jackie meyer: redefine your boundaries and stop conforming to inappropriate behaviors.
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the disruptors 
with liz farr for 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间
jackie meyer is a fan of value pricing and niching your practice. her favorite area is tax planning, which doesn’t require a huge investment of time to provide huge financial benefits for clients.
her own firm tripled revenues by focusing on tax planning.
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firms that focus on low-volume, highly-niched areas solve several problems at once.
with a smaller client load, clients have an easier time reaching you. it’s also easier to keep good staff because the work is more satisfying and less of a paper mill. meyer also believes in leveraging technology to augment what people do, explaining that when ai and automation take over basic bookkeeping, we will enter uncharted territory.
additionally, meyer also hosts a facebook group called accounting firm influencers, where accountants share strategies, ideas, advice for tricky tax and client situations, and accounting jokes.
9 more takeaways from jackie meyer
- boundaries are good. you don’t have to accept inappropriate behavior from clients, and it’s not appropriate to expect your staff to meet last-minute demands from clients.
- the most important change is changing and being willing to go outside of the norms of a traditional accounting firm. block out your time. choose your own priorities.
- visualize the value you’re bringing to your clients by using the roi method of selling. show the client the dollar amount of savings they realize through your work and the return on the investment in your fees. this is not to be confused with contingent fees.
- use standardized processes and procedures throughout your firm.
- reach out to other accountants to share ways to solve problems.
- smaller, newer firms may have an advantage over larger firms in rapid growth because it can be much slower to implement change in multi-partner firms. small firms can implement new ideas right away.
- if you bring value to the table, value price it and price it upfront. you won’t have any ar and clients know exactly what to expect and what they will get.
- stop assuming you can do everything. the key to success in the future will be niching down. automation and ai will eventually take over much of what we do now, so we need to move to higher levels of service.
- get education and cpe outside of the strictly technical areas so you can see the gamut of what’s out there.
more about jackie meyer 
jackie meyre is the concierge cpa, ceo of meyer tax founder of taxplaniq.com, and the certified concierge accountant mastermind.
she specializes in providing innovative tax strategies for executive clientele for a high return on investment. she leads her own team of top-tier public accountants spanning across the us operating with 100% virtual workflows and is a top-rated speaker, business coach, and social media influencer with thousands of students and followers. she served on the intuit tax council (2016-2019) and the forbes finance council (2019-present). recent honors include 40 under 40 cpa advisor winner (2018/2019/2021) and aictc (american institute of certified tax coaches) member of the year (2019). jackie is a proud proponent of lifelong learning and will complete her doctorate in strategic leadership from regent university
meyer’s passion is coaching firm owners to become better leaders, be more efficient, provide a higher return on investment, work with ideal clients, apply tax strategies and most of all have more time off with certified concierge accountants. she also coaches accountants to become better tax planners with taxplanningmasterclass.com
join her facebook community: accounting firm influencers to connect daily with other industry influencers.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible.they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr 00:04
welcome to accounting disrupter conversations. i’m your host liz far from cpa trend lines. my guest today is jackie meyer, the concierge ceo, the concierge cpa ceo meyer tax, founder of tax plan iq, and the certified concierge accountant mastermind. welcome to the show, jackie.
jackie meyer 00:29
thank you so much, liz.
liz farr 00:30
well, i just pleased as punch to have you on board, because i like to have a lot of different points of view. and you certainly have a different point of view than some of my other guests. so let’s get started. counting your island in in the us and around the world has been scarce for a long time. what are some ideas that you have on how to make things better? oh, gosh,
jackie meyer 01:03
do we have all day? anything’s yeah, so you think, okay, i’ll try to make it succeed. first of all, i think that practices need to niche down into an advisory service of some sort. i personally love tax planning as like the top kind of roi method way to really niche down and provide a higher level of value to your clients, and really give them that kind of concierge assistance that they they really want. so i’m all about kind of low volume, high niche areas. and that solves so many problems internally and externally, you know, with your clients being able to get a hold of you whenever they need to, or even before they actually do something that they might not need to do or should do. but then also from a staffing perspective, it makes the work so much more enjoyable, because they get to work one on one with these clients more and see this big impact that they’re having on them, instead of it just being a paper mill. and so i think that’s definitely the first thing that i would say that that could help solve that problem. i think the second thing is just putting boundaries in place into firms and for firm owners to know that boundaries are okay in our industry, you don’t have to get walked all over. you don’t have to get stepped on and you don’t have to accept returns on april 14 and turn them around in one day. that is not appropriate. that’s not appropriate behavior by the client, it’s not appropriate for you to ask your team to do that. so you know, we have to redefine those boundaries in our industry, what’s appropriate behavior and what is not. and let’s not conform to the inappropriate behavior anymore.
