Welcome to Escaping the Accountants Trap podcast. It's a podcast to help accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers escape what we call the accountants trap. It's where you're stuck working with low value and high demanding clients. But at the same time, you can't raise your fees because you have a ton of competition. Well, how do you escape the trap? One way is the topic of today's episode, and that is by freeing yourself from an oppressive business model.

To help me with the discussion, I've invited Eric. So back in, Eric, as a CPA speaker, business advisor, and creator of the Accountant Success Formula, his strategies help accountants maximize profits, attract the best clients, and get the time and freedom they deserve. Eric, welcome to the show.

Hey, Adam, thanks for having me. I'm really looking forward to this.

Oh, man. So this discussion, I'm I'm looking forward to it as well. Because what you are saying, you know, escaping the oppressive business model is essentially what we call escaping the accountants trap. And I would love to dive in. So right off the bat, what do you mean by that? What do you mean by you free today's accountants from an oppressive business model?

Well, and and by the way, just going to throw kudos on to Adam. Like I've said this to both of you, I've said this to you guys. You actually have got great copy when it comes to the issue that I talk about freeing today's accountant from an oppressive business model, the accountants trap. I love that, by the way.

It's perfect. And so we're in a completely in alignment here. So for me. So here's a quick little background. I was in public practice for 18 years. I did the traditional accounting firm like me, multiple partners, billing by the hour, working crazy hours. What happened was my partnership collapsed and I had to start up my own practice. So then for the next eight years, I said I'd had enough of the the grind and the billable hour.

And I said, I've had enough of this crap. I'm out. And so what I did is I became like an entrepreneur, and I started testing and trying different ideas. And what happened was, is that I worked a zero over time for the last eight years of my when I was in public practice. Zero funny story, I had one one of my staff members actually did overtime once I found out about it, brought her into my office and said, if you ever do that again, you're fired.

And she went, okay, got it. Like, that's how serious I was about it. Like, you cannot do that because it's a slippery slope account.

It is.

Yeah. Billable hours is a working hours is a slippery slope. I'll get into the three. What I call the three. The three lies that we've been conditioned to believe. But. So what happened was, is. And I sold my accounting practice after eight years, easily got a great multiple on my billings. And then I had a bunch of accountants asking me, well, how do you do this?

And I said, well, basically I decided to get away from the oppressive model. And I started coaching accounting firms, and then I realized that they're all doing this. We're all doing this. And it's like the accountants Trapp, which is. But I see it as two part two problems. There's two parts to the oppressive model. One is the billable hour.

The billable hour is an oppressive, oppressive model for both the client and the accountant. It's stressful. You got to track your time. Then you got to try and collect your money from your clients after the fact. It's just horrible. So I shift my model over to a subscription based model and freed the clients up completely from that stress altogether.

Okay, let's pause there just for a second. So if it's so oppressive and by the way, I agree with you 100%. But if it's so oppressive, why do the majority of accounting firms do it?

Okay. So let's go. Let's let's the who who hit the rewind button. Excuse me or.

You.

Okay, here we go. Here's the issue. Accounting accountants have been brainwashed. I'm going to say it. We've been brainwashed. The profession has brainwashed us into believing what I call three lies. Okay, now see if these resonate at all. Okay? Lie number one, our worth is equal to how many hours we work.

Right. And that's proof in the pudding is that it's the billable hour. It's like well if you work ten hours on a file then it's worth more money than if you only work an hour on the file. But you and I know that clients don't care how many hours you work on something. Totally. They care about the outcome.

But this is. But this is the brainwashing. And I'm saying it again. It's the brainwashing that the profession has put upon accountants to think that we have to do this right. So that's the first lies that our worth is equal to how many hours.

It doesn't promote efficiency at all.

Well, it doesn't promote effectiveness. It doesn't promote looking at the user like efficiency is doing things quicker. Effectiveness is what is the impact. What does the client get as a result of it. And they pay for value. So value is what you price is what you pay value is what you receive. Right okay. So that's the whole but that first lie actually has a lot of a lot of meat to the bone shall we say.

There's I got another book inside me, I'm sure it's like what the hell happened to me. The accountant's life is what, what happened to me as a child. What was the childhood trauma that happened that made me become an accountant?

Okay.

Somehow ties into this billable, our mindset. So if you don't work crazy hours, you somehow feel less of a human being. Yeah. So there's the first lie. So. But I'm sure most accountants out there, if they're listening to this, they get it. Okay. Lie number two is that our clients are naturally price sensitive to our services. Okay.

