Top business growth tips: how these accountants went from sole to sizable

Content Summary

Helen Hawkes

4 Sep 2024

5 min read time

Small Business

Steps arrows pointing up business growth

This article was current at the time of publication.

How do you grow a sole operator into a practice with 11 staff?

For Kerri Selby FCPA, founder of KDC Accounting, getting systems right early on was an important factor: the client relationship management system she set up when she founded the practice has been essential to growth.

“Data we’ve captured about clients’ businesses and needs has allowed us to offer a holistic service, not just the tax return they are asking us to do. That, in turn, has attracted clients by referral,” she says.

Strong relationships are also a factor in the firm’s success.

They range from the affinity over time that she’s built with clients – who range from tradespeople to health, retail and hospitality workers – to the diverse team she’s built, along with a decade-long relationship with a business coach.

“A good business coach makes you money because they stop your ego getting in the way,” she says.

“Staff who are the right fit are crucial to success and growth; we talk about culture every step of the way including communication, accountability and leadership. You raise your staff up with you,” she says.

Gisborne-based CPA Gareth Yaxley, a member of the New Zealand Public Practice Committee, also deployed a business coach to help rebrand the business.

He has organically grown his firm Traktion over six years. It now comprises eight staff and 80 clients, mainly in civil construction.

“We needed a stronger market presence, plus we had some pretty big goals and wanted to keep ourselves accountable,” he says.

Yaxley and his team now have a five-year plan that covers what resources will be needed to grow and how the service offering is likely to change.

He is also a true believer in the coaching concept. Along with the usual accounting services, the firm now offers business coaching.

Stuart Coulthard co-founded Melbourne’s Rubiix Business Accountants with his business partner. Like Yaxley, he grew his practice organically. It now comprises 16 people.

He cites honing his promotion skills, via a networking group, as a fruitful business building exercise.

“[It] gave me the opportunity to talk about who I was and what the firm did, and referrals came along the way,” he says.

“I also spent a lot of time, and still do, talking to other business owners about what they are doing.”

How to embrace change

As fee-based services are eroded, accountants need to consider that business is either going to contract or income must be replaced with something else, notes John Zerella FCPA, president of the CPA Australia’s South Australian Divisional Council, who heads a firm with 45 staff.

“In the early 1990s, the preparation of individual tax returns was very lucrative,” says Zerella, who started the business with his wife in 1995.

Times have changed, and so has his business. From solely doing tax returns to financial planning, broking and bookkeeping, he has grown his business, AFM Services, by the acquisition of no less than eight firms.

“The first business I bought was from a sole practitioner who didn’t want to deal with the changes coming in with GST,” he says. “We still have many of their large clients on our books today.”

While Coulthard believes compliance work will always be available because of changing rules and complex transactions, introducing advisory services has allowed his firm to increase fees by 30 per cent in the last three years.

“It’s about being able to talk to clients about the future as opposed to looking at the past. It’s more rewarding work.”

Yaxley took a strategic approach to expanding into advisory. “We identified a gap in the market for advisory services and small businesses support. To successfully monetise that, we made a list of all the businesses we thought could use our services.”

He created a new business sales plan, which included fees the firm needed to achieve to support those new clients.

“[Then] we started marketing. That included hanging out in the places where potential clients were, such as industry and trade events, and being part of sponsorships around town. We also ran free business seminars. More recently, we’ve got into digital marketing,” says Yaxley.

Ask your clients first

While expanding an accounting business using advisory services is a sound idea, accountants need to first listen to what clients want help with, says Lynda Steffens FCPA, founder, The Small Business Project.

As an advisor to accounting firms, she believes engaging more effectively with existing clients is the best way to broaden a firm’s services.

“Accountants know how to deliver the services, for the most part, but not how to get the client to agree,” she says. “In reality most have an existing client base they can start having deeper conversations with.”

Steffens teaches clients how to put some process and structure around that communication and how to package and price services. “Rather than thinking they can do it on their own, most accountants would benefit from getting some help, especially with branding,” she says.

What not to do

Building a sizable firm is not always smooth sailing, notes Canberra-based Selby. “There are steps I wish I’d done better, such as having firm procedures written before I put on my first staff member.

“Now we have policies, procedures, duty statements and commitment statements and my team will bring something to me if it isn’t working and say we need to revise it – we’ve levelled up.”

Coulthard says his mistakes include thinking the firm could do SEO marketing itself and spending money in the wrong advertising media. “These days we structure growth actions; we don’t jump at the shiniest thing.”

Yaxley cites not anticipating how quickly the firm could grow as one of the big problems the firm has had.

“Not hiring staff early enough so we had enough capacity in the business to allow for growth or not ‘niching’ fast enough would be two,” he says.

“Accountants looking to expand their client base need to find a niche and target that. But don’t limit yourself [to your local area]. Remember that we live in an increasingly digital world where a small fish can swim in a big pond.”