Accounting Startup From the Ground Up we built a million dollar tax accounting & bookkeeping firm

hey what's up guys if you want to start a tax or accounting business boy my name is rob and i own feedback crunch i love helping with um consulting writing messaging web design and digital marketing we got a cool little team here at feedback wrench i've got a full-time designer we've got some writers with us project manager and we just love helping small business but here's what i want to talk about i want to tell you my story of how i actually started nuance financial which is nuancedfinancial.com i don't work with them anymore they do a good job um they got kind of a big shop but man we went from nobody no customers literally zero and we took two sticks together we rubbed them together until some sparks fell and we built it up and we built up a really successful sweet little accounting practice and i just want to talk to you about like what my journey was to get that so that hopefully you'd be interested in talking with us now what i've found is that when i'm working with accountants the main thing that we do is we help people present kind of a value proposition that's more compelling because i tell you what if you're going to focus on doing taxes you're in a race to zero i was just talking to somebody you're up against watson ibm watson matched with h r block software and the dirty little secret about tax preparation is that we're just one or two ai breakthroughs away from the tax code or the tax system really being super cheap in fact you look at turbo tax you look at hr block software um even the tax business itself is either built on drake or intuit software or thomson reuters software it's all about just putting the right numbers in the right boxes when it comes to tax preparation tax preparation is a race to zero and yet tax preparation is the thing if a small business owner or somebody doesn't do tax prep they go to jail so it's important i think it's a really valuable thing i don't think everybody has to do tax prep you can be an accountant you can help people keep their books up to date provide more of a cfos thing but i tell you what business tax returns are still super relevant and that's going to help you build what i call this outsourced accounting model so um long story short let me just walk you through how i got or let's talk a little bit more about the model to get a little distracted this model is all about providing excellent value and being more of a guide and a coach and an accountant that helps small businesses really do three things and you'll hear this throughout all my videos number one is to help them mitigate their taxes and pay only their fair share there's not one person who i've ever met that sees the gross amount of their revenues get absolutely obsessed about keeping as much of their revenue as they can and you want to make sure that you do everything possible with these small business owners to make sure that they get paid and not uncle sam i have and i could go on and on and on it's about to get harder and tax planning is going to be even more important as we move into this world where corporate tax rates are going up um we're going to lose a lot of different options there's going to be these hard breaks at income levels tax planning under this new administration is going to get more difficult but tax planning is important because there's a huge difference between um somebody who makes 150 250 000 a year if they implement some of the strategies you're gonna save them you know three four five ten thousand dollars a year in self-employment taxes and income taxes it is game changing so this model is all predicated on delivering on this value proposition that you're going to work with them throughout the year to help mitigate their taxes because let's be clear when all you do is a tax return um you're a historian the year has already completed there's almost nothing you can do short of making some contributions to retirement plans to actually mitigate the taxes of a business when you're working as a year-end tax person so the first value proposition is really about working with them throughout the year to make sure that their taxes are mitigated now how do you actually do that the way you're going to do that is you're going to make sure that they have immaculate spectacular fantastic sweet books throughout the year do their bookkeeping for them so the foundation of excellent tax planning comes from the second value proposition where you're just going to take care of everything you're going to do the bookkeeping form you're going to do the accounting for them you're going to help them pay in their taxes throughout the year you're going to help them run their payroll the number two thing is you're going to save them time by just handling it all for them right and and i'm telling you reconciling bank statements making sure that the accounting is all done making sure that the books are spectacular is such a great way to help a small business owner because it saves them time and it allows them to focus i'm your prime customer i hate accounting i i don't want to sit down and reconcile bank statements it's not what i want to do i want to go add value on to create videos i want to write and work with my clients and i love the meetings that we have to unbox who they want to be as a customer and then make that real on their website and to help them win trust that's what i don't want to spend time bookkeeping it's not what i want to do and most entrepreneurs are the same way not only do they not want to do it but it's usually outside of their skill set generally speaking most entrepreneurs and business owners are hardwired to execute really well then they learn how to lead develop and manage people and do sales and that can even be a difficult thing and the last thing that they want to do is just sit down and do their bookkeeping and and make sure that they're paying in taxes it's something that gets neglected so number one mitigate their taxes number two help them by handling everything and then number three keep them compliant keep the the taxes uh or keep them compliant and mitigate the risk there's kind of three parts to that or two parts to each one of these in fact number one when it comes to the tax reduction help them build tax efficient wealth and be wise at their money so it's build wealth and reduce taxes number two you want to make sure that you help them by saving them time by doing their bookkeeping and help them focus on what they do but you're going to serve as a staff alternative let's talk about that a little bit later and then the third thing that you're going to do is you're going to keep them compliant just do stuff right for them you know on this whole spectrum this is something i just had a guy call me he's like do you have to be a cpa to do this you know you have to get your ptin number there's some things you have to do to file taxes professionally but for the most part you can help a business owner um without a ton of qualifications now i think credentials and qualifications and training and legitimacy in your in your knowledge is important but that being said remember that you have two