446 How This $500k/yr Tax Firm Can 2x Profit in 3 Steps

Today, a three year old firm that's going to do a half million top line this year, they're honestly, they're crushing it. They're doing a great job, but there's room, there's room for improvement. This one, it's going to be hyper practical. How can we double their profit with three changes? Most of these changes actually they're relevant to like almost every accounting firm. So you're almost certainly going to be able to steal a few of these little tidbits yourself and then a couple workflow ideas for problems that boy. Problems around bank feeds, bank feeds around getting client information each month. If you're doing bookkeeping, this is a hybrid tax and bookkeeping firm. Come on in, let's roast a firm. Okay. This is a real life accounting firm that anonymously submitted their info to me. You can do the same via the link down in the show notes. Let's get right into it. This accounting firm, they're in the Midwest but the client base is 100% remote. A lot of folks in Texas, Georgia, Florida and North Carolina. But these days it doesn't really matter where their clients are. 2022, they did 180k in 23. They did 400k last year, in 2024 they did 450. They do taxes and accounting. To sum it up, this is their words, we do about 200 returns a year, 70 businesses and the rest are personals with schedule Cs and schedule Es, that's sole proprietorships and rentals. To break it down a little More, for about 20 clients, they do quote full service. So on top of their business and personal return, they do books, payroll and meet throughout the year for tax planning and implementation. Then they have about 10 clients that are year round, quote tax advisory clients. We do their returns plus we meet throughout the year for tax planning. Maybe they have a bookkeeper already or maybe they're high earning, have a high earning W2 doing Roth conversions, stuff like that, that affects their taxes. But the largest chunk of their business is once a year tax prep clients. Now for those once a year tax prep clients, they pay 2,100 bucks for a business and personal return or 1,000 bucks for a personal return with a schedule C or schedule E. Those full service folks, the people where they're doing year round meetings, tax planning, monthly books and payroll, those people are paying between 9 and 12,000 a year. So generally just under 1,000 bucks a month. And for those tax advisory clients, that is folks you're not doing the books for but doing More hands on year round tax planning. They're paying four to six grand per year, so just under 500 bucks a month. Tax returns are billed upfront. Tax projections are upfront as well. However, full service, they're usually billing around 775amonth. And a few at legacy rates of 500 or 600amonth. They don't really specialize. We happen to fall in about 50% real estate investors and then the rest is a healthy mix of tradesmen, mental health therapists and restaurants. Let me give you so step one for a firm in this stage and then I'll tell you a bit more about the makeup of the firm. Step one, when you are an early stage firm, and to me that's a firm that's maybe less than 7 years old, you need to come out of the gates with a baseline expectation of pretty reasonably aggressive, like baseline price increases every single year. And that's because in the very beginning of running your firm, unlike oftentimes, you know, years five and beyond, you're moving through different client networks at a faster rate than ever before. You're going from having basically no client network to very quickly finding folks who will happily pay you more. And at day one, when you're starting your firm, that feels like this monumental task. And you'll take just about anything that'll pay the bills and put, put food on the table. But for most accountants, that goes away quicker than you think and before you know it, you hit capacity. And that's why in the beginning of your firm running journey like you just need to plan on there being a very, very high like base level price increase that's happening every single year. The trap here is to think that your day one clients are going to be your forever clients. And there's like this romantic attachment that you'll have and this appreciation that you have. And that's okay. But the reality is what's good for your business and what's good for that client's business, that's going to be a moving target over time and, and your firm will never change as fast as it changes in the early days. So as much as I would love for your forever client to be the very first person that you dated in high school and all likelihood the person that you are when you're 50 years old, that like, that doesn't mean there's going to be alignment there. And the trap here can be we have this sort of nostalgic like attachment or genuine appreciation for these people and so we will bring them along to forever the Problem is those folks, you end up serving them kind of begrudgingly. So you're not doing your best work for them. They're not really getting all of your attention. And so you are fooling yourself if you think that like, you are the best thing for them. This is something that's easy to do. We look around at everybody else and was it an Intuit commercial where your BLEEP don't stink? I think it was into it. It