I Almost Shut It All Down in July. Here’s Why I Didn’t.

2025 nearly broke me.
Clients dropped. Revenue cratered. My dream car? Totaled by a dump truck, with no one inside. At our lowest, we were bleeding over $12,000/month.

But we didn’t quit. And by November, we closed 10 new clients in a month and had our first $15K cash day.

In this special New Year’s edition, I walk through the real story behind the posts: the burnouts, breakthroughs, and the shift that brought us back.

What I cover:

• The exact moment I considered shutting it all down
• Why discounting for quick cash nearly wrecked us
• The “Mexico Meltdown” that set off the chaos
• The daily habits that pulled me out
• 3 muscles I had to build to survive the year

If you're in a tough season… listen to this.

You're not behind. You're not broken. You're being forged.

👉 Subscribe, share, and message me if this hits.
Let’s make 2026 the comeback year, together.

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Transcript

Kitchen Shock And The Dump Truck

SPEAKER_01 0:00

There's a moment I'll never forget. I'm sitting in my kitchen, staring at my laptop. The numbers on the screen didn't lie. Clients were leaving. My accountant told me we were burning 12K a month. And my Audi, the dream car that I worked so hard for, had just been absolutely crushed by a dump truck outside of my house when it was parked on the road. Worst part was there wasn't even anyone in the dump truck. The uh company forgot to put the parking brake on and it rolled down the street and absolutely wiped out my dream car. And all I can remember thinking was, is this what growth looks like? Does it should it really feel this hard? 2025 was supposed to be our year. Instead, it felt like everything that could go wrong did. But I didn't break. And in this episode, I want to take you through the real story of 2025, not just the highlight reel, but the lowlights, the near breakdowns, and what I learned about leadership, cash flow, client trust, and most importantly, myself. Welcome back to another episode of CFO Chronicles. This is our New Year's Day edition for wrapping up 2025. So this episode is coming out January 1st, 2026. And I really want to dig into everything that happened in 2025. At times, it's very easy for social media, for podcasts, whatever it is, to only promote the highlights. And it gives a false sense of reality to those who are viewing, those who are listening. And I want to pull back the curtain and yes, talk about the wins, but also talk about things were really, really hard this year. The points out the year where I really wanted to quit and what kept me going, and hopefully some lessons that I learned from this year that will be helpful for you, the audience listening, because this was a hard year, despite what you see on social media, despite you know, posts and whatever's going up, this was a tough year. Yes, we had some amazing things happen, but this this was a challenging year and it it really tested me. So let's let's start with the wins because I think that's the most important thing. So top three wins of the year, because even in a brutal year, there were some there were some real peaks, there were some awesome moments. So win number one, absolutely hands down, has to be speaking at Grocon in Provo, Utah. This was my first time presenting on a stage of that size. Um, first time presenting, really, if you count outside of school and university to a classroom about 20 to 30 people. This was huge. I had that do I belong here moment going up, and and then I delivered. And I'll never forget applying to speak, getting accepted, and then thinking, oh shit, I have to do this now, preparing the presentation, feeling comfortable with it, practicing, rehearsing, getting comfortable with the material, but then standing behind the stage, getting mic'd up, going out. I was the first to speak after the lunch break. I didn't have a bite of food prior to speaking. I had no appetite. I was a nervous wreck, had a brand new suit. Um, the whole thing absolutely drenched in sweat by the time I was done. But it was it was an amazing experience. The feedback after was incredible. I had so many people coming up saying how helpful it was, how great the presentation was, and that's what I cared about the most actually delivering value and helping and educating the audience so that they can take that information and apply it to their business. That moment proved to me that I can do this, I can lead in rooms like that. And that was that was so cool. It was so huge for my own self-confidence, and then also just the belief and the reinforcement that yeah, I know what I'm talking about, and there was a ton of value that came from this. So that was huge. Win number two, publishing my book. I got to hand out over 400 plus copies of my book this year at events we sponsored and attended. The wildest part, getting messages weeks later from people saying, you know, this helped me close more clients, this gave me clarity. I had no idea, you know, this could this could be done. Um, those those hearing that feedback was so incredible. And just knowing, again, awesome, this the time that it was put into this book, that the the resources, all the trainings, everything that I've invested into for my time to put that into the book, how it was helpful for others. And I'm so excited to get more copies of that book in more firm owners' hands across the industry. Uh, if you don't already have a copy, feel free to check check out uh where to grab it on Amazon. Um, but yeah, that was that was massive. Just the positive feedback of how impactful this book is because I'm not gonna lie, speaking on stage, publishing a book, handing it out, there's massive imposter syndrome. So to be told