Business Strategy for CPA's

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: geraldinecarter.com/subscribe Lots of people don’t like change. They have enough going on, thank you very much, and one more thing to change is one more thing they have to learn, and remember to do differently.  Change, seems like work.  If we like our currently reality, then there may not be a need to change.  But many people don’t like their current reality. They want things to change, but don’t want to change things.  Because they don’t like change.  I want you to know what change is. I want to unpack it for you, so that it stops being something to avoid or resist or dislike. I want to unpack it for you, so that in seeing what it is, you can make your experience of change easier for you, you can change things more quickly, and better, and eventually, learn to enjoy change.  Change doesn't have to be this mysterious thing – once we unpack it, we can see how it works.  Here is change, unpacked, in seven stages. Learn to observe progress as you move through seven stages.  And once you know the seven stages, it gets way easier to know where you are in the progression, and you know what stage is next.    Here are the seven stages of change: Stage 1: Not aware at all. Stage 2: Aware but believing that you're powerless to change anything. Stage 3: Aware, and believing you can change things, but aware only after the fact.  Stage 4: Aware in the moment, but it happens so fast, that you don't change it in the moment.  Stage 5: Aware that it's happening in the moment and change it while it's happening.  Stage 6: See it coming and prevent it.  Stage 7: Permanent change.   I hope understanding and appreciating the seven stages of change helps you befriend the change.

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe Not all accountants and CPAs get stressed during tax season. They've got their systems down. Stress isn't their go-to thing.  But for many CPAs and accountants, stress is a common experience. But it doesn't necessarily have to be that way.  Here to talk with me about how to go from being stressed to not being stressed in tax season is my guest, Dawn Goldberg. Dawn Goldberg has been a CPA in public accounting for over 30 years, as well as a mom for over 27 years. She has worked for large firms like Deloitte & Touche and Ernst & Young as well as smaller firms. Dawn is also the author of “The Smarter Accountant – How To Eliminate Stress and Overwhelm, Create More Time, Gain A Competitive Advantage, And More!”   Highlights: —  “Tax season is stressful, is actually an optional thought.” —  “Accountants have this badge of honor. If we're not overworking or not stressed, then we must not be very good at what we do.” —  “In coaching jargon, the intentional model is about thinking thoughts on purpose that are going to create the feeling that you want to generate, that will lead to the actions that you want to be taking, that will create eventually the result that you actually want to have.” —  “Ask yourself this: Do you like what that thought will create if you keep it?” —  “Using the fuel of focus gets me much better results than the fuel of stress.” Connect with Dawn: Website: https://thesmarteraccountant.com/ Podcast: https://cpamoms.com/podcasts/   Episode mentions: 193 Create the Exact Business You Want: Introducing The Model https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/193 218 Mindset Coaching for More Powerful Results, with Emma Richter https://www.businessstrategyforcpas.com/218   Dawn’s book: The Smarter Accountant: How To Eliminate Stress and Overwhelm, Create More Time, Gain a Competitive Advantage, and More! https://www.amazon.com/Smarter-Accountant-Eliminate-Overwhelm-Competitive/dp/B0B7QFYW8N

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: geraldinecarter.com/subscribe   Would you love to get paid in full up front for tax returns? There’s a long history of paying for your tax return when you pick it up at your CPAs office, or when they send the invoice, which might be weeks or months after you did the work.  Despite knowing the benefits of getting paid in full up front:  - You can have a clearer sense of how much of your capacity is now paid and on the books, and how much more you need to sell  - You have clients who have agreed to your price, so you don’t have send invoices and duck for cover - You don’t have a pile of A/R, dangling out there in space, that you need to burn time tracking down - You’re no longer held hostage by client you want to fire, but you don’t want to fire them until they pay you, for the last 3 years  - You have access to and use of the cash, and cash is queen You still get hung up on 3 common objections, which are: 1. I haven’t done it this way before, I don’t know how to do it  2. Clients aren’t used to paying this way 3. I'm worried about underpricing, I don’t know how long returns take, I can’t price if I don’t know how long it’s going to take, what if they show up with some surprise, what if I get killed on scope creep.  Each of these objections may have some validity. But each objection can be overcome – and I walk you through how, in this episode.

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe Can you tell what this is? Sugar, unbleached enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), palm oil, cocoa (processed with alkali), high fructose corn syrup, leavening (baking soda and/or calcium phosphate), salt, soy lecithin, chocolate, artificial flavor. . Would you pay $4.25 for two sleeves of them? . If you’ve ever bought Oreos, then yes. :) . Most regular buyers cannot reverse engineer their way from the ingredient list, to the product, to what the product does. . Oreos, satisfy your sweet tooth craving. . Regular buyers also face the following ingredient list: Document review, secure file exchange folder, calls, projections, calculations, planning, strategy, preparation, state return, estimates, portal, filing, emails, correspondence. . Most regular buyers cannot reverse engineer their way from the ingredient list, to the product, to what the product does. . What it is: Gold-level tax prep and filing . What it does: Get taxes off your mind, so you can do something fun with your weekend. . Next time you’re in the cookie aisle, stand before the Oreos and imagine the casing with only the ingredients listed. No Oreo, no glass of milk. No dunk. No quench. Just an ingredient list. In black and white. Flour, sugar, niacin, palm oil, leavening. . Now imagine your client. . Now imagine the list of a la carte ingredients you sell. . Now you can imagine what your client might be experiencing. . For some, a milk-dunked Oreo is a heavenly experience.    For some, painless, seamless tax prep is a heavenly experience.  . Sell, what it does.   Sell, the experience.    Not, the ingredient list.

