Main Street Business

#557 The Accounting Industry Was Broken... Here's How I Fixed It

• Mark J Kohler and Mat Sorensen

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In this episode of the Main Street Business Podcast, Mark J. Kohler tackles the top challenges facing accountants today, from the disconnect with business owners to the need to shift from compliance to advisory roles. Learn actionable strategies to elevate your practice and thrive in the evolving tax industry.

Here are some of the highlights:

  • Mark begins by acknowledging the frustration of business owners and practitioners in the accounting industry.
  • The disconnect between business owners and accountants, leading to frustration and apathy.
  • Mark outlines the five major pain points for accountants: not charging enough, lack of practical strategies, inconsistent income, etc.
  • The importance of charging fair rates and creating a relationship that values time and expertise.
  • Issues of training new employees and the constant need for retraining due to high turnover.
  • A break down of all the features and benefits of being a Main Street Certified Tax Advisor
  • Encourages accountants to check out the program and take advantage of the resources available to them.
  • Mark discusses the skepticism among accountants about the feasibility of advisory services.
Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Main Street Business Podcast with your distinguished hosts, mark J Kohler and Matt Sorenson. Both are best-selling authors and have over 25 years of industry experience, with 10,000 client consultations, making them the leading tax and legal experts in the nation. Together, they'll unpack the most complex tax, legal and financial strategies crucial for saving more, stressing less and building generational wealth. Today they're your personal advisors, ready to break it down for you and make the tax and legal game easier than ever. Here is Mark and Matt.

Speaker 2:

Yes, the tax industry is broken and you may be a business owner watching this to say, yeah, I knew it, I want to just know why. Or you might be a practitioner in the accounting industry saying, mark, please give me a solution Now. I'm a CPA, an attorney, bestselling author, and I've been in this industry and I was a part of the problem for many years because I didn't know how to crack the code myself in my own practices. But I'm here now and I have figured it out and I want to tell you what's wrong with the system, what your pain points are, because I've shared them before. Tell you what's wrong with the system, what your pain points are, because I've shared them before, and a solution that's real for you business owners and for you advisors.

Speaker 2:

Why is it broken? Why are baby boomer accountants walking away from practices, almost giving them away? Why is accounting school enrollment down across the board at all universities? Because of the disconnect. Business owners are frustrated because they want to have a sit down with real, practical strategies and accountants want to be an advisor but don't know how to get there. It's like two ships in the night passing past each other. They want to meet, they want to wave to each other and pull over and talk on the side of some beautiful Island, but they pass by each other every day and both groups are so frustrated and they're just apathetic. Accountants are quitting and business owners are going to TurboTax. But, my friends, there is a solution Now.

Speaker 2:

Part of that solution is the accountant has to take the lead. The accountant has to become the advisor. Hold them out an advisor and reach out to their client and go I'm ready to meet. I want to meet and save you taxes. And if you want to be part of my advisory program, great, if you don't go find someone else that wants to look into the rear view mirror and just do compliance. But we've got to take the lead and if you do, the business owners come in swarms. They want to come, they are. We have a network of accountants that are now overwhelmed with business owners that want you and need you. But the first step is you have to take the lead.

Speaker 2:

Now I know your pain points. I want to just hit them five, the five big ones, and the first one is you're not charging enough. You want to, but you don't know how, and you don't know how to create that relationship where you're paid for your time and you're billing the proper amount per hour in a structure that's fair to you, but we keep in this vicious cycle of just giving away free freaking advice. Number two pain point If you do get a client to come in and sit down, you're like what are we going to talk about? Do I have real strategies that are better than just let's harvest tax losses, put money in your IRA? Oh my gosh, I don't even put those on my top 20 strategies. People, I know it can be scary when you don't have street smart tax strategies and that are not aggressive but cutting edge. Because you had to learn accounting from some old guy or gal down the hall and you've been dying for real strategies but they don't teach it in the CPA exam or the enrolled agent exam or the bar exam. They don't. You've got to hope that you get with the right firm and learn these strategies, or you might be here on YouTube.

Speaker 2:

Number three you're sick of the inconsistent income oh my gosh. The tax season cycle oh, I've been there. I had a nervous breakdown on one October 15th on the couch in my office and then all of a sudden I'm not making money for three months. But I got to pay all my people and bonuses and Christmas and then start making money, hopefully the middle of January. It is ugly. We want consistent income all year but we don't know how to get there. And we want to. We want to be at the promised land of tax advisory.

