Ep. 8 | Subscribing to A Better Firm
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John Tripolsky:Welcome back to the mister r show presented and hosted by the monthly recurring revenue institute. On today's episode, we're gonna take a dive and a deep look into what it means to subscribe to a better firm. So without going into too much detail on this as well, you can read a little bit in the show notes. Even if I had to pick another person that discusses with us, couldn't pick a better one than Chris. I've actually sat in plenty of meetings, presentations, etcetera, you name it, with him and his team in their private practice dating back I mean, probably almost ten years ago, they started to implement this.
John Tripolsky:So really excited for this conversation. I am almost a % positive you will take some very valuable information from this discussion as Chris really walks us through some of the challenges they had in their private practice, his reasoning for really updating and modifying and modernizing the way that they run their practice, the way that they bill their clients. You'll hear all about that including the eight steps that he has identified to actually implement that within your practice if you so choose. So let's stop wasting time. Let's jump into it.
John Tripolsky:Grab the pen. Grab the paper. Let's go. Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the Mr. R Show.
John Tripolsky:That's right. You heard it. Your favorite podcast. We know it is. Don't lie to us.
John Tripolsky:We are here on a great topic. It may seem familiar to some people. I know you've heard a little bit about it here just briefly in the intro, but we pride him away from the desk, away from meetings, away from presentations, conferences, airplane rides, Uber rides. We actually pulled on, Chris Pacuro with us today, founder and educator here with us at the Monthly Recurring Revenue Institute. How's it going, man?
John Tripolsky:How are you?
Chris Picciurro:Things are great, John. Good to see you again. I'm very excited about this topic. This one, I'm extremely passionate about. And, actually, this presentation rather, what we're gonna talk about today, the first time I ever presented on this was a few years ago.
Chris Picciurro:And although we've been operating in on a subscription based model, on our private CPA firm for almost ten years, it was about a few years ago where I was challenged by, or, you know, asked by an organization to present how we're doing what we're doing to to their user base, and excuse me. And I forced us to put this presentation together to for me to really dive deep into how I got to where we were at in the subscription model. And then, really after that, I thought, gosh, we need to help people out. And that was this is one of the building blocks of the of of the MRR Institute, really. I mean, this is this is something that we teach in our mastermind groups, and I think that this podcast, anyone even considering going to a membership model or subscription based model should dive into this and listen to this because it's it's really what clients want.
Chris Picciurro:It helps you be work mutually together with your clients. And and the bottom line is it's time to throw away if your time sheets. It's time to delete that app. You should have already in most cases. So I'm excited to dive in of you know, we've gone from this in our industry understanding about how important value pricing is in a subscription model.
Chris Picciurro:Now we know that and, John, you've traveled around with me also to conferences. We know that at least 50% of the people that we present to want to do this. They just don't know how. So we're gonna this is gonna be a great starting point for anyone considering, moving in this direction.
John Tripolsky:And, really, it works for you know, you you alluded to something or or kinda tipped off on something there too that this is very fitting. Even looking outside I know everybody listening to this. So the majority of our audience here are tax professionals. But this is something that reaches even farther outside of our industry. Right?
John Tripolsky:So and as you mentioned too. So obviously, traveling with you, knowing you for so long here, you know, twenty plus years. I have firsthand seen you from friend and client side of the business go from a traditional way of doing it to this. And and, again, kinda watching from the, we'll say, riding the pine. We use a little bit of a a sports sports reference there.
John Tripolsky:It was very interesting to watch, you know, some of the challenges that came with it about just relaying to people about the change. But, really, it wasn't that hard to understand. I know there were I think probably the only people that had an issue with it that I seen, and it wasn't they really had an issue with it. They just didn't understand it, was my, you know, 80 year old grandmother who who you know, that it was a little little change for her. I mean, she still referred to you as her her bookkeeper.
John Tripolsky:And that's just, you know, to a CPA, that's like a a slap in the face a little bit. But it was really exciting to watch you guys go through this change. And, really, from a business, you know, as a client of y'all's, it's it just makes a little bit more sense. Right? It's a little bit easier just to say, alright.
John Tripolsky:It's x number of dollars per month for a subscription. These are all the services that are included in this prescription. And you're not just getting random well, we'll say random, but you're not just getting invoiced for tasks and etcetera throughout the year. Right? So it it just makes everything work a lot easier and a lot more seamless on both sides of the fence.
John Tripolsky:So I know you've broken this down into eight steps. So let's let's kinda turn it over to you to walk us through those eight and, you know, obviously, give us some of your experiences along the way. So some of the challenges you guys have seen, maybe a couple examples of, you know, maybe some pros and cons and pushback and high fives that you guys have.
Chris Picciurro:I'm glad you addressed that. The the biggest challenge in this is handling your legacy clients. We're gonna talk about that, so take a breath. If you're listening to this and you're you're a tax professional, you would you might be getting the shakes already thinking, I really wanna do this, but, oh my gosh. What about mister Smith and missus Jones and the little old, you know, the the the mature aged lady that pays me a meatballs?
Chris Picciurro:Wasn't that the Adam Sandler movie? The Wedding Slinger?
John Tripolsky:Oh, man. Yes. That's a great reference, actually.
Chris Picciurro:No. Yeah. The thing is take a breath. Understand that whatever you choose to do moving forward does not necessarily apply to all your legacy clients immediately. We're gonna talk about strategies, for dealing with legacy clients.
Chris Picciurro:And as one of my favorite favorite songs says, you can't look forward when you're looking back. So think about this as something to move forward with. Keep an open mind. We're gonna walk through these eight simple steps, and, and then if it's something that intrigues you, we're gonna give you some opportunities to dive deeper, but let's talk about before we even start diving into the steps, what is a membership based subscription business model, what we call MBSB? What is it?
Chris Picciurro:We're gonna talk about why accountants should consider moving to it. Then we're gonna go through those eight steps, how to even get started with it, getting started just like anything, just like any habit that you wanna get into or any business practice. That's the hardest part. We're gonna talk about that in those eight simple steps, and then I think we'll have a few minutes left. I will give you some free implementation hacks that are usually designated for people in our mastermind group, but, we're feeling generous today, Jen.
John Tripolsky:Oh, yeah. It's that time of year. Right? You guys are roll rolling off the extension period for for filing, so you're you're feeling saucy. I appreciate it.
Chris Picciurro:No. Hey. We we try. We aim to please. So I often yeah.
Chris Picciurro:If you look up at value pricing or subscription model membership base, you're gonna find a bunch of different, what we would call, definitions. So we just went to the Internet. Right? Everything in the Internet's correct, but but looking at Investopedia, which is a pretty good source just for kind of defining financial terms, per Investopedia, subscription business models are based on the idea of selling a product or service to receive monthly or yearly recurring subscription revenue. And we're gonna we're gonna talk in in our hacks a little bit about the, you know, the charging monthly or yearly.
