As an accountant with a thriving practice, adding advisory services for clients may have been in the back of your mind for some time. Especially when clients keep asking for help with things outside the realm of normal accounting, such as investing and retirement advice, you know it's time to expand your practice. However, for some reason, you just can't seem to get past the hurdle of getting started. You keep making different excuses for why you aren't expanding your accounting practice, even though the demand for increased services remains strong.
In this episode of the podcast designed for accountants from Thomas Reuters called Pulse of the Practice, you will find inspiration to begin. When we are faced with change, we often struggle with where to start. This episode of the podcast will take a look at not freezing with inaction, but getting started with change.
In a previous post at the Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb, we discussed adding advisory services to your accounting practice. That advice is still quite relevant. However, in today's blog post we are concentrating on how to overcome the hesitation and/or fear you may have about getting started adding advisory services to your accounting practice. As it turns out, this hesitation has much more to do with mindset than with whether or not you and your firm are capable of handling whatever is placed before you.
We all have fear. And living through a pandemic increased that fear for millions of people. But one of the defining characteristics of us as humans is our ability to adapt and overcome. So what is really stopping you from expanding your accounting practice? See if you relate to the below list of common fears that stop people from living their best life from an article at Inc.com. (You might be surprised at some of these common fears.)
- Fear of Failure--To get over the fear of failure, ask yourself, "So, what if I do fail?" What is the worst that can happen? If the reality is "Not a lot," then dive in, give it a shot. Don't let just the fear of failing hold you back.
- Not Wanting To Appear Arrogant--It can sometimes feel as if we have become above our station, that by claiming our success we are looking to put ourselves above others, which can then be perceived as arrogance. This perception can often limit the goals that we set for ourselves, for fear of separating ourselves from the herd. There is nothing arrogant about achieving your full potential.
- Not Wanting to Ask for Help--There are a number of reasons why people don't ask for help. Fear of rejection; they don't want to appear stupid; they worry it will undermine their achievements; they don't want people to know they are struggling. The reality is, very few people achieve great success without the support and assistance of others.
- Worried About What Other People Think--Acceptance from others is a strong desire that many people have, and it can cause us to question the things we do by wondering what other people are thinking: about us, about our businesses, our plans, and our goals. The reality is that most people are too busy worrying about their own problems to be scrutinizing what others are doing. Second, who cares? We have enough of our own negative thoughts to deal with without adding other people's potential negativity to our list of obstacles to overcome.
Once you address your fears/hesitation about adding advisory services to your accounting practice--most you probably found in the list above--we'd like to offer one more tool to help you get started. This free whitepaper from CPA Practice Advisor, 8 Steps to CAAS Practice Transformation, will help guide you through the transition of adding advisory services to your accounting practice.
Below is a description of what information you will find in the free whitepaper:
Adding advisory services to a traditional accounting practice requires a team effort. This eBook outlines eight steps that firms should consider to help them successfully implement client accounting and advisory services, including:
- The critical differences between CAS and CAAS
- Getting leadership to transition to a CAAS model
- The resources needed to begin offering CAAS
The MoneyThumb team hopes this blog post will help your accounting firm overcome your hesitation about adding advisory services to your accounting practice. We'd appreciate it if you could share this post on your social media page.
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