legacy firms may value tenure, but firms of the future prioritize impact, innovation, and client fit.
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the disruptors
with liz farr
for most cpas, the road to partner is long and narrow—often paved with decades of grueling hours and delayed ownership. but aaron dickerson, founder of dickerson cpa in austin, texas, had no interest in waiting 20 years to earn a seat at the table.
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“i saw partners who had been there for two decades and were still paying for their equity,” dickerson recalls of his time at a legacy firm in ohio. “it just didn’t make sense.
so, before turning 30—and after being diagnosed with charcot-marie-tooth disease, a progressive neurological disorder that limits mobility and endurance—dickerson made the leap to start his own firm. instead of trying to fit into a broken mold, he’s forging a healthier, more efficient model from the ground up.
sponsored by “it’s not just the numbers: how to move beyond the numbers and deliver real value for your clients”
by penny breslin and damien greathead – see today’s special offer
accounting’s demanding hours don’t pair well with chronic illness. but rather than viewing his condition as a limitation, dickerson turned it into a catalyst for change.
“that really impacts my ability to work the demanding hours most firms need during busy season,” he says. “so i built a firm that doesn’t require that.”
a simple yet powerful innovation he adopted: scheduled tax appointments, a model pioneered by brenda cannon. this approach flips the usual reactive workflow and puts the firm back in control by setting clear expectations for client document delivery. as dickerson posted at the end of tax season, “i work when i want. extend what doesn’t get done.”
at dickerson cpa, the focus isn’t on how long you’ve been in the game—it’s on how well you play it.
“public accounting is probably like 20 years behind when it comes to valuing effectiveness over experience,” he says.
for dickerson, effectiveness means building better systems, streamlining processes, and cutting loose clients that drain energy and diminish service quality for others. “how do we best serve our clients and make sure we’re not holding on to clients that are causing bad client service for the other clients?” he asks.
but getting to that level of clarity isn’t always easy, especially in traditional firms where key metrics are often kept behind closed doors.
“am i being profitable? are my clients profitable? what can i do to increase the efficiency of these engagements?” he remembers asking—without ever getting clear answers.
dickerson believes the future of accounting lies in specialization, and he’s walking the talk by narrowing his own client base. he encourages firm owners to find their sweet spot: industry niches, service types, or ideal client profiles.
“in the face of things like ai, firms will have to change,” he says. “to remain competitive and to provide value to clients, you really need to specialize and figure out what you enjoy doing—both as a firm owner and as an employee.”
that clarity, he says, makes it easier to build a sustainable and fulfilling firm.
looking ahead, he sees advisory services taking center stage in the profession. “i think, five years from now, those are going to be the services that are in demand, not tax compliance,” he predicts. “clients are still going to need that, but i think that’s just going to be like a secondary service.”
for dickerson, the goal isn’t just to survive in accounting—it’s to reshape it for a healthier, smarter, and more client-focused future.
10 key takeaways
- start billing upfront or at least require a deposit. you will eventually get burned if you bill in arrears.
- re-evaluate monthly pricing every three to six months to ensure it’s still working for the client ant that you’re not losing money.
- if you like auditing, consider offering outsourced internal audit services. you avoid the independence issues, and there’s no peer review.
- bring staff into management conversations early. transparency can help with retention.
- consider implementing eos – the entrepreneurial operating system – as your team grows. this provides clarity for roles and direction.
- consider a vp of operations as an early hire. someone who understands accounting firm operations can transform your business.
- don’t hang on to clients too long, even if they are a large portion of your revenue. new clients will come along due to the demand for your services.
- if you’re thinking of going out on your own, do it sooner rather than later.
- position yourself or your firm as the first person clients call when they have a problem.
- look back at your response to the pandemic as a gauge to how you will respond to future disruptions. take the lessons you learned from the pandemic and apply them to ai.
more about aaron dickerson
aaron dickerson is the founder of dickerson cpa, pllc, an accounting firm based in austin, texas. originally from ohio, dickerson holds a master’s degree in accounting from ohio northern university and is a licensed certified public accountant, certified valuation analyst, and certified fraud examiner. after beginning his career at a traditional firm and spending some time in industry, dickerson set out to build something that felt more human by prioritizing practical systems and a work style that supports both clients and his own well-being. his firm focuses on helping small business owners manage taxes and financial decisions in a way that feels approachable and sustainable. he’s committed to building a firm that grows with intention, without burning people out or sticking to outdated ideas just because “that’s how it’s always been done.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr
welcome to accounting disruptor conversations. i’m your host. liz farr from cpatrendlines, and here i’m talking to owners of firms who are doing things differently than our parents and our grandparents accountants. now my guest today is aaron dickerson, founder of dickerson, cpa, pllc, welcome to the show.
aaron dickerson
always. thanks for having me. i’m really excited to be here.
liz farr
yeah, well, we met really briefly at bridging the gap back in 2024 so you know, people that are attracted to that conference are very often a unique breed of accountants. so i’m glad that we could connect in this way. yeah,
aaron dickerson
i’m glad we met. you know, it was kind of by chance that i went to bridging the gap. you know, the tax twitter retreat was right beforehand, and so it happened in for that i probably wouldn’t have met you or had gone to that conference, but i definitely walked away with a ton of information and and ways to improve my my firm from both of those conferences. and it was great to meet everybody. and there’s so many great people to share ideas with and learn from at these places. and it’s just awesome. i always walk away from those conferences with a ton of energy of like, okay, i’ve got to do this and improve my firm this way, everything. so it was, it was great to meet you there, and great to be connecting again.