Chris Picciurro:These type of businesses focus on customer retention. Now we can call this client retention over customer acquisition. In essence, subscription business models focus on the way revenue is made so that a single customer pays multiple payments for prolonged access to a good or service instead of a large upfront one time price. Now, the economy is trending towards more subscriptions instead of ownership for cars, software, entertainment, and shopping. This increases the LTV, lifetime value of the client.
Chris Picciurro:So, let's stop there. Many of us tax pros are building a tax practice and the tax practice, if you look at it as an asset, is based on your goodwill and based on the lifetime value of the client, based on the in just like any business, it's based on your cash flow and your discretionary earnings for the owner. So the more you can increase that value, even if so a business that's doing a million dollars of subscription business is gonna get valued much higher than a million dollars of turn and burn tax prep. That's just the way it is. So not only are you becoming more efficient, you are assisting your clients, you're sitting with them, not across from them at the table.
Chris Picciurro:You're also increasing the value of your business. So that's that's that is the membership based, that's what a membership based subscription business is defined as.
John Tripolsky:Awesome. Awesome. So they're really getting through that. So, really, that gave us the background of it all. Right?
John Tripolsky:So that gave us kind of the intro on what exactly were the definition that we're looking at. So before we get before we get too far into it too, really, if you had to answer the question of, at what point did you realize that this is probably a good idea or you wanted to get away from kind of the standard, you know, the the cliche way of running your practice. So what really triggered this? If if you don't mind me asking, are you wouldn't mind sharing that with us?
Chris Picciurro:Well, I would say
John Tripolsky:besides the sleepless nights, you know, the Alright.
Chris Picciurro:No. This overworked on the pain. I had the opportunity to to this is the third time someone's asked me this question, which is great. This is the first time I'm gonna not tear up, I think.
John Tripolsky:There you go.
Chris Picciurro:But for me, it was a lifestyle situation, and I could my kids now are 14, 13, and 10, and straight up, I missed the first five years of the older two's lives. I couldn't tell you anything almost about it. Thank God my wife was on Facebook so I could see some pictures. It was a complete blur, especially during from from Jan the January to the middle April. And, it was very regrettable.
Chris Picciurro:It's profitable but extremely regrettable and during that time, it spans all of my kids' birthdays. Now, luckily, my little 10 year old, I snapped out of this turn and burn way of doing things, you know, when he by the time he was born. If I had to pick one, really one moment, it would there's a lot of moments. Right? There wasn't one big pivot point, but it was March, 03/19/2010.
Chris Picciurro:Okay? So I had been in business about eight years. When you might say, what what in the heck? Would you have a hangover from Saint Patrick's Day? That would have been nice, but no.
Chris Picciurro:That's my middle child, my daughter's birthday. And when I am not kidding you. We were we were living in the Detroit area at the time, and my older child's 14 was 14 old. I was at the hospital with my wife, sitting in the Delivery Room on a chair with my computer set up, and I knocked out 22 tax returns in our hospital stay. And the only time I stopped was when she was dilated enough to have this baby.
Chris Picciurro:And I put turned on my computer, sat with her. I'm a little squirmy, but I still hung in there. And she did all the hard work, delivered our beautiful daughter, and then I went back to work. And anyone with children knows that first child, they have to kick you out of the hospital. Right?
Chris Picciurro:You're like, oh, no. I can't be trusted. I can't leave here. This you're feeding me. Once you once you're on the second child, you have to stay twenty four hours and you're outie as quickly as possible.
Chris Picciurro:So luckily, we were surrounded by family, also. But but, again, that was like, what am I doing? I'm cranking 22 tax returns the day of and the day after my daughter's born. That is ridiculous. He and I had a 14 old at the time.
Chris Picciurro:So that I I that was one of the big, big pivot moments. But, honestly and this is one of the reasons I have passion with this. I felt trapped. I was trapped, and I trapped myself. Building a business based on me running it, not processes, based on clients controlling your workflow, and based on deadlines controlling your workflow, not you controlling all that, based on tax compliance and not tax planning and strategy.
Chris Picciurro:So it took me a while to unravel. I would say the last decade, we've been focused on the membership based subscription business model. So the first ten years of my of being in practice, I, you know, did things the the traditional firm way, which we're gonna talk about, the second ten years, the MBSB way.
John Tripolsky:Awesome. Awesome. Well, I think that's a perfect example. Right? And a lot of people maybe I mean, you have this this memory.
John Tripolsky:I'm sure you don't or, boy, you Jack, you might remember the exact time that you had this and time everything. I mean, your your memory is fantastic with dates and time and location. But, like, that example is just I and I know personally from knowing you, like, that's just one piece of the puzzle. Right? So, like, I'm sure everybody has a story.
John Tripolsky:If they've gone to this model already, I'm sure they have something, you know, maybe not the exact same, but something similar. Right? Like, what triggered change? So what actually triggered it? Maybe they made the change.
John Tripolsky:Maybe they were afraid to. But I think the content we're gonna we're gonna cover through in just the process and the comparison between the MBSB, you know, way of doing things and verse the traditional firm way of doing things is probably I wouldn't say, again, shocking to anybody. A lot of people may have considered it. They just may not have known how to go about it. So I look forward to us chatting through this a lot.
John Tripolsky:So give us a little bit, you know, kinda as we jump into these steps, give us a little bit of the comparison Mhmm. Between the two of those. That's the traditional and this other MBSB way of doing this.
Chris Picciurro:Right. So let's talk about the traditional way. So your practice is time you have time based pricing in the MBSB. You've got relationship based pricing. We talk about that all the time.
Chris Picciurro:Price the relationship, not the work. You're gonna get more efficient with the work. Right? You're not gonna get and and you're gonna dive deeper into that relationship. Traditional firms are extremely reactive where MBSB is proactive.
Chris Picciurro:Traditional firms are very compliance driven, as I said, where we are more planning driven. When you're a traditional firm, your firm is a vendor to someone. They are an expense. Okay? In our model, we are a partner.
Chris Picciurro:We are an asset. And I tell that to people all the time about tax pros. If your client or and I tell prospective clients, if we get a lot of people coming to us that are not happy with their with their with their tax professional. And honestly, a lot of times, it's it's a two way street. Right?
Chris Picciurro:It's not one way or the other. But but my thought is, if you look at your tax professional as an expense and not an asset and not an investment into a relationship, then it's not the right fit. So couple other things, I mean, the traditional firms are extremely labor intensive. We are very process intensive. We say it's only a problem till there's a process.
