Buying and Selling an Accounting Practice with Brannon Poe Ep. 59

If you're focused. You're going to get better results. And so sometimes if you're on the buy side, you can buy things that take you off of your path. And sometimes that can be a good surprise, right? But often you're going to put more balls in the air than you can handle.

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Brandon is the founder of Poe Group Advisors and has been facilitating successful accounting practice transitions throughout the US and Canada, since 2003. He is also the creator of accounting practice academy, which is a virtual practice management workshop. Now let's get right into it.

I'll tell you a story. First of all, when my children were much younger, we went on a ski vacation and it was this really remote ski place. And I took my laptop and I took my phone, my cell phone, and I got there. And guess what? I couldn't have any reception at all. There was no wifi. There was like wifi at this little restaurant that you could barely get into.

And so I took this forced vacation off the grid. It was the best vacation I've ever had, like in my working life. And so fast forward a few years after that, I was speaking with a client in Canada, who's a CPA firm owner and he was taking a four week trip to north Africa and he was completely going off the grid for four full weeks.

And I said, how do you do that? So he kinda gave me his process for prepping for a long trip like that and for basically how to reenter. And I'll never forget. He said the first time I ever did it, I was in the airplane. Just having taken off from where he lived in Toronto. Lookdown at the city and wondered if he was going to have a business when he got back.

And he said, the cool thing was the staff stepped up. The clients were happy for him. The other thing was he didn't just like ghost everybody and leave. And then for that kind of trip. You got to tell people ahead of time, you got to tell clients like, "Hey, I'm going out of town. I'm going to be out of pocket for a month."

So that expedited a lot of work. And it actually brought in new work because people sort of thought of these special projects that they wanted him to look at or consider. And so all in all, it was a great experience for him and we sell CPA firms all over north America and we have this really interesting privilege in doing that as we see people's financial statements.

So we actually see their numbers. And I can tell you, this guy had a really successful practice. So if you didn't know what his schedule was like, and you just looked at the numbers, you'd be like, wow, what's the secret here? And I've noticed that pattern in selling firms is the people who are balanced and they take the time off, actually have more successful business.

So I wrote this really little book. The Unplugged Vacation is I call it an airplane read. It's really short. And we kind of tell you how that works. So that's in a nutshell of the book. Book,

I love to get my business to the point where I don't even have to tell a client so that I'm going actually. Let's be honest. I can actually do that now. I've arrived. My clients, they don't know who I am. They don't care anymore. So I have reached the epiphany and have a great team that supports me. But I like that. I don't actually like going on vacation, but that's a whole another thing. Let's move on to accountants, flight plan podcast. Who's your target audience and guest profile.

So target audience is owners of CPA forums or aspiring owners of firms. Typically our clients are in the smaller range of firm size. So I'd say under 5 million in revenues, pretty typical for us, maybe one to four partner firms are our typical client profile. As far as guest profile. What I like to do is introduce people who might not have ever been exposed to the accounting industry.

I like to bring some outside thought in, not to say that we don't have industry thought leaders, but I love to mix it up. So I don't really have a fixed profile. It's. I don't really do a lot of planning for who my podcast guests are. Like, we don't have this for like 12 month calendar of it. It's sort of like, oh, this guy would be good or this girl would be good or whatever.

We wing it a little bit. And honestly, I think that's probably why we've gotten a big following on our podcast in many respects-

The reaches a big audience because you are guests neutral. So the next question I have is what is the one of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when buying and selling their business, you specifically were just with CPA companies. I'm assuming, but still what are mistakes?

Oh gosh. Biggest mistakes. Well, I think you could break it down from the buy side or the sell side. So. I think the sell side, the biggest mistake is lack of planning. And you can do a lot. If you thinking about the sale, I always think you should build a business with the end in mind and you need to always think about, okay, how would the market perceive my firm?

And it's nice to have that sort of deep point on your business. And if people would just think about that 5 years, 3 years, 5 years, 10 years before they want to exit, they would make different decisions. And they would build more value into their business and it wouldn't be just Nichols. I mean, it could be a big difference.

So I'm not about for people buying a business-

For people buying a business one thing I'll say in general about business people is people underestimate the true value of focus is probably one of your most powerful things you can do as an entrepreneur. If you're focused, you're going to get better results.

And so sometimes if you're on the buy side, you can buy things that take you off of your path. And sometimes that can be a good surprise, right? But often you're going to put more balls in the air than you can handle

Shiny objects syndrome, right. To stick with the core focus double down on that and then. Yeah, I understand that.

Yeah. I think if you're going to make an acquisition, you need to be intentional. And I think it's important to think about what you want before you start looking. So if you start looking or if something catches your eye that you're not looking for, that can get you into trouble. I think if you're intentional upfront, you're going to have more success on an acquisition.