liz farr
fantastic. now, aaron, can you tell listeners a little bit about your business, where you’re located, what kind of services you offer, what kind of clients, things like that?
aaron dickerson
sure. yeah. so i’m in austin, texas. i do not have an office, though, so i’ve clients in different areas. i’m from ohio, so i have some clients there in ohio. and so i take pretty much anyone, wherever they’re located, depending on what their business is and how big they are, and different other things. so i work mainly only with business owners. at this point, i still have some stragglers, some struggling clients that don’t have businesses. we all know how that is, but pretty tax heavy at this point, but i’m really focusing on growing the advisory side like this outsource cfo controller, level type services for businesses that i have some background in that area, so i realized, like, hey, this is a great service that i should be offering my clients, because i think tax can can be difficult for some of us, and it’s it’s good to have an all around service offering for these business clients. so as i focus on that area, it’s i found that that’s where i need to, need to focus and push for new clients. so,
liz farr
yeah, now, now you’re you’re younger than a lot of the other people who own firms. you know you were a firm owner before the age of 30, and you have a unique story about how that came about? could you share that with listeners? sure, yeah,
aaron dickerson
i’ll just give you some background info as we we get started here. so i’m from ohio. i got my career started after undergrad. i started working at credit unions. so started on a small credit union, and loved that industry, but it was, it was small enough to where it was just like the cfo and i and the accounting department, and i quickly got bored, like i was only working a few hours a day, and then i didn’t have anything to work on, and that that just didn’t work for my my style, the way, you know, i worked, my day would drag on and on if i didn’t have stuff to do. so i ended up moving to a different credit union that was larger. and then, by chance, at that time, i had always told myself, i don’t want to go into public accounting, because i, you know, i heard about the hours. i didn’t want to do big four. i didn’t want to, you know, work 80-90, hours a week, whatever they were doing at that time. so i had avoided it until that point. and then that new credit union didn’t work out very well, just dynamics and everything. and so i started looking for other roles. and there was a small accounting job, accounting firm in in ohio, where i was at, and they actually had financial institutions as clients like, oh, this is our right. so it fit my background, and i liked that industry, and so i wanted to stay in it, and so i applied. that’s how i ended up in public accounting, right? um, that firm opened in the early 1900s like 1920s i believe maybe 1930s in a town in ohio that was like booming at that time. from like at that time, it was railroads and oil and stuff there, there in ohio, in the midwest. so things were, were were interesting. it was my first experience public accounting, so i didn’t know any different, but we were still passing around paper tax files. and, you know, we still did the firm, the office itself was like very when you walked in, it felt like you went back, like 30 years in time. and we had some older partners. there were four partners. we had a couple older, older partners, and then some newer partners that had just joined in or bought in, you know, as partners right before i joined the firm. so i learned a lot there they were. they did really good work. i enjoyed my time there. i got to get, you know, it’s a small firm, so i did everything. i external audits, tax, nonprofits, for profits, like lots of different industries, highly regulated industries, like the financial institutions, telephone companies, that kind of stuff, where we had regulatory reporting, and it was great. i loved everything about it. i liked who i worked for, but there was a lot of outdated processes, and it was very, very hard to change things, because there were, there were staff members that were, you know, just set in their ways. and so, you know, you could come up with ideas, and they were open to implementing them, but it took forever to get through that process. so i was there for about three years, i think, before i moved to austin, maybe a little under four. and then i happened to, you know, i passed the cpa exams, and then i moved to austin after that, so,
liz farr
interesting, interesting. and you know, you shared on with me that you also have some health problems that have influenced your journey quite a bit.
aaron dickerson
yeah, so at the time, you know, when i was there, i was working. we didn’t work crazy hours. i was probably working with travel and unbillable hours and stuff. i was probably working 55 to 60 hours, maybe a little more than that, depending on different weeks. so it wasn’t too bad i was also studying for the cpa exam, and before that, doing my master’s program at night. so if you add that in, it was more. and it was when i was at that firm when i finally got diagnosed with it’s called charcot marie tooth. it’s a very rare genetic disorder. even when i go to doctors like a lot of times, they don’t really know much about it, and i’m actually teaching them versus the other way around. so is it a long process of learning that i had it? i had the symptoms as i was younger, and i knew, because it was genetic, i kind of knew i had it, but, you know, took a while, so finally got that diagnosis before i moved to austin, and it, you know, it’s been more recent where i’ve realized that that really impacts my ability to be able to work the demanding hours that most firms need during busy season. and it’s interesting to look back to that time and realize, oh, like, that’s why i was in my early 20s, and i felt like i couldn’t work the same hours that partners were working that were, you know, some of them in their 60s or older, and that always confused me, and it makes a lot more sense now that i have that diagnosis, and i’ve been able to learn about the disease and everything, and that’s really tied into how i’ve had to build my firm, you know, because there’s limits on what i can do, and so i’ve it’s not the only reason, but it has definitely contributed to the decisions i’ve made, you know about clients i’ve taken on, or the services i’m going to offer, and the way i, you know, implement processes and procedures at my firm, in comparison to the typical model of our industry. so,
liz farr
yeah, yeah, i like it. and, you know, i find it really refreshing to speak to people who realize that whether it’s because of family commitments or health or whatever or something else they’re doing where they realize they can’t work, you know, a zillion hours, but they have to really limit themselves in how long they work. so kudos to you for figuring that out. congratulations.