from peers in the industry how impactful that was and how much it helped them, it was absolutely incredible. The third biggest win of the year, this one is this one's cool. I've never had a day like this, have have gotten relatively close, but this was this was a milestone that I was absolutely pumped about. I had my first$15,000 uh cash collected in a single day. It wasn't just from a launch or a sprint, it was just momentum, filling up a pipeline, jumping on sales calls, refining the process, refining our offer to to be a no-brainer offer for firm owners, having the the case studies, the results, the testimonials to back what it is we're doing and produce that consistent result, and just having those at bats to be able to have the opportunity to close over$15,000 in one day. It was massive. And what that day reminded me is that you're never that far away. And sometimes you're just a few yeses away from a massive breakthrough, from a huge milestone. So that was that was a very special day, and that came towards the end of the year back in about mid-November, approximately. So there's all the wins that I wanted to briefly touch on. The top three highlights. I mean, obviously, there was a lot of other wins, um, but those are the top three that stand out. A couple runner-ups, I would say. Again, going to Mexico for the winter, and I'll get into why that was also uh a challenge. Having the ability to travel down to Medellin. I've always wanted to go to Columbia, so that was really cool to check that out. Um, and then got to go out to Arizona at the end of this year, and then first time in Vegas. So, all of that, either through personal or through work, some amazing trips, and uh yeah, just love having that ability to travel and having the freedom and being able to build a business around that. So those are the wins and the honorable mentions. Next, let's get into the losses that tested me because this is the other side of the coin, the side that maybe a lot of people don't speak about publicly, the ones that aren't published online, but they're very real. And I don't I know every glamorous post I see online, there is another side to that coin, and that's what I'm hoping I can share with with everyone today. So I think it's so important to share that because this year was hard and the punches didn't stop. So we'll start in the summer, because that was the hardest month of uh of the year in July, hands down. We had clients dropping off, mostly from a legacy service, but still painful. We had team members who left, spent a lot of time training team members, then they left. So we got clients leaving, we got team members leaving. Our accountant told me we were bleeding over$12,000 a month. In the cherry on top, a dump truck literally crashed my dream car. I had a fully blacked-out Audi Q5. I worked so hard to get this thing, I worked so hard to upgrade from the vehicle I had prior. I was in love with this vehicle. I only had it for about 10 months. I was mowing my lawn, the vehicle was parked on the road, and a dump truck literally rolled down the hill and absolutely totaled my vehicle. And then the dump truck rolled up on the lawn behind me while I was mowing. If you haven't seen the video and you want to see it, feel free to send me a message. I'm more than happy to share it. It's it's unbelievable, truly. Um, that was tough. I was in absolute disbelief. We were just told how much money we're losing every single month. Clients are dropping off, team members are leaving. We didn't we're not bringing on new clients at this point. And then to top it off, July 31st, when I thought, how can this month get any worse? Get me out of July, my vehicle gets absolutely demolished. The worst part was there was nobody even in the dump truck. The guy at the top of the street jumped out of it, didn't put it in park, and it rolled down. Things could have been a lot worse. Um, thankfully, no one was hurt because there was no one in a vehicle. But yeah, that was that was tough. That one's done. And it just felt like one hit after another. And I just kept thinking, should it be this hard? Like, is anyone else struggling the way I feel like I'm struggling right now? And how do I how do I lead through this? How do I get through this? I still have team members who are relying on me. We still have clients who are relying on us. They don't need to know all of this story. So that was July. We'll rewind a little bit to January, um, which I will refer to as the Mexico meltdown. Chronically, a lot of this chaos started back in January. So I went into 2025 thinking this is gonna be an amazing year. We're coming off 2024, record high, record high year for revenue, got a ton of momentum going into the new year. I'm starting it off in in Mexico, and I'm gonna be traveling through Colombia and then heading back to Mexico again for about two and a half months to get away from the Canadian winter. And what was supposed to be a reset, if you will, new energy, excitement, again, getting away from that cold Canadian winter, everything took a turn. Week two into my trip, my brand new MacBook fried in a power surge. So that sucked. Waking up on a Monday morning to go and work, jump on sales calls, meet with the team, build, and my laptop's not working. Um as I was running around town to try to find either a place to repair the MacBook, find a spot to buy a new laptop that I could that I could physically work from for the next couple months. I get violently sick for a full week. I'm taking sales calls from my iPhone. I'm feeling horrible. I'm barely able to get out of bed. I can barely keep anything down. It was tough. Taking sales calls from a cell phone, it's not the greatest look, uh, at least in my experience, when you hop on Zoom and the