If I Started A Firm From Scratch, Here’s What I’d Do

Hey 👋 - Brandon here.

Happy Saturday to 1,453 growth-minded accountants.

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I was asked recently if I had to start all over again, what would I do differently?

I started my firm back in 2015 and went full-time in Q3 2016. I made nearly every mistake in the book. My life was rather dull - 80+ hour work weeks for years to grind through firm building.

But looking back, it didn’t have to be that way.

Here’s what I would have done differently:

Build a $3k, $5k, and $9k advisory offer

My first service package was $250/mo for one tax return, email support, two 60-minute strategy calls, and a few other bells and whistles.

My pricing was bad and led to constrained cash flows causing me to hire lower-end talent.

Knowing what I know now, I would have started with a $3k advisory offer that includes email support, a few check in calls, and some other minor things to enhance the relationship.

Spend 75% of my time in marketing + sales

You can be the smartest technical person in the world, but if you don’t have leads, you won’t make money.

Firms need leads. Especially new firms.

I did a great job early on building my marketing pipeline. My mistake was trying to do all of the client work myself (primarily because I was marketing working with ME) and hiring a sales person to handle the inbound leads.

In retrospect, I should have hired the best technical people my money could buy and spent the majority of my time building the marketing funnel and selling prospects on our services.

Hire the best technical people money can buy

When it came to hiring, I resisted investing tons of money in more experienced talent.

Instead I tried to scrape together a team and keep labor costs low.

This was a huge mistake and likely set me back a couple years.

If I had to do it all over again, I’d start by hiring a highly capable tax manager (think $120-$150k) even if it killed my cash flow. I would then focus on filling their plate with work that I’m bringing in the door.

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

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Cheers,

Brandon

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