There's an inherent belief that we're there to reduce price, reduce costs, get taxes low and clients come to us and they don't want to pay more. And this is part of the accountant's trap right. You get caught up with these clients that you that they don't want to pay. And we think not that they don't want to pay more, but as you and I both know, once you change your model, the way you work with the client, they're willing to pay a lot more money.

A client that was paying you $1,000 a year will pay you $1,000 a month. If you provide the right value.

If and if they see the value, exactly.

Communicate the value. But you have to change the business model to change a value, which is what the CFO project does so well. And I love it because it's like you're changing the model of just grinding out a tax return to helping the client actually become more profitable, right? It's a different model. And so but there's a second line is that our clients are naturally price sensitive to our services.

It's not that they're naturally price sensitive. It's the way that we sell them. It's the way that we talk to them. It's the model that we're we're working under.

Absolutely.

Okay. And then here's the third lie okay. The third lie the accountants have been conditioned to believe in is that tax time just has to suck.

Okay.

Okay. Know anybody who's been in public practice and done a tax season knows what I mean by that. It's just it's it's part of the process. It's like the hazing ritual. It's just the cross you have to bear. It's the burden you have to bear is a cross you have to bear every year because that's you're an accountant.

That's just what has to happen. And that's a complete lie. And as I noticed, you remember I said in B in the, in the prolog here. I worked in my accounting firm, my second accounting firm that I opened up for eight years, not a single hour of overtime for myself or my single staff. No one. So tax time didn't suck for us because I had model.

I had controlled the model and like I said, when you take back control of your business model, you can take back control of your life. I made more money, had clients who loved to pay me great money. I made more money than I ever made before. Clients were happy to pay me that money, and I had a whole bunch of free time on my hands.

So those are three lies that that and they all stemmed from, well, where do these three lies come from? They become from the traditional business model. It comes from the profession. Our profession is not working for us. They're working against us.

Yeah.

I truly believe they're the villain here. Like, I mean, you know the story brand. You know the story I do. Donald Miller Donald love it. Okay, so here's the story. Here's the story. Brand. Who's the hero? The CPA is the hero. Yeah. Okay. Who's the villain? The accounting profession is the villain. Okay. And who is the guide? Oh, that's me, I'm Yoda.

I'll be the lead guide and protect the accountant who's the hero to free them from and give them the visibility into the fact that they already have all the skill set that they need to actually be paid incredibly well and be valued by their clients, and not have to be stuck in this hellhole known as the accountant trap.

Right?

Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. All right, so I'm I'm curious. I'm tuned into this movie where where you're the where you're guiding the hero, the accountant. So. Yeah. What happens.

Next? Well, you start with it. Do or do not. There is no try. Right. You gotta start with that. You gotta start with that. Right. So, you know, how do you stop working in an oppressive business model? Yeah. Just stop. But it's so hard for accountants. It was hard for me to. I had to have a I had to have a really horrific, experience, like my first partnership breaking down.

That was a really horrific part of my life. And it woke me up at snap me and kind of going, I gotta change things. This is too much. And you know, if anything, the pandemic is done. I hope it's snapped accountants into thinking there's a better life out there for me and day. By the way, they have in droves they're leaving the profession.

Yeah. Because of the pandemic was like, you know what? I have this saying. It's life's too short to work like an accountant.

I love that, yeah, I agree with you. I 100% agree with you. Yeah. And accountants are. You're right. They're fleeing the profession and they want to do something different.

Yeah. They're they're just rushing. They're running away from it and I don't I don't blame them at all. Right. And so so here's the thing. What I do is I show them that the power is within them. They already have all the training in the skills that they need. Okay. To get paid way more money, have way less stress and have way more free time.

And so the problem is the business model. And there's two parts problems with the business model, which we started on. One is the billable hour. If you're still doing a billable hour model you're in you're in part of the the brainwashing, which is their worth is equal to how many hours you work, right? Clients don't care. And once you shift your model from billing by the hour to a subscription based value pricing model, you'll have smoothed out cash flow.

You'll have no more accounts receivable. You won't have those ugly conversations at the end of the here's your tax return. I call it the Five Finger death. But you and I talked about heavy metal before, right? I'm in a heavy metal band. I love heavy metal. And one of the things that I say that accountants do at the year end meeting is give their clients a five finger death punch, one of the greatest heavy metal bands, current heavy metal bands, not eight.

