Discussion:How did you get here?

1) What's the story of your practice and what single idea, practice, or change made the single biggest impact on your client base growth?

2) For you full-timers, is it the retail establishment that brings most of your clients in or is it word of mouth referrals? How much would you say having the brick and mortar shop affected client base?

Now that tax season is over, I am studying my options. Jobs are very tenuous at best these days so there is probably an equal chance of losing mine verses keeping it...the whale that swallowed my old, very stable company is constantly pruning. Since being acquired, there have been almost bi-weekly layoffs of a person here and a person there. They do it this way to avoid the notification processes and it appears to be a way of life. So I am preparing for the eventual fact that I may lose this job and if I do, I am going out on my own. Never again will I deal with this corporate nonsense....a merger or acquisition a year is too much to take.

So I am looking hard at taking the EA exam this Summer/Fall as a fail safe and to increase my knowledge and clout. Avoiding the EA was never the plan, I felt that having a few years experience under my belt would help me.

However, I am trying to gauge how much of a client base difference having a good retail establishment will make. It makes no sense to throw up a shingle if the client base effect is minimal and rent bills start coming due.

Thanks,

Michael

As most did, I started by working as a seasonal subcontractor for local CPA firms while at the same time building my practice.

The single biggest impact on my practice was networking with other CPA's and doing everything I could to help them, since I had some free time. I was a little ahead of the curve in terms of electronic research and forms products in the early 1990's, so I became the one to call for forms and research printouts.

Then, over the next 10 years, three of the part time sole practitioners I had helped closed their practices and referred all of their clients to me, without asking for anything in return other than someone they could trust to take on the work!

I don't know about retail establishments since I work out of my home.

Good luck with your job situation. I don't know a single person who isn't severely impacted by the current economic turmoil.

I am home-based and do no marketing other than a line in my email signature where I say that "I consider a referral the highest compliment, please tell your family and friends about the professional services I provide". I got that from a realtor, and I thought that if people know I want referrals maybe they'll send some, and they do.

But the big motor of my practice are a couple of clients. I put a lot of time and effort to solve some problems that they had, and didn't charge that much for that (they were underwater) and they tell everyone that care to listen about me, so I am getting new people from them every year.

I am looking forward to hear what other people have to say. Good luck!

The first order is to get the EA exam under my belt...part 1 in June or July depending on vacation. If I lose my job, I may just study full time and take all three parts instead.

I don't have any plans at this point to go it on my own. I don't have enough clients to even consider it.

The ultimate plan is to build my business over the next few years to the point where I need some assistants and I should have two kids coming out of school by then (high school) who can work part time during college.

Michael

My husband originally had this business. I helped him because I had done taxes on the side before and my job, as a computer programmer/analyst who specialized in financial and accounting systems, gave me a lot of knowledge in the accounting, payroll and tax fields.

After being laid off after many years in the field (and being burnt out because of the oncall demands), I took over his business, and my husband went back to work for someone.

I'd like to take the EA exam and just build the tax portion of the business and keep the accounting and payroll side small. I have a special needs daughter and her needs require a lot of my time, so I think this arrangement would be the best for us.

But that's why I have 100% retention, I answer the phone, I email ASAP, my clients know that I am here for them, and I CARE about them. That makes a huge difference. I may not know everything (or a lot) but I research, I read TA, and I deliver. I review the returns and I always find something that give my clients a better outcome (not necessarily a mistake), and I couldn't do that when I worked for the "chain", since it was done and e-filed on the spot.

I even answered the phone on the 16th!

The cell calls I get to pretty quickly though...

And I took it.

Never let the sun go down on an unanswered email or phone call even if it is just "I got your message and I will get back to you".

Michael

Worked for Block for three years (taught the basic class for two of those), then got a full-time tax job with a CPA firm that specializes in tax work, where I stayed for five years. I passed the EA exam in 1991.

I've been self-employed for about 18 years. I run one ad in the newsletter published by a local hardware store, and a couple of friends whose practices are max'd out have been referring clients to me for years.... I try to keep it at about 180-190 clients; I don't know how any solo practitioner can do more.

It was back years ago and I went to meet with my tax man Dan, who once had worked for my father's tax man. Anyway, Dan had gone out on his own when his boss retired, and he worked out of the basement of his home.

I went up there during tax season, and we were shooting the bull, and so I offer him a cigarette. Now, this man had not smoked for 10 years, and he was overweight, and here I hand him a full bore Marlboro cigarette to smoke, and you can imagine what happened. He checked out! He expired on me. Remember now, I'm a dumb kid who thought every one lived forever at this time. In other words, though I was highly educated, I didn't know a damn thing.

Well, I was confused as hell, so I take and open the deep freeze down there in the basement, and I put him inside where I can think. I thought, and I decided, with it being in the middle of tax season and all, and here I basically killed the man, the least I can do is service his clients so that he would go out well thought of.

Well, come 5pm, with my business plan complete, I called the funeral home, and had him picked up, and then I basically just took over, and I've made history ever since.

Oh? The police, you ask? The police gave me no problems, since it was indeed an accident; and it helped that Dan did the Chief's tax return, and now Crow had the file with the Chief's tax return in it, and all Dan's notes...so no problems from that quarter.

As far as retail or wholesale....with a retail shop, you have to keep it busy during the off season, and about all you can do is sell dry ice. You can make it and sell it with a fairly small investment, and what with global warming, you can do ok.

If you don't count Sundays, there were 78 days from January 15th through April 15th this year. If you prepared 190 tax returns in those 78 days, you prepared an average of 2.436 tax returns per day.

My average returns per day was 8.33 returns, but I could have easily prepared about 200 more returns in March, since many of my March clients came earlier in February or later in April this year (and at least 200 of my former clients are now using Turbo Tax or having their friends use Turbo Tax to prepare their returns). This year was the first year I had to sit and do nothing for a lot of the time in March. There were many days in February this year that I prepared 20 to 24 returns per day.

So, my first thought to your statement, "I don't know how any solo practitioner can do more," was I don't know how any solo practitioner can stand to only do 180-190 returns. Unless, of course, those 180-190 returns are all corps, estates, and/or partnerships.

This year, I only had to work three Sundays (about five to six hours each) and about three weeks of 11.5-hour days in February. January - 80, Februrary - 363, March - 128, and April - 79. Total - 650 returns. I used to be accustomed to preparing 850 to 950 returns each tax season -- until tax preparation was "simplified" in the early 90s, then my yearly total began to decrease gradually a little each year. For me, this includes doing everything: answering every phone call, doing all the filing, greeting every client who came into my office, answering all questions, and preparing every tax return (some take 5 minutes and some take 1.5 hours, average is somewhere around 20 minutes each).

650 returns x 20 minutes = 216.67 hours. 216.67 hours divided by 78 days (not including Sundays) = 2.78 hours per day spent preparing tax returns. The rest of the time was spent answering the phone, answering questions, filing, making phone calls, cleaning the office, listening to clients talk, etc...

Now you know how it's possible to prepare more than 180-190 returns every tax season.  :)