liz farr 02:58
those are some really good ideas, you know, and and i love the idea of boundaries, and making sure that people respect you. you know, i remember so many times when people would drop things off and then call up and a day later and say, so did you finish it yet? well, no, this is not h&r block. yeah, don’t do it that way.
jackie meyer 03:30
and it’s not best for the client either to turn around work so quickly. and they just you know, by not explaining that concept to the client, they don’t understand they’ll never understand what it’s like to be an accountant. just like we don’t understand what it’s like to be a vet or to be an er doctor. there’s really specific, urgent things that happen in our industry that you have to just explain to the client so that they have appropriate expectations.
liz farr 03:56
that’s right. now, until recently, the business model for accounting firms really hadn’t changed much. now it was based on the billable hour and this kind of pyramidal, organizational structure with a few partners up at the top, and then some managers and then a whole bunch of staff accountants, but we’re beginning to see that change. what are some of the changes that you’re seeing in the firms that you work with?
jackie meyer 04:31
oh, gosh, um, i think the most important change is just changing itself. so not conforming to the old way of doing things and just having like an aha moment of, oh, wow, i can block my time in the week. i can choose what my priorities are. i can actually give a sales presentation into a client without feeling cheesy and gross. i can go outside the norms of what’s expected from a traditional accounting practice. and it’s going to be okay.
liz farr 05:13
those are really good ideas. yeah. and i remember when i was still in public accounting, and i was working on getting my cpa, to become a certified valuation analyst. the way i got through that work was to block off the first hour of my day to just study the materials. and that was how i got through it. you know, it kind of annoyed some of the partners, i think, when they would stop by my desk and see me reading and studying and taking notes instead of doing whatever it was that they wanted me to do. but i explained to them well, look, you’re and you want me to do this. so this is what it’s going to do. this is what it’s going to take.
jackie meyer 06:08
yeah, definitely. you’ve you’ve got to, you’ve got to stand up for yourself. all right. no one wants what you need to do to get what good.
liz farr 06:20
yeah, yeah. and you’ve got to be able to just say, well, this client email just came in, but i’m in the middle of this thing. that is taking all my focus. and so if i drop what i’m doing to talk to to address this email, then it’s going to take me another 10 or 15 minutes to get back into what i was doing. right. yeah, so what other strategies besides blocking time? have you found personally useful?
jackie meyer 07:05
there are so many. okay, let me try to pick my favorites. um, i love visualizing the value that you’re bringing to your services. and so i’m a huge advocate of that. i’m a big proponent of what i call the roi method of selling. and, and i’m not a salesperson, i’m an accountant, just like anybody else. but i realized that you have to go out of your comfort zone, to for clients to connect with what you’re doing and realize, like how big of a value that you’re bringing to them. and so i love seeing accountants get that aha moment of wow, i can actually like show the client that i saved them $50,000. and after my cost, they still had an roi of, you know, 400 500%. so that’s really an important one, i think it’s important for us to discuss that more in our industry, because people get so concerned, that value pricing, and this roi method is getting confused with contingent fees and something that, you know, the aicpa says we can’t do, and that’s just not the case. it’s not true. i’m on the aicpa practice management committee. i spoke at their last conference. you know, they’re very supportive of value pricing, and whatnot. and so i like to see that kind of incremental change with practices. and let’s see, what else are the kind of the big hitters oh, gosh, having standardized processes and procedures. that’s a big one, right? and it’s not what we see happening in our firms. i really love to see accountants sharing information with each other on oh, hey, i found this better way to do this. here’s how it is in the sas software that i created tax plan iq which helps tax planners. we have checklists and workflows of how to actually like implement tax planning strategies. and so that’s kind of revolutionary to our industry of like, this is exactly how you do these things. to get these complex matters solved. i also host a facebook group called accounting firm influencers would love to have your your listeners join us. and we have over 5000 accountants that are talking daily about you know, things they’re doing to better their practices, ways to have more confidence jokes, just to help us get through the day. there’s a lot that are still suffering through the 415 busy season. so that’s always a really a really cool thing to do as well.
liz farr 09:54
yeah, i monitored that facebook group just to kind of get a pulse of what’s going on and what the hot button issues are. so i, i really enjoy that because i really get a, an inside view of what is going on in public accounting now that i’m outside of public accounting. i really like seeing that. now, now, what about growing firms? how are their strategies that you think are best? and are there different ones for solo firms and for multi member, multi partner firms?