aaron dickerson
still a work in process lots of new information, even more recently, that that is great to know. it’s the hardest part is it’s one of those diseases that doesn’t have much research. there’s no cure, and really the only thing you can do is just be like, stay active, you know, to prevent progression. and there’s a lot of promising research around like gene editing and crispr. i’m sure some people have seen headlines about that, but otherwise, you know, it’s just kind of figure it out on your own. like i said a lot of you know, the first doctor i went to and i told them, i said, hey, like, i have a medical history, you know, my grandpa had this and and so i have that, and i have x, y and z symptoms. they actually told me, i don’t think you have that. and, like, wouldn’t refer me to somebody. a neurologist, is where i needed to go. they wouldn’t refer me. and so it’s been a process of, like, having to demand that help and jumping providers, because you have to find somebody that listens, you know, because when you’re in your 20s and you tell people, you know, i have an excessive amount of fatigue, or my legs are, you know, these different things, they just kind of dismiss it times. so,
liz farr
yeah, yeah. now, something else you’ve written about online is that is the myth of putting in your time, and that experience is more important than effectiveness, but but your journey proves that those are not really set in stone. can you? can you talk about those about that for our listeners,
aaron dickerson
sure, yeah, i feel like the typical model, you know, to if you’re if you want to be partner, and as in a cpa firm, typically, you got to put your time in work, you know, 10, 15, 20 years before you can even be considered. and then when you are considered, you then have to buy in to these firms. and i kind of noticed that, you know, as i started into into public accounting, you know, i did really well, performed well and, and was told, you know, you’re on the partner track, you know, if you that’s what you want, you could stay here, and you could, like, that’s what, where you could end up. but that was the gist of it. like they didn’t give any other details. there was no time frame. and you know, i knew at that time. i knew before i was even out of college, that i wanted to move out of ohio. so there i kind of had this internal fight. like, okay, i like this firm, i like the clients i work with, but like, i want to move out of here. and unfortunately, this firm wasn’t built around a remote model where that would even be an option. and then i watched a couple of the newer partners, it’s like, okay, well, they were here for 20 years before they got to buy in, and they’re still paying for their equity. it just didn’t make sense to me at the time. and, you know, i didn’t have the community. i didn’t know about tax twitter, like, i didn’t know anybody, you know. i wasn’t going to conferences, you know. so it’s kind of, you just figure this stuff out on your own, other than the resources you can find, i hadn’t found jason’s youtube channel and all of these resources. so it was just kind of confusing at that time of being like, okay, this, this can’t be the only way to to be able to kind of build your own firm and everything. it just didn’t feel right. that experience was the only way to get there. it felt like to really provide value to clients, it was more about effectiveness. being effective, building better processes and and getting rid of clients that don’t fit within you know your your service offerings that are kind of dragging you back and holding you back. so i think there’s just not at every firm and and experience is important. you know, years of experience, you obviously can’t just come out of school and start preparing, you know, very complex partnership returns or whatever, so that it has its purpose and it needs to be there. and i don’t think that’ll ever go away, but i think it is little heavily weighted at this point when it comes to, you know, somebody that could be an equity partner at a firm or making more of the admin decisions, like, hey, how are we going to run these processes at the firm? like, what’s the best way? how do we best serve our clients and make sure we’re not holding on to clients that are causing bad client service for the other clients. so i think there needs to be a better balance between those two things, of of experience versus effectiveness and and i think that’s something our industry really struggles with, and is probably like 20 years behind on. them, in my opinion. so,
liz farr
yep, that would be my experience, too, you know. and when i started back in the early 2000s it was the normal way of firms to hire a boatload of new people. they would expect, maybe of 20 people they would hire, maybe half would stick around, and maybe one of those original people might make it to partner somewhere, but we don’t have the boatloads of grads coming out of school anymore. so
aaron dickerson
very different, even from when i graduated. you know, i said i’m young and everything, and i think i’ve noticed changes and and i keep in touch with a few of my professors. just had a call with one last week, actually, and it’s just very different even over the past five to 10 years. so,
liz farr
yes, exactly. and now, as you mentioned, you know, a lot of firms are still kind of stuck in the mold of the partner track being the only way to get ahead. but that’s a mistake, i think, and your journey proves otherwise.
