I’ve had a lot conversations with people about starting their own firms lately. Here’s a distilled playbook on all I’ve learned so far.

A lot of accountants tell me they “want to start a firm”, then stall. Not because they can’t do the work, but because they don’t have a repeatable plan for getting from $0 to a real practice. After 80+ episodes talking to founders who did it, here’s the playbook I’d personally run if I were starting today.

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The Firm-Founder Playbook

1) Self-Assessment: Your Constraints and Design Specs

Reality check: Your lifestyle, cash runway, and appetite for risk dictate your launch model.

• If you need your current income: Don’t rip the cord. Embed yourself inside an existing practice that doesn’t yet offer your service (e.g., build a tax arm inside a CAS or wealth-advisory shop). You start on second base with salary (or at least a strong base of clients to cross-sell into) along with future upside.

• If you can take a lower-earning year: You can considering going independent, keep expenses light, and buy yourself time to build the right thing, not just any thing.

2) Bookmarked People: You Don’t Need to go at This Alone

You don’t need a 50/50 cofounder on Day 1. You do need complementary operators you trust though, because doing absolutely everything yourself is a recipe for burnout.

Action you should start today regardless of entrepreneurial ambitions:

• Make a list of 10–15 “bookmarked people” you’d partner with in a heartbeat, or who could have complimentary skills you lack. Often this can be former classmates or co-workers you gelled well with.

• Take a few of them to coffee this month. Get curious about what they’ve got going on. and what their personal aspirations might be.

• Keep the relationship warm: share interesting niche content, wins, and your thinking. You’re building a great relationship, but also becoming aware of who you might be able to work with in the future.

Why it matters: It shortens your “I’m drowning” phase and keeps you from becoming the lonely everything-person.

3) Pick a Niche You Actually Like (and That Can Pay)

You can’t out-generalist regional firms. But you can out-specialize them.

Shortlist niches where you have credibility + access. Some examples for myself would be:

• Real estate investors / Airbnb hosts Since I own a rental property, I know their pain points, and those things that can be optimized that we never get to (debt structure, entity choices, record-keeping chaos). Big upside potential from optimization.

• Medical professionals I have family members who are in the medical profession, and I see the challenges they come across first-hand. High income, mostly all short on free time to worry about accounting and taxes, and a lot of them face the same issues (pro corps, payroll, benefits, billing).

• (Yours might be creators, commission-based sales, MSPs, etc. go where you have native context.)

Niche filter:

• Will they pay? (Yes/No)

• Are they busy enough to delegate? (Yes/No)

• Do you personally like the domain? (Yes/No)

• Can you talk the talk and meet them where they’re at?

Positioning sentence:
“We help [niche client set] go from [messy reality] to [specific outcome] with [your wedge] - then expand into [higher-margin layer].”

4) Seed Clients & Referral Pipes

Aim for a few seed clients to validate delivery, pricing, and ops.

Where to start:

• Your own network: people with rental portfolios, existing medical contacts, ex-colleagues.

• Tangential pros: in the example of real-estate owners that would be mortgage brokers, realtors, wealth advisors. Ask two questions:

  1. “Who sends you accounting questions you don’t want to handle?”

  2. “What do you wish CPAs did for your clients that they don’t?”

  3. “What would make you want to send those leads to me?”

Value-for-value (instead of discounting) to get early clients onboard at a reduced price:

• Case study permission + testimonial

• Logo / name usage on your site

• Warm intros to peers

• Invite to their next event with peers in the relevant niche

5) Content + Communities: Be Seen Where They Already Gather

Ask every prospect: “Where do people like you hang out?” Keep digging until you get real answers.

Plug-ins that work:

• Speak at their meetups / Zooms on a relatable but frustrating issue.

• Write the “finally-explained” post on a new tax/change that actually hits their wallet.

• Launch your newsletter, and get more distribution by also sharing on platforms with built-in discovery (LinkedIn newsletters are still algorithm-favored).

Give away the what, sell the how:
Most prospects won’t implement; they’ll hire you once they trust you.

6) Land & Expand: Build the Advisory Ladder

Returns and books pay the bills. Advisory builds the firm. Whatever the niche is you choose to pursue, you should be looking into what you can offer clients once they’re onboarded and trusting you with their accounting work.

A practical example for a real-estate focused firm:

1. Land: Rental/short-term rental tax + entity setup (flat or tiered pricing).

2. Expand A: Debt optimization review: rebalance loans to lower rates; shift non-deductible personal debt to deductible investment debt where appropriate.

3. Expand B: Portfolio operating model: cash flow calendar, reserve sizing, maintenance pacing.

4. Expand C: Partner services: mortgage broker offering, realtor referral partner, etc.

Medical Niche Example:

1. Land: Pro corp setup + Tax Compliance + Payroll + Indirect Tax.

2. Expand A: Billing audits + AR cleanup; expense policy design.

3. Expand B: Benefits plan modeling; income-splitting optimization.

4. Expand C: Wealth advisory handoff with recurring review cadence.

Pricing Guardrails (so you don’t box yourself in)

• Anchor to outcomes, not hours. “$X saved / $Y risk reduced” beats “10 hours @ $___.”

• Three-tier packaging: Core (compliance), Core+ (ops automation/quarterly reviews), Pro (advisory + partner coordination).

• Advisory projects: Define a crisp scope (inputs/outputs, 2–3 meetings, final memo). Price to the delta you create.

Closing Thought

Starting a firm isn’t for everyone, but if you’ve got that itch, it might be worth exploring. A business coach I worked with had me map out the “and then what” to talk me through my fears of leaving the steady 9-5 life, and I realized that regardless of outcomes it was going to open a lot more doors for me than it closed. You don’t need to risk it all either if you have financial obligations, a lot of these firms start off as side projects, or with people confirming intent from a base of customers before making the jump.

Pick a niche you actually enjoy. Meet clients where they already hang out. Land with something simple; expand into the work that moves their bottom line.

Liked this? Reply and tell me about your plans, I love having new firm operators on the podcast!