was like they go around like they, they introduce this kid, he's like, maybe in his 20s, and he's like, hey, my name is blah, blah, blah, and my BLEEP don't stink. And then they cut to like a documentary interview of his parents. They're like, yeah, no, we, we knew something was different pretty early on. And yeah, his BLEEP don't stink. Accounting firm owners, everybody thinks their BLEEP don't stink. For the most part, we've got rose colored glasses for, for what we do. But when you look at any other firm in town or any firm that you get work from, you're like, wow, those people stink. And oftentimes how we compare ourselves, and this is true of all things in life, we assess ourselves based on our intent, but we assess other people based on their actions. And so when we look at our own firm, we're like, oh, who are the, who are the people we're doing the very best work for and what are the cool new things that we're doing? But the reality is like the, especially the clients who are your very first clients, who are not very premium clients, you very quickly outgrow them and they're no longer getting your best work like they're getting, they're kind of the afterthought now. And like, the longer you cling to them, the more you're keeping them from being some other accountant's first client is also the value of having other firms that you can refer work down to the whole fear of like firing people and leaving clients flapping in the breeze as if that's your problem. Like there's right and wrong ways to do that. But the whole notion of moving clients on gets way easier. When you have another firm in your network for whom they can be a clients, then you're doing that firm a favor when you pass them along. And it takes a lot of the, the stress and the pressure out of quote, firing clients. But tip number one here is like, just have a base level annual price increase of, I'm going to say at a minimum 15% if you look at say, Logan Graff, who's been documenting his journey of building a tax firm on YouTube, I mean, I think his average price increase over the first few years was like 30 to 40%. And that's, that's totally normal. And it's because you have to start at just kind of a rock bottom place, right? So if, if the goal of this exercise is to work out how to double this firm's profit, that's kind of how I approach these, is like, what's the path? Hypothetically, just as a thought experiment, what's the path to doubling profit? Because doubling profitability solves capacity, solves hiring, solves work life balance, because you can work half as much if you want. So what are all the levers that we could pull that would get us to double profitability but also do so in a more fun way, a more sustainable way? Step 1, 15% price increase year over year, like bare minimum, across the board. And doing some back of the napkin math with the makeup of this firm's team, I would say right now they're running at a 40 to 50% margin, which is pretty good. Some of that's due to offshore hiring. But you still have two partners that are doing the bulk of the work. And so that profitability can be better if we're like, if we're not factoring in their pay. So step number one, don't be afraid to do those price increases early days. Like that's just part of running an early firm. And like 15% is extremely conservative there. Know that if you're not doing that, you are like leveraging your future because you end up with all these legacy clients that are taking up time where in the period of the first three years, like you're usually taking on clients at 2 to 3x the rates. And so you can genuinely do one of those projects, pick up one of those new, more profitable clients and get the same profit that you would get at that point from like five or six legacy projects. And so to not cycle those legacy projects out or increase prices on those legacy clients, that really hamstrings your accounting firm. Okay, that's step one. That's a no brainer, 40% margin firm for trying to double profit. We gotta find a path to more or less a 40% increase in price. Little more about this firm. So there's two partners, they have a COO and another cpa. They have two full time accountants in the Philippines. These are like accountant accountants, not tax accountants. And then two seasonal preparers, one CPA and One ea, the partner CPA reviews and signs all the returns and this year is doing about 70 of them. Prepping about 70 of them. The COO will prep about 40 this year and then the seasonal preparers split the rest. During busy season, the full time accountant in the Philippines does the books for almost all of their full service clients. Sorry, I think I may have said there were two in the Philippines. There's one full time accountant in the Philippines. They do the books for almost all their full service clients and then payroll and sales tax is split between the COO and the partner CPA in terms of client communication and account management. The partner CPA is the client lead for their year round clients and for the tax prep clients where they're doing anything more than just like once a year tax prep. The COO does most of their sales, onboarding, website management, scheduling, billing, etc. They get about two thirds of their tax work done in tax season, the rest happening around extension season. Middle of the year, they're doing sort of tax projections, making sure all the monthly bookkeeping folks are caught up. They're also taking on new clients throughout the year. But every new client they start with, they do a $300 tax projection for as kind of an intro service. The client gets some experience working with them. They get some experience working with the client before they commit to anything long term. This is, this is good. I like sort of initial projects like this for a number of reasons. We're gonna get into in a minute. Hey, real quick. This episode is sponsored in part by clienthub. 