aaron dickerson
yeah, yeah. so i ended up moving to austin, you know, my end goal. that was a little over four years ago. when i moved here, my end goal, i knew i wanted to be running my own firm. i never would have imagined that i’d be doing that at this point in time. it definitely happened a lot sooner than i expected, and when i moved i had no idea how i was going to get to that point, right? but i also didn’t know how i was going to get to partner by staying where i was, you know, because that information wasn’t shared with me as a staff member, i think there’s a lot of silos between different levels. you know, at least in the firm i was at, information wasn’t freely shared between management and and staff and vice versa. and so you didn’t really know. hey, how are my billable hours, like, am i being you know, am i profitable? are my clients profitable? profitable? the ones i’m working on? i don’t know. how can i improve my hours? you know? how can, what can i do to increase the efficiency of these engagements? i didn’t know, because i didn’t even know what the efficiency was on those engagements. and so i think it’s very important for for firm owners to, you know, if you have a good staff member, somebody that maybe you would want to take over your firm when you retire. or, you know, maybe bring on, maybe you want a partner. you know, you’re a solo owner. you have some staff. you have, you know, awesome staff member. start bringing them into those conversations early on. it’s a, it serves an amazing you know, you’re just going to get a better a better staff. i think it’s going to make them feel more valued if they’re part of those discussions, management discussions and and you know, if you’re letting clients go every year, like let the staff have some input on some of those things, i think it does a lot more than compensation, more more than a lot of other benefits, that that might be the traditional way to keep staff around. i think just letting them, empowering them to help improve your firm, will reduce your stress as a firm owner, and it will. i think it is a huge retention tool that a lot of people don’t think about, and that’s not just our industry, but i definitely see it as an issue with some of these older firms that haven’t, haven’t modernized, like many of us have. so
liz farr
yeah, and i, i also have found that today’s firms are creating different and unique positions that are not in that old style org chart, yeah, which i think is really refreshing. you know, if somebody had offered to me an option to take on something like process optimization expert or client liaison specialist or onboarding process optimizer, something like that.
aaron dickerson
that’s a really good point, i think about that for. frequently for for various reasons about staffing and and, you know, i’m so low at this point how many staff i have a contractor here and there that i’ll use, but i don’t have any full time staff members, and so that puts a lot on my shoulders. but i’ve always said that i think probably not the first hire, but the most important hire as a smaller firm, as you build out your first few employees, probably like first five to 10 staff members, depending on how large you’re going to grow, is like a vp of operations, someone that you can you can really rely on, to someone that understands public accounting. isn’t necessarily an accountant or a cpa, but they understand the client service side of things, and they can build those processes of onboarding and like making sure that clients are getting good service levels, things aren’t slipping through the cracks. they can, they can evaluate software and help build out processes and and like karbon or canopy those kind of things. it really helps, i think, takes a lot off of the partner shoulders so that they can focus on client service versus having to deal with all of this background admin stuff that maybe a regular, like front end receptionist or admin person might not be capable of doing so
liz farr
that’s a good point. some of my other guests have said that their first hire was a really good admin person, but your point that you really need somebody who can really not just do the admin, type things, you know, filing things, answering the phone, routing messages, but somebody who can really look at your firm in the operations to make it better can be very valuable.
aaron dickerson
definitely, if you’re lucky, you might hire an admin person, and they might grow into that role. you know, just depends on who you hire and what their goals are and what they want to do. you know, another tool that that is helpful, and i see a lot of people talk about this in our industry, is eos, the entrepreneurial operating system you can use an implementer. implementer, read a book, but when i first moved to austin, i worked in real estate, private equity, and that’s how i got familiar with that. and it really seemed to help us kind of figure out as a startup, how, okay, how do we orient our team? how do we get everybody in the right seat to make sure that they’re doing they’re doing what they can to help the organization. so, yeah, staffing is is probably my number one concern as a solo firm owner at this point, trying to figure out how to go about that.
liz farr
i can see that, that it’s gotta be challenging and and i’ve heard a lot of really good things about eos from other people that it really gives them a way to crystallize the different roles. you know, when you have, when your form grows, then it’s important to have an implementer and a visionary that who are different people? yeah, because those are very different roles.
aaron dickerson
yeah, it’s a good system, and i think it does fit in our industry. well, don’t be afraid to customize it, though that was one thing i noticed when we were implementing the implementer was like, well, this is how it works and and that was something i didn’t necessarily agree with. it’s like you should freely, you know, change things to where it fits in with your business. but i think it’s a really good starting point. and if, if you’re a firm owner, and you don’t know eos like, please look into it. i think it would be a great way for you to to increase efficiency and and just figure out those next steps, especially if you’re trying togrow
liz farr
absolutely now, you mentioned that you started out at a firm that had been established in the in the 20s, and the first firm that i worked at had started in the in the 60s, and the founder was still there when i started. he was a great guy who’s really a a wonderful mentor and a wonderful person. but how, how are you designing your firm differently from these legacy firms?
aaron dickerson
yeah, that’s a great, great question. and there’s so many things i can point to here. you know, i don’t have an office. that’s one thing. i’m cloud based. you know, i don’t have a lot of the it infrastructure that i remember at our old firm. i’m a mac user. that’s not very common in our industry. no, i think the biggest thing is just not, not doing everything. you know, the firm i was at, we did audits. we did, you know, we pretty much any client that walked in the door we would help, you know, other than just, like, basic 1040s, and stuff and, and that seems to just create a lot of friction. it makes it harder to build processes and, and i’m not perfect when it comes to that. i have a lot of clients on my list still where it’s like, okay, this is not a good fit for me at this point, and i need to figure out how to take care of that. you know, it’s on my list of things to do this year before next tax season. but i think it’s you know whether you want to do a niche or of a certain service, type of client, or if you only want to offer a certain service. i think it’s important to start to do that for various reasons, for your own like stress and and health and and all of that. but also just with the way the industry is going with ai and all of this, i think, to remain competitive and to provide value to clients like you really need to specialize and figure out what you enjoy doing as a firm owner is as an employee, and finding that type of client you want to work with to just make your life easier. so that’s what i’m trying to do. i think i’m i’m doing a fairly good job, but there’s always room for improvement, right?
