How to Grow an Accounting Firm as a Tax Planning Professional

When Jake Mellor was growing up, money was a mystery in his family, meaning no one talked about it. Today, he provides tax and bookkeeping services to more than 3000 clients. With a team of 23, he’s looking to double his team in the next year just to keep up with current growth in new clients and workload. Here’s his story on how his firm has taken the opposite journey of what most firms take.

The Beginning of His Firm

Mr. Mellor got into the 7 Figure Firms coaching program because he not only wanted to work hard, as he had done all his career, but he wanted to work smart and grow an accounting firm. “I was stuck working in my business, and I didn’t believe I had the time to work on the business. Also, there was an irony of the plumber that had a leak at home. I was the plumber with a leak—I was helping people with their finances, but my business entities were not organized in the most efficient way. I was doing a lot for free and wasn’t charging or pricing my services as best as I could, and I knew it.” 

While the typical evolution of a firm goes from tax preparation to tax planning, then onwards to other services, Jake Mellor found himself offering other products before introducing tax planning and finally offering tax preparation.

“I started doing tax preparation for my clients just to make sure they were benefiting appropriately,” Mr. Mellor explained. “I used to give tax planning advice for free, believing the good deed would come back to me…but I also soon realized the saying, ‘God helps those who help themselves’, and that if I started charging for my consultations, clients would implement the strategies more often.”

In fact, Mr. Mellor estimated he gave away around 50% of his advice for free at one point in his firm. “When you don’t help yourself, you put yourself in a position to help others less. Through the 7 Figure Firms program, I’ve learned as a tax planning professional, to take care of myself first so I can better take care of my clients.”

Transitioning to Offer Traditional Accounting Services

Mr. Mellor explained that when he began working as an adult, he was continually let down by his employers, feeling his trust was abused. He went independent so he could make better decisions for clients with no pressure to just sell a product that paid the highest commission, but to sell the product that was actually the best for the client. Adding traditional accounting and tax services to his already existing services helped give his firm a well-rounded menu and serve clients better. 

“Accountants are trusted in the eyes of clients. That’s why I decided to re-position myself from a marketing perspective as an accountant. On the accounting side, you are their financial doctor. Being their accountant increases their trust.”  

Adding accounting services to expand the firm has proven to be a good move, as Mr. Mellor continued:

“I have implemented almost everything in 7 Figure Firms, and it’s a huge reason why my revenue has increased these past few years. I used to have more clerical staff who did data entry, but now I have staff that can produce fulfillment. I delegate now because I’ve hired specialists to do all the specific work so i can concentrate on selling. I also have three sales people now who are able to explain and educate people on our services.”

Mr. Mellor went on to say that 7 Figure Firms provides systems that can be duplicated: “I knew how to do everything, but I didn’t have it systematized, it was a bottleneck for me. It was all in my head and it wasn’t written down, nobody else could duplicate it. So it had to be me that did everything. That’s why I was working so hard, but not smart.”  

Grow an Accounting Firm Internationally

One of Mr. Mellor’s goals is to expand internationally, first in Mexico, to clients beyond American borders. As he considers accounting services to expand into internationally, he also needs to expand the size and the reach of his firm. One way he’s dealing with expansion is by implementing Corvee Software. It’s a tax planning software for accountants that has been implemented for his staff to keep things running smoothly as he continues to grow as a tax planning professional. 

“Using Corvee Tax Planning software has been great for my office. My staff are using it. We were using seven different client management softwares before, and we were not fully utilizing any of them. We ran into problems, for example, we were not utilizing our data to cross-sell our clients properly. We’d try to cross-sell by entering client info from the various softwares into Excel sheets manually, however, their Quickbooks files would be in a different place, and everything we needed was in a different location and it was just too much work to consistently be an effective use of our time. In short, it was not an organized or optimal situation. After the transition period, I estimate we cut document collection time and client communication time in half.” 

Using accounting practice software tools such as Corvee Tax Planning along with using 7 Figure Firms processes to expand his service options have both contributed to Mr. Mellor’s growing success as one of the fastest growing firms in the nation. 

If you want to discover how to grow an accounting firm and all the ways Corvee Tax Planning can help build, grow and optimize your accounting firm, request more information below.