And why that’s not always a bad thing.
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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
“Success doesn’t have to look like going up and to the right,” says Ian Vacin, co-founder and director of partnership relationships at Karbon, in this episode of Gear Up for Growth, hosted by Jean Caragher, president of Capstone Marketing. “You have to understand what you want as a firm owner, align your revenue with your resources, and build the scaffolding to support that complexity. Otherwise, profitability falls, and you may not recover.”
MORE Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | MORE Gear Up for Growth here
Gear Up for Growth is tailored specifically for public accounting firms with up to 100 team members looking to expand their practices intelligently and efficiently.
Vacin, along with Jason Blumer, founder and CEO of Thriveal and Blumer & Associates CPAs, wrote the new book, Scale with Purpose: The Service Entrepreneur’s Guide to Intentional Growth. Drawing from research involving hundreds of firms worldwide, Blumer and Vacin reveal that only about 5% of firms successfully navigate their first major growth phase without setbacks. The authors emphasize that organizational design must precede capacity planning. Without thoughtful structure, firms hit predictable scaling plateaus, particularly between 8 and 20 employees.
Here are two additional takeaways for CPA firm leaders.
- Founders Must Decide If They Truly Want What Growth Brings
- Perhaps the most powerful moment in the episode comes when Blumer shares a pivotal question that reshaped his own leadership journey: “Do you want what growth means?” said Jason Blumer. “A lot of founders push forward without realizing what comes with it – the complexity, the responsibility, the identity shift. You have to be honest with yourself before you scale.”
Blumer notes that some of the most successful firm leaders intentionally chose to shrink after expanding, recognizing that their ideal firm size was smaller than they initially imagined.
Founders Must Evolve from Technician to Organizational Leader
One of the most consistent themes in the episode is that scaling stalls when founders remain embedded in technical work instead of stepping into true leadership roles. Most CPA firms are started by highly skilled technicians. But as the firm grows, the managing partner can no longer be “the hero” doing the work.
Growth requires:
- Letting go of revenue-producing tasks
- Delegating client relationships
- Designing organizational structure
- Focusing on strategy, culture, and profitability
As Vacin explains, it’s “really hard to let go” when your identity and success have always been tied to being in the weeds. Yet without that shift, firms hit scaling plateaus and often retreat before moving forward again.
Other highlights include:
- Culture doesn’t scale by accident. It requires intentional rhythms—recurring meetings, communication habits, leadership behaviors, and hiring decisions.
- Not every firm should pursue expansion. A smaller, well-designed lifestyle firm can be a successful and intentional outcome.
- The “right size” is unique to each firm. Bigger is not always better. Some firms intentionally scale back to regain focus and profitability.
More about today’s guests
Jason Blumer is the founder and CEO of Blumer CPAs. He also the Thriveal CPA Network along with his partner Julie. Jason is a podcast host and founder of two monthly podcast shows since 2011, The ThriveCast and The Businessology Show. He has been named by Accounting Today as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Accounting and as a CPA Practice Advisor Thought Leader. blumercpas.com, jason@blumercpas.com, Linkedin
Ian Vacin is the co-founder and chief customer officer of Karbon, the global leader in collaborative practice management for accounting firms. He has almost 30 years of experience in technology and 20 years of leadership experience in the accounting profession, working at Karbon, Xero, and Intuit. karbonhq.com/, Linkedin
Transcript
Jean: Hello. Thank you for joining “Gear Up for Growth,” powered by CPA Trendlines. I’m Jean Caragher, President of Capstone Marketing, and your host. I am delighted to be joined by two guests today, the authors of “Scale with Purpose: The Service Entrepreneur’s Guide to Intentional Growth.” Jason Blumer is the founder and CEO of Thriveal, and CEO of Blumer & Associates CPAs. Ian Vacin has almost 30 years of leadership experience in technology and accounting at Karbon, Xero, and Intuit. Jason and Ian, welcome to “Gear Up for Growth.”
Jason: Hey, hey. Jean, thanks for having us.
Ian: Thanks for having us on the show. Appreciate it.
Jean: Oh, you’re very welcome. So, we’re all excited about this book, “Scale for Purpose.” I know it’s a lot of hard work writing a book, so, kudos on the accomplishment.
