Lee M. Cohen on Making Accounting Exciting, Giving Back, and Finding Personal Fulfillment

Lee M. Cohen is the founder of accounting firm LMC Advisors, former President of SBH Community Services, and community leader who has redefined what it means to run a successful business. With decades of experience building his firm into a trusted powerhouse, Lee has also made giving back a cornerstone of his life.

In this episode, we explore:

The keys to building a business that aligns with your personal values.
Lee’s approach to making accounting, an industry known as cookie-cutter and plain, an engaging and rewarding profession.
How his commitment to philanthropy has shaped both his life and career. Lee also shares his advice for young adults who want to get ahead.

Enjoy!

Transcript

Victor M. Braca: What does it take to build not just a successful business, but one that truly serves a community? Today’s guest, Lee M. Cohen, has done just that. As the founder of LMC Advisors, Lee transformed his vision for an accounting firm into a powerhouse with 140 employees, all while staying rooted in the values of integrity, giving back, and community.

I’m Victor Braca, and Momentum is where I dive deep with exceptional leaders to uncover the key decisions, defining moments, and lessons that propel them to success and how those insights can inspire your journey forward. In this episode, Lee shares stories that go beyond balance sheets and tax returns—from taking the leap to start his own company with a young family to navigating setbacks that, let’s just say, tested his resilience. Lee opens up about the mindset that helped him grow a firm that prioritizes people just as much as profits.

But this isn’t just about business. Lee talks about his deeply personal commitment to giving back, shaped by his father and solidified through his leadership at community organizations like SBH. You’ll hear how one small act of kindness for a client changed the trajectory of his career and why he believes giving back isn’t just good for the soul; it’s good for business. If you’re looking for insights on scaling a service-based company, advice for young professionals, or a reminder of the power of doing the right thing, this conversation is for you. You’re going to love it. Let’s dive in.

All right, Lee, welcome to Momentum. This is very exciting.

Lee M. Cohen: Thank you for having me.

Victor M. Braca: Thank you for being here, for taking the time. How you doing this morning, first of all?

Lee M. Cohen: Doing great. Looking forward to this. Momentum has been a great inspiration for a lot of people, so I’m looking forward to today.

Victor M. Braca: Thank God. Yeah, and I’m very excited. So, you know, start us off. Tell us who you are. What does your company do?

Lee M. Cohen: My name is Lee Cohen. I’m a CPA. I started my firm, LMC Advisors, 14 years ago. We’re an accounting firm serving both the community and outside of the community. We have about 140 employees currently, and I love what I do.

Victor M. Braca: Okay, beautiful. Take me back to the early days. Did you always know you wanted to go into accounting?

Lee M. Cohen: So, through high school, beginning of college, I was really, really good in math. For me, the only option I thought of was accounting. I did some finance classes, didn’t do that great in them. Did amazing in accounting classes and said, “This is what I want to do.”

Victor M. Braca: Cool. And tell me about your first working experience. I actually read about you that you were managing a chain of family retail stores. Maybe tell me about that. Were you interested in that? Did you want to pursue that? I’m guessing you didn’t.

Lee M. Cohen: Well, actually, out of college—well, throughout college—I was working in the back office of our family retail stores, doing a lot of the bookkeeping and working with the other bookkeepers in the company. When I graduated college, I actually opened a business with my brother, a retail business. I did all the back office and bookkeeping for that business, but I was really, really unhappy.

Our accountant at the time said, “Lee, you need to get out of here. You need to do something in the accounting field. You’re really smart, you’re really talented. Go out and do it.” I thought long and hard about that, and he said he’d help me.

I went to my brother and I asked him, and he practically pushed me out the door and said, “Go do this. Retail’s not for you.” And I went and started doing bookkeeping for people. Then one thing led to another; people were asking me to do taxes and stuff. But I wasn’t yet certified, so I had to go work for a couple of small accounting firms in the city to get the experience to become certified.

Passed the test with a lot of help from my wife at the time, who helped me study. Passed the test and then I was working at a firm for five years, bringing in a lot of business, but it just wasn’t for me. There were too many partners; they didn’t understand my mentality of delivering client service, things when we’re supposed to, deadlines and stuff like that. They didn’t understand, I’ll say, the Syrian business mentality that we have. And one day I just said, “It’s time. If I’m going to take a chance and start my own firm, I’m going to start it and do it right now.”

