Can You Make Money As A CPA In A Tax Practice?

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics as quoted in Start Up Journal CPA’s are growing occupation with a large number of present CPA’s retiring. The sticking point seems to be MARKETING (ever heard that before?).

Locally, the CPA I know who seems to be doing the best has a tax franchise. Others seem to want to do payroll… lots of small transactions. Who knows what the others do. As an insurance salesman way back when we used to call Lawyers and CPA’s respectively “Mr. Doom and Mr. Gloom” because they were excellent and shooting down ideas for $150 per hour but could never seem to come up with a clever idea themselves.

Here’s how one CPA got started from scratch:

Perhaps you can take pointers from the success story of Phillip Guan, a 39-year-old San Francisco tax accountant who built his client base to roughly 1,000 over the past four years. Mr. Guan left his job at now-defunct Arthur Andersen in June 2002 to start his own practice. With no clients of his own at the time, Mr. Guan first tried traditional marketing techniques such as placing ads in the newspaper, joining local groups and sending out mailings.

But growth was slow, so Mr. Guan decided to try a “more proactive approach.” He started cold-calling local business owners and asking them questions such as: “Are you happy with your current accountant?” and “Do you think you’re paying too much in taxes?” Whenever businesses expressed dissatisfaction with their current CPAs, or said they were looking for another, Mr. Guan offered them a free consultation about his practice and how he could help them. About 5% to 10% of the people he called eventually conferred with him, he says.