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From Burnout to Breakthrough: Barrett Young on Firm Transitions and Purpose

Vlad Ungureanu — Wed, 25 Mar 2026 14:17:17 +0000

In this episode of the Thrivecast, Jason Blumer sits down with longtime friend and CPA leader Barrett Young to talk about the messy, honest journey of building a firm—and the transitions that shape us along the way.

Barrett shares his story from becoming a CPA, to launching his own virtual firm, to eventually closing it and joining an 80-year-old accounting firm where he is now a partner. Along the way, he wrestled with burnout, the pursuit of “freedom,” and the deeper realization that purpose, culture, and meaningful work matter more than simply escaping the traditional model of public accounting.

Together, Jason and Barrett explore what it really means to be an entrepreneur in the accounting profession, why lifestyle firms and scaling firms often create tension in the industry, and how leaders must filter advice to build the firm that actually fits their life and calling. They also dig into Barrett’s work helping business owners with succession planning and exit strategy, highlighting the uncomfortable but necessary conversations family businesses often avoid—and why ignoring those conversations can destroy both companies and families. This episode is an honest look at leadership, vision, failure, and growth. If you’re building a firm, questioning your direction, or navigating major transitions in your career, this conversation will challenge and encourage you.

Mentioned in the Show

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Vlad Ungureanu
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason founded Thriveal in 2010 as a way to help entrepreneurial CPA firm owners connect, learn, and grow. He serves as the Visionary and CEO of Thriveal, and his partner Julie Shipp serves as the Integrator and COO of the organization. Since 2010, Thriveal has helped many small firms grow by providing a community, coaching services, webinars, firm consulting, monthly growth groups, and live events. Deeper Weekend is the annual live event by Thriveal, now in its 10th year.

Jason is also the CEO of Blumer & Associates, CPAs. The firm was one of the first to move from a traditional office to a virtual environment in 2012, where they serve as an advisory firm for the design, marketing, and creative agency services niches. He and his partner focus on business consulting and coaching with the owners and partners of firms and agencies, while their team meets the technical and financial compliance needs of the customer.

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs.

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Defining (and Leveraging) Alignment — Part 2: Your Clients

Jason Blumer — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 19:29:10 +0000

In Part 1, we defined alignment and applied it to your team. We established that alignment is not agreement — it’s a foundational orientation built on clear shared commitments, mutual trust, and a matching of how you lead with how others want to receive that leadership. We also established that alignment is what makes leverage possible, and leverage is what gives leaders reach.

Now we turn that same lens on your client relationships. Because the misalignment that quietly drains a firm’s energy doesn’t only live inside your accountability chart. Much of it lives in your client base — and most firm leaders never stop to assess it.

The Client Relationship Is a Leadership Relationship

Here’s the reframe that changes everything: your relationship with your clients is not just a service relationship. It is a leadership relationship.

When you take on a client, you are not simply agreeing to deliver a set of services. You are entering into an alignment agreement — a shared orientation around how you will serve and how they will receive that service. The “how” matters just as much on the client side as it does with your team. You have a way of working. You have a model, a philosophy, a standard of service. The question alignment asks is: does this client trust that model enough to follow your lead?

If they do, you have alignment. If they don’t — if they resist your process, question your judgment at every turn, ignore your recommendations, or pay reluctantly — you have misalignment. And misalignment with clients costs you far more than just revenue. It costs you the leverage you need to grow. And as a leader, you have to fix that problem.

Alignment Is Still Not Agreement

Just as with your team (as discussed in Part 1), client alignment does not mean the client always agrees with you. It means they trust you enough to move forward together even when they don’t. A truly aligned client can push back on a recommendation and still implement it. They can express concern about a price increase and still pay it. They can have a hard conversation with you and still show up next month, committed.

What they cannot do — and remain aligned — is fundamentally distrust your expertise, resist your process, or treat the relationship as purely transactional. That’s not alignment. That’s a vendor relationship. Vendor relationships cannot be leveraged. They can only be serviced.

The shared page with a client looks like this: both parties understand what has been agreed to, both parties know their role in making the relationship work, and both parties trust each other enough to return to that shared page when things get hard. When a client goes off-page — missing deadlines, ignoring recommendations, resisting your model — alignment has broken down. And a leader who understands alignment knows that this is not a service delivery problem. It’s a relationship problem that requires a leadership response.

Why Client Alignment Creates Leverage

The firms that grow are not necessarily the ones with the most clients. They are the ones with the most aligned clients. Here’s why.

An aligned client consumes your value. They implement what you recommend. They engage in the planning sessions you schedule. They trust your expertise enough to act on it. When a client does this, your work compounds — each engagement builds on the last, the relationship deepens, and the value you deliver multiplies. That’s leverage inside a client relationship.

An unaligned client, by contrast, absorbs your time and energy without multiplying your impact. You do the work. They ignore the recommendations. You follow up. They miss the deadline. You deliver the value. They don’t consume it. Month after month, you pour energy into a relationship that never compounds. That’s a tough client to grow with. Ultimately, that’s a drain on your leverage.

The chain looks like this:

Trust is the root. Alignment is the trunk. Leverage is the branch. Reach is the fruit.