Victor M. Braca: So take me back to the conversation you had with your wife. Like, you’re married. Do you have kids at that point?

Lee M. Cohen: Yes, we had kids. Yep.

Victor M. Braca: You’re giving up… you’re saying, “Honey, I’m giving up a steady salary and I’m starting my own company, you know, and I might make no money.” Like, how does that play out?

Lee M. Cohen: My wife really stuck by me through everything. Really helped me a lot of times guiding me when sometimes I didn’t see things clearly, but she supported me and said, “I’m here and let’s do it.”

Victor M. Braca: And how did it feel going out on your own? I mean, you wanted to deliver the white-glove service to people, and you said people didn’t understand the mentality of really taking care of your customer. So how did it feel starting your own company?

Lee M. Cohen: So, it was a little scary. But I knew and I had a vision of the type of service I wanted to deliver. I knew what I didn’t want to do from all the other firms that I worked for. Basically, six people that were working for me in my other firm came with me. We took an office that was fully built and we started. We were working on top of boxes, rented desks, until everything came in. But we started and had a lot of support from a lot of banks and factors that I was doing business with. They were happy to help support me to grow and to go on my own. They were great.

Victor M. Braca: At this point, you’re a new company in a relatively crowded market, crowded industry—accounting. How do you set yourself apart? How do you build up your initial clientele? How do you convince people, “You know, come to LMC”?

Lee M. Cohen: I always tried to do the right thing. I always tried to deliver service that was not typical of an accountant—a lot of hand-holding with my clients. I was really just true to who I was, and that’s really what helped me throughout my career to help grow it and deliver the right kind of service and the right kind of advice to clients.

Victor M. Braca: Do you think prospective clients, when they notice that about you—you’re true to who you are, you stick to your values—do you think they respect you more because of that?

Lee M. Cohen: I do. I think they know that I’ll do right by them and that I will work closely with them to give the right advice. What I tell people all of the time is, “I’m going to give you the advice that I would tell myself.” So if I would do this for myself, I’m going to tell you what to do. And that’s really been a great way for me to continue to grow and for people to trust me.

Victor M. Braca: Beautiful. I can tell from you, it’s less just the hard skills and knowing the numbers and knowing the facts; it’s more of connecting with people, doing the right thing. It’s the soft skills that really come out in you.

Lee M. Cohen: Yes. I definitely am able to connect with people. I’m a regular community guy that has built up a business. I’ve worked hard to try and develop the relationships with not only clients but referral sources, and that’s helped me to grow.

Victor M. Braca: So take me through the growth years at the company. Maybe tell me about a setback you’ve experienced—the biggest failure you’ve experienced, so to speak, or what you learned from it.

Lee M. Cohen: So, it was probably at the beginning of my firm when I started it. One of my clients at the time basically did something unscrupulous with the banks. The banks found out about it; I had no clue about it. But the banks really came down hard on me because I had issued financial statements, and they sued me.

For a good year and a half, it really was like a dark cloud over me. I had banks that didn’t want to do business with me because of the situation. The banking community is small. That specific bank wanted nothing to do with me. So like, if I had a client that came to me that used that bank, I had to tell them I can’t service them.

I really learned a lot from that experience. I learned how to really manage the client relationships and really take a little deeper look at some of the things people are doing and make sure the clients are right for me and that I’m taking on the right clients. I’ve turned away clients that don’t want to follow the right advice and do the right thing.

Victor M. Braca: Guys, I want to take a quick break to thank longtime channel supporter Safarda Community and Kosher Media. If you don’t know what Kosher Media is, they’re a digital advertising network for Jewish communities worldwide. They reach hundreds of thousands of people every week and they’ve helped me increase the reach of Momentum, which was very nice of them. They reach their audiences through Instagram ads, Facebook ads, text message blasts, WhatsApp ads—really all across the board. They are the best in the business, guys. Head over to koshermedia.com to work with them. That’s koshermedia.com. These guys are great for all your advertising needs for the Jewish community. Back to the episode.

