FREE TRAINING THIS WEEK ON BECOMING A CFO
For CPAs and Accountants
Increase Your Income And Smooth Out Your Seasons by Becoming a CFO Advisor
Rely less on tax season, and use your expertise to help small business owners succeed.
Your business clients already trust you with their numbers. CFO Advisory is a monthly service that turns that trust into high-margin, recurring revenue. The CFO Project gives you the systems, the training, and the support to add it to your practice.
You're Stuck in the Accountant's Trap
Many CPAs and accountants are stuck in what we call The Accountant's Trap. You're working for low fees, dealing with high-demand clients, and burning out on seasonal compliance and transactional work.
To make matters worse, you can't raise your fees as AI, automation, and offshoring cap your pricing power.
Tax season makes it harder. Most of your income arrives in a few intense months, and you spend the rest of the year getting ready for the next round of returns. To earn an extra dollar, you must take on more clients and more long days because your fee is tied to the hours or returns you put in.
CFO Advisory gives you a way out of the trap. It's a recurring monthly service where you guide business owners toward their goals, and it pays you all year long.
CFO Advisory vs. Tax Advisory Services: Two Services That Work Together
If you've looked into adding advisory work to your practice, you may have considered adding tax advisory services. Tax advisory and CFO Advisory are two different services, and many CPAs offer both.
Tax advisory services help a business owner plan around taxes. You advise on things like entity structure, the timing of income and expenses, and the deductions and credits the business can claim. You plan around the tax calendar and usually bill by the project.
CFO Advisory is the service a CFO Advisor provides. A CFO Advisor is a trusted guide who helps a small business owner reach their own definition of success and generate consistent, positive cash flow. You run a monthly process with the owner that begins with setting targets and then reviewing actuals, creating the forecast, scoring it and building the 30-day action plan. The owner pays a monthly retainer for that guidance.
| Tax Advisory | CFO Advisory | |
|---|---|---|
| The owner's question | How do I pay less tax? | How do I reach my goals and generate consistent, positive cash flow? |
| When the work happens | Around the tax calendar | Every month, all year |
| What you deliver | A tax plan and filing strategy | Targets, a forecast, a scoreboard and a 30-day action plan |
| How it's billed | By the plan or the project | A monthly retainer |
| Typical fee | Often more than $2,000 a year per client | $1,978 per client per month |
The two services make each other stronger. When you meet with a client every month, you know their business far better by the time tax season arrives, and your tax planning gets sharper because of it. You already have the client's trust, access to their numbers, and context around their business, so CFO Advisory is a natural service to add beside the tax work you do today.
Want to see the role up close? Read about what a CFO Advisor does day to day
Why CPAs Are Already Positioned to Offer CFO Advisory
You have three major things that any outside advisor won't have: trust from business clients, access to their numbers, and context about their business. Most business coaches can't explain how the advice they give will affect cash flow, but you can.
Owners of businesses doing between $500,000 and $5 million in annual revenue need someone who understands their numbers and can help them decide what to do next, and very few of them have that person. In fact, there are 36 million small businesses in the US, and about half of them won't reach their fifth birthday. These owners need CFO Advisory services.
Your clients are probably asking you for it already, but they do it in the questions they ask you. They ask whether they can afford to hire, whether the new equipment makes sense, or why the bank balance dropped in a month that felt good. Those questions are the beginning of a CFO Advisory engagement, which is why the fastest path to your first CFO Advisory client is usually a client you already serve.
What CFO Advisory Adds to a Tax Practice
The average tax preparation client pays about $750 a year. The average CFO Advisory client in our program pays $1,978 a month, which comes to about $23,736 a year.
If you get 8 CFO Advisory clients through our program and charge the average our members charge, you would earn around $16,000 a month, or about $192,000 a year.
That doesn't include any of the tax work, which you could either keep or refer out.
The time fits, too. Our methodology lets you deliver the service in 2-4 hours per month, per client, so eight clients is a manageable addition to a working tax practice.
Add CFO Advisory to Your Tax Practice on Your Terms
You can decide how big a part of your practice CFO Advisory becomes.
Many CPAs start by offering it to a few of their best tax clients who fit the criteria above: owners doing $500,000 to $5 million in annual revenue who are already asking business questions. They keep their tax work running as it is today. Others move their best clients onto a monthly retainer and step back from lower-fee work over time. Some make CFO Advisory their whole practice.