liz farr
yeah, yeah. now follow up on that on on x, you know, i long for the days of tax twitter. i was part of that also, you know, but it’s kind of, it’s not as wonderful a community on x anymore, but i i saw a post where you laid out your approach to your this most recent tax season. you said, i work when i want. extend what doesn’t get done. so how does that work? how did you make that a reality.
aaron dickerson
the first thing i did was the overall system that made that possible, that mindset possible for me this year was scheduling 1040s brenda cannon talks about this, and she’s kind of the inventor of that process. a lot of firms have started to implement that, and i’m not aware of anyone that’s not had a positive result from that. i’d love to hear from them if that’s the case, but that was really the underlying process that allowed me to have that mindset, and i’m really glad i implemented it, because i didn’t do that just because there, you know, some of the health issues presented them selves this year, and so i didn’t really have a choice some weeks. and that process definitely was a huge part of it, and the other part of it was me just being like, i’ll get to it when i get to it, and if the clients are upset, that’s probably not a client that i’m going to be working with anyways. and so i just tried to communicate with them as best as i could about when their return will be done. prioritize the clients that got their information in, met their deadlines for when their documents were due on that new system and just hope for the best. that’s really what i did. it could have gone better, but everything you know, i was pretty much on track at the end of tax season with how many returns i had filed in prior year. the other thing i did was i had a contractor. so i had, i had somebody, i had a contractor that helped with some stuff. and then i had a part time, basically like an intern who helped me knock out some of my simple 1040s like friends and family, that kind of stuff. so those two things that that scheduling, and specifically, just in case listeners aren’t familiar with that, with brenda’s system, but you schedule when clients have their documents due to you, so then you have control over your workflow. i was using calendly. there’s, you know, there’s different options for how you implement it, but i only made so many slots available, and once they were full, they were full. and, you know, any new client after january 1 was an automatic extension. they they were told up front before, you know, like on the consultation call or whenever i talk to them, but otherwise, you know, it wasn’t really planned at the beginning of tax season, that was what i was going to do. but it worked out that way. luckily, i put some things in in process to allow for that, but it worked out really well, and i definitely going forward will will have the same mindset for sure,
liz farr
excellent. yeah, i keep thinking that i need to have brenda on my podcast to go into great details with that. but and i have talked to other people who’ve implemented kind of versions of that, especially on the review side, where they’ll say, okay, on tuesday, between nine and 10am i’m going to review this tax return. and so that gives the preparer a deadline for when they it needs to be in the partner’s hand, okay? and then it also gives the client an idea for when their return might be ready,
aaron dickerson
right? yeah, i like that idea where you can almost send automatic, you know, depending on what software you have implemented and stuff, but kind of like automatic email updates to clients like your return is in review, and so that way that can reduce some of the emails coming in like, where’s my tax return at? where, you know,
liz farr
yeah, yeah. nicole davis has a pizza tracker for her firm,
aaron dickerson
yeah, yeah. i remember seeing her talk about that,
liz farr
yeah, yeah. now, what are some of the other things that you’re doing differently from the way legacy firms have operated?
aaron dickerson
oh, ah, so, i feel like we’ve touched on a lot of this, but yeah, we’ve definitely no paper like, that’s one thing, the obvious thing. and i think most of us are at that point now, just because, especially after covid, you know, everyone had or whatever. and if you weren’t already on on cloud based or, you know, if you were still using paper, you probably got forced off of that at that time. not taking all of the clients that come in the door is probably the the next one. and i know we talked about that earlier, but it really, really bogs you down, and having a rope like a long client list just results in more emails in your inbox and and that results in worse service for the clients that are are awesome clients. you know, the clients that you love to work with, the ones that pay you well, that don’t complain about your bills, that give you their information when you request it, and keeping those clients around that aren’t doing those things are are just holding you back from being able to get the better clients and from serving them well. and, yeah, otherwise, i think it’s, it’s software based ai. using ai is definitely a huge thing. we’re all talking about that now, and not, not relying on, on the old systems like thompson reuters and and some of that stuff was, was definitely not great. i think avoiding peer review has been a good idea. you know, i kind of miss the the audit work and the review type, financials and everything, but it just doesn’t seem, especially at my point in this process, it just doesn’t seem like a good idea to be subject to that kind of stuff. so just avoiding some of the complexities of some of the services that aren’t necessarily providing value to clients, you know, clients that come along for an audit or review, they don’t really want an audit or review, in most cases, they’re there because they have a lender that’s requiring it or or something like that, you know, or it’s an industry issue, something along those lines. so otherwise, i think it’s a lot of simple, simple stuff. i don’t track time. that’s the other thing, but i haven’t mentioned is tracking time that has its pros and cons. i think, as a solo firm owner, i think it’s easier to say, i’m not going to track time, because you still have them, you still have a pretty good idea of how much time you’re spending on each client, because it’s just you working on them, these bigger firms. you know, as you get staff, five or 10 staff members, it’s probably a lot harder to not do that. billing wise. i wouldn’t bill by the hour, but you know, tracking time might might be beneficial, just from an effectiveness standpoint, especially if you’re trying to decide what clients to keep. you know, if you’re making a lot of internal changes. things, i would say those are the main things. and staying open, that’s the other thing. i like to kind of go with the flow and and see what happens. and if new clients come along and it’s like, okay, i wouldn’t necessarily do that kind of service, or i wouldn’t typically work with that industry, but this seems like a great relationship, or someone that i’d really like to work alongside. i think that’s a good way to make sure you have opportunities still coming along.
