If You're Building an Accounting Firm in 2025, You Need to Do This ⏰

Summary

In a rapidly changing world, especially with AI transforming industries, accounting firms are not exempt. Jason shares insights from numerous firm owners to highlight vital strategies for building a thriving accounting firm in 2025. These strategies involve utilizing AI, moving upmarket, developing peer networks, reinventing hiring processes, and systematizing operations. He encourages firms to escape the low-end market by charging premium prices and capturing clients' willingness to pay. Jason also emphasizes the importance of peer networks for advice, offshore hiring for cost-effective staffing, and implementing systematic processes for efficiency.

Highlights

• AI will initially impact the lowest-paying clients, but it offers firms a chance to serve higher-end markets. 🚀
• Firms must avoid charging too low, as that attracts less valuable clients. 💸
• Peer networks can provide invaluable insights and shortcuts for firm management. 📚
• Offshore hiring can offer high-quality talent at a lower cost, breaking traditional assumptions. 🌏
• Systematization helps streamline services, making firms more efficient and scalable. 🛠️

Key Takeaways

• Embrace AI: Firms should harness AI technology to serve more complex clients and enhance their competitive edge. 🤖
• Move Upmarket: Transition to higher-paying clients by increasing service value and pricing. 💰
• Peer Networking: Develop diverse peer relationships for advice and client referrals. 🤝
• Revamp Hiring: Consider offshore hiring to find skilled, cost-effective staff. 🌍
• Systematize Operations: Build repeatable processes to enhance efficiency and consistency. ⚙️

Overview

Accounting firms in 2025 face unique challenges and opportunities, especially with the rise of AI. Jason from 'Jason On Firms' advises firms to lean into AI. By doing so, they can not only survive the competitive landscape but actually thrive. Positioning your firm to cater to more complex clients is crucial, especially as AI begins to dominate simpler, commoditized services.

Building effective peer networks is also emphasized. Jason recounts his experience of gaining insight from other firm owners, which helped him streamline his firm's operations. This kind of networking can provide the support and knowledge sharing necessary to progress and innovate within the field.

Finally, Jason describes the importance of hiring and operational systems. By exploring offshore hiring, firms can reduce costs while maintaining quality. Meanwhile, implementing systematic processes allows for greater consistency and efficiency, saving time and resources. These steps are essential for any firm aiming to lead in 2025's dynamic market.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 01:00: Introduction and AI's Impact on Accounting The chapter discusses the anticipated impact of AI on accounting firms, highlighting that AI might affect lower-paying clients rather than the aspects traditionally assumed. It is suggested that AI will influence staffing and internal systems of accounting firms. The chapter aims to guide firms on priorities to focus on by 2025 through insights gained from real firm owners. It promises to outline five key strategies that will enhance profitability, with the first two strategies offering immediate financial benefits.
• 01:00 - 04:30: Importance of Moving Upmarket and Pricing Strategies This chapter begins with an introduction to the speaker, Jason, who previously managed a 40-person accounting firm and now helps accountants improve their practices globally. The focus of the discussion is on the profound impact AI is having on the accounting profession. Jason argues that it's imperative for accounting firms to embrace AI rapidly, as those who have already integrated AI are advancing more quickly than those addressing outdated issues. He hints at the benefits of this advancement as leading to a more profitable enterprise and emphasizes the urgency of adapting to these technological changes.
• 04:30 - 07:00: Introducing Three-Tier Proposals The chapter titled 'Introducing Three-Tier Proposals' discusses the impact of AI on the industry, emphasizing the importance of adopting productized solutions. It highlights that AI is enhancing the capabilities of companies serving the lower market segments, pushing traditional firms to focus on moving up-market in response. The chapter uses bookkeeping as an example to illustrate how AI affects service pricing and client engagement.
• 07:00 - 10:30: Building a Peer Network This chapter discusses the potential impacts of AI integration into productized solutions. Initially, these solutions are priced around $300, but AI incorporation might change this dynamic. As AI enables more complex client services, companies might either increase prices to reflect the enhanced capabilities, potentially starting at $500 a month, or improve service quality. This could lead to either a price increase or a deflationary effect on the prices of competing solutions.
• 10:30 - 13:00: Reinventing the Hiring Funnel The chapter 'Reinventing the Hiring Funnel' discusses the challenges and strategies in modernizing and enhancing hiring processes. It highlights the necessity of altering pricing models and moving upmarket, meaning serving higher-value clients with specialized services. This adjustment helps entities differentiate from productized solutions that focus on standardized offerings. The emphasis is on reevaluating pricing to not just align with traditional models but to surpass them, securing a more competitive and tailored market placement.
• 13:00 - 16:00: Choosing Offshore Hiring The importance of pricing is emphasized, highlighting that clients' perceived value is strongly tied to what they pay. A major point is that charging similar prices to productized solutions can lead to clients undervaluing personalized services. The chapter warns about the trap of hesitating to raise prices due to fear, which restricts finding premium clients. Low pricing typically attracts budget clients, while premium clients may be deterred by overly low rates.
• 16:00 - 20:00: Systematizing Your Processes In the chapter 'Systematizing Your Processes,' the focus is on improving how to effectively capture a client's willingness to pay despite initial challenges. The author reflects on their struggle with clients frequently complaining about prices and the difficulties faced even when discounts were offered. These challenges gave rise to a cautious approach to pricing adjustments due to the fear of backlash from price-sensitive clients. The chapter likely discusses strategies to overcome these obstacles and systematize processes to better align pricing with client value recognition.

