Why Pricing Keeps Breaking in Tax & Accounting Firms (It’s Not Your Rates)

‍Lee Reams

Welcome to the Growth Minded Accountant Podcast, where our experts share best practices on running your firm in the digital age. This podcast is brought to you by CountingWorks PRO. Let's get started. Welcome back to another episode of the Growth Minded Accountant Podcast. My name is Lee Reams. I'm the founder and CEO of CountingWorks. Today we're going to talk about something that we've we've covered previously. it's pricing, but we're starting to kind of see a clear way, a clear narrative to kind of communicate how you as a tax and accounting firm need to change the way you're communicating the way you're running your business when it comes to how you're actually applying how you price your work. So today's podcast is titled You don't have a pricing problem, you have a pricing system problem. As usual, I am joined by our chief visibility officer who's going to provide some great insight on what narrative is, what positioning is.

Rebekah, if you can say hello.

Rebekah Winters Barton

Yeah. Hey guys. Excited to be here as always. and I know she's in Indiana, so we've been seeing all the pictures. Warming up a little bit, right? Little bit. A little bit. You wouldn't know it from the blanket I'm wearing today, but we are going to make it through.

Lee Reams

Yeah. I think we're supposed to be like 75 today out here on the West Coast and then 80 tomorrow. So, um, I feel for you guys and the rest of the country. So, let's get into this. and then just so you know, this is part this is part A of a two-part, um, kind of sequence I want to do. So, next week on the Growth Minded Accountant Podcast, we're going to talk about much more detail about positioning and more importantly, how to be relatable. These are game changers when firms start using this in their own marketing and learning how to kind of tell their story, connect with clients like they've never done before. But I feel before you get into positioning and even the relatability issue, I think you need to establish kind of your philosophy on the way you price kind of the way I'm going to talk about the way it's used to be done, way now AI is kind of disrupting things and the way I believe it should be done.

So there's a conversation I keep hearing from established tax and accounting firms and it usually sounds something like this. You know, I know hourly billing doesn't really work anymore, but I don't know what replaces it. And you hear all about advisory over and over again. And I think there's even more confusion because then okay, I now replace it with a new pricing formula, but there's no system behind that. How do I communicate it? How do I offer that? How do I get that picked up by ChatGPT, for example? So, this hesitation of I don't know how to go from hourly to kind of the advisory makes a lot of sense. So and the reason this is most pricing education as a profession has been focused on models right or formulas hourly fixed fee you know now everyone talk about value pricing but almost no one talks about why pricing breaks in the first place. So today I want to reframe this entirely.

I want you to come out of this with a lot of different takeaways. You know maybe if there's only one or two things I think this is valuable for you. So, uh, I'm going to try to reframe this entirely because most firms don't actually have a pricing problem. I believe they have a pricing system pricing system problem. so pricing is not your rate card, it's architecture. Okay? So, once you see it that way, everything else starts to click. So, as usual in the growth minded account, I like to break these up in segments. I think it helps it flow a little bit better. With this particular episode, we're actually going to have kind of like a PDF download that will be in the description that kind of formulates and follows what we're talking about today. So, I think it'll be a helpful takeaway.

So, you know, if you're not taking notes or you're not following along every the whole way and we say something you want to go back to, definitely take that or download that document. So, hourly billing didn't become dominant because it was smart. It became dominant because it was defensible. Okay? Okay, so if a client asks why does it cost what it costs, you could point to hours and think of your lawyer relationship, right? Uh it felt objective, it felt fair and it felt very safe, right? Uh but it also limited the amount of money you could make and you know that became kind of a hidden cost. So hourly billing train your clients to question time, not value. Um focus on effort, not outcomes and treat efficiency as something to negotiate and I think you can all relate to that, not reward. So all of a sudden what happens to the industry AI and AI didn't create this problem but it really has exposed it.

