

Our market has been hot, and we are probably just coming back to a more normal trend.

What role does advisory and strategic planning play today compared to the more traditional accounting relationship businesses may have relied on in the past?

Our clients probably value that advisory service the most. We have strong relationships with our clients, and they do not simply want us to complete compliance work.

Obviously, the compliance work needs to get done, but the advisory role is the part that I think has the most value in the relationship. We are able to show our value as a firm in how we assist our customers and clients with their needs.

What strategies do you have in place to recruit and retain talent, while also helping your team grow and provide value to clients?

We are a flexible employer, allowing our people to have hybrid working arrangements. That allows us to retain and attract talent.

We are also firm believers that we are better together. There is more productivity, as well as stronger relationships, when you are face-to-face with people. We really encourage our people to have in-person meetings with our clients, and we emphasize the importance of being in the office because of the relationships that are formed there and the learning that happens just by being around others.

That also helps promote our culture because people feel more connected when they are around other people, as opposed to being at a screen in their home.

Looking ahead, what are your top priorities for the firm’s growth?

Our biggest challenge ahead is evaluating our IT back-office infrastructure and ensuring that we are utilizing systems that are talking with each other. We also want to ensure that our platform is teed up for us to best utilize AI in how we operate our business.

We have an AI advisory team in our firm that is responsible for developing our AI strategy, setting policy, and rolling out implementation strategies. We want to ensure that AI is being used in a fiduciary manner and that we are not putting our clients’ information out in public.

Our firm has 285 employees across our four North Carolina offices, and we are continuing to look to grow and operate as an independent regional accounting firm.