liz farr
those are all really good things. now, how does your pricing work? you know, as you move into advisory, are you moving to more of, like, a subscription base, or some kind of monthly billing or, you know, there’s a lot of confusion about what all that means, and everybody’s doing it differently,
aaron dickerson
yeah, yeah. and i’ve definitely messed around, like, try different ways, and i feel like there’s no way is perfect. probably i started, what did i start with? i can’t remember. i’ve never done like, form based pricing, but as of right now, when it comes to tax services for 1040s there’s just a base prep fee. and i i bill that up front every year. so i use ignition clients, you know, get their proposal and, you know, beginning of january, usually. and i’ll usually base the price off of the prior year, from what i know. and then i have, like, a section that says, you know, if there’s something new, i’ll end up billing for that later on, and then i’ll do so that’s like, just the preparation of the return. and then if anybody wants planning, those are monthly packages on on top of the preparation. so i have two different planning packages. the middle one isn’t really a planning package. it’s more of like, if you get a tax notice, i’ll help you respond to it, and i’m not going to bill you for it hourly. if you have quick questions, they can email me those kind of things. and that, i believe, is 75 dollars a month, and then the top package is 175, a month. and we do that’s when we really do the planning. so i usually do two meetings with clients, june ish, and then in the fall, and the all of the clients that do that have a business. so i’m typically a lot of them. i handle the accounting for them. so it makes it a lot easier, but i’ll get there. you know, if they have a spouse that’s w2 will get an updated pay stub, will finish out their bookkeeping through whatever month we have, and kind of do our projection to help them plan for estimate payments and talk about, you know, if they need to make any changes for the current year, so that way they’re aware, give them an idea of what they should expect to owe at the end of the year. that package seems to work fairly well for most clients. i don’t have a ton that go with it. i’d like to increase that, but that’s kind of the purpose of the cfo and controller level stuff, because i think it makes the tax planning easier. i don’t have a planning package for entities, tax only entities, but pricing is pretty similar. i have a minimum and then i just base off of prior year. if they’re a new client, i usually give them a price range, so that way i have some wiggle room, but i bill everybody up front. that is the best thing ever. if you’re not doing that, i highly recommend that you start billing people up front, or at least take a deposit. you know, if you’re not, if you’re billing everything at the end, i you need to make a change. i think, when it comes to those things, deposit at minimum, especially with new clients, because i’m sure everybody’s been burnt at some point. i’ve, i’ve had that as a new firm owner, you know, someone comes along and it just doesn’t work out. the cfo controller stuff, the pricing, i feel like, is a lot easier on, on those services, higher value. i typically won’t take a client for less than $2,000 a month on on that, and it’s, it’s very customizable around what they want, you know, because some clients could have somebody on staff that’s doing accounting, but maybe they just don’t have the full on skill set to do a really robust month end close. or they need help. they want, like, a cash flow, like a 13 week cash flow projection. or they want to do, like, three years of projected financials because they’re growing, or they’re trying to make decisions around headcount and those kind of things. so there’s a lot of custom, customization available in those services. i’m still new in that forefront. so pricing is is a work in process, but it’s typically just a flat monthly fee. it makes it easier on the client and on me, because then, you know, it’s it’s just an easier package, and then you re evaluate every three to six months just to make sure that you’re not losing a ton of money. and it’s working out for the client.
liz farr
perfect, perfect. and now i want to circle back to something you said that you you kind of miss the audit and review work. i do quite a bit of work with alan anderson, who is a consultant to auditors. he’s been in in audit for decades, and so he was an audit partner himself. what he’s been trying to get auditors to do for the last 20 years plus is to take on more of an advisory role, not to make the management decisions, but to give the business owners ideas and insights about the kinds of things that they’re doing. so i would say that with your cfo and controller type work, you are already doing the really cool stuff that he wants auditors to start doing.
aaron dickerson
yeah, it’s, this is an interesting topic, because i feel like as an external auditor, i mean, you have independence issues, obviously, so you have to be yes, what you’re advising clients on, which can be very difficult when you’re working with small entities. and small clients because they don’t have anybody else to go to, you know, they’re a lot of times you’re preparing the tax return too, and then, like, who? like, you’re their accountant, you know? so they, they come to you for everything, something i’m i really miss. i don’t necessarily miss the external audits, the financial statement audits, because of all of the red tape, not only peer review, just the checklists and all that stuff and underlying requirements. what i did miss and what has really served as probably the best experience for me to prepare for these cfo and controller services i’m offering is outsourced internal audit services. you you get rid of the independence issues in most cases, because, you know, like i was doing that for financial institutions. so we would, we would go in and basically help them prepare for regulatory exams. so we’re helping them write policies or procedures, coming in every year, auditing those policies and procedures and helping them find issues before the regulators found them, you know, helping them prepare. and it just felt like the client was getting value from us and we can serve in an advisory capacity. we didn’t have that gray area of like, okay, can’t really help you with this, because we’re signing off on your financial statements, or whatever it is. so if you haven’t, as a firm owner, if you’re like this kind of work, and you’re kind of in the same boat as me, where you don’t necessarily want to be doing external audits, maybe consider an internal audit role helping you know, if you have a this is probably good for, you know, five to $20 million business, probably larger as well, but that’s where you’re really going to start working with somebody and helping them build out their accounting departments, right? and you can even go outside of accounting like we would do, we would do vsa related stuff. we would do it related stuff. you know, you don’t necessarily have to be doing only accounting audits, but that might be a way that people can can break into that area and serve in that advisory capacity and a non traditional service that most firms aren’t offering to their clients.