So when you have jobs or tasks that used to take you hours and now you're able to do them in minutes. Think a tax planning strategy you know I could go on and on about how many things have been automated. This logic starts collapsing. Or if your billing's still on hourly and it used to bill three hours and now you're billing 35 minutes. Um I think you got a problem, right? So I kind of went in and researched just to kind of back up what I've seen and where you know some of the thought leaders and the educators believe and MI MIT Sloan has been warning about this for years. They said when automation increases firm that price effort instead of outcome see margins compression right even as your productivity improves. Uh and this is where I go to the argument this isn't a pricing issue this is a system issue. So now let's talk about pricing models to pricing architecture.

And this is where I want to see the big shift and how you think about things. So the old question would be how do I price my work, right? And that's the difference between a pricing model and a pricing system. So a pricing system has four parts. We're going to go break down all four of these parts. And Rebekah, hopefully you're going to jump in a lot about education and the packaging side. The first one and this is what we're going to talk about next week is positioning. Second one is going to be education. Third one is packaging and fourth is systems. Okay? So miss any of these and I think your pricing breaks and I'll kind of explain how that works. But you know no matter how good your intentions are.

So meaning if you've only position, you don't educate, you don't package it properly or you don't have some automation or systems that all of a sudden becomes a bottleneck where an approval is needed by a senior manager for every proposal. That's where you get into trouble, right? So, positioning becomes the big thing you need to work on even before you start doing pricing, right? So, pricing fails when firms try to charge differently without positioning themselves differently. So, if your firm sounds like every other firm, clients always default to price.

So, Rebekah, let's kind of give some examples if you could of what you know that old firm position statement like. we offer CFO services versus what you need to contrast it or update it to the modern standards and why this starts making a much clearer positioning and story inside of your prospect or your client's mind on why this is important for them, why there's a positive outcome, and why this is a benefit for them versus a cost.

Rebekah Winters Barton

Absolutely. So, as things have moved toward advisory, I think almost every firm is saying we do tax planning, we do tax strategy, we do tax advisory. So that in and of itself is not really the flex that it was maybe 10 or 15 years ago or even 5 years ago. So it is very important to position yourself more narrowly. So for example, instead of saying we do tax preparation and advisory for business owners, say something like we help business owners avoid costly tax mistakes before they happen. That's putting something in someone's mind that they can relate to. It's helping them put themselves in the shoes of your clients and see how you can really help them. We offer CFO services. Okay, great. But so does everyone else or seemingly so does everyone else. So if you say something like, "We help local entrepreneurs make confident financial decisions," that's a positioning statement. That's saying exactly who you help, exactly what you do.

And instead of local, you can stick your city in there. You can really localize it, make it super niche, and you're going to attract the people who you really want to work with by doing this. Another option, if you're just say, "We help small businesses." How? Right? That's not telling anyone anything. It's just some words. If you say something like, "We work with local boutique owners who want better outcomes every quarter." That's a positioning statement. That's something that tells, you know, who you're helping, what type of outcome they can expect, and it's narrowing it down because all small businesses are different. So, it's a great idea to have an industry or at least a faction of industries that you support like retail, medical offices, um, you know, consultants, whatever the case may be.

Having that positioning statement that really defines who you are and what you do is what's going to set you apart and set you up for a pricing model that works, not just now, but down the road.

Lee Reams

So, let's break this down a little bit more. It's the perceived value. So, I'm in the entertainment business. I'm a movie producer or a director. I'm most likely going to hire someone who has positioned themselves as the CFO advisor to the stars, right? Who knows my vertical inside and out, who knows how the industry works, knows the secrets, right? Versus someone who's just a CPA firm in Burbank. Okay? That is what positioning is all about. and you're positioning yourself for a pricing discussion that it's like, okay, if I can make it my prospect or client think that I know some secret, you know, sauce that others don't, that a commodity firm and the other commodity firm could argue I know exactly the same thing. I offer the same thing.

