Bookkeeping to Advisory Services: How One Firm Experienced Accounting Firm Growth

Iyanna Vaughn is the founder of LFG—Lovely Financials Group—a firm helping women entrepreneurs succeed in business. Beginning in 2016 primarily as a bookkeeping firm, today Ms. Vaughn does tax planning and CFO services for her clients. Here is her story of growth from bookkeeping to advisory services by investing in the 7 Figure Firms program. 

From Healthcare Management to Accounting

In college, Ms. Vaughn received a degree in healthcare management with a desire to become a CFO for a hospital. She loved her accounting classes in school, so she later decided to open an accounting firm instead of going the CFO employment route. 

Beginning in 2016, Ms. Vaughn offered bookkeeping services, but the problem was she didn’t know how to price or scope her service. “I was doing monthly accounting for as low as $150 for small businesses, and sometimes I suffered from scope creep, where little questions would come up from clients that took my time, yet I felt obligated to take care of,” explained Ms. Vaughn. 

As a result of low pricing and inadequately defining scope, her business struggled for two years. She began helping clients with increasing their profits in addition to just bookkeeping, but she hit a low point during 2018, realizing how much she was helping her clients, but wasn’t helping her own firm. 

“It felt hypocritical—here I was helping these other businesses succeed by analyzing their numbers and giving them strategic advice as a CFO, but I wasn’t doing it for my own business. I was having issues just paying my bills,” she confessed.

From that point on, she treated herself like a client and got obsessed with her own numbers. Ms. Vaughn decided to join the 7 Figure Firms program and made a commitment to accounting firm growth and taking care of herself. 

From Accounting to Advisory Services

As Ms. Vaughn invested in herself through the 7 Figure Firms program, she became more aware of how to fix her pricing and scope problems. She observed that the whole field of accounting under-prices, which in turn devalues everyone. It’s essentially a race to the bottom. She began to move away from just bookkeeping and offered new services such as better defined CFO services and tax planning. Ms. Vaughn’s profits went up, and so did the profits of her clients. 

“My goal is always maximizing the profits and cash flow for my clients. I had always wanted to help people overcome their fear of money, so although I started with bookkeeping, I knew I wanted to shift to help clients know what to do with their numbers. The 7 Figure Firms program helped me package, price and sell what I had wanted to do all along, I just didn’t know how to put it all together.”

Ms. Vaughn appreciated all the sales content inside the program, especially the already-prepared sales slide decks for selling tax planning or CFO services over Zoom calls. “I saw that Andrew Argue, CEO of Corvee, had a different way of doing sales that wasn’t uncomfortable. It made me feel good about doing sales for the first time,” she explained. “Now I think of sales as just having a relationship, listening to a person’s problems and helping them with a solution. The slide presentations I’ve been given help clients understand what the scope of service is and help me explain to them what I do and the value I provide.”

On sales calls, Ms. Vaughn now feels in control, knowing what she’s going to say. She has been able to productize her services, and she has packages based on different scopes. Each package is very straightforward, so there is no confusion for clients and it’s easy for them to make a decision. “I used to have way too many service options,” Ms. Vaughn confessed.

With more sales coming in at higher prices, she feels better about herself knowing she is doing for her own business what she is doing for other businesses—growing profit margin and building cash flow.

From Advisory Services to Firm Processes

Ms. Vaughn’s short-term goals include getting to over a million dollars in annual sales and building out her team. “I want to continue streamlining systems and training staff to take over different areas of the business,” she said. “My desire is to have the team do all the delivery, including sales. I’d like to step back and become more of the visionary behind the business.”

So far, Ms. Vaughn has had a team member take ownership of the accounting department so she can focus on advisory services. To go from bookkeeping to advisory services required adding team members, and the accounting firm growth tools and processes inside 7 Figure Firms have been helpful for her. She is on pace to double sales this year with the added help of team members.

As a long-term goal, Ms. Vaughn would like to grow to be an international CFO firm for entrepreneurs who want to maximize their profits. She has already made a name for herself by starting the Major Margins Podcast in 2020, which helps online entrepreneurs maximize their profits and create healthy cash flow. She uses the podcast as a lead generating tool.

“Learning about advisory services made me realize there’s no ceiling on my limits, I can scale as large as I want to. 7 Figure Firms gives you confidence that you can deliver what you promise in a sales call. I can always ask questions in the private 7 Figure Firms Facebook group and have them answered pretty quickly. There’s accountability to implement what’s in the program…it’s truly holistic care for accountants.”  

What does she love most about the 7 Figure Firms program? “I love the process and workflow for tax planning inside 7 Figure Firms. To be honest, tax planning used to not even be on my radar,” she continued. “This program refreshed my company, changed our whole sales process and structure, and I became more strategic.” 

Ready to refresh your accounting firm and experience the kind of accounting firm growth you know you’re capable of?