As an accountant my success is judged by my peers on the amount of clients that I have.  There was always a push to get more clients.  More clients meant more money.  At one point our partnership had close to 1,000 clients, 7 full time staff members, and two partners.  During tax season I did close to 790 tax returns in a four month period.  There was never much time for me to meet my clients, or see what their needs were it was simply a mass produced, assembly line operation.  We would focus on bookkeeping, payroll, and tax return preparation.  We might spend an hour a year with our clients, and that was about all.  I was a minority partner, and I was told to spend as little time with the client as possible, so I could make more money for the firm.  I never liked that.  I am a people person, and didn’t want to be behind a desk all day cranking out tax returns.  My last two years at the firm, I decided that I was going to go out and meet with my clients.  I wanted to see what their needs were, and how I could better help them.  For this, I got in trouble for spending too many non-billable hours with a client.  It turns out that my competitors were doing the same thing to their clients.  The assembly line is the norm in this business.  No one takes the time to get to know their clients and how they can better help them.  They are busy doing bookkeeping and filling out forms to care.

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When I left the partnership, I did a lot of soul searching on how I wanted to run my practice.  I was never satisfied with the status quo.  I have a rebellious soul by nature, and quite honestly I didn’t want to mass produce bookkeeping and tax returns.  In my years of practice, I had a considerable knowledge of taxes and tax planning, I wanted to use that knowledge for my clients.  This would mean that I would have to spend a lot more time with my clients, I would have to do more work, and I would have to have fewer clients.  This concept would mean that I would have to charge more for my services, but my clients would be getting a tremendous amount of value for the money.  I would hire employees, but they would only do the busy work, and never have any contact with the clients.  That would all be done by me, my partner, and our staff accountant.  This was absolutely groundbreaking in this space, and I knew it would be met with resistance.  I would probably lose some clients, and not get clients that were price shopping, but clients that got it, would be entirely grateful and I would have clients for life.  I knew there had to be a market for what I wanted to do, and I set out to find it. 

 

As it turns out, I was right.  I did lose some clients, and there were some clients that just didn’t get it.  I didn’t convert some leads to clients, and there were some times that I questioned my business plan.  Then one day all of a sudden, my calendar starting filling up.  I started getting big clients.  People were starting to understand what I was trying to do.  They were telling their friends, and their friends were telling their friends.  I opened nine different businesses that were doing nine different tax, accounting, and financial services.  

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​When asked what I do for a living instead of saying that I am an accountant, my response is that I solve problems.  After all that is what my clients pay me to do.  The more complex the problem, the better for me.  Our business does do bookkeeping, and tax returns, but those are the end results of all the planning that we have been doing throughout the year.   We have expanded into IRS Representation, Estate Planning, Tax Consulting, Real Estate Investor Taxation Consulting, Financial Services, and Tax Planning.  There is no problem too hard and there is no problem we won’t figure out a way to solve.  Not every business or person is the right fit for our firm.  We recognize that, and don’t try to fit a square peg into a round hole.  Some people just want someone to fill out forms for them.  That is perfectly okay. 

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There are a lot of accountants out there that they can choose from.  If you are looking for a firm that has extensive knowledge of the Tax Code, and will work day and night for you to avoid as much taxation as possible.  If you are looking for a firm that will look at your situation from every possible angle, and look at you as a whole, you have come to the right place."