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They've got a limited time promo right now. 50 bucks off your first three months. They give you a personalized demo because you want it to go better next year, right? I want that for you. Make this the last stressful, busy season you'll ever have with Client Hub Link down in the show notes. Hey, real quick. This episode is sponsored in part by the folks at Team Up. Team Up. They help you find talented accountants in the Philippines. Team Up's got a killer PDF guide to how to do this stuff. They call it the 2025 salary guide, but it covers way more stuff than just salaries. And one of the things that it digs into is I think the biggest misconception about hiring folks offshore is the difference between outsourcing versus hiring direct. A lot of folks that have had negative offshore hiring experiences, what they're actually doing is working with an outsourcing group where they're buying month end closes or buying tax returns. And it's up to that outsourcing group to manage how it gets done and the training of the team members and all, all that. That was not the model of offshoring that I did. I did what Team up does, direct hiring. All it is is you're working with human beings in another country and they're capable of all of the things that my onshore people are. At the end of the day, it's up to me to, to train them and kind of develop them from A to Z. But there's no like middle person. Oftentimes in these outsourcing groups you're paying and I, this was the case for me because I'd done both. You're paying that group pretty much the same amount as that person salary. So like doubles the cost. I just want to work with person directly. Team up will help you do that. Check out their guide covers a lot of just like kind of the questions you're kind of too embarrassed to ask. You can download that one down in the show notes. Let me do, I'll do tip number two here and then share a bit about their sales and marketing because that leads into tip number three. Tip number two. If you recall, they're charging 2,100 bucks for business and personal returns and 1,000 bucks for 1040s that just have schedule Cs or schedule E's and then 775amonth for full service. Regardless of what you think about those prices. There's people who are listening to this podcast and are like 775 for full service. That's outrageously cheap. There's other people listening to this who are like, I can. I almost don't even believe that. Like, I can't even imagine a world where that's normal for me. Every accounting firm is, like, on the same food chain and there's what's normal for you today. But, like, we can't fixate on that. We have to acknowledge that at every single level of the food chain, the person above looks down and is like, that's ridiculous. I can't believe that you only charge that and they look up and they think that's ridiculous. I can't believe anybody would actually pay that. That's true of everyone, wherever you are on the food chain. And it's what makes average rates and going out and basing what you want your clients to pay you on, on average. Is it what, it's what makes that so pointless is within the scope of the game that you're playing. All that matters is how do I get to what feels like unbelievable. How do I. How do I normalize that for myself when I look up market and I think, how in the world is someone paying, you know, say 2x your current rates for the exact same work or oftentimes for even worse work? And you see this from some of the bigger firms that you get work from. How do I get to that reality that I just can't comprehend right now? And the best thing that you can do specifically for this firm is never charge a single price for anything that you do. And this is business advice that goes beyond just running accounting firms. There should never be a single price for even the same work because different people have different willingness and ability to pay. So if I go to. I was at, I was at Legoland this last week. I know things are. You were at Legoland during the week? Jason, listen, things are going pretty well. I don't mean to brag, but you go to Legoland and there's a whole bunch of different versions of that experience. Maybe you've seen this at Disneyland or, you know, whatever the cheaper, creepier local equivalent is because you're an accountant and thus a cheapskate. On that note, and I am, I am too. I'm allowed to say that because I am both of those things. Where I grew up in Salem, Oregon, there's this like 50, 60 year old theme park, Enchanted Forest. It is just the most terrifyingly creepy thing you've ever seen. It's so weird, but so cheap. And my kids thought it was so cool that there was a little window of time there where