A misaligned client base caps your reach just as surely as a misaligned team member. And a leader serious about growth has to be willing to assess both.

The Four Parameters of Client Alignment

Just as we score team members across four parameters, we assess clients across four parameters — each one revealing a different dimension of the alignment between your firm and the people you serve.

1. Belief / Same Page This parameter measures whether the client trusts you and is genuinely aligned with what you believe about your service. Do they trust your expertise? Do they follow your recommended processes and platforms? Do they engage with your model rather than resist it? A client who scores low here consistently questions your judgment, second-guesses your recommendations, or tries to work around your process. This is a trust deficit — and without trust, no alignment is possible.

2. Clientship This parameter, listed as an alignment principle on our own firm’s website, measures whether the client owns their role in the relationship. Alignment is a two-way orientation, and the client has a part to play. Are they collaborative? Do they provide information on time? Do they show up to meetings prepared and engaged? A client with high clientship is easy and enjoyable to work with — not because they’re passive, but because they take the relationship seriously. A client with low clientship consistently drops the ball on their end and expects your firm to compensate for it. Over time, these clients erode your team’s morale and eat into your capacity.

3. Value Consumption This parameter measures whether the client actually absorbs and uses the value your firm produces. This one matters more than most firm leaders realize. You can deliver exceptional work to a client who never implements it — and that client will eventually blame you for their lack of results. A truly aligned client is what we call transformationable — they are open to being changed by the work you do together. They implement your recommendations. They grow. They add services because they’ve experienced the value of the ones they already have. When a client consumes value, the relationship deepens and your leverage inside that relationship grows.

4. Profitable This parameter measures whether the client has been priced appropriately and whether their payments reflect a genuinely profitable engagement for your firm. Alignment with a client who is chronically underpriced is fragile — your team will eventually resent the work, and the firm will subsidize the relationship at the expense of its own growth. A profitable client validates your pricing model, pays without friction, and represents the kind of engagement your firm can sustain and scale.

Assessing Your Client Base

Beyond individual client assessment, it’s worth stepping back periodically to evaluate the health of your entire client base across four dimensions: Sustainability, Alignment, Recurrence, and Profitability.

Sustainability asks whether your client base is structured for long-term health — are you reviewing clients annually, managing concentration risk, tracking growth potential, and making intentional decisions about who stays and who transitions out?

Alignment asks whether your clients are actually consuming your value, the focus of this article — implementing your recommendations, using your preferred platforms and processes, and engaging as genuine partners in the relationship rather than passive recipients of deliverables.

Recurrence asks whether your revenue model supports predictability — are most of your engagements structured as ongoing relationships rather than one-time projects? Recurring revenue is aligned revenue. It reflects clients who have committed to the relationship, not just the transaction.

Profitability asks whether your pricing reflects the value you deliver — are you tracking margins by service line, reviewing pricing annually, issuing change orders for out-of-scope work, and ensuring that no single client represents a dangerous concentration of revenue?

A firm with strong scores across all four of these dimensions has built something rare: a client base that can be leveraged. One that multiplies the leader’s reach rather than consuming it.

The Leadership Move with Clients

Assessing client alignment requires courage, because what you find in these assessments will demand decisions. Some clients will score beautifully — these are the relationships through which your leverage flows. Others will reveal gaps that a direct conversation might address. And some will show you, clearly and honestly, that the alignment was never really there.

A leader who understands alignment knows that firing a misaligned client is not a failure. It is a leadership move — one that creates space for relationships that can actually be leveraged toward growth – for the good of the client and the firm.

The goal is not a full client roster. The goal is an aligned one. And when your team is aligned and your clients are aligned, you have built the foundation that every growing firm needs — trust that runs all the way from your culture to your client base, leverage that multiplies your reach, and the kind of growth that actually lasts.Trust is the root.Alignment is the trunk.Leverage is the branch.Reach is the fruit.

Jason Blumer, CPA is the founder and CEO of Thriveal, a coaching, training, and educational company serving entrepreneurial CPA firm owners. He also serves as CEO of Blumer & Associates CPAs. Through Thriveal’s coaching, consulting, and live events, Jason has guided hundreds of firms through strategic transformation.

What’s next for you? Join one of our programs and share your inspiration with other like-minded firm entrepreneurs.

Defining (and Leveraging) Alignment: Part 1 – Aligning with your Team

Jason Blumer — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 16:38:34 +0000

Like the word leadership, the word alignment is hard to define. And I believe it leads to a lot of practical confusion in growing service firms where alignment with your clients and your team are critical. In this article, we’ll tackle alignment with your team, then we’ll follow up another article on aligning with your clients.

If you don’t have a precise definition of alignment, you can’t grow your role as a leader or your firm. And if you can’t define it, you can’t leverage it. And without leverage, your reach as a leader stays frustratingly small — no matter how hard you work.

What Alignment Is Not

Let’s start with what alignment is not, because the confusion here is where most leaders go wrong.

Alignment is not agreement.

This is the most important thing to understand. When leaders conflate alignment with agreement, they either demand false consensus — everyone nodding along in the meeting only to quietly resist afterward — or they tolerate real misalignment because the team seems to get along fine on the surface. Neither serves a growing firm.

