AI Is Everywhere. Here’s What It Actually Changes (And What It Doesn’t).

Every software vendor says they’re “AI-powered” now. Every firm owner says they’re “using AI.” Most of them have no idea what that actually means for the people they serve. So let me be specific. At Blumer & Associates, we describe our approach as Human First, AI Forward. That’s not a tagline — it’s a real operating philosophy that shapes how we work and what clients actually experience.

A lot of what AI does for us, you’ll never see.

Meeting notes get organized. Technical research gets summarized. Internal documentation gets structured. Emails are clearer and more specific. All of that happens in the background, and it’s genuinely useful — but it’s not the point.

What it creates is what I’d call a cognitive division of labor. AI processes the routine tasks we’ve performed for decades in the firm. Humans handle interpretation, judgment, and strategy. That’s what we’re going for and what we believe our clients want from us. The goal isn’t automation for its own sake; but rather creating more room for better thinking on your behalf. That means we’ll be looking for our team to grow over the next few years as we reskill around the value of our interpretation, judgment, and strategy.

Many of our clients and our market are already using AI tools to research accounting and tax questions. That makes total sense — AI has made information faster and easier to access than it’s ever been. But there’s a real difference between finding information and applying it correctly.

Of course, AI can explain a regulation. It can summarize a rule. It can give you a starting point. What it cannot do is understand the full context of your business, your history, your goals, and the nuances that actually matter when advice needs to be specific to your situation. That’s what we want to grow in – really knowing our clients, their hopes, dreams, and be there for them when they need a human to talk to. We’re leaning into leveraging AI to help us do that for our clients!

A quick word on security and responsibility.

As we explore and adopt AI tools, strong security standards, clear internal policies, and human oversight are not optional for us. They’re the floor. AI should support professionals — it should never replace the judgment and accountability that define a trusted advisor. That standard doesn’t change. So we want our clients and our market to know that we do not put sensitive client data in our AI tools. The tools are not ready for that yet, and we won’t ever risk our clients data.

AI is one of the tools that helps us deliver better thinking, more consistently, to the people we serve. When it’s implemented well, the client relationship becomes more human — not less. That’s what we’re building toward. If you want to talk about what that means for your business specifically, what security protocols we’re applying, we’re always glad to continue the conversation.

Every business goes through seasons.

Some seasons are about aggressive growth.
Some are about launching new services or expanding into new markets.
And some — often the most strategic — are about strengthening the foundation.

Many leaders assume forward momentum always means acceleration. But sustainable growth isn’t built on constant expansion. It’s built on clarity, alignment, and operational strength.

Sometimes, the smartest move a company can make is to reset and simplify. Here’s what that can look like.

Reevaluate the Clients You Serve

Not all revenue is equal.

As businesses grow, client rosters naturally evolve. Over time, misalignment can creep in — whether it’s pricing that hasn’t kept up with market value, services that no longer fit your core strengths, or relationships that consume more energy than they create.

A foundation-strengthening season is a good time to ask:

• Are our pricing structures aligned with the value we deliver?
• Are we serving the types of clients we do our best work for?
• Are we holding onto legacy arrangements that no longer serve either side?

Refining your client base doesn’t mean shrinking. It means strengthening. A well-aligned client portfolio creates healthier margins, better team morale, and stronger long-term partnerships.

Simplify How Work Gets Done

Growth often brings complexity.

New tools get added. Processes layer on top of older processes. Workflows evolve organically. Before long, teams are navigating more friction than necessary.

Simplification is powerful.

That might mean:

• Consolidating systems
• Clarifying roles and responsibilities
• Removing unnecessary approval layers
• Standardizing processes that have become inconsistent

Operational simplicity increases speed, reduces errors, and improves communication. It also creates a better experience for both your team and your clients. But there’s another benefit that’s often overlooked: ownership.

When systems are clear and roles are well-defined, team members can take fuller ownership of their responsibilities and client relationships. They spend less time navigating confusion and more time making decisions, solving problems, and delivering value.

Simplicity doesn’t just make work easier. It makes accountability clearer and performance stronger.

Complexity compounds — but so does clarity.

Improve Visibility Into Capacity & Planning

Many businesses operate reactively when it comes to workload and growth. Without clear visibility into capacity, forecasting, and resource allocation, growth can become chaotic rather than strategic.

