the two big metrics and 12 more takeaways.
this video is a preview. the complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to pro members. the podcast version is available everywhere you get your podcasts.
subscribe to 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 podcasts anywhere: apple, google, spotify, iheart, deezer, amazon music and audible, player fm, audacy, gaana (india), and boomplay (africa).
the disruptors
with liz farr
after helping people buy and sell accounting firms for years, brannon poe realized he was sitting on a treasure trove of valuable information that could help firm owners who were “motivated to change their practices for the better.” he’s leveraged those insights into a coaching program for accountants (accounting practice academy) and several books. his latest book, prepare your cpa firm for sale, describes the process of transforming a firm into one that buyers willingly pay top dollar for.
more podcasts and videos: dawn brolin says grow your firm by shrinking it | jason blumer & julie shipp: move leaders out of client service | james graham: drop the billable hour and you’ll bill more | karen reyburn: fix your marketing and fix your business | giles pearson: fix the staffing crisis by swapping experience for education | jina etienne: practice fearless inclusion | bill penczak: stop forcing smart people to do stupid work | sandra wiley: staffing problem? check your culture | scott scarano: first, grow people. then firm growth can follow |
exclusively for pro members. log in here or 2022世界杯足球排名 today.
poe recommends that firm owners start planning for an eventual sale well before they’re ready to leave. “i think the biggest mistake that i see often is they don’t do any planning,” poe says. starting the planning process three to five years ahead gives firm owners time to change things, including getting alignment on the timetable and price with other partners, which may be a tricky issue.
play the full episode.
stream the podcast.
poe cautions firm owners against putting all their eggs in one basket when planning their transition. the person being groomed as an internal successor may not work out. by the time they realize their chosen successor will not be taking the reins, they’ve lost time and want that exit “very badly, very quickly,” poe says. “you’re already exhausted, and then you don’t make great decisions on the exit.”
planning ahead can alert firm owners to “any problems that you’re not aware of that could be problematic for the market” and will provide time to fix those problems. instead of fixing everything at once, poe recommends taking on just a few projects, starting with “things that are going to make a big difference, but they’re easy” to get early wins.
firm owners generally need to create capacity for improvement projects by pruning their firms. that pruning may include reducing the client base, removing problem employees, or eliminating entire segments. “i’ve learned you can prune without a lot of risk,” poe says.
another opportunity is with delegation. poe says, “growing a business is really a series of letting go.” most firm owners spend far too much time doing things they shouldn’t be doing, but learning to delegate those tasks can create momentum. once one thing is off the owner’s plate, the owner will let go of more tasks.
since accountants tend to have a tough time with delegation, poe developed the “3-bucket tool,” which he recommends firms go through together as a team. bucket one is for the tasks you want to keep, bucket two is for the tasks you want to delegate one day, and bucket three is for the tasks you want to delegate now. poe also suggests adding a fourth bucket for what people want to do more.
14 key takeaways
- two key metrics for smaller firms:
- cash flow to the owner should be 50% of revenue.
- owner hours should be under 2,000 per year.
- how many potential buyers are there? firms in large metropolitan areas attract many buyers, as do firms that are fully in the cloud with remote teams that serve clients virtually.
- atypical services such as expert testimony will only attract a small number of buyers.
- buyers want to see quality fees, which means a client base that isn’t fee-sensitive and pays more than the area’s average.
- buyers also want to see longevity of staff and low turnover. they want people who are well-trained, good at what they do, and happy in their positions.
- firms dabbling in an area without a dedicated person may suffer in the margins. small firms doing audits that do not have a partner focused exclusively on audits are another example.
- to determine if a segment is worth keeping, consider all the time—including the time to keep up with its changes—and the cash flow from it from a buyer’s perspective.
- private equity firms are interested in accounting firms because they see a lot of opportunity in firms, especially because many accountants aren’t managing their firms optimally.
- think about past attempts at change that were unsuccessful to identify the reasons you failed to implement—your ftis—as well as successful changes. try to create the same environment that resulted in success in your current change management projects.
- most firms are undervaluing their work. if you can get the pricing in your firm right, your staffing problems will resolve themselves because salaries will go up.
- you can try new things, such as changes in pricing, on a sample before rolling them out to the whole firm as you gain confidence. you don’t have to do it all at once.