Agreement means everyone gets their first choice. While alignment means something deeper and more durable: it means all parties can fully support the direction being taken, even when the practical outworking includes things they wouldn’t have chosen themselves. You can be aligned with someone you disagree with. In fact, that’s often where the most meaningful leadership happens.

So What Is Alignment?

Alignment is a foundational orientation between two parties — in this case, a leader and their team — built on three things: clear shared agreements, mutual trust, and a matching of how you lead with how your team wants to receive that leadership.

Think of it as being on the same page. Not the same sentence, not the same word — the same page. The team knows what they’ve committed to. The leader knows what they’ve committed to. And when things get unclear or hard — and they will — both parties know where to return. That shared page is the anchor.

These shared agreements can get foggy over time. They can be forgotten, misunderstood, or misapplied in the daily grind of running a firm. That’s normal. What matters is that they exist, and that both parties know how to find their way back to them. Alignment isn’t a one-time event. It’s an ongoing orientation that requires tending.

The “how” of alignment matters more than any specific outcome. Two team members can disagree on the best approach to a client project and still be deeply aligned. What keeps them aligned isn’t agreement on tactics — it’s trust. Trust is the ingredient that allows alignment to survive disagreement, absorb friction, and keep moving forward.

This is also why alignment is fundamentally a leadership move. It doesn’t emerge on its own. It doesn’t happen because your team is talented or because everyone gets along. A leader has to build it, tend it, and — when necessary — make hard decisions about it. That last part is what separates leaders who grow firms from those who merely manage them.

Why Alignment Gives You Leverage

Here’s where alignment becomes more than just a healthy team dynamic — it becomes a strategic resource for leadership.

Leverage, in this context, doesn’t mean using people. It means the methodology leaders use to expand their reach into the places they are meant to have influence. A growing firm requires a leader who can extend their influence beyond what they can personally touch, manage, or execute. That extension — that reach — is only possible when the team is aligned.

Think of it this way: if your team isn’t aligned with you, every initiative you launch requires more energy, more supervision, more convincing. You spend your leadership capital explaining initiatives, fighting the team’s own perspectives, and trying to ‘convince.’ Instead of building toward the future, you are just getting more exhausted. You can’t scale what you can’t trust. And you can’t trust what isn’t aligned.

But when alignment is present? Your influence multiplies. Your team carries the mission into corners of the firm you can’t personally occupy. They make decisions you would have made. They represent the culture you’ve built. That’s leverage. And leverage is what turns a solo practitioner into a firm leader, and a firm leader into someone who can actually grow the firm larger beyond themselves.

The chain looks like this:

Trust is the root. Alignment is the trunk. Leverage is the branch. Reach is the fruit.

Break any link in that chain and growth stalls. A misaligned team doesn’t just create HR headaches — it caps what you as a leader can accomplish. Full stop.

Assessing Team Alignment

Because alignment isn’t intuitive, it requires assessment. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and you can’t measure what you haven’t defined. That’s why we assess team alignment across four specific parameters, scoring each team member on a scale of 1 to 7 — where 1 means “not aligned at all” and 7 means “completely aligned.” The scoring is subjective and reflects the team member’s current state, not their potential or their tenure.

Here are the parameters we use to score our team’s alignment:

1. Core Values Alignment This is a culture parameter. It measures the degree to which a team member innately embodies and consistently displays the firm’s published core values. This isn’t about reciting the values from memory — it’s about living them without being reminded. A team member who scores low here displays a lack of care for the mission, skips cultural meetings or retreats, and generally treats the firm’s values as someone else’s concern. It’s very difficult to make someone care about the mission of an organization. Great team members come with that desire already built in.

2. Mind/Emotions Alignment This is a distractibility and awareness parameter. It measures whether a team member consistently manages their personal life in a way that enhances rather than disrupts their work. The opposite of this alignment looks like a team member who “disappears” — taking surprise trips, going dark without warning, or consistently letting personal chaos bleed into their professional reliability. Leaders have limited ability to influence team members in their personal lives, which is exactly why this parameter matters so much at the hiring stage.

3. Work Efficiency Alignment This is a work production parameter. It measures the amount of work a team member consistently outputs each week relative to the salary being paid for that output. The opposite here is the team member you have to micromanage — the one who always needs reminding to do their actual job. When a leader is constantly chasing output, they are spending leverage they don’t have on problems alignment should have prevented.

4. Future Commitment Alignment This is a commitment-to-leadership parameter. It measures a team member’s innate belief in the future value of the firm, their belief in their leader’s future stated direction, and expressed through their consistent dedication to their work and the company’s direction. The clearest sign of misalignment here is what leaders often call a “flight risk” — someone you fear is quietly getting ready to leave. A flight risk isn’t just a retention problem. They’re an alignment problem, and they actively drain the leverage a leader needs to move forward.

What to Do with Your Assessment

Once you’ve scored your team across these four parameters, patterns will emerge. Some team members will score consistently high — these are your aligned core, the people through whom your leverage flows most freely. Others will show gaps in one or two areas, which opens a coaching conversation. Still others may score consistently low across multiple parameters, and that requires a harder conversation — one that only a leader who understands alignment as a leadership move will be willing to have.

The goal is not to build a perfect team. The goal is to build an aligned one. And alignment, once built, becomes the foundation for everything else a growing firm needs: leverage, reach, and ultimately, growth.

