If taking the first step to starting your own accounting / tax / CAS / fractional CFO firm is on your 2026 resolution list, and you don’t know where to start, here are the 5 simple foundational steps to building the foundation of your firm:

Oh, 2025…what will I say about you? You were a doozy. It’s probably not an exaggeration to say that after 8 years of firm ownership, 2025 was my most emotionally taxing (no pun intended) to date.

I’ll officially declare my 2026 planning session last week (that happened at my kitchen table, overlooking the valley and mountains) a booming success. Not because I plan to grow X% next year, quite the opposite actually, but because I felt like I walked away with clarity and peace.

It’s Wednesday, so I would normally be off from accounting firm work today, but I shifted my week a little due to the holiday. My parents were in town until yesterday, so I took most of Monday off to hang with them.

With absolutely nothing to do with running an accounting firm (because it’s nice to remind ourselves that we’re more than our work), here’s what I’m…

Last week I talked about my Monday Scorecard and I mentioned that I can complete my weekly scorecard in 15 minutes (usually in 10, if I don’t see a shiny object - Squirrel!) The reason I can knock this out in 10 minutes is because of this simple Google Chrome hack.

A few years back, I onboarded a new client that was big on running his company on EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System). At a similar time, some bigger accounting firm owners were talking about EOS for their internal firm operations as well.

A couple weeks ago, my car started making a funny noise (it’s 11 years old, so it’s allowed). I wanted to take it to my favorite mechanic in town, Mike, but he’s hard to get ahold of.

Every October, for the past 3 years, I’ve kicked off my annual “Pricing Adjustment Review” for all of my clients. It doesn’t necessarily mean every client’s pricing increases every year. This is more art than science.

If you’re thinking about joining us at next week’s Pricing Increase Workshop (where I’ll cover increasing prices of current clients), I want you to come prepared with what your ideal prices are for new clients.

If you’ve ever prepped for a new baby in your family, you likely went through a “nesting” period. You built the crib, washed the onesies, and generally got everything in the right place before the baby got there.

At the end of every month, I block 4 hours on my calendar to plan out the upcoming month. Every 3 months, that time includes planning the next 3 months as well. This past Monday, I planned October and Q4.

Quietly, behind the scenes, Lou (my web designer), my daughter (the 14yo), and I have been toiling away getting all past newsletters loaded up onto a website. And…

Here’s a recent win from an Aligned member (shared with permission):

My first real corporate internship was when I was 19 years old, at a place called Hewitt Associates. At the time, Hewitt was a privately held company, headquartered in Chicago’s northern suburbs. The particular building I sat in was surrounded by wooded acreage right off I-94.

With absolutely nothing to do with running an accounting firm (because it’s nice to remind ourselves that we’re more than our work), here’s what I’m reading, watching, and playing.

If you read last week’s email, you know that we’re in the middle of playing “Is it AI?”, where you guess if I used AI to write my refreshed website copy.

Have you ever watched “Is It Cake?” on Netflix? Pastry chefs attempt to make a cake that looks like something else (purse, shoe, bowl of fruit, etc) and then three judges have to determine, from a reasonable distance, which of the purses / shoes / fruit bowls are actually cake.

Last week was county fair week. For context, I spent my entire life in the suburbs of Chicago until our family moved to very rural, very small town Idaho 6 years ago.

Only 110 days until Christmas, but more importantly…Only 25 more days until the Fall Selling Season. Why is September thru early-December a selling season for small accounting firms?