Mark Wickersham built an accounting firm to 200 clients in two and a half years, nearly broke. Meeting Steve Pipe and Paul Dunn, then reading Ron Baker on value pricing, changed everything. He's since taught 300 accountants to replace hourly billing with value pricing, letting some quadruple their fees and actually have a life.
1996.
About 200 clients.
1998.
1999.
About 300 accountants.
I believe the accounting profession is an incredible profession. A profession where we can make a profound difference to the lives of clients and a profession where we should be, as a result, very well rewarded. Unfortunately, that's not always the case. I think back to when many years ago, I started in the profession and I started my own accounting firm in 1996, started from scratch, grew it with no clients, and in the space of two and a half years, grew it to about 200 or so clients. And it was hard, seriously hard. It was growing fast, but I wasn't making money. And I found over the years, in the first two, two and a half years, I was just working longer, longer and longer hours. I was the first into the office every morning to open it up. I was the last to leave. I didn't have time for holidays. And for two years I went into my accounting firm every single Saturday just to catch up. It was crazy. I was working way too hard for way too little money, which is interesting because I think that's the state of most accountants bookkeepers around the world. We work too hard for too little. Little. For me, it all changed in 1998. I met my friend Steve Pipe, and his ideas completely changed my life. And then, thanks to Steve Pipe, he set me on a path where in 1999, I met Paul Dunn, another of my heroes. And then through Paul Dunn, I met Ron Baker. And it was his book on value pricing that changed everything for me. I discovered a better way to price. I realized that I'd been pricing way too cheap. Completely wrong. I believed you had to keep timesheets and bill based on the hour when I started in the profession. And what I found was that's absolutely not the case. When I started to put in place systems for value pricing in 99, 2000, my results changed so significantly that that a few short years later, I was able to sell my accounting firm in a management buyout. The managers bought it and since the year 2000, I've been teaching accountants, initially in the UK, now around the entire globe, how to move to value pricing. I'm the author of the book Effective Pricing for Accountants and other books. Since then, I spend a lot of time mentoring over 300 accountants. We will get together online every month and I teach systems structures, processes for getting extraordinary results through value pricing. Using my value pricing system, some of those firms are increasing prices by double, some by three times, even four times. And not too long ago, a bookkeeper told me how he'd increase one of his prices by seven times. And that's what's possible when we learn a different way of pricing? I just want to get that message out to many, many more accountants because I work with 300 or so, I mentor them, I do videos for accountants. But there are many more, many, many more that are still working way too hard, who are struggling, who are not making enough money. And the thing is, we're at a big crossroads in the profession. We have a huge technological change, we have cloud technologies. And I believe that's going to have two major impacts. Number one, as cloud technology reduces the amount of time to do compliance work, we have to replace that with something else. We have to add more value, we have to learn how to add value. We have to do more services, more consulting, more strategic planning, more tax planning, more price control consulting. And we also have to change our pricing model. The old fashioned model of pricing based on the hour is crazy. In a world where technology is crashing, the amount of time required to do stuff we have to change. The great news is for those firms that are willing to make that change, there are huge opportunities. You see, price really is the starting point of everything. Price is the most powerful lever in the profit equation. Get your price right and everything changes. When you price right, when you get the right price, the higher prices, then you create space in your life. You create space by being able to do more for clients, by being able to offer those added value services when you're charging the right prices. And, and that means you have a greater opportunity to make a real difference to clients lives. Which is why I came into this great profession to change the results, to change the lives of business owners. And when we do that, when we create that space through better pricing, when we do better stuff, what happens is we attract those great clients, those ambitious business owners who are looking for an accounting professional who will change the their lives. We get those better clients. We also find that when we get the price right, we increase our revenues, we increase our profits, we increase the amount of cash in the bank. We also find that when we're doing better stuff, working with better clients, doing the added value work, we have much more fun. It's just so much more enjoyable when you sit down with a client and you make a real measurable difference because perhaps you've taught them how to price and they're now reporting bigger profits thanks to you. That's something we can be rightly proud of. And of course, when we've got better clients, when we're pricing better, higher prices, we can work less hard, we can spend more time with our friends, with our family, out on the golf course or whatever else it is that you love to do. But the starting point is price. We have to get the price right. For too many years as a profession, we have got it wrong because we're pricing with redundant pricing models and being way too cheap. We have to get it right. And when we do, we can make a huge profound difference the lives of our clients. Now, because my job for you, my job is to educate. My job is to teach you the skills that you need to master value pricing and when you are ready, the skills to help you earn money helping your clients with their pricing. My job is to give you the tools. My job is to give you the systems so that you price with confidence. So why not come on a journey with me where I'll take you through the process, the value pricing system. Join me and a community of other like minded accounting professionals all around the world who are changing the way that they work, changing the results they get and most important, changing the results of their clients.
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