The Radical CPA: The First 3 Questions I Should Have Asked Before Starting My Own Practice

I had just come off a really bad tax season.

This was about eight years ago now, and I knew there had to be a better way. I left a mid-sized firm, with seven partners and about 50 other employ­ees and I joined my dad’s firm — literally and figuratively. Figu­ratively, because many of his technology and processes were “old school.”

I was tired of working part-time and not being treated like a contributing member of the firm. My family was young. My son was four years old and my daughter was six. My son was in the process of getting ready for full-time kindergarten and things were just changing in my life. I no longer felt the need to only work part-time, so it seemed like the right time.

My dad’s firm at the time was very different than our firm is today. It was mainly a side 1040 practice that he built while working as a director of taxes for a publicly traded multinational company. He worked out of a home office before they were trendy. My dad had been doing 1040s since I was a baby.

I grew up in a tax home. When I joined him, the first thing he said to me was, “Go get your own customers.” It was transformative for me because even though I was joining him, he was setting me up to change the way that our firm would run. He was not going to share his custom­ers. Period. The end. I really had a blank slate and the freedom to change the firm.

As I acquired new customers, I used new technol­ogies and brought them into our firm — this transformed our firm dramatically. Since the changes proved to be extremely profitable, my dad was delighted and became open to even more new changes. The transformation initially happened unconsciously and I didn’t really put much thought into how I was going to change things. I just did it.

Since hindsight is 20/20, the questions I wished I had asked myself going in were:

1. Why do I want to change?
2. Why do I need to change?
3. Why is now the right time to change?

The questions I ask you now are:

1. If you had a blank slate, what would be the first thing you would change about how you run your firm?
2. How has the world changed since you started working in the profession or since you started your firm?
3. Are you ready to have your world, your firm and your life rocked?

Originally published on CPA Trendlines, February 28, 2015. For more content like this, subscribe to The Radical CPA newsletter. Or buy the book.