Can we zoom into the weeks following that setback? I mean, it’s a big reputation blow. Especially if the banking community is small like you mentioned, there’s a lot of people that don’t want to work with you. Your reputation is heavily damaged. How do you build back from that? Because today it’s the opposite. Today if somebody looks at LMC and based on all the awards your company has won—which we’ll get to—you have the opposite reputation. So tell me how that happened.

Lee M. Cohen: It took me not weeks, but a couple months to really figure out what my game plan was going to be. I was nervous. I was nervous about the future of my company, I was nervous about the clients that I was serving, I was nervous about the employees that were working for me. I had a lot on my plate to make sure that this company continues and I’m able to deliver what I promised to people.

I actually went to get advice from someone that was very close to me, outside of the community but in the banking and factoring area. He actually knew the story, which I was surprised because he never said anything to me, and he continued to send clients my way and give me referrals. He said to me, “Lee, just continue to do the right thing. I promise you this will blow over. You do an amazing job for people. Don’t let one unscrupulous client ruin your career and ruin your firm.” And he said, “I will help you.” He basically worked closely with me, kept referring me business, and really helped me to build back the relationships with specifically that bank and just to create the LMC name.

Victor M. Braca: For sure. So you’re running a service-based business. It’s accounting, it’s sort of consulting, servicing clients. How do you scale that? Is it just manpower?

Lee M. Cohen: The model for the accounting industry is manpower. Hire more people. Have people that can do the work, meet with clients, and you know, step away from the actual work that I was doing and continue to be able to be out there just to consult and bring in new business.

I was lucky. I’ve had great people that have worked with me, that continue to work with me, that are partners of mine now or future partners. The first six people that started the firm with me, five of them still work for me; two are partners already. So having the right people behind you and supporting you is definitely a key in the service industry.

The accounting world’s changing a lot. For a while, it wasn’t really an attractive industry to go into. A lot of people say it’s boring, a lot of people say you can’t make money in it, you’re stuck. I hope that I have quelled that fear in people because you could run an accounting firm, you could do well just being an accountant. If you have a good business mind, you can build it up and build a strong firm in any service business, not just accounting.

Victor M. Braca: Right. Now, looking back at the 14 years that you’ve been running your company, I want to focus a little bit on where you started from versus where you are today. So maybe can you touch on how starting from the bottom—starting from nothing, not an established family business, not a connection that you made early on, but really starting on your own—how has that taught you lessons that have stuck with you until today?

Lee M. Cohen: So again, and I’ve said this before: doing the right thing always has been paramount to what we do. Building relationships throughout the community and throughout the outside world in banks, factors, investment advisers, lawyers—all of that. Going out for lunch with them, doing the right thing, has always continued to help me bring on new clients.

I think it’s important for me to share a specific story about growth and something that I think has been paramount to my growth. The story goes like this: I had a client— I was doing one little tax return for him—and he passed away. His wife was left not knowing what to do. She didn’t know how to do a lot of things, but she really needed a lot of help in finance, in taxes, and all of that.

So I really took time. Spent a lot of time with her hand-holding, doing whatever she needed, at probably a fraction of the cost that I would have charged anyone. And it was all great. She introduced me to her investment adviser, who I built up a good relationship with, and he saw how I was treating her.

A year later, I get a call from the investment adviser’s wife. “Hi, you don’t know me, but I have a client whose husband is very, very sick and is going to pass away very soon. I understand from my husband that you are amazing with widows.” I said, “Wow, okay. It would be my pleasure.”

Can we meet with my client, his wife, because we really need to make a decision very quickly about what we’re going to do? I met with them, we hit it off, it worked out really well. That woman is still a client of mine. I provided the same type of white-glove service to her.

But the investment adviser’s wife also had another client. A couple years into it, she said, “I really want you to take a look at my other client’s work.” And the other client was a really big client—our biggest client still to this day. I couldn’t believe that I was even getting the opportunity to even bid for this client. It was big. It was probably 20 entities and trusts and foundations—a lot of stuff that probably was not my strong suit.