Chris Picciurro:And remember, when you're a traditional firm, you're selling your time. You can only sell your time once, and it's gone. With a subscription model or value, even value pricing, you sell your knowledge, and you can sell that knowledge over and over and over again. We know in that traditional model, you've got time sheets and accounts receivable, and you usually get paid after the work's complete, And that payment is usually seasonal, which the positive is a lot of us in the beginning of the year, but I'm telling you, it gets dry quick. Right?
Chris Picciurro:Where in the MBSB model, we have no accounts receivables. We have no write offs. We are paid before any work is done, and we actually charge a client setup fee, which we're gonna one of our hacks, and we have year round cash flow. I already know right now pretty much my cash flow for 2024, and we're and we're in the beginning of the fourth quarter of twenty twenty three. Now obviously, there could be changes.
Chris Picciurro:Right? You we could have a client member, transition away. We could bring on new clients. We could we could do more more things for our clients. But the bottom line is my my bay think about if you're running a sports sports team, and let's say you're, you know, John, you like hockey.
Chris Picciurro:So if you're the if you're a hockey team and you have 18,000 foot, stadium, I already know that I've sold 12,000 season tickets. Right? And so that's that's cool. So we have some competitive is every game gonna sell out? Maybe not.
Chris Picciurro:But we already have we're already at break even or very profitable right off the bat. That doesn't even include parking and maybe some other implementation, food, drink, etcetera, etcetera. So year out cash flow, getting paid in before, and, man, when you don't have to worry about time sheets, that is like the handcuffs that every tax pro wants to get up get off of their wrists. And then when you have accounts receivable, you get paid after the work's done, that just throws an element of it's it just throws something in the middle of that relationship. When a client has price certainty and a and you're paid before the work's done, you can both focus on getting the task done at hand and not worried about, oh, how much am I gonna bill?
Chris Picciurro:Am I gonna pay me? Are they gonna gripe? Should I put that much time into it because am I not gonna but but I wanna get them to the best result possible. And so that's the big difference between the traditional firm and MBSB firm model.
John Tripolsky:And to really highlight excuse me. Really highlight a couple of those that that stand out to me. Again, not being in y'all's world every day, really being on the client side of of what you guys offer, and really just, you know, owning a business for a while in any business. Right? So, you know, you mentioned value based pricing.
John Tripolsky:We hear that a lot. So it's it's really just the value of the relationship. Right? Is is somebody as I always used to say, you know, having a a marketing firm, it's if marketing if your marketing agency or marketing partner ever becomes an expense, it's the wrong partner. Right?
John Tripolsky:It's always or it's they're the wrong person. They're the wrong fit. Like you had mentioned, it's always that partnership. So and I've seen this time and time again with you guys now running really at MBSB is that people really view you guys as partners where they're coming to you for recommendations for other services, implementations that you offer them. It's more than just, hey.
John Tripolsky:I'm here for my taxes. Help me with these and go away. Right? They're not beating you up on price month over month over month. They already know what it's gonna be.
John Tripolsky:They know what the relationship's all about. But then you obviously you mentioned as well, you know, alleviating some of those things. Timesheets. You're not getting paid to file timesheets. Right?
John Tripolsky:You're getting paid to do the work. So really by having to do the timesheets, you're now decreasing your revenue per hour, really, at the end of the day. And then cash flow's huge for any business, whether you're a car wash or making dog cookies or doing tax prep. Right? So you mentioned seasonal versus year round.
John Tripolsky:So it's a lot of this just makes absolute sense. And back to my earlier comment is you could almost take this and put it in any business model. I mean, we see car washes all over the place now going to a monthly subscription. People are like, what in the world? That's the last business on the planet you
Chris Picciurro:thought would go to a monthly subscription, but it makes sense. Right? Well, that is a I agree 100%, and that's a great segue as to why you should move to that. Right? We so we obviously understand the what it is.
Chris Picciurro:Who does like, why you're seeing premium vehicle, like Porsche and Audi go to a subscription model. Heck, your video gaming is a subscription model. Playstation Plus. Right? We used to be, oh, we'd go get our cartridge and then we had a disc and then but the bottom line is, subscription model.
Chris Picciurro:John, think about vacationing has been on a subscription model for since cruises started. It's it's everywhere. Dollar Shave Club, a guy with a great beard like yourself might be interested in that.
John Tripolsky:I mean, we have in our household alone just trying to think of all the subscriptions we have. Some of them are kind of they're funny. Right? Like, when we had a newborn, we had diapers on a subscription. We have air filters for our HVAC system on a monthly subscription.
John Tripolsky:So many things. Right?
Chris Picciurro:Amazon Prime's another example. I'm I contend that I can almost MBS be any business. I've been working with some attorneys. Now there are some legal stuff that has to be done hourly. You know, maybe it's a state work and probate work just it's mandated.
Chris Picciurro:But, you know, estate I feel like most businesses can go to the MBSB model. And that way, you you really dive deep into those, those relationships, which takes me to another thing. We're we're getting close to drop getting into those steps. Right? But and it's great to think about a comparison.
Chris Picciurro:Just because everyone else is doing some doesn't mean we should do it even though everyone else is going to this MBSB model. So let's think about how this would benefit your firm, though. Okay? Because if you're listening to this, you're probably a tax pro or one of our family members, but I don't think our family members really listen to the might be a continuing ed. We're gonna think about how it benefits your clients in a minute, but how does it benefit your firm right now?
Chris Picciurro:And I'm gonna before I dive into this, I wanna reiterate because you might start getting excited about this and then say, oh my gosh. I've got 500 clients. I can't don't worry about those clients. Don't let's not worry about legacy clients right now. Let's move forward.
Chris Picciurro:Okay? One, you know, you so the advantages again, some of these things I mentioned, but foreseeable and consistent cash flow. It allows you to control your workflow instead of the workflow controlling you. Your client retention is gonna be very high in your client loyalty. Your clients are not only partners, but they're fans of your organization, and your client retention is gonna be even higher if you provide them with some price certainty and if you charge it some type of client setup fee because even if it's modest, now they're in the boat together.
Chris Picciurro:Roll away those time sheets. Hourly billing and time sheets need to go bye bye. That's, you know, that that that's number that's probably the the biggest benefit immediately. So almost all your client interactions actually can create an additional revenue. I'd say two thirds of our client interactions create other opportunities for us to help our clients reduce their tax legally and ethically, which in turn, sometimes, many times, generates more revenue.
Chris Picciurro:So that thought of what if what if, the client a books a meeting every day? Trust me, they're not gonna book a meeting. They might for the first week. I've never seen that happen. But eventually, you're gonna run out of things to talk about or you're gonna talk about things that could be revenue sources.
John Tripolsky:You can As I mentioned before too, I've seen that happen firsthand where it's it's clients again, I I'm, like, beating a dead horse of that. But clients truly value the partnership more than they do previously. Right? So like you mentioned, it opens up doors to additional revenue. Yes.