If You're Building an Accounting Firm in 2025, You Need to Do This ⏰ Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30 people like to say how AI is coming for accounting firms and and that may be true but not in the way that you would think It'll come for our lowest paying clients It'll change how we staff our firms even how we build our internal systems So in this video I'm breaking down the most important things to prioritize in your firm in 2025 based on hundreds of conversations with real firm owners so you can skip the guesswork and build a firm that will thrive regardless of what happens with AI I'm going to cover five important points and the first two like they will immediately add to your bottom line Genuinely 5 minutes
• 00:30 - 01:00 from now you're going to see a path to a more profitable firm Okay My name is Jason I last ran a 40 person accounting firm Now I help accountants around the world run killer firms We're jumping straight into the AI boogeyman discussion because as I mentioned AI will change the accounting profession but not in the way that most people think Firms today we should absolutely be leaning hard into AI In fact I would argue today's AI first firms are already pulling ahead of those firms who are still stuck on issues we frankly should have resolved by now How to train the
• 01:00 - 01:30 team up on AI how to navigate security concerns But arguably the biggest way AI could reshape our profession in the short term is productized solutions The company serving the bottom of the market getting much more powerful with AI which is what makes it imperative for traditional firms to get serious about moving up market Because in an aggressive AI timeline AI comes for the bottom of the market first Let's look at bookkeeping for an example and say I serve a range of clients who pay me anywhere from $500 to $1,000 per month
• 01:30 - 02:00 Right now that's probably all right because most productized solutions start around 300 bucks But when these productized solutions lean into AI and you better believe they're already doing this it's bound to have one of two effects productized solutions will either charge more because they can serve more complex clients or will have a deflationary effect on everyone else's prices So these productized services their prices it may end up starting at $500 a month instead of 300 or these services will actually get a lot better so that on simple engagements it'll
• 02:00 - 02:30 become harder for me to justify the prices I once did Now that may be hard to believe I probably lean to the former timeline more than I do the latter But importantly the right thing to do today for either one of those timelines is the same It's to move up market to serve clients that those productized services can serve well And getting up market at all starts with better pricing Because the only way to guarantee you aren't up market above what productiz solutions are selling is to look just like them and charge the same prices So much of
• 02:30 - 03:00 how clients value something simply comes from what they pay for it And as simplistic as this sounds the way that you will guarantee someone doesn't value what you do over what productiz solutions do is if you charge the same thing Now obviously there's 100 levers to pull to make that more premium service worthwhile or not But the most common trap is we get paralyzed afraid to ever charge more and we never find that premium client as a result Cheap prices attract cheap clients And when a premium client sees rock bottom pricing
• 03:00 - 03:30 they're going to assume rock bottom delivery So where do we start how can we begin to more effectively capture a client's willingness to pay i can tell you how I struggled with this and you can you can see if it resonates I always had clients complaining about price There was never a day when there wasn't a cheapkate in our midst And even when I would give these people discounts they would still complain As a result whenever I considered increasing prices my mind immediately went to these people I thought about how they would be beside themselves and make me feel as though
• 03:30 - 04:00 they were being hard done by I would fixate on the people unwilling to pay more not recognizing that I also had clients who would happily pay more My CN clients were stopping me from optimizing my firm to attract more A and B clients Sound familiar ever been there get a get a little tummy tingle there Here's the thing is every client has a different willingness to pay And the easiest way to capture that willingness is to introduce three tier proposals This looks like offering clients the bronze silver or gold package But even within
• 04:00 - 04:30 this framework 80% of firms still get this wrong because the core opportunity is to let your cheapkates self- select and the folks happy to pay more pay more It is truly a immediate boost in revenue And equally important your clients just decided for you who the cheapkates are and who they aren't which may actually be the same thing as who's still on the client list in 2 years and who isn't This self- selection actually becomes a guide for who you want to work with in the future But the the trap here and this is what most people get wrong is to do more on the silver or the gold plan
• 04:30 - 05:00 when what you really want to do is better So for example let's say the gold tier costs 3x the bronze tier Most firms will feel pressure then to do three times the work of the bronze Don't do that That's more That's not better An airline for example will charge three to sixx as much for first and business class seats but only spend one and a half to 2x on like delivering the service for those people that they do the plebs the normies So if your bronze level service is the minimum uh filing
