How do you run 6-figure accounting firm in only 15 hours a week? How do you do it? What’s the magic formula?

I’m at a local networking event all day today (I wrote this yesterday). After years of focusing on national and virtual reach for finding new clients, I now have a growing itch to focus locally for lead generation.

Last week, fellow subscriber Lori Yearwood, CPA asked this question and I think the answer is worth sharing more broadly…Curious – what types of services are you providing to clients that you would consider CFO type services?

Admittedly, I was really nervous when I hit ‘Send’ on last week’s newsletter. Maybe I was totally off base. Maybe it was just me…And then you flooded my inbox with replies.

I think there’s downward pricing pressure facing our industry right now. Full stop. (All the value-pricing spokespeople just unsubscribed. It’s fine.)

At a high level, I think there are 2 ways to grow an accounting firm…Option 1: Fast & Furious or Option 2: Slow & Methodical

I started my firm’s newsletter in 2021. It was the year our youngest went to full day 1st grade and I finally had newfound capacity to take on more clients. It was also the year I started posting on social (mainly IG at the time). I was marketing for the first time.

About a month ago, deep inside one single line of The 15 Hour Accountant Newsletter, I casually mentioned that I’m pulling back on my newsletter (my firm newsletter called “Money Stuff”, not this one!) and my podcast. You can read the original mention here.

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.

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):

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?

Your kids are teaching more about selling than you realize. In our house, it sounds like this: “Do you want an apple or strawberries on your plate?”

We’re talking about the “casual drop” today…

When I was about 1 year into my accounting firm ownership life, I was in a Girl Scout carpool headed to a weekend jamboree camp.  Me in the driver’s seat, my newish mom-friend Amy in the passenger seat, and lots of 8 year old girls in the back. (I later found out that my spiritual gift is not carpooling lots of small children, but I digress.)

Sometimes, upgrading current clients is a much easier and faster way to increase revenue than pounding pavement for brand new clients.

What Does the State of the Economy Mean for the Accounting Industry?