John Tripolsky:That's revenue for the practice, but there is so much of value to the client. They're not they don't care if you're make I mean, they're happy you're making money off it because they're benefiting way more than you are. Right?
Chris Picciurro:Yeah. Absolutely. And many times yeah. Again, those client those clients become your partners. I mean, they really are in many, many ways.
Chris Picciurro:It you know, and then some you know, once in a while, a client might transition out of the membership. Like, let's say they had 10 rental properties and they just one day decided to sell them all and they they they don't need all of what you're offering. It's much easier to say I'm I'm canceling a subscription than I'm I'm changing accounts. Right? It's it's that's that's just the way it is.
Chris Picciurro:But other advantages, I mean, you're gonna attract staff because you're not gonna be working them to death, and you're going to the staff's gonna feel confident that your revenues are coming in and that you have a good process and you have good relationships with clients, and they're gonna be attracted to you because they don't have to fill out a darn time sheet. I mean, Fed, it's huge. You know, you're gonna have reduced labor costs because you're not paying through the nose for overtime for if you have hourly workers. And think about this. I mentioned this already, John.
Chris Picciurro:Every client you obtain is really an annuity. It increases your enter enterprise value. We talked about it. There's no there's no accounts receivable. It really helps protect your firm against recessions.
Chris Picciurro:We have never been more profitable and valuable to our clients than during the pandemic. So it's it's like it's pretty crazy. It also allows your firm to communicate all the work that's going unbilled and unrecognized by the client right now. I can promise you if you're listening to this, you're probably doing things for your client that that add value, that you're either not charging for, and or the client has no clue that you're doing at all. You know?
Chris Picciurro:So, John, when when when you when you do the dishes, I'm sure you help Stacy out a lot and, you know, she there's a Yeah. There's like a there let's say the dishes are in the steak. Now, obviously, you have a younger child and I've got pretty much two adults, children, almost adult children. So we accumulate a lot of dishes. When you do the dishes, if you just you know, it'd be nice if if you just do it every day and Stacy doesn't ever see even sees a dish, she's not gonna recognize it until you, like, leave them out a little bit.
Chris Picciurro:So the point is you're doing stuff. If you're doing stuff for clients, let them know there's a value to that. And so this allows you to to recognize that and monetize that. Instead of them thinking like, oh, well, hold on.
John Tripolsky:I don't need that because I don't wanna pay for that. Right? Like Yeah. If you're billing hourly, some and not saying people are cheap, but it's almost an innate reaction to people is like, oh, if I don't know what you're doing or I don't think it's important, I don't wanna pay for it. Right?
John Tripolsky:So part of a membership is they get to see everything that's moving along. It just everything everything works together. Exactly. Probably the bit most common thing would be replying to IRS tax notices, replying to people's emails,
Chris Picciurro:stuff like that, picking up your phone, secure client portals, all your technology costs that you have to incur. So, obviously, there's a ton of advantages for you as the tax pro, but this has to be mutually beneficial. So there has to be some advantages to the client. And, John, you might and and you being on the client side of some of these things, you could you can kinda speak to this a little bit, but, I've mentioned this already, but just having price certainty is a huge advantage. Like, even if a client doesn't love your price, it at least they know what it is.
Chris Picciurro:And and for us, we use evergreen engagement letters, so we actually build in modest price increases, indefinitely so a client doesn't think their price is gonna double in a year. Mhmm. You know, I've and we we clearly define what we call in the industry, a scope, you know, the scope, meaning scope creep. Meaning, oh, gosh. This person is wanting you to do things that not illegal or anything, but they're they're wanting you to do things beyond what you're you're engaged to be doing.
Chris Picciurro:So we clearly define the scope of the membership in our engagement letter. But the
John Tripolsky:That's just like you mentioned real estate investors. Right? Like, you have a membership. You have three properties. They go buy a portfolio, add 25 properties, you know, to their portfolio.
John Tripolsky:Obviously, there's a little bit more work that's involved there. Right? So that could I mean, that scope creep to an advantage or, to an extreme, I should say. But I have seen that happen. Right?
John Tripolsky:Absolutely. So for us, you know, if if we're working with a in
Chris Picciurro:our private CPA practice, most of our memberships come with up to state tax filing for up to three three to five states. You know, if you if you because we specialize in real estate investors. So, John, you live in Michigan. If you bought a property in Indiana, now we have to file an Indiana nonresident return. We don't want us to have to sit there and increase your membership by a couple bucks here and there.
Chris Picciurro:We're just gonna do it. Now if you if you go into eight states at one time, then there's a then we would need to do an addendum to your membership potentially. Right. Absolutely. But, you know, I I equate it to this.
Chris Picciurro:How many times would you go to a restaurant or would you go to let would you go grocery shopping and and just go grocery shopping if there were
John Tripolsky:no prices on any items? Oh, absolutely not. I mean, you might get to the
Chris Picciurro:curves or you might get, like, formula And necessities. We need. But that's how our business operates if you're not doing this. You work with clients a lot of times with no set price, so they're afraid to talk to you. You're trying to cut corners, and you'll get the best result possible.
Chris Picciurro:So price certainty is a huge advantage even if the clients think your prices are pretty high. You have to have high prices to be able to give the personalized attention and get to the point where you're providing tax planning advice and value instead of just tax compliance.
John Tripolsky:And, actually, Chris, to mention too. So this is, you know, obviously, having contacts and friends are all around the country, you know, unfortunately, a lot of them and this is a kind of an extreme example, but I think a lot of people might be able to relate to this or they may have not gone through it, but they understand the pinpoint of it. I'm thinking of actually two people specifically who unfortunately went through, marriage separation. So they were going through a divorce. Right?
John Tripolsky:And their attorney is, you know, billing them by the hour. I'm try I'm definitely not gonna give away any hints that's gonna alleviate your, identify even where this person lives. But it it's you know, attorneys are notorious and for for good reason. And, you know, the service they provide is incredible, but they bill hourly, and I've never met a cheap attorney. Right?
John Tripolsky:I've I mean, well, if there are some out there, you might question how good they are. But I've I the one individual I'm thinking of specifically was absolutely terrified to email, call, contact their attorney for any reason because they knew they were gonna get billed, I think was in increments of fifteen minutes for x number of dollars, ended up going through this divorce, got to the end of it, and in a sense lost every I wouldn't say lost everything, but it definitely did not work out in their favor because they never even communicated, to their attorney the things they needed, the really what happened, the situation, etcetera. So the relationship has kinda gone to the dump. I mean, the value of that relationship between attorney and client really kinda went to the dump because they didn't they were terrified to communicate because they were going to be billed by time, not the process itself. Right?
John Tripolsky:So if somebody said, hey. You know what? Your divorce is gonna cost $20,000 or it's gonna be between 20,000 and a hundred thousand. We have no idea. Or it's gonna cost you, you know, $2,000 a month for ten months.
