Business Strategy for CPA's – Details, episodes & analysis

Have you ever felt frustrated or discouraged when you imagined your firm being a certain way but couldn’t make it your reality?

Belita Blasingame knew she was up to the challenge of reshaping a firm she had purchased into the one she envisioned. 

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Link to full shownotes: 

https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/

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If you feel trapped by your own accounting firm, I can help you stop the chaos and end the long hours without losing revenue or hiring. Join 5000+ other CPAs who get my single-tip daily emails.

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Subscribe here: geraldinecarter.com/subscribe

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Readers say they love it because they’re short and on point.

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Want more client interviews?

310 From Exhausted to Having Her Life Back: Wendy Norman, CPA

304 From 55 Down to 15 Hours; Same Take-Home Pay with Melissa Downs, EA

293 What it Takes to Work 15 Hours per Week with Erica Goode, CPA

Complete list:

geraldinecarter.com/client-interview-episodes

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Three ways I help overworked CPAs go down to 40 hours without losing revenue or hiring:

THE EMAIL COURSE – Free
geraldinecarter.com/stop-working-weekends
Stop Working Weekends will teach you how to reduce your hours without giving up revenue. 

THE BOOK – $9.99

geraldinecarter.com/book
Down to 40 Hours – A Roadmap for CPAs to End Overworking Without Losing Revenue

THE VIDEO COURSE – $497
geraldinecarter.com/video
Access 30+ video lessons, bonus training, template letters, website teardowns, and more. Plus, get a $1000 credit toward my DT40H Mastermind and a money-back guarantee.

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Do you think like someone who bills, or like someone who prices?

If you think like a person who bills, you might be leaving profit on the table. Learning how to price requires thinking like a person who prices. 

This episode will help you get this concept into your bones so you can start thinking like a pricer and bring in more revenue for equivalent work. 

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Link to full shownotes: 

https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/

…

If you feel trapped by your own accounting firm, I can help you stop the chaos and end the long hours without losing revenue or hiring. Join 5000+ other CPAs who get my single-tip daily emails.

.
Subscribe here: geraldinecarter.com/subscribe

.

Readers say they love it because they’re short and on point.

…

Want more client interviews?

310 From Exhausted to Having Her Life Back: Wendy Norman, CPA

304 From 55 Down to 15 Hours; Same Take-Home Pay with Melissa Downs, EA

293 What it Takes to Work 15 Hours per Week with Erica Goode, CPA

Complete list:

geraldinecarter.com/client-interview-episodes

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FOUR ways I help overworked CPAs go down to 40 hours without losing revenue or hiring:

THE EMAIL COURSE – Free
geraldinecarter.com/stop-working-weekends
Stop Working Weekends will teach you how to reduce your hours without giving up revenue. 

THE BOOK – $9.99

geraldinecarter.com/book
Down to 40 Hours – A Roadmap for CPAs to End Overworking Without Losing Revenue

THE VIDEO COURSE – $497
geraldinecarter.com/video
Access 30+ video lessons, bonus training, template letters, website teardowns, and more. Plus, get a $1000 credit toward my DT40H Mastermind and a money-back guarantee.

CPA MASTERMIND – $9500
geraldinecarter.com/40
For the overworked CPA at six figures of revenue who is ready to stop working weekends, wants to implement overdue changes, and doesn’t want to do it alone. You’ll make progress faster and with more confidence. 
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You can figure out how to make the changes you need to make to your firm out on your own. But just because you can doesn’t mean you should. I talk with Down to 40 Hours CPA Masterminder Hector Cantu about the difference between DIYing and taking the shortcut. 

– “It would have taken me years on my own to figure out the changes we made in less than a year.”

In less that ten months, Hector cut his hours by 19% and increased his revenue 32%. His prices are about 3x higher than where he started. Now he has time to think about hiring, training, and growing his practice.  And he doesn’t feel as rushed or stressed when working with his clients. 

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Hey CPA firm owner, glad you found the podcast. 