camera's you know propped up against you and it's not from a laptop. Um, it just it just made everything a real challenge. And then fast forward a couple more weeks. Um sitting in Mexico City, dealt with a couple other issues while we were in Columbia, dealt with some issues at the start of Mexico City. I was just like thinking how much I'm bleeding money in every direction I look. Then I get hit with a notification from the CRA for a bill over 25 grand from a COVID benefit program years ago during the pandemic. I was already at capacity and the year just started. And I just kept thinking, eventually, this has gotta stop. This is this is comical to anyone else listening. I could see the humor in it, but at the same time, I was in absolute panic and thought, how how do we get out of this situation? This is insane. Every direction I look, I'm getting punched in the face. So we'll move, we'll move on to you know what got tested because we went over the wins, we went over the losses, the ones that stand out the most, and a lot got tested this year, but nothing more than my relationship with myself and with my team. I used to get rattled easily. And for those of you who know me, you may be laughing and thinking you still do get rattled. I'm way better than I used to be. Um, and I can make that joke. But this year I learned how to absorb the punch, breathe, and and not lose full control. If this happened a couple of years ago, I can say with pretty much guaranteed certainty, I would have shut the doors and folded this whole thing in. So the problems didn't get easier. I just stopped reacting to all of them like fires. I had to stop being dramatic and start being decisive. Something that always comes to mind is that as bad as things get, no one's coming to save you except yourself. And you're responsible to get to lift yourself up off the mat and keep going. And that's what I kept telling myself. And as hard as it was, it was about compounding on the little wins to get up off the mat. And some days it felt really hard to even get out of bed, and then it quickly was reminding me, you know, a talk track in my head of this is the situation you're in. Will it get better if you just go and watch Netflix for the afternoon? Will it get better if you take a handful of days off and don't do anything productive to work to get out of this? And I'm a firm believer, yes, you need a reset, you need to step away at times, and that's fine. But if you do that all the time, now you're making a choice to avoid versus making a choice to recharge. And I'm on honestly, I'm really proud of how I responded this year. Again, because the version of me from two years ago, three years ago, absolutely would have cracked their this this episode wouldn't be happening right now because there would be no business. So, with all of that, some new muscles that I had to build this year forced me to level up in three key ways that I'm I'm excited to share. And honestly, as I say all this to everyone, those who are listening, I hope this is really helpful for one listener out there. I hope someone's like, Yeah, I had a really tough year and this is helpful. But honestly, this is huge for me just to reflect and be able to look back and listen to this January or sorry, December 31st, 2026, to see how far I've come in yet another year. So I appreciate you being along for the ride and listening to what I'm sharing. Um, really, a lot of this is for me, and I hope it could help someone, but um, this is really for me to reflect on and have that piece. So the three things that forced me to level up, or the the thing this year forced me to level up in three key ways. First one, patience. Everything was taking longer than I wanted, but I had to accept that growth is messy and progress isn't always obvious. I've learned in immense ways to become significantly more patient. It's hard, but you just keep putting in the work and you keep building the systems and you trust the process, the results will come. And I just I needed to be patient with that because trust me, in the middle of the summer, it felt like there was there's no way I can get my head above water. I'm I'm so far beneath water, even with a snorkel, we're taking on a ton of water. And I can I can proudly say today recording this, we're we're standing with water around our ankles, just enjoying, enjoying the weather, enjoying the temperature. So that's amazing. The second thing, leadership. Leading when things are easy is one thing. Leading when everything around you is falling apart and still showing up for your team, that's different. And for my team listening, I wasn't the best at times. And I appreciate your patience with me because it is hard showing up when things are falling apart. And I put my best foot forward. I spoke to my mentors, I spoke to my coaches to work through that because I knew I knew I needed to show up for them so that we can continue showing up for our clients because our clients don't care what's going on. Yes, we have amazing clients, they're amazing people, but at the end of the day, they're looking for a specific result, and that's totally understandable. So we have to make sure we're delivering that for them. Then the third thing is resilience. I bent really hard, but I can proudly say I didn't break. And the only reason we're closing this year strong is because I kept going when I felt like nothing was working. I knew from the help of again some mentors and coaches, what brought us to the most successful year we've ever had in 2024, the same systems to a certain degree would get us back to that. Yes, you always need to upgrade your systems, and you can only grow to the level that your systems allow. We were significantly lower than this in this particular time