• 05:00 - 05:30 the tax return closing the books each month then silver doesn't have to look like comprehensive tax planning or closing the books by the fifth of the month It's uh closing the books while wearing a fancy hat or being more responsive You can do comprehensive tax planning but there's also a bronze version of that versus a gold version that for you is much much more profitable I'll put a whole bunch of ideas on screen here for how you can make something feel premium This will probably seem really silly to you especially as most accountants are very
• 05:30 - 06:00 practical people who don't spend on things that may feel trivial But the fact is people pay for exclusivity for the fasttrack for the premium offering especially entrepreneurs who who want to feel like they're a cut above the rest right all we're doing here is we are letting people pay more if they want to And these first two items that we've covered charging more to escape the bottom of the market and capturing willingness to pay Don't think oh Janice Janice we should do this in year end renewals Don't do that That's a trap consider is there actually a version of
• 06:00 - 06:30 this that we could we could do now that we could do by the end of the month because these changes like they add money to the bottom line as soon as you do them Okay these next two are the biggest operational blockers to most firms and nailing this will genuinely shave years off of your journey Next we need to talk about investing in your Peter network I am not a network guy In fact the only accounts who I tell to go to local networking events are those who want to work with realtors But my firm running journey took a huge turn in 2018 when I went to my first accounting conference And I sat down at breakfast
• 06:30 - 07:00 the first day with a table of three other firm owners And over the next 45 minutes realized that every question I had ever had about how to run a better firm was better answered by my peers who are doing the same thing than any thought leader or or software company And I I get the irony of that as I say this But all the answers you're looking for someone else out there they've already tried the things you're thinking about doing And rather than guessing what you should do next the goal should be to go out and find the person who's already done it that can give you the
• 07:00 - 07:30 shortcut I'm so bullish on this In fact like the moment I realized this in my career was the biggest turning point We've talked on the podcast about a a structured approach to how you build this peer network I'll give you the short version here These are the eight types of peer relationships firm owners need to develop a tactical peer group Not just one person but a diversity of perspectives on the day-to-day stuff from people who run firms just like you A group for each of your core tools my practice management system the tax software The day that I was able to stop
• 07:30 - 08:00 relying on what salespeople told me about software and instead could rely on real people at real firms people actively using those tools Uh that was let's just say we we started using software a little bit better Next one friends who are a step ahead the people who help you visualize what you're trying to become And actually equally important friends who are a step behind This is immensely fulfilling Being able to help others in the profession who are currently where you were a few years ago Here's one people don't think about much Friends who can hand down clients the
• 08:00 - 08:30 bigger fish who are cutting clients that you'd be happy to have And if they had a solid referral partner in you they would send you loads of work for the same reason that you need this friends you can hand clients down to because those clients you've been hanging on to too long it's much easier to pass them off when you have the right home for them Here's a biggie a connection within your specialization that is the type of client that you're trying to serve Last a couple friends for personal support because running a firm man like it's a lot These have been the most important
• 08:30 - 09:00 relationships that I've developed and I'm so bullish on the value of your peer network that it's actually kind of what I've devoted my life to now I run a peer networking community for small firms that tries to give you a bunch of shortcuts to build these relationships It's called Realize I'll link it down in the pinned comment What a shill Look at this guy Okay last two points How to reinvent your hiring funnel since this is the number one blocker for most firms finding the right team members Now we'll talk about how to systematize the stuff you do So most of us we are uh severely
• 09:00 - 09:30 blocked on hiring We're perpetually looking for that that senior who's a unicorn and if we could just find that next person man we'd be off to the races until we need the next one or or somebody leaves or we're blocked on change management and you want to hold your team accountable but uh you you can't because you have no leverage and if they leave you'd be absolutely hosed I have uh yeah I've been there I have an entire closet full of those t-shirts They've got all the leverage because you don't have a sustainable way to find new staff A few things I challenge you on here First consider what makes your firm
• 09:30 - 10:00 a great place to work And if it isn't something you can put on a careers page or that you can describe in 15 seconds or less then you haven't nailed the pitch yet It's not enough to be an accounting firm And just like it's very hard to build a a firm that's great for any type of client it's near impossible to create a juicy proposition that will appeal to every potential hire Because this this whole like just being a great place to work we're nicer than everybody else You'll see once you come work for us Even if that is completely true