If you feel trapped by your own accounting firm and are fed up with PiTB clients who get you their stuff late, don’t appreciate the value you provide, and complain to you when you don’t turn it around on a dime, I can help you stop the chaos and end the long hours without losing revenue. 

If you like the podcast, join 4200+ other CPAs who get Vitamin G, my daily dose of single-tip business strategy delivered straight to their inbox: 

Subscribe here: geraldinecarter.com/subscribe

Readers say they love it because they’re short and on point.

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If you like the idea of working less, you might enjoy these episodes from client interviews:

295 Niche Journey and 5x Higher Prices than 24mo Ago with Sheila Hansen, CPA

293 What it Takes to Work 15 Hours per Week with Erica Goode, CPA

281 4 Pricing Problems Solved with Kathy Hayden, EA

Freedom to Choose Not to Double Revenue with Prithi Daswani, CPA

When you need to explore, with Rebecca Driscoll, CPA

15 Hour Weeks, $200K, 70%+ Margins, with Erica Goode, CPA

130% Revenue Increase While Working Less with Paige Gott

How to Build $250K in CPA Advisory Services in 4 Months, with Prithi Daswani, CPA

From Scratch to 6 Figures in 9 Months with Shaan Afridi, CPA

Want to get your life back while protecting your revenue?

Here are a few ways I help overworked CPAs:

GO DOWN TO 40 HOURS

THE EMAIL COURSE
Stop Working Weekends will teach you how to reduce your hours without giving up revenue.
geraldinecarter.com/stop-working-weekends
Free

THE BOOK

Down to 40 Hours – A Roadmap for CPAs to End Overworking Without Losing Revenue

geraldinecarter.com/book

$9.99

THE VIDEO COURSE
Access 30+ video lessons, bonus training, template letters, website teardowns, and more. Plus, get a $1000 credit toward my DT40H Mastermind and a money-back guarantee.
geraldinecarter.com/down-to-40-hours-video-course
$994 » 50% off for a limited time! » $497

A 1:1 CONSULTATION
Do you have a burning question about the material in Down to 40 Hours? Book a one-on-one call with me to get guidance on implementing the material in your situation.
geraldinecarter.com/coaching-options/
$1295

CPA MASTERMIND
For the overworked CPA at six figures of revenue who is ready to stop working weekends and wants to implement overdue changes but has trouble doing it alone:

• Get guidance on increasing prices without overdoing it or underdoing it
• Disengage problem clients at a pace you’re comfortable with
• Create packages while knowing how to navigate scope creep
• Focus on your client niche without feeling like you’re jumping off a ledge
• Be in a community of like-minded CPAs on a similar journey to share best practices, have a sounding board, and get accountability

Make more progress faster and with greater confidence and ease. Guaranteed to get you down to 40 hours.
geraldinecarter.com/
$9500

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In this episode, I share with you how you can get down to a 40-hour workweek, work with great clients you enjoy, all without forsaking revenue. 

It's what we do in Down to 40 Hours with CPA Mastermind, my four-month program designed to help CPAs like you build simpler, more profitable, easier to run businesses. 

It is the best program out there for the CPA who wants to get down to a 40-hour workweek, and now is the best time to give it to yourself.

So an episode today in five parts: 

1. What you want
2. What you have instead and how you got here 
3. What the solution is 
4. The process for getting out 
5. What you'll have when you travel the length of the process

If you're a CPA who is ready to have a practice you love making solid money, working with clients you enjoy and doing rewarding work without the insane hours, check out CPA Mastermind and get on the waitlist:

https://geraldinecarter.com/waitlist

If want more details, and have questions, check out https://geraldinecarter.com/cpa-mastermind.

And if you still have questions, email me at gc@geraldinecarter.com.

Highlights:

— “When you sell work, what that means is that you're going to do work all the time because that's what you're selling.”

— “Focus on the value that you can create for your clients.” 

— “We help you get better at communicating value so that you don't have to feel like you have to justify your prices or your bill to your client after the fact.” 