we were hitting that so hard. Anyways, I'M in Legoland. There's all sorts of different flavors of tickets that you can buy to get in that give you different levels of like, you know, sort of fast pass, like quicker access to thing. But at the end of the day, we're all going to the same park and like we look at the services that we do and we're like, oh no, these are very, very different client to client. Even if you locked down your services to be completely identical, the scope of what you delivered, the work that you actually do, even if you lock that down to be completely identical for every single client, you could still sell a hundred different flavors of that thing. And like, theme parks are a great example of this. Now the few times we've been to Legoland, it was super slow every time we'd been there. This last time we got there and it was spring break, so it was like wild. And I'm standing in my second line for, and I'm about 30 minutes into this wait, I got a. How old are they? I got a four year old, a six year old, an eight year old with me. And in my mind I'm thinking, and I went for just like the base level cheap. Just get me in the door pass. In my mind I'm thinking, I would pay any price to jump over into that other line right now. As I stand there and watch family after smiling family after smiling family cruise right on through. And we make like no progress in the line, right? We've all been there. Those people paid extra to be able to do that. And at this point I would happily, very happily cut that check. But at the end of the day, we're all getting on the same ride. It's just the experience is different. So for accounting firms, like never selling a thing at a single price looks like always using three tier proposals. And when you're starting out, this means for your bronze, silver and gold packages, whatever it is that you do today, that is most likely the bronze package. Your silver package is going to be say 30 ish percent more in terms of cost, like, or price. And then your gold package is a bigger step, say 80% more. I won't go too deep on three tier proposals because we've done this, we've talked about this quite a bit the last few weeks on the pod, but basically the reason you set that gold tier even higher is that is like a YOLO price. And several times in your firm running journey, someone will say yes to a YOLO price when you least expect it. And those are huge moments for your firm. Because you need to understand why they're saying yes to this and then basically rebuild your client base around this. Yes, because that 80% increase, I mean, that's for a 40% margin firm. That's a 3Xs profitable project. And remember, what I'm saying is that doesn't even need to mean that we're doing any more work. It just changes some of the mechanics of the service delivery. So someone agrees to pay 80% more than they're paying, or that then they're paying right now, like that base bronze level in a 40% margin firm, someone pays 80% more. That project is three times as profitable. And the only way that you never. I think it was actually Ron Baker said this in one of his books. The only way you can never have those really powerful realizations is if you never even give people the opportunity to say yes to that. And so oftentimes we're limited by what we think is the norm, but our clients don't have that context. And if we don't give ourselves the opportunities to be exposed to that, we'll never find it. So your three tier proposal, if you're looking for a place to start, your bronze is more or less what people are doing and paying you to today. You know, maybe factoring in like a 15% price increase year over year like we talked about. Silver is say another 30% on that, and then gold is another 80% on that. But what we're looking for is not a bronze, silver and gold, that looks like doing a little bit of work, more work, and then the most work. We're looking more at this in terms of like, what is like the economy class, the business class, and the first class version of this. In fact, got a video coming out on the main channel this week where we put like a bunch of ideas up on screen for how do you make something feel more premium? And we're a little bit allergic to this accountants. Because we pride ourselves oftentimes in being the very savvy people who would never be caught dead, like paying more than you would absolutely need to for something just like me in the Legoland example. As I'm looking, as I'm like buying those tickets, I'm like, I'm not a sucker. I'm not gonna pay for that extra fast pass stuff when the park's usually empty. And then I came to regret that. Meanwhile, turns out there was a whole bunch of people who, or not wired that way and they all cruise straight through the line. And I didn't. Some ideas for stuff that really isn't any more work but can put someone into a more premium package, Premium reporting. So go out and get a reporting tool like you plug that into the accounting system. Those reports generate themselves a more experienced rep, like the person that they talk with, being more senior, faster support turnaround, so you, you get back to them within 24 hours or they can call you or something like that. Peer networking opportunities. Let's say you put together like some invite only events. This especially works if you've got a bit of a specialization and there's value in bringing those people together. Premium onboarding. Maybe there's a higher level of expertise or faster speed involved. Dedicated client concierge. So that's probably some combination of faster access but also not getting handed around between like different departments. This person is going to kind of like track down those answers for you. Faster speed to completion and really anything at all that feels like exclusive or premium. And you have to like, you got to take your accountant hat off here. Because people make buying decisions based on how important that purchase makes them feel. It's the reason why there are people who will happily go out to really big firms with very, very basic work. I mean a basic 1040 and they'll pay a regional firm to prepare a 1040 for them that's just made up of a bunch of government forms. But they're happy to do it because they want to feel the way you feel working with the big guys or the premium guys. And we get in our own way here when we're like, oh, it's all the same, it doesn't make any difference. The fact remains, like people buy Mercedes instead of Toyota Camrys. And even if you buy a Toyota Camry, there are still plenty of Mercedes buyers out there to serve. So the biggest mistake people make when they're rolling out three tier proposals is they think of it as. And a lot of this actually has been reinforced by like the thought leadership from the software companies behind these tools. They think of it as like okay, bronze is basic once a year tax prep. Silver is a planning call and gold is year round tax planning. Don't do that. There's a bronze, silver and gold version of year round tax planning. There's a bronze, silver and gold version of your full service year round sort of thing. And so if bronze is 775, your silver is, you know, 950 and your gold is 1300 or something like that, the more time you spend as well with like your target client going forward, like the ideal avatar, you will learn what things are very important to them that you can build into those silver and gold packages. And then when you put those three tiers options in front of clients, not only are they an immediate profit boost because a lot of folks will opt into silver mainly if what they're doing right now is bronze, they'll be like, oh, I didn't realize there was something better that I could do. And they just don't want to be at the bottom. So that's an immediate profit boost, but it also just gives you transparency into letting clients self select who they identify as. And then over time, if you are going to cut back on clients, it's very obvious, like the bronze folks then are the ones that you're going to probably start looking for a new home for. In my experience in the firms like I rolled out three tier proposals across, you know, we did over 2,000 engagements a year and so I have that as a bit of an experience. But I try to temper that with what have I heard from like, you know, way more other firms to try to have a more holistic picture of what that looks like. What I consistently hear is people are surprised at how many people opted into higher levels. And that's because our mind anchors to the folks who complain about price that don't like how high your price is. But you never hear about the people who will happily pay more. And that is what three tier proposals capture. I'll say it one last time, please. If your gold tier is three times the price, it shouldn't be three times the work. Otherwise it defeats the purpose of the whole thing. Gold tier is the same service with a fancy hat on with some sort of more premium service delivery. This episode is sponsored in part by Cloud Accountant staffing. I'm in another country today. I'm in. I'm in London, which is not a country, it's a city. And I realize that. But I'm here because there's accountants everywhere. Accounting is in many ways a universal language and a great upside of that is you can hire accountants to work for you anywhere in the world. Cloud Accountant staffing. They're an accounting firm that started hiring folks directly in the Philippines, had such good luck with this that they started doing this for other accounting firms and now they will do it for you. This is a true story. I was in a coaching call with some folks in my online community. Realize every Wednesday I run like a live coaching call with different types of firms and offshore hiring came up because people were like, I think the prompt was what's the biggest positive change you made in 2025 this year, something you wish you would done years earlier. And one person shared it was for them it was offshore hiring. We talked through that a little more like upwards of probably a third of the people on that call were actively making offshore hires. I've shared before. I did that at the end of my firm running journey and it completely changed how we approached hiring and very rapid succession. We brought in four people from the Philippines. If you haven't done it before, you're going to have a lot of like embarrassing questions. You don't even know what to ask. Just start the process. Get on the horn with cloud accountant staffing. They can answer all those questions for got nothing to lose. Check out the link to them down in the show notes. Hey, real quick. I write a weekly