spectrums on one end you have uh small businesses going to a big cpa firm and getting helped and they're paying someone like you maybe to do everything for them and on the other side they do it themselves like what you have to come to grips with is that you can really help them out by doing things for them and and you can be this happy medium for them and and i'm telling you these are this is a great business to start and anybody that wants to stay organized that wants to learn about this stuff is going to be excellent so let me walk you through how i got to this model because this isn't something that came out because i just started like paying attention to you know i clicked on a bunch of facebook um ads i i genuinely i mean this i orchestrated this value proposition out of thin air now i got some perspective from sandy botkin and mark kohler but really that was about showing me how you can actually mitigate taxes for a small business owner this business model came out because i actually was hired at eagle brook church i was a group's pastor and got fired because i butted heads and i had to grow through some things and i got recruited to go to thrive and financial where faith and finance meet and uh you know that business didn't gel with me because i didn't feel great about the products we were selling i didn't like the the model was based off of selling variable annuities quite frankly um didn't love it so while i was doing it though i'm like i want to get around all the super successful people and what i found was that the successful investment in insurance and investment planners what they were doing was is they were do they were like providing value in terms of estate planning and tax planning so that they would earn the right to have a conversation about retirement planning investment advising and insurance and it was really interesting for me to watch i wouldn't watch the tang well group who would work with 3m owners and talk to them about estate planning what do you do as a as a 40 to 65 year old when you start thinking about what happens if something happens to me what happens if i die do i want a will do i want to trust what happens to the cabin up north what happens to my real estate what happens to my 401 k how do i make sure that you know my 18 year old doesn't get a ton of money and it was really interesting on the other side i started to learn that the the most successful people were talking all about taxes now when i take a step back i realize the reason why they were doing that is because people with estate planning and tax planning pro have money the people that are concerned with estate planning and tax binding they have money so they can pay for your services which is a good thing right but uh long story short i started seeing how they did that so i went and i taught myself i genuinely i read everything from robert kiyosaki about the cash flow quadrant i read their tax loopholes of real estate book i read everything i could from tom tom wheelwright i think was his name about how to mitigate taxes i went and got sandy botkins book um this was back in like 26 2015 or 14 or something about how to reduce small business taxes i went and bought nolo books that taught me how to actually process a lot of these uh conversions of s corp and then i read mark kohler's book the tax and legal playbook which has been updated since the tax cut and jobs act and i would highly recommend that and i started finding all of these things that we could do that would add way more value than what we were adding when it came to the financial planning now what's weird is when i back back up to the what i had learned in the financial services world was it was 80 sales 20 advising and the advising was really about hey let's help people be wise with their money and if you can help them be wise with their money which would mean hey let's make sure that they pay off their debt that they have a cash flow plan that they save up six months of cash uh backup so you have a reserve right we would make sure that they'd start investing we'd start showing them how much you need to invest to actually get to a point in retirement where you would have a nest egg that you could actually live off of and we would just add a ton of value to them and then what we would do is in there we would show them well you should buy life insurance you should buy long-term disability insurance maybe you want to look at um what's it called long-term care insurance and then roll all your funds over to me and i'll help manage them and that's how we would get paid i'd add value and then i'd get paid if they actually bought something from me or if they rolled their assets and i got so frustrated because i'd go out there i could prospect people would trust me i'd give them great coaching advice but the only way they roll stuff over is if they get fired or they have some sort of event where their 401k get rolled over um and i was finding people that would buy insurance but you know i'm working i was 24 or 5 or whatever i'm 39 now maybe i was like 30 years old it seems like so long ago but it wasn't but long story short you know you work with five people up and five people down in terms of years around your age it's usually who you have relationships with and i just found that these guys they were good they were in good position but i didn't like the model and it was frustrating so i also had listened to a guy named patrick lencioni patrick lencioni is a speaker that has been at the global leadership summits which are put on by willow creek association excellent content to help you move upward and forward in your life and i had gone to those and and uh he he made a comment around his book called naked which was about vulnerability in the professional world right do you have to act like you've you've got everything together do you fake it till you make it or just be authentic and move forward well he argues that you should be authentic and move forward and one of the things he talked about is as a consultant you know a lot of consultants and guides and coaches so i'm a financial consultant at the time um you know you get really guarded about how much value do you want to give away versus charging and getting for the retainer or for the the actual um fee for the consulting right and he said you know what when you meet somebody just run around and add value just just ask the question do a little columbo bundle it down around a little bit don't be afraid to ask stupid questions but find ways to just add value don't be so concerned with milking and making sure that you get the absolute best return on your time right and i just took that to heart i've taken that to heart it's why this youtube channel exists it's why my business exists and it really helps so all that being said i started finding all these ways to help people be wise with their money to mitigate their taxes to prepare for retirement to mitigate their risk so i was locked up with all this information and i had some licenses that i could apply to it but i hated the model where i only get paid if they roll over things and if they buy insurance so long story short um i concocted this idea i'm like i'm going to go out there