John Tripolsky:Mhmm. You know, it's everybody, I think, gets where I'm going with this. Right? And I think it supports what you're saying to it. It builds the value and the communication, builds both sides of the street, for the relationship between clients.
Chris Picciurro:Well, I guess, if you're a divorce attorney, you need someone that you feel is gonna get divorced three, four times in their life to keep them on the membership. So but that's the thing. You know, they're pulling it to what an advantage of the client is positive communication experiences. You nailed it. An email, a call, you know, they're not they're never questioning why you're saying something because, oh, is this sort of rack up my bill?
Chris Picciurro:They're not afraid they're not they're not afraid to call you and and or text you or email you or what however me with you. You know, the other advantage for the client is it'll it allows their CPA firm or their tax firm or their enrolled agency firm, it allows your tax professional to invest their time in a value added tax strategies instead of turning and burning tax returns. It also frees up there's an advantage for the client. It frees up your tax pro to introduce you to other professionals within your ecosystem and help you solve problems. So, oh, gosh.
Chris Picciurro:You know, I've I've my what? My what? You know, like, my spouse just left her job and, she had health insure she had health insurance and and medical and and life insurance through her employer, but she's gonna start a business now. She they've got a problem. Right?
Chris Picciurro:But most likely, the tax pro knows someone that they can refer in their network to that client. That's adding value. But if the tax pro is consistently turning and burning returns and doesn't have time to do that, or if the client's afraid to call the tax pro, none of that special sauce can happen. And, really, it just changed the mindset of the tax pro, and this is advantage of the client, to be able to provide high value planning.
John Tripolsky:Absolutely. So Absolutely. So I think we gave a great definition, overview, comparison, everything warming up to it. So if maybe I'll add a drum roll in here. But let's Oh.
John Tripolsky:Let's say it is, you know, without further ado in my in my very deep theatrical, you know, action movie voice, let's talk about those eight steps. And I and I think the way that you have structured these and by the way, anybody that's listening to this, you're about to you're about to embark on these eight steps of converting to this. People paid I mean, this sounds like a sales pitch. People paid thousands of dollars to attend events that I and again, I've been there. I've seen people's eyes light up when we walk through this.
John Tripolsky:And kind of going back a little bit to to support Chris what you said is, totally forget about that you have any clients at all. Let's pretend you're starting over. This is how you wanna operate your business and your firm, not how you are doing it. Get over the fear hill. Let's walk through these steps if we can, Chris.
John Tripolsky:Those eight steps that you guys have identified.
Chris Picciurro:That sounds good. First step of eight to getting started to an MBSB. Understanding that MBSB isn't the future. It's the present. Get the mind shift right.
Chris Picciurro:It's it's not it was the future ten years ago. It's the now. The really talented, really profitable tax pros that that have a great balance in life are are there. So you can fight it or you just join us. Number two, draw a line in the sand.
Chris Picciurro:Start small and understand that those legacy client, legacy client implementation happens over time. That's one of the first things I said, but that's step two, because it's like, okay, this isn't the future, it's the now, I wanna do it, yes, oh gosh, I feel handcuffed by those clients. Nope. You're not. Continue to you can continue to do the way things you are previously.
Chris Picciurro:Don't worry about that implementation right away. Find someone on your team to be your firm champion if you have staff or you become the champion of this this movement. You it has to be it's not gonna happen on its own. Once you figure out who's gonna kinda be that champion, and if you're a solopreneur, you might be thinking, dang, I wish I had a team. Honestly, it's so much easier to go to this model by yourself than with a team of 15 to five, ten, 15 people, believe it or not.
Chris Picciurro:It's easier to turn around a motorcycle than an 18 wheeler. So pick if you're a solo solo practitioner, I'm telling you, you got it the easiest. You know? Because you're in control and you would be their own, champion. Next, step four.
Chris Picciurro:Figure out your firm's four competencies. What do you do really, really well? What do you do better than other people? Five preparing tax returns is not a core competency, believe it or not. This is not.
Chris Picciurro:If you think it is, then you don't have one, and I'm sorry if that sounds harsh. Everyone in this business does tax returns well, almost everyone. Hopefully, the people listening to this and are interested in continuing in. Mhmm. You know, having a secure client portal is not a core competency.
Chris Picciurro:So what are your core competencies? What do you what's your special sauce? And they should be things, you know, that you kinda like to do. So that's number four. Number for, like, for our private CPA practice, our core competency, our number one is that we developed a proprietary tax planning and strategy process that has a ton of intellectual property rights.
Chris Picciurro:I don't expect that someone starting is gonna have that, but you have something. You might know something really well about farm law, or you might have something that you do super well that's a that's a competency. Mhmm. Number five, create a list of all your service offerings. What's your menu?
Chris Picciurro:And you know what? Here's the I'm gonna something I'm gonna confess to you. When I started my practice twenty one years ago, I didn't have a menu. You know what was my menu? Whatever the heck someone's gonna pay me to do that's legal.
Chris Picciurro:That was my menu. I have this oddball situation. Oh, we'll make something for you. That is the most inefficient way to run
John Tripolsky:a practice. And, actually, on that, Chris, I was I was trying not to interrupt you on these numbers, but I think that one's super important. Right? So when you when you get to that point and you're take and I'm speaking from firsthand experience in a professional services, not tax prep. I'm not a tax pro again.
John Tripolsky:Once you do that, how much so here's a question for you. So say it took you thirty minutes to do a task that you're very comfortable with. You know, you do very well. You add a lot of value. How much time do you think it would take you to take on a new task?
John Tripolsky:Very challenging, very weak, very let's just call it a weird situation. Right? Would normally take somebody say thirty minutes. You not knowing it very off the wall, how much time do you think you would spend trying to figure that out, AKA cutting into other time you could be doing something you're good at, getting paid for, family time, etcetera? I mean, just hours and hours.
Chris Picciurro:I I probably you know, it's interesting because that's a great question, and we address this in in some of our speaking engagements when we talk about tax strategy specifically for real estate investors. We went through the IRS instructions where the where it says how much time it would take to learn about this form and learn how to report something. So probably twelve to fifteen hours if I had to guess. Mhmm.
John Tripolsky:It barely could be for something you would never have to do again. If it's very unique. Right? If you're serving the masses. Exactly.
John Tripolsky:It's like But you can't bill for fourteen hours if if it should have taken you thirty technically. Right?
Chris Picciurro:That's why the advantage is you're you're you're investing in in knowledge that you can sell over and over, not time. So figure out what your service offer So
John Tripolsky:I apologize for cutting off. That was just very important.
Chris Picciurro:That's right. So once you figure out what your service offerings are, you might be looking at yourself in the mirror saying, oh, dang. I don't even have a menu. That's okay. Create one.