Jason: Thank you.
Jean: So, each of you, tell us, in one sentence, what does scale with purpose really mean? And how is it different from just growing revenue?
Jason: Ian, can you go, so I can copy your answer?
Ian: He always throws me under the bus. I don’t know what [crosstalk 00:01:18]
Jason: It’s like, that’s a big question.
Ian: I’m gonna set it up with my [inaudible 00:01:22] which kind of tees it up, and then Jason will close it out. We were trying to answer, why is it so hard for firms that exist between the size of 8 employees and 20, why do the majority of them go up to somewhere around 12, 16 employees, and then go backwards, to then go forwards again? And so, the book was to understand why did some firms be able to scale intentionally and successfully, while others struggled? And this was a blueprint around how to ultimately be able to navigate the complexity that comes with size and scale. Jason, over to you.
Jason: Wow. That was good. It came out, as we started writing, that the intentionality of scaling is kind of a requirement. And that’s, I think, I don’t know, Ian and I have always known that. We’ve been scaling our own businesses for 30 years. But just, that became a big part of the book, that if you want to scale, you’ll have to do it on purpose, design it. It has to all be intentional. There’s really not accidental growth in a service-based company, so that really started to stand out. And we made a point through the book a few times where, if you want to scale, you’re gonna have to design it to happen that way.
Jean: So, what are most CPA firm leaders getting wrong about scaling their growth?
Jason: A lot of things. Service-based companies are founded and started by technical, technical people, technicians. So a big part of our coaching and consulting is about helping the technician abandon, really, some of the technical revenue production, and start to become owners and founders and leaders of a business, which is a really hard swing for them, because they are trained technicians. And so we find, a lot of times, when they’re struggling, they remain embedded in some of the most technical revenue production. You know, the managing partner is the tax partner. And at some size, that can’t work anymore, if you wanna scale, so they limit themselves, and many firms remain very small as a result, because they don’t know how to adopt maybe more of a corporate structure, move away from production in revenue, and start to move towards a CEO role. So, I don’t know, Ian, if you have thoughts about that.
Ian: Yeah, I think I’ll go through…the journey of the book was, when we went to start to write the book, we thought we were gonna write about capacity planning. That was the goal. And then we spent over a year and a half of research, with firms across the globe, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of firms. And we realized that capacity planning couldn’t exist without organizational design and strategy. And it started, and if you look at the book and how it’s broken out, it starts with understanding and speaking to the entrepreneurial leader, and why they started the firm, and why things get more difficult as they keep chasing revenue. And they have a perception of just getting bigger for the sake of getting bigger. And so there’s a understanding of what you want as a firm owner. There’s what your team needs in terms of scaffolding. That can lead to understanding how do you then marry your revenue with your resources, to create profitability. And that’s where the book goes, is understanding how to create a healthy organization, that’s able to attend to the needs of all those that are involved. And so, the book’s journey itself, for us, was an evolution in writing, as we started to learn about what is it that it’s gonna be…what is it gonna take, that you have to make personal decisions, business decisions, and strategic decisions.
Jean: So, what differences do you see in leaders of firms that do intentionally scale their growth and those that don’t? Are there qualities in common?
Ian: It’s interesting. Only about 5% of the firms that we spoke to were able to successfully navigate it on the first try. And 95% of them would go forward and then go backwards. And the difference between the ones that actually were to do it versus the ones that weren’t, were they ultimately had a thoughtfulness of how they approached it, and they were very self-aware of not only theirselves in the equation, but the team that they needed around them. Many of them changed roles. The person who was leading it wasn’t the one that was leading it in the second phase. It’s not always the case. But there was this observance of being able to step back and take stock in what was gonna have to change, because that change period between 8 and 12 employees was significant. They couldn’t operate the same, so they had to significantly change either operations, processes, HR requirements and whatnot. And they were able to be able to thoughtfully do that, and have a plan in place to maneuver as the actual complexity increased. Jason, [crosstalk 00:06:23]
Jean: Right. If I’m remembering right, in the book, you did have, did you call them phases, like different size firms and phases? I recall maybe three different ones, and challenges that the leaders would face at each of those times. Am I getting that right?
