If you still believe old “Partners & Co” approach to your accounting practice is the way to go, you need to wake up. Cloud accounting is here, new banking infrastructure, such as bitcoin is emerging, and new devices adoption rate is accelerating. All these new trends are making your old accounting business obsolete. What are you going to do about it? Every business owner, including an accountant, wants to make the world a better place and build something that makes a difference and pleases her customers. Guy Pearson will help you define your unique selling proposition and business model, assist you to take the focus back to your clients and will share his experience on building a practice that scales. In this presentation, we will take a deep dive into proven ways to build a practice that matters and one you’ll be proud to tell your friends, colleagues and family about. Objectives: What is your USP (Unique selling proposition) – do you have one and how to craft one? Business models – are you a surgeon, a local coffee shop or a McDonald’s? Maybe a hybrid is the way to go? Always. Focus. On the client. They help you get paid. Think with scalability in mind. Make yourself obsolete. Do something that matters.

1. Building An Accounting
Practice You Can Be Proud Of

2. • Chartered Accountant (Aussie CPA) - 10 years in
practice
• 3 x Xero award winner in first 3 years of practice being
opened(most awards globally)
• 30 under 30 entrepreneur in Australia
• 5 startups in 5 years (1 failed, 3 running, 1 dormant)
• Obsessed with Accounting + Technology and
delivering better information to small business owners
to make better decisions and change the world.
• CEO / Chief Ignitioneer at Practice Ignition.
A bit about me

3. Interactive Accounting
interactive by name and nature
• Self funded + bootstrapped from the ground up (whilst I
bartended at nights)
• 5 years old (2010 start date)
• 3 offices around Australia
• 20 amazing people onboard
• 100% cloud from day 1
• Model built on the back of studying startups
• Clients in 8 countries
• Services high growth companies, High Net Worth Individuals and
100% cloud businesses.
• Helped companies raise $100m in funding
Let’s talk accounting

4. • What is your USP?
• Business Model for your practice.
• Your Clients. Your lifeblood.
• Can you scale?
• Make yourself obsolete.
• Do something that matters to you.
• Takeaways.
• Q+A.
Agenda

5. What is a USP
Unique Selling Proposition. It’s what makes you stand out from the crowd.
Example
In the cloud accounting field in America, there is one stand out for having picked a niche.
Chaney + Associates
This firm focuses 100% on non-profit religious and faith based organizations around the USA.
Picking one
Usually you will have one area that you are great at in your business. It could be anything, but,
you need to be “the best” at this and identifiable by your USP.
Remember being a “proactive accountant, trustworthy, thoughtful” CPA is not a USP. It’s
expected.
1. List the common services you provide by industry, demographic, size of business and stage
of business;
2. List any particular software you focus on or specialize in;
3. What value add work are you capable of?
NB: the sooner you get this defined, the easier is your path to market.
Defining your USP

6. Your USP will affect your business model.
Who are you?
Are you a surgeon, a local coffee shop or a McDonald’s?
The Surgeon
You’re a specialist at what you do. Everything in the firm is designed to have you at the top, to do the
delicate work, the sign off and you only generate revenue when you work.
Local Coffee Shop
Personalized service to your local area, region, market , but a jack of all trades to everyone.
McDonalds
The goal is volume and repeatable service over and over again. Would you like fries with that?
You can pick more then one
Make sure if you want to operate more then one model that they play nicely with each other e.g.
Compliance is usually a McDonald style model that feeds into local coffee shops for industry specific
+ surgeons for high niche.
Your business model

7. It doesn’t matter what any expert says. These people are the most important people at your practice.
Without exception.
Money talks
Your clients are the reason that you have a practice, they fund every decision you make.
Bullshit walks
They will stay with you whilst there is trust. Don’t bullshit them. Don’t over promise and own up when
you stuff up with a plan to fix the issue.
What do they want?
As an industry, we are afraid to ask this questions. Make sure you ask your clients if they’re happy
with your service and ask them if they would refer you (net promoter score is built into Zendesk etc.)
Always on your mind
The best referral driven practices have one thing in common. They communicate with their clients
with relevant information as and when they read it. It used to be scanning newspaper articles, now it’s
twitter/linkedin/blog links that may interest or affect your client.
You watch. The referrals just flow in (their connections just don’t get serviced and will be impressed).
Your clients

8. Have you considered the limitations of your practice?
Don’t be a bottleneck for your practice, make sure it can run without you signing every little detail off.
Systems
How hard is it for your way of doing things to add 1 more client?
People
Have you got the right people on board, what’s the average time required to do the next job?
Clients
Is there only 1 point of contact for your clients, do they have an easy way to interact with you?
Goals for your practice
How fast, how big… it’s up to you. Why not >25% p.a.? 100%? Or you may want to keep it small, it’s
completely up to you.
If you’re designed to scale, you can hit whatever target you desire with greatly reduced friction.
Can you scale?

9. As a practice owner, this should be your ultimate goal. To be an owner, not a worker.
Practice what you preach
The #1 reason to work towards your obsolescence is to be able to share with your clients
how you became obsolete, no matter what model you chose or clients you chose to serve.
Remember entrepreneurs want to be owners and work on the business not in it.
Knowledge
Share your knowledge with your team, don’t be a bottleneck, don’t protect your knowledge,
incentivize this sharing at your practice.
People
I started my own accounting practice because I believed that I could do a better job of
running an accounting practice and then trusted people. The result: I became an owner only
after 3.5 years of a multi-million dollar turnover CPA firm.
Make yourself obsolete

10. utilism – the greatest good, for the greatest number.
Help
Help your fellow man, woman and child. Help your family. All your goals should be aligned.
Grow
Grow your practice, grow your clients business, grow your influence to achieve great things.
Access
Access to information is one of the key problems you are here to solve.
Better information = better decisions.
Teach
Once again, share your knowledge and pay it forward. This is what entrepreneurship was
built on.
Do something that matters

11. Remember, what you do is important.
Don’t downplay your role in the world.
Accountants have the ability to be a huge difference maker, to help entrepreneurs paint the
future and help families increase their take home pay, their ability to give to others and their
overall happiness (taxes are a huge stress).
Pick something you want to tell your grandkids about
It’s not all about money. What did you
do to change “the world you live in”?
Be Proud. Be a trusted advisor.
Make a difference.

12. What legacy
will you leave
behind?

13. Stand out from the crowd
Whatever you choose, make sure you stand out in the crowd and make sure you have an
easy way to explain what you do and for whom you do it.
(e.g. video that changed the game for interactive accounting)
Business model
Work through your path to clients and define what you are about. I recommend you start
with the lean canvas model to define your services, your market and your path to growth.
Pricing
Pricing models for fixed fee models are available here, pick the right model that enables
ease of sale to your chosen clients or a hybrid, fixed fee for low value and value based for
high end work.
• Looking At Pricing Models
• How To Price Your Practice
• Worksheets To Build Your Practice
Takeaways

14. Decisions to make
• Who are your clients?
• How big do you want to grow?
• How will you charge?
• Are your clients happy?
• What can you do to make them happier
• Can you scale?
• How far are you from being obsolete?
• How do you get there from here and when?

15. Work on the beach is not a figure of speech
When you can save up to 2 hours on an engagement letter
Start saving time now
As a member of CPA Academy we give you three months FREE!
http://www.practiceignition.com/cpaacademy