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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 [...]

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 [...]

  In professional services, clients experience the final deliverable—but behind every engagement is a team whose judgment, collaboration, and execution determine the outcome. Consistent, high-quality client service depends not only on technical expertise, but on leadership that provides clarity, accountability, and direction. As advisory and tax managers, our role is to oversee client work while leading the teams responsible for delivering it. This requires a leadership approach focused less on execution and more on guidance, quality control, and professional development. Effective leadership begins with technical credibility. Teams rely on leaders who understand the work well enough to set direction, evaluate [...]

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. [...]

It's worth reflecting on what Community Service Month truly reveals—not just about our community impact, but about who we're becoming as a firm. Service isn't a checkbox activity. It's a strategic question: Are we building an organization that creates value beyond billable hours? This month, our team didn't just volunteer time. We practiced the deeper work of firm transformation: Stepping outside comfort zones (much like challenging our traditional service delivery models) Building relationships without transactional expectations (the foundation of advisory evolution) Leading with purpose over process (exactly what client-centric transformation demands) The communities we serve become mirrors. They reflect whether [...]

Autumn brings something special to the entrepreneurial calendar. At Blumer CPAs, we see this season as your opportunity to celebrate the year's wins, harvest the lessons learned, and plant the seeds for an even stronger next year. Here's what separates thriving entrepreneurs from those who just survive the year-end rush: they don't wait until December 31st to assess their progress. Smart business owners use November to conduct a meaningful year-to-date review, optimize their tax position, and begin strategic planning for the year ahead. Celebrating Your Year-to-Date Wins Before diving into planning, let's talk about something entrepreneurs often skip: celebrating achievements. [...]

At Blumer CPAs, we like to consider the season of life and business.  Summer winds down, kids head back to school, and the energy in the air changes. For many business owners, September feels like a fresh start—an opportunity to reassess and reposition heading into Q4. It’s also a time of change: team members return from vacation, budgets get real, and client rhythms shift. Pair that seasonality with the demands—and opportunities—of the final quarter, and strategic preparation becomes non-negotiable.  The Power of Seasonal Reflection Businesses, like seasons, go through predictable shifts. Some find energy rising now; others begin to slow. What [...]

Over the Summer we’ve done a series of blog posts covering the Core Values at Blumer CPAs, https://blumercpas.com/,  starting with an Introduction that stressed their importance to you as a business owner and how to use them, followed by an examination of each and what they mean to different members of our firm (all linked below): Good, Great, Growing Coachable, Reliable, Resilient Transparent, Visible, Accountable Diligent, Decisive, Direct  For the final post in this series, I’d like to explore the final piece of Core Values: Implementation. Blumer is a remote firm. We are scattered across the country and see each [...]

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 [...]

At Blumer CPAs, we know that how we show up for our clients matters just as much as what we deliver. The way we work—how we think, communicate, and make decisions—has a huge impact on the businesses we serve. At Blumer CPAs, our approach to client work is rooted in three values that guide every conversation, project, and relationship: Diligent. Direct. Decisive. These aren’t just words we like—they are how we build momentum with our clients. Here’s what that looks like: Diligent: We take the time to understand what matters. When a client brings a challenge or an idea to [...]