Jason: Yeah. Ian wrote a part about scaling plateaus, which is kind of alluding to that. And the leaders who are successful in navigating growth have to navigate scaling plateaus. And basically, what that means is the business does grow to a period of time, under a certain kind of team structure, a certain kind of structure, whatever it is, but it won’t, it doesn’t keep working. And that’s the thing about these service businesses. You have to kind of reset it, reset roles. And that’s where the founder or the owner is always moving towards a higher-level role, to run the company. Or they’ll hit a scaling plateau and they don’t know why. They’re stuck, they can’t grow, or the team are not as happy, the owner’s not as happy. Those kind of things happen. And it’s typically because we have to break some things. We have to redo the model or the structure. But a lot of us just kind of, we just grind our way through it. We keep pushing through. And in a service-based company, that, the book is about service-based companies, very specifically, that is a very particular complicated business to scale, because all scaling’s done through relationships and people. And so you, turns out you have to be a really strong leader to pull it off. And a lot of us struggle with leadership. And accountants do…
Jean: For sure. Yeah.
Jason: …because they’re very technical.
Ian: We do.
Jason: We do. Yeah, we do. Everybody does. But you have to grow as a leader, kinda start disrupting things in the business without breaking it, and then it can get back into another scaling plateau, or another scaling time, until it hits another plateau. Then you gotta reset it again.
Jean: Right.
Ian: Yep.
Jean: Mm-hmm. So, what I’m hearing is that the leader of the business, or the managing partner of the firm, their identity, or maybe their role changes, as the firm gets bigger. So, the leader has to recognize that, number one, and then perhaps be willing to admit, “I really need help doing X, Y, Z,” or, “I need to add a role in our firm to handle A, B, C.” And that may not be so easy for each leader to recognize or admit.
Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think they don’t recognize it. That’s the first difficulty. And then typically, when we’re consulting with these firms, when they’re a little bit larger, at that point, they’re typically complicated enough where it’s really hard to understand, because it gets to a size where they’re like, “I actually don’t know how to unravel this mess.” And they almost have to have a third party come in and poke through it and start fixing it in order. There are certain things you do in order. And it’s hard. So, I think, I don’t know, Ian, do you agree? They don’t recognize it, and when they do, they don’t know what to do when they do recognize it, maybe.
Ian: Yeah, it’s really hard to let go. I think if you talk to any leader, that’s part of the issue. It becomes doubly hard if you’re a technician by trade, because your success has always been in the weeds, and being able to be the hero. And as you get bigger and bigger, the heroes have to step back, you have to have an organization that’s able to live and thrive, and you have to be able to, with an ego part of it as well, realize that you’re also part of the organization, but you’re not necessarily in full control. You may be at the head of it, but you have to make time to be able to nurture all aspects of the business and all the functions that’s there. And you just can’t do everything, and you can’t be the best at every particular thing. And it’s really hard as an entrepreneur, where you start off in a journey where everything’s on your plate. You wear all the hats. And so now you’ve gotta depend on people that don’t have the same motivations, they’re not in it for the same reason, humans are really complicated, and so that’s why the complexity scales, and the difficulty. And most people, by the time they’ve woken up and they’ve realized that they’re in this trouble, that’s when you’ve hit the wall so hard, you bounce off of it going backwards until you can get your wits about you, and then have the courage to go forward again. And so that’s why we were very careful in how we wrote the book, and we talked about purpose and intentionality, because that was the recipe for success in being able to navigate that without having to get the bumps and bruises.
Jean: Yeah. I recorded an episode with Jeffrey Weiner, from Marcum. And then of course he had the astronomic deal with CBIZ. And he started at a very small firm, a small local firm on Long Island. And he said that he surrounds himself with people who are smarter than he is.
Jason: That is key. Yeah. And a lot of the things we learned… That’s why Ian led a huge research project around this book, and you can see there’s just stories after stories in this book. And it was research projects, because we’re trying to learn. We don’t wanna just espouse things we think, though Ian and I have been doing this a long time. We learn from a lot of people, and how they do it, how they do it different, how they don’t match each other. And it’s just such an intimate choice to scale a services firm. There’s no right way. We make that point in the book. I hope these tools help you, but you’re gonna have to form them to be your own, to help you in the organization you’re trying to build. That’s a key.
