2022世界杯足球排名 today<\/a>.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nhis focus in his accounting firm and in groupup is finding that sweet spot of the right clients, right services and right prices. the first step is \u201cmaking sure we have the right people in the right structure with the right motivators behind it. those three components can build an unstoppable team,” montgomery explained. next, he said, \u201con the client side, we do the right service that’s in our wheelhouse, that we can consistently deliver to the right client\u2026and for the right price, so we have enough money coming in the door.\u201d<\/p>\n
with that structure in place, montgomery said, firm owners \u201ccan get out of production and lead the firm,\u201d changes that can lead to \u201cyou running a firm that gives you more freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n
a key to making those changes is to be willing to delegate and empower. \u201cwe advise our clients to outsource and grow and scale their business,\u201d montgomery said. but many firm owners fail to practice what they preach. by failing to build out an empowered team, he explained, \u201cwe have a bunch of worker bees, and we become extremely busy, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
12 more takeaways from joe montgomery<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nslow down your hiring process to share your vision upfront.<\/li>\n the current model of working 50-plus hour weeks at 85-90% productivity just leads to lots of burned-out people. switching to flexible hours and dropping to 70% productivity can be done, but only if you are serving the right client with the right kind of work for the right price.<\/li>\n more firms are being intentional about defining their ideal client and ideal service and getting a good price for the work. with flat monthly pricing, some firms are getting 200-300% realization. because they are capturing the value on the front end, some are dropping from 1,000 clients to 100 and providing a higher level of service to that smaller group of clients.<\/li>\n firms are also expanding from a single partner to a leadership team by elevating leaders within their firms. sometimes this means additional revenue, and sometimes it means the owner has a more balanced life.<\/li>\n if your firm wants to achieve a certain revenue target, build out a sales process and assign someone to own that seat.<\/li>\n be a business coach to your clients. that starts with slowing down the sales process to three separate meetings so you can uncover the pain points for the client and paint a picture of better ways. provide several options and price according to the value the client perceives, not your costs.<\/li>\n stop the bleeding at the front. stop bringing in junk clients or clients who are too small or too big. otherwise, you\u2019ll never hit the sweet spot of the right clients, the right services and the right price.<\/li>\n accountants need to acquire the ability to cut through the noise of the apps and the noise of legislation and guide clients to clarity by serving up the right resources for the clients. be the accountant who cuts through the mess to identify the right tech stack and the right people for the client, and you\u2019ll stand out from the crowd.<\/li>\n there is an opportunity for accountants to act as business coaches for their clients to connect them with technology and educate them. but to do that, you need to create a whitespace for people to be creative and curious about your clients\u2019 problems.\nmontgomery<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/li>\nat montgomery’s firm, the average fee is $6,500 per month, and no team member works more than 30 hours per week. that extra 10 hours gives everyone the creativity to solve the client\u2019s bigger problems.<\/li>\n don\u2019t compare your firm to others. having an engaged and happy team with a great culture is better than landing at that perfect 33% ratio of payroll to revenue.<\/li>\n if you\u2019re overworked, hire someone to help. that may lower profit for a bit, but you\u2019ll have a better life. use the additional capacity to offer your clients a new level of service.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\nmore about joe montgomery<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\nas a second-generation firm owner, joe montgomery is an entrepreneur at heart and understands the unique challenges of a family firm. he has created new service lines, built a great team and culture during times of 80% turnover, doubled the size of his family firm, and represented it to win local awards and national recognition. he left in 2020 to launch <\/span>groupup<\/span> and cohesion accounting, a new virtual, advisory-based practice that boasts an average fee of $5,500 per month and a work-anytime, -anywhere team culture where no one works more than 30 hours per week. through his speaking and networking, joe has helped thousands of accountants move closer to their goals. joe challenges the status quo and is a firm believer in collaboration, leveraging disruptive business models and creating a better way for all in the accounting profession. he believes that accountants are uniquely equipped to radically change small businesses across the globe for the better. montgomery works at a deep level with those looking to flip their firm and get back their life. when not talking with other firm owners, joe loves to backpack and spend time with his wife and three boys at the beach.<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/em><\/p>\ntranscript \n<\/strong>(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)<\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>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 joe montgomery, founder of groupup and cohesion accounting. how are you today? joe?