Chris Picciurro:Create one because it and then this is also part of step five. Put in order highest value to lowest value. Right? So what's the highest value thing you do for your clients? Right now, what's your most profitable service line?
Chris Picciurro:It could be some type of tax it could be, gift tax preparation because you're you're an expert in that, and not many people know about gift taxes. Could be for and then what's your least valuable? Your least valuable might be processing payroll. It might be logging on to some janky system and paying your client's sales tax. That's least value.
John Tripolsky:Right? I know you're smiling because sounds kinda familiar, doesn't it? It sounds like somebody went through one of those or two of those.
Chris Picciurro:Oh, absolutely. I mean, there there are some dark days. You know? And then so, yeah. So I mean, that's that's that's that's what it's all about.
Chris Picciurro:Then so go high to low. Right? The next so you are so now think about this. You've created you've figured out what you're good at. You've created your menu.
Chris Picciurro:You've met and you've gone from what's our highest margin stuff on the menu to what's our lowest margin stuff on the menu. What's our filet mignon? What's our side of french fries? Okay? Now, this is where it gets fun.
Chris Picciurro:Step6.eight. Figure out your top two client segments or industries. Niches, if you will. A niche doesn't have to be an industry. That's why I say segment or industry.
Chris Picciurro:If you live in, I don't know. John, pick a darn place. Boise, Idaho. Okay. Good old potato farming.
John Tripolsky:I didn't pick California like we usually do on our other podcast. No. I always pick on California.
Chris Picciurro:We won't pick on California today. You live in Boise, Idaho. Obviously, farming could be a could be a a segment or a niche that you're into, or you might just enjoy, you know, working with a certain segment of clients and you and let's say you're in a suburb of Boise, they and and and they and you just like working with clients in that town or that area and or I'll give you an example, man. If I had to start all over again and I from scratch, I would brand myself as the pickleball CPA. I have you know, you knew pickleball had to come out sometime.
Chris Picciurro:Right?
John Tripolsky:I was waiting for it. I I didn't know it would take us forty three minutes to get into it, but, you
Chris Picciurro:know, it's I love pickleball. Right? So the cool thing in is, if I'm a if I'm working with just because not if I'm working with clients that all love pickleball, we already have that in common, and that's my segment. I love pickleball players. They might have different situations, but I'm gonna be able to take their situations and relate it to game.
Chris Picciurro:We're just gonna have that bond. So maybe you're really involved maybe you went to Boise State University and you you, are really involved in their alumni association and you want to work with Boise State alums on specifically. You get to talk football, you get to talk recruiting. So the point is find your your top two segments or industries. So, what are you good at?
Chris Picciurro:Competency is step four. What's your menu? Step five, what's most profitable? Step six, who do you wanna sell that menu to? Who do you wanna attract?
Chris Picciurro:Step seven, build a service package. Build that first service package that involves your high value stuff that's scalable for your top two client segments. So, high value, scalable, top two client segments. That's it. That's step seven.
Chris Picciurro:Now step seven is extremely difficult. We do I mean, we spend time, and we have some and I we have, some mastermind groups that we walk through every step of building a package. The good thing is once you build one package, you could you could sell that package over and over again. Build that package, price that package, and or we we do some some, recurring revenue retreats just on step seven. But step seven is great because once you build it, then you can use it over and over again.
Chris Picciurro:So So let's use a Boise. I can't believe we're talking about Boise, Idaho. I've never been there. I'd like to go, actually.
John Tripolsky:You being a Michigan State fan, I should have said Ann Arbor, Michigan. You know, we're at University of Michigan as biggest rival. So
Chris Picciurro:Last time I was there, was with you and and, You You were not happy.
John Tripolsky:You were not happy about that.
Chris Picciurro:I wasn't happy.
John Tripolsky:But If I if I would've said that, let's put it this way.
Chris Picciurro:That will say.
John Tripolsky:So we would've we would've you would've thrown everything off the day. If I would've said Ann Arbor, you would've just your computer went crashing. That would've been the end of the podcast. We'd have to bring somebody else on, but I was this kind.
Chris Picciurro:So So but let let's think okay. Let's say you're you let's say you wanna you live in Boise, Idaho. You wanna focus on building a tax planning and strategy and tax preparation practice for for football athletes, current athletes, and former athletes that went to Boise State University, especially with NIRL name, image, likeness, now that college athletes can be paid, or former athletes are entering the workforce. Build a package, and think about what their concerns are. They're probably pretty physically fit.
Chris Picciurro:They're probably you know, so your package might be called the touchdown package, the you might have one that's the field goal and the punt or something like whatever you want it to be. It could be whatever, but you build the package because the bottom line is if you don't build these packages, the clients are gonna come in and order things because you don't have a menu and you're gonna be scrambling around. And just like you said from the beginning, you're you're just not your workflow is gonna control you. You're not gonna control it. Final step of eight, commit to using this for the next five prospective clients.
Chris Picciurro:Don't worry about the legacy clients. Give it five prospects. And I hope you do not get all those five prospects as clients, because if you do, you're charging too little. Try to get the out of the next five prospective clients, try to have a reasonable goal of those two of two of those prospective clients becoming actual clients into this membership based model. Awesome.
John Tripolsky:That Hey, Chris. Hopefully, I'm not stealing your thunder at all there, if, if I do say this. But I'm actually gonna I'm gonna walk through I'm gonna give us a really quick recap from the average Joe here, myself, just on those eight. But something I hear you say all the time, which is very relatable to number eight there Mhmm. Which is your best clients will pick your next clients or your best client will pick your next client.
John Tripolsky:So why that resonates with me looking at number eight there, you know, committing to using this for the next five prospective clients. You're already setting the expectations. You're you're building you're building a great relationship from the get go where you're going into it so mutually beneficial. The expectations are there on both sides of the fence. It's you're creating and you're you're almost cherry picking in a sense your best client to then it scales up.
John Tripolsky:So that being said, I'm just gonna run through those eight really, really quick. I'll try for thirty seconds or forty five seconds, but then also I'm gonna copy these and I'm gonna put them in the show notes here. So even as I'm running through these, I'll fly through them. Chris, you explained them fantastic, but people can reference them. Right?
John Tripolsky:So looking back. So we're looking at number one. We want do we just wanna recognize that, you know, it's not future it the present. So look at today. Don't look back looking forward a little bit.
John Tripolsky:It's today. You live in today. Make the change. Identify it. Go with it.
John Tripolsky:Right? Two, drawing that line in the sand to think it's how you referenced it, Chris, is just understanding that, you know, yes, you you have legacy clients. Those are your current clients. Right? And implementing this or this change, they'll adapt it or adopt to it over time.