Strengthening your foundation may involve:

• Building better tracking systems
• Standardizing how work is estimated
• Reviewing workloads more intentionally
• Investing in tools that increase efficiency

When you have better data, you make better decisions. And when growth eventually accelerates, it does so from a position of control — not strain.

Invest in Culture, Alignment & Ownership

A strong foundation isn’t just financial or operational — it’s cultural. Periods of reset create an opportunity to clarify expectations, reinforce values, and strengthen alignment across the organization. When priorities are clear and systems are simplified, something powerful happens: ownership increases.

When team members understand their role, their responsibilities, and the outcomes they’re accountable for, they step into a higher level of leadership — regardless of title. Decisions happen closer to the work. Problems are solved more proactively. Client relationships deepen.

Clarity fuels confidence.
Confidence fuels ownership.
Ownership fuels growth.

Intentional alignment creates stability beneath the surface — and that stability allows businesses to move forward with far greater momentum when the time is right.

Why Simplifying Is Strategic

Choosing to reset and simplify isn’t a sign of slowing down. It’s a sign of maturity. Businesses that take time to refine their client base, streamline operations, improve visibility, and strengthen accountability create the stability necessary for sustainable growth in the years ahead.

Not every year needs to be an expansion year. Some years are about building strength beneath the surface — so that when growth does happen, it’s profitable, manageable, and aligned.

And that’s exactly where our focus is this year.

We are intentionally choosing to reset and simplify — to refine who we serve, streamline how we operate, strengthen ownership across our team, and build a stronger foundation for what comes next. By doing this work now, we position ourselves — and the businesses we serve — for smarter, more sustainable growth in the future. Sometimes the most strategic move isn’t more complicated.

It’s simplifying.

Many business owners have a compliance-based relationship with their accountant. You send documents. They file returns. You pay the invoice. The work is accurate and necessary — but largely historical. It reflects what already happened, not what you’re about to decide.

Compliance is essential. But if that’s the only interaction you have with your accountant, you may be underutilizing one of the most valuable strategic resources available to your business.

The Difference Between Compliance and Advisory

Compliance looks backward. It tells you what your revenue was. What your expenses were. What you owe. Advisory looks forward.

It helps you think through questions like:

• Can we afford this next hire?
• What does this pricing change do to margin?
• When does our cash flow support expansion?
• Which service lines are actually driving profitability?

Those decisions shape the future of your company. And they’re strongest when your accountant is involved before you act — not after the fact. That’s the shift from reporting to partnership.

Why Advisory Starts with a Plan

A true advisory relationship begins with clarity.

Before work starts, we take time to understand:

• Your goals
• Your current financial picture
• Where you want to grow
• What decisions are coming in the next 12–24 months

From there, we define the scope of work and agree on pricing upfront. That structure isn’t about restriction — it’s about alignment. You know exactly what you’re investing in. We know exactly how to serve you well. The relationship has direction.

And just as importantly, you don’t receive unexpected invoices for work you didn’t anticipate. When new needs arise — and they often do in growing businesses — we clarify the scope and agree on the investment before work begins. That level of transparency protects both sides and keeps trust intact.

When Scope Conversations Happen

In any growing company, new opportunities and challenges appear. A new hire. A new product line. A potential acquisition. Sometimes those requests fall outside the originally defined scope. When that happens, the conversation isn’t a wall — it’s simply a checkpoint. We revisit what was agreed upon, define what’s new, and align on how to move forward.

In advisory, clarity around scope isn’t rigidity. It’s what allows us to dedicate real time, assign a team intentionally, and protect the quality of the work.

The alternative model — often hourly billing — works well for some entrepreneurs who prefer open-ended flexibility. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that approach. It’s simply structured differently.

Advisory relationships prioritize defined planning, proactive communication, and structured engagement. For many growth-oriented businesses, that structure creates stronger long-term results.

What to Look for in a Strategic Advisory Partner

If you’re evaluating whether your accountant can truly function as a growth partner, consider these questions:

• Do conversations focus on where your business is going, or only on what already happened?
• Are financial discussions connected to real decisions you’re facing?
• Is there a proactive rhythm to the relationship — or do you only interact at deadlines?
• Do you understand clearly what is included in your engagement and what isn’t?

Strategic advisory isn’t about more meetings or more reports. It’s about better thinking, better timing, and clearer decision-making.

The Client’s Role in Making Advisory Work

Advisory relationships are collaborative. They require business owners who are willing to share context — not just financial statements, but goals, concerns, uncertainty, and plans in motion.