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>i’m good, liz, how about you?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>i’m doing just great. now there’s a lot that i’m sure you have to say about these questions. so let’s just jump right in.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>sounds great. such good questions. thanks for having me.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>oh, of course, of course, glad to have a wide variety of voices. now, accounting talent in the us and around the world, for that matter has been tight for years, the pandemic made it worse. what are some of the things that you have seen firms? do that make it a little bit better?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>yeah, that’s a great question. a couple of things that come to mind. i think, number one, i’m seeing firms change their strategy towards recruiting. so i think it used to be we put out the job applications, we contacted some recruiters. and then we interviewed a couple of people, we skimmed resumes, maybe we interviewed twice, we probably tried to do it within a two week timeframe. and then we just picked somebody, and we kind of hoped it worked. and so maybe not incredibly intentional. and we just did a talk actually, with karen rayburn of pf marketing, on actually using smart marketing to build a talent pipeline, and how she has seven steps. so i’m seeing a lot of firms slow their hiring process down, which seems super counterintuitive, given the market being what it is like we have a tendency to kind of freak out and want to make snap decisions on the hire. but really, i’m seeing firms slow down, share their vision more upfront, and try to be a little bit more transparent and clear. just during the interview process, and so they’re, they’re sending videos, a lot of them have culture pages on their website, where they have their values clearly stated. and they’ve got videos of their team members talking about the firm. some actually make candidates send in videos before it’s kind of a first step in the whole kind of hiring process. so i’m seeing different strategies and recruiting. but i think more than that, and this probably is a bigger idea is, you know, we’ve overworked our people. and we’ve hung on for probably far too long of this idea that we can get people in here, working 50 plus hours a week, you know, 85 90% productivity percentage, right, like that’s the holy grail. yeah, but what that looks like is a bunch of burnout people. yeah. and so i’m also seeing a shift more toward certainly flexible hours, but also lowering that percentage to maybe something like 70%. which we can only do if we’re also bringing in good revenue, like to the serving the right client with the right kind of work for the right price. so i’m definitely seeing firms. i don’t want to say slack off, but just maybe make the expectation more reasonable. and then a strong push on vision, culture and leadership. so i just don’t think we can do the whole, hey, come work for me. we’re going to have tax season and you’ll ever see your family. we’re a cool company. we do starbucks on the weekends. but they never share their vision. and they never actually talked about where the firm wants to go and collaborate with the team on on those bigger ideas and bigger goals. and so it doesn’t actually feel like a company. it just kind of feels like sort of a day job. i go show up and i do my work. and i clock out and i go home. and it’s just never ending. we were talking a little bit before liz and you mentioned kind of this dark spiral with no light at the end. i’m seeing firms be so much more intentional about showing their culture and their vision and aligning their team behind it and making it a really exciting process. so those are three things that come to mind. at least, there’s probably a lot.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>well, those are all really good things are slowing down on hiring. and being intentional about hiring. i’ve heard a lot of other conversations about that recently, that it doesn’t make any sense to just bring somebody in like they’re a exchangeable widget that you can just plop it into a chair and expect them to happily crank out work for a year or two.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>yeah. yeah.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>that just doesn’t work. and and the emphasis on culture, you know, what, what would you say are some really are some things that that young accountants are looking for in a firm culture.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>i think that what maybe somebody coming out of college is looking for. and and that’s a whole other thing, because college enrollments down people taking the cpa exam or is down. and so a lot of people don’t want to be in accounting, like maybe we used to. so i think the people who are graduating with accounting degrees, they’re looking for, they’re looking for a company, not a firm. and so when i think of a firm, i think of one person sole owner million bucks and revenue team of eight to 10. and it’s kind of a sweatshop, or maybe it’s actually not, it’s might be pleasant. but it’s not going anywhere, it’s static, it’s not growing, like maybe it’ll have a year where it does 1.2 million, and it drops to 900k. it just kind of sits there. and it might be pleasant, but it’s not going anywhere. what i’m seeing a lot of maybe younger cpas want is a place where they can connect with a vision that deeply resonates with their own values, and where it directly translates to impacting people. so and this is, this may not be different than that firm owner who owns that firm. but i just think that we’re looking for all of those, that vision and that owner who started that firm, and all of the client service that they’re giving all the care that they give, maybe they they stay up thinking about it. but we’re looking for that to be communicated to the whole company, the whole firm. so we can get excited about it and kind of come along and be a part of it.