Tax season is finally over—and now it’s time to take stock, compare notes, and rethink how to run your practice smarter, not harder. In this episode of the Tax Rep Network Podcast, host Eric Green is joined by the unstoppable Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE, for a raw and revealing post-season debrief that every tax professional needs to hear.
What started as a casual catch-up quickly turned into a masterclass in firm automation, client management, and how to make tax season less chaotic—and way more profitable – by implementing Ignition. Dawn breaks down how she completely transformed her practice by requiring engagement letters and full prepayment before a single return goes out the door. From raising prices after January 31st to revoking unsigned engagements, she shares how setting boundaries with clients turned her firm into a cashflow machine—dropping $40K/month into her account on autopilot.
Eric shares his own lessons from managing hundreds of open IRS representation matters and the moment he knew it was time to stop chasing payments and start using Ignition to get organized, get paid, and get peace of mind. Together, they highlight how implementing Ignition streamlined client onboarding, automated follow-ups, and eliminated the dreaded “double consult” by embedding personalized videos into engagement letters.
From leveraging subscription pricing to firing problematic 1040 clients with grace, Dawn and Eric unpack the mindset shift that helped them reclaim their time and build practices that run smoother, serve better clients, and make more money. You’ll hear real-life examples, laugh-out-loud client stories (like charging extra for removing staples!), and the powerful idea that if you’re doing high-value work, you should absolutely be charging for it.
Whether you’re a CPA, EA, attorney, bookkeeper, or anyone else working in the tax world, this episode is a wake-up call: you are not a charity, and your time is too valuable to give away. Now is the time to set up systems, raise your prices, and stop doing everything manually.
If you’re tired of the billing chaos, constant follow-ups, and late-night April 15th scrambles, this episode will inspire you to make a change that could permanently improve your practice—and your life.
👉 How Eric made an extra $170K just by Ignition’s built in feature to following up with potential clients automatically. Why not you?
👉 Link below to get the Ignition deal Eric mentions during the episode.
Tune in and discover how to go from working in your business to working on it—and maybe even free up time for a round of golf or a day on the boat next April.
Start a free trial with Ignition at http://ignitionapp.info/trn-trial-2025
Use code TRN25 to save 50% off your first three months!
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Listen to the podcast here
Automate, Elevate & Get Paid: Building A Profitable Practice With Ignition With Dawn Brolin
I’m joined again by Dawn Brolin. Now that tax season is over, Dawn and I started comparing notes. I’m sure everyone reading, 100% of your money was in the bank before you hit send on any of those returns. Yeah, I asked a bunch of my members, they laughed at me. I’m like, “I don’t want to hear that.” What are we talking about?
For everyone reading, whether you do accounting, bookkeeping? You’re an attorney, you’re a tax professional who does tax returns. In this day and age, there is no reason why every one of your engagement letters should be signed before you do anything. You should get paid and you should know about that. We have been banging the drum here about Ignition. Dawn, I just want to see, because you told me that you had this thing fully set up and running. How did this season go for you?
Upfront Payment Revolution: Transforming Your Tax Practice
It was unbelievable. I had a fine place to put my money because I had so much of it. Everyone prepaid. There are a couple of exceptions of local people who have been my clients forever, but still, they pay me before I will push send and I think that there’s maybe four. One’s my post lady, my mail delivery lady, and that’s fine.
The majority, the 99% of the rest of them all prepaid. I had a price increase. If they didn’t prepay by January 31st, their price went up if they didn’t sign. By the end of February, we revoke. You can revoke engagement letters. I pulled back engagement letters for folks who hadn’t signed yet and I don’t even think about them.
I’m sitting here with 100% of money has been paid. I had to open up a money market, put the money in somewhere that made me money, and off we go, and because we move to relationship pricing, then the first of every month, $40,000 gets dropped into my bank account. There are 25 individuals, some of them have multiple entities, but 25 of them in total, $40,000 a month. The tax return money is just fund money in a way. Help me get faster to retirement.
There are a couple bunch of things there. Number one, everyone’s signed and does everything before you hit send. For the folks reading, you are on the hook for malpractice, whether you’re paid or not, so get paid. That is actually a really brilliant idea. The price increases January 31st, so sign before a price goes up. That would be very motivating.
It was definitely impressive. 2024 was the first year I did prepayment and it went pretty well. People prepaid. I didn’t really have many people balk at it. I didn’t have a lot of disruption. I had one client in 2025 who reached out, a state trooper, she’s like, “I think I’m going to do my return myself this year. Maybe I’ll go to H&R Block.” I go, “That’s a good idea. You should do that. You’re going to pay more than what you pay me probably.”
She’s like, “Really?” I go, “I dare you. Go to an H&R Block and ask them.” I didn’t care. It used to be when a client would be like, “I’m thinking about,” “I’ll just lower it by $100 so you’ll stay.” Now I’m like, “Do whatever you want to do.” I’m not worried about it because I have enough clients who see the value in what I do for me to make a very good living.
A good friend of mine who’s an EA has a huge practice now calls this billing season because he’s got to get all his bills out. I was literally like, “You’re an idiot. What are you doing?” The January 31st price increase is brilliant.