- experiment with new price quotes for new clients to determine the real market value. price can help filter out the clients you don’t want.
- increasing prices on existing clients doesn’t always result in fewer clients. you may get more money, but you might not gain additional capacity.
- taking regular unplugged vacations – where you are completely disconnected from your firm – can improve the health of your business. your team will need to step up or disappoint you. detaching from the work can give you a new perspective and more energy to make the changes you want. poe says, “the detached brain solves problems far better than the brain that’s in the weeds and in the midst of it.”
about brannon poe
brannon poe is the founder of poe group advisors and the creator of accounting practice academytm, an online workshop that is transforming how owners run their firms. he began facilitating successful accounting practice transitions in 2003 and has since pioneered a consulting-based approach to transitioning cpa firms, culminating in poe group advisors’ unique process – the seamless successiontm. he started his career in public accounting as an auditor with ernst & young before working for several years in auditing and tax preparation for the regional firm of elliott, davis & company. poe is the author of several books, and multiple industry articles. he is also the host of the “accountant’s flight plan” podcast. poe is passionate about entrepreneurship and is a founding member and past president of the charleston chapter of the entrepreneurs organization (eo). poe has worked with some of the most successful and seasoned cpas in the industry and has been privy to the behind-the-scenes methods that these clients have used to build highly profitable practices along with capable and independent teams.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr
welcome to accounting disrupter conversations. i’m your host, liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my guest today is a returning guest, brannon poe, founder of the poe group advisors and the accounting practice academy. how are you doing today, brannon?
brannon poe
i’m very excited to be here, liz. thank you. i’m great.
liz farr
oh, you’re welcome. well, well, the reason i brought you back on is because you just put out a brand new book, prepare your cpa firm for sale: how to reduce owner hours, increase profitability and transform your practice. great book, by the way. now, what was the impetus behind this book? why this book and why now?
brannon poe
well, so we wrote a book called the accountants flight plan in 2010. and that book, had a collection of ideas and experiences around practice management. so you know, we sell cpa firms. i’ve been brokering firms since 2003. and so the first book was in 2010. and it was sort of like a collection from my client work. and the way that sort of happened was, i would sell out have a practice for sale. and we get access to all this information that sort of privy to the practice, we see the backside, we see the financial statements, we get to know the owners, we know how they manage their firms. so we, we get a lot of insight. and it occurred, actually, my wife said, you need to write a book, you’ve got enough notes about these different practices. and so that was how that book was written. this book is some of those concepts from accountants flight plan are timeless. and they some of them kind of make their way into this book. but four years ago, we launched the accounting practice academy. so we’re in our fourth year. and we’ve had a lot of experience with clients who are really motivated to change their practices for the better. and we’re getting more just more information and more insight about how that change process can take place. and it’s not just about the information about how a well run firm operates, the way it looks like, it’s how do you make those changes. and those changes typically have to be made by the owner. and they’re a lot of those are mindset changes, just the perspective and the challenging your assumptions. and then slowly putting things in putting things to work and getting confidence that those things work. and then once you have that confidence, then you can do more of that change. so i gave you a really long answer. but it’s just, it’s just an accumulation of our experience that we wanted to, to share. and yeah,
liz farr
that’s, that’s great. and you know, what i really like about all the ideas in it, is that this could have kind of a kind of a different impact on our reader, if they implement these in make them not necessarily want to sell their firm, but want to keep running it for a while because it’s just so much nicer.
brannon poe
exactly. and i kind of think anytime you start a business, you need to be thinking about what you could do to make it, build it so you can sell it one day. so it’s a great book, even if you’re nowhere near selling, but if let’s say you’re just starting a practice, i think it’s a great book to read and incorporate into your plans until you’re starting a practice.
liz farr
yes, because it’s it’s creating a firm that not only you want to own but that somebody else might want to own in the future and that people will want to work at
brannon poe
exactly, yes. yes.
liz farr
yeah. now one of the exercises you have in the book is to look at your firm from the buyers perspective. so what kinds of things should a firm owner be looking at?