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>oh, i agree. and that that doesn’t sound anything like any of the firms that i worked at. unfortunately. that’s a story for another day. yeah. now now, along with problems in getting talent in the door. i see a lot of firms making changes in their business model also. because until recently, it was always just the billable hour. and this very rigid hierarchy, or you came in a staff and maybe eventually you’d make it to partner. what are you seeing these days?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery \n<\/span><\/b>yeah, that’s a that’s such a good question, too. i definitely am seeing a big shift on the client side. so used to be we bring in any client that came in the door, we would charge a lot by the hour, i think we’re getting past that we’re doing flat fee. a lot of us are, but we still might bring in any client that comes in the door. and then there’s a tendency, of course, oh, they need an audit. we only do we don’t do audits, well, let’s learn how to do it, or they need a review. we only do one review, we don’t like it, we actually hate it. but this client needs a review. so we’ll figure it out for them to what we’ll add it in. and so we kind of just expand our service offering way too much. and we do the wrong things, or the wrong services, maybe to the wrong client. and so what i’m seeing firms get more intentional with is really defining your ideal client, and not just their client, but also their service, their ideal service, and then actually getting a good price for it, which i think we like to give stuff away. we’re nice. yeah, but capturing that value. so a lot of the firms that we work with, they’re on a flat monthly fee for all services. and they’re getting, you know, two to 300% realization, which is how they can let their team go to 70% and hold people because they’re actually capturing that value on the front end. and way less clients for sure. but way higher service is another trend i’m seeing. so you’re going from like that 1000 client firm to maybe 100 clients, but we know their faces. and it’s less people to kind of manage and and serve so we can serve them better and command higher prices. so that’s probably on the client side. i think organizational structure like the second part of your question. yeah, i’m definitely seeing a shift. and this is from that maybe one million dollar firm, sole owner with maybe a team of worker bees or whatever you want to call it, to building a leadership team, and actually trying to grow beyond that, and push through the ceiling that we might be stuck out, maybe that’s a revenue goal 2 million or three or something. or maybe it’s just that the owner has a more balanced life, because we’re elevating other leaders, which is then helping retain them because they’re more engaged in the whole process. and so sometimes that looks like equity. it doesn’t always. but definitely elevating some leaders and running the firm together, instead of just one or two partners kind of dictating down. i think it’s a big shift.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>that is a big shift, you know, and, you know, are you seeing too many? are you seeing many people employ the ceo-type structure?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>definitely. yeah, for sure. and we have a very set defined leadership chart. so there’s usually a visionary kind of role, and then a salesperson, more of an operations, and then an administrative finance, and somebody’s probably in the middle who’s holding it all together. so maybe up to four to five, sometimes i see to see titles used like the c suite. other times, it’s just sales manager, operations manager. but for sure.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>yeah, and i’m hearing so much more about having somebody take over the operations seat. yeah, that’s something that i didn’t experience when i was in public accounting. you know, sometimes it was our it guy, sometimes it was kind of by committee. but we really didn’t have too much in the way of standardized ways that things were done. it was just kind of,<\/span> by vote, almost like what the general consensus might be or kind of a group decision.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>well, kind of like many paths, and you would hope to get to the correct outcome. you know, the last firm i was at, we didn’t, there wasn’t really even a protocol that i was aware of, for onboarding a new client. so, you know, once i got all the way through an onboarding, conversation, and i looked down at my paper, and i realized, oh, i didn’t bother to get their phone number, their email address? yeah. oh.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>yeah, i think that’s, i think it’s less about necessary, necessarily people hierarchy that i’m seeing, but it’s definitely about segmenting those key roles, like you said, like onboarding, we can’t let onboarding slip. that’s really important. that’s the clients first experience. so there should be somebody in charge of onboarding. now, maybe it’s not a dedicated person, full-time person. maybe it’s one of your lead accountants who has to take it, you know, as a kind of hybrid role. but you should know who that person is in your office and your firm. who’s owning that seat for sure. yeah.