Business Strategy for CPA's

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7*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. Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7*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   Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7*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.    Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7*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/   Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7*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 :) Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7*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 Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7Happy 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 Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe In this episode, I want to give you 12 reasons to focus on a niche or an industry, or your ideal buyer or a market segment. Whatever term you like to call it. There are slight differences in the details but what's most important is understanding how valuable it can be to your business to focus on an ideal buyer, to pick a niche and move in that direction.  It simplifies your business. It deepens your expertise Expertise is more valuable than general knowledge.  When you create value, it enables your prices to go up.  When your prices go up, your margins also go up when you niche.  When your prices go up, you need fewer clients to meet your revenue targets. Your business starts to feel easier, because there's just less to keep track of. When all your clients look like each other, it becomes so much easier to systematize. The more you can get your clients to nest the more space you create in your business and the more mental space you create in your mind.  When you niche and you focus on an ideal buyer and you deepen your expertise, you become less duplicatable. You put yourself in a position to sell expertise without having to do any work. Niching and going in the direction of deepening expertise creates options for you in terms of how to create revenue.   And here are some of the objections that I hear about niching:  Letting go of existing revenue. I won't be able to create future revenue. I will be bored. It feels limiting, as in, “I’m eliminating too many potential customers.”   Each of the above objections gets addressed.  Narrowing your industry, your niche, focusing on an ideal buyer opens up more options for you. Episode mentions: 211 Pricing for Improved Profitability 212 Hold My Beer and Watch Me Niche 220 How to Price for Access, not Work 179 Digital Products, Courses, and 90% Margins with The Real Estate CPA   Blake Oliver's Earmark CPE podcast https://earmarkcpe.com/   Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe Here are some different ways to think about what you price.  Why?  Because what you price informs your revenue. Depending on what you price has a huge impact on how much you work, or don’t work. Depending on what you price will inform your revenue or the revenue that you do not bring in.  If you look at the accounting space right now, the going model is to price work.  But there are at least two problems with this method of pricing work:  When you sell work, you're always on the hook for working. What if you think that clients value work, when in fact, they really value access more?    What would happen if you priced your packages and differentiated your services based solely on access? If work is what you want to be doing less of, what if you consider the option of selling less work? What would happen if you safeguarded your time and you priced and sold access? If your clients value access and access to you is in short supply, consider pricing for access, so you can do less work.  Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7

Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7*Want one piece of business strategy delivered daily to your inbox?* Subscribe here: https://www.geraldinecarter.com/subscribe   Accountants and CPAs have loads of systems running through their tax practice. Perhaps some things must still be done manually. But what if more of your work and your staff's work could be automated?  Here today to talk with me about this is my guest, Jason Staats.  Jason is a CPA turned automation nerd who enjoys sharing new ideas and memes on Twitter, Youtube, and Tiktok. He also built Realize, an online community of accounting firm owners.   Highlights: — “Automation today looks a little more bottom-up. It's automating the very workflow and client-specific problems that we have.” — “If you can surround yourself with people who are at varying levels of the same journey, that's just going to accelerate your learning so much.” — “The best way to think about where to start, especially if you do a lot of accounting is, what could you just automate inside of a single accounting file?” — “Inbox rules are the greatest automation hack there is.”  — “In your decision-making feedback loop, you need to have trusted peers or an external coach who can give you honest feedback that isn't subject to the groupthink that you have within a firm.”  Connect with Jason: Podcast https://www.automationtown.fm/ YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@jasoncpa Twitter https://twitter.com/JStaatsCPA Community https://rlz.io/ Software mentions: Zapier: https://zapier.com/ Make: https://www.make.com/en/   Get your FREE 7 Pricing Essentials for CPAs and EAs here:https://geraldinecarter.com/7