The difference here is you're going to be able to get a premium for your services and you're also going to attract people that are willing to spend more than [snorts] they would like a, you know, a commodity type shopper. So when your positioning is clear, there's a couple other things that are really important, Rebekah, that I want you to go into this. So it goes into Google and how you're indexed, how your brand story is told online. More importantly, how ChatGPT, for example, understands you better. It actually, you know, people will ask questions like, I'm looking for X, and then it will look for CPA firms, for example, or enrolled agent firms that actually have the same story. they offer da d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d d for this vertical this might be a better fit for you and they'll actually get recommended inside these AI tools. Obviously, Google is owning this as well.

Uh there's referral partners prospects arrive pre-qualified. They already feel like they know what you're doing. So, why is that so important?

Rebekah Winters Barton

Well, there are a variety of reasons and one of them is technical, right? the AI systems in particular want to know your story because they want to recommend someone who is a really good fit for their users. So the more your story is out there and we talk about this a lot, but the more your story is out there, the more cohesive it is, the more you position yourself and tell the internet who you serve, what you do, where you are, what your specialties are, the more likely you are to be connected to people who fit the parameters that fit you. Basically, so if you're looking for pediatricians in Minneapolis and you don't have anything on the internet except that you serve small businesses in Minnesota, the AI systems aren't going to understand who exactly you serve. By creating content and positioning yourself and using positioning statements that say, "Hey, I want to work with pediatricians in the Minneapolis St.

Paul area who serve, you know, children under the age of 12." That's a really great positioning statement that's going to help the AI systems understand who to connect you with. And not just GPT, but Google's Gemini and its AI synopsis that appears at the top of every search page. All of these systems are looking for signals about who you serve so they can better connect professionals like you with their users. So, it's very, very important to tell your story. On a user standpoint, like Lee mentioned, it's a great way to help people pre-qualify themselves. If someone finds you and they see that, hey, you only work with pediatricians and they work as a veterinarian, they're not going to reach out to you. And that way, you're not wasting time talking to people who don't fit your demographic, who you can't help in the way that you want to help them.

So, there's a variety of reasons that it really, really matters to position yourself online. some of them technical, some of them from a user experience standpoint, and they all come together to really help you set yourself apart and get the clients you want and therefore price yourself according to the outcomes that you're actually delivering. So, I want to expand on this a little bit more. it's not just your positioning, but it's telling these tools and the internet how you work because this is going to be part of the response and part of the it's almost like a salesperson, a virtual salesperson for you. So if your website for example is missing how do we work with clients, how do we charge, right? This is kind of like these FAQ things. Um this part of the story is going to have a hole. So when they're comparing you with two other vendors, for example, the two other vendors say I offer CFO advisory services.

Uh I offer three base levels or you know and again I'm not arguing how to price this. I'm just giving you background. if you're providing this context that is going to be included in the responses and in the analysis of who ChatGPT, for example will recommend. So just real quickly Rebekah kind of explain how do you add that type of content and that story inside where does it go? I assume just on your website on your website I'm going to sound a little bit like a broken record if you've listened recently but an FAQ page is a really great way to get some of this information out there. Also having a pricing page is key. We talk a lot about pricing with our clients and about having pricing pages and you can also build pillar content.

It's something we've actually done at CountingWorks where we've answered specific questions about our services, about how we work, who we work with on pages of our website that are devoted to explaining particular aspects of our services that were perhaps missing or not fully fleshed out. A great idea is to do an AI audit of your own website. type your URL in, say, "Hey, what do you perceive this business does? What am I missing to be a fully cohesive brand?" And it will tell you from its standpoint what you need to add. So, that's a good way to kind of start. But a lot of the time, what you're going to need to do is answer questions in an FAQ or add some pillar content. And pillar content, for those who don't know, is going to be a page that kind of builds over time. We also often call it evergreen content. It's a page that's going to gain authority.