brannon poe
well, i think if you can somehow bring fresh eyes, do your own practice that’s can be a game changer in a number of ways. it’s it’s not unlike if you’ve ever sold a house and you are ask your real estate agent to come in and help you prep prepare the house and what you need, give some tips on what you need to do to stage it properly. and i actually have had this experience as you walk through, and you just immediately shift your perspective and thinking about how that buyer is going to see the books on the shelf, or is that too cluttered? or does that deck need to be painted? you know, it’s, it’s kind of taking stock of the condition of your house or your firm. two really easy takeaways. one thing that i mean, this is very simple. and these are targets, and they’re sort of targets for smaller firms. when i say smaller firms, i mean, maybe less than 10-15 employees. but the profitability, a target is 50% cash flow to owner. so if you have a high cash flow to owner percentage, that’s going to be attractive to a lot more buyers. the other metric is owner hours, if you can keep owner hours under 2000. that makes your firm much more marketable. so you know, if a firm owner has 3000 hours or something sort of crazy like that, that’s going to turn a lot of buyers away. so those two metrics are really good targets. because in order to hit those targets, everything else in the practice sort of has to shift as well.
liz farr
absolutely. and i liked that 50% of top line revenue as cash flow to owner because that makes me think of the ratio that mike michalowicz wits uses in profit first, which is, you know, for a small company, you start with 50% of the cash that’s coming in, that’s going in to pay your own salary, the owner draws. so that isn’t some kind of crazy, crazy metric that you just pulled out of the air. that’s what a lot of different businesses use.
brannon poe
yeah, and, you know, i have a lot of get a lot of pushback on that metric. some accountants are like, well, there’s no way i don’t understand how it can be done. well, i can tell you, it’s doable. i see it all the time, we’ve sell practices like that, you know, pretty regularly, so it’s possible.
liz farr
now, besides reduced owner hours, you know, under owner hours, under 2000 hours per year, cash flow to owner being 50% of top line revenue. what else makes a firm especially attractive to buyers?
brannon poe
well, it can be so so when we market a firm, what we like to think of is a concept called number of potential buyers. so if you own a firm, let’s say you own a firm in denver, colorado, or let’s say you own a firm in los angeles, california. so these are both major metropolitan areas. so the location has a big impact on the number of potential buyers. so when we think about what makes a firm marketable, or unmarketable, that’s the sort of prism that we’re looking through. cloud firms, like let’s say you’re not in a great location, if you move your firm completely to the cloud, where you’re able to serve virtually your, your clients, and you’re able to have a remote team, or your full cloud firm that expands the number of buyers possible. so that makes it more attractive. there’s higher demand and higher price. other things are mixed sometimes can can impact how many buyers so let’s say you’re doing something a little atypical of a cpa firm. let’s say you’re doing expert testimony, expert witness testimony, that’s a that’s a very small universe of cpa firms that want to get into that same type of work. so it can be non recurring, and it’s it’s so that’s one example of something in the mix that might really make buyers not want the firm. even audit work in small firms can be undesirable. so sometimes if you eliminate the audit work, your number of potential buyers will increase. so there are a lot of a lot of those little instances but mix of work. um, fee quality also impacts. so fee quality typically, is going to also impact cash flow. like i said, cash flow to owner has ripple effects throughout the practice. and that will definitely be one that fee quality gets impacted by that. but that’s usually a good indicator of the quality of the clients. you know, buyers want clients that are not fee sensitive, or don’t have a history of being fee sensitive. so things like that.
liz farr
well, those i really like and especially fee quality, what is what is fee quality me?
brannon poe
well, to me, it means high fees. so where, you know, where it’s maybe an above average fee for the firm’s in a particular market, let’s say you’re, let’s say you’ve got a very run of the mill, bookkeeping tax practice. and if your minimum fee on a individual tax return is $1,000, i’ve even seen minimum fees of $2,000. but that’s a very high fee quality.
liz farr
yeah. yeah. you know, i’ve seen people out there advertising for $500 and less, or 1040.
brannon poe
i talked to… interesting little story… i talked to a cpa who had sold his firm in the northeastern united states. and he was fairly young and wanted to start a new venture. and his new venture is to do basically create a machine to do high quality 1040 work, just 1040 work. and the business model that he’s was contemplating was, first of all, he’s going to be 50,000 returns a year. he was going to automate everything that he could automate, was all going to be virtual, the data entry was going to be done overseas is going to outsource the data entry. but he’s going to have us base reviewers, so that there was a quality of tax return would be high. so there would be low errors, good quality return. and he still with that model, with that much volume with automation without sourcing. the model didn’t work if he didn’t have at least a $500 fee for the for each return. yeah.