The strongest partnerships happen when accountants are brought into conversations early. When financial implications are explored before decisions are finalized. When strategy and numbers move together. That’s when the relationship becomes genuinely valuable — not transactional, but strategic.

A Thought on Fit

Not every business needs or wants an advisory relationship. Some prefer simplicity and transactional efficiency. Others want structured, forward-looking guidance.  Neither approach is inherently right or wrong. The important thing is understanding the difference — and intentionally choosing the kind of relationship that supports how you want to grow.

At our firm, we’re intentional about capacity and the level of attention we provide. That allows us to maintain the depth and proactive service that advisory work requires.

If you’re considering what kind of accounting relationship best fits your business, the first step isn’t changing firms — it’s clarifying what kind of partnership you actually want. Because the right relationship can sharpen your thinking, reduce uncertainty, and support decisions that move your company forward.

​​We’re intentional about capacity to protect the quality of service our clients receive. If an advisory relationship sounds like the right fit, fill out our Get Started form.  We’d love to sit down for a Value Conversation where we’ll talk through your goals, needs, capacity, and timing to determine next steps

Revenue is a vanity metric. After decades of financial advisory working with entrepreneurial service businesses, I’ve learned that impressive top-line numbers don’t paint a full picture without the right operational foundation. At the complexity level where most businesses operate—$500K to $5M in revenue—you cannot afford to run on accident or default. All things have to switch into being intentional.

These six metrics reveal whether you’re building genuine sustainability or just presenting well.

1) Top-Line Revenue Growth Rate

The Strategic Benchmark: 15-20% year-over-year growth

Growth beyond 25% annually creates a tricky operational reality: revenue produced by humans requires those humans to be trained, integrated, and effective. It takes approximately six months (in our perspective) for a new team member to get fully settled into a company’s roles, processes, and culture.

So you could land a $500K client overnight and accelerate your top line by 30%. But the structural lag of building team capacity to serve that client excellently becomes your constraint. When revenue outpaces infrastructure development, you throw bodies at problems. Quality erodes and teams can burn out if you’re not careful.

2) Fixed vs. Variable Labor Composition

The Critical Threshold: Between $500K-$750K in revenue, shift from contractor-based to employee-based labor. From variable labor spend to fixed labor spend.

Contract labor is variable by design—flexible, temporary, outside your cultural control. You cannot scale a company on a foundation designed to be temporary. Fixed labor represents greater risk, but it provides the control and commitment necessary for genuine growth. It’s greater risk because you commit a salary to someone whether the revenue comes in or not.

The Strategic Indicator: As you mature, contract labor percentages should decline while fixed labor percentages as a whole of your revenue should generally increase. If possible, we like to see variable labor go down and commitment of fixed labor go up.

3) Total Labor Composition

The Benchmark:

• • Fixed labor (wages + taxes + benefits): 45% 
  • Strategic contract labor: 8%
  • Total: 53% of revenue

These are generalities of course, but it gives you some sort of guide as to what your labor spend should be. Sometimes we have to invest in new team before the revenue shows up, so our labor margins may increase. That’s okay, as long as we know why our margins are high or low, and there is a strategic reason.

4) Owner Compensation

The Benchmark: 10-15% of revenue, varying by firm size and operational role.

The most common mistake: owners extracting all available cash through distributions rather than transparent P&L compensation. It means your pay looks okay on the Profit & Loss, but then the cash margins are depleted when an owner takes out all of their cash. Without clear benchmarking, you’re either undercompensating yourself toward burnout, or overcompensating and constraining growth investment.

5) Pre-Tax Profit Margin

The Minimum Benchmark: 10%

We establish 10% at the bottom line as a guide. This leaves only 90% for all other allocations, creating necessary discipline.

Can profit be too high? Yup, if you’re trying to grow they can be. Profit margins of 30-40% during growth phases usually indicate the owner is shouldering excessive production burden, and are failing to offload that to their team. Conversely, 1-2% profitability signals fundamental misalignment—growing too fast, wrong labor strategy, or resources allocated to non-advancing initiatives.

The Reality: Profit should flex with your growth stage, but it’s hard to do (especially when your company grows larger and more complex). Investing in non-revenue-generating leadership compresses margins temporarily, but this is often necessary to invest in growth. That’s not failure; that’s strategic investment.

As a note, if you are not growing larger and are supporting a lifestyle firm, then you want your profit margins as high as possible!