In Part 2, we’ll take this same framework and apply it to your clients — because alignment doesn’t stop at the edge of your org chart. It extends all the way into your client relationships, and what you find there may surprise you just as much.

What’s next for you? Join one of our programs and share your inspiration with other like-minded firm entrepreneurs.

Stop While It’s Working: The Hardest Leadership Decision

Vlad Ungureanu — Wed, 25 Feb 2026 17:29:25 +0000

Kenji Kuramoto is the Founder and former CEO of Acuity, a pioneering outsourced accounting and fractional CFO firm that built and maintained financial functions for thousands of innovative entrepreneurs. Under his leadership, Acuity became one of Accounting Today’s Top Firms for Technology and a Top Firm to Work For, before merging into Sorren in 2025.

In this episode, Kenji joins Jason M. Blumer, CPA, to unpack what really happens when you step away from something that’s still working. He shares the full story behind Acuity’s 20-year journey, the decision to run a proactive merger process, and why he ultimately chose not to continue into the next chapter with Sorren—despite being Acuity’s founder and leading the proactive merger process.

The conversation explores the emotional reality of leadership transitions: identity loss, grief, relief, clarity, and the discipline required to not hold on too long. Kenji reflects on the surprisingly anticlimactic nature of closing day, the importance of timing your exit well, and how staying deeply connected to the profession helped him navigate life after stepping away.

Today, Kenji is an investor, founder, and advisor focused on reimagining the future of the accounting profession. He is the founder of 404 Invests, an early-stage investment firm backing Accounting Technology, SaaS, FinTech, and Crypto companies. Earlier in his career, Kenji served as CFO of an Inc. 5000 tech company and began in the assurance practice at Arthur Andersen.

If you’re a firm owner considering succession, a merger, retirement, or your own next chapter as a leader, this episode offers rare honesty and perspective you won’t often hear.

Mentioned in the Show

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Vlad Ungureanu
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs.

Visit Website

The Virtual Firm Revolution: Growth, Exits, and the Future of CPA Firms

Vlad Ungureanu — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:40:59 +0000

In this episode of Thrivecast, host Jason M. Blumer, CPA sits down with Salim Omar, CPA—nationally recognized CPA firm consultant, author, and industry thought leader—to explore how CPA firms are evolving in response to changing demographics, advancing technology, and shifting expectations among firm owners. With more than 30 years of experience in the accounting profession, Salim has worked closely with firm leaders at every stage of growth, helping them rethink their firms, strengthen communication, and plan intentionally for what comes next.

Salim shares his journey from building and running a successful CPA firm to focusing on consulting, including his transition to virtual operations and the strategic advantages that come with it. Together, Jason and Salim discuss the real-world benefits and challenges of running a virtual firm, managing global teams, and maintaining strong team dynamics in distributed environments. A central theme throughout the conversation is the importance of understanding your audience—clients, team members, and potential successors—and how that clarity drives smarter decisions and sustainable growth.

The discussion also dives deep into the complexities of mergers and acquisitions within the accounting profession. Salim explains why many deals struggle after closing, often due to communication breakdowns, cultural misalignment, and unclear expectations. He highlights the critical role sellers play after an acquisition and why their leadership and engagement are essential to successful transitions and long-term firm health. ‘

Drawing from his book, The CPA Firm Exit Playbook, Salim offers practical guidance for firm owners navigating what he calls the “exit evolution path.” Rather than viewing an exit as a single transaction, Jason and Salim explore how firm owners can intentionally design their next chapter—whether that means selling, merging, scaling back, or continuing to contribute in a new capacity. The conversation also touches on leadership beyond traditional retirement and how CPA firm owners can align their professional futures with personal fulfillment.

The episode concludes with a forward-looking discussion on the growing impact of AI on the accounting profession. Salim shares why AI is both a powerful opportunity and a necessary adaptation for firm leaders, and how embracing technology thoughtfully can elevate advisory services, improve efficiency, and shape the future of CPA firms.

Mentioned in the Show

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Vlad Ungureanu
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs.

Visit Website

The Growth Ceiling You Can’t See: Why Your Firm Strategy Keeps Stalling

Jason Blumer — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 17:56:04 +0000

I’ve seen many firm owners hit the same invisible wall. They’ve got the strategy mapped out. The new service lines are defined. The pricing model might be built. The accountability chart is drawn. Everything looks right on paper. And then… nothing moves.

Or worse, things move for a few months, then quietly drift back to how they’ve always been. The firm owner blames execution. Or staff buy-in. Or market timing. But here’s what I’ve learned after working with firms for 15 years: the ceiling isn’t in the firm. It’s in the owner.

What Is a Growth Ceiling?

Here is how we define a growth ceiling in our book, Scale with Purpose: The Service Entrepreneur’s Guide to Intentional Growth:

“A growth ceiling occurs when the organization has usually maximized its potential within its current operational structure, its current team structure, its market focuses, or the leadership skills needed to break the ceiling.”

It’s a point in time when there is a significant slowdown in the growth of a business or it has become non-responsive to normal cyclical growth tactics. Growth ceilings in service firms are often based on human limitations, among other things. They can surprise you without warning. Your team may feel the ceiling too, but they can’t articulate why. And only you, as the leader, can break it.

The real question isn’t whether you’ll hit a growth ceiling. It’s whether you’ll recognize it before it stalls everything you’ve built.

The Strategy That Won’t Land

Here’s what this looks like in practice:

A firm owner comes to us wanting to scale advisory services. They’ve got the plan—build out the advisory team, restructure pricing, shift the positioning. We dig in to help. Within a few conversations, the real picture emerges. The owner is still the primary relationship on their top 20 clients. They are still reviewing most of the work. Still the one who has to approve any decision over $500, etc. And now they want to layer a scaling strategy on top of that structure. It won’t work. Not because the strategy is wrong, but because they haven’t grown into the leader that strategy requires.

The Seven Principles of Firm Growth Ceilings

Over years of working with firms facing these invisible walls, I’ve identified seven principles that determine whether a firm breaks through or stays stuck.

Principle #1: Your Firm Must Become Its Own Entity

You have to let the company eventually become its own entity. Don’t confuse the company’s purpose with your personal purpose, or your family’s purpose.

The practice question: How are you in the way of your own firm’s desire to grow to its fullest potential?

Most firm owners can’t answer this honestly. They’ve built the firm around themselves—their relationships, their decision-making, their vision—and then wonder why it can’t grow beyond them. The firm can become an extension of the founder’s ego rather than an entity with its own identity, its own purpose, its own capacity to thrive.

Principle #2: Your Team Structure Must Evolve

Initial team structures work at initial phases of growth, but eventually new team structures must be created to support different size firms.

The practice question: Where have you been tolerant in allowing your team to operate in an archaic model of a firm?

You cannot scale a larger firm with a flat team structure. The team that got you to $1M won’t get you to $3M. The structure that worked at $3M will break at $5M. I’ve seen firm owners try to maintain a flat structure—everyone reporting to the owner, everyone operating as peers—well past the point where it actually functions.

At some point, you need management layers. You need clear reporting structures. You need people who can lead other people, not just do good work themselves. Every phase of growth requires a different organizational model. Most firm owners wait too long to make the change because they’re afraid of creating hierarchy, afraid of losing the “family feel,” afraid of becoming too corporate.

But tolerance isn’t kindness. It’s avoidance. And it’s keeping your firm smaller than it needs to be.

Principle #3: Teams Must Move in the Same Direction

Teams must move in the same direction, operating on the same basis of your vision and core values. If they don’t, chaos results.

The practice question: How have you lived in fear of your team, failing to call them to serve a purpose higher than their own professional whims?

This one lands hard. Most firm owners know they need alignment, but they’re afraid to actually demand it. They tolerate team members who don’t share the vision because they’re afraid of losing people. They avoid hard conversations. They accept mediocre commitment because at least bodies are in seats.

The result? A team pulling in seven different directions. When you don’t define where you’re going and insist that people either move with you or move on, you create an organization where everyone is doing what feels right to them. Not what’s right for the firm. Not what’s right for the clients. What feels right to them.

That’s not a team. That’s a collection of individuals who happen to share office space.

Principle #4: Owners Must Mature

Owners must mature as they learn new ways to build and lead a company that is growing larger.

The practice question: How have you remained static in your leadership, choosing moments of comfort over the long-term institution of a legacy?

Leadership growth isn’t optional. The decisions you made to build a $500K firm will sabotage a $2M firm. The leadership style that worked with 3 people will destroy culture with 12. The way you showed up as a founder doesn’t work when you need to be a CEO.

But most firm owners resist this evolution. They want to lead the same way they always have. They want to be everyone’s friend. They want to avoid conflict, avoid hard decisions, avoid the weight of real authority. So they stay static. They choose the comfort of familiar patterns over the discomfort of growth. And their firm plateaus right alongside their leadership.

Principle #5: Balance Revenue with Capacity

The pace of revenue growth must be balanced with the pace of your maturing systems and teams. If not, revenue will outpace your company.

The practice question: How have you grabbed for cash in ways that overlook the reality of yours and your team’s limited capacity?

Some firm owners take on work they can’t deliver well because they can’t say no to revenue. They overcommit. Then they wonder why quality is slipping and team morale is tanking.

Revenue growth feels like winning. Until you realize you’ve taken on more work than you can handle with the people and systems you have. Now you’re paying the price—burned out team members, disappointed clients, slipping standards. Growth has to be paced with capacity. You can’t just grab every dollar that walks through the door. Sometimes the right decision is to slow down, build capacity, then accelerate again.

Principle #6: Breaking Ceilings Requires Risk

To surmount or move past a growth ceiling, often a risk must be taken to break it.

The practice question: Where are you failing to analyze, accept, and push through risks that could be the key to unlock healthier future growth for your firm?

Every growth ceiling I’ve seen broken required the firm owner to take a risk they weren’t comfortable taking. Hiring before they could “afford” it. Firing a large client. Restructuring the team. Removing the wrong team member. Moving to value pricing. Investing in a new service line before it was proven.

The risk is always there. The question is whether you’ll take it. Most firm owners won’t. They wait for certainty. They wait for proof. They wait until the risk feels safe. But by then, the opportunity has passed. The ceiling has hardened by that time.