Jean: Now, there’s been a lot of talk lately about CPA firm culture, and what it is at any given time, and then, as the firm grows, how do you keep that culture in place? We have remote working still, and multiple offices, and lots of things going on. So, how can a firm intentionally scale its culture so that it makes the firm stronger, as opposed to weakening the culture?
Jason: Yeah. Well, first of all, you can do it. So, it’s something that can be done. And there’s a lot to culture, right? A lot of times we say, “Every business already has a culture.” There is something already existent there. It may be positive or negative, or whatever it is, but that becomes just as intentional as anything else. It becomes a role. Lot of times, that’ll start to sit with an operations person, then an HR person. Though, HR has a different perspective on culture maybe than a founder. A founder wants it to be an enjoyable place. HR’s trying to do a little protection, from a compliance standpoint. That’s all good and right. I think the way we do it, and the book has a big chapter on rhythms, we rhythmically place a lot of things into our firm, and we teach that with firms we consult with, that rhythmically, we have to be together on a rhythm. And we define a rhythm as the same time, same day, at whatever recurrence of that rhythm. So, if we want a cultural team meeting every week, our firm does it every Wednesday 12 p.m. noon Eastern. That’s the time. It’s not ever changed. It’s a rhythm. Nobody questions it. It’s just habitual. A rhythm forces habitual adherence to that rhythm. And in those meetings, those face-to-face things, that’s when culture happens, culture improvement happens. And it involves a lot of things, you know, gifts, and retreats, and all that’s part of it. But really, culture is a daily work, that’s gotta sit inside of somebody’s role, especially when you’re virtual and you’re not together. That’s a big deal. So, I don’t know. Ian…Karbon has a really amazing culture, so he probably has a lot to say about that.
Ian: Yeah. I’ve worked in a lot of big companies, and kind of seen how they operate, and when we started Karbon, I think it goes back to, the culture is an embodiment of the leadership team at the very beginning, the entrepreneur and whatnot, because you’re able to set essentially the vision, the mission, then you’re able to set the values. And so, a lot of the culture stems from those leaders initially, because they have an overarching weight by which they’re able to influence the folks that are coming into the firm. They also pick who those people were. And so, that is a good understanding of both your flaws and your strengths, because that will be embodied within that company’s culture when it’s small. As it grows, that culture has to evolve outside of the actual leaders themselves. And that happens at that point of that first scaling boundary, that first scaling barrier, around 8 to 12. And that’s sort of when you start to get teams, because now you have people operating without having direct one-on-ones with those leaders.
And you cannot control culture. You can positively and negatively influence it. So, the way to think about it, and how I explain it to folks that come here at Karbon is, I’m not here to be able to set the culture. The only decision I can make is who we hire, that’s able to take that culture and expand it. Every new person adjusts and modifies that culture. And it depends on what you want. For us, it’s about diversity. Diversity, in my opinion, drives that culture to be broader and more capable. And so we look for that when we’re hiring, in terms of making sure that we’re not hiring the same people, that will think and breathe and do everything the same. It becomes much more important from a hybrid sort of situation, where you don’t have the ability to sit in a room together. Everyone’s gonna be operating differently in different times. And as you go bigger and bigger and bigger, you realize that HR doesn’t control the culture, the founders don’t control the culture, but your actions, and who you’re able to support and train, put on your shoulders to let them lead, that is what’s gonna define the culture. So, those decisions ultimately transcend, to be bigger and broader decisions, that you don’t realize initially.
Jean: Right. I’m happy that vision, mission, core values, your culture, is getting more attention now. And I know that there are a lot of practitioners out there who still think, oh, that’s a bunch of marketing hoo-ha, that this is just not necessary. And I’m happy to see that more and more firms are giving it more attention, and taking it more seriously. Because it truly…I mean, your book is based on all of this. I mean, the foundation of everything else, so I just, yeah, it makes me very happy to hear those conversations.
So, growing with intention must also involve the decisions, or how you’re defining your clients that you work with, and the services that you’re offering, and the pricing structure that you’re using. Could each of you touch upon that a little? I know that’s a big question, covering a lot of stuff, but becoming purposeful in those areas too. Who do you wanna work with? What services you wanna offer? How much do you wanna make from it?
