I interviewed Lana Jo Hill in July 2020 because she was having extraordinary pricing successes, despite some personal challenges and the world going into lockdown.  Lana talked about scope creep and the importance of working with the right clients.

If you would prefer to watch the full interview, you can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/HACoKZ77ltU

Lana Jo Hill’s Success Story

Lana owns her own virtual bookkeeping firm, Hill Bookkeeping and Consulting, based outside of Baltimore, Maryland. The business will soon be reaching its fifth year.

Lana started her virtual bookkeeping business to fulfil her passion for helping small businesses grow. Having a virtual business is also perfect for Lana as it allows her to spend more time with her two young boys whilst still continuing to earn an income.

The challenges Lana faced

One of the biggest challenges Lana has had to face is scope creep.

Her clients...

Here is another inspirational case study from a multi-award-winning bookkeeper in Canada, Teresa Slack.

As always, if you would prefer to watch the full interview, you can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/MlXQpU_TxKI

Teresa Slack’s Success Story

Teresa runs Financly with her sister Connie which they started seven years ago. From day one, they decided on being a virtual firm, and they grew really quickly thanks to networking events. They decided it was time to hire staff and hired three bookkeepers.

But they quickly realized that their hourly rate of $35 wasn’t enough to cover paying their staff and business expenses, and things got bad. In a recent interview I had with Teresa, she told me, “We actually hit a point where Connie and I had to put our own personal funds in just to cover our payroll. That was extremely stressful!” Teresa found there was nothing left after paying their staff to allow them to get...

This story is a very typical story of how an accounting professional moved away from hourly billing and the results she got. Her name is Jessica Fox. 

Watch the full video where she describes her results here: https://youtu.be/L1v5QwdRCWU

Jessica Fox’s Success Story

Jessica Fox started Florida Virtual Bookkeeper in 2016. Before then, she had been a corporate bookkeeper, so she was great at the technical stuff, but knew nothing about pricing.

When Jessica decided to become a freelance bookkeeper in 2010, she had two clients. One tax accountant who kept her busy with clean-up work and catch-up projects; they told her how much they would pay her, and she agreed. So, she had no need to know how to price.

The other client was a small non-profit, which Jessica worked for mostly out of the kindness of her heart, not because of the money, so she was only charging them very small amounts.

“I started to under-price myself from the very...

This is Melanie Jury’s inspiring story. If you would prefer to watch the full interview, you can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/9X6LSo9FNo4

Melanie Jury’s Success Story

Melanie Jury started her bookkeeping journey in the mid 90s. Her family had a business, and she was bookkeeping for that company, which then led her into other companies.

Melanie then started her own bookkeeping business, but at that time, she was raising her children and didn't have very many clients. That was a good thing because she wanted to raise her children and be there for them.

Melanie’s company was all manual and desktop-based, there was no cloud software, and it grew very fast. So did the family business, and this meant she had to take a step back from her own company, let it go, and focus on the family company.

In the end, that didn’t really lead anywhere for Melanie, so she left the family business, and started over with her new...

This is the story of Elnize Goosen who has been putting the value pricing foundations in place for the last few years and transforming the results of her firm.

Of course, if you would prefer to watch the full interview, you can find it on my YouTube Channel here, https://youtu.be/16t46EYwGC4

Elnize Goosen’s Success Story

Elnize Goosen’s firm, DGE Chartered Accountants and Registered Auditors, is based in Centurion, South Africa. They are a fully virtual, cloud-based firm.

Previously, Elnize worked in a corporate firm. However, the firm that she was working for merged with another firm, and they had a finance department already. Elnize was declared redundant. In a recent interview together, Elnize told me, “I was about six or seven months pregnant at that stage. And I was declared redundant, and I lost my job. It was a shock! But for a while before that my husband Daniel had been nagging me to start my own firm. That was the...

You must review prices regularly.  After all, circumstances change. One of the most common questions I get from the accountants and bookkeepers I work with is how to re-price existing clients, particularly when the current price is far too low, and the price hasn’t been changed for some time.

This is a huge opportunity for you to significantly improve your profit. Here’s a case study to help illustrate that. It is based upon an interview I did with an accountant called Stanley Dean in October 2021.

If you would prefer to watch the full interview, you can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/JMbt8Sxvz8Y

Stanley Dean's Success Story

Stanley Dean runs a firm called SDA CPA Group in Atlanta, Georgia in the USA, and has been in business since 2003. When he started his firm, as a CPA Stanley believed he knew everything about running an accounting practice. However, it wasn’t until he got into it that he realised he...

This is the story of Carol Kostachuk who is now much more confident with pricing.  She knows she does not need to win every client and she uses a meeting fee to pre-qualify.

If you would prefer to watch the full interview, you can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/O7nxDdBzyOU

Carol Kostachuk’s Success Story

Carol is based in British Columbia, Canada, and has been in business for over 24 years. She started in a position where she was doing administration and bookkeeping. But Carol was working crazy long hours, going to work at 5:30 in the morning and not getting home till 5:30 at night.

Then, when she was off on maternity leave, Carol spoke to her friends that were already in the bookkeeping business right out of school, and during her maternity leave she started her own business.

Since then, Carol has completely transformed the way that she prices from the old-fashioned way of time-based billing. I spoke with her recently to...

You need to systemize the process of communicating value. Words are so important.  The wrong words will get the “That’s expensive” reaction we all hate.  The right words will get the client to buy and buy at higher prices.  There is so much at stake with the words we use.

You can systemize the communication by creating standard scripts, proposal templates and pricing brochures for your core accounting services.

This is a story from Jhonatan Aldama, who is getting great results from pricing.  If you would prefer to watch the full interview, you can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/K3DoPgayFJc

Jhonatan Aldama’s Success Story

Jhonatan Aldama’s firm Nuve is based out of Austin, Texas. They are a virtual accounting firm serving clients all across the US and launched in December 2020.

In a recent interview together, Jhonatan shared with me some of his major pricing struggles that he faced...

This interview with Kimme Lafayette demonstrates what is possible when you have a system for value pricing.  Read it carefully, there are many learning points. 

Even better, watch the full interview which goes into further detail. You can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/-3CJZYRGZps

Kimme Lafayette’s Success Story

Kimme is located in Southern Ontario, in the Niagara region, and she’s had her business for about seven and a half years. Kimme focuses on bookkeeping, sales tax filings and payroll tax filings – focusing on being involved with her clients on the day-to-day stuff.

In a recent interview, Kimme told me, “When I started my business, I had been working as a bookkeeper for a company and they were changing all of their staff to subcontractors, and they dictated what my opening rate was going to be - $25 an hour instead of the salary I’d been on.”

This was a challenge for Kimme because...

This is the story of an accountant who has really mastered the value conversation. You can find it on my YouTube Channel here: https://youtu.be/PYUcIXFWEeY

Neil Criddle’s Success Story

Neil Criddle is based in Weston-super-Mare, in the Southwest of the UK. Prior to starting his business, Neil had about 12 years in industry working for lots of large corporates including veterinary, financial services, construction and telecom industries, but no experience with an accountancy firm.

In a recent interview I had with Neil, he told me, “As I got further into my career, I wanted to help people, but in my own kind of way. I’m not a massive fan of following the rules if I think the rules aren’t fit for purpose for the end user. I was doing a lot of good work and getting frustrated by the fact that I couldn’t help people in the way that they would have benefited from because of political red tape and hierarchies. So I started my...