Principle #7: Be Strategic About Investment

Be careful leveraging investment, debt, or personal cash to push through a growth ceiling. The risks are much higher when facing a growth ceiling.

The practice question: Where have you been foolish in your decisions to try to spend your way out of a growth ceiling?

You can’t buy your way through a leadership problem. I’ve watched firm owners invest in new systems, new hires, new marketing—all while avoiding the fundamental internal work that would actually break the ceiling. The money just accelerates the dysfunction.

When you’re at a growth ceiling, adding resources without addressing the underlying constraint just creates more chaos. You’ve got more people bumping into the same bottleneck. More technology surfacing the same broken process. Investment can be powerful. But only after you’ve done the hard work of identifying what’s actually limiting your growth. Usually, that’s not a resource problem. It’s a leadership problem.

Where Coaching and Consulting Actually Fit

This is why Thriveal offers both coaching and consulting—because firm owners face two fundamentally different types of growth challenges.

Consulting solves firm problems. When your firm needs a growth strategy, a restructure, a transition plan, or a way to navigate complexity you haven’t faced before—that’s consulting work. We bring expertise, frameworks, and strategic direction to help your firm build differently.

Coaching solves leader problems. When you need to think differently, lead differently, or become the version of yourself your firm actually needs—that’s coaching work. It’s the space where you gain clarity, build confidence, and develop the capacity to lead what you’re trying to build.

Look at the seven principles above. Most of them require leadership growth, not just strategy. You can have the perfect growth plan, but if you haven’t evolved as a leader, you won’t execute it.

That’s why the most transformational growth happens when leaders engage both. The consulting gives you the strategic roadmap. The coaching gives you the internal capacity to actually lead it.

The Question That Tells You Everything

If you’re trying to figure out what you actually need right now, ask yourself this:

Is my firm’s growth limited by what I don’t know how to build, or by who I haven’t yet become?

If the answer is “what I don’t know how to build”—you probably need strategic consulting. If the answer is “who I haven’t yet become”—you probably need leadership coaching. And if you’re honest with yourself, the answer is probably both.

The firms that transform aren’t the ones with the best strategies. They’re the ones led by people who are willing to grow at the same pace they’re asking their firms to grow. That’s the work. Not just breaking the ceiling in your firm, but breaking through the ceiling in yourself.

What’s next for you? Join one of our programs and share your inspiration with other like-minded firm entrepreneurs.

Seasons of Change: Courageous Decisions for Firm Owners

Vlad Ungureanu — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:24:58 +0000

This Thrivecast episode, the final one of 2025, features a solo conversation led by Jason, who reflects on seasons of change and intentional leadership as he looks ahead to 2026. Drawing on nearly 25 years of firm ownership and 15 years of leading Thriveal, Jason explores how change—whether chosen or forced—can become a catalyst for growth when approached strategically. He shares personal insights on how markets evolve, teams shift, and leaders must continually reassess where they are most needed and what they are truly committed to building.

Jason outlines a significant pivot within his accounting firm, which is broadening its long-standing niche focus to serve entrepreneurs more generally after recognizing major shifts and challenges within its previous target market. Rather than waiting for disruption to dictate the next move, he explains why proactively adapting alongside the market is essential. That same philosophy is being applied to Thriveal, which is entering a new season after 15 years of operating as a broad, open community for firm owners around the world.

Looking ahead, Jason explains how Thriveal is choosing depth over scale by narrowing its focus and restructuring into two core programs designed specifically for growing and scaling firms. The Venture program serves firm owners with five or more team members, while the Ascent program supports firms generating one million dollars or more in revenue. By limiting enrollment and moving away from multiple community membership levels, Thriveal is creating a more intimate, high-commitment environment where firm owners receive consistent accountability, coaching, and peer connection throughout the year. The episode also details several intentional changes that support this deeper focus, including sunsetting the Deeper Weekend conference, reshaping master classes, expanding self-paced courses, and developing future workshops connected to the newly released book Scale with Purpose. Throughout the episode, Jason encourages listeners to view change as a core leadership responsibility—one that requires courage, clarity, and a willingness to let go of what is familiar in order to build something more meaningful. The conversation closes with an invitation to firm owners who feel ready for this next season to explore whether Thriveal’s Venture or Ascent programs are the right fit for their growth in 2026.

Mentioned in the Show

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Vlad Ungureanu
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs.

Visit Website

Not Sure Where to Start at Thriveal? Meet Lauren Day

Lauren Day — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 19:17:47 +0000

I’m Lauren Day, General Manager at Thriveal. I’ve been leading the Thriveal community for a number of years, working closely alongside Jason and Julie in events, marketing, and operations. Over time, that role has grown—and now I have the privilege of overseeing the full Thriveal experience to ensure Thriveal continues moving forward within our shared vision.

At the heart of my role is one simple goal: helping members find clarity, direction, and the right support—without needing to have everything figured out first.

What My Role Means for You

As General Manager, I help members navigate Thriveal’s programs, people, and resources. That means listening first, asking thoughtful questions, and helping connect you to what will actually help—not what sounds good on paper.

You don’t need to know where to go. That’s part of what I’m here for.