than the systems that brought us to our record setting revenue in 2024. So I knew rely on the systems that have got us there before and we will get through this. And just stuck with the process and we kept going and we got out of it. And it wasn't easy. And I'll get into what some of that looked like. But if you're having any difficulty, anything you're going through in life right now, just trust the process. Trust the process. That's the best, best piece of advice I can give uh at this point in the podcast. So the truths that I now live by, there's a quote, it's a background, it's the background on my phone. And I I love it. Nothing changes if nothing changes. And I lived that this year. I had to change how I showed up for myself. Midsummer, I made one of the most important decisions of the year. I stopped sacrificing myself for the business and started putting myself first. I started putting on my own oxygen mask so that I could help others. Rather than waking up, going to bed late, sorry, waking up late, jumping straight onto the computer, skipping meals, skipping exercising at the end of the day, and just repeating that terrible cycle. I was like, enough's enough. I gotta put myself first. I gotta put on my own oxygen mask. And I started tracking daily habits that I knew if I if I accomplish these daily habits, I will be in a significantly better place in a week, two weeks, a month's time. And that's what I started doing. I've always enjoyed cold plunging the last couple of years. Um, not because it's a big trend, but because I truly believe starting the day doing something really hard that you absolutely hate that doesn't get easier any single day is so important. So I was doing that every morning. And I got back into the gym. I've always been very active growing up, played a lot of competitive sports. I like working out and even, you know, building this business over the last six and a half years, I still would go to the gym. I would just found myself sacrificing more of that and would at the end of the day go if I had time or that that if I have time excuse that everyone likes to tell themselves or like to consider is lying to themselves because everyone has time. That's what you prioritize. But I started getting back to the gym, cold plunge straight into the gym. Whether that was walking on the incline for the next 45 minutes just to get some movement, or getting right into weights and then doing the uh the incline at the end of the day, or vice versa, whatever that looked like, but moving first thing in the morning and then actually eating meals. Shocker how incredible you feel when you actually eat breakfast and then you can you can sit down and start working. Again, these are all things that I'm sure everyone listening is like, yeah, this sounds pretty obvious. You know, eat the frog, move, and then eat breakfast. So um they're obvious, but are you doing them? Do you do them consistently? Because I wasn't. And when I started doing that, that one shift, me choosing me, it helped me climb out of the hole that I was in, the massive hole that I that I physically knew I was in. Because when I showed up better, everything else followed. And and I know that may sound a little woo-woo and and crazy for some of you, but um, I know for a fact that it it made an absolute huge difference and it those daily habits continuing to do now because it got me out of that hole and it's it's got me to this place where we have a ton of momentum going into 2026. So the the mistake that I'm glad I made that I learned in the heat of our financial dip, I started offering discounted paid in fulls to get fast cash. We have an amazing program, we get amazing results for our clients. And offering a paid in full at the time seemed like a great idea to get hands on hands on cash to get caught up on bills, to get that next injection to reinvest back into the business. And it worked in the moment, but it became a massive roller coaster. One good month. Month than the desert. Go from wow, we're rich, let's jump on a yacht, to oh my God, we're gonna be eating um ice cubes for dinner. Obviously, not that dramatic, but it was just the peaks and valleys and not looking at what our true MRR is. And again, I'm not an accountant. So for all of my listeners here who run accounting firms, you may be thinking, James, you're an idiot. That's so obvious. But again, I just want to share the raw moments from what happened this year. Because if this helps one person out there listening, then I feel I've done my job. What this taught me is that paid and fulls are not a business model, they're not a great business model. Predictable recurring revenue is now that cash flow is healthier, I'll never go back to that band-aid strategy because that's truly what that was. Let's just keep putting band-aids on. Problem is you get a nice injection, but then you're not getting new revenue or that recurring revenue coming in from your clients from either three, six months down the road. And that's tough, especially if things slow down like they did in the summer, where there's just essentially, you know, a huge dip in revenue coming through. So that was hard. Um the next piece I want to talk about is the moment that I almost quit because I think this is really important. This is really dark. And if you've been listening along here for the last 25 plus minutes, I'm sure you can probably guess when that moment was. It was the end of July, start of August. Vehicle just got absolutely mashed. Revenue is plummeted a ton. We're being told we're bleeding over$12,000 a month. I had that moment where you look around and think, what if I just shut this all down? I didn't say it out loud, but I felt it. And a big part of if I shut it all down, I still have