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The return of your favorite weekend read (for accountants)

Author

Brandon Hall
August 30, 2025

Hey 👋 - Brandon here.

Happy Saturday to 1,897 growth-minded accountants.

Today’s issue takes less than 5 minutes to read.

I started this newsletter because I felt I had a lot of value to share with owners of accounting firms.

But I’ll admit, I got burned out.

Not just from creating this content, but all content.

I stopped posting on X and LinkedIn. Stopped recording YouTube videos (after spending $15k+ to set up a sick at-home studio). Stopped writing blog posts and newsletters. I just got tired and needed a break.

My hiatus wasn’t meant to be this long - my last newsletter to you was in February.

But I’m feeling the thrill of content creation seep back into my veins. So I’m kicking off this newsletter again with some updates and my thoughts on a recent article about KPMG’s AI news.

Have a topic you’d like my thoughts on? Simply reply to this email with your idea!

First, some updates:

My 2nd daughter (3rd child) was born in February - this was the final straw that stopped my content production. I wanted to spend more time with my family and not worry about being part of social commentary (it’s a lot of work and mentally draining).

Interestingly, our lead flow at Hall CPA went UP after I quit producing content.

My marketing coordinator, Pat, is a rockstar and had been working on locking down our SEO strategy for about ~6 months prior to my hiatus. Additionally, Nate has been crushing content surrounding the Tax Bill. The results were incredible… our web traffic is up ~200% YoY and lead flow was up slightly YoY until the tax bill came out in July and new client inquiries went through the roof - July saw 563 webform submissions and this month we expect ~490 submissions.

All without me producing a lick of content.

Our firm was named an IPA Top 400 firm, which exceeds my wildest dreams. However, we are not growing as fast as my rudimentary budget predicted we would… the law of large numbers finally caught up with us. Growth is still good, but we are expecting mid-teens (w/o M&A) going forward.

My accounting community, four15 is cranking. In fact, I’m about to launch four15 2.0 and invite you to be a part of it (still need to have at least $1M in revenue to join).

Check out the four15 website I custom coded (vibe coded?) with the help of Claude. It ain’t perfect but it was a fun challenge to not use any web builder tools and instead go straight to writing custom code in VSCode. I’m now working on coding AI agents for our firm which is much harder.

And I’ve been playing a lot of golf. Recently shot a 79 on a trip out to Hilton Head, best score in 15 years.

Now, about KPMG’s AI usage…

Recently, an article came out about how KPMG built an AI tool that creates tax plans in hours rather than weeks.

I’ve talked about how AI will eliminate the billable hour, and here’s a real-life use case. KPMG created a tool that significantly reduces the inputs required for the client deliverable, which will also significantly reduce their per-client hourly billings.

Hourly billing will inevitably create revenue shortfalls as AI tools are developed to perform much of the billable work.

Smart firms are figuring out how to fix and value price engagements so that they can be rewarded with higher profitability when they drive efficiencies.

If you create a tool like KPMG, you should be rewarded with additional profits, not additional client projects to fill revenue gaps.

That's all for this Saturday. See you next week.

Cheers,
Brandon

Ready to grow your firm? Here’s how I can help:

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