Ian: I’m gonna sit back and let Jason go. I think Jason might have a word or two on this one. We might be here for a half hour now.
Jason: Ohh.
Jean: I’m watching the clock. Don’t worry.
Jason: I’ll try to keep this short. Yeah, it’s a big deal. The reason there’s, Ian’s talking about this scaling plateau around 8 to 12 people, Ian wrote about something called span of control, where you can probably lead about 6 to 8 people, one person can lead about 6 to 8 people. That’s kind of that ratio. So, when a founder starts, the clients are all the founder’s clients. They’re hers. It’s, like, she knows them, she brought them in, she serves them. And so, that becomes a very intimate thing she has with that client base. And when you start getting past that barrier, 8 to 12, relationships form between your clients and other people. And so, that’s really weird. I think if we really focused on it more, we would understand how weird that feels, when a client still knows you really well as the founder, and emails you, and you go, “I don’t know as much about the thing you’re asking me as now the person I hired to do it.” And so, that’s when things really start to break, is when the company starts to become more about the mission of the organization than it does about the founder who started the company, and that’s inevitably what will always happen to every company that scales and expands larger.
So, you start to put things in place that support a company growing larger. Things like pricing is a real, you know, it’s a real important aspect of go… I believe going to your market, and pricing them, is just a better move than billing by the hour. Now, we have a pretty serious conversation in the book about pricing and billing. And we’re not trashing anybody that does one or the other. Changing between them is very difficult. Turns out it’s a lot harder than people think. But, I don’t know, this company grows and expands, and the client base becomes something that other people care for. Sometimes you don’t have as much say-so over that. So, what your job is, as the founder, or the original technician, is to lead with a vision and a purpose. It’s like, “These are the kinds of clients I want,” like an ICP, you know, ideal client profile. “These are the ones I want.” And then there’s other people executing, making sure whoever fills out the lead form is vetted in a way that matches that, and they’re also turned away when they’re not. And then, how you decide to get your revenue, those are very foundational things, when you choose to price and scope those kind of things. Or you can just bill by the hour, and just pitch money into the firm, and just start billing against it. I don’t know. It just totally depends, and I don’t know, Jean, if I’ve even answered your question, but…
Jean: No, you are, because we’re hearing a lot about, I mean, pricing is a hot topic, and getting away from that billable hour, because the conversation that always comes down to, yes, we’re more efficient, from our technology and from AI, and it doesn’t take us as long to do the work for the client, so are you actually gonna charge less for a service because you’re being more efficient?
Jason: I hope not.
Jean: It really just doesn’t make sense.
Jason: No. That’s not a good business model, so…
Jean: Right?
Jason: Ian, you probably have a lot of thoughts on that too.
Ian: Well, one of the things we bring up in the book was, it’s just an observation that we’ve had over the last decade or so. You’d go to conferences, you meet firms, and it felt like everyone was chasing revenue, or chasing customer count, or client count. And when you peel back the onion, and you a lot of these firm owners, that didn’t spell success, truly, in the end. It just spelt more headache. And really, profitability was really what people were after, and that’s kind of the evolution that’s happened since post-COVID, which is, how do I drive the most enterprise value for the firm? Because at the end of the day, I wanna be able to not only, I wanna serve the best clients I have, the best way I can possibly, at the highest profit, so I need to satisfy the needs of my employees, my clients, and the business itself. And so, when you look at it that way, it doesn’t define the business as having to get as big as it can possibly get, or the number of employees needs to be as high as it needs to have. It’s what is the inherent motivation of the firm owner, and those that are in the leadership, about driving the vision of what they want, and that success doesn’t look like going up and to the right.
We talked about it the last chapter. It’s like a mountainscape. There’s a high peak somewhere in that mountainscape, and that’s the right spot for you and your firm. It can be small, it can be medium, it can be large, but that’s unique to the choice that you have to make. Now, when you do that, now you have to understand, I need to get the right revenue, from the right customer base, because I have a set of resources that can do that type of revenue fulfillment, at an efficient way, that’s gonna drive the maximum profitability. And then I’m going to put the operational rigor, and we call that the recipes within that, in order to ensure that we can do that at the lowest cost. And by doing that, we can now arrange everything where we can now systematically ensure that when we wanna go ahead and get more capacity, we have the revenue that can support it, but we have the underlying structure and scaffolding to support the weight of those additional people or those additional clients. And that’s the intentionality that a lot of folks don’t understand, which is, you have to do these things in a very clear sequence, otherwise, what happens is profitability falls, and you may not recover from it. And that’s what drives a lot of companies backwards.