— “When we focus on exactly your ideal buyer who you want to work with, and you begin to work with only those kinds of clients, you generate efficiencies as you see ways to improve systems and stop doing all kinds of stuff to please all kinds of people.”

— “Knowing what to do is only half the battle. The other half of the battle is having your head in the right space and having a mindset that works in your favor.”

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We're talking with Sheila Hansen, who is a participant, a masterminder in my program, Down to 40 Hours CPA Mastermind, to get her perspective on the experience of what it's like, and the value of being in this program.

Sheila helps female-owned creative businesses understand their numbers while increasing profit and scaling to $500K-$2M in revenue.

Highlights:

— “One value of this program is really digging into niching. In some ways it was giving myself permission to go the route that I wanted to go.”

— “We don't have to have it all figured out exactly today.”

— “Clients care about if we can provide a solution that helps them see where their cash is going, and how to keep more of it and spend (or not spend) in a way that aligns with their goals.”

— “In the 10 weeks since we started, I have grown my monthly recurring contracts by 65% in revenue dollars. And in doing so, I only grew my client roster about 25%.” 

— “The mindset coaching sessions help me go from being paralyzed and not taking any action or avoiding it all together, to actually moving forward and getting something accomplished.” 

Connect with SHEILA:

Website: https://www.hansenllc.net/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sheila.hansen.cpa/

Get first access when CPA Mastermind enrollment opens:

https://geraldinecarter.com/waitlist

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?*

Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe

Today we're talking about disengaging and disengagement letters and the process of letting go of some, or many of your clients so that you can free up space and bandwidth in your business to focus on generating high-margin revenue. 

I want to share with you what this looks like, sounds like, and feels like, so that you have a sense of the experience, so that you know that this is doable for you. 

Not only is it doable for you: it is imperative if you are a CPA, especially when working 70, 60, 50 hours a week, and you’re exhausted and worn out and want to keep being a CPA. 

Highlights:

— “There's more revenue to be created when you focus at the top end of your client roster and figure out and design higher-value, higher-margin services that are designed to solve problems for your clients.”

— “The risk of not appropriately disengaging so that you can get your time and your bandwidth back is that your best clients, who can't get your attention, leave.”

— “Your position is your north star: it informs your strategy, packaging, pricing, and how you promote your business. Without a north star, a business owner wanders all over the map.” 

— “The strategy is universally the same: isolate who you want to work with, decide what problem you're going to solve, choose your prices and your packaging, and then focus on selling to only those people.” 

— “Disengaging is good for you. It's good for your business, and it's good for your clients.”

Episode mentions:

211 Pricing For Improved Profitability 

https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/211

201 Effortless Value

https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/201

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As an accountant, chances are good you don't like selling: you don't want to be dirty, pushy, smarmy or gross. Nor do you want to have to convince buyers that accounting is good for them (they should know)!

If you’re stuck believing “sales is dirty,” you will hinder revenue coming in the door. 

When you believe that what you offer solves problems for people, and you work in service of your buyer, selling becomes a conversation where you seek an understanding of the problem and the solution, and explore ways to work together that are mutually beneficial.

When you understand the six elements to be looking and listening for, selling gets so much easier. It also helps you see how your buyers view what you offer, which simplifies what you need to communicate when promoting your tax practice, and having discovery conversations. 

These six elements help you understand your prospect more deeply, which makes for conversations that get to the heart of the matter more quickly, quickening the sales cycle and improving your conversion rates. 

These elements are: symptom, pain, solution, process, result, and value.

Highlights:

— “Your clients are coming to you because they believe that you may be able to help them get from where they are now to where they want to be.” — “When you talk to your buyer, in their buyer's English, that's how they know that you're listening and that you actually understand them.”

— “When your buyers know that you understand them, and you have a process for helping them, it deepens trust which accelerates their journey of working with you.”

— “The more you can create a repeatable process, the easier it will be to systematize, the less work it will be for you. The more you systematize, the more time you get back, through delegation or otherwise.” 

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Many CPAs tell me they are looking for high-paying clients. They wonder where those clients are, and “how to get them to spend more.”