You Don’t Need the Perfect Question

Thriveal offers a lot of value, and with that can come uncertainty about where to start. Many members arrive knowing they need support but aren’t sure which path fits best.

My role is designed to remove that friction—so you can move forward with confidence instead of guesswork. One of the most common concerns I hear is, “I’m not even sure what I should be asking.” That’s okay.

Thriveal is designed to support members at different stages of growth, and clarity often comes after the conversation begins. Through that process, members are typically guided toward one of three paths:

Venture Program – Built for firm owners with a team of 5 or more, focused on leadership, growth, and navigating increased complexity.
Ascent Program – Designed for firms generating $1M+ in annual revenue, centered on strategic growth, scalability, and long-term vision.
One-on-One Coaching – Personalized support for members who need deeper, focused problem-solving around their specific challenges.

You don’t need to know which option fits best at the start. Together, we uncover what will serve you most right now.

Also, our Founder, Jason M Blumer, CPA wrote a book on scaling. Even if you didn’t join Thriveal to find direction to grow your firm, you can get the manual on growth on Amazon here.

Here Are 7 Things You Can Ask Me About

These are common areas members reach out about, but they’re just a starting point:

Which Thriveal program is right for you
Who you should talk to for your specific challenge
Business growth and strategic planning
Leadership, operations, or team-related issues
Navigating change or transition
Feeling stuck or unsure of next steps
How to get the most value from Thriveal

If your question doesn’t fit neatly into a category, that’s completely fine.

What You Can Expect When You Reach Out

You can expect clarity, follow-through, and support. My commitment is to help you get where you need to go without feeling overwhelmed or passed around.

Thriveal works best when members feel guided—and that’s the experience I aim to provide.

Start With a Conversation

If you’re unsure where to begin, start with me. One conversation can bring clarity and momentum.You don’t need a plan—just a question.

Schedule a 30-minute call with me here:
https://calendly.com/lauren-blumercpas/30min

What’s next for you? Join one of our programs and share your inspiration with other like-minded firm entrepreneurs.

The Season for Choosing What Matters

Jason Blumer — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 19:00:20 +0000

There’s a feeling that comes with certain seasons in business, times when you feel it’s time for a refresh or change. In my journey as an entrepreneur, this has come at various key times.

Years ago, I said out loud on a podcast that I just wanted to mow grass for a living. The complexity had become overwhelming, the debt was mounting, and I couldn’t see a path forward that didn’t involve escaping to something simpler, more tangible, more controllable. That “mow grass” fantasy wasn’t really about lawn care. It was about craving results I could see and measure when everything in my business felt uncertain. It was about wanting control when growth brought nothing but chaos.

The Journey Through Seasons

What I’ve learned over 25 years is that the moments when you most want to escape are often signaling something deeper. They’re not telling you to quit—they’re telling you it’s possibly time to choose. Maybe choose something new.

My partner, Julie Shipp and I, find ourselves in a similar season with Thriveal right now—not one of crisis, but one of choosing. The past couple of years has been about envisioning our future through research, counsel from others, and deep soul searching. We’ve been asking ourselves the same questions all business owners must ask:

What is required of us in our work?
What do we want to commit to?
What should we commit to?

Now, after 15 years of serving the accounting profession broadly, we’re choosing to go deeper with fewer rather than broader with more. We’re choosing to build something that will leave a legacy for future leaders in both our firm and our community. We’re choosing intimacy over scale, depth over breadth, commitment over convenience.

This isn’t about limitation—it’s about focus. It’s about acknowledging that we can’t serve everyone equally well, and that trying to do so serves no one fully.

Why We’re Changing

For 15 years, Thriveal has cast a wide net. We’ve offered community-level membership for anyone interested in growing their firm. We’ve hosted Deeper Weekend as a global, profession-wide conference. We’ve produced the Thrivecast podcast for anyone who chose to listen.

These were good things. They helped hundreds of firm owners imagine new possibilities.

But as we look at the next 15 years, we recognize something crucial: the firm owners who transform aren’t the ones who sample ideas occasionally. They’re the ones who commit to sustained accountability, who show up monthly, who do the hard work of implementation with others beside them. We want to pour our energy into those relationships. We want to walk alongside firm owners and their teams through the messy middle of transformation, not just inspire them from a stage once a year.

So we’re making changes that will allow us to build the kind of intimate, high-accountability community we believe creates lasting transformation.

What’s Changing in 2026

Here’s what the new landscape looks like:

What’s Changing	Timeline	What’s Next
Community Level Membership, along with Mentor Hours, and Community Groups sunsets	Ends December 31, 2025	As our Community level sunsets, members are invited to join Venture or Ascent programs starting January 1, 2026. Programs are monthly attendance accountability groups for firm owners and their teams.
The Thrivecast Podcast	Final episode Summer 2026	After 15 years and hundreds of episodes, we’re sunsetting the show
Deeper Weekend Conference	Discontinued	Not returning (last conference held in 2025)
Venture Program	Becomes monthly starting January 2026	Meeting 4th Wednesday each month at 4pm EST (first meeting: January 28, 2026)
Venture Summit	May 13-15, 2026 in Greenville, SC	Now open to all Thriveal program members (previously Venture-only); $950 member ticket
New Event: Live Scaling Workshop	Fall 2026 (dates TBD)	Led by Ian Vacin, Jason Blumer, and Julie Shipp – focused on our book Scale with Purpose
Ascent Program	Continues monthly	For firm owners with $1M+ in revenue; ongoing high-accountability group
Masterclasses	Continuing	Quarterly educational webinars with CPE, taught by Jason Blumer and with guest speakers
Thriveal Courses	Launching July 2026	Virtual self-study courses available to public

What Stays the Same

Our commitment to you hasn’t changed. We’re still here to help traditional accounting practices evolve into strategic advisory firms, ones that can scale. We’re still focused on helping you build scalable, profitable businesses that deliver exceptional value.