Jean: Ian, you’re amazing because you answered a question I had without my even asking it to you.
Jason: Well said.
Jean: It’s about, I had a question, right, about profitability, you know, and having more clarity. You know, how, does that drive higher profitability? And obviously what you just told us is yes, it does. And you do have to be intentional about that, as well as everything else, right, that we’ve been talking about.
Jason: Yeah.
Jean: So, let’s talk about some practical first steps. So, there are firm owners watching and listening to this episode. And really, the demographic of our listeners and viewers covers the general basic description. So, while my initial focus was for firms under 100 people, I know we’re getting folks from larger firms listening too, so… And I think you focus more on firms about 50 people. Am I remembering that right?
Jason: Yeah. Two to $5 million in revenue, probably.
Jean: Right?
Jason: And that’s about hitting the right spot.
Ian: Well, we tried to, again, the book was because there’s multiple scaling plateaus that exist. So we wanted to define the first one that folks hit, because it’s usually around that 8 to 20. Then it flexes, it depends, but it’s usually around that 40 to 60, and then there’s other ones that happen at different size, as you get bigger. The difference is, as you go into those structures, you find yourself more in a team than you are in the ownership. That doesn’t change it. The same recipes apply in solving it, but your perspective has changed because you’re at a different spot within that scaffolding structure.
Jean: Right.
Ian: So, the book applies there, but we were trying to answer it from the entrepreneurial leader, who has to then set the pattern for that as they go into these larger states. Does that makes sense?
Jean: Right. It does make sense. And what you’re sharing with us today is relevant, I believe, no matter what the size firm you are. It just…
Jason: Sure.
Jean: …some firms may be in a more difficult position than others. So, firm leadership is looking to scale with purpose. What are the first two or three things that they should do, to scale with purpose?
Ian: I’m gonna butt in before Jason goes, because I’m gonna set you up, Jason.
Jason: Okay.
Ian: So, what people don’t realize here is that Jason really wanted to just mow lawns. He just wanted to get a lawnmower, and just drive around and mow grass, and not have anybody talk to him.
Jason: Right.
Ian: And we talk about it in the book…
Jason: Well…
Ian: And there was a question that came up, Jason, that I want you to [crosstalk 00:26:37]
Jason: Yeah.
Ian: I think this is a step up, which is, what do you want?
Jason: Yeah.
Ian: What do you want from this relationship or this business? And I’ll…that’s my tee-up to you, Jason.
Jason: Yeah, though, that’s good. Yeah. Well, that, you know, Jean, the quick answer is, where do they start? We wanna go, where are you in the way, founder? And typically, you’re the one causing the problems. And Ian is poignantly talking about a story, that, after I got a new partner, after Julie Shipp became my new partner, she heard me say on our podcast, “I’m just sick of this. I just wanna go mow grass.” And she had just become a partner. Well, she was not happy. She’s like, “Okay, so, I just committed my life to this thing, and you wanna go do what? You wanna go mow grass.” I was just at the end of myself. You know, these businesses were starting to consume me. I was not controlling them. And she asked me, she said, “Do you want what this means? Do you want what this growth means?” And she didn’t…so, she didn’t ask, “Do you wanna grow?” because that’s an easy question for me to answer. “Yeah.” She’s like, “Do you want what it comes with?” And it comes with something, you know, and a lot of times, founders don’t face that reality soon enough. I didn’t, so what I was doing is, I was like, “Grow, grow, grow. Let’s scale a business, and act…” and participating in being a lifestyle firm, which is not bad, but in the book, we make a point. This book is about those that are expanding, and growth, and the complexity that comes with, and that is not right for everybody.