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>yeah, yeah. no. and, you know, i think that there probably was a process, but it wasn’t really communicated to me.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>so, so maybe there was, and some people knew about it. but the whole firm didn’t know about it. yeah, yep. and i think that’s a big shift to is we’re moving from these little silos of knowledge. and we all have our little lane that we play in to know let’s look at how the team interfaces together and works together to serve the client and where the moving pieces interact. and yeah, let’s let’s document our processes and share it even with front desk support team. because because otherwise, part of our part of our company is operating without the other part knowing what we’re doing. and it’s just, that can definitely lead to chaos for sure.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>yeah, yeah. yeah. and now what about growth? a lot of firms say that their goal is growth, but different it’s even really need to grow? hmm.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery<\/b> \n<\/span>no, i don’t think they do. i think that’s a very personal decision. it probably, it probably depends on the owner, but also the leadership team and those that might be buying the firm behind them or just the key leaders. if you have a bunch of key leaders who want to grow, it’s probably smart to try because they’ll probably get disengaged and leave if you don’t. but if you’re if you’re kind of running a good shop, and your team is happy, and you’ve got people who are loyal and you’ve been there for a while, your clients happy, you’re not working a lot. you’re able to run your firm and two or three days a week. and that’s it. then i don’t think you have to grow. no, i think it’s kind of a personal decision for sure.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>and what about strategies for growing? now, you mentioned earlier, maybe one strategy was to provide more services to the existing client base so that instead of just doing a tax return for 1000 clients, you’re doing many more things for a fewer clients? what about what about things like that? what kind? what are some ideas you have in that arena?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery<\/b> \n<\/span>i think the first step was is probably to if you know, you want to grow, and you’ve picked like a revenue range or whatnot. maybe you’ve set this big target and five years, we want to be a $5 million firm, or something like that, i think we have to assign somebody in the firm. to own that seat. we got to stop this whole, oh, who can meet this new client? well, i’m not available. so let’s let this senior bookkeeper who’s done two sales meetings this year, you know, greet this new $10 million construction client that’s looking for high level advisory services. i think we have to stop that. and i think we have to assign somebody to it. definitely building out a sales process is something we help a lot of our firms with. because what i find most firms do, and i struggled with this, too, i’ve sold over $3 million of arr in accounting firms. and i used to struggle with like the quick close, where the client would walk in the door. and because you’re you know, i’m the cpa and one of the partners sure i could get them to pay me something. and we have a new client. the question is, is it the right thing? and is it the right price. and getting that price up takes a process, we got to uncover the pain, we got to paint a picture of a better way. and then we have the solution with the client, show them a couple of options. without a price like no price has been shown. and this is a three step meeting, or three separate meetings. and then once we kind of know the scope, and you know, they’re basically want to buy it no matter what it costs at this point, then we peg our number. but it’s all based on the value they perceive of the service, not what our cost is, or whatnot. so definitely implementing a strong sales process. even if you’re a solo firm, and it’s just you kind of running the firm. i like to stop the bleeding at the front end. because if we just keep bringing in junk clients, we love our clients. but if we bring in clients for less value or clients we shouldn’t be serving because they should be at h&r block or turbotax. or they’re way too big. they should be at a bigger firm. then we’ll never have that sweet spot of clients that we probably all want. so that might be a couple of ways. the other thing i’m seeing a lot of firms do is just connect with other businesses that serve our same audience. and so financial planners, bankers, even attorneys, had one attorney, and for whatever reason, they really liked us. and they were an intellectual property attorney. and they would send us almost one client a week. wow, good clients to like high-paying clients. so we made sure we took that person out to lunch and dinner a lot and kept our relationship good. so assigning somebody to own the seat and building a sales process over time. it’s not going to happen overnight. and maybe through some strategic partnerships or referral partnerships.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>those are all really helpful and very concrete ideas. and i hope that listeners will take at least one of those ideas and run with it. i certainly didn’t see much of that in the firms that i worked at. oh, no, no, no. no, we took on a few clients that we maybe shouldn’t have. i mean, the benefit for me was that years later, they became topics of columns that i wrote for accounting web every october for a couple of years. accounting horror stories. and, you know, many of them were clients that we shouldn’t have taken on that. were you know, it wasn’t some of them weren’t that the problem wasn’t that we weren’t the one best suited to them. the problem was that they were just a terrible client. they were a little too chaotic.