liz farr
that is really a good idea. i hadn’t really thought about that, you know, i i had a mentor back when i was in college working on my degree, who was a long time internal auditor.
aaron dickerson
yeah? so, yeah, when you normally hear about internal audit, you think of staff within an organization, not an outsourced organization, but that’s a whole i mean, yeah, you can a lot of these smaller entities like they don’t have the budget to hire an internal auditor, and they don’t necessarily have the work for it either, right? they don’t need a full time person constantly doing that kind of work. but you could go in quarterly, once a year or whatever, and just do some checks. help, help increase some efficiencies for clients and and they’re going to, they’re going to value that a lot. it’s going to be way more valuable than an external financial statement audit in most cases, i think
liz farr
exactly now i know that you’re just a firm of one with one or two contractors, but like me, you probably had some really terrible leaders that you worked with. so you probably have some good ideas of what bad leadership is like, and you probably also have some models of really good leaders. so what advice do you have based on your experiences? what advice do you have for people who want to be better as leaders?
aaron dickerson
yeah, this is a great topic. i think the number one thing that i’ve noticed is just communicating with your team, if they, you know, if you’re having, let’s say you have a management or partner meeting once a week, and you’re going into a conference room and you’re shutting the door and you’re coming out, and they’re not hearing about anything from those discussions. they’re going to wonder, what’s being talked about. you know, they’re going to wonder, okay, well, are things changing? like, what’s going on? they want to be involved in most cases, and so just over, communicate with your team, bring them in on those meetings sometimes, you know, do a quarterly all staff meeting and provide updates, let them know their place in your organization. if they don’t know where they stand or what role they have, they are just going to do what they’re told and not bring ideas to you, or maybe go out of their way to improve processes within their role, and they might start looking elsewhere as well. so i think just communication, and i think it’s easy to not intentionally do that, to not communicate things, because we’re all so busy. so just stop and think and be like, what? what are we doing as a management team, or as leaders that maybe our staff don’t know about, that we should share with them, just for a better better team morale. but also, i think you’ll find that doing that will help your firm grow or improve, because now they are going to have ideas to bring to you in different perspectives that you might not have even considered.
liz farr
that’s really good advice. i especially like the the idea of communication, because so often what was going on in the partnership group was this, this opaque thing that none of us really knew about. we we would sometimes get little hints that maybe things weren’t great, or things were going great, but that was really all that we got,
aaron dickerson
right? yeah. and then your staff are wondering if they have little hints or ideas of what’s going on. they’re just, you know, they’re going to come up with ideas of what that is, and you’re better off to just tell them, even if it’s a negative thing, even if it’s like, hey, like, we’re having a tough few months, whether it’s, you know, financially or, you know, just workload, like, maybe everyone’s behind on stuff, like, you just be open with them. and i think that that’s just going to result in better outcomes for the entire team, both leadership and the staff.
liz farr
exactly. now, many of us learn from making mistakes. unfortunately, that’s seems to be a very effective way to learn lessons. so what would you say is the most valuable mistake you’ve made and and that’s valuable in terms of the learning?
aaron dickerson
i have two examples here. i think most of us will relate to the first one for sure, keeping clients around for too long. specifically, as a new farm owner, you know, i had one client that was pretty large, a large portion of revenue. and when you’re getting started, you don’t necessarily want to get rid of them, because you need the money, right? you need the revenue. but what you find is the new clients come along anyways, especially in the environment we’re in today, the demand is out there for our services. so you know, to new firm owners, especially, you can find new clients, and don’t keep clients around too long, especially the large ones, because they take up a ton of your time, and that takes away from time for you to find those new clients, to replace them, right? and sometimes it’s hard to get rid of them. yeah, unfortunately, i still have the example talking about right now, right? so it, although i’ve identified it, it still hasn’t been resolved, you know, and that’s something i need to take care of. but the other one is, if you, if you’re thinking about going out and starting your own firm, you’re already thinking about it, especially if you already have some clients on the side. a lot of people get started that way. they they have a full time job, and then they are taking clients on the side. that can be very difficult, because now you’re you’re managing both a full time role and you’re trying to take care of your clients, it can be very, very hard. i think i waited too long to get to quit, to leave my job and and take that leap of faith, i guess. and i think it’s there’s a lot of options, you know, if you’re worried about money and everything. like, there’s fine, there’s funding options. like, you can figure it out. you can find new clients, project your financials out, if you’re not sure, you know, if you’re in that boat, build your emergency fund, obviously. and i think you’ll find that, you know, once you get a few years into firm ownership. if you’re in those shoes, you’ll look back and you will say, wow, why didn’t i do this sooner? like i should have left and did this, you know, a year or two before, because then now i would be a year or two further down the road into firm ownership and and running my own life and hopefully having a better work life balance as well.
