Growing Your Firm | Strategies for Accountants, CPA's, Bookkeepers , and Tax Professionals

Are you completely exhausted by the end of tax season, working 80- to 100-hour weeks, and wondering if your firm is running you instead of the other way around? In this episode of Growing Your Firm, host David Cristello sits down with Chelsea Harper, Business Manager at Taxes Plus. Chelsea shares the raw, honest story of transforming her family's 20-year-old traditional tax practice. Facing severe burnout, staffing shortages, and endless low-margin compliance work, Chelsea made a bold, game-changing move: cutting their client volume by roughly 75% while keeping take-home profits the same. Whether you are a CPA starting a firm, an accounting firm owner, an operations manager, or a bookkeeping firm owner, this conversation provides a step-by-step masterclass in shedding fee drag, eliminating hourly billing, implementing subscription pricing, and reclaiming your weekends. In this episode, we explore: The Traditional Tax Trap: How taking on every referral created a 1,600+ return burden for just three full-time preparers. The Turning Point: The emotional and physical toll of burnout—and why staying in the traditional tax model was unsustainable. Transitioning from Hourly to Subscription: Moving clients from unpredictable hourly billing and one-off tax prep to recurring monthly and quarterly memberships. The "Rip the Band-Aid Off" Rollout: How Taxes Plus categorized clients into tiers, sent out price increases, and handled client attrition without destroying the business. Eliminating "Fee Drag": How cutting 75% of client volume slashed software licenses, seasonal payroll, and overhead costs—leaving owner take-home pay unchanged. Completing Returns Early: How shifting to mandatory quarterly maintenance allowed the firm to complete 95% of corporate tax returns by March 15th. Adding Wealth Management: Integrating CFP financial planning and tax advisory to build high-value, sticky client relationships. Key Metrics & Transformation Takeaways: Volume Reduction: Cut client returns from ~1,600 down to ~300 individual and ~90 corporate clients. Revenue vs. Margin: Revenue dipped only ~15%, but reduced operational overhead kept owner compensation completely whole. Pricing Shifts: Tier 1 tax/membership pricing increased from an average of $550 to $948 (and now starts at $1,500 for new clients). Quality of Life: Eliminated weekend work during tax season and built a firm that allows for team resilience and personal freedom. Featured Guest: Chelsea Harper  

Are you past the basic "ChatGPT as a search engine" phase, but wondering what practical, high-impact AI implementations actually look like in an accounting practice? In this episode of Growing Your Firm, host David Cristello welcomes back Isaac Perdomo, founder of Opzer, an automation agency dedicated to helping accounting firms implement AI safely and effectively. Isaac cuts through the noise to demo real-world AI applications that save hours on routine compliance, cleanup, and quality control workflows. Whether you are a Managing Partner wanting to protect firm capacity, an Operations Manager building better systems, or a CPA starting a firm, this episode breaks down what is genuinely working in AI right now. In this episode, we explore: The Evolution of Browser Automation: How new models like Claude Opus and GPT are finally making browser-level automations reliable for legacy portals and systems without native APIs. Security & Risk Boundaries: Why browser automation should be kept on read-only permissions and where human supervision is non-negotiable (e.g., bank transfers, payroll, and fund movements). Automating Big Catch-Up & Cleanup Work: How modern AI handles transaction categorization across years of bank statements and charts of accounts in an afternoon instead of months. De-Scaling the Review Process: Using Claude to create pre-review layers where junior staff catch critical errors before deliverables reach senior partners. Live Demo: The Claude Tax Review Skill: How Opzer uses pre-packaged Claude Skills and Artifacts to scan tax returns, highlight mismatching data (like state codes vs. zip codes), and surface critical discrepancies side-by-side. AI Video Editing & Social Media: How dropping raw footage into Claude can generate edited, captioned client case study clips in under an hour. Key Takeaways & Frameworks: Focus on High-Volume Bottlenecks: Don't implement AI for the sake of novelty; map your firm's most repetitive, time-draining processes and start there. Systems of Record vs. Micro-Tools: Why core practice management platforms remain essential while general-purpose models like Claude continue to absorb niche point solutions. Pre-Packaged Skills: Developing reusable internal skills to standardize quality control across bookkeeping and tax returns.   Featured Guest: Isaac Perdomo  