liz farr
yeah. because, you know, it takes people to do that kind of work. and if you want to have us base people even just reviewing, then you’re going to have to compensate them well. yeah. you know, and especially that kind of high pressure, high volume environment, you better be paying them. well. you know, i don’t think i would like that kind of work. it’d be kind of brain numbingly boring for me. that’s just me. yeah. but there are probably people out there who would love to just put in their hours. and you know, maybe if you limit it to 40 hours during busy season, if you could figure out how to do that, then, okay, but i don’t know. yeah,
brannon poe
i just thought it was, it was fascinating to me, i would have thought the minimum fee would have been lower than that. even even because with that kind of volume and automation. but what it what it demonstrated to me is, if you have a traditional practice in the us, and you’re doing everything, kind of a lower volume, with all us help. what does that you know, what does that say about the fees that you’re charging, it might just get you to look at those fees a little differently.
liz farr
yeah. that’s a really, really good point. though, besides fee quality, what other characteristics of a firm impact the selling price? are there? are there any that are more important? your feet quality we mentioned? yep. they’re ours. we’ve mentioned cash flow to owner we mentioned what else is really important.
brannon poe
i think, i think those are the big location is probably the biggest one. it really it really does impact the value. and that’s not something you can change very easily. even going to a cloud model is very difficult and a lot of people try and don’t quite make it. however, anything you can do to improve your tech stack will help like i call those things sort of curb appeal items. and those are things that you can control. and you can, you know, have a fairly quick, there’s the kinds of things that you focus on like a year before you want to go to sell, you can make the office more if you have a traditional office, you can make that more tidy you can, if it needs paint or carpeting, you can kind of improve the curb appeal of the business. staffing is becoming a bigger and bigger issue with purchases. you know, they’re all interestingly enough, there are a lot of buyers that are not traditional accountants and accounting firms buying. we’ve got private equity looking into the business into this. and we’ve got some i just recorded a podcast last week with a gentleman who does not he did not have an accounting background. and he bought he has purchased three firms. and he had some really interesting things that he looks out. but staff is key, especially for those people who are not in their profession. and they’re looking at, okay, how, how do i purchase a firm where i know the owner is not going to get pulled back into the day to day details. right. because if you don’t even know how to do a tax return, and you’re buying a business, then you need to make sure that people are there’s redundancy, so that if you lose somebody, but so that’s something that buyers are definitely looking at more, they want to see longevity of staff, they don’t want to see high turnover. they want to see people who are well trained and good at what they do and happy but they’re happy in their positions.
liz farr
that that would be a biggie for me. you know, a friend of my inherited a tax prep firm, essentially when her mom passed away. and before that happened, she didn’t know anything about tax prep. but she rolled up her sleeves and jumped in. studied, got her ea and now she’s got a nice little niche practice. nice. you know, can work.
brannon poe
yeah. steep learning curve.
liz farr
very steep, very steep. now, one of the things i really liked in this book was that you talk about the timing of an exit and planning for that. now, what are some things that cpas tend to ignore when they think about the timetable for succession?
brannon poe
i think a lot, i think the biggest mistake that i see often is they don’t do any planning. yeah. and that’s way more common than the not. you know, it’s it’s so if we’re talking about the big thing that they don’t do, it’s it’s any planning. and i think it’s really smart. if you’re three to five years away, if you start getting those, those notions that you might want to exit, like start thinking about it. if you have partners, you need to start those conversations with your partners, the sooner the better. sometimes that can be the trickiest it issue to deal with is partner timetables not being aligned and or values of what their opinion of value of the firm not being aligned. so if a partner wants to buy another partner out, they may not be able to come to terms because the purchasers or the sellers just not being realistic about the price and the value. so i think the sooner you get ahead of these things, the more you can deal with them, and the more that you can change them. so we have people that reach out to us. i spoke with the gentleman today who i first spoke with in 2007. so so yeah, he was in his mid i looked at because i had my notes and he was in his mid 50s. and now he’s 71 i believe. and so, you know, that’s good, because he’s kind of been thinking about it and we have occasional conversations and so now when he’s ready, he’ll there really aren’t that many surprises.