It's like you and I were talking about, but you give them a five finger death punch. And so what it is, is you. You sit down with the client, you give them what the first part of the finger is. Here's your personal tax bill. Here's your corporate tax bill, right. Here's your state tax bill. Here's another. And then here's another bill.

There's always five in there. And so for us it was like the personal tax bill the corporate tax bill the the sales tax bill. They the they prevent the state the federal tax sales tax bill and the federal tax are in this, state tax bill. So in Canada, we've got we've got the provincial provinces and the and the federal government.

And then the fifth is your bill. So what you've done is you've just compiled yourself in with all those pain points and you've done a five finger death punch. Write to your client.

Like your way to put it.

Five Finger Death.

Punch. And their client really doesn't know what they're paying for.

Honestly no no they don't, they don't. But that you've just all you've done is you've just associated yourself with all the pain and suffering of tax bills with your bill. Once you get rid of that, you put them on a subscription based model. They'll actually you just bundle the services you currently have. Like anybody listening, just bundle the services you currently have provided to your clients.

You take that billing model that you had and you just change it into a subscription. Based clients, on average, will pay you at least 25% more, more on annual to just pay you monthly and get give them unlimited access to talk to you, which is ties into the second part, which I'll get to. You have more of a communication with your clients, so they'll talk to you more often.

They'll use you as a trusted advisor. You smooth out your cash flow, you stop worrying about accounts receivable and bills, and you stop giving your clients a five finger death punch. Everybody wins. Okay, so there's kind of we'll call it the first problem with the problem solution there okay. Problem solution. Second is billing is compliance filings. That's the second part of the traditional model that's is flawed okay.

Just filing compliance filings is like just it's you're not providing any value, which is the CFO. I just realized, you know, the value we could be giving them is giving them more more, profit in their business. I love that, right. It's fantastic. So for the accountant that's in general public practice, stop just doing compliance filings. Be the trusted advisor.

There's this value curve that Rick Payne from, did, and it's in my book. He gave me the, the rights to use it in my book. And there's a copy here for my book that I'll give to any one of your listeners that want to copy.

The accounting success formula.

For the accounting success formula for today's accounting firm. Impressive business. I will mail them a copy. Just, you know, they email, you, say, yep, I want a copy.

Great.

I'll send them a copy. All right. For anybody. And I've got it in there. And it says that the reason why you're having price sensitivity with clients is because you're just doing the compliance work. You're doing bookkeeping, you're doing tax, personal taxes. Only once you move up the value curve and you start being the trusted owner or trusted advisor for the business owner, and you start looking at all the different areas and you'd be that quarterback for them.

You have upward pressure on price. So as you and I know when you start providing better value, you get paid more. And so I've shown accountants that once they shift out of just being compliance donkeys. Yeah. From a compliance donkey to a reliance advisor, they all of a sudden jump up and the clients eyes and they'll get paid way more money.

So when you combine the two together you have this amazing magic that happens. And so the other thing that I wanted to expound on is the second part is how do I become that quarterback, how to become that trusted advisor. So what I show in the accounts successful, where I say most accountants don't sit down and talk to their clients about what's known as the four planning pillars.

So if you picture a business owner, they're trying to build a life for themselves, right? Not just a business, but their whole life. And so picture it as like a building with a, with a roof. And there's four pillars that holds up that roof, okay. Each pillar represents the following business plan A wealth plan, a retirement plan and an estate plan.

So those are the four pillars that hold up this house. So if you think about it the the business, they're they're running a business in a certain way. They're going to trying to grow their personal wealth. Eventually they're going to retire, and then they're going to have an estate that goes to their family. Well, as just like with building a house, can you imagine what happens if you were to build a house and you have an electrician, you have a plumber, and you have a drywall like you do a business owner has an accountant, a lawyer and a banker or a financial advisor.

Let's say you're building a house and the the, the, the, the plumber, the electrician and the drywall are all working off a different set of plans. There's not one set of plans they're all creating. They think this is how the client they talk to, the client. Client says this is what I want, and they start building the house.

The house looks like an abomination, doesn't it? Yeah. Okay. That I can guarantee you, is 99% of business owners out there because they have an accountant doing one thing, a financial advisor doing another thing, a lawyer doing something else.

Is on the same page.