6) Salary Cap at Desired Profit

The Calculation: At target profitability, how much can you invest in fixed labor?

This Greg Crabtree methodology removes emotion from hiring decisions. Based on your revenue and desired 10% profitability, we calculate maximum sustainable labor salary caps, then compare those to actual spending. Then we share the difference with our clients.

A positive variance means you are spending under your allowed labor cap. Then you theoretically have the capacity to hire. A negative variance means you are spending more than your allowed labor cap. This represents over-investment in labor relative to profit objectives.

The Signal: Consistently showing $100K+ under your labor cap while feeling overwhelmed? This may mean you have financial capacity to hire, but you’re navigating the psychological challenge of commitment (like fear of handing off work to new team).

The Philosophy of Benchmarks

Benchmarks aren’t pass/fail assessments. They provide comparative context for meaningful questions: Why are your numbers here rather than there? Was this intentional? Do you have a strategy, or are you operating on default patterns (“we’ve always done it this way”)?

Legitimate reasons exist for diverging from benchmarks. What matters is whether those divergences reflect intentional choices based on your context, not unconscious patterns solidified over time.

The Strategic Narrative

These six metrics reveal the story of what you’re building. Financial data doesn’t deceive—it exposes your strategy or your lack of one.

When contract labor declines while fixed labor rises, that demonstrates strategic team-building. When profit compresses as labor investment increases, that indicates investment in leadership infrastructure. The numbers illuminate whether you’re building sustainable structure, whether your labor strategy creates advantage, and whether your efficiency improves over time.

Track them. Benchmark them. But most importantly, understand what they reveal about whether your choices align with your intended growth goals. While revenue might be vanity, these metrics represent operational reality and can help you have something to compare your numbers too monthly.

These methodologies form the foundation of our work with our advisory clients. The objective isn’t perfection—we’re trying to develop sufficient understanding to make intentional strategic decisions about our client’s business evolution.

Maybe we can help you too? Reach out if you think we can help: https://blumercpas.com/get-started-form/

Or, read my book, Scale with Purpose: The Service Entrepreneur’s Guide to Intentional Growth, to give you deeper guidance.

You’re running a $1.5 million service business. Or a $3 million consulting practice. Maybe you’re at $800K in your third year and everything feels like it’s about to break.

When growth is happening fast, and you are drowning in chaos, you need an entrepreneurial accounting firm more than ever (not one you have to chase).

Let’s say you email your accountant on Monday about Q4 estimated taxes. It’s Thursday and you still haven’t heard back. You’re making hiring decisions, pricing decisions, client decisions—all without any financial guidance. Then April rolls around and surprise: you owe $47,000 you didn’t plan for.

Your firm says they do “advisory services.” What they actually do is file your taxes and send you a bill.

Here’s what entrepreneurs tell us about their prior firms when they switch to our firm:

“They were never proactive.”
“I couldn’t get them to respond.”
“They didn’t actually help me run my business.”

You don’t have to settle for this scenario anymore. At Blumer CPAs, we solve for dealing with an entrepreneur’s chaos.

What We Actually Do

At Blumer & Associates, we run your entire outsourced accounting department for service-based companies doing $500K to $5M in revenue (if that’s what you need).

Not bookkeeping-plus-tax-prep. Not “we’ll get back to you during non-busy season.” Your full accounting department—proactive, consistent, and built specifically for entrepreneurs like you. 

We don’t wait for you to ask questions. We monitor your numbers continuously and reach out to you first—before problems become crises. When your cash flow is trending down, you hear from us before you’re scrambling to make payroll. When a tax planning opportunity appears, we bring it to you before the April deadline.

You get a dedicated team, not a revolving door. The same people work on your account month after month, year after year. They know your business model, your growth goals, your specific challenges. No more re-explaining everything to the new person every six months.

We speak your language, not accounting jargon. Our monthly deliverables include actual commentary—what the numbers mean, what you should do about them, where opportunities and risks sit. Financial reports should inform decisions, not confuse you.

Our growth models are built specifically for service-based entrepreneurial companies. We’ve studied what drives growth in agencies, consultancies, and professional services firms (and we actually wrote the book on how to scale this type of services company: check our book Scale with Purpose). 

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Your accounting firm should be your first call when you’re considering a big decision, not just your last call when you need tax forms signed.

The entrepreneurs who grow past $3 million don’t do it alone. They have a financial partner who helps them see around corners, plan for growth, and avoid expensive mistakes. They have someone who brings insights they didn’t ask for—because great advisory means anticipating needs, not just responding to requests.