What’s changing is how we do that—our service in Thriveal will come with more focus, more accountability, and more sustained support for those ready to commit to the journey.

Leadership Changes

To support this new direction, we’re making two important team transitions:

Lauren Day has been promoted to General Manager and will run the day-to-day operations of Thriveal
Andreay Hyman will move exclusively to Blumer & Associates CPAs, continuing as the firm’s Operations Manager

For Current Community Members

If you’re currently in our Community level, Lauren Day will be reaching out personally to discuss how you can transition to either Venture or Ascent by January 1, 2026.

Current Venture members: Your program becomes monthly starting January 1, 2026, meeting on the 4th Wednesday of each month at 4pm EST. You already have your ticket to the 2026 Venture Summit.

Community members considering Venture: If you upgrade by January 2026, you can attend the 2026 Venture Summit for the member price of $950.

For more information, reach out to Lauren at lauren@thriveal.com.

A Note on Seasons

After 25 years of building a firm and 15 years of building a community, I can tell you with certainty: the work is worth it, and the struggles are temporary.

The moments when you feel like walking away from complexity are often the exact moments when you need to lean in and choose what matters most. Not everything. Not for everyone. But something specific, for someone specific, with your whole heart.

That’s what Julie and I are doing with Thriveal. We’re choosing depth. We’re choosing commitment. We’re choosing the firm owners who are ready to do the hard, consistent work of transformation alongside us and each other. We’re excited to grow deeper with you in this next season!

What’s next for you? Join one of our programs and share your inspiration with other like-minded firm entrepreneurs.

The Strategic Purpose of Being Intentionally Optimistic

Vlad Ungureanu — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 14:27:30 +0000

In this episode of The Thrivecast, Jason Blumer interviews Heath Alloway, Growth Partner at Sorren, who brings extensive experience from BKD and the Upstream Academy. Heath introduces a transformative framework he calls the “four pillars of success”: culture, people, clients, and wise growth. This sequencing is deliberate—growth sits last because it exists to fuel the other three, challenging the profession’s tendency to pursue revenue targets disconnected from organizational health.

Heath draws a critical distinction between healthy and unhealthy growth. Firms growing too rapidly with misaligned clients experience culture rot, elevated turnover, and declining engagement, while strategic growth creates space to say yes to the right opportunities and invest meaningfully in team development. He addresses a counterintuitive reality: humans process thousands of thoughts daily, with 80% skewing negative and 95% being repetitive. Heath advocates for fundamental reorientation, asking: “When you think about the future, if it hasn’t happened yet, why would you choose to think about everything that could go wrong?” This shift from defensive positioning to intentional optimism becomes the foundation for sustainable transformation.

The conversation explores evolved approaches to business development in accounting. Heath challenges the conventional wisdom that business development belongs exclusively to partners, arguing that early exposure throughout team members’ careers transforms what could be a shocking transition into natural professional evolution. He provides tactical frameworks rarely executed: identify your top three prospective clients by name (most partner groups cannot), prioritize cross-selling within existing relationships where trust already exists, and proactively request introductions from clients who genuinely want to see you succeed. His role extends beyond traditional growth activities to include facilitating strategic planning retreats and leadership development for clients—services that internal surveys identified as highly requested offerings, revealing that clients are inviting deeper partnership if firms are willing to see beyond compliance work.

Heath acknowledges COVID’s paradoxical gift to the profession, noting it forced changes firms should have made voluntarily: fee increases reflecting actual value, termination of misaligned client relationships, and more intentional investment in team connection. His concern is that firms might abandon these strategic gains as they return to task-focused execution, forgetting the cultural intentionality that emerged during crisis. The episode concludes with Heath reframing business development anxiety through a powerful metaphor: if you were a doctor with the cure for a rare disease, wouldn’t you feel obligated to share it? Accountants possess gifts that can genuinely transform client businesses and communities, yet fear and introversion often prevent initiating the conversations where that value could be realized. His message to the profession is both challenge and invitation: “This profession will do more for you than you can ever do for it.” The path forward requires moving beyond reactionary growth toward intentional design—building firms where strategic choices about clients, team development, and cultural investment align with a clearly articulated vision of who we are becoming, demonstrating that sustainable growth emerges not from grinding harder but from thinking more clearly about what we’re building and why it matters.

Mentioned in the Show

Thrivecast Crew

Audio Engineering by: Vlad Ungureanu
Produced by: Jason Blumer

About our host: Jason Blumer

Jason is the host of two…

Jason Blumer

CEO, Thriveal; CEO, Blumer & Associates, CPAs.

Visit Website