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe   Your clients buy a solution to a problem they have. And the better you get at understanding the nature of their problem, talking to them about their problem, and explaining to them their problem in ways that show them that you understand their problem more deeply than they do, the easier your business will get to run. Here are 8 questions you can ask to deepen your understanding of your Ideal Buyer’s problem: How would they describe their problem, in their words? What would they Google, to try to solve it? How do they feel now, and how do they want to feel? Are they willing to pay what it’s worth to you, for the solution? How does your package help them solve this problem? Why will your solution work for them, what’s compelling about it? Why are you the best person to help them? Why will they be delighted to discover your solution?   You have space and permission to design something truly amazing for your clients. With their problems in mind. With your solution being the best one out there in the marketplace. Where there’s nothing else like it, that comes even close.  Go design that, and sell it.    Episode mentions: 214 - Problem Solution Process Result https://businessstrategyforcpas.com/214 221 - 12 Reasons to Niche https://businessstrategyforcpas.com/221  

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: geraldinecarter.com/subscribe Falling into the trap of working too much is a common place to land. But working too much doesn’t have to be a thing, even though it’s become normal in our society. The good news: working too much is imminently solvable. Get the solution to 15 reasons you might be overworking and what to do about it.  I use the term overworking to simply mean “working more hours than you want.” That might mean working 55 hours when you want to work 40 hours.  That might mean working 35 hours when you only want to work 25 hours.  And it also doesn’t mean that working 50 hours a week is necessarily overworking. If you want to work 50 hours a week, you might not be overworking.    15 reasons you might work more hours than you want to: Too many clients Too many underpriced clients Too many types of clients Stuck in hourly pricing in all its forms Systems stuck in your head, nonexistent, incomplete, unreliable, or unfindable. Staff: undertrained, underperforming, or both.  Too much on your calendar: Too many meetings, meetings longer than they need to be; too many programs, groups, networks.  Overworking begets overworking. Long hours are inefficient and error prone.  Doing automatable tasks manually, including digital tasks.  Work is who you are; it’s how you define yourself You don’t know what you’d do with your free time or yourself if you did have time It can be a way to garner sympathy or attention You think you can multitask Avoiding home/personal life Because you allow it by rationalizing it 🙂   It’s good news! Each of these is imminently solvable. You can get on the path to working the hours you want. Start by picking 1 or 2 of the most doable ones to work on, that will have the most impact.   

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: geraldinecarter.com/subscribe   Many CPAs work until they're done. And they either hand their firm down, sell it, or turn off the lights and close the door. Some miss an opportunity to be more strategic about what they choose to build with an eye toward future value creation.  Here today to talk with me about this is my guest, Jody Grunden.  Jody is the co-founder & CEO at Summit CPA Group, A Division of Anders CPAs + Advisors. Summit CPA is the leading provider of Virtual CFO Services in North America.    Highlights: — “High growth and high profit, those are the two big things that companies look for.”  — “Being remote accelerated growth, because now we could go anywhere and hire anywhere.” — “There's a great opportunity to get rid of existing clients that are preventing you from making changes [to improve your firm].” — “Take advantage of the remote atmosphere, whether it's hybrid or fully remote. This is the perfect time.” — “The most important factors: niche, go remote, and take risks.” Connect with JODY: Website: https://www.summitcpa.net/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jodygrunden Twitter: @jgrunden and @SummitCPAGroup Previous episode with Jody: 086 Secrets of Shifting to vCFO Services, with Jody Grunden https://businessstrategyforcpas.com/086 Book mention: Time's Up!: The Subscription Business Model for Professional Firms, by Ron Baker and Paul Dunn https://www.amazon.com/Times-Up-Subscription-Business-Professional/dp/1119893526 Software mentions: Reach Reporting: ​​https://reachreporting.com/  

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe: geraldinecarter.com/subscribe You can create time.  You don’t have to be busy all the time.  The accounting space mostly believes that CPAs work long hours, and that’s just “how it is.” That’s not how it needs to be.  You can create time.  You create time.  You can create time with these seven tactics: Plan to your time Make decisions - faster, more strongly Stop wondering - start figuring it out Constrain - pick 1 or 3 things to focus on Try things - stop thinking of your attempts as failures Say no - stop saying you’re a people-pleaser Stop thinking busy and stop being busy - start saying you create time and start creating time You CAN create time, and work a 40-hour workweek. Time to put an end to habitual overworking in the accounting industry :)

*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe In this episode, we're talking about value creation.  In the accounting space, it’s easy for the firm owner to think that revenue comes from clients, work, time, or deliverables. Because your client pays the bill for the work you did, it can appear that that’s where the money comes from. But the money comes from the value you created.  The more you think about your clients and creating value for them, and the better you get at capturing the value you create for your clients with effective pricing, the better you'll get at bringing revenue into your accounting practice without having to put in so many hours and so much effort to create that revenue. When you create more value and capture that value with higher prices, you can meet revenue goals with fewer clients and less work. This is the path to making your accounting practice easier to run. After which, life gets easier.  Remember: all revenue comes from value creation. Not from clients, not from time, not from deliverables, not from work. Episode mention: 220 Effortless Value: Price for Access, not Work https://businessstrategyforcpas.com/220

Happy holidays! Enjoy the annual tradition of accounting humor, hosted by Geraldine’s two kids, Hazel and Remy. This year: Top Ten 10 Signs of a Bad Accountant. Wishing you all the best in 2023!   *Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe