Have All The Good Accountants Launched Their Own Firm?

Is it even possible to go out and hire a really good accountant anymore? Because if they were really good, wouldn't they be off running their own firm? I saw somebody pose this question the other day and it actually made me stop and think. I was like, is that true? And. And as me, who tries to give people agency and remind them of what they're capable of, and oftentimes that means going out and starting your own firm, I'm like, am I pushing all those folks that way? Let's talk about that. Because that creates a lot of headaches if you're trying to hire talented people in your firm, right? Like, how do I ever hire someone to step into some of the responsibilities that I'm doing? If having those responsibilities mean you could be off running your own thing, that almost seems impossible, right? Get on in here, let's talk about it. Sometimes I worry I'm bad. I'm bad to listen to for your staff. Like, I'm gonna pump folks full of confidence and they're gonna go off and do their own thing. I've heard this from a lot of people. They're like, quit making my folks feel so capable and enabled. And I'm like, sorry, man. In fact, it's why a lot of big firms don't like me. They do not steer folks to my content. Because the biggest group of folks that are going out and launching their own firms right now are the folks falling out of big firms. Welcome. Great to have you here. I'm. I feel less bad about steering you toward, towards launching your own firm than I do folks in small firms anyways. Is it realistic to think that you can hire somebody, buy back your own time, pull folks into what you're doing if those folks are off doing their own thing, right? Like, like running their own firm? I tell people, like, oftentimes you will be proposed like a really impressive role at a firm making a bunch of money. But that same person in their head, they're like, I could never go out and do that on my own. Sometimes it takes other people showing you and telling you what you are capable for you to even believe it yourself. And if we go back to the example of a roasted firm we did recently, the owner was the most tax capable person in the firm, despite having hired a whole bunch of folks. And they were kind of blocked by that. Like, I need to get out of the technical work. But how can you simultaneously tell a person you're capable of doing my technical job and you should come and do it for me instead of going out and Doing it for yourself. Right. You kind of end up stuck between those two things. Let me give you three tips. My thoughts here on this and how I navigated this in my. In my own firm. Number one was we have to be really careful. How easy it can be to fall into the trap of trying to convince anyone who will listen that we are the best thing for them. I mean, I think we've actually had generations of employers who have, like, these company man blinders, and they will brainwash their teams into thinking, of course we are the best place that you could possibly be. And why would you want to go on any other path? This is like the most toxic tunnel vision that we get going into. Usually going into work at a firm out of school, and you get so focused on that little game, that little baby universe that you're living in. And I even had this in, you know, the firm that I worked @ that was 30 people at. @ the time, I wasn't thinking about any other firm or any other universe where I could be playing the same game. But, like, zoom out, how many accounting firms are there out there are out there in the world? Is this really the very best one for you? Well, we don't usually think about that because we're so focused on the game that we're playing. And bad bosses, they will readily remind you how much they think you need them. The whole conversation around, like, people going out and launching their own firm. Because this happened a couple of times in my career where members of the team will go out and do their own thing. And what would the bosses say? Oh, they don't realize just how hard it is to do. Like, you gotta go out. These are things they would say, yeah, you gotta go out and get insurance. You gotta figure out how to find good clients to work with. It's like, yeah, duh, are these. But are these hard things, the clients that already work with that person, like, we already have proof they're capable of supporting clients directly. Why would they not go and do that on their own? Right? But the bad bosses, they will not even entertain the thought that you are not the very best place for that person on their journey. And I've seen a hundred different versions of this, and usually that that manager is completely blind to the reality of that person's life right now and what they want to get to, where they're at on that journey. So they don't even have enough information to know if they are the thing for that person at that point in time, because they see their job as convincing everyone that they need the employer. There are no alternatives, be it going off and doing your own thing or other firms where they could also go work. I mean, pretty much everyone that I worked for growing up was wired that way. I started at a itty bitty like five person firm and the owner totally wired this way, like couldn't imagine ever wanting to go anywhere else. I mean, I shared back clear back to working at the grocery store in high school and I left to go to college. And the GM is like, this could be your job someday, why would you even leave? And I'm like, I looked around, I'm like, but this isn't, I don't, I don't want to win that game. And so try to be mindful of the fact that like my job and, and the way that I can pull people into my team effectively is to align what I need right now with where this person is on their journey. And those things either align or they don't. And the more real and frank you can be about that, the more goodwill you will build with your team by being totally transparent in those conversations, like do we have anything for you right now that will take you in the direction that you want to go? Sometimes the answer will be yes, sometimes the answer will be no. Now second consideration here for how to exist within the reality of, of this hiring environment right now, Second thought is we have to be able to ensure folks can be productive as quickly as possible. Because the reality of employing folks these days is there's no such thing as a company man. You can't, I wouldn't plan on anybody being with you for decades or even decade. Which means if they have to be with you for years for that to be like a positive relationship, then the way that we're staffing people like just, just won't work. There has to be a really quick path to folks being a productive member of your team. When they come in. That means super clear expectations of them. And my take is that probably also means output based compensation. So is their compensation, their incentive structure aligned with actually the work that they're getting out the door? That's a way for me as a business owner that I, that I can kind of protect the business to ensure I'm making money when they're making money, but also solves a lot of problems around like change management. And are we working to actually get stuff done and keep clients happy or are we actually just working to fill the 40 hour week? The more interchangeable those roles in your team can be, whereas where you rotate people in and rotate people out, the more resilient the business is to people changing. And the reality is like roles and folks cycling through different companies that is happening faster than it's ever happened before. So the business has to be resilient and has to have a great onboarding process, good documentation. We have to learn how to manage conversations with clients when somebody leaves. This just came up at a in person conference I was at the other day. How do you keep from ticking clients off when that staff person leaves? This is why all of our client relationships were managed in pods and