liz farr
yeah, the firms that i worked at had partnership agreements with mandatory buyout ages. and i thought that was a bad idea. because they were usually so young, that these partners didn’t really want to hang up their hat at that point. and so that made transitioning them out really difficult. and what ended up happening in a number of cases was that they just went to another firm that didn’t have a mandatory retirement age. and they took all their their clients with them. yep.
brannon poe
yeah, i’m kind of shocked by that. i have run into that. and it’s surprising to me that they don’t have that figured out a little better.
liz farr
yeah, i just, it never really seemed to work out quite right. a buy out i saw that worked about right was one where it was a solo owner, who decided that you know, he was done. and he gladly turn the reins over to somebody else. he kind of stayed on for about another three years. but he was gradually pushing things off his plate and moving them over to somebody else. and that worked out great for him. yeah. as he said to me, i have enough money. i want to go play with my grandkids. yeah. yeah.
brannon poe
yeah, i think some people, it’s definitely easier when you’re a one owner firm, you can make that decision whenever you want to. but even if you’re a one on one firm, i think planning is smart. because you can position the firm for a sale more effectively. or if there any problems that you’re not aware of that could be problematic for the market. it’s good to know, in time to do something about it.
liz farr
yeah, so yeah, you talk in your book a lot about projects for improving your firm. but all these projects, they take time and energy, everyone’s already overworked? how can owners find the extra capacity to do this.
brannon poe
so in a combination of ways, so the first part of our workshop, in accounting practice academy focuses primarily on opportunities for pruning, because you got to create that capacity before you can really do well on those projects. and one of the reasons why these private equity groups are interested in the accounting industry, is because they realize that there’s a lot of opportunity in these firms. because a lot of accountants just quite frankly, aren’t managing their firms in an optimal way. and so, the private equity firm, their strategy is they’re going to come in here, and they’re going to do a lot of the things that were sort of prescribing, they’re going to do them if they buy a firm. so i just think that’s an interesting perspective is, is the reason all these private equity firms are looking at the accounting industry is because there is a tremendous amount of opportunity. and i’ve learned you can prune without a lot of risk. so you can practice you don’t have to, you don’t have to implement everything, firm, wide price increases is a good example. you don’t have to do that all at once. you can test you can sample, you can take the risk out of it. and then build a confident, you know, build a pricing model that you’re confident in, and then roll it out firm wide. you don’t have to do it all at once. so, but to your question about time, where most accounts owners are spending time doing things they probably shouldn’t be doing. and they’re spending a lot of that time doing things they shouldn’t be doing. so there there’s opportunity with delegation. now that’s assuming you’ve got a team but if you don’t have a team, sometimes you have to sometimes you have to prune away problem employees a problem and employ you can be more work than not having that person on your team. so you can’t be afraid of ruining what needs to be pruned. there are clients that need to be pruned out of a practice, sometimes their entire segments that need to come off the practice. what we find is that if a firm is dabbling in something, they don’t have someone who’s really dedicated and focusing on that area, it’s probably suffering in terms of margins. and like you take you take a small firm is still doing a lot of audit work, or a little bit of audit work. let’s say audit is 20% of their practice. and, but they don’t have a dedicated partner that just focuses on audit work. and they’re not, they’re not getting super efficient, because they’re not doing a high volume of audits. so they’re not very, very efficient. they’re studying, they’re staying up on the rules. they’re probably not really accounting for that time. so it’s i mean, there’s a number of examples of where that whole segment, if you really look at all the time you’re putting into that segment, and what you’re getting out of it. it just doesn’t make sense. yeah. so again, that’s sort of like looking at it from a buyer’s perspective. they’re looking at it from that 30,000 foot view. and they, they might recognize that sooner than someone who’s been in that environment for years and years, who’s someone who’s been in that environment for years and years. it just might not occur. it’s just hey, that’s why we’ve done it. we’re just gonna keep doing it this way.
liz farr
that’s right. that’s right. and i like your comment about sometimes you have to prune the difficult employees. yep. yeah, yeah, i’ve worked with a few of them. and things were smoother when they left.
brannon poe
the air in the office changes sometimes when the right person leaves.
liz farr
that it that it does, yeah. yeah. and we touched on delegation. and one of the tools that you have in your book is this three buckets tool, which i really like as a great tool for delegation. can you explain that to listeners?