For $3,500 to $4,500 per month, with our firm you can get everything you need to run your business with full financial knowledge and strategy:

• Full outsourced accounting department (not just bookkeeping)
• Monthly financial statements with strategic commentary
• Proactive tax planning year-round (not surprise bills in April)
• Dedicated team that knows your business
• Growth metrics and models specific to service companies
• Regular strategic calls where we bring the agenda

Compare that to hiring a full-time accounting manager at $80K plus benefits, who still won’t have the breadth of expertise or strategic capability our team provides for your particular market. You’ll have to manage a full time accountant, too.  We’re pretty sure you didn’t get into business to manage accounting employees. Compare this to your current firm that charges similar fees but only shows up once a year.

The Human First, AI Forward Difference

In our firm, we leverage AI to handle the repetitive, time-consuming work that used to bog down accounting teams. Data entry, transaction categorization, routine reconciliations—AI handles it so our team doesn’t drown in administrative chaos.

This isn’t about replacing humans with robots. It’s about freeing our team to do what humans do best: think strategically with you about your business. While other firms are drowning in administrative chaos (which is why they can’t get back to you), our team spends their time understanding your business model, analyzing your opportunities, and proactively reaching out with guidance.

AI technology makes us more consistent, more responsive, and more strategic—not less human.

Time to Make a Switch?

You built your business because you saw an opportunity others missed. You took the risk. You believed in something better. Now apply that same standard to your accounting firm.

If you’re tired of chasing people who should be chasing you, if you’re done making major business decisions without financial guidance, if you’re ready for a firm that actually helps you grow—we should talk.

We are the entrepreneur’s firm. We built this practice specifically for service-based companies like yours. We know what drives growth in your business model because we’ve studied it, written about it, and helped dozens of companies break through revenue ceilings.

Two Things We Want You to Do

First, be skeptical. “Proactive service” is what your last three firms promised. We get it. So here’s what we’re willing to put in writing:

• Response time SLA: we reply within one business day
• Monthly strategic calls where we bring the agenda with insights you didn’t ask for
• If month two feels generic or reactive, 30-day out clause

Second, we’ll meet with you and show you insights about your company you didn’t know before you met with us. No charge, no commitment. Just proof that we see things in your numbers that you’re currently missing.

The entrepreneurs who win aren’t the ones who do everything themselves. They’re the ones who build the right team around them—and that includes an accounting firm that acts like a true strategic partner.

Ready to have that conversation?
Not when you have a crisis. Not at tax time. Now. Because entrepreneurs who plan ahead win, and we want to help you win.

Email us at info@blumercpas.com or hit us up here

P.S. — Still not convinced? Fair. Here’s what we’ll do: Schedule a 30-minute call where we review one month of your current financials—no charge, no commitment. We’ll show you exactly what proactive advisory looks like and what insights you’re currently missing. If it’s not dramatically different from what you’re getting now, we’ll tell you to stay put.

That’s how confident we are that you’re not getting what you’re paying for right now.

We serve entrepreneurs at Blumer CPAs, especially those in service-based businesses. Because we serve many industries,  we have noted some commonality between these entrepreneurs. They push through a market to create new opportunities and to capture the value that others are not capturing. This means they can leave financial messes in their wake. It’s okay, because our firm is known for being able to clean those up, add structure to their businesses, and bring accountability around their financial processes. We lead entrepreneurs at Blumer CPAs. 

Right now, many entrepreneurs are experiencing a familiar surge of trying to make the most of every season. I have some thoughts about what separates thriving entrepreneurs from those who merely survive: the ability to maximize today’s success while strategically preparing for tomorrow’s transitions. You have to balance and do both at the same time. Super tough to do. 

Mastering Mid-Year Season Fundamentals

When business is booming, it’s tempting to assume everything is running smoothly. But peak seasons reveal both your strengths and your vulnerabilities. Are you tracking company profitability in real-time, or just watching revenue climb? You have to look at your Profit & Loss statement, entrepreneurs. And further, you need someone to report on the granularity of data found in the P&L, so you have to chop it up a bit to learn from that financial document. Smart entrepreneurs use high-demand periods to stress-test their systems and identify what’s truly driving profit in their P&L versus what’s just driving activity.