there was never a single person that managed 100% of that client relationship. So for example, if there are two main people that they work with, then the worst thing that can ever happen is 50% of their team changes. That still sucks, but it's a lot better than 100% of the face of the company changing. Right. So how do we design these roles in a way that acknowledges the reality that people are cycling in and out more than ever before? Last third consideration here is we got to be realistic about the company that we're asking these people to come and work for. There there's like, I feel like the past generation was like people should just be happy to have a job. That's not the reality anymore. Like there has to be a reason why they would want to come to work for me instead of somebody else. And especially as distributed work has now kind of taken over. It doesn't matter where you are. You used to get people who would work for you because you were one of the only local options in town. Now people can work for companies that are set up anywhere. And so there's this sort of leveling of the playing field that's happened where unless we can say that we are the best for this specific type of person, why would those folks come and work for you? And a framing here to think about if you are constantly blocked by not being able to find high enough, like high level enough people, is we always need to be thinking, are my ambitions big enough for that person's dreams to fit within? They have their own set of ambitions and things that they want to do. Can they imagine coming into you, your universe and see seeing those dreams fulfilled? Oftentimes they can't because we don't have like a very specific vision. Last week we talked about what your 10x path is like. What is the 10x version of your firm, of your development? I shared in the past for me that was getting out of client work and building the accounting machine rather than doing the work, it was going to be going all in on 20% of our client base and them getting a hundred percent of our attention because that was a more profitable and more exciting path forward. But it was also less. We were over capacity, we were doing too much. And in that decision to commit to a 10x path, we would have more time. We could be intentional about how we spent that time because we were ultimately doing less. Our vision for what we want to do, it has to be ambitious enough for someone else's ambitions to fit within it. And so if, for example, you want to be the leading firm for pest control shops and there's somebody out there that's super into that stuff and you're the firm for it, that's a much more interesting proposition. Right. In dental right now you have sort of this like corporatization of dental and all these big groups trying to roll up clinics. But then the small solo clinics, like they don't have any leverage against the insurance companies who are paying them less and less for all the work that they're doing. And it's created this sort of animosity where you've got solo docs that are like super against private equity and these roll ups that are happening. If I am the firm for solo docs and for privately owned, locally owned firms and there's people out there who have seen the downsides of all this and how it's kind of ruining dentistry, that is a vision that folks are going to be more excited about, more bought into. But most of us, we're almost afraid to have a vision, afraid to be opinionated because we think it closes off parts of the world from, from being able to work with us when in reality does the opposite. Right. We don't have anything to say, so we're not interesting to specific clients or specific folks that could come to work for us. The solution, to me, I mean, it really does come back to what we talked about last week and finding your 10x path forward because your 10x vision is bigger, it's more ambitious, there's more opportunity there, and that gets people excited. That's what makes someone say, okay, I could see being in on 10% of this being more interesting than being in on 100% of my own thing because I could see this really going somewhere. I shared in my business how I'm kind of at a turning point of like trying to figure out what is my next 10x opportunity and whatever that looks like, be it, you know, writing books or doing like a big tour of live shows. Those are both really big, really ambitious things that would attract a different type of person to come and work with me than would be willing to work with me now. But if I'm not willing to commit to that bigger ambitious version, it is then harder to fit those folks ambitions into my own vision. And those people, at that point, they don't see any other option for themselves. And so the most realistic, most appealing path then for a lot of them is to go and do their own thing. If they have this vision for like teachers or you know, single mother entrepreneurs or a specific type of person that they want to serve, if they see somebody out there that is crushing it and doing a really good version of that, that will probably be their default. Where they want to go to work, where they want to have an impact. If they don't see that anywhere, then to a degree there's almost this moral imperative to build it yourself. Because you're like, well, my ambitions, the things that I want to do, they aren't actually going to happen if I go to work anywhere else, so I have to do it myself. Now there are like more like mission oriented versions of this, but there's also very basic, like more dry versions of this where it's like real estate development that may not feel sexy, may not feel mission oriented, but there's people who are super, super into that stuff. And if you're the go to place for that type of person, you've created an environment that's, that's more realistic that, that that person will see a big, exciting, ambitious path forward with you rather than going out and doing their own thing. So three things to think about. Stop trying to convince people that you're the best thing for them. You either are or you aren't. And if you can meet them where they are, people will appreciate that because you're applying what your business can do to their life circumstance rather than the other way around. Second thing to consider is how do I make my business more resilient to people change? The fact that folks are cycling in and out of roles faster than ever before, I gotta protect my clients from that. I gotta protect the other staff on my team from that. Man, if one person leaves and then everybody else is like, screw that, I'm not picking up that person's work. And then you have this cascading thing. I know several firms this has happened to. It's your worst nightmare, right? Before you know it, half of your team is gone. We gotta build firms that are resilient so that folks can cycle in and out of roles and be more productive faster. Third, we gotta think, what are our ambitions and can those of other talented people fit within them? Do I actually have something to offer the folks that come and work for me? And if you do, that's also the most fun version of doing this. Now you're, like, aligned with the members of your team on the things that they're passionate about, what they want to see in the impact they want to have in their work. And that aligning with your firm, that's a lot of fun. That's much better than just a job. But goodness knows, show me a tax firm, and I'll show you a tax firm. Hiring for a senior tax manager. Finding these good people, it's really hard. It is more than rocking up to Robert, half sacrificing your firstborn in exchange for them. You know, sending you somebody with big four experience these days, I don't think that's the move if you're looking for that. Really hard to find person, man. Be out there, be visible. Talk about what you do. Talk about what you have to offer. Oftentimes, the best connections there happen in ways that we could have never expected or planned for. Go out there and make some magic. Okay, I'll catch you in the next one.