John Tripolsky:It's not gonna happen right away. Three, I think we were talking about, you know, pick a team member within your team to to really run with it. Right? So be be your champion, be the leader, kind of they own that process. They own the implementation of it, which really, I took that as, you know, you're you're identifying somebody who has a lot of potential to grow within your organization, not just, oh, yeah.
John Tripolsky:You know, go knock these little tasks out. You're really crafting and adding value to that person and their that position that they're in with you. It's it's great. So that's that's a little bit of a challenge. I think maybe for some people, if they don't have somebody yet, but maybe they can go find them.
John Tripolsky:Number four, I wrote down here, you know, identifying the firm's core competencies. And you explained it very well. I don't think I need to go into that, but identifying what they really are, tax prep now being one of them. So we'll leave it at that. Like I said, you explained it.
John Tripolsky:Five was really looking at the current service offerings, right, and ordering them from highest and value to lowest. And then six, picking your top two client segments or industry. I've seen people living in the South, people that only target, fishermen or longliners, stockbrokers. You're very, very specific. Truck drivers is one that I've seen.
John Tripolsky:Very you can get very, very niche. Day cares is another one we've seen. Vet clinics, veterinary clinics, etcetera. That's number six. Number seven is building that package.
John Tripolsky:Again, menu offerings and high value and very scalable. Right? The one to many rule is fantastic. We do something one time. You can sell it over and over again.
John Tripolsky:So much value. And then eight, Chris, as you mentioned, and we touched on briefly as well, is trying it with five prospective clients. And what you said too was I took it as, if you try it on number one and they absolutely shoot you down, it's okay. It's probably for the better. Right?
John Tripolsky:Like, modify your pitch a little bit. Maybe go back, tweak your menu a little bit. Make those changes. Even if you get zero out of five, you know. Be be stubborn.
John Tripolsky:Go for six. Go for seven. Go for eight. You never know. So And you're gonna be I did an average show recap for us worth Yeah.
Chris Picciurro:Yeah. I'm gonna go eight b. You're gonna be a little clunky. So if you sit on those five prospective clients, even if you go o for five, you know what? You probably have five clients in your client's base that would like this.
Chris Picciurro:Now you're equipped to pitch it to them. That's okay. Perfect. Because they're a much Perfect. You know?
Chris Picciurro:Yeah. Your let your best client pick your next client. So that's those are the eight steps. Now we're gonna sprinkle we got a few minutes left, John, to sprinkle a little special sauce Oh, okay. On on these good good people, good listeners.
Chris Picciurro:So I'm intrigued.
John Tripolsky:I don't know what you're gonna say, so hopefully it's good.
Chris Picciurro:So And I'm sure yeah. And and, again, we would love the feed we'd love feedback from our listening base. You know, John's in the show notes, we're gonna give you opportunities to interact with us, interact with each other. So what are the keys? Right?
Chris Picciurro:So we talked about eight steps, but what are, what are my hacks for lack of a better term? Because we have a few minutes left for doing this model. Okay? And, usually, this is paid content, but we're just gonna let it fly.
John Tripolsky:I would say your accountant's gonna be pissed, but, you know, it's all good.
Chris Picciurro:You are. So obviously, we talked about you need to develop a bunch some of these spot the following things. You need that firm champion that's for that discovery consultation and pricing. You have to have some type of formal discovery process before you offer a membership. You have to do And that discovery process is two ways.
Chris Picciurro:You're learning about the client, the client's learning about your practice. You're trying to figure out if you're a good fit and if you're not, that's okay. You'd rather have that discovery meeting be it twenty minutes, thirty minutes, forty five minutes, and you and even I could tell you in my experience, even if you have a discovery meeting and you didn't, it's not a good fit as far as a full firm membership or a client, it's okay. It is okay because they're gonna ask questions that you just got reps answering and and and they might come back to you. They might say, I'm not there yet.
Chris Picciurro:Okay. That's fine. I'm I'll come back later. Ney I already mentioned this. Name each package or pro brain.
Chris Picciurro:We have our own proprietary names. Name it based on what your niche is, what your segment is. Not please don't call it, like, unnamed like, don't whatever you call it, just name it. Okay? Even if it's gold, silver, bronze, you know, hopefully, you're more a little more,
John Tripolsky:saucy than that. Creative. Yes. As I mentioned, you'll you'll upset your accountant there. Then if you don't name it anything creative, you're really gonna upset your marketing guy.
John Tripolsky:I'll tell
Chris Picciurro:you that. You don't wanna do that. Use this client acquisition process should have visual aids, videos, template emails. So, again, it comes down to the the client prospecting process. Create that.
Chris Picciurro:Visual aids are amazing because what we are what we're what someone's subscribing to and basically is is it's intangible other than a PDF of a tax return. How do you how do you make an aid for your not your knowledge? That visual aid can be, I mean, John, you know, we have tons of them from, like, rental property reporting, or we use visual aids on almost every discovery meeting. Do I expect the client will will memorize the visual aid? No.
Chris Picciurro:But when when someone says, I'm considering an s corp versus a schedule c. I already have a five minute video I created, and I have a chart showing what forms an s corp, what are the positives and negatives of each type of entity. I'll bring that up right in the discovery meeting. Ours are all virtual, but I'm sharing my monitor. Template emails also.
Chris Picciurro:You know, you're gonna wanna we we if you have a minimum membership amount or a membership minimum fee, communicate that right away so that you're not, you know, fishing in freshwater for saltwater fish. Develop your own pricing calculator, including a client onboarding fee. Make sure your price set up, you know, and and make sure when you do that, your price set up your pricing is set up where even if someone was a member for one month, you're gonna collect what you would have collect collected for them being a client for a year. Right? Because the the fear is like, oh, this guy's or this girl's gonna become a member.
Chris Picciurro:I'm gonna prepare their tax return, and then they're gonna leave the next day. You've got to figure out how to underwrite that yourself. Become your own underwriter. That's a pricing calculator. Again, we're gonna mention some tools, and some, resources we have at the MRR Institute to help you with that.
Chris Picciurro:Figure out your firm's capacity to conduct formal meetings and work backwards on scalability. So for us, we used to have conduct about two and a half formal meetings per client, which obviously per year, which obviously then gives you some type of capacity issue even if you're really efficient in our private CPA practice. Now we've gotten that number down to about one meeting per client because we created, a service called CPA Urgent Care, which is proprietary, where clients can come in come in and have access to us on an on demand basis instead of setting up these formal one hour meetings. Again Mhmm. You've gotta figure out what if you're a solo shop and you you gotta figure out, okay.
Chris Picciurro:Maybe I'll meet each client two and a half times a year. If I have a if I have 300 meetings available through the year, I hope you might have more, but let's just say 300 meetings or more most likely, let's say you have 500 meetings available per year, just making a number up, and you meet people two and a half times, then you know you can pretty much bring on 200 clients, 200 membership.