Your cash flow during various seasons isn’t just about what’s coming in or going out—it’s about positioning yourself for the inevitable slower periods to come. So you need to save some cash too, especially in tough economic markets like the one we’re in. This means being disciplined about collections, managing working capital efficiently, and resisting the urge to make emotional spending decisions when money feels abundant.

The Mid-Year Reset Opportunity

August presents a unique strategic window. You’re far enough into the year to have real data, but you still have a meaningful runway to make course corrections. This is your moment for an honest mid-year financial review (see below for how Blumer CPAs does this work for entrepreneurs). Are you on track to hit your annual goals? More importantly, are you building the right kind of revenue—the kind that creates lasting value rather than just keeping you busy?

Do these few things to check in with your financials at this time of year:

• Take your January to June 2025 revenue, double it and see if that is what you expect your total annual revenue to be for the year. 
• Take your current cash balance and divide it by your average monthly expenses. If the result is less than 4, you might be operating too close to the edge.
• Calculate your profit margin for the first 6 months (net income ÷ revenue). If it’s lower than the same period last year, your growth might be costing you more than it’s worth.
• Add up revenue from your top 3 clients for January-June. If it’s more than 50% of your total revenue, you’re one client loss away from a crisis, regardless of how good this year looks.

These simple financial “sanity snapshots” aren’t perfect, but they can help you know how you are doing. Mid year is when you need to look at your financials and monitor your seasons.

Leading Through Entrepreneurial Seasons

Up and down seasons test your leadership more than your systems. Your team is watching how you handle pressure, how you make decisions under stress, and how you maintain focus when opportunities seem endless. Productive leaders aren’t just managing tasks during up and down periods—they’re modeling the consistency and strategic thinking that will carry the business through all seasons.

The most successful entrepreneurs use mid-year periods to strengthen their leadership foundation, not just their bank account.

Preparing for What’s Next

We’re almost ready for Q4, so planning for the coming year should already be on your radar. Economic conditions shift, market demands evolve, and the strategies that got you here may not be the ones that take you forward. Year-end tax planning that starts in a month can give you options and flexibility that last-minute scrambling never will.

Strategic preparation isn’t about pessimism—it’s about building a business that thrives in any season. So you need to begin thinking about it now. 

Your Strategic Next Steps

The entrepreneurs who build lasting success in any season are those who use every season—including the good ones—to strengthen their foundation. We can help you do that.

Are you ready to maximize this season while preparing for what’s next? Our mid-year financial health assessment examines your company, team, and leadership effectiveness to ensure you’re building sustainable success, not just riding a wave.

How productive are you as a focused, consistent leader? Take our assessment to discover where your leadership can drive even greater results: Leader Productivity Assessment.

You’ll receive a score and assessment of how you are doing after you submit your answers online. We’ll also reach out after you take the assessment so we can talk about how you did in this mid-year review. At Blumer CPAs, we help you make the most of every season. 

Ready to turn your mid-year season into a lasting strategic advantage? Let’s talk Fill out our Get Started form here and someone from our team will reach out to schedule a time to meet. about how our advisory services can help you maximize today’s success while building tomorrow’s foundation.

Cash flow is the heartbeat of your business, yet most entrepreneurs are flying blind when it comes to understanding what’s happening with their money. Actually, clients don’t even know to ask us this – but we typically try to sell our clients some form of cash flow reporting (and there are great tools to do this for our clients!).

We do want our clients reviewing their financials monthly (in a summarized format) but monthly statements only tell you what already happened. That’s not bad, it just gives you the patterns of how you’ve been operating. Cash flow reporting is always looking forward, typically 30, 60, 90 days out. We’ve all heard cash flow is like blood pumping through your company, and our clients need to visually see what the flow is of their cash in their business.

When we’re selling to clients, they often say “I just don’t know what I don’t know” or “what am I not seeing?” – we can usually solve these fears with some form of cash flow reporting. It gives insights to the client, calms them down, and then they can start making decisions with data, not only with their gut.

The Three Financial Reporting Timelines That Matter

Think of the reporting you need in 3 phases:

Historical reporting covers what already happened—your traditional profit and loss statements and balance sheets. It’s completely accurate with zero risk, and perfect for tax prep and compliance.

Present timeline forecasting covers the next 90 days to 6 months. This is your cash flow sweet spot I’m talking about—far enough out to make meaningful decisions, close enough to be highly accurate. This is where you manage seasonal fluctuations, plan major purchases, and avoid cash crunches (or when to dip into your line of credit).