brannon poe
yes, yes. and this is a tool that the whole team can use, not just the owner. so what we’ve done, we’ve done as a team. and i’ll go into how the tool is designed, because it’s really simple. but what we’ve done as a team, is we get anybody everybody into the conference area. and we set a timer for 20 minutes. and we say, okay, fill out this tool, we’re not going to judge you, it’s a safe place to put down whatever your you’re thinking. and then we’re going to talk about these things. and so we set the timer. and the tool is divided into three columns on the paper. it’s keep delegate one day is the second column. and then the third column is delegate now. so let’s say you just take all of your thing, you take all the things that you work on, i say, as an owner, you’ve got some time that you spend on farm administration, you really don’t want to do that. but maybe you don’t have anybody in house that can take it right now. so you might put that in a delegate one day category. and then what happens is the delegate now that’s the easy stuff. that’s the stuff like, you know, i really don’t want to open my mail anymore, or i don’t want to filter my email inbox anymore. or, you know, just things that if you could just get it off right now, you could, you could let it go. and what tends to happen is that delegate now, a lot of that is administrative in nature, like an admin can do a lot of that work. so you go around the table, and you got a team of, let’s say, your leadership team is five or six people. and one admin might could really take on a lot of these little so you might not even need to hire a professional staff. to free up your professional staff, you might need more administrative help, more support. the other thing you can do is help people turn the page page over and add a fourth category and that is i’d like to add to my plate. oh, yeah. so what you might find is that the you might have a really good manager, for example, that really he wants to get into more onboarding work, onboarding staff, they really liked onboarding new staff, or maybe they really like, would like to do more state work, or you know, who knows, right. and what you find is that you, the partner, or somebody who might want to let go that one day, well, gosh, there’s a person that wants to do this work. so maybe you can start working on that handoff. so there’s all kinds of there’s so much opportunity just with that one tool. and it’s probably something that needs to be done periodically, it’s not a one on one and done, it’s maybe once a year or every couple of years, like it’s something that’s, you know, things kind of creep up. the other thing it does, if you, if you have really good staff, most really good staff, they want to be challenged, they’re happier in a role, where they’re growing and learning and developing. and so if you can create a culture where everybody’s, everybody’s moving up, the whole company is moving up. that’s a culture that a players like to be in.
liz farr
and i think, you know, just in taking a lot of that administrative stuff off the owners plate, that would also make it much more appealing to a buyer, when they see that there is this team of people who can do a lot of the lower level work. and so as an owner, as a potential owner stepping in, you know, a lot of my headaches are already taken care of. yep.
brannon poe
and the energy you get when you delegate something, and you don’t have to worry about it, and you free yourself up a little bit. it really creates momentum, because then you’re like, okay, what else? can i get out? what else can i let go of? growth? i think growing a business is really a series of letting go.
liz farr
yeah. you mentioned that in your book. and i love that phrase. and that way of thinking about it, that moving up is just letting go of the things that you’ve done. you know, and that is so hard for so many accountants to do, because they, they like to have control over every little bit of what’s going on. yeah, how can how can you help them? let go of that need for control? how do you do that? brandon?
brannon poe
well, i think they have to believe that on the other side of that is a benefit, they have to know that there’s actually a real benefit to that. but i think as far as like the and that kind of gets into change management, which we’ve learned a lot about with our coaching business is getting people to change is it’s a whole art and science in itself is learning how humans change. and i think what we do is, we say, look, first of all, you’re gonna have a lot of ideas, right? when you enter any kind of coaching program, or any kind of thing, there’s a million ideas and in that book, so you can’t do them all at once you got to be intentional. and you’ve got to be, you can’t have to limit what you’re working on. and so we always suggest, look at things that are going to make a big difference, but they’re easy. those are the first things you should do. do the things that are just sort of you know, from your own data are going to make a big difference. and just do something towards that. it can be little it can be low risk. but just make a little progress, get a win, you need some early wins. and also you need to identify your own history about why you didn’t change in the past. and that could be like your own personal history. i think weight losses are is a really good example because a lot of people can kind of identify with that. what, what worked in the past, was it an accountant? was it a was it you needed accountability? was it exercise was the key and so you had to have a workout buddy, or no what what what is it a about you that helps you change. and then once you’ve identified both your, we call it fti failure to implement, like you can know what to do, but then you don’t you don’t do it. so look back at your history what, you know, where are your ftis in the past? and where are your successes in the past, and then try to bring that and kind of create that environment for this change management project.
