Build the future you want by building the firm you can sell

When you think of the future, does it involve working in your tax or accounting practice until you have no life left in you? Or if you are honest with yourself, would you like to break free of the day-in-and-day-out challenges of running a firm while still having the ability to enjoy a different future?

If your preference is the latter of these two choices, you’ll love this three-part series because you will have a clear roadmap for actually building the bridge toward a different future. Let’s get started.

Decide to own your future and then start building it

Getting to the future you want is simple, but not always easy; you must make the decision that you truly want something different, and then create the system that will get you there. This is exactly what I did when I determined I wanted to have a different life than the one I was living as the owner of an accounting firm.

I loved my clients and had a great team. I was dedicated to ensuring they were well taken care of, but in my heart, I knew that I had another set of skills and a different dream I needed to fulfill. That’s when I knew I needed to create an exit strategy from my firm. I needed to sell the company I had literally put blood, sweat, and tears into building.

However, I knew that before I could sell my firm, I first had to consider all of the components I had to build or put in place to make my practice saleable.

Put the building blocks in place for a saleable firm

If you are currently contemplating a future that includes preparing a tax and/or accounting firm to sell, or are considering buying one, the following building blocks are key to consider as you put the right structure in place:

1. What is the firm structure? Is the ideal model brick-and-mortar, remote, or hybrid?
2. In the existing practice, what are the good parts to retain, the bad ones to eliminate, and the ugly ones to repair or completely eradicate immediately?
3. The retraining of clients is likely necessary, so determine if they need to be shifted or transitioned to fit your new model and future goals.
4. For the technology and workflow infrastructure, consider the tools and strategies you need to build and be efficiently profitable in terms of being in the cloud, systematized, and automated in every way.

Building your firm for your desired future is the first step, then scale for the sale

In the second part of this series, we’ll move from the building stage to the growth stage, where you take all of the systematization and efficiency you created here and start to scale it. So if you haven’t already, give yourself permission to dream outside of the box of your current situation to the future you really want. The building blocks outlined above will give you the solid foundation for making it a reality. The next article will help you streamline so you can strategically scale your firm to be ready for an eventual sale.