But she said, “No, I really want you to take a look at everything and I want you to give me a quote.” In comes five or six boxes of old returns and backup for those returns, and I spent a lot of time looking at them and I found huge mistakes in the returns. Basically shared it with her, and she said, “You’re hired. Give me your price quote.” And to this day, still a client, still delivering that service to them.

From that client, I met another lawyer that deals with high-net-worth individuals, and that firm has really referred a ton of business to me outside of the community. I really attribute it all to helping this widow way back at the beginning of my career.

Victor M. Braca: Wow. That one act of kindness spirals into all of that. That’s amazing. I think if that doesn’t highlight the importance of doing the right thing when nobody’s watching, then I don’t know what does.

I hope you’re enjoying the episode so far. If you are, please leave a like, comment, subscribe. If you’re not, leave a dislike. But really, if you’re enjoying the episode, please share it with somebody who could use a little bit of inspiration. We’re trying to grow the podcast as big as possible; anything you could do to help with that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much. Let’s get back to it.

So you’ve done a great job at being able to mold giving back and focus on impact and community and a lucrative business. But if you’re talking to a young person who feels like they have to decide between the two, what do you tell them to inspire them to find that balance?

Lee M. Cohen: I’m a firm believer in giving back. I’ve been very fortunate and I can watch Hashem’s hands in every single thing that I did and every decision along the way. I feel like it was really important for me to give back. If you’re trying to find that balance, do what you can. You don’t have to spend all your time giving back. You can do a little bit, and as time allows and you’re able to focus on what you’re doing in your career, you find a little bit of time to do it.

I don’t know where I honestly found the time to do it, because if you ask me today could I do what I did in the past—like be president of SBH—I don’t know where I would find the time. But I love giving back, and I loved what it meant for me. I didn’t do it for any reason except because I loved it and wanted to help the community. But it really did a lot for me and for my career and who I am as a person. I learned how to public speak from SBH, from being president of SBH. I was petrified the first time I had to speak publicly. If you see now, it seems easy, but I didn’t sleep the night before I had to make my first speech for SBH.

Victor M. Braca: Yeah, I love it. And it’s a great segue into our focus on community. Really, whoever I speak to—community members, non-community members—everybody is guided by a sense of direction in terms of the community, in terms of giving back, getting involved. I want to ask for you: let’s go over what you’re involved in and why it’s so important to you. For anybody who doesn’t know, in case you want to be humble: you were the president of SBH, you’re very involved in our community. You’re very involved in the UJA, Hatzalah; you were awarded a JCF Charity Award. All these things, Hazak first of all. Why is that so important to you?

Lee M. Cohen: I feel fortunate. I feel fortunate for what I’ve been able to build up, and giving back is very important for me. I’ve instilled it in our firm as well. We have four or five give-back days a year where we do stuff for our own community and other communities as a firm. I feel it’s important to carve out that time and really be able to help in the areas that you know well.

I’ve been asked to be a treasurer or on the audit committee of many organizations. I’m trying to stay away from that now because I do that all day. I want to do other things besides accounting when I’m giving back. But I feel it’s an obligation, and I felt like I liked—especially SBH. I started as a captain, became treasurer, vice president, president. I loved what SBH did and continues to do for the community. I felt that it was my time and asked Hashem for guidance along the way, and thank God it worked well.

Victor M. Braca: Amazing. Is there a specific reason why—I mean we obviously touched on your company’s focus on doing the right thing. We heard that story from you and how it spiraled into who knows how much more business, and that wasn’t even the original intention. But why do you, in particular, put a focus within your company on giving back? I hear from a lot of people who give back, but to see it in your company—five give-back days a year. Can you touch on that a little bit?

Lee M. Cohen: I think giving back has really shaped who I am as a person. It’s been really good for me as a person, it’s been great for my career, and I’ve learned a lot of skills from the different things that I’ve done over the years. Instilling that in the people that work for me—I want them to understand that, and I want them to understand that it’s not just work and that we have a sense of purpose to the world. It’s not just to deliver tax returns and financial statements; we have other things that we can do and it’s important to balance them all out. So that’s just part of my message to my firm.