John Tripolsky:And that one too to to kinda inject a little bit. So when you mentioned CPA Urgent Care and how that correlates and relates to some of the other things you had mentioned too. Right? So what I took by that is by offering the opportunity for them to ask a one off question. A, I mean, going back to what we talked a little bit earlier.
John Tripolsky:Right? Like, they know they're not gonna get billed for it. They're not gonna get a bill for x much you know, for a two minute call or a two minute question. They're not gonna get billed for fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, and an hour. So that barrier is down.
John Tripolsky:Right? They have access to get on there and ask that question because they are an ongoing member. Right? So they're a monthly member on that. If they if they stop paying or cancel, they'd no longer have access to that.
John Tripolsky:But then on the flip side, so that's value for them, but value for the firm. Right? So now you've taken what is likely gonna be a question at the absolute worst time they could ask, and that's probably two days before the tax deadlines. Y'all are crunched in time. They're gonna get a response back that's maybe not really personalized.
John Tripolsky:It's kinda canned because you guys are in a crunch time. They're frantic. They need the answer. It just becomes a whirlwind a whirlwind of data collection disaster, we can call it. Right?
John Tripolsky:So it's by offering that, it it it just makes it easy. So, hopefully, that sees or that lays it out a little bit how everything's connected and and really the importance of that one specifically.
Chris Picciurro:And once you get this really developed like we have, you could build a referral system where you're compensated for prospects that aren't even a good fit. Right? You get you can find another fit for them. You've and then once you really build this out, you can build strategic partnerships so that you can that that so that you can monetize some of these other referrals that you're making, some of these other tax planning implementation pieces that you're doing and other work. And then, eventually, you're gonna create a process to convert your transactional legacy clients to MDSB.
Chris Picciurro:So, you know, again, we've got a lot more there's a those are the steps. That's what you need to develop. I'm gonna close it out. I'm gonna close it out with my five item. Actually, I'll give you a bonus one.
Chris Picciurro:I'll give you six firm mindset and culture changes that have to occur to make this make this work. And I'm just gonna rattle them, Johnny T. We're and and Go for it. Go work. No.
Chris Picciurro:We have a content that's available that we can expand on this, but this is what I'm gonna leave you guys with. This is probably gonna be the most important minute you listen to here. Of course, we're gonna save it for the ad. So these six things have to change in your firm's mindset and culture to make this work. And if you could commit to this, you will.
Chris Picciurro:Number one, be a price maker, not a price taker. Number two, you have to learn how to say no to be able to say yes in your practice. Three, rule out potential bad client fits due to either price sensitivity, they're not responsive, they have unrealistic expectations, they're unstable, or they're unstable. You have to develop your client acquisition process to identify those four potential landmines. Remember, number four, tax returns are a verb, not a noun.
Chris Picciurro:Number five, it's a problem until there is a process. We talked about MBSB being process based and processes are scalable. Final thing, sales don't solve problems. Processes solve problems.
John Tripolsky:Now that's some good nuggets right there. And I will I'm gonna add one more thing to this, and this is a question for you, Chris. I know you did not see this coming, but I've seen this a lot, spending a lot of time with you guys, you know, on the on the private practice side and a lot of events, you know, over the the past couple years. There and this is gonna be tough to be a a very shorter answer on it, but there's a lot of tax pros that say, woah. Woah.
John Tripolsky:Woah. I don't wanna make any change at all. I love that there's a tax season. I love just disappearing for four, six months out of the year and then sitting on a beach the rest of the year. So what what would be your response to somebody that says that?
John Tripolsky:And it's again, this is not a fit for everybody, this change. But if somebody is very I wouldn't say very strong feeling about that, but they're very comfortable with a quote unquote taxed season. What would you say to them about possibly making this change?
Chris Picciurro:I would say, go ahead and stay doing what you're doing, and I'm gonna clean up and get all the great
John Tripolsky:clients. Oh, there you go. And by the way, everybody, that is a very short answer from somebody who really likes to give detail because he's very detail oriented. So kudos to you, Chris, for that one. I I appreciate that.
John Tripolsky:But My pleasure. We will and and yep. So no more no more questions. No more topics on this stuff, at least on this podcast specifically. There's a lot more we can go into this.
John Tripolsky:And, again, I think we covered so much in this show. Yeah. Let's just be happy that there's a pause, rewind, replay button wherever you're listening to this because this is something that, you know, it it does take significant effort to do. But I will say again firsthand, I have seen Chris go from a two man shop or a man woman shop, about twenty years ago to growing, growing, growing. You guys had what?
John Tripolsky:Like, 16 offices, you know, three, four thousand, I said employees, three or 4,000 clients. I mean, you guys were huge. Right? But I see that y'all were running rampant as all get up. Right?
John Tripolsky:And then here we are in the past year, year and a half. I mean, we've launched some businesses together. I mean, this being one of them. Right? This would have never even been a possibility if you were stuck in that grind.
John Tripolsky:Right? Then sales don't solve problems. Processes solve problems. Thanks you so much for going through this with us, Chris. I know everybody that listens to this.
John Tripolsky:Obviously, you have a lot of takeaways. Again, hopefully, you got on got a CP for this one. So don't forget about that. Time time is money, so make it worth every cent possible. And as always, thank you so much for joining us here on the mister r show.
John Tripolsky:Hey everyone. Thanks for hanging out with us here on this episode. Hopefully, you went back and got the CPE credit for this one, but more importantly, hopefully, you took a lot of notes from this and really, if anything, you took from it, a little bit of inspiration and motivation that there is a better way to possibly do things than you are doing now. If you feel trapped in those time sheets, kind of the grind of, you know, what is commonly referred to as tax season, kind of getting out of that, building those relationships with your clients and really looking at them at the end of the year or at the beginning of the year and saying, wow, I I have true partnerships in place here, not just client vendor relationships. So again, hopefully you took great notes from this to make it even easier.
John Tripolsky:We put those steps. I outlined them very briefly, put them in the show notes with wherever you're listening to this. That'll either be, I've heard to the left and the right specific places, but usually is right below. So be sure to check that out. And, nouveau nugget for you.
John Tripolsky:We've actually launched a private Facebook group for our audience. So, if you get on Facebook and you look up just tax pro two point o, it should come up in there. But, again, I'm all about ease and simplicity. I've actually put the link directly to that private group in the show notes as well. So, be sure to join that group.
John Tripolsky:Send us any questions you have, maybe on this topic specifically, if you haven't had the opportunity to hear Chris speak on this to a group, I definitely, definitely urge you to do so if you're at an event where he's on the schedule for that. So that being said, we look forward to our next episode where we touch on another fantastic topic and really helping you to build a very profitable, manageable, and enjoyable firm.
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