The Mindset Shift Required to Launch a CAS Practice
Summary
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- The difference between work and lives is about the quality of time we spend within them.
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- Everyone can complete a job, task, or assignment, but few can provide relational and intimate value in their work.
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- An accountant that cares about the work they are doing is an accountant that is in the position to enjoy their work.
Quick Links
Amy Vetter
Amy is the CEO, keynote speaker, and consultant at B3 Method Institute. B3 Method Institute is an educational organization focused on providing work-life harmony. Since you’re in the learning mood, here’s a ‘math’ problem of the B3 Method: (Business + Balance = Bliss).
Amy works with accountants, and really all professionals, to find bliss, peace, joy, and balance in their everyday lives. She started B3 Method Institute from her experience as a CPA and a Yogi. (A yogi is a practitioner of Yoga). After 15 years in the accounting industry, her focus shifted to helping accountants grow their practices. She did this by means of consulting on business processes and assuring that practices were mindful of their purpose and mission.
Through efforts of building strategies and roadmaps with those she worked with, Amy’s goal was to help professionals achieve the career they desired.
Work Life Balance vs. Harmony
Our host David Cristello, founder and CEO of Jetpack Workflow, asks Amy her views on the difference between the following two phrases:
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- Work-Life Balance (how much time we spend)
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- Work-Life Harmony (how well we spend our time)
Amy clarifies that her thinking of work-life balance is an idea that can become stressful when analyzing how much of it actually exists. Essentially, she views the term ‘work-life balance’ as a variable that is relevant to the quantity of time—how much time we spend between work and life. Amy’s experience as a musician made her realize that ‘work-life harmony’ was a better representation of the quality of time we have in this overall balance equation or how well we spend the time between work and life.
The reality is the term ‘balance’ is specific and measurable, whereas ‘harmony’ ebbs and flows. Amy’s idea paints a picture that it is less about black and white and more about the feeling, emotion, and energy involved. She says, “The biggest goal around this is that you become more aware of your energy and what you’re putting out in the world.”
David adds an excellent point about the analysis of how we spend our time between work and life. Basically, if we see that we are falling short on our goals; this becomes an easy way to self-judge.
Amy provides an amazing point when she says it’s about observation and changing our thinking from judgment of ourselves to research.
She says it perfectly, “It isn’t about the thing you’re doing. It’s about the feeling and the energy that you get from it.”
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CAS
Client Advisory Services (CAS) is termed as ‘a variety of accounting services provided by CPAs to clients.’
More specific to Amy’s and David’s conversation, this term CAS is rather variable. Amy states she doesn’t like defining it because it can mean whatever it needs to. Whether that’s bookkeeping services, CFO services, analytics, etc., it comes down to what the individual or firm is most passionate about doing. It is also relevant to the consumer demand of what is needed.
Amy calls herself a Cherished Advisor—a play off of the profession’s long standing term, ‘trusted advisor.’ She has written a book called Integrative Advisory Services: Expanding Your Accounting Services Beyond the Cloud specifically to share her thoughts about creating a ‘cherished advisory’ practice.
The value is not found in the services provided, but again found in the relationships, emotional intelligence, and energy that the service, firm owner, or staff produce. Amy says it best when she says, ‘“t’s a client that cannot imagine you not being their accountant.”
Anyone can go online and find accounting services, however not everyone can go online and find valued expertise, effort, relationship building, and intimate conversation with business owners.
This is where the value is found.
Personal Purpose
Amy talks on developing a practice at the root. She tells us that we do not want to be structured horizontally, or too broadly. By discovering a niche, we gain a few valuable strengths in our businesses:
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- By participating in niches we enjoy, we become excited about the business we’re doing.
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- When we combine our personal purpose with the businesses we help, we create more urgency and win-win scenarios for everyone’s success.
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- By sticking with a niche, we gain specific experience to the industry we’ve decided to focus on, which enhances our knowledge of said niche.
An accountant that cares about the work they are doing is an accountant that is in the position to enjoy their work.
If we thoroughly enjoy the health and wellness sector, as Amy shares she does, then we may find more purpose and intention in the services we provide to our health and wellness clients. At the root, if we develop our firm to represent clients who are in industries we ourselves are interested in, then everyday becomes a bit more enjoyable.
This not only relates to the enjoyment of providing a good service, but also personal enjoyment and fulfillment because of the client’s success as well.
Finally, if we continue to serve in similar niches, we position ourselves to learn more and more about that specific industry, making us even more valuable to those we already serve. This creates additional value add to potential clients, too.
Find more details on the best ways to connect with Amy below.
Keynote Speaking & Books: https://www.amyvetter.com/
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- Coming April 24, 2023: Disconnect to Connect: Tap INto the Power Within You to Create the Life You Desire
Crash course on developing the career you desire:
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