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.

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.

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.

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.

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:

1. Which Thriveal program is right for you
   
2. Who you should talk to for your specific challenge
   
3. Business growth and strategic planning
   
4. Leadership, operations, or team-related issues
   
5. Navigating change or transition
   
6. Feeling stuck or unsure of next steps
   
7. 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.

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 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.

Why?

Here are a number of reasons. I hope if you are on the fence one resonates with you:

1. I’m out of my normal element for a ‘weekend’ and have the time and space to explore new thoughts and ideas to bring back to my firm/practice. (In the beginning of my last partnership, my partners used to ask me what I learned and what I brought back for my practice and the firm. They recognized that I wasn’t just screwing around getting CPE but that I was learning/growing.)
2. In the midwest, Fall is a season of harvest and planning for the next year. October is a good time to celebrate the end of a year and start to plan for the next using what we learned in the last year.
3. I am surrounded by like minded professionals who have goals, dreams and objectives similar to mine. I learn so much by talking to other attendees, sharing experiences and listening to/telling stories.
4. The learning is excellent. There are some years I look at the topic beforehand and say ‘meh’, but once I sit, listen, absorb, I find tons of value in the learning. I never walk away disappointed or without an actionable item(s).
5. DW challenges you to take the next big step in your practice and sends you home with the energy to get things done.
6. I’ve had bad years. When I feel like this business is weighing me down, too challenging or futile. Coming and talking with other like minded people reminds me that this business is so cool/fun/rewarding. Breaks me out of my funk and brings me back to where I need to be to move forward.

I hope I’ve given you some reasons to think about moving forward.

Now I’ll give you the one reason not to go:

You don’t want to or are not in a place to make meaningful changes to your practice that will bring you more time, energy, money and joy.

My success in 2025 stemmed from a big commitment/decision I made about my practice in a breakout session at DW#16. And the setup of the success of my practice in 2026? I can argue it came from the same commitment. 

If you are on the fence and reading this, I hope this post gives you the nudge you need to make the best decision for YOU about DW#25.  Learn more about Deeper Weekend here. 

This blog was a post shared in our Thriveal community by one of our long-time members and Deeper Weekend attenders, Michael Wall, CPA.   (This is not a paid advertisement!)

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

There are so many firm owners quietly leading teams and clients in our profession and you may not know who they are. They may not be on social media very often but they have hundreds and hundreds of team members and thousands of clients under their care on a daily basis.

This is our 2025 Venture Summit group – a group of about 25 to 30 leaders that gather in person every year to wrestle with leadership and hear from each other on how to lead a team and clients with more intention. These leaders are so inspiring, I wish you could have been there! It’s not unusual for them to stand up impromptu and start teaching the group – they are all well versed in leadership and openly wrestle together with their own confidential issues in their firms. 

Implementing Change Through a Restructure

One key topic we discussed was structuring our firms intentionally. What is structure? Structure is adding what we anecdotally call scaffolding to our firms as they grow. As a services company grows larger (more revenue, more clients, more team, more service lines, etc.) then it becomes more complex. As it becomes more complex then that complexity must be matched with more ‘support’ or ‘scaffolding’ to prop up the organization. This is necessary so that the organization doesn’t implode in on itself, or worse, overwhelm and consume the founder/owners. 

We discussed 4 key areas of structure at the 2025 Venture Summit:

1. Building a visual Accountability Chart. This visually lays out how your team is listed within the organization, and where each team member is located. My partner and I often build these charts with our consulting clients when their firm is overwhelmed by its own complexity. The visual representation of the team is a key to everyone understanding their place and context within the team. 
2. Build your Accountability Chart with Roles. Roles, with the associated Title, is the full description of what a team member is meant to perform in a firm. We often say “firms are built with roles, not humans.” That only means that we don’t build roles around the people we hire. It’s the other way around. Instead, we create roles that support the organization in its growth. Then we hire humans into the Role and make sure we are clear about what we are hiring them to do. So it’s the Role that defines what the organization needs. And it’s the Role that helps the human we hire know what is expected of them. 
3. Build your Roles with Job Descriptions. Job Descriptions are more specific descriptions of the Role. Every Role has a title, and the Job Description gives clarity to the Role. We make our Job Descriptions super-detailed in our firm. We want clarity so we lean towards 3 to 4 page Job Descriptions that clearly define what we expect from that role. As we say, “clarity is kindness,” so we never assume when we are adding scaffolding to an organization. We want to spell out the requirements of a role as clearly as we can. A Job Description is how we do that. 
4. Build your firm around Rhythms. This is another way to add scaffolding to cull the chaos of the complexity of growth. Rhythms work out to be calendar-based, meaning they can be placed on a calendar, then recur over time. We define rhythms with 3 components:
   • Same time – clarity is picking the same time for the rhythm. Having a rhythm always recurring at 9 am, EST, or 2 pm, EST (as examples) defines clarity of when things are to take place (typically meetings of some sort).
   • Same day – for more clarity, we add these rhythms on the same day too – always on Tuesdays, or always on Fridays if we can. Adding a rhythm on the same day at the same time makes work even clearer for team members. Now we are at same time, same day to bring clarity for how to implement the rhythm to the structure we are seeking to add to our companies as they grow. 
   • Same recurrence – for more clarity, we add recurrence on a rhythm to the mix. Again, this is a calendar-based rhythm, so now we define it as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually, etc. We can define any recurrence pattern to fit in with the same time, same day parameters mentioned above. This adds yet another calendar-based rhythm that tightens up the operations of a growing services organization.

As an example of a rhythm, we have a Weekly Team Meeting every Wednesday at 12 PM EST on a weekly cadence. Same time, same day, every week. This is the rhythm where our team gets to know each other better, check in with the firm, and enjoy each other’s company as we solidify our culture. What started as a simple check-in has become the heartbeat of our firm. 

Here’s What Really Happens When You Get Structure Right

We help a lot of firms transform, and here’s what we consistently see: the firms that embrace intentional scaffolding don’t just survive their scaling adventure – they thrive through it. These owners aren’t burning out at their desks, trying to hold everything together through sheer force of will.

Instead, they’re having the conversations that matter… inside of their structure. They’re thinking strategically about market opportunities, not just reactively putting out fires. Their teams operate with clarity and confidence because everyone knows their role and how it connects to the bigger picture. The chronic overwhelm that plagues growing firms can be dissolved when you have the right structural foundation (you just have to fight the fear to get started).

Your Growth Challenge Starts Now

If you’re thinking it sounds hard to implement structure, I’ve been there. The good news? You don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Pick one element – maybe start with mapping out that Accountability Chart. Accountability is key. Give yourself an hour this week to map out who’s really responsible for what in your firm.

You’ll probably uncover some surprising gaps or duplications you didn’t realize existed. That’s exactly the kind of insight that comes out of mapping things like an accountability chart. 

The beauty of building scaffolding is that each piece makes the next one easier to implement. Before you know it, you’ll have created a whole firm that supports your leadership desires instead of consuming them. We’re not just running accounting firms – we’re reimagining what professional services can become. And that requires leaders who think like entrepreneurs, not just skilled technicians who happen to own a business. 

Do you want help with your structure? That’s what we do! Contact us so we can help you get started.

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Transform Your Service Model

Slowly move towards pricing, which represents a fundamental operational and philosophical change towards value instead of just work. Traditional time-based billing creates constraints on both revenue and client relationships. Pricing can push your service outside of the bounds of an hour time block, and give you the potential to price higher than just what is reflected by an hourly rate. Removing arbitrary earning limitations can allow you to create larger chunks of cash as you create new services.

Service packaging transforms unclear value promises into tangible deliverables. You can move towards creating structured and packaged offerings that combine compliance with advisory services too. A package lets you put them together, and helps the client see your value beyond just compliance. One thing we tell those we consult with is to “sell something your client never asked you to buy.” This means that when clients ask for services, always offer additional advisory services too just to let them know what you can do for them (whether they buy them or not). You can put these advisory services in the higher packages of your offerings. Develop tiers of pitching services (3 options is key), offering a high, middle, low offer for the client to pick what level they want to pay for. 

Niching allows you to address specific client pain points for specific clients. Helping your clients can come when you deal with their very real specific issues. Niching leads you to see many types of these issues as patterns when you are serving the same type of client over and over. You become experts at their technology, the types of owners you work with, and the service models start to become easier to deliver for your team. Niching allows you to address the specificity that experts can really solve for their clients. It takes time to become an expert; niching into services (horizontal), or industry (verticals) is worth the time spent and it will make your firm more valuable over time.

Passivity represents the greatest threat during economic uncertainty. When markets fluctuate unpredictably like they are doing now, many leaders instinctively retreat to defensive places – reducing expenses, pausing initiatives, and essentially waiting for conditions to improve. This may not be all that bad, but this reactive approach gives up control just when strategic direction matters most.

Maintain Organizational Focus

Effective leadership requires filtering market information for your team. We mentioned this concept in our first article. As a firm leader, you have to become a master at filtering information. Not all information is good to take in, and some you should stop taking in all together. It is equally as important to filter information for your team. They need to hear the summary of what the market is doing, given to them by their leaders. And the tema don’t need to sort through your own personal emotions about it either. You need to deal with that privately. You can be truthful with your team, but you don’t have to divulge everything to them. Give them the reality of the ups and downs of the market, but also give them the encouragement they need to know that you are steering the ship with intention and a purpose (here is a great article from coach Ed Batista on this very topic).

Structured client interaction frameworks provide stability to your client base. Last year, we added a process to check in with our clients periodically. Before, we only did checkins when we were delivering an advisory service (like explaining their financials to them). But we felt the clients needed more care. So our leadership team created a way to check in more often, even for those clients that hadn’t purchased advisory services. This allows our organizational stability to run all the way through our client base. Now that we are in tough economic times, stability allows our clients to lean on us for advice to get them through this (without thinking they can make it without us). 

Targeted professional development maintains critical skills for a firm. We consult with many firms, and we know that those that regularly train their teams are always closing ‘skill gaps’ in their team. That means the firm is always becoming more valuable, more skilled, and more ready to “work-share” their way through tough economic times. If some team has to leave the firm, training props up the remaining team to step in and keep critical services humming. Unprepared team, from a skill level, means the owners have to scramble and fill in the gaps of client service right when running/operating the firm is the hardest. Keep training your team during the tumult of hard economic times.

Create a structured roadmap 24 to 36 months down the road to evolve your firm and services. We hear often (and it’s true) that downturns always create opportunities. This article is about long-term strategies to navigate a tumultuous market, so leaders must focus on how strong they will be when we come out of this economic downturn. Make a plan for what you will do when you see it start to pick up again. Will you launch into a new market ahead of everyone else? Will you sell new services to your client base when they are ready to start growing again? Will your team be ready to pivot back into growth when that time comes (and it will!)? Don’t forget to plan now for that time ahead when you can leverage opportunities that others have forgotten about.  

Develop Leadership Resilience

Implement mental discipline practices for the owners/leaders that allow them to stay focused. Allow for your leaders to talk out how they are feeling about the changes in the market and the firm. The owner desperately needs it, and so do the leaders that are supporting the owners. Delivering timelines helps everyone to think clearly about the path forward for a firm going through a down market. In fact, anything written down, put in a chart, or discussed as you share your screen creates clarity of decisions so our emotions don’t step in and feed us incorrect information. Develop rhythms for thinking through firm decisions as a discipline so everyone stays on the same page.

Connect organizational purpose to broader impact beyond present difficult times. More than ever, now is the time to continue to share your purpose and core values. Explain to your leaders and your team that these things do not go away just because you have to make iterative moves and respond to a down market. Rallying around a deeper purpose provides some motivation that sustains teams through the short-term efforts to make it through a hard economy. Give examples of how you are still helping people, that you are still valuable, and that you are a sustainable organization that will be here for a long time to come.

Some Encouragement

The landscape ahead contains both significant challenges and extraordinary possibilities. We’ve seen this before. I can say with certainty that your orientation towards these difficulties – whether you see them as threats or opportunities—will largely determine your outcomes when we pull out of this tough market (again, we will pull out of this!).

It’s interesting that the most successful firms emerge from tumultuous markets fundamentally stronger, having used disruption as a catalyst for the transformations we discussed above. You stand at a pivotal moment where strategic decisions made now will have amplified impacts for years to come. Who knows, this downturn could be the very thing you need to become the firm you are meant to be in 24 months!

We support firms navigating these markets. Reach out to Thriveal.

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Embrace Active Navigation

Avoid Passive Defensiveness

Passivity represents the greatest threat during economic uncertainty. When markets fluctuate unpredictably like they are doing now, many leaders instinctively retreat to defensive places – reducing expenses, pausing initiatives, and essentially waiting for conditions to improve. This may not be all that bad, but this reactive approach gives up control just when strategic direction matters most.

Navigating markets requires emotional intelligence alongside strategic clarity. The psychological impact of market volatility comes out as genuine anxiety that affects decision-making quality. Successful firm leaders acknowledge these responses while still remaining decisive in how they take actions (instead of being passive). This emotional discipline creates the foundation for proper responses during challenging market conditions.

Your responsibility isn’t to predict markets, but to be wise in how you adapt to them. Focus on developing responsive approaches regardless of economic direction rather than attempting to forecast troubling economic situations. Maintain heightened awareness of both emerging threats and unique opportunities by being in a community or listening to balanced podcasts. There are opportunities during these times, and they will often create transformative growth potential while competitors remain in a posture of defensiveness.

How do you embrace action, instead of being passive?

Implement Immediate Response Strategies

Review your firm’s precise cash position and runway. Identify which service offerings have diminished abilities to produce cash, and which address critical emerging needs. You want to be saving cash, and not necessarily spending cash on new creative endeavors.

Engage key team members in developing initiatives to protect your firm, and create responsibility to get help from other leaders. Establish clear accountability for specific response elements (with dates and times). 

Identify your revenue-critical client relationships and schedule time to talk to your key clients. Some may reach out to you, but you should initiate conversations when you can. Ask about their specific challenges before problems escalate. These conversations can reveal immediate advisory opportunities that the client may be willing to invest in.

Market disruptions can shift what clients value in your services – cash flow forecasting, for example, may suddenly supersede tax planning, or debt restructuring might address more immediate concerns for your clients. Firms demonstrating responsiveness to these evolving priorities strengthen client relationships while creating additional value opportunities.

How do you make sure you are taking in the right digest of information?

Implement Information Discipline

Filter the news you are listening to. The news around market disruptions is generated at unprecedented volumes, with highly variable reliability. Leaders who fail to implement disciplined filtering of all of this news frequently make poor decisions, or could even lean into being fearful. You have to filter the news you hear.

Translate what you are listening to into specifics for your clients. Develop relationships with people who understand how to translate broad economic trends into specific implications for your clients’ industries. These types of connections provide value by converting abstract developments into concrete implications. You can do this in communities like Thriveal, or with coaches. 

How do you keep your clients from becoming fearful?

Prioritize Strategic Communication

Communicate with your clients. When economic indicators create heightened anxiety, clients require trusted advisors more than when times are stable. Increase communication frequency to high-value clients. For example, you could transition from quarterly to monthly engagement during volatile periods, even if you aren’t pricing fully for that care.

Provide honest assessments on your client’s financial position with clear rationale supporting your recommendations. Clients see through smoke-blowing. This transparency includes discussing potential challenges before things get worse for their business, and can better prepare clients for difficult situations ahead.

You could offer different scenarios to your clients during these hard times so they have choices to pick from. Develop best-case, likely-case, and worst-case scenarios that allow clients to prepare for various potential outcomes. This approach filters the noise from market news and converts into specific plans the client can assess for themselves.

Check out Part II of this blog series here.

As you navigate these turbulent waters, remember that your leadership abilities can carry you through this. I’ve seen many firm owners transform market disruptions into opportunities for growth, you just need to apply some of the wisdom in this article to get it right. You may be tested, but we always learn during these hard times if we can remain resilient and stable. 

Talking it out helps. Reach out to Thriveal.

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

After 25 years of building a firm, I know how it feels to want to just go mow grass for a living. I actually said that out loud on a podcast one time. 25 years of building a firm teaches you a lot about yourself. More than anything, it teaches you about your breaking points.

My breaking points came many years ago. I was underwater—debt was piling up, tax issues mounting, and my personal relationships strained under the weight of the business failures. It was then that Julie joined as my partner, stepping onto what appeared to be a sinking ship. She’s like that – she’ll just dive into things she believes in.

And how did I welcome her? By declaring on a podcast, “I’m done. I just want to mow grass for a living.”

She heard it before I even told her, and the conversation that followed changed everything.

“What do you actually want?” she asked. It was a simple question but a very complicated answer (at least for me). I wanted the rewards of saying I was growing a successful firm without confronting my own fears, limitations, addictions to what I called “entrepreneurial freedom,” and the ability to “do whatever I wanted to do”. I wanted growth without growing pains. I wanted to be a visionary without doing the hard work of maturing as a leader.

The “mow grass” fantasy wasn’t really about lawn care of course. It represented a search for an escape from complexity for me (probably your “go mow grass” fantasy means something else to you).

The Journey Back

What followed wasn’t a quick turnaround story. It was a multi-year journey of facing uncomfortable truths and trying to grow up as a Founder/owner:

• Getting professional help to address patterns that were sabotaging my success
• Cutting my own salary while I dug us out of debt
• Learning that I couldn’t have everything I wanted
• Discovering what it truly means to lead a scaling service organization

I did have a lot of growing up to do, just like many entrepreneurs do. I guess I had to hit close to the bottom to really start to try to change.

My breakthrough came gradually, not in a single moment of triumph. It happened through small, consistent choices. I had to have difficult conversations, process changes, and develop our own well known time blocking methodology that we still use to this day. By showing up day after day, I gradually gained control over the chaos of growth and started to win and feel in control of the chaos that comes with growth. Maybe you feel like growth brings chaos you can’t control?

Today, our firm looks nothing like it did during those challenging times. The debt is gone. The relationships are healing. The team is thriving. It ain’t perfect but it’s something we can manage with really hard consistent work. And our work is very fruitful, so I lean into it now.

But here’s what 25 years has really taught me: the moments when you most want to escape are often signaling something even more important.

My desire to mow grass wasn’t really about lawn care. It was about:

• Craving tangible results when everything felt uncertain
• Seeking simplicity when complexity overwhelmed me (and our businesses)
• Wanting control in a business that was growing, but chaotic

Understanding this has changed how I approach difficult seasons. Now when the “mow grass” feeling emerges, I recognize it as a signal to stop and try to figure out why I feel that way (journaling works for me). I can lean in now to my work even when it feels overwhelming because I have practice with learning what that feeling means and how to take it under control.

A Note to Fellow Firm Builders

If you’re in your own “I just want to mow grass” phase, know this:

1. You’re not alone. Every firm builder I respect has hit similar lawns.
2. This moment doesn’t define you—how you respond to it does. We all have seasons.
3. Find a community or someone you can trust to stand with you in those hard times.

After 25 years, I can tell you with certainty: That work is worth it, and the struggles are temporary. Even now in a season in our world where the economic and political turmoil feels heavy, I can say that it’s just a season too. The view from the other side of the yard is better than any perfectly mowed lawn I’ve been on.

Want to see how others have managed this? Watch what Barrett Young, CPA says about these journeys in his own life and make sure you come to our RISE event  to get your own firm growth journeys nailed down and pointed in the right direction.”

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