Liz Farr, Author at CPA Trendlines

Loren Fogelman: Stop Undercharging and Start Being Client-Centered

Stop letting your business and career “suck the life out of you.”

This video is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members. The podcast version will be available everywhere you get your podcasts.

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Loren Fogelman is on a mission to help accountants and bookkeepers build businesses that “don’t suck the life out of you.” As Fogelman says, “How much can you actually give up your personal life before it’s not sustainable any longer?”

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Dawn Brolin Says Grow Your Firm by Shrinking It | Jason Blumer & Julie Shipp: Move Leaders Out of Client Service | James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More | Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow |

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According to Fogelman, a keynote speaker and one of America’s top-ranked business coaches for Business Success Solution, “At least 57% of firm owners are undercharging for their services.” She encourages professionals to double or even triple their fees, which frees up time so they can provide client-centered services and “go back to the gym or spend more time with your family or take that much-needed vacation.”

The highly-sought business coach has several methods her clients use to earn more, work less, and have more quality time for themselves.

PODCAST

Brannon Poe: Grow Your Business by Preparing to Let it Go

The two big metrics and 12 more takeaways.

This video is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members. The podcast version is available everywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

After helping people buy and sell accounting firms for years, Brannon Poe realized he was sitting on a treasure trove of valuable information that could help firm owners who were “motivated to change their practices for the better.” He’s leveraged those insights into a coaching program for accountants (Accounting Practice Academy) and several books. His latest book, Prepare Your CPA Firm for Sale, describes the process of transforming a firm into one that buyers willingly pay top dollar for.

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Dawn Brolin Says Grow Your Firm by Shrinking It | Jason Blumer & Julie Shipp: Move Leaders Out of Client Service | James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More | Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow |

Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Poe recommends that firm owners start planning for an eventual sale well before they’re ready to leave. “I think the biggest mistake that I see often is they don’t do any planning,” Poe says. Starting the planning process three to five years ahead gives firm owners time to change things, including getting alignment on the timetable and price with other partners, which may be a tricky issue.

GROWTH STRATEGIES

Disruptors: Dawn Brolin Says Grow Your Firm By Shrinking It

Make life at work better for yourself, your team, and your clients.

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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE, intentionally shrank her firm, Powerful Accounting, from 11 to three team members, the opposite of the way most firms grow. She also drastically cut her client list, while nearly tripling her fees from a select group of just 19 clients.

“I decided I wanted to change my life,” Brolin says. “I want to change my staff’s life. And I want to change the way my clients work with me where they weren’t worried about getting a bill because they called me and asked me a question.”

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Jason Blumer & Julie Shipp: Move Leaders Out of Client Service | James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More | Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow |

Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Part of that change in Dawn’s life was her passion for coaching college softball, where she serves as the team’s Designated Motivator. Because softball season overlaps with tax season, she leaves the office at 2 PM, five days a week. No one in her firm works more than 35 hours a week.

PODCAST

Disruptors: Nicole Davis & JW Davis Show How to Create Your Own Pipeline

Change your business model, change your life.

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

What would an accounting firm look like if you had never worked in public accounting? Because Nicole Davis, CPA, and JW Davis, a registered investment advisor, didn’t follow the traditional path to firm ownership. They reimagined what a firm could look like, starting from a blank canvas instead of the regimented, structured, paint-by-numbers design of traditional accounting firms.

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Dawn Brolin: Grow Your Firm By Shrinking It |Jason Blumer & Julie Shipp: Move Leaders Out of Client Service | James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More | Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow |

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Nicole is the founder and principal of Butler-Davis Tax & Accounting in the Atlanta area, while JW is the CEO.

Like many Disruptor-led firms, JW explains that ”one of the really big things we focus on was work-life balance.” Nicole adds, “If your culture is one of stress and long hours, then you really need to rethink your business model.”

INNOVATION & CHANGE MANAGEMENT

Disruptors: Chase Birky Builds the Anti-CPA Firm

Don’t reinvent the wheel. Join a better wheel.

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Chase Birky wanted “a better way to CPA,” so he and co-founder Max Fritz created Dark Horse – the “anti-CPA firm,” which would be “the opposite of what a client would expect of a CPA firm, of what talent expects of a CPA firm.” Dark Horse democratizes access to the resources, tools, and technology available to larger firms so sole practitioners and small firms have an easier path to the modern CPA firm.

MORE PODCASTS and VIDEOS: Jason Blumer & Julie Shipp: Move Leaders Out of Client Service | James Graham: Drop the Billable Hour and You’ll Bill More | Karen Reyburn: Fix Your Marketing and Fix Your Business | Giles Pearson: Fix the Staffing Crisis by Swapping Experience for Education | Jina Etienne: Practice Fearless Inclusion | Bill Penczak: Stop Forcing Smart People to Do Stupid Work | Sandra Wiley: Staffing Problem? Check Your Culture | Scott Scarano: First, Grow People. Then Firm Growth Can Follow |

Exclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

Dark Horse was born out of the realization that small businesses were underserved by their accountants. Many small business owners have “these horror stories about the large firm that deprioritizes them and charges them an arm and a leg, or the one-off practitioner or micro firm that wouldn’t return their emails or phone calls, and never provides advice, just tells them to sign on the dotted line,” Birky says.

Liz Farr

MORE AT STORE.CPATRENDLINES.COM

Liz Farr, CPA, is a special contributor to CPA Trendlines, bringing an insider's clear-eyed view of the tax and accounting business and a passion for advancing the profession.

She's the host of the hit CPA Trendlines podcast series "The Disruptors," available everywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

As founder and proprietor of Farr Communications, she is the secret weapon that her clients use to get their messages out. She has written blog posts, web content, articles, white papers, case studies and books for accountants and accounting tech companies. Her specialty is ghostwriting for coaches and consultants who want to move accountants into the future. She can bridge the gap between the dream these visionaries have for the future and the mindset and reality that today’s accountants are living in.

Five of her past and current clients have been named to Accounting Today’s annual list of 100 most influential in accounting. She has written under her name for the Journal of Accountancy, Intuit’s Firm of the Future blog and AccountingWEB. She has also appeared in Forbes, CFO.com, and Accounting Today.

Farr has a broad educational background, studying biochemistry at the University of Munster, Germany, and obtained her bachelor's degree as a double major in biochemistry and German at the University of New Mexico. She also studied German, Spanish, computer science and linguistics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and continued her studies in linguistics at the University of Washington. She earned her master's degree in accounting in 2004 from the Robert O. Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico, qualifying as a licensed CPA in 2005.

Professionally, Liz began as a tax preparer at H&R Block before working at several local CPA firms in the Albuquerque, N.M. area. At her last assignment as a tax manager, she helped a team develop streamlined processes for getting tax returns out faster and more accurately.

After spending 15 years working as an accountant in the Albuquerque, N.M., area, she traded in her ten-key for a pen and has been writing full time since 2018.

She can be contacted at Farr Communications.

When she’s not writing or studying the accounting business, she’s hiking or skiing in the mountains of New Mexico.

Here’s what you’re looking for: Liz Farr

This video is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members. The podcast version will be available everywhere you get your podcasts.

This video is a preview. The complete video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members. The podcast version is available everywhere you get your podcasts.

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music and Audible, Player FM, Audacy, Gaana (India), and Boomplay (Africa).