Process and perseverance: A journey to a better life

Between our everyday lives, running our businesses, and providing for our loved ones, it’s easy to stick to the status quo and not pursue adapting or changing. 

For 10 years, this represented me and my practice, as my clients ranged from individuals and small businesses, to whomever walked through the door. Then COVID hit, my lifestyle turned into chaos, and I knew something had to change.

I did that exercise a lot of sales and marketing people recommend. I pulled my top five clients to see what they had in common … and then an epiphany hit me. They were all women and most of them had kids! Having three kids at home and being a working mom during the pandemic was definitely challenging, and something I could build on.

This moment drove me to launch my niche. I leaned into it, launched a website that said I work with women-led businesses, and braced myself for people telling me I was making a mistake.

Sure, a few did, asking me if it was limiting who I can bring in. The opposite proved to be true; I get more referrals now as a generalist because people know what kind of prospect to send to me.

I’m the woman-led business accountant, and have been for more than four years.

A lot of tax pros are running themselves ragged trying to be everything to everyone. It doesn’t have to be that way. Here’s what’s worked for me, and what I’d tell anyone building or rebuilding a practice right now.

Start with the clients you already have

You don’t need a market study to find your niche. You need your existing client list and an honest look at it. Who do you enjoy working with? Who refers to you the most business? What do they have in common, such as industry, life stage, values, and how they make decisions? My niche found me … I just paid attention to it.

Once you name it, say it out loud. Put it on your website. Say it at every networking event. The clarity does the marketing for you.

Provide a process: Give clients direction, not decisions

I’m very process-oriented, and I think that’s exactly what my clients want, because it takes decisions off their plate. With every new client, I walk through the same three priorities in order: 

1. Estimated taxes, so nobody gets blindsided by a five-figure bill they had no way to plan for to pay.
2. Retirement, because if you were in a corporate job, you’d be deferring into a 401(k), so let’s replicate that.
3. Strategy, once the cash flow and retirement pieces are stable.

I also always offer two paths, a lower-cost option and a higher-cost one that delivers more value, but asks for more commitment. Some clients aren’t ready to invest heavily right now, while others know their calendar is about to blow up and need to move fast. I call it hustle and flow: You won’t get a permanent balance, but you can be intentional about when you push and when you ease off.

Using technology for business growth and more time

Technology didn’t make me work more hours; it let me work fewer of them for more revenue. Because our time is so important, why not let the technology free up that time to grow your business, be with your loved ones, or perhaps take a much-needed vacation?

Here are a few things I won’t operate without:

• QuickBooks® Online for every single client, no exceptions. I don’t want to spend my time reconciling five different platforms.
• A bookkeeper who actually closes the books monthly, not once a quarter. If your books aren’t current, you and your client can’t make good decisions with your numbers.
• A proposal and billing tool that looks professional and makes it easy to move clients to subscription-based pricing. I use Ignition for this.
• IT support is non-negotiable. I hired an IT company, so if my laptop is ever lost or stolen, I can kill it remotely before anyone gets into client data. We’re holding people’s Social Security numbers and their whole financial lives. That’s a privilege, but it’s also a real security responsibility and deserves its own line item, not an afterthought.

Be intentional with prospects before they ever book a call

One of the best things I ever did was write a template email that I send to referral partners and prospective clients. It spells out exactly who I work with:

• 3-plus years in business.
• $500,000 or more in revenue.
• Already on QuickBooks Online.
• Woman-owned.
• Single-state.
• Not working in retail, restaurants, or international business.

People either self-select out immediately or write back thrilled because they check every box. Either way, I’ve saved everyone time, and it’s helped some of my best referral sources—financial advisors and attorneys—get sharper about who to send me.

Get in the rooms where referrals actually happen

Almost all of my growth has come from word of mouth, not advertising. I’m active in ProVisors, a national referral network, and I lead our Oakland chapter. Every meeting, you stand up and describe in one or two sentences who you help and how. I keep refining that pitch because the more specific it is, the easier it is for someone in the room to think of exactly the right person to send my way the next day.

Learn from my mistakes to turn potential into success

If I could go back, here’s what I’d tell myself:

• Hire a good bookkeeper immediately and don’t go cheap. You want someone who can grow with your business, not someone you’ll outgrow in 18 months.
• Get a real business attorney involved in your entity formation. A DIY S-corp election done through a generic online service can cost your clients (or you) thousands. I’ve seen returns with a dozen family members listed as 1% shareholders because nobody advised otherwise.
• Know your end game before you start. Decide roughly how much you need to earn, add about 20% for overhead, figure out two or three service lines and their pricing, and work backward to how many clients you need in each bucket. It’s a lot easier to choose when you’re done than to have that decision made for you.
• Don’t wait for “perfect.” You don’t need a business card or a fancy website to take your first client. Start with one or two people, and build from there.

Scale by swapping: Sometimes less is more

When I started in 2012, I had a handful of bookkeeping clients. A year later, 10. Then 20, 80, and then acquired a practice and jumped to 650 tax clients. At some point, I realized I wanted more complex, more interesting work, which meant more rentals and more Schedule Cs, not just more volume.

So I started swapping instead of stacking. For every new client whose revenue could replace three existing clients, I let those three go. It’s the closet rule. Every time you bring something new in, something old goes out. It’s the most comfortable way I know to scale because you’re never carrying more than you can actually serve well, and you always know your revenue is covered.

Don’t think twice: Invest in a workflow platform

Every year, I set aside real money. I budget $10,000 for myself and, when I can, another $10,000 for the business, specifically for reinvestment, which includes coaching, training, better software, and whatever moves the needle. When I finally paid for a proper workflow platform for my practice, it felt indulgent in the moment. It ended up being one of the best investments I’ve made because I bought back time that I couldn’t create any other way.

Run this equation on yourself: Figure out your real hourly value, then compare it to what it costs to outsource the things eating your time, whether that’s a task in your business or, honestly, cleaning your own house. If one new client covers two and a half months of a house cleaner, that’s not indulgent; that’s just doing the math.

Actionable steps for moving forward with your practice

Because I am so process-oriented, I believe in mapping out your short- and long-term aspirations, with specific details. Here is my advice for doing so—somewhat recapping our journey together in this article.

Set yourself these kind of goals for this month: 

• Pull your top five clients and look for the pattern. That’s your niche, even if it’s not obvious yet.
• Draft one template email or one-liner that describes your ideal client clearly enough that people can self-select in or out.
• Confirm your data security is actually handled and not just assumed. This includes IT support, device lockout, and the works.

Set yourself these kind of goals for this year:

• Move at least one billing relationship to a subscription or retainer model, with a tool built for proposals and payments, not just workflow.
• Get involved in one referral network or industry group where you can consistently describe who you help, in front of the same people, more than once.
• Set a real dollar figure aside for your own professional development, and actually spend it.
• Write down your end game: your target income, your overhead, your service lines, and how many clients in each bucket gets you there.

Be willing to adapt or change, no matter what stage you’re at

If there’s anything my journey to now has taught me, it’s that none of this has happened overnight, and I’m still adjusting to it every year. 

So no matter what stage your business is at, it’s important to not be complacent and at least be willing to adapt or change. I firmly believe every one of these changes bought me back time, energy, or both—and that’s really the whole point. You can build a practice that supports real people extremely well, without it costing you your own life in the process.