liz farr
those are all really good ideas. and i really like the emphasis on looking at yourself as perhaps a barrier to change and how your own characteristics can be hindering or helping the firm to move forward. yep. yeah. yeah, and then one of the things i’ve talked to a lot, and talked to people a lot on this podcast about is pricing. because you know, as you know, i hate hourly billing, i thought that was kind of a racket. and in you talk in your for in your book about different ways to experiment with pricing? can you talk a little bit about that? yeah.
brannon poe
so pricing, i think is one of the one of the major things that can change your practice in so many positive ways. and also, a lot of firms, maybe the majority, maybe the vast majority, are underpricing, their work, they’re undervaluing their work. and, you know, if they could get that, right, the staffing problem would eventually kind of resolve itself, because salaries would go up. and it would create a market mechanism to pull more students into the profession. like if the money was good. yeah, that would help. you know, that would help. right? so i think the first thing you have to do is get your mind right about what your own worth is, as the type of work that you’re doing, realize that it’s valuable. but, you know, from a tactical point of view, one of the easiest things you can do is experiment with new price quotes with new clients. so i mean, there are a lot of firms that are kind of doing this accidentally right now, because they really don’t want more work. so they’re trying to say no, with the price. and what a lot of people are finding out is like, it doesn’t work. you can’t say no with the price. so you get the client anyway,
liz farr
yeah, kind of backfires. but in a good way.
brannon poe
but in a good way. so what i always encourage people is like, experiment with where the real market is. because what you have in your practice, that’s your market, that’s not the that’s not the market, that’s not the real market. that’s what you’ve created in, you know, in your experience with your clients. so with new clients, it’s really easy to kind of test the boundaries. and you don’t want to get every quote, you want price to filter out people. right? if you’re not charging, and afterwards filtering people, you’re really not charging enough. maybe it’s for every two bids that you put out, you only get one, or maybe it’s three to one. so that’s an easy one. the other one, the easy place to experiment is with low risk the client, so you really don’t care if you lose or not, like problem clients experiment with those people on pricing. so what our apa members have experienced, though, is even that it doesn’t work as effectively as they think in terms of like pruning. so we’ve had several people come in, well, i’ll just, i won’t less work. so i’m going to prune, and i’m just going to charge higher fees. and that way, my capacity will increase and i’ll have fewer clients. and we had one person who was really sort of in a bad spot. when they came into the program. i think they’d lost some staff. they were burned out. they really wanted to make a pretty dramatic change in their firm. and part of that strategy was far fewer clients. so he doubled his fees across the board and i do not recommend doing that. and i’m not this is not a this is not a recommendation for strategy. this is what one person did. and he only lost 7% of his clients.
liz farr
wow. yeah. wow.
brannon poe
so we’ve had that happen time. and again, people will make a price increase, maybe it’s 20%, maybe it’s 30%. and they think they’re going to kind of prune out their list a little bit that way. it doesn’t work.
liz farr
well, the extra money with would be good.
brannon poe
the extra money is good. right. but if if, if you’re really at your wit’s end with your schedule, and with i mean, some people get to a point in life where they’re just not going to do it anymore. yeah, which is good. i think that’s a good thing to realize, like this is no longer acceptable. i’m not going to accept this anymore. so he was at that point, but it just didn’t quite work out the way he had planned. our, our, our most successful members usually end up terminating a group of clients, they ended up terminating a fair number of clients that don’t fit the practice anymore, for whatever reason. and they make a swift talk about getting capacity quickly. you know, that that does it that that gets you what you need. it’s just hard to do. it’s hard, emotionally. you’re attached to these people, you care for them. that’s, i think, the hardest part about that tactic.
liz farr
yeah, yeah. and i think that that may be a big reason why a lot of people keep on these legacy clients who aren’t paying them very much. and are kind of a pain to work with. you know, there is that attachment. you know, mr. jones was my very first client, how can i fire him? or that’s my wife’s sister’s boyfriend, or something like that? yep. yeah.