newsletter goes out every single Thursday and let me tell you, it is a banger. You ever struggle to keep up with like a high news updates? Things are happening so fast, Jason. Where do I learn more? What is the most up to date Tippy, Top hot goss in the industry and tech advice and all that? It's the newsletter buddy. Straight to your inbox every single Thursday, 2pm Eastern. Thousands of accountants read it. I'll put a link to it down in the show notes. You aren't on that list yet. You better get on it. Okay, so if this firm had to increase prices 40 to 50% to double their profit, they might already be there. If not, they're pretty close. Let me share a little bit more about the firm before getting to my my third tip. And it's around how they approach sales and marketing right now. They say right now it's mainly referrals and a little bit here and there from Instagram or Facebook or other social media. If you recall, they don't really have any sort of specialization. They say that, but half of their client base is real estate investors. But when a potential client comes in, they invite them to their tax dome. They get a copy of their last year's tax return plus an invite to their QuickBooks file. If they're caught up, the first step is they get them caught up on tax filings if they are behind. But then once they're caught up, they kind of go immediately into pitching their more comprehensive tax planning approach, which, which is good because almost inevitably you're going to move away from the once a year tax work in a firm like this. And then they kick off with that initial $300 tax projection project. Here's my third and final tip for you and this is, it's a now thing, but it's also a forever thing. Like, this is the game and you just keep doing it and doing it. That is to, like, get really specific about who your A clients are right now. Maybe that's real estate investors, maybe that's mental health professionals, tradespeople, therapists, restaurants. It's probably not restaurants. Bless the people who serve restaurants. You need to know, and it hasn't come out anywhere here, you need to know who your best clients are. And three tier proposals are actually a great way to figure that out. Because if your price is $100 and everyone pays $100, you don't know who would have paid $1,000 for that. You only know the people who would have rather paid $50 for that. And so three tier proposals are the first step to learning who would happily pay more for what you do. But the reason people pay more is that it's worth it to them. The pain is so acute that they're happy to pay that and they have the money to pay for it. Like restaurants are a great example of the pain is very acute and they want to pay for it. But in most cases, they don't have the money to pay for the amount of work it is to really serve a restaurant well. But maybe that's real estate investors for you. Maybe that's mental health therapists. First you got to figure out, like, who that a client is, but then start doubling down on them. Start being visible wherever it is that those people hang out. Figure out who the gurus are in the space that they look up to. How can you support those gurus? Because on any given client list, there's such a huge spectrum of willingness to pay from the person that would really like to only pay 50 to. So you mark it down and they still complain to the person who would have happily paid a thousand bucks. Like, you can trade the profitability of 20 of those $50 people for that $1,000 client, right? And that's just the, the crazy power of rebuilding around those more premium people, the folks who will say yes to the gold plan here and there. Like, there's a version of your firm that has a third. The client count is just as profitable and is just built around those clients who it turns out, you're solving really meaningful pains for. And that is where you're like, you're not. You're not doubling your profitability. Like, that's where you're probably doubling it every 24 months. And then like, that's just the journey. Like you're always looking for that next pain. The more rare the pain is, the better, because the fewer substitutes there are out there. If you're the only one solving that problem, awesome. Charge whatever you can charge. Because there are no substitutes, right? And realistically, to get there, it's probably gonna take some time of either the COO or the CPA partner. And that just means going to trade shows, doing a podcast interview, maybe writing a newsletter, just being visible, like being the first person that comes to mind for that type of person whenever they're looking for a new accountant. And an idea that I've shared a few times that I stole from Blair Enzo's most recent book, the Four Conversations. An idea that I really like is having a starter project that doesn't conflict with whatever their current service provider does. And this firm, they're kind of halfway there with this tax projection project. Someone may be able to come in and do this tax projection project with you just to get a taste of how you work without having to divorce their current accountant yet. Because that's. That's a scary, emotional, risky thing to do. If you don't know that next shop is better yet, then they're probably not going to roll the dice on just making the switch. And like