Title: A/B Test How This Accounting Firm Earns 50% Margins on $150 Clients | AJ Zepeda How to Build an Accounting Firm That Runs Without Founder Calls | AJ Zepeda How to Standardize Your Accounting Firm Before Adding AI | AJ Zepeda What if the secret to building a more scalable accounting firm isn't charging every client more, but giving each client the right service model? In this episode of Growing Your Firm, host David Cristello sits down with AJ Zepeda, Founder and COO of Maverick. AJ shares how he and his partners combined their accounting practices, created a three-tier pricing model, and built an operational system designed to grow without requiring the founders to manage every client relationship. AJ explains how Maverick serves smaller clients through a highly standardized $150 monthly package with an estimated 50% accounting margin, while its highest-tier clients receive controller and fractional CFO support. He also breaks down the firm's deliberate six-week onboarding process, standardized chart of accounts, Notion-based operating system, and practical approach to using AI. In this episode, we explore: The $150 Monthly Accounting Package: How Maverick uses QuickBooks Ledger, asynchronous service, and standardized delivery to serve smaller clients profitably. Building a Three-Tier Pricing Model: How the firm separates highly standardized clients, its profitable core accounts, and controller or fractional CFO engagements. Creating a Firm That Runs Without Founder Calls: Why Maverick's core clients receive proactive weekly bookkeeping and monthly reporting without requiring recurring meetings with a founder. The Six-Week Onboarding Rule: Why the team refuses to begin production until every login, document, prior-year return, and client detail has been collected. Standardizing the Chart of Accounts: How a consistent accounting structure helps the team onboard clients faster and deliver work more efficiently. Building the Operating System Before Adding AI: Why AJ believes clean data, documented processes, and a centralized system must come before automation. Using Notion as the Firm's Central Database: How Maverick connects client information, SOPs, Scribe documentation, calendars, Slack, and time records in one system. Managing Out-of-Scope Work: Why AJ wishes the firm had established stronger boundaries and billed additional work earlier. Key Metrics & Operational Frameworks: Entry-Level Package: $150 per month for standardized bookkeeping, reporting, and tax support through QuickBooks Ledger, with an estimated 50% margin on the accounting work. Core Client Pricing: Approximately $650 to $1,500 per month for the firm's profitable, lower-stress middle tier. High-Level Advisory Pricing: Approximately $2,500 to $4,000 per month for controller and fractional CFO services. Onboarding Timeline: Roughly 30 to 45 days, with the firm allowing up to six weeks to collect information, clean up the books, and document the engagement properly. Client Communication: Weekly bookkeeping questions and monthly reports delivered by the 15th, with deeper financial reviews reserved for higher-tier packages. Featured Guest: AJ Zepeda    

What if the secret to building a highly scalable, multi-million dollar practice isn't just growing an accounting firm, but surrounding it with banking, legal, wealth management, and insurance services? In this episode of Growing Your Firm, host David Cristello sits down with Tobby Kommer, CEO of Haga Kommer and President of Aspire Bank and Aspire Insurance. Tobby brings a unique background from the banking and M&A sectors, rather than traditional public accounting, allowing him to rethink the entire accounting firm business model. Over the last decade, Tobby has led over 35 acquisitions of CPA firms, growing his practice from a 12-person team to over 250 employees across 15 locations. He shares his exact framework for running an acquisitive firm, restructuring partner and staff compensation around production instead of billable hours, and preparing his company for a 100% Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) transition. In this episode, we explore: The Integrated One-Stop Shop: Why bringing banking, legal, wealth management, insurance, and CPA services under one umbrella creates the ultimate client retention engine. The CPA as the "Center of the Universe": Why Tobby originally thought banking would lead the client relationship—and why CPAs actually hold far more client trust. Acquiring 5 to 8 CPA Firms Annually: How Haga Kommer positions itself as the "acquirer of choice" for 1M–2M firms looking for an alternative to private equity. Replacing Billable Hours with Production Pay: How Tobby structures salary increases and trimester reviews based on output rather than time logged. Eliminating Firm Hierarchy: Why Haga Kommer dropped traditional titles (Associate, Senior, Manager, Partner) in favor of transparent, production-based compensation. The Internal Leadership Academy: How Tobby uses quarterly 2-day offsites, book reviews (like The Five Dysfunctions of a Team), and sports documentary studies (like The Last Dance) to train emerging leaders. Transitioning to an ESOP: Why Tobby is transitioning his 100% single-owner equity model into an employee-owned firm. Key Metrics & Operational Frameworks: Scale Benchmark: 250+ employees across 15 offices, with a target client size of $10M and under in revenue. Office Structure: Hub-and-spoke model keeping individual locations small and personal (10–20 employees) with back-office corporate support. Culture Alignment: Open P&Ls shared down to administrative assistants to align performance with overall firm health. Featured Guest: Toby Kommer  

Is your firm relying entirely on word-of-mouth referrals to grow? While client referrals bring in warm leads, they make controlling your growth trajectory nearly impossible.  To build a high-performing advisory practice, you need a predictable, repeatable go-to-market engine. In this live panel session from the Growing Your Firm Summit, host David Cristello moderates a discussion with three firm leaders who have built, scaled, and transformed modern advisory practices: Shane Mason – Co-Founder at Nimble (led 8 years of hyper-growth) Marcus Dillon – Founder & CEO at Dillon Business Advisors (DBA) Roman Villard – Founder at Fullcent From custom proposal generation and gatekeeping bad-fit clients to positioning your brand on LinkedIn and utilizing LLM files for SEO, this panel provides a practical blueprint for accounting and bookkeeping firm leaders. In this episode, we explore: Moving Beyond Referrals: Why you need an active sales and marketing engine to control your firm's pipeline and timing. Educating Referral Partners: How defining your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) prevents partners from sending low-margin, bad-fit leads. Packaging vs. Customization: The debate between standardized internal baseline packages vs. tailored client proposals. The "Gatekeeper" Sales Role: Why hiring the right sales lead to filter out non-communicative or uncooperative prospects protects your service team. Targeted Niche Networking: How attending industry-specific events (e.g., dental or construction conferences) with top clients drives warm, high-trust leads. AI for Go-To-Market & SEO: How to use LLM.txt and robots.txt files on your website to ensure AI models recommend your firm in search results. Avoiding "AI Slop": Leveraging Claude and custom GPTs to streamline 60% of proposal drafting without losing your human voice. Key Takeaways & Frameworks: B2B Partnership Channels: Partnering with specialized CFOs or legal professionals who need an execution arm for accounting and bookkeeping. Language Alignment: Using the specific language, metrics, and goals of your clients (e.g., "exit-readiness" instead of "month-end close") in sales conversations. Single-Software Focus: Why mastering one core accounting application (e.g., QBO or Xero) drives internal team delivery speed. Featured Guest:  Marcus Dillon Shane Rowley Roman Villard