If you're an employed accountant starting from scratch, you'll build your client base with our proven lead generation systems. These systems find clients through the associations where owners already gather and through strategic partners like bankers, attorneys and insurance advisors who serve the same owners you want to reach.
CPA to CFO Training: A Done-With-You Program
The CFO Project is a done-with-you mentorship program. You get the systems, the training and the tools on the day you join, and then you get people helping you put them to work in your own practice.
Systems
You get three proven systems to find, sign and serve your CFO Advisory clients, with six self-paced courses that train you to put them in place and the tools you'll use with every client.
Support
For your first six months, you'll meet weekly with a roundtable of peers led by an executive coach and a CFO Mentor.
Community
You'll join 500+ active members, with weekly and monthly live events that include NASBA CPE-eligible masterclasses.
Certified CFO™
You earn the certification by completing the training and landing your first client, and the program is backed by a money-back guarantee.
CPAs Who Made the Move to CFO Advisory
“Since joining The CFO Project, I sold off the bulk of my tax practice and am just focusing on my CFO clients. I am now in line to make the most that I have ever made in my life this year.”
Joel S.Former tax practice owner
“The CFO Project has helped me with my accounting practice in a few critical ways: understanding how to help clients achieve what they want, which is, surprise, not just taxes and bookkeeping; providing a framework to support and help clients with their businesses; and confidence in offering a scalable service.”
Shay J.Accounting practice owner
“The CFO Project has indeed been the sharpest tool in my toolbox used to create my own CPA Advisory practice. Definitely happy I said 'Yes' to this opportunity.”
JoAnne A.CPA Advisory practice owner
“Clients struggle to express what they're really asking for (financial statements aren't it!) and I never did develop mind-reading capabilities. Even with all my years of experience I'm finding The CFO Project is teaching me new skills and better ways of supporting my clients.”
Marc Y.20 years in accounting and finance, 10 running his own firm
Meet Lacey Harnar, CPA & Certified CFO
CFO Mentor at The CFO Project
Lacey Harnar is a CPA & Certified CFO with The CFO Project. As a CPA, she has experienced the stress and strain of many tax seasons. As someone who is passionate about intentionally designing her business and life so that each day brings joy and satisfaction, she knew a business built solely on tax work would not allow her to achieve her larger goals. As a CFO, she is not only able to achieve her business and life goals, she is able to help other business owners do the same.
Lacey is one of our CFO Mentors. When you join The CFO Project, you can learn directly from her and our other CFO Mentors, who have built CFO Advisory practices of their own, through office hours, the member forum and the weekly roundtables they help lead.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is CFO Advisory the same as tax advisory?
No. Tax advisory helps a business owner plan around taxes, and the work follows the tax calendar. CFO Advisory helps the owner reach their own definition of success and generate consistent, positive cash flow, through The One Clear Path, a repeatable monthly system. Many CPAs offer both, and the two work well together.
Can I keep doing tax prep while I build this?
Yes. Many CPAs in our program keep their tax work and start by offering CFO Advisory to a few existing clients. The service takes 2-4 hours per month, per client, so it runs alongside your tax practice, and you decide over time how much of your practice you want it to be.
Do I need a new license or credential?
You don't need a new license to offer CFO Advisory. If you also provide audit or review services, check your state board's independence rules before you offer advisory work to those same clients. Members can also earn Certified CFO™ by completing the training and landing their first client.
My clients don't need a CFO.
You're right, but they do need someone they trust to help them make more money. Whether you call yourself a CFO or something else almost doesn't matter.
I'm not qualified to be a CFO.
You may not be qualified to be Coca-Cola's next CFO, but you're probably qualified to guide a business doing between $500,000 and $5 million in annual revenue.
My clients can't afford this.
If someone wants something badly enough, they'll find a way to afford it. Owners pay for guidance that helps them make more money, and a CFO Advisory service is built to do exactly that.
All I know is tax and accounting. I've never run a business before.
You don't need more experience to launch this service. You need a system. Your technical background already lets you read a prospective client's numbers and understand what's driving their business, which most outside advisors can't do. The CFO Project gives you the rest: a repeatable system to find, sign and serve your clients, so you can sit down with any business owner and run the same monthly process every time.
I don't really know how to sell this service.
This is tricky. You can't walk up to a client and pitch your CFO service, because they don't know what a CFO is and won't think their small business needs one. Inside The CFO Project, the Four-Step Conversion Process shows you how to offer it in a way that gets owners to take action.
Two Ways to Start
Start with a free training, or, if you've already watched one of our trainings, book a call with one of our Enrollment Advisors.
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