So how has being the President of your EO Chapter, Entrepreneurs Organization Chapter shaped your life and your role at Poe Group Advisors?

That is a great question and I don't know that I can fully answer it until I've had a couple of maybe a year or two to reflect on it because I'm still in the middle of it.

So I'm still, I did a two year term. I'm about a year and a half into a two year term of presidency and I've learned so much. The biggest thing is being a present of a board with other entrepreneurs is a real honor. And it's a huge learning experience because they're very smart people and we're all volunteers.

So you don't have the same relationship you have with employees because employees kind of have to do what you say or are there consequences that you can, you've got tools in your toolbox, as they say with volunteers, you've got to lead by inspiring them and you've got to lead in a different way. So from a leadership perspective, that offers that a bit, and then you bring that back to the office to.

I have numerous presidents. So we go to a presence meeting every year with EO, and I've had a number of say, like former presidents, like people who are further up the leadership track say I was president of Neo Chapter. And after my presidency, my business just took off and I can see why that could happen because you have to make time for EO.

It is a big responsibility and it forces you to make your business run a little bit more with that. And so I feel like once that presidencies over, you've learned a lot, you've learned different leadership skills. You've learned to be more efficient in your own work. And then when you come back to just having a business, it's like, "wow", I've got all this extra capacity and extra knowledge.

And so, yeah, it's just really cool to see EO's. It's hard to describe. The connections you make. And the training that EO has, has been phenomenal. The leadership training you get when you go to their presidents meetings and their other meetings and so.

Have you taken advantage of any of their other programs like the MP at MIT or the Harvard program?

I haven't really had time to explore those things as president and running a business.

I highly recommend if anyone's listening to this, I did both programs or I am still in the MIT program. It's mind blowing how good the curriculum, the teachers, the experiences are.

Yeah. I've heard that from others and I don't doubt it because the president's training is incredible.

Yeah. Great. So in your business today, what would you say is your biggest challenge that you're facing?

That's a tough question. We're growing very rapidly and I love that. Like I've always enjoyed when the business has been growing pretty rapidly, not too fast. Rapidly. So I'm in a really good phase of my business right now.

So I'm very content, but I can see that. I feel like I've just kinda gotten through a challenge of sorts. I had a point where this past year, like if we went back 12 months, I added several team members this year. I was president of EO. So the biggest challenge was managing my time and I intentionally decided like, okay, I'm going to work more than I want to work, right? Because it's temporary. And because I need to make an investment of time so that I can get this business properly staffed and getting the people trained. And so-

So how much are you growing by 20%, 70%?

Well, if you look at year over year, it's a little bit deceiving because 2020, we did have a dip, which was the first year of COVID was really kind of weird for the accounting industry.

And this year I feel like. The growth. We're probably about average of a 20% climb, which is not super fast, but I'm content.

Great. And so looking at next year, this is going to be a two-parter. What is your growth strategy? Number one and I've got to ask this question, so I'm going to just prime it right now.

You just said that other businesses should start. They should be thinking, building to sell or having that mindset. Are you building an exit plan? So both things, growth strategy and exit plan.

Yeah. So growth strategy. We have a workshop called Accounting Practice Academy, and we rolled that out. We built it in 2019, right before the.

And was pretty fortunate that we had this virtual program ready to go in the spring of 2020. So we've ran it for two years this year. We want to see maybe a two X growth on that program and what we have found. And we didn't expect this when we launched it. But accounting practice academy has actually had a big impact on the brokerage business.

A lot of people that are coming interested in the content that we have for academy, they get in that content and then those funnels, and then they convert to either sellers or buyers. So that's actually been a big part of our growth is academy, as far as building to sell. I'm working to make the business much less about me.

I'm personally not brokering any more deals. So I'm getting out of the direct client work and focusing on team building. We have an amazing. We have a couple of new people this year and they're just doing amazing. We've got everything systematized and processed out. And so, yeah, I'm kind of in the next phase at the beginning of that next phase.

And I want to make this business less and less about me so that other people can be running it. And if that's the case, then you can sell it whenever you want to sell it.

Or not sell it, but just have that peace of mind that if you need to, or you end up wanting to you're there, you're at the finish line.

Right, yeah.

Brandon talked about the impact and importance of taking an Unplugged Vacation. What pitfalls entrepreneurs should avoid when buying or selling their businesses and his experience of being the president of his local Entrepreneurs Organization Chapter. For more information, go to the show notes where you're listening to this podcast.

Want to know more about me go to my website, OfficialNatashaMiller.com, thank you so much for listening. I hope you loved the show. If you did, please subscribe also, if you haven't done so yet, please leave a review where you're listening to this podcast. Now I'm Natasha Miller and you've been listening to FASCINATING ENTREPRENEURS.