Speaker 2:

And number four if that wasn't bad enough, we've got to train our people. But I'm trying to stay busy, mark, billing and helping clients and doing all the admin. But I've got to stop and train a new employee every freaking week and so I'm wasting time retraining and retraining and retraining and then they leave and I can't hire good enough people and they don't want to be there either, and the atmosphere and culture of my accounting firm sucks. Mark, I don't know what to do with my staff. And number five, the biggest pain point of all many of you, many of you accountants out there, from bookkeeper to a tax lawyer you don't believe advisory could even happen, that it's so elusive. How do you get there? What do you do? How do you do it? How do you change your engagement letter? How do you change the billing? How do I have that comprehensive consultation? How do I set the expectations on the front? How much do I bill them and when, where and how? How would it be to have a tax?

Speaker 2:

70 to 80 plus strategies that actually work, that are cutting edge, from self-directing a retirement account to reasonable comp strategies with S-corporations putting kids on payroll, helping a client build a family office. Let's talk about asset protection and identifying asset protection holes in their entity structures. Let's talk about our state planning. Do they have their revocable living trust? 60% of people don't even have a will. Are we looking at getting them out of debt? There are so many conversations you could have if you're just equipped with them. So how about a program where we learn 60, 70, 80 strategies, with an exam at the end of each one of those strategies so that you can put your people through a training program and know they're going to get trained and have to pass that exam to move through the progress bar? And then how about a weekly phone call with ongoing training when issues come up, where you can ask questions of the founder, mark J Kohler or other tax advisors in the network that are providing deeper dives on a variety of topics every week? How about a program where every month, we talk about business building and have a module where we keep all of those recordings, where I give you an engagement letter, pricing diagrams and structures, how to hold a comprehensive consult, how to help target the perfect spot on a 401k contribution, how to do a Roth conversion with chunking, how to exploit the short-term rental strategy, the long-term rental strategy, what to do with the syndication or even the dash four self-rental strategy all of the cutting edge strategies, but then put together in a practical way of how to deliver it and be compensated fairly.

Speaker 2:

So many of our members are bringing on advisory clients that 4X a compliance client. For every new advisory client you can bring on, you can get rid of four compliance clients. And I teach classes at our conferences even I'll come to that where we help you convert and transition compliance clients to advisory clients. We even have a Main Street Life Coach that meets with all of our members as a group, giving advice on relationships, communication, handling the stress of tax season, how do we manage the work-life balance and a host of other issues. Because people it starts up here and once we believe it and we can see it, we can make it happen. And all of this is wrapped up in a community, a tribe, with a networking group that's closed to our members only, where you can throw out questions during the week, and two conferences a year, live, in person and virtual, where you can get together and collaborate and build new relationships. The testimonials, the experiences of our members have blown my mind. I never thought it was going to be this amazing. We're now in our third year with over a thousand advisors around the country.

Speaker 2:

And finally, that Tax Advisor Network. You can put your information on there and get leads from the millions of views I get on YouTube and with my podcast and other social media, because I'm out there telling everybody if you need an accountant, if you need an advisor this speaks Mark Kohler. I have a whole army of them, you accounting professionals. One advisory client pays for this entire certification One. This is amazing. I beg of you to check it out. Down below in the description is a link where you can meet with a real person on my enrollment team and do a demo and schedule one as early as tomorrow. Check it out, no obligation, and you can see that path to advisory.

Speaker 2:

I have ongoing webinars, on-demand webinars, ongoing trainings and I'm not going anywhere. It is my passion and my mission to help the accounting industry. I've been in the industry for 25 years and this is what I want to do for the next 10, 20. I don't know, we'll see, but I am loving it and I am so excited about the relationships I'm building and this new community that is just growing like wildfire. And you business owners, if you stuck around for all this, get over to that Tax Advisor Network because you can find an advisor that's got all those skills that I just talked about, that is dying to meet you and now learning how to communicate with you. I will help you with those tools. I will help you with the community. We've got the life coaching to help you believe in yourself and it's all in one program the Main Street Tax Pros. That, my friends, is the answer to the problem with the accounting industry tax advisory and a program that can deliver it. Check it out down below and I'll see you at the next training.

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Mark J. Kohler

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