• 10:00 - 10:30 nobody knows that until they start working with you So they'll only agree to start work with you based on the info that they can gather externally And and this is like uh so many other things in entrepreneurship where when you're stuck and I spent probably 10 years stuck on hiring to get unstuck requires breaking some assumption that we hold today That might be having the courage to be opinionated for the first time Not being afraid to say who you're great for and who you're not great for And maybe having to eat the cost of a recruiter
• 10:30 - 11:00 for the first time I don't like paying that ransom any more than you do But consider the cost of not finding the right person There's a reason that recruiters exist Or I'll actually tell you the biggest thing that I did here You look seriously at offshore hiring Oh here we go Okay The last four accounts that I hired they were in the Philippines and they were fantastic True story Uh zero chance I would ever go four for four with onore hires Maybe I just got lucky But it completely changed how we approached staffing in our firm
• 11:00 - 11:30 And this was an 80year-old tax firm You better believe we went into that with all the fears and ignorance you would expect What about security what about disclosures but what opened my mind was I had a couple friends who ran killer firms I looked up to them and eventually learned they did a ton of offshore hiring And so the assumptions that I had up to that point there was no way to like resolve them with what I was seeing in the real world And it forced me to change my perspective and and it opened us up We just started learning opened our minds And I'd encourage you to do
• 11:30 - 12:00 the same thing because patriotism patriotism is great but it's not a business strategy And if there's somebody on the other side of the planet that will do that work at half the cost you got to have a really strong answer in 2025 to not offshore hire Last we're going to talk about systems So so important But first if you need a partner that'll make offshore hiring really easy for you what team that's the Jason Daily House fan [Music]
• 12:00 - 12:30 Okay consider this video sponsor [Music] It's team up Except for team up They make it easy Easy easy easy easy easy squeezy Listen okay we partner with TeamUp because they'll help you directly hire really talented accountants in the Philippines I know a bunch of firms who have happily used TeamUp and now continue to return to TeamUp each time they need to make a hire It's why I'm happy to promote what
• 12:30 - 13:00 they do And unlike most offshore staffing groups you're not paying a mailman each month You just hire people and you pay those people directly no different to the rest of your team We're the best Give team up a call and we'll do the rest Great accountant We'll find them for you Watch more of Jason's videos That's what you'll do [Music]
• 13:00 - 13:30 You guys you're very kind Like I said I know a lot of firms who are very happy with Team Up and they actually just released a free salary guide that's really good We'll answer like all the questions you could potentially have about doing this and I'll link that down in the video description Okay last point and everything you just heard is is honestly kind of table stakes compared
• 13:30 - 14:00 to this is that most firms still haven't systematized and so we're operating at like half the output that we could be simply because we don't have repeatable processes Well every client is different and that is true but building systems is about taking the 80% or 50% or even 20% of that type of engagement that's the same every time and putting it on rails Let me tell you what I did in my firm and this is a true story Step one is to get all your peeps into a room and put on a board all the different things that
• 14:00 - 14:30 you do for people And it is going to be a mess a big hot mess But the good news is this is this is the worst that it will ever be So you put all that up on a board and you look to see what they have in common And those common threads are what you begin to build your systems around Maybe that's simply how you gather info We take a bite-sized part of the entire process and we put that on rails We deskill it in the process This means we're we're saving the time of your most scarce resource your bigrained technical people We start small we get
• 14:30 - 15:00 some wins pull some admin folks into things that were once technical parts of the process and then we keep going And a funny thing happens as soon as you have a system even if it's a big old sloppy one where clients are still doing things differently a funny thing happens is once your teams agreed upon the basic framework for those systems for the first time your engagements start trending toward being more similar than they are different because the natural state of your engagements is they will grow more different over time that is just like a force of professional
• 15:00 - 15:30 services nature because uh your client Mike doesn't want to have to make the simple hire contributions and Janice made the mistake of picking up those tax forms in person last year Your engagements on their own they will get more different over time until you have a system Even if it's just a loosey goosey one now your team has a language to propose to the client hey let's actually do this instead the next time the conversation of doing something off the wall comes up they're like "Yeah no we've actually got a preferred way to do this Let's let's go down this path." And your client's usually like "Fine." But
• 15:30 - 16:00 until that exists your team doesn't have anything to tell them And once you have that the engagements they start getting more similar for the first time And you can start systematizing things just a little bit more I've actually got a whole detailed process of how your firm can do this It's literally the most liked video that I've ever made I spent an entire week on a free template that'll make this way easier for you to do the same process I followed in my firm And I'm going to show you how to do that right up here Here it is