brannon poe
and you know, that the owner just has to make that decision. and there’s no right or wrong answer. it’s just a choice. right? it’s it’s, it’s a hard choice. but, and i’ve had certain i’ve had some people go, you know, i’m not going to do that. and. and that’s, you know, that’s okay.
liz farr
there are an awful lot of options out there. yep. another thing i really liked about your book is you talk about unplugged vacations, which is something you advocate enough for they even wrote a whole book about it. yes. now, how does taking time away from your firm? when you’re completely disconnected from it? how does that help make your firm more attractive to buyers?
brannon poe
well, i think a lot of firm owners, you know, you mentioned how difficult it is to change. and i think a lot of firm owners don’t want to let go, they don’t want to that’s a that’s a little mini letting go. like if you can take a vacation. and let’s say it’s just a week, and you’re not checking in, you’re not checking your email. there’s so much that happens. in preparation of that, like, you’ve got to hand you’re delegating before you go on vacation, you’re saying hey, this needs to be done or look out for this, or can you meet with this client or whatever it is. so i think there’s delegation that goes on the team, they either step up or they disappoint you. either way, you’ve got new information about your team that might need to be handled. so there’s just a lot of things that just kind of improve the health of the business if you’re doing this on a regular basis. but i think the biggest thing is just the owner can relax. the owner can truly detach from work. and it’s that detachment, that i think is really powerful, because when you come back to the office, you’ve got, you’ve got new energy, you’ve got a fresh perspective. and that’s a great way to tackle change. you know, it’s like, if you’re dreading going back to the office because of the hour hours or because of just the number of decisions you have to make on a daily basis, or the number of client problems that you have to deal with whatever it is, you can kind of come to the point where man, that’s just not acceptable anymore. and how can i solve this? and i think the detached brain solves problems far better than the brain that’s in the weeds and in the midst of it.
liz farr
that’s absolutely right. you know, i think i heard that thomas edison, when he was trying to solve a problem, he would just kind of put the question to his mind, and then try to take a nap. but he would take a nap, with his arm stretched out and a steel ball in his hand. and so that as soon as that steel ball fell out of his hand, because he fell completely asleep, he’d wake up. and so he went trying to stay in this kind of twilight. interesting stay. so that it was, and that was how he maximized his creative problem solving.
brannon poe
and interesting. well, i think, i think most accountants have experience like looking at a file, maybe it’s a tax return or looking you have in a file, and you just set it over for a few days and let it get cold. and then you pick that same file up and you see the mistakes, you see the opportunities, like you see it with fresh eyes, and it’s your practices the same way.
liz farr
absolutely. yeah, just getting away from something really gives you a new perspective. now, what other advice do you have for firm, firm owners who were thinking about their transition?
brannon poe
when one is a big one, is don’t put all your eggs in one basket? it’s, it’s, yeah, i’ve seen i’ve seen that happen a lot. and sometimes it works out, okay. but i’ve also seen it backfire, you know, you groom someone and you think they’re going to take over and then for whatever reason, they don’t want to, or you realize they’re not really going to be that capable, or you can’t come to terms with that person, or whatever, for whatever reason, it might not work out. so then you’ve lost time and you’ve lost. you’ve lost time. and that’s really valuable when you’re thinking about exiting. because, you know, at a certain point, when you’ve made up that mind, eggs, you made up your mind to exit. some people just, that’s really that’s what they want. they want it very badly, very quickly. so it’s like you hit this point. and you don’t want to you don’t want to hit that point. and then you’re kind of already exhausted. and then you don’t make great decisions on the exit. so don’t put all your eggs in one basket and plan would be my my key advice.
liz farr
that’s really good advice. and i would say don’t put it off too long, either. because if you wait so long that health issues, cause you to have a forced sudden retirement or forced, sudden ending to the firm, then that’s even worse. yeah.
brannon poe
yeah, then you’re in a fire sale situation, which is not good.
liz farr
well, i think this has been just great having you back on brandon, always a joy to talk to you. in one of these days. we will meet up in person, i am sure of it. yes, yeah. thank you for taking the time to talk to us. now, if listeners want to connect with you, where’s the best my best way to find you?
brannon poe
so i’m on linkedin. it’s probably the best place, but my website is poe group advisors.com. you can reach out to me by email and look at our resources. you can find out about and download a free copy of the book that we’re talking about on our resources tab. so that’s the easiest way.