Some people, in different seasons of life, should be a lifestyle owner. And that is not an expansion move, so it doesn’t come with a lot of the design and the complexity of team. Maybe a small team. But you have to know, do you want what this means? And some people find themselves, after sometimes 15, 20 years, they look up and they go, “This is not what I wanted.” And that’s a rough spot to be, right? Fifteen, 20 years, and you have, you know, 30 employees, and you’re just consumed by it. You’re overwhelmed. You’re not happy. It’s not enjoyable. You’re having health problems by that time. And that is not the time to wonder if you should have scaled a firm. It’s, now you got a big old elephant in front of you you gotta deal with. So, the book is about getting to that person early on, and saying, “Hey, before you read this book and go, ‘Yeah, I wanna scale,’ make sure it’s what you wanna do.” And that’s a really…it’s being really honest with yourself. You know, it’s…here, this is a funny story. I’ve taught so much about growth and scaling. It has been many times, after our conference, our deeper weekend conference, that Ian and Karbon have sponsored for so long, that many people will come up to me and go, “This was amazing. Now I know I don’t wanna grow. Thanks for helping me.” And I’m like, “No, no, no. I was teaching you how to grow,” and they’re like, “Now I finally know I do not want what this comes with.” And that was so weird the first couple times I heard it. Then you hear it enough, and you’re like, “This actually is pretty good content.” If it’s teaching them what it comes with, that’s actually what you’re supposed to be realizing.
Jean: Right.
Jason: This has some complexity to it.
Jean: Yeah. I think, these days, people are paying more attention to how they’re spending their time…
Jason: They are.
Jean: …and who they’re spending it with, and what they’re doing. And that example of a firm leader, you know, turning around after 20 years in business… I mean, he, you don’t get that time back. You know, that’s gone, so…
Jason: No. No, you don’t. Yeah.
Jean: Yeah, that’s a smart decision then, because if they aren’t willing to put in the work, don’t do it.
Jason: Right.
Jean: I mean, keep your firm the size that you’re comfortable with…
Jason: Totally.
Jean: …and if it’s sustainable, and you know when you wanna finish, figure out who you’re gonna sell to…
Jason: That’s right.
Jean: …or who’s gonna acquire you, or whatever that might be. Yeah.
Jason: That’s right.
Jean: Yeah, underlying all of this conversation, another reason why it’s so important, in my mind, is that, with the talent crisis, and firms always looking for people, if a firm is growing by scaling smartly, I have to believe you’re more likely to keep the talent that you have on board, because they can see a future for themselves. Because as the firm grows, and as you’ve been explaining, the leader doesn’t do everything anymore. People have different roles. If staff can see that, they could see their own future in the mix here. And that’s important.
Jason: Hopefully. Yeah, hopefully. And that’s the thing about, these are human-based businesses. You know, you can actually build a very well-built and intentional and structured business. And it’s so weird, you perceive somebody as a leader, and you wanna bring them along, and you find out they’re in a season of life, and they say, “No. I think…I mean, this is a great firm, but I think I’m gonna step back.” And it’s like, “Wait, no. I had plans for you. You were the leader that I was gonna call to help me.” And so, humans just, you just can’t rely on the fact that your organization is always gonna be what other people need. And sometimes that can hurt your feelings, because you’re like, “Isn’t it awesome here?” And they’re like, “It is, but it’s not my thing.” And it’s like, that’s so weird, but it’s true, you know?
Jean: Right.
Jason: And I’m sure, Ian, you’ve run into that many times too.
Ian: Yeah. I mean, and going back to your previous question, as this is related, Jean, was, like, the first step on the process is taking internal, sort of, understanding of who you are, and what you want, and what’s right for you and the team, right? That was the second point, which goes back to the human side of it, which is, in the book, we talk about that goes back to understanding how to design the organization that’s gonna be able to get to the vision that you want to get, whether you’re a team leader in a large company or whether you’re a leader of a small company. And that’s where, again, understanding how do you design how the humans are going to fit, and where the gaps are gonna be, and the growth that you wanna get in that, because that creates durability and sustainability. And then you have to take stock in that as you start to go each one of the rungs of the ladder, as the organization gets bigger.
Jean: Right.
