How To Create The Perfect Accounting Firm

It wasn’t hard to find a reason to bring back author, accounting firm consultant, international speaker, and futuristic firm guru Rob Nixon back on the podcast to show you how to build the perfect accounting firm.

You can find our prior interview with Rob here in order to hear more about his background.

This time we stay in the nitty-gritty and discuss Rob’s new book, The Perfect Firm, which dissects the steps to create the perfect accounting firm.

In this episode of the Growing Your Firm Podcast, David Cristello and Rob Nixon discuss:

• The origins of The Perfect Firm and why it’s so relevant right now in the accounting industry
• 5 Steps to create the perfect accounting firm according to Rob Nixon
• Why running your firm ‘by default’ is deadly to your accounting firm’s future

ADDITIONAL LINKS:

• My prior interview with Rob about firm profitability
• LINKEDIN – Rob Nixon
• The Perfect Firm

BONUS: 
Get free tickets to Rob’s next 1-day firm reboot in person! A $200 value absolutely free just for being a Growing Your Firm listener.

How to get your free seats:

1. Head over to ThePerfectFirm.Global 
2. Click on “Get Tickets”
3. Put in code “PERFECT”
4. Enjoy!

BONUS #2: 

The goods keep coming! The first 9 listeners who leave a comment below that they listened to this episode…

I will send you a free copy of Rob’s new book The Perfect Firm free of charge! 

You have to leave a comment telling me what you enjoyed most about the episode. Hurry! Only 9 copies to ship.

How To Build A Perfect Accounting Firm:

Rob Nixon just released a new book that’s climbing the chart. The Perfect Firm just released in April 2017 and it could change the future of the accounting profession in the next five years.

Because the book tackles major ways you, the firm owner or partner, can be ahead of the pack when innovation and technology sweep away the ‘old school’ ways of running a firm.

His book accomplishes five things:

1. Helps you become a disrupt-or (not be disrupted)
2. Helps you run not a ‘practice’ but an accounting business
3. Shows you how to deliver profitable business advisory services
4. Steps to continue to build a great lifestyle
5. How to grow your perfect accounting firm

The book started taking shape after sitting down with a friend who just left his firm. Apparently, his friend was fed up with the partners. Sitting down with Rob, he asked: “What makes a perfect firm?” 

No one had ever asked Rob that in his 23 years of working in the accounting industry. Rob promised to write up a post about his thoughts.

Here’s the post Rob wrote. As you can see, the post took off more than any of his other posts. Right away, he knew he had something.

Rob dug through 23 years of work to make a ‘timeless’ book to last for the next decade. A book to define a perfect accounting firm. 

Obviously, there aren’t hard metrics that will tell you if you have a perfect accounting firm. That’s why Rob put together five steps to ensure you are on your way.

5 Steps To A Perfect Accounting Firm

These five steps are both ‘mindset’ strategies and also tactical strategies. Listen up!

1. You must treat yourself as an accounting ‘business’ NOT an accounting practice
   1. Your business should fuel your life, not the other way around
   2. Ask yourself these basic questions:
      1. How do I want my business life to look like?
      2. What type of work do I want to do?
      3. What type of clients do I want to work with?
2. You must know to the number what type of metrics you want:
   1. What income, revenue, internal metrics do you want to be hitting? (be specific!)
   2. Do you have a dream salary for each of the partners? Write down your vision.
3. What services do you want to deliver? 
   1. There’s no governmental law telling you that you must only offer tax and bookkeeping
   2. One firm Rob met with wanted to add a law firm to their practice. They did.
   3. Another hired scientists and engineers for data analysis for cyber-security.
   4. One firm had a ‘minimum package’ each client must get. At the time they had 256 clients. After implementing their ‘minimum package,’ they lost 130 clients fast. But, they realized something incredible. Their remaining 126 clients saw the profits-per-client jump to $26,000. Now, they have 2x as much time and no loss of revenues
4. You must build the culture you want to grow in:
   1. Who are the people you want around you when the going gets tough?
   2. Remember, you’re the firm owner. It’s a dictatorship. You make the rules and you make the culture you want.
   3. Rob went through a period where he lost employees. He didn’t blame others. He blamed himself and took a proactive approach to molding the culture he thought would work best with him and his clients.
5. Remember: Clients always come….LAST!
   1. The needs of your client do not come first. You find the client that meets YOUR NEEDS FIRST.
   2. Find clients who ‘believe what you believe.’ Who ‘treat your team as they deserve.’ Who ‘play by your rules.’

This is building a perfect accounting firm by design not by chance.

Governing ‘By Default’ Could Kill Your Growth:

A business running ‘by default’ runs by the seat of their pants. They know they have clients they shouldn’t, yet they don’t have the guts to cut ties. A ‘default’ firm runs on auto-pilot.

A dangerous game.

The problem lies in that accounting firms don’t need to always hunt for new clients. Accounting is a profession where leads turn up due to compliance. Compare that to consultants and lawyers who are more project-orientated.

Firms will keep clients awhile and automatically think it means they do a great job. Not always the case. 

A client not moving from firm to firm more has to do with financial intimacy than satisfaction. A client simply doesn’t want to explain their story again to another CPA, so they stay put. This is great leverage for a firm like yours…but breeds complacency.

You should start making the changes now because, in the next 5 years, the accounting industry will not look like it does now. The average age of a partner is about 52.5 years old. This profession is an ‘old man’s game.’

At some point, the older partners will get swept away and a new firm owner will take the reins. The time is now to really think about the future strategy of your ‘perfect’ firm.

How to start?

DAVID’S TIP: Do you actually know your client’s goals? If you know their goals, you can only up more value to them. Be proactive and don’t wait until you’re in dire straits.

In the end, building a perfect accounting firm comes down to how much value you’re willing to provide your clients. The more you provide, the better chance you have to survive the coming changes.

WHAT DID YOU THINK? THE FIRST 9 PEOPLE TO COMMENT BELOW WILL GET ROB’S BRAND-NEW BOOK, The PERFECT FIRM, DELIVERED TO THEM. COMMENT BELOW!

Related Articles:

1. 3 Amazing Tips to Build An Accounting Firm Brand That Stands Out
2. The Accounting Firm’s Blueprint to Creating A World-Class Team (Without Recruiting)
3. 3 Steps To Take Your Accounting Firm To The Next Level