Before You Grow, Do This First
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.
Similarly, any time we have family or friends over for dinner, our whole family spends about a half hour putting things away, scrubbing toilets, and wiping down counters before our dinner guests arrive. (I joke that we invite people over at least once a month just to force us to clean.)
The point is, we don’t want to invite people we care about into a mess.
The same goes for your accounting firm. Before you grow, whether that means bringing in a new client, contractor, or employee, you want to get your “house” in order first.
This applies whether you’re a $60K solo firm or a $600K firm with your eye on $1M.
Before you grow your firm, you want to make your current firm the best version of itself.
That means having a:
✔️ documented onboarding process
✔️ defined and scalable client workflow
✔️ clear packages and pricing
✔️ work schedule with boundaries
✔️ fully synced tech stack
✔️ landing page for your ideal client
If you have unresolved or inefficient onboarding, workflow, or tech stack issues, adding more clients / employees / contractors will only add to the problems you’ll need to fix later.
Resist the urge to chase growth before you have the best version of your current firm.
Fix these things before you’re at capacity and desperate for time.
Block the time.
Decline the new client.
Do the work.
Then, and only then, grow the amazing firm you’ve built and refined.
Cheers,
Erica
PS - We have a three-part, live, hands-on Pricing Increase Workshop starting this month in Aligned (see below). If getting a hold of your current client pricing is one of the things you need to get in order - join us! I’ll walk you through my own process, give you time in the session to do it for yourself, and answer any questions you have. Plus you’ll have the camaraderie of people doing the same thing at the same time.
What’s Happening in Aligned
Demo: Gusto Money: Tue, Oct 14th - 3pm MST
Workshop: Annual Pricing Increases (Part 1): Fri, Oct 24th - 12pm MST
Office Hours w/ Erica: Thur, Oct 30th - 10am MST
Question of the Week > I'm starting to plan our Aligned Holiday Party! What should we do? (a) holiday trivia, (b) puzzle competition, (c) murder mystery, (d) mulled wine/cider class
Current Discussions On > increasing pricing for current clients in Anchor, celebrating the last day of a W-2 (congrats Melissa!), pricing / serving bookkeeping-only clients, QBO invoice matching issues, leads and new client wins (congrats Benjamin!), bank PDF-to-CSV files, and more!
Join the discussion with 150+ like-minded, non-scaling accountants / really cool humans in the link below.
Money back guarantee, if you get in there and don’t see the value. No questions asked.
More details in the link above.