I love the out loud question of "HOW MUCH DOES GUSTO COST" followed by a moment of googling and the soft "oooohhh..." So often struggling small/new business owners use questions as reasons to procrastinate or stall, whereas productive ones google it and move on, it's really not that hard!
Excellent perspective on this acct'g firm's struggles. One thing I learned the hard way many years ago. The lure of simplification and higher marketing/sales effectiveness that comes from specializing is blown to bits if that vertical - that niche - experiences trouble, or is undermined somehow in their market. It took a long time to realize that diversifying the customer base would save us when one niche experienced difficulty. It took almost going out of business due to over-reliance on a customer profile that suddenly was in big trouble. "Never again will we specialize". Taking on at least one other team member who groks this risk is a huge help because they understand the risk and will add to the ability to diversify. Thanks for the excellent video!
People on twitter being mean, shocked. People tend to forget that #Taxtwitter is still twitter at the end of the day lol. Props to these guys for going through this. Hope they pull through.
This feels like their first business. Welcome to business ownership! Took me three businesses before I really started making money. None of these in accounting, just to be clear.
Sounds like The sales guy saw a huge demand in accounting, and wanted a piece of the action. Without any accounting experience himself, he found the first accountant available to partner with, who has entry level experience. Good luck to these guys. They’re finding out it’s not so easy to do what we do.
Thats the SoCal lifestyle! I bet if they spent less time on personal appearance for social media and talking in lingo/buzzwords, and more time doing accounting, they'd be ok.
Sheesh…Not to be mean, but realistically, it’s not a surprise these guys are flailing. Two “firm partners” with like a year or two of experience between them in the industry, going after the low-end pricing model, who sound like they basically work part time and hired an employee, but pay themselves full time salaries, sounds like a bad idea. Honest advice, like others said because it’s obvious, get rid of the guy with the beard and let the EE go, then you’re fine.