Victor M. Braca: And you could tell that comes out. Obviously that’s recognized. I want the audience to know: you were named a Top CPA of 2024 by Forbes. You personally were one of Crain’s New York’s Notable Leaders in Accounting. You were awarded the Arthur J. Dixon Public Service Award by the New York State Society of CPAs, and I mentioned the JCF Charity Award. Your firm was recognized as a 2024 Regional Leader by Accounting Today and was ranked the number 14 Best Employer in New York City. Do you think that higher purpose—the sense of morality and ethics in business and giving back in your company—contributed to this?

Lee M. Cohen: I definitely think it contributed a lot to our success. We care a lot about our employees. We know we’re successful because of them, so we try to treat them really well. But I think in today’s day, having a sense of purpose for a firm and having goals—and not just a place to work, but being part of a family and being part of a growing firm—is really important to people. I’ve embraced that and want to continue to build on that.

Victor M. Braca: It’s great. I love it. Wow, this is Dubai chocolate. It’s a new thing, the hottest new thing. It’s a chocolate bar filled with pistachio and kunafa. Delicious. A little too delicious, I think it’s a little dangerous. My sister Joyce just started selling these guys. Place your order, it’s so good. Try it once. Go to https://www.google.com/search?q=tinyurl.com/dubaichocolatenyc. Look at this! Amazing. So good. Back to the episode.

Shifting towards your advice to young adults. What do you think are some concrete steps young adults nowadays can take, whether it be building up soft skills or hard skills, in order to put themselves ahead in terms of success in their career?

Lee M. Cohen: First of all, I think a college degree as well as skills in computers are really, really important today. It’s something we really look for. But being able to speak clearly and be able to public speak or be comfortable speaking to a client or someone like that—it’s really important. Public speaking skills are really important.

Doing things that you love, I think, will help anyone set themselves apart. Because if you really love what you do and you have passion for it, you’re really going to be very strong in it and you’re going to go ahead in any company or anything that you do. The world is shifting—AI, technology—all of these things are really important these days. It’s moving faster than we can even keep up with them in our own business. Having great knowledge about what’s going on in the technology world right now is really important.

And just experience. We used to hire people that just had accounting experience. We’ve shifted over the past couple years; accounting experience is not that important to us. If you’re good at what you do, you have a good business mind, we can teach you the accounting. We’ve taken a different approach to hiring because the accounting market was really tough for a while. So having experience—whatever experience it is—is really important.

And I think the best advice I could give anyone is don’t lie on the resume. The interviewer will see right through it. Be prepared with what your goals are over a five-year horizon, because that’s usually a typical interview question. But be true to who you are in the interview, because you don’t want a job that you’re really not suited to be at.

Victor M. Braca: For sure. I want to shift towards networking a little bit. It sounded like when you mentioned that story earlier about you helping out that widow, in a way that was networking, but it wasn’t in the sense of trying to get something out of somebody else. What I observe often in people is networking trying to build up a relationship so the business relationship comes, but that’s really not the primary goal. How have you built up valuable connections? How do you advise people like me—18-year-olds, people in high school and college—to build up their network, to meet people?

Lee M. Cohen: So, I’ve never purposely networked to gain business. It’s relationships that I built up by working with clients, and then their advisers or their banks or their factors saw the type of work that we did, and then they really reached out to me and said, “Let’s go for lunch, let’s meet. I want to hear more about what you’re doing.”

I think it’s really important that, if you can, being in touch with people and connecting with people in your industry as you’re growing and learning is really good. But again, do good work, do the right thing, and the networking and the people will come to you. I’ve never marketed; I’ve never had a marketing campaign until probably recently, and it’s not even that robust right now. A lot of people just trust me and know my reputation.

Reputation is key in any industry that you’re in. Have a good reputation, work hard, and think a little bit outside of the box sometimes if you have to find the people you’d like to go to lunch with. It doesn’t have to be the top of the bank or the leading partner of a firm; it could be a young person at the company because you never know—you’re both growing and you never know what opportunities could come from anything that you do. So you don’t only have to strive for the top; you can network with people your age or a little older. I feel strongly that it will develop.