jackie meyer 10:40
well, i will say this, with the coaching that i do with accountants, i used to not coach brand new firms, because we thought, oh, well, they’re not established enough to do some of these coaching principles. and then we realize later on that they’re the perfect coaching student because they can implement this stuff right away. there’s nothing constraining them. once you get into a bigger like multi partner firm. there’s so many limitations and things that slow them down from implementing change. so tell me your question one more time.
liz farr 11:17
what are what are some good strategies for growing a firm?
jackie meyer 11:21
yeah, so i find that it’s easier from a smaller, firm perspective to grow. it’s easier to niche down. so overall, hopefully, those smaller firms out there have hope, because you’re actually the solution, i think, compared to the bigger firms, but i really think tax planning is the way to go to level up a firm. i mean, it tripled revenues. in my firm, i’ve seen it triple revenues, and a lot of our coaching student practices. and it equally decreases your time because tax planning in itself is not extremely time consuming. but it’s that knowledge based value that you’re bringing to the table, and all that research and education that you put into it beforehand. but then the tax planning itself, once you get it down, it’s not time consuming. and so it’s really a great profit driver.
liz farr 12:17
i really liked the idea of tax planning, and having some expertise. you know, when i was in public accounting, tax planning was really a misnomer. what we were doing, it was really just helping these people get an idea of how much cash they were going to have to come up with. yeah. the definition think i lost you? oh, no.
jackie meyer 12:51
as a tax plan. right.
liz farr 12:57
yeah. yeah. yeah. it’s, it was so absurd. you know, it was just trying to figure out what is the size of the check that i was gonna write?
jackie meyer 13:09
exactly. and there’s so much more to it. yeah, we have like, eight.
liz farr 13:25
think we’re, i kind of lost you for your sound for a minute.
jackie meyer 13:32
there are dozens and dozens of tax strategies out there to utilize yes.
liz farr 13:37
yes, there are. there’s so many things you can do, you know, from setting up a retirement plan for your business, or different benefits or salary structures or business structures, your compensation, there’s so much you can do.
jackie meyer 14:00
yeah, definitely, i find that there’s like a corps of about a dozen strategies that each firm will kind of start to specialize in. but there’s so many to choose from. and it depends on what your niche is and what industries you work with as to which might be the best for you.
liz farr 14:17
exactly. now, it used to be that to be really good in accounting, you had to keep the tax code in your head or the fasb regulations. and you had to be really good with the 10 key. but some of those skills have gone by the wayside now. what are the skills that you think accountants need to be successful today and in the future?
jackie meyer 14:47
i think they need to be detectives, and you know, want to like solve problems. i think that’s going to be the big thing that helps accountants stand out in our profession. and not just being a numbers cruncher thinking outside the box and giving proactive advice, and oh my goodness, when the client comes,
liz farr 15:09
you don’t know.
jackie meyer 15:11
and i hate it when people ask like a tax planning question, can i do this? and you’re like, no, no, no, no. like to think about what they could do out of that scenario, because there’s probably some options.
liz farr 15:27
yeah, there are always multiple ways to achieve a goal. but the key is to keep in to find out what the overarching goal is. before you just say, no, you can’t do that. exactly. yeah. now, we’ve talked about some of the things that accountants should do. what are some things that accountants should stop doing immediately?
jackie meyer 15:59
oh, man, hourly billing ah, yeah, if you bring value to the table value, price it please and price it upfront. so you don’t have any ar, you don’t have any client complaints because they know exactly what they’re getting into. and they know exactly what to expect, and then bring that value to the table. so yes, please, let’s get rid of hourly billing. i’m not a huge proponent of getting rid of the timesheet quite yet, but i’m starting to get there. i’m definitely i can see the value. i think ron baker said the other day, in this cpa practice advisor symposium, thought leader symposium, that making someone fill out a timesheet every five to 10 minutes is like someone being in jail. and why are we subjecting our workers to this. so there’s, you know, gotta be better ways to deal with time than that. and so i’m trying to explore how we can still effectively budget a job without having to, you know, record every single second of the day. so that’s something that’s, that’s a to look into, for sure. other things that count should stop doing, assume that you can do everything and you know, niche down instead, because if a generalist isn’t going to work in the future, for us, we’ve got bookkeeping taking over, we’ve got ai taking over, we’ve got a lot of different people and professions that are taking over the basic things that we tend to offer as accountants, and so we need to start moving on to that higher level of service.
