How To Start An Accounting Business

1. How To Start An Accounting Business

2. WHY START A BUSINESS AT ALL? This one I’ll spend a very short amount of time upon. Starting a business offers pain, freedom and everything in between. But if you value your own income, working to your own hours – and starting something that could support yourself and your family ultimately long-term – then this is definitely the way. One of the things I will say – is that starting a business is no joke – and there are many challenges that you will face along the way. And that it’ll (very likely) take years longer than you think to achieve your goals. If you’re prepared for all of that though – then it’s definitely worth doing it.

4. WHY START AN ACCOUNTANCY BUSINESS? The retention is extremely high. Much higher than marketing. When you find an accountant – because they’re managing your money – you tend to stick with them year in and year out. With SEO and appointment setting – we have corporate clients who pay a decent amount of money for returns that are difficult to deliver and not always (SEO) tangible. With this in mind – it makes the sales process much more challenging. Furthermore, with the SEO side of the business, I’m competing with a global workforce (i.e Indians and every other economy) – so it makes a differentiation between agencies harder. I think running an accounting business startup is going to be that much easier.

5. ANY EXPERIENCE AS AN ACCOUNTANT? Have you filed your own accounts? Have you had to figure out basic accounting procedures? And then over the last several years, I’ve had to work through my personal and corporate tax returns and have set up multiple companies. So I can definitely put it all together from a sales and marketing perspective. What I think I’ll also do however is watch a couple of basic accounting courses so I can understand basic financial calculations more keenly and add more value on this side of the business. If you haven’t had experience as an accountant that really doesn’t matter as long as the person running the actual accounts has that experience – and this would become an effective partnership.

6. YOUR EXPERIENCE WORKING WITH ACCOUNTANTS? Having managed my own accounts for around 5 years, and then sought help from my business partner, then a family accountant and then finally my accountant today. So if you have similar experiences – really collate them and consider what insights that do give you into the service levels of different accountants you’ve worked with. YOUR EXPERIENCE RUNNING A SERVICE BUSINESS If you have experience running a service business then this will become powerful when it comes to understanding customer service, building slide decks, proposals and all of the corporate elements of working with enterprise businesses. If you’re still in employment then you’ll still have had powerful experiences of deadlines, customer service, expectations and the like! Write all of this out in terms of things you’ve done, deadlines you’ve worked towards and what you have to contend with when doing all of this.

7. YOUR COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE WITH STARTING AN ACCOUNTING BUSINESS? This is integral to the consideration of starting an accountancy business. Have a hard think about this – and carve out what these elements are. The bigger the differences – the better you will do effectively – and this is the way to think about it. Marketing Expertise – As we’re an SEO agency, we’ve got an established methodology we use to rank websites on Google – which we will employ for Pearl Lemon Accountants as well. Sales Force – As someone who comes from an outbound sales perspective myself – we’ve got a sales team who would happily also sell our accounting services and we can hire commission-only sales reps to drive this journey as well.

8. REGISTERING THE DOMAIN NAME So one of the first things I’ve done (and granted it’s easier in our case) is to register the domain name. This is psychologically an important part of moving the business forward – because much like a baby – the business has to have a name – and this is where this element comes into play. In our case, it’s Pearl Lemon Accountants – but I’d absolutely encourage you to think of a name and then build the business out from that point on

9. DECIDING ON A CONTENT MARKETING STRATEGY This is what we’re doing in the Pearl Lemon case. I’ve done some keyword research and identified around 50 blogs I want to be written for Pearl Lemon Accountants that will be part of our pre-launch process. I’ve now sent this to my content writing team who will get this going over the next 2-weeks.

10. FINAL THOUGHTS I’m genuinely excited to start an accounting business. Now I’ve gone through the challenges of building a marketing agency (which is still growing and developing) and built out operations teams for them on the lead-generation, SEO and PPC side, I’m excited to continue my journey of building small service-based businesses. And if you’re thinking about starting your own accountancy firm then I definitely think it’ll be an amazing journey and I encourage you to check out Pearl Lemon Accountants and reach out to me if you have any questions!