We’ve instilled in our firm a lot of networking or business development skills. There are a lot of people bringing in business to our firm now, not just me. Because they’ve networked; they’ve gone to an association, they’ve gone to a trade show. There’s different things that you can do to learn more or understand more of your industry, and I feel like it will come.

Victor M. Braca: I love it. It sounds like the core of what you’re saying is: make a connection. Don’t just strive to better your business or grow your business; you have to really be interested in people.

Lee M. Cohen: You have to be interested in people. You have to work hard. You need to meet with people and be able to feel comfortable speaking with them, and one thing will lead to the next. I can tell you how I started. I met with one factor who was my friend—I mentioned him earlier—and we basically went out for lunch, went to the US Open together, and we built a friendship. That literally led to all my connections with banks and factors that I have today. We have very, very strong relationships with those.

He was a friend in the beginning. I took a chance; he was factoring a small client of mine at the time. We spoke; he knew I was from the community. Every banker, every factor wanted into the community. We became friends, I went to his wedding, and we continue to talk all the time and continue to help each other and refer business back and forth to one another.

Victor M. Braca: Amazing. I love it. So the show is called Momentum. We have a signature question, and we’re trying to inspire people to build up their momentum for eventual success in life. Looking back, what has been your momentum moment? The moment where you were running your business and things started to catch on, where things really turned around for you?

Lee M. Cohen: I was SBH president at the time, and I was pitching a really large client that I was really, really nervous about. I went into that meeting—I was nervous, I was shaking. I know it was not my best meeting ever. But as we continued on in the meeting, we spoke, and he said, “I really love what you have to say and I’m really going to consider moving my work to your firm.”

I said, “That’s great. If you want, I can give you references of clients that have moved to me that are your size and that are really happy.” He looked at me and said, “I don’t need any references from you. You’re SBH president; that’s enough for me.”

At that moment I said, “Wow.” I think everything tied together. I understood why I became SBH president, and I didn’t do it with any intention for business. I felt really good about hearing that, and I think that was one very big moment for me that was pivotal in my career. Hearing that gave me a lot of confidence to go out and pitch other clients and bigger clients. That meeting sticks out for me.

Victor M. Braca: Amazing. And it underscores really the whole theme of our conversation which is: if you give back and you make that your priority—everybody needs to make money, but if you make that your priority—you will see good come from it, even though you’re not doing it to advance your business. Before we close, is there anything else you’d like to tell our audience?

Lee M. Cohen: I want to say: don’t rush it. You have to do your time. You have to gain experience. And don’t give up, because you can’t learn everything in a couple of years. I can tell you now what I know today versus what I know 20 years ago. 20 years ago I thought I knew everything, but what I know today is so different, and that’s only from experience. I feel very strongly about that. I feel like so many young kids want to just make money right away, quick. You need to gain experience to be successful. You’re not going to just be successful overnight.

Victor M. Braca: You heard it here first. All right, Lee, thanks so much. This was a lot of fun. Pleasure looking forward to keeping in touch.

Lee M. Cohen: You got it.

Victor M. Braca: All right. Wow, that was great. That wraps up this incredible conversation with Lee M. Cohen. One thing that really stood out to me is his belief that doing the right thing, not just in business but in life, pays off in ways that you can’t always predict. Whether it was helping a client in need or building a company culture that prioritizes giving back, Lee showed us how success is about more than numbers; it’s about values.

Personally, I loved hearing how one small act of kindness early in his career spiraled into a series of opportunities that shaped his business, and how his focus on relationships and integrity has been a key to his growth. If there’s one takeaway from today, it’s that giving back isn’t just something extra; it’s essential. It can impact your career and community in ways you could never imagine.

If you enjoyed my conversation with Lee, you would love my conversation with Alan Shamah, founder of e.l.f. Cosmetics. In that episode, Alan shares his journey from a challenging childhood, to say the least, to building a $12 billion brand, offering insights into entrepreneurship and brand development. You can find that in the show notes or on all platforms. Again, that’s episode number five of Momentum with Alan Shamah.

Before we go, make sure to check out our new website. Find us at themomentumpodcast.com. Let us know what you think. Please be sure to subscribe on your podcast platform of choice, rate the show five stars, and please share with a friend. See you next time.