Nobody's on the same page. Nobody's looking at the blueprint. What's the blueprint? So what I show accountants is sit down and talk to your client and ask them about these four planning pillars. I have a a questionnaire that they walk through. It's a really step by step, easy to to have the conversation with the client. And what it does is it gets you to understand what their business plan is, what their wealth plan is, what their retirement plan is, what their state plan is, and if they don't know what it is, there's an opportunity for us to co, collaborate with the other lawyers that the bankers, the financial advisors to fix that problem and

to get paid really well to have a clear blueprint. So the client knows that what all their hard work is building the home that they want for themselves. And that's that's the general approach. I don't. And so once you do that, you become that general contractor, that quarterback, and the client is going to be looking to you. Even the conversation becomes valuable because they're like, Holy crap, an accountant actually cares about what my business is doing, right?

They don't care what my like. And it's an easy conversation. It creates value, right, for the client. It positions you as the as the quarterback, as the trusted advisor. And number three, it gives you an opportunity for special projects. And this is where the joy comes in. And this is why I love the CFO project. Yeah, love love it.

What you're doing out of is is awesome because you go deep into the business pillar. You show the accountants, hey, let's go into that special project called profit. Yeah. Which drives everything. You got more profit. You have profit that can be allocated to gross and growing your wealth. And then your wealth is going to support your your retirement and your retirement.

Then we'll support the estate that goes to the rest of your family. Right? Totally. But you go in there and you show them how to go deep into the business pillar. And that's why I love the account success formula and the CFO project. They just go hand in glove. Yeah, it's just awesome. So you go deep into there and show them how to actually help the client become more profitable.

Right. So even for those accounts that don't want to go into that deep end of the pool, they still need to understand the four pillars. And so this is where and you're and and any of your, CPAs that are in the CFO project, they're deep into that, into that business pillar. They still what if they started talking and looking at those other four pillar?

There's other three pillars in making sure. Okay, well, what are we doing over here? Is it in alignment with those other, other pillars to make sure that we're building the life you want for yourself? Clients. Go. Go squirrely for this stuff. Yeah, because you actually care about their life. Not just filing. Putting. I call it putting numbers in boxes.

Yeah, absolutely. They don't they don't care. They don't care anyways. There's there's like a major long wait. I've been talking the whole bloody time, man. You got to say something.

No, no, this is fantastic. I 100% agree with you. I mean accountants. Yeah. Business owners are not lying awake at night thinking, oh, man, I can't wait till I speak to my accountant next. But they should be if they follow what you're saying, the account of success formula, they should be doing that.

And it does and it does work. And so the thing that what happened for me is that when I shifted my model over, when I and I talk about the business model, I, I at the end of my videos that I do, I do a weekly video, add to my email list and to LinkedIn, and I always end with the same thing I said.

When you take back control of your business model, you can take back control of your life. And so this is for the accountant. It's like once you take back control of the business model, you can take back control of your life so you can get what I call the three freedoms money, clients and time. Right. And those three freedoms negate those three lies.

Remember money? Yep. Clients time. Money. Your worth is not equal to how many hours you work. Clients. Your clients are not price sensitive to your services and they will actually pay you handsomely. They will love.

You. Absolutely.

And then time. Freedom of time. Yeah. Tax time doesn't have to suck. You don't have to. Do, you know, 24 hour days. Yeah. Right. So and I'm passionate about it because I did it myself and I broke free like I broke. I'm going to use your phrase, man. I broke free from the accountants like I did. I broke free, but I did it in a different model.

And so by just understanding what those four pillars were and working collaboratively with the other professional advisors, I was the quarterback. I was getting paid like, dude, I got $15,000 a month for doing a an annual compliance filing, like they had one company. I filed their taxes for it, but they were paying me $15,000 a month. They had another company that had an audit.

I didn't do the audit. We had another accounting firm doing the audit because I won't do audits because that's just talk about low end work. The the auditing firm, when they found out how much I was getting paid for just for doing the consulting, they were like, you're a real A-hole, Eric. You know why I said why? I said, you get paid more per month than we get paid for the entire Wow year.

And I was like, oh yeah, sucks being you guys, right? Like, and who loves me more? The client loves me more than the auditors, right. And so I'm really passionate about that. And there's another part of this, Adam that I think is really critical. We've got the AI machine coming. Yeah. Putting numbers in boxes is dead. Yeah, dude.

It's dead. Absolutely dead dead dead dead dead. Okay. It's absolutely dead. And so I am on a I'm on a mission to get the account success formula course. I've got a program online program, and I've got coaching program, like a one on one coaching. I want to get it into the hands of as many of accountants as I possibly can, because they need to get in front of this wave.