and i'm going to work with self-employed people i prospected like 10 to 15 people and i was like hey there's two things you can do i'll show you i'll kind of coach you i won't give you legal tax advice but i'm gonna show you uh the type of thing you should be bringing to your tax professional so that they can actually reduce your taxes here's the s corp here's real estate here's a separate simple ira uh solo 401k or an actual 401k and here's some fringe benefits and here's how you can do all this stuff to mitigate your taxes meanwhile let's do those retirement plans and you can do them with me and we can invest and by the way you should probably buy long-term disability insurance you might want to do a buy sell agreement if you own a business which is life insurance on your partner if you have that or for your spouse for if i die my spouse can buy me out and sell the business whatever that is i go out there and they're all like rob yeah i'll do that investing things someday but my accountant doesn't do this and i don't think he's going to in fact my accountant just does my taxes at the end of the year and they kind of reconcile my books like once a quarter they pay in my quarterly taxes that's it do you know someone that can help me and i'm like that's kind of interesting no your guy doesn't do this then the next guy same thing next guy same thing that i get in front of like it was probably like seven or eight before i'm like there's an opportunity here not only because their people don't do this but because i know what's going to happen if they implement this strategy i started doing the math on this and this is what core v tax planning software does you know imagine a world where you intersect with somebody and you save them seven to eight grand a year then you take that seven or eight grand a year and you invest it into a twelve percent or eight percent or whatever it is s p 500 index fund and then you do the future value on that so what was interesting is as i was looking at this as good lord i'm gonna make multi-millionaires if they're 20 or 30 years old you put 30 years of compounding interest at eight to ten percent or even five or six percent on money that you just created because you did tax planning this is compelling stuff this is important then i started to realize that business owners just need help and there are business owners everywhere the gig economy construction economy um is has just been booming even if it goes through downturns it's still important so i called my buddy nick um my my old best friend i was like hey man i think there's there's an opportunity here and i had bumped into a guy named ed reese and and uh he had kind of been like yeah you know he was doing tax planning and tax returns for 50 bucks a month for people on the side while he worked at a cpa firm so we just said you know what let's put together a scope of work and kind of a value prop and let's let's go in front of people so i started prospecting get in front of people and and we'd run some meetings and try this we signed up a couple clients we signed up a couple more sign up a couple more we started doing it and nick and ed actually did the stuff they're the accounts they're the ones that do the tag they're they're uh bean counters i do a little bit different thing and so those bean counters would do it and then they'd learn it and then we'd kind of okay well we got to price it this way and let's put a project fee on the front let's put a scope a work container on the back to make sure that they don't cancel and oh man we got to do backup bookkeeping so we learned so much through this and they to this day i think could write books and books and books i want to interview them moving forward there's a little bit of hurt there because there were some shenanigans that happened so i don't really intersect with them but long story short we've started finding out that the market responds really well to this idea of somebody that will come alongside a business owner and be a staff alternative for them and not only be this staff alternative where they don't have to hire patty part-timer to do their books you know two days a week or one day a week and you know you kind of fast forward that if if somebody were to come in and help a small business owner with their bookkeeping and maybe some of their ar and invoicing or whatever if that was just one day a week that's eight hours a week times four that's 32 hours times 20 bucks an hour you know that's six seven hundred dollars and then you have self-employment taxes you have to manage them and let's be frank most of these people want more hours than that they're trying to get more work out of that you know for you to have somebody to do what we were doing at nuance financial for you to have a staff person do that it was significant investment like it it was genuinely um usually a staff person right at two three four thousand dollars a month depending on what was going on so we found that the market was responding big to this 300 and 900 a month type of deal and i tell you what we grew that big time we started to protect ourselves there are some lessons that we learned i'll make more videos about that but um you know i i got out of the business because as i was connecting with all these people i'd find all this opportunity i'm like dude we can mitigate your taxes they'll do your bookkeeping that's cute that's great count beans how boring um but man if you do this this this and this you're gonna be able to grow your business big time uh so all i did was after i found out that um some stuff had happened in the business uh we i kind of said man i gotta get out of here you guys i i can't i can't be part of this anymore and i shifted out and i started feedback and i just went back to some of my clients and said hey here's what i can do i can bring a little bit of what i brought to nuance and bring it to you how does that sound and it has been great since that so all that being said what i want you to realize is that there's great opportunity for you to be an accountant but there's more to it and i'm gonna hit on some of those things um in terms of like value sales how do you unbox the value that you're delivering how do you connect with people how do you do professional sales because the biggest difference between nuance financial is twofold and i'm gonna hit on that in the next video like and subscribe if this is helpful if you're on the podcast man i'd love it if you would like this podcast i'm going to keep sharing information that helps people but this is just a little introduction to what we were doing good luck god bless and just appreciate the time give us a call if you need help

Channel: FeedbackWrench

Views: 28,951

Keywords: how to start a tax firm, how to start a bookkeeping business, work from home bookkeeping business, how to start a cpa firm, accounting business, how to start an accounting buisness, accounting firm startup, start a certified public accounting firm, how to get tax clients, accountant marketing, cpa marketing, cpa firm, bookkeeping business, how to get bookkeeping clients, how to get accounting clients

Id: SBDuw-0Qpog

Length: 19min 40sec (1180 seconds)

Published: Thu May 13 2021