liz farr
yes, it’s that, that elusive work life balance that we all are seeking. yeah, yeah, yeah. now i want you to pull out your best projection software here and tell me where you see the accounting industry in 10 years.
aaron dickerson
oh, wow. this is a this is a tough one with with ai and all of that, i actually tweeted or replied to someone’s tweet couple of days ago about this. i think a lot of people think that white collar jobs are going to be displaced more than blue collar and service workers because of ai and tech tech advancements. i don’t necessarily believe that. i think it’s going to be the other way around, not that we’re not going to lose white collar jobs. i just think a lot of the changes that we’re going to see, especially in our industry, because we’re already dealing with a pipeline shortage and those kind of things, is just changes in the way roles work within firms or within, you know, clients, accounting departments. i think, if you this, is a lot of the reason why i’m going into the cfo controller side of things at this point. i think, you know, five years from now, those are going to be the services that are in demand, not tax compliance. clients are still going to need that, but i think that’s just going to be like a secondary service, and most clients will be out looking for advisory type services from our industry. so i think if you’re, you’re worried, if you’re, if you’re a firm owner and you’re worried, what am i going to do five or 10 years from now? or if you’re saying, hey, my plan, you know, i was going to retire in 10 years, and my plan was to sell my firm. and now i don’t know if it’s going to be worth anything 10 years from now, because of ai, you should start making changes. and i think the changes to make are what? what value are you providing your current clients? is it just compliance? are you just talking to them once a year and filing a tax return for them? is it basic, 1040s are they going to be able to go, you know, use into it, turbo tax, or whatever, to get that done? or are you talking with them throughout the year? specifically, businesses are if they have a problem, whether it’s accounting or not, who are they calling first? if it’s not you do what you need to do to position yourself or your firm to be that person that they’re calling, i don’t think, i don’t think ai is going to advance as fast as a lot of people do. my opinion, i think it’s going to, number one, the advancements will be a bottleneck. number two, power the power gradient, everything i think is going to cause issues. and specifically. our industry, i think clients are going to be reluctant to just trust ai with answers when it comes to their financial well being. you know, both in tax compliance, but i think more when it comes to relying on their financial data to make management decisions. so i think things are going to change, and you should be preparing for it, for sure, but you shouldn’t over prepare as well. i think nobody knows what’s going to happen in 10 years. what i think is going to happen is probably not going to be what happens, you know. so i think also being flexible and prepared to make sudden changes, if you need to, is very important as well.
liz farr
amen to the ability to make sudden changes. you know, the pandemic proved to us that accountants can indeed change quickly if they have to. yeah,
aaron dickerson
yeah. i think that that is that’s a very important the pandemic is a good, good way to look back. and if you’re running a firm at that time, look back and evaluate how you reacted during that time. you know, i know i was in ohio. i know accountants were accepted. it was an exception. as far as, like, working in person, we actually never went remote when i was there. and i don’t know if every state was like that. in ohio, accountants, you know, because of payroll and stuff like, it was considered, you know, important service, and we were able to continue to go to client offices and everything. and what if that wasn’t the case? i think the firm i was at would have been. it would have been an issue, you know, because we were still passing around paper files. how do you get access to the data you need to prepare a client’s tax return if they’re sitting on a desk at the office and you can’t get into the office, you know, it’s so take that if you ran a firm at that time, look back at that time from the pandemic, and then take those lessons and apply them to ai over the next 10 years and in technology in general, and be like, can we react best enough to do this? you know, make changes. you know, next year, let’s say a software comes out that can prepare a tax return, like a complex tax return, 1040 and can do it for $500 like, what are you going to do? if that’s the case, do you have another service you can offer your clients, or all your clients just going to leave?
liz farr
yeah, it’s true. you know, in many other countries, most people don’t even need to file a tax return. yeah, if their only income is w2s or investments, then it’s taxed at the source. and many countries don’t have the same credits and deductions and complications that we do
aaron dickerson
that’s a really good point legislative changes, or i think we take for granted the system that we’ve built our profession around, right? and i think this past presidential election is pretty good example of that. you know, getting rid of the internal revenue service and everything like, if, if that happened and income taxes went away, like, what would you do as a firm owner? what service would you offer to your clients, your current clients, or what new clients would you need to get, you know, to replace your revenue to continue on and and do what you want to do and need to do, you know, to survive and and make money.
liz farr
definitely, well, i think that’s it’s a good way to wrap up our conversation. i mean looking forward and being optimistic, thinking about the future and how we can’t know what it really will be, but we all we can really say is that it will be different from what we think it will be. right?
aaron dickerson
yeah, that really is the only certainty with all of this.
liz farr
exactly. well. now if listeners want to connect with you, what is the best way to find you?
aaron dickerson
so i’m on twitter. i’m on like, bluesky as well. i’m just not logging in there as much. so if you, if you have twitter, find me there. my handle is aaron atxcpa. on twitter, you can message me. you can also go to my website, dickerson.cpa, my email and my phone number are on there. otherwise, feel free to send me an email. it’s aaron, aa aaron at dickerson.cpa.