you know all these bills that need to be paid for. I still have to pay all of our team, but I need more cash in order to do all that. So it was it wasn't really an option, but it was how do I just get through enough to to kind of make make everything whole and then and then stop this. And what pulled me through was this I couldn't let my team down, I couldn't let myself down. So I just went back to the basics, simplified, focused, started stacking those tiny wins. And now we just brought on 10 new clients in November, our highest month yet. Absolutely record-setting month for bringing on new clients. And I do want to give a massive shout out to our team because again, a couple of years ago, if we were to bring on 10 clients in a month, it wouldn't have worked. We wouldn't have clients go live, the systems would have broke, the team would have pulled out all of their hair, just wouldn't have worked. So we have amazing systems in place now where we can do that, and now that bar has been set, we're cool. That one that 10 new clients in a month that once was a record, that's just now the benchmark. Let's let's make that the new norm because we have the systems and we keep looking to improve those 1% every single day. So final takeaway. If you had a year that didn't go as planned, I want to tell you something. Because this took me a while for me to figure out myself. And I'm still figuring it out. There's still really hard days, but I want to tell you something. You're not behind, you're not broken, you're being forged. And the wins on the other side of the chaos, they hit different. They feel so much better when you've gone through all of that trouble, all of those punches to the face. It feels incredible to have those wins on the other side. I'm so proud of what we built this year, not just because we finished strong, but because we refused to fold when everything pointed to quitting. And I'm so proud of our team for sticking with me. And I'm so proud of our clients for their continued trust in what we do and just really leaning into us and providing us that, you know, positive support as well when they're getting the results they're looking for, because it's those little words of encouragement that make a massive difference. So if you're working with a vendor, you have partners, whatever it is, send them a message. Just tell them how much you appreciate the work that they do for you, the work that you both work on together. It'll make someone's day. And especially if they're going through a challenging season, that message may be the difference from them closing their doors or keeping things running for another couple of years and making massive, a massive difference in the ripple effect that that can bring. So I encourage you to message one person on your team, one vendor who you work with to doing an awesome job, and just say, Hey, I see you and I appreciate what you're doing. And I'll close with this. If you've ever felt like you were drowning at any point this year, DM me. Seriously. I I would love to have a conversation with you because you're not alone, you're not crazy, you're just building resilience. And I'm here to support you and I see you because we've gone through it. And if we could get through it, I guarantee you anyone listening to this can get through it. Thank you so much for being along on this ride with me, with our team, listening to this podcast week in, week out. If this has brought even a sliver of value to you, would love to hear your feedback in the comments. Would love to engage in conversation with you on LinkedIn or over email or however you want to get in touch with us on our social media channels. Please share this podcast with someone who you know it would help them out. Share this podcast with someone who should be listening, following along. Every week we try to bring on high value individuals from the industry. If there's someone you believe who needs to be on the podcast, let's hear, let's hear from you. I want to I want to bring them on. I want to make sure that we're continuing to provide value to our audience. And if you have a chance, please leave a review, rate the show. It means the world to us, helps us keep growing so we can bring on high, high value individuals who can share a ton of ton of resources and value to our audience. I'm super excited about what's to come in 2026. I hope you all had an amazing holiday. You're taking a little bit of time to relax so you can hit the ground running. I know I will be. I'm recording this on December 27th. I'm getting ready to head to Mexico for the next two and a half months. I'll be back to work on January 8th. So I'm taking some time to enjoy hanging by the pool, being by the beach. And I hope you guys have an amazing year. And I know there's so much more to come. 2026 is going to be huge, and we'll see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in to this episode of CFO Chronicles, The Secrets Behind Success. I hope you found value in today's conversation. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. If you enjoyed today's discussion, please rate and review the show. It helps others discover the insights we share here. Second, if you're ready to take your business to the next level and attract the high-end clients you deserve, head over to accountingleadsnow.com or click the link in the show notes to book your strategy call. It's time to position yourself as the advisor your clients need. And don't forget, you can connect with me on LinkedIn to stay up to date on what's happening in the world of accounting and financial growth. We've got exciting topics coming up, so stay tuned for the next episode of CFO Chronicles. Until then, keep pushing forward. Your growth is just one strategic move away.