Strategic timeline planning extends 6 months to 2 years out. This is less precise but still valuable for expansion conversations and/or hiring decisions (and other big initiative spending you need to think through more deeply).

Business owners care about cash flow, but a small business owner just doesn’t know how to do it. But we do, and that’s why firms like ours exists. Historical data is very good, but you’ll also want to look ahead on a short term basis too.

We try to offer cash flow reporting services to our clients on a weekly basis. You can look at historical financials on a monthly basis, but when you are looking ahead for 30, 60, 90 days then you want to do that in a shorter rhythm.

If you’re a super nerd, I wrote a book on becoming a cash flow advisor for accountants – small business owners may enjoy it too: https://relayfi.com/blog/ebook-becoming-a-cash-flow-advisor

What’s your biggest cash flow challenge right now? Are you dealing with short-term visibility issues or long-term planning concerns (we all deal with both off those from time to time). I’ll see if I can offer some help on issues you might be facing. And feel free to message me on LinkedIn privately if you want too.

Like many of our clients, our firm is at a size where we have to nail down the revenue production of our firm. That is, at our size, we have to have a machine that is now producing our revenue to support our team of 15, as well as the growth we anticipate over the next few years. 

Like many things in scaling a service organization, we’re finding that what got us here won’t get us there. We have always been an ORG (“Owner Revenue Generated”) company. As the owner and founder, I’ve always sat in the seat of sales and generated all of the revenue that our team needs. To be sure, I’m pretty good at pricing and actually teach that concept too. But our size requires that we do this differently moving forward because of the volume of revenue we must now produce. In fact, my partner Julie Shipp has sensed this change was needed probably for the past 2 years. She’s had a desire for the firm to not be fully dependent on my network and my ability to ask each new lead to pay us money. So she is looking to nail down our marketing this year in new ways that make revenue production more methodical and predictable. It’s what we’ll need to do to keep growing (which we want to do). 

I saw a great article on the Collective 54 blog that discusses this very thing: https://www.collective54.com/blogs/why-we-fail-to-scale/ 

John Kearney, makes a point about sales that I’ve repeated below:

1. Build the machine: Stop hiring sales people assuming they’ll bring the sales approach. You have to own the sales approach and have the sales team follow it. This is critical to reduce variability and allow you to learn how your buyers want to buy and have that intelligence driving your Go-To-Market decision making. This machine should be built into your CRM to ensure it can be measured, monitored and improved. It should serve as a value driver when you scale and prepare to exit.
2. Fill the funnel first: Stop hiring big game hunters first. Their ability to hunt big game and deliver on their extensive networks is inconsistent at best. And can be devastating to budgets and chances of scaling. Instead, invest in the top of the funnel. Generate demand through outbound appointment setters and virtual tools like chat. Owners can handle those deals that come in as the funnel is filled. This is both more cost effective and leads to incredibly more consistent revenue scale.
3. Build the talent: A team of Business Development Reps (BDRs) setting appointments allows you to build pipeline efficiently. More strategically, BDRs learn to work in the machine and naturally progress to handling more of the sales process over time. They create their growth opportunities by generating pipeline. When they’ve created the demand that requires more Account Executives (AEs), they get promoted. And then the ROI on your sales team vs. big game hunters is wildly more accretive.
4. Transition away from sales in stages: I’m sorry – but you can’t go yet. In firms that successfully scale, owners slowly transition away from being the primary revenue generators. The AEs that have been developed through the machine to replace you still need a leader. As AEs evolve, some will begin to exhibit leadership traits. Cultivate these leaders to replace you. From there, never stray too far from the deal. This will always provide some of the greatest insight into the market, and how your buyers buy.
5. Take Control: When owners need taxes done, we pay an accountant. We pay the lawyer to reduce liability. We pay the MSP to keep our environments secure. The job is done and the invoice is paid. Too often I hear from you all that you thought the sales team you hired would just sell. Not only do they not sell, but you can’t even articulate what the problem is. Sales is different. It requires the machine, the predictable pipeline build, a talent program to attract top talent. Own it, or be at the whim of your sales team.

Attribution to John Kearney of The Buyer’s Way

From John’s points above, my biggest takeaway for our firm is that we have to take control, own our sales process so that we are never at the whim of a ‘salesperson.’ 

Blumer CPAs is going on 30 years old, and we’ve made a lot of changes over the years. Additionally, we know this change from being an ORG (Owner Revenue Generated) company to a company with a sales machine will take us a few years. But we can do it. It just takes time, some investment, and trial and error.