Typically, it's longer form, oftentimes over 750 words, sometimes upwards of a thousand words, and it's going to really explain a topic in depth. There are blog posts that can serve as pillar content. There are static URLs that can serve as pillar content just depending on your needs and depending on what that audit of your website tells you. so a couple clarifications. You don't necessarily have to show your pricing, but you should say, who do I work with? you know, am I a highlevel, you know, I'm working with professionals or dual income households and, you know, with income over 500,000. What you're doing is you're positioning yourself already as a premium product or you work with the trades. I work with plumbers, electricians, whatever.

That will kind of help people self- select in some ways and come ready to the discovery call or ready to hire you where their first question isn't, and this is you'll appreciate, you don't want them to say, "What do you charge?" You want to hear, hey, I think you might be exactly what we need. Okay. And that perceived value is has happened before the pricing conversation ever happens. They're they're probably I think the statistics say that people come in like 67% decided all their research has been done online before they actually talk to you. So if you've done that effectively and fed ChatGPT and Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, whatever tools you're using, that conversation is going to be a lot easier. So that is where pricing pressure starts to disappear.

So I'm going to roll into the next section which is education is the bridge and a lot of firms are like what are you talking about education about pricing and you know it's not so I kind of look at it this way most firms jump from this is how we used to build to this is how we build now and it's a very direct like you know hitting you over the head like a change and that gap creates resistance. Okay. And what we mean by education fills it is you can pre kind of hit up your clients over time whether that be on your blog, your newsletter, social media, your website. U educating clients on how you price and again what we just talked about. So that education doesn't necessarily happen in the pricing meeting. They've already realized, yeah, we do monthly, you know, recurring charges and we sell through subscriptions.

This happens long before a pricing meeting right through your content conversations and more importantly repetition right so if they see this over and over again that is why your email newsletter your blog your social post are so important have them on autopilot have them be consistent make sure it happens so education looks something like this blog post answering you know what is tax advisory what is CFO advisory is CFO advisory right for my business is CFO advisory right for my medical practice Now you're positioned. Now you're telling a story. Now you're kind of seating kind of your talking points, right? You know, social posts explaining why reactive tax planning costs more long term, right? Oh, that's a wait a second. There's actually a cost here to me. Common mistakes business owners don't see. Right? So, these are things email campaigns walk through. You know, this is what happens when no one is watching cash flow.

You know, that's exact, you know, exactly what I'm talking about. the business that all a sudden it's December and they're like, "Oh, accountant, I need help." You know, let's clean up this mess. You know, why decisions made in Q4 affect Q4, I mean Q2 affect Q4, right? So, those kind of things. So, this content isn't marketing fluff. It's pricing support. And that's why I'm talking about when I say pricing architecture or pricing systems. So by the time pricing comes up, the client already understands what's at stake, why my decisions matter, and why outcomes are more valuable than time. Right? You see how we're doing this. So Rebekah, you know, this is where the narrative, visibility, and education starts shaping buyer expectations, uh, you know, before they ever talk to you. And kind of give some explanations or way we have done that for our clients just in creating, uh, kind of this seed of education.

And we use playbooks. we help build out these kind of conversations so they just run and then clients all of a sudden just are proactively self-selecting and calling and saying hey you know I want to talk to you about CFO advisory, for example.

Yeah, so I think there's this tendency not just within tax and accounting but in all industries to put marketing in one bucket and maybe pricing in another bucket and then maybe your day-to-day operations in a third bucket when in reality there is one large bucket and everything really goes together because it all connects and it all plays off of each other. So what we try to do is build those bridges, which is actually the name of this segment. So it's I think kind of a good analogy, but we try to build bridges between all of those buckets so that everything is cohesive and everything comes together. So for example, your monthly newsletter might have personalized blog posts that speak to your target audience that discuss things like, hey, here's a new service that we're offering. we're starting to offer advisory packages. This is why it matters. This is who it's for. That answers those questions that you just mentioned.