Knowing what I'm about to tell you will expand your view of what's possible for you when you have a deeper appreciation for what's valuable to me as a multi six figure coach and what is less so.

This episode is born of a conversation that came about in CPA mastermind, my four-month coaching program for CPAs to help them build businesses that are much easier run and much more profitable. 

They were asking about what my experience as a coach is, so I shared with them where I invest, and how I think about the value of each of the services I receive from my tax return-only CPA to my cashflow CFO/CPA, to my business coach. 

This proved to be a helpful way for them to see where I was investing my money in my business and to help them think about their clients and their buyers and where they may be able to capture and create value that they might not have already been seeing.

Highlights:

— “When you don't know where or how to create value, that's value that you cannot capture with your prices.” 

— “Working with coach helps me see what's possible for me in my business that I couldn't have seen myself.”

— “I think of my tax return CPA as somebody who tells me what I owe on what I made. I think of my cashflow CPA as somebody who tells me what I need to make. And I think of my business coach as someone who tells me how to make the money I want to make.”

— “When I invest in expertise, the dollars I give to that expertise come back multiplied.”

— “If you have a roster of smart clients running solid businesses, you have latent high-paying clients.”

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Many CPAs serve all kinds of clients, from service-based business owners to manufacturers to nonprofits. It seems like accounting is accounting and tax is tax, and you can do these things for anyone who needs them. 

The problem with generalism is that it leads to broad but shallow expertise. And shallow expertise is not worth as much as deep expertise. Acquiring deep expertise requires focusing on a specific type of client.

 Focusing in this way can feel scary and limiting: the thinking is that it will be harder to find clients because there will be fewer of them. Or, “it's hard enough to generate business as it is, so why would I want to limit the kinds of clients I work for?”

Here today to talk with me about his journey taking his CPA firm into niches is my guest, Josh Lance. Josh is a CPA CGMA and the founder of Lance CPA Group. 

Highlights:

— “You can't just leave that expertise in your brain. It has to be freely shared within your organization.”

— “If we are really experts, and we are good at what we do, and we're going to solve our clients’ problems and help them achieve their desired outcomes, there's a price to pay for that.”

— “If you want to niche, you have to go all in on the niche.”

— “Specialization is going to be a bit messy at the beginning. But in the long run, it's good.”

— “There's so many more clients out there than we could ever imagine to serve that there's no worry where we box ourselves.” 

Connect with JOSH:

Website: https://lancecpa.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshualancecpa/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/lancejd1

Email: josh@lancecpa.com

Do you wonder how to price accounting services? Stop wondering, stop pricing accounting services, and start pricing for value you create. When you front-load your services with value, you have more latitude to price in a way that ensures both you and your client are mutually profitable in the exchange. 

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If you want to know more about working with me to increase your profitability, put 15 minutes on my calendar: https://calendly.com/geraldinecarter/15min

Let me show you how 1:1 VIP coaching can help your business be more profitable and easier to run, in less than 5 months. 

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This episode is a summation of everything that I've taken in over the years on pricing and how I've effectively used it for great results for my clients. 

Topics covered:

•  why use price to improve profitability
•  six reasons why it's good for your clients when you charge them more
•  five reasons that hourly is so bad for your clients, and it's bad for you.
• value and price
• creating value without having to do that much extra work?
• tiered pricing or menu pricing
• how to raise your prices

Highlights:

— “Part of figuring out your pricing is also getting your packages together with your prices on the right track, so that you can stop having a million underpaying clients, and you can get your time back.” 

— Remember, “It is good for your clients when your prices are higher.”

— “Value creation helps you increase your prices.”

— “When you can create a situation where it's high profit for you, the seller, and it's high profit for them the buyer, you create a win-win situation where you love selling, because it's nicely profitable for you, and they love buying, because it's nicely profitable for them.” 

— “If you want to get your firm's packages and prices on the right track, if you want to stop having a million owner paying clients and you want to get your time back, start with value and use pricing as the tool to capture it.” 

Earmark CPE podcast

https://earmarkcpe.com/