Follow us on our journey as we move away from being an ORG! We teach and talk a lot about growth conversations with agency and design owners. You may want to come talk to us! Sign up for our Newsletter and subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn more about the design of growth!

How you have conversations in your organization, and the intention with which you speak, matters.

“Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.”
– Robert Frost

Overspeaking, looping with no point, and speech riddled with generalities or exaggerations do no good to move your organization and your team forward. But transforming speech turns out to be a difficult challenge. 

• Your speech patterns are habitual, and likely have been allowed by those around you for years and years. So if you loop in your speech and never come to a conclusion, it is likely based on situations of trying to make your point, yet never getting to the point, and others around you allowing you to do this.
• You can notice others’ speech patterns more than you can recognize (and change) your own. So you need others in your life to practice talking and allow them to reflect back to you what is working and what is not working. This process requires safety and trust with those involved in the communication. 

As a firm, we believe in the power of speech, noticing and seeing the results of our speech, and changing that speech to what benefits the greater good and the culture of our community. This year our team will dive into a deep study of crucial conversations. We’ll be reading the book Crucial Conversations together and leaning into our safe community to allow us to challenge one another to grow in this important area of service to our clients. Our conversations, or lack of effective conversations, change how we serve our amazing clients. We work with high-level entrepreneurs who require efficient and strong communication. So we commit to this work as a community so that we can be effective as a team. 

It may be time for you to evolve into an organization that works on these types of speech and communication changes. As a firm, we commit to our own communication so we can effectively deliver services that change our clients. And we do change our clients when we:

• Clean up their accounting so that it reflects what they are selling and how profitable it is
• Format and benchmark their agency financials so they can glean growth insights (meaning they learn what to continue doing, what to stop doing, and new things to start doing)
• Budget and project their financials into the future so they can compare their actual vs. budget financials
• Communicate with their team in ways that helps us run their financial department, invoice their clients, pay their bills, provide cash flow to the owners on a weekly basis, and use financials to tell them things about their business they can’t know without our team’s intentional communication

We teach and talk a lot about growth conversations with agency and design owners. You may want to come talk to us! Sign up for our Newsletter and subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn more about the design of growth!

We coach and consult with many service-based organizations and we are finding some patterns after the pandemic. Many entrepreneurs are struggling with what it is like to now lead a company considering the remembrance of where they were before the pandemic, what the pandemic has done to their companies, and how they have been affected personally as leaders. 

We’ve all been struggling personally after the impact of the pandemic on our lives and those around us. And now an unstable economy is bringing a lot of discouragement to service entrepreneurs. You are not alone if you feel this too. Many entrepreneurs are considering selling or shutting down their business, or getting a job elsewhere, but we caution against that. 

It’s never wise to make changes to get away from something; instead you want to make appropriate changes to move towards something of greater value. 

Let your movement towards new things drive your decisions. If you don’t see a clear path to move towards something of value, then it is often best to wait and stay in a holding pattern. Running from something can leave you disillusioned as you find out the grass is never greener in some other lawn – and can often be worse than where you are now. You may need to stay put in your business until there is a clear direction to move towards the next valuable thing. 

Yet staying put feels like agreeing to stay in the hurtful and disillusioned places. Though that does not seem wise, it may be what you need right now for a few reasons:

1. Staying put can give you time to assess your business options and move more slowly. Change management can be complicated work so you need a slower pace of change to be more strategic. 
2. Staying put can allow you to avoid unnecessary risk-taking. Any change in businesses, whether selling, shutting it down, ramping up something new, etc. always takes a level of risk-taking. You have to make bets, whether big or small, to implement changes. But if you do it to run away from pain, instead of moving towards new value, then you can miss things and get it wrong.
3. Staying put allows you to figure out what is really driving this disillusionment with your current situation. It is human work, and it’s often hard to even know yourself well. Sometimes you need to take time to journal, get a coach or counselor, or just to stay the course to learn why you may be struggling. Look at your problems, don’t look away from them. 

As coaches and business counselors, we work with entrepreneurs to really vet out what is going on inside their minds, their emotions, and their businesses. We couple our knowledge of how businesses work and scale, with the mental and emotional science of how humans work and react to their entrepreneurial situations. We can help. Sign up for our Newsletter and subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn more about how we support entrepreneurs in our work.