We'll encourage people to do that to post blogs. We encourage people to make their social posts go along with these blog posts, right? And with our playbooks then we can also add in email campaigns. We can add in all of this information that is kind of priming clients to understand what's happening with pricing without necessarily directly talking about pricing. And I think that's where the psychology aspect of this comes in. the psychology aspect of purchasing. Once people start to understand, okay, I need CFO advisory services. This sounds really interesting to me because they've read emails, they've read blog posts, they've seen Reels, they've read social posts that all kind of pertain to this topic. Then when the time comes for you to introduce pricing or packaging, they've already decided that it's something they want. So, it really is that priming that is key. And we do it through lots of different ways.

Like I just mentioned, we do it through playbooks. We do it through emails. We do it through newsletters. But no matter if you're using counting works or not, you can prime your clients for any sort of a pricing shift or for any sort of a new service that you might be offering to them. So my ne next suggestion is when you create your actual if you do packages and again whether you publicly show your pricing or not you might have a base level package but when you develop it use this narrative this financial outcome versus just listing tasks because when you start listing task you're now going and correlating it back to time. So you know I mean packages built around decision to support. So should I sell my business? Should I hire more employees? Should I raise capital? C capital advisory, right? Or more important like ongoing access. How often we're going to talk? Financial clarity. How am I going to present things?

How am I going to give you KPIs to make you accountable each month? And to see, hey, where do we win? Where do we lose? What do we need to do better? So instead of selling, hey, you get four meetings, two projections, and unlimited emails. That sounds familiar, doesn't it? Because that's about way every single one does it. You sell ongoing guidance so you can make confident decisions all year. So you start utilizing this language and your copy even in your engagement letters, your proposals. Again, we've already talked about on your website. so this is how this shows up in the real world. A narrative priced package might sound like year- round tax planning, so you're never reacting under pressure or CFO level guidance without hiring a full-time CFO. you're really starting positioning your again Rebekah said it as well. You want to put your client wants to see themselves in the story.

Okay, clear financial direction so you know what decisions to make and when. So behind the scenes, yes, there are meetings, there's projections, there's deliverables, but that's not what your client is buying, right? The client is buying fewer surprises, reduced risk, confidence, relief, right? And that's why pricing tied to outcomes holds up. And that's the real key here. If that's one takeaway, kind of use that when you're thinking about your own pricing. So clients aren't comparing hours anymore. They're comparing peace of mind. Okay, so really important. So, uh, now we've talked all about this and it's just like, well, this sounds like a lot of work. So, uh, if you create a system, um, if you don't create a system, you're going to end up backsliding, I guarantee you, to hourly billing. without systems, education becomes inconsistent. Maybe you did one blog article.

Maybe someone reminded themselves to talk to a client about something, but then they forget. you know, messaging changes depending on who talks. So, there's not like this. This is a companywide talking point. This is how we're positioned. This is how our narrative for pricing goes. more importantly, scope creep comes in quietly and we've done a Growth Minded Accountant Podcast on scope creep and the percentages, the amount of loss of revenue is amazing. So, that's a huge thing. a confidence erode. So systems stabilize pricing. What does a system look like? [snorts] Automated education content running in the background automatically. Every month you're sending maybe an email or a blog article. You're hitting social media. Consistent language across the firm. Um clear boundaries around what's included. Predictable advisory touch points. So pricing stops being emotional. It becomes operational.

I want to just target this real quick, Rebekah, without going on a whole another consistent language across the firm. Explain that. In our most successful clients, they have 100% created a position. They've show their personality, whether it's their color scheme, the fonts they use, the language, the personal photos, and they integrate all of this copy across this. But when we say integrated across the firm and what I meant is integrated into proposals, your engagement letters, that language, you want someone who their first glimpse of you, the story doesn't change and you're actually, it's like a political campaign. You're just reinforcing one or two or three talking points over and over again. That's when it starts hitting and that's how you build real trust.