liz farr 17:48
absolutely, and, and i am with you 100%, on billing by the hour. and you know, and i, there is a place for timesheets, in trying to figure out what a particular project should take overall, and where things are going out of kilter out of whack. that’s a good thing. because that can point you to ways that you can improve things in your firm. but it’s when the timesheet is used as a sledgehammer to punish them, then then it’s not very that it’s completely useless as a tool. you know, with if you’re told that this project should take six hours, and well, actually, the partner wrote down the six on there, he writes six hours down on every business tax return. so that’s a pretty meaningless metric. so if it takes me 10 hours or 12 hours, how is that helpful? right, and, yeah, and if we only have, you know, if it’s late november, and we don’t have much work going on, you know? or who is whose fault is it that i only have four billable hours this week? it’s not my fault. it there is no work for me to do. yeah, exactly. now, what are some of the blocks that keep accountants from changing?
jackie meyer 19:49
change is so hard for anybody, right? and so, we’re so used to what we’ve been doing at the firms that we worked for before starting our own practice. this isn’t whatnot, right? so you don’t know what you don’t know, i would encourage accountants to get education and cpe, outside of just technical areas, so that you can see the gamut of like, what’s out there, and what can change and what can be done. because there’s so much more to an accounting firm practice, you know, i really want people to align their passion and purpose, and not just be like sucky, like you said, before we started the podcast. we want to county the suck less, right? and i’m with yes.
liz farr 20:40
yeah, absolutely. and, you know, i think a big part of what helped me get where i am now was learning about accountants around the world. that here in the us, we tend to think that this is the center of the universe. but really, over in the uk, and australia, and new zealand, the english speaking parts of the world, they’re doing a lot of things a little bit differently than we are a, it’s the same overall things, we have to get the numbers, we have to help with audits, we have to help with the bookkeeping, we have to help with some tax compliance, all of that is the same. but there are so many different approaches to it. and that’s what really helped me open my eyes to what is possible.
jackie meyer 21:38
yeah, definitely. unfortunately, a lot of accountants change because they’ve hit rock bottom. and so i’m trying to come in before they hit rock bottom, and encouraged to make change before their health suffers, their mental or physical health suffers. i know back when, you know, i had my first child, i was doing like four people’s jobs. i had no idea that i could, you know, trust other people to do the work. i had no idea that hourly billing wasn’t the thing to do. and i was just miserable. and my health suffered. my mental health suffered, suffered, for sure. and so you know, i want to get the word out that there is a better way. and you know, change is important before you hit rock bottom if possible.
liz farr 22:30
absolutely. absolutely. no, right now, client accounting services or client advisory services, cas, whatever you want to call that. that’s a big thing. only ask you to put your hands on a crystal ball and tell me what is the next big thing in accounting?
jackie meyer 22:54
oh, the next big thing and accounting?
liz farr 23:00
oh, gosh,
jackie meyer 23:01
i would, i would honestly, but this is probably against the grain of every listener. but i would love for ai to take over basic bookkeeping and tax preparation, any just data entry functions, i would love for that to happen. so that we can all really use our brains for like what we were made for, you know, and that would be really, really cool. and there’s talks. there’s been talks of this for years and years and years, but it feels like we’re really on the brink of it actually happening.
liz farr 23:34
yeah. yeah. you know, i remember when i was in public accounting, and we were starting to use autoflow technology for tax returns. and the beginning, it was really terrible. and then it got a little better and a little better and a little better every year. so i think it should be pretty close. but i’m still amazed that there are a lot of people out there who are still manually typing in everything.
jackie meyer 24:10
yeah, it’s, it’s scary.
liz farr 24:14
it really is scary. and, you know, in what, what do you think we will be doing when ai and automation take over? what will we what else will we get to do?
jackie meyer 24:30
well, that’s where the advisory parts of things really come into play. so that’s what’s so exciting. we can really like really niche in on tax planning or, you know, cfo services. wow, that’s like uncharted territory. i still don’t know what someone when they say they’re an outsourced cfo. i have no idea what they do. and it varies so much. across the industry. what the outsourced cfo a does compared to outsource cfo b, and it’s the same with tax planning. so i feel like we could really niche into our expertise at that point.
liz farr 25:10
well, i think that’s a perfect note to end our conversation on. jackie, i want to thank you so much for taking the time out of your very, very busy schedule to talk to me. if people want to reach out to you, where can they find you?
jackie meyer 25:29
well, first of all, join my facebook group so that we can talk a lot because i’m on there almost daily, called accounting firm influencers. and secondly, you can visit my website it’s jackie meyer cpa.com. that’s n ey e ar. or just shoot me an email if you have a question about the podcast or you know you like something i said or you didn’t like something i said and you want to talk more about it. my email is cpa@meyertax.com so it was definitely a pleasure to be with you today. thank you.