Ian: Because we found in a lot of folks, they learned that as they went bigger, and then they went back, they said, “You know what? My perfect size was about 14 people or 16 people, because I had the people that I wanted, they were motivated to do what we do, we had all A players, and I have a growth path for each one of these folks, and now we can create a stable organization. I don’t need to get more talent, but what I’m doing is becoming more efficient, more effective. I’m thinning my client base to be more profitable at, you know, I can charge higher rates.” And so there’s many different ways to be able to create high enterprise value. It isn’t have to be about more talent. But if you are gonna do more talent, that comes with a lot of cost, scaffolding, those types of things. So, there’s different ways to kinda do that, and we try to explain that in the book. So that’s why, when you get to the latter part of the book, and we talk about operations management, that’s built on a foundation of the structure of the organization, which was built on the goals and aspirations of those who are leading it.
Jean: Mm-hmm. Right. That’s an interesting perspective that you just shared there, Ian. Thank you for that. Okay, so, I have one final question. If every managing partner listening or watching to this episode could reflect on one uncomfortable question about their growth strategy, what should it be?
Jason: Wow. Jean, I’m stumped.
Jean: I don’t believe that.
Jason: You’re like, yeah, right, Jason.
Ian: [crosstalk 00:34:39] one question. [crosstalk 00:34:40]
Jason: Yeah. So, what… I think…well, it would probably be, you know, what Julie asked me a long time ago. She said, “Do you want what this means?” Well, I think what is not wise is to continue to push forward without knowing why. Maybe you’re at a size that you enjoy, is big enough, but we would still ask, do you want what it means to keep going? A lot of the stories in the book, people, some of the wise leaders, Chad Davis was a really, was a story all the way through the book. And he did ask himself, him and his partner asked themselves that. And they went back. They went up to 120 people, and moved back to 60. Pretty disruptive move. And they said that…and even now, Chad says that was the right move. And so, at some point, that owner, they faced, they looked in the mirror and they said, “Do we need to keep going?” And they said, “No. We don’t want to keep going. We need to go back.” In some…there were many stories, right? You know, firms going back. They reduced their headcount, which is a weird… But that’s growth. That’s growing their organization the way they wanna grow it. So, I would, everybody needs to ask themselves, do you want what it means to do what you’re doing now, to keep growing bigger? If you don’t, do you need to be smaller? These are all real options and choices you have, and we need to not…we need to stop being default. We need to stop defaulting into the answer we think we’re supposed to give people, so…
Jean: Right.
Jason: Ian, that’s mine. Did I steal yours?
Ian: No, I appreciate you giving me the space to be able to think.
Jason: I know. [crosstalk 00:36:21]
Ian: I now have the benefit of being able to be succinct, which never happens. Mine would be, do you really have a plan, or is it a win? And that’s where I think where…I think that’s where the problem lies, and that’s what this book was about. The reason why we use intentionality and purpose was, most people think they’re doing the right thing, and they have the right sort of way forward, but they haven’t truly stepped back and take stock in all the things that around them and what they’ve got set up, and whether or not they actually have the strong foundations for what the growth is going to take. And if…the book is to give you an illumination of whether you’ve really thought this through clearly, and whether or not you’ve been able to check all the boxes and ensure that you’ve got all the flywheels humming together. Because it doesn’t take much for it to get out of sync, and now you’re in a lot of pain and hurt. And so, this book was meant for you to take over a weekend, and really get you to open your mind, to then take a look at what you really have in front of you to create a plan, versus having just a win.
Jean: Well, I’ve been speaking with Jason Blumer and Ian Vacin, authors of “Scale With Purpose,” and I believe you’ve shared great information. Folks, go out and get that book. Hop on Amazon, every place it’s sold. It is a plethora of great questions to be asking yourselves, checklists, examples, stories, all of it. It’s fantastic. Thank you, gentlemen, for sharing those stories with us today.
Ian: Thank you.
Jason: Thank you, Jean, for having us. [crosstalk 00:37:57] Yeah. Yeah. It was fun. And hit scalewithpurpose.info. That’s our book site, and that’s a great way to find everything about…because we’re gonna be doing more. More resources, some events, things like that, so…
Jean: Wonderful, wonderful.
Jason: Yeah.
Jean: And thank you for tuning in to “Gear Up for Growth.” Be sure to check us out next time, when we focus on another topic crucial for accounting firms aiming for smart growth in today’s competitive marketplace. I’ll see you then.