They need to be positioning themselves as the trusted advisor. So when this AI wave comes flowing through, it's going to take away putting numbers in boxes. Yeah, it's going to take away all the compliance. Right. And I don't want to be a doomsday guy. I want to take it, but I want them to take advantage of it. But I'm telling you, I see the landscape just going gone.

Oh, totally. I mean, I reading and disappear. Yeah. I was reading of the other day just about they say in ten years, about 90% of what account is due today is going to be replaced by technology.

Dude, I put that in white. I've been talking about this for a decade. I've been talking about this. Try me mental on my website it's Eric. So back in Capcom, our go to accountant success formula.com. Click on there go and you'll see this my PDF the first the lead magnet we call it the lead magnet right a free PDF to get me on.

So you get the free PDF. And then you get on my email list. And then I send you weekly emails and give you offers to to join my course. And that's just the way the email thing works. The first one I did was that was what I was talking about. I did that ten years ago.

Wow.

I was they saying the accounting. I said 98% likely probability that accountants will be replaced by technology. Yeah. And they've no one's been listening to me until this year. ChatGPT comes breaking up to the surface, and all of a sudden everything's going, oh.

Hey, let's go take it over. And what we tell people is, yeah, that's what we tell people, tell accountants and bookkeepers and financial professionals. Is that the one thing that can't be replaced is a relationship with you and your client, and they want somebody that they can trust to tell them what to do. Yeah. To to make more money, to have a better life.

Exactly.

That cannot be replaced. And you can charge more for that.

Yeah. And exactly. And that's what you and you and I touched on it briefly on our brief interlude. Like, I love that we talk more about heavy metal music and our love for that. But but an 80s 80s music. Yeah. But here's the thing is that, I will be incredibly valuable for those accountants that position themselves properly.

Okay. So let's just talk about that. They position yourself as the trusted advisor when the eye comes in and you and I are both working on, I solutions for both our, our both our, our coaching programs. And once you plug that in, it's going to make all that mundane work on the bottom that most accountants don't like doing anyways.

It's going to go away. But you got to get in front of the wave. If you're going to surf the wave get on the surfboard. Yeah, I see all these accountants swimming out in the open ocean and and they're thinking, oh yeah, you know, I've got my bookkeeping technology all dialed in. Everything's great. I'm like, oh, dude, that's going away.

Yeah. Like you're just swimming in the ocean without a surfboard. I want to put as many surfboards in the water as I possibly can get on the surfboard. And when the AI wave comes, you can ride the wave instead of getting drowned, right?

Well, that's a great analogy. So, Eric, somebody listening in there saying, yes, I need this. I'm interested. Where do they go?

They can go. Accountants success formula.com. And that'll send them right to my website. The again, any of your listeners here, they, they, I don't know if they email directly to you, but they can send an email to me as well. Yeah.

What's your email? We'll put this on it.

Yeah. I got Eric at Eric Sole back in cpa.com okay. And they can send me an email and they want a copy of the book. And dude I'll send it out. Boom. Perfect.

So Eric it's Eric. Yeah.

At Eric Sol back end cpa.com. Perfect. And yes I didn't think it through carefully when I first got my URL. I really should have made it a hell of a lot shorter. I should have just made it the account and success formula. I I'll probably shift it over to that eventually. But you know you go accountant success formula will get you to me.

All right. And again, I just love having conversations with accountants that really want to take back control of their lives. Because for me, Adam, like I was in public practice for 26 years and the first 18 years of it, I got pushed around by the system. And it was. And the thing that drives me crazy is that that it's our own profession that's doing it to us.

Yeah, it makes my blood boil now, when I see what's going on and how much accountants suffer and they're brainwashed and it's not your fault if you're listening to this, I'm not judging you because I was the same way I was brainwashed for 18 years until I realized I actually had the freedom to change. Right? And so that's why I love the CFO project and the accounting success formulas, because we're helping accountants realize that they can take back control of their lives.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. This is good. This is good stuff. Eric, thank you so much for being on the show today.

Adam. My pleasure. We got a lot more. We got a lot more future fun coming. I yes.

Yes, I agree we need to do a second episode of this. But. And to everyone listening or watching, thank you so much for spending the last few minutes with Eric and myself as we discussed how to escape the accountants trap and how to escape this oppressive business model. Thank you so much. Thank you. Eric.

Thanks, Adam.

All right. Bye for now.