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery \n<\/span><\/b>was the wrong client not a good fit? yeah. yeah. yeah.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>yeah. now, it used to be that we had to be really good with the 10-key to be successful as a cpa. i’ve talked to auditors who tell me about having 10 key races. and today, automation does a lot of that. so what are the skills that accountants need to be successful today? and in the future?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery<\/b> \n<\/span>yeah, that’s a good question. it probably depends on the role. i would say a little bit, you know, in the firm, but i would say what the firm needs to acquire. and probably there’s, you know, different people are doing different things, but the firm needs to acquire the ability. and this goes all the way to leadership, but also maybe to bookkeepers and front desk, it needs to acquire the ability to cut through the noise of all the apps out there, and to cut through the noise of all the legislation, and to guide and walk our clients through and get them to clarity and not overwhelm them to death and serve up the tools for the client. so i don’t care if bookkeepers here and if there’s, you know, filipino bookkeeper team over here, and there’s 50 different accounting apps that do this one thing. that’s okay. my job becomes, what set of these resources is best for my client? even if it’s not me. now, i think it’s better if the firm can acquire the ability to offer those resources kind of internally or through a partnership or something. but i see, i think gone are the days where it was like, oh, yeah, we have a payroll software, that’s, you know, we just use this one thing for our clients. and it’s just really expensive, rigid software, maybe. but the client really should be on like a gusto, diy gusto. and maybe they’re fine to manage their own payroll, because it’s one person. maybe you need to have a partnership with gusto. and you offer that up. the clients are out there searching for this stuff anyway, and they’re seeing it pop up all the ads. if you’re the accountant, that kind of signals, i cut through that mess. and i can help you identify your tech stack, or your people team. then i think i think you’ll stand apart a little bit for sure. so i think it’s more of, you know, our client is looking for business guidance. now more than ever. and so some of its tactical or technical with apps, but i think a lot of it is you know, they’re getting from maybe a financial planner, wealth building stuff. and that’s very much about their family, and maybe they get some business advice for that too. but if they have a business coach, sure, you know, they could get a business coach, but that’s really expensive. and that usually doesn’t last but a year or two. so i think there’s an opportunity for our accountants to become kind of many business coaches, where we’re partnering with our client and connecting the people with the technology, and we’re educators and we’re coaches, more so than we’ve been in the past.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr \n<\/span><\/b>i think your answer there really makes it clear that we’ve got to get away from this 80% utilization goal because there is no way that you can learn about all the different apps and about the different resources plus stay on top of relevant legislation and industry trends. there’s no way you can do that. if you’re working as hard as you can all the time, you just can’t do that,<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \no<\/span>h, it will be impossible. we’ve got to create the whitespace. i think we’ve got to create the space for people to be creative, to be curious about our clients problems, which normally we just get annoyed by and complain about. because we’re too busy. yeah. so we can start to almost act like a tech company. we’re constantly iterating we’re constantly developing constantly trying to solve clients problems. and i think our fees have to be a lot higher. kind of coupled with that to help cover but i think you’re right. yeah.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>yeah, because you just can’t do that, you know, i, back when i was in public accounting, it just felt greedy sometimes, too, for me to spend 20 minutes in the morning reading accounting today, or the thomson reuters news headlines. it just felt greedy to do that. when really, that was some of the most important work that i could be doing.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery \n<\/span><\/b>yeah, did you have to log on your timesheet? you know, 20 minutes, publications or something like that?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>no, we just have this big catch-all category of admin. yeah, whatever. you know, that was the rounding error. and i know i was here for eight hours. what else did i do?<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\njoe montgomery\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>yeah. yeah, that’s, um, we could talk about that a lot, i’m sure just the shift from inputs to outputs.<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nliz farr\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/b> \n<\/span>yeah. and it was, in so many ways irrelevant. the number of hours that i logged on a particular client was often irrelevant. if it was an audit, that was for a fixed fee up front, so what did it matter? if it was a tax return, the partner would look at the hours i’d put in and look at last year’s bill, and kind of get something that put the two together.\u00a0<\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n