Yes, cohesion matters. And I say it all the time. You want a cohesive story across everything you touch. So, like you mentioned, proposals, intake forms, social media posts. the hero section on your website should immediately tell people who you are, what you do, answer these questions. It should have that verbiage. And I think one other thing that we don't talk as much about is that when you and your staff interact with clients or potential clients, it's very important to continue using that same language. You just mentioned, Lee, something that struck me when you said different people are using different language at the firm. That is something that shouldn't happen. It's very important to sit your team down and say, "Hey, here are our talking points. This is what we're telling people. This is what we do." Your team should be as comfortable with who your firm is as you are as the owner.

So, I think it's really important to remember that while it matters significantly online that you have this consistent language across all of your marketing materials, all of your collateral, all of your onboarding materials, they should all match. Equally important is making sure that when your team is having conversations with people that they're using those same language, same talking points so that everything really matches across the entire client experience. Not just when people find you online, but once they're actually working with you as well.

Lee Reams

And we the way we handle this is we teach and we use AI, we use Max and we teach basically and you could do this on your own. You could create your own style guide or even like your own, you know, go into ChatGPT and just, you know, riff with it of what your philosophy is and then create a PDF of that and then every single staff member could use that anytime they're doing a proposal. A tool like ours, you can feed all that language in and our tool knows this is what we do. This is how we talk. Include, you know, in your proposal, include five bullet points of how this specific vertical or profession would benefit from my service. So it personalized everything and if I had all those talking points in it automatically integrates it. It automatically integrates those into my blog articles, my outbound emails. So that is the power of AI and at scale and it is really good. This isn't technical stuff. This isn't thing you need to worry about.

This absolutely works. So you know what is the real price of broken pricing models. So it doesn't just hurt margin. it reshapes the way your firm operates usually in ways you don't notice right away. So, you know, I'm going to talk about this partner bottlenecks. Some one person has to approve or, you know, put it all together. When pricing is tied to hours or vagueness, uh, scopes, partners become the safety net, right? Every exception, judgment call, or quick question flows back to them. Not because the work is necessarily complex, but because the pricing system can't support delegation. Okay? It's not as smart enough to already know these answers of where we should go. Advisory burnout when pricing isn't tied to outcomes. I think advisory sometimes becomes reactive. Uh the boundaries between what the client paid for and what actually they're receiving if you have not laid it out properly. That's where you get a problem, right?

So you're constantly responding instead of guiding. Uh clients pull value as it comes up versus some structured process and the work in some ways can feel endless. You're like, "Oh my god, what did I sign up for?" Even if the revenue stays, you're still at $2,000 a month, but you're doing $6,000 worth of work. That is because you didn't put a system in. You didn't properly communicate. You didn't set boundaries. Uh revenue without leverage. Firms add advisory revenue, but nothing gets easier. Every new client adds complexity, not necessarily capacity. Um you know, growth without freedom. Uh you know, you might be growing, but all of a sudden, you're back to that situation where your head is spinning all the time. Uh your time really doesn't free up. It actually makes you busier. and then you're like, well, I got to fire, you know, so many clients just to to fill up more time.

No, organize yourself better, price yourself better, attract the right type of clients. I think that's where you're going to be much more successful. So, your firm doesn't have to feel broken. you know, and at times you just feel busy, right? So, without a pricing system, busy never turns into scalable, okay? It kind of just stunts your growth. This is as far as we can go. so let's go with this. One of the biggest issues and Rebekah I have I want to bring you into this. Um I have been working with clients for 20 years and most of you do. You got incredible loyal client bases and I've been charging them one way and they're used to low pricing. Right? My clients have been with me forever. Uh but here's the truth. Clients don't resist change, they resist uncertainty. And when you explain the firm is evolving. The way we do services is evolving. We're offering much more. You know, AI has enabled us to do much more than we used to.

We used to be a compliance firm. Now, we can really help set up your family for success. your children for success, your business for success, uh, you know, what do they gain, right? How this improves predictability and outcomes. And most clients will come with you. They will. You just need to be a leader, right? You're not asking for permission. So, Rebekah, kind of explain. We went into this a little bit more, you know, and I just want to reiterate it. Just like any rule of a podcast, if you have one really important comment, integrate your talking points and narrative across all your touch points. Repeat it twice in your podcast. So, Rebekah, I'm setting you up to repeat twice.