the good clients out there, they're not without an advisor. They're not looking through Google reviews. Like, the good clients already have a professional that they're working with. And so if we really want to get better clients, we have to give those people a reason to jump ship. So something so compelling that they will come over and work with us instead. And the best thing we can do is offer a very specific service that their current provider doesn't offer that will give them a taste of working with you before you force them to commit. And so, like, this tax planning project, that's a basic version of that. But how can we make something that's more targeted? So if we're going to look, if we're going to work with, say, mental health therapists, maybe that's our. Our most premium client right now. We want to double down around that. What is a version of this little tax planning project that's very, very specific to them and can be stood up and communicated as something that can be valuable without even working with you on an ongoing basis. So like, what is like this tax diagnostic or audit or something like that that is very specific to them and the ways that they work. You can generate a cool report around it, kind of make it turnkey, how you put these things together and Someone can see that you do this without having to divorce their. Their current service provider to get a taste of working with you. And so when they hear you on a podcast, when they see you at a trade show, for a small investment, a comparatively small investment, though it should probably be more than $300, they come, they pay 1,000 bucks, and it's like if this person pays 40 grand in tax a year, 100 grand in tax a year, thousand dollars, that's a very small investment to make sure that they're not, say, paying any more in tax than they need to, or that they're like, finance tech stack is where it ought to be. Because, say, $1,000 for this trial project, a very small amount of that client's time stacks up to a thousand bucks. And if a better finance stack can save them a couple hours a week, like, that was a really worthwhile investment. Right. So my tip number three, figure out who your A client is right now, how you can be more visible for that type of person and rebuild your communications and your projects around the pains that those people have. Now, this may require getting some time back for that partner cpa. Right now, they're just, they're doing the work, they're doing the accounting. And that's usually where we start because that's all we knew before we did our own thing. We just did the work for other people. But in your own firm, like, the very most important thing you have control over is the client list, because they ultimately dictate what are they willing to pay you. And so how profitable can the firm be? How, how, how much can we pay our people? And so if your time is just going into doing the work and not being invested in, how do we find just the one next really good a client? And that's all this is. This isn't pulling up the carpet and doing this big dramatic thing and saying, we're never doing this again. No, it's literally about how do we find the one next client who would say yes to the gold tier on a proposal? That's it. You build that new firm one client at a time, but it like, it takes your time and attention and bandwidth to be able to get there. So the next hire for this firm, where I would probably send you, it's probably to make an offshore tax hire. I don't know that the profitability is there yet to be able to do an onshore tax hire. These partners are probably clearing maybe 120 a year themselves. So I would probably look at an offshore tax hire next. Help them get into the work that the partner CPA and the COO is doing right now to free up some bandwidth for you to just like go out and talk with more of the people who are your current AI avatar. Like, if you have a client who's exactly the type of client you want to get more of, where do they hang out? Can you bum along with them to a conference? Or at the very least ask them, what do they go to, where do they learn, what stuff do they consume? And then make some time to try to show up and be visible there. You can do it. But also, like, I also try to stress while we are roasting firms here, good for you. Like, you're doing it like, they're doing great. They've made a super cool thing here. Are there always ways that it can be improved 100%? But the juiciest things here, I would, I would say are just baseline price increases, three tier proposals that's going to give you a huge boost and a ton of really, really useful information about your client's willingness to pay. But then for the first time, really dig into like, okay, who's our perfect avatar? Like, of the people we have right now, who will happily pay more? The three tier proposals will tell you that. And then how do we keep rebuilding around them, Keep crushing it? Hey, you want to do the same for your firm? Pop your details into the form in the show notes for a chance for us to do the same thing with your firm. We did one of these last week. Super fun. Got some positive comments. Thank you for that. Even some folks who in the past had been roasted. We'll probably get back to doing more of these because they are fun. Gang, I'll see you in the next one.