Rebekah Winters Barton

So, it's very important again to be cohesive in all of your language here and to communicate to your clients that outcomes matter and to help them understand priming them. Really, we're going to go back to priming people. You want to prime them for this change because like we said, people are not resisting the change in pricing. They're scared of what that could mean for them. So, if you can prime them to understand that, hey, this change is a good thing for you. It's going to help you keep X amount of dollars more a year or it's going to help you put your kids through college or it's going to help you afford that lakehouse you've always dreamed of when you retire. Whatever the situation is, by framing this change in a way that makes people feel confident in your abilities, you're going to have a much better chance of them coming with you. And it's important to remember that these people already trust you.

Your clients who have been with you for 20 years, they trust your abilities. So, if you're saying to them, hey, I can now do this much better than I could before on the old pricing or I can now do this much better because of AI. I can help you this much more. There's really no good reason for them to not come with you. It's all about how you prime them and how you explain the reason for the change. And just hitting people over the head like with a hammer and just changing everything without priming them is not the way to do it. There's a much better way to do it that's going to create less friction. it's going to make it a smoother path for everybody, for you, for your clients. So, I think just remembering that you need to gently prime people for the change without hitting them with something that's basically a massive blow to everything they've ever known from you. And just think about what you would want if you were your client.

What information would you want ahead of time to feel comfortable with a pricing shift or with moving from hourly pricing to a monthly subscription? And answer those questions. That's a really easy way to kind of think about it. We want you your clients to be able to put themselves in the shoes of the people you help. So, put yourself in your client's shoes as well and think about what you would want to know prior to any kind of a big change with a service provider. Yeah. So, think of the client life cycle. Yeah. They you track them, you positioned yourself so they feel, hey, this is the right firm for me. And then you continue that same language, that same messaging in the onboard side. So what is the language in your proposal? What is the language in your engagement letter? How do you communicate through your client hub? Follow that same the set the expectations. Make sure you don't get scope creep.

Make sure you reinforce your value over and over again. Make sure you refer make it personal. Personalize all of this communication. You're going to be much better off. Uh so let's land this. Let's let's I guess finish this one up. Hourly billing feels safe because it's familiar, but familiar familiarity isn't a strategy. Luckily, this is the end of the podcast, so I'm good. [laughter] The firms that thrive next won't have better rate cards. They'll have better systems, and they'll price outcomes, not effort. They'll educate before they sell. They'll use narrative to reset expectations. They'll let systems do the heavy lifting. Use the automation. Use these tools. Use these platforms. Find ones that are AI native. It's a huge difference. Trust me, the difference between the old software, clunky, hard to use versus AI tools is amazing. So, pricing isn't a decision. It's an architecture. And once you build it that way, it stops breaking.

So, if you're interested in creating your own pricing system, one that actually holds as holds as your firm grows, that's the work we're doing with firms every day here at CountingWorks PRO. We're going to take this to the positioning relatability. I think relatability is something that's so key and the firms we see it in the performance of our own platform and our own clients who are really killing it. They are very relatable. We're going to give examples. We're going to talk about what relatability really means. How to do this effectively even if you're a little shy or don't want to put yourself out there, have privacy concerns. It is an art form and it will drive huge dividends both in the type of clients that you're attracting and then even your current client base and the way they work with you. So again, thank you for being a subscriber or listener to the Growth Minded Accountant Podcast.

I think we're getting close to 7,000 subscribers. This is awesome. I have a one of our GMAs, our CFO project advisory interview over 20,000 views. Thank you so much for all the positive comments. We're going to continue creating content like this. So, we look forward to seeing you here in the future. good luck in tax season. It's going to be a fun one. Lots of things to worry about and lots of opportunities. Thank you again,