I found that the key to it is you got to have a system that’s simple. The reason that I use Ignition is because I get my engagement letter signed. I can monitor how many times they’ve opened the engagement letter. When they call Tracy and they’re like, “I never received that,” she was like, “Actually, you viewed it fifteen times. Yes, you have seen it.”
The first thing you see when you click on it is Dawn’s face in a video telling you how the process goes so you know that it’s one simple system. I get new clients during tax season. I’m sure most of you, those that are reading, also get new clients every tax season. I don’t think there’s been a tax season where I haven’t gotten a new client, to be honest. When the new client calls up, we get a copy of the prior year return.
I go ahead into Ignition and within 30 seconds, I don’t even think it takes me 30 seconds, I got an engagement letter out. That’s one part of the process. I got a way for them to pay me, second part of the process. I’ve got a video that explains to them how they’re going to work with us because I have a video for new clients is different from existing clients, but everyone gets the same video.
It’s such a consistent process. When they sign that engagement letter, I’ve got the engagement letter, I’ve gotten paid, they know the system, they know what they’re going to do. They’ve used SmartVault already. They’ve already been introduced to how they work with us at Powerful Accounting. It takes me 30 seconds to do that. Now I’m off and running. I’m still not in part of the game yet until everything’s ready to go.
I don’t do anything until Tracy says, “All right, tax return’s ready to start. Everything is in the vault for you. You’re good.” That process alone, so if you’re doing something that is disconnected, okay, I’m sending out my organizers, okay, now I’m sending out my engagement letter. Now I’m going to collect payment. I’m going to get on a phone call and explain to them how our process works. All of those things are, if you’re disconnected like that, you can fix that very easily. There are templates that are already ready for you, all that stuff and you’re off and running.
You’re not doing any work until you’ve been paid. Eric, that’s a big mindset shift, at least for me. When someone pays me and their return is ready to start, that is what matters to me. Now I’m like, “They committed to me. They signed and they paid. They’ve gotten me all their stuff. Now I have an obligation to get that tax return done.” It’s motivating.
Protecting Your Practice: Payment, Automation, And Malpractice Prevention
I’ve told this story before on my YouTube channel. I have like 200 open matters. Stuff is flying around here. There are eight of us here in the tax group and we’re working on an offer. I get it from Amanda, I think it’s ready to go, review the letter, whatever. I get a message, a text from Amanda that said, “Don’t send it to the client. They didn’t pay.”
What do you mean they didn’t pay? I go in, there’s no payment. I email our controller, Darryl. He’s only in two days a week. Darryl sends back. He said, “I don’t see any payment from them. Not in QuickBooks, not in Clio.” I went and just checked the bank roughly about the time the letter was signed. I can’t see anything.
You got to have a system that's simple. Share on XI email the client saying, “We want to wrap up this offer, but it appears you didn’t pay the retainer. If you did send me a copy,” because if we screwed up, they email me back, “We’ll pay, but if only if it’s accepted.” That’s not the way we work. I email back saying, “That’s not the way we work. We need that paid.” “I’m only going to pay if it’s accepted, like you, because we collect, because we’re busy. We’ve automated everything.” We’re more profitable than ever. My patience for that nonsense is really thin. Might say commit tax fraud. Yeah, no, we’re not doing that. If I submit that, malpractice-wise, I’m on the hook. The fact that I can say, “I never got paid.” That’s not my insurance carrier’s problem. It’s not going to be their problem. The IRS could care less.
I message back saying, “I’m going to throw this in the shredder. I wish you the best of luck with your next representative. I recommend you pay them because we’re going to pull our power of attorney.” They paid. By the way, the offer was accepted and appealed because there was some nonsense that we did. They increased the offer from like $12,500 to like $13,200 or something, whatever. The bottom line is that was one of the things when you told me like, “Don’t you get alerted when they pay?” No, I don’t. With Ignition, I do.
I’m told again, when they open the letter, they sign the letter, they’ve paid. Now Maggie and Nicole, no. Until that happens, they don’t tell Amanda to get going. They don’t tell me. I get a list. In fact, I was just talking to Felicia, actually. We were talking about disengagement and how I deal with that. I told her like with the rep stuff, we send everything, they’ll pay, they’ll sign the letter and then they don’t upload anything into smartphone. Nicole will email them and say, “It’s been a week,” “It’s been two weeks.” By the third week, she’ll email me on Friday, “Here are the five people that have not responded now in several weeks.”
I email them saying, “You haven’t submitted any given us anything. There’s nothing we can do. You’re clearly not ready to go forward. We’re going to close the file, pull power of attorney. I’m just going to return the balance of the retainer. Later on, whenever you’re ready, you can come back.” Usually, I’ll get a no. I’m going to,” and it’s Friday. I’ll say, “I need this stuff by next Wednesday. If it’s not here by next Wednesday, I’ve got to get out of this case.”
I’ll tell them the IRS might threaten the levy, it’s an appeal and there’s nothing I can even tell them. You haven’t given me anything. I’ve been urging everyone, make sure you increase your prices. You should not be cheaper. Honestly, you should not be cheaper than H&R Block. You should be more expensive. It’s different because you’ve got subscription pricing and I know that we’re going to be doing a whole management round table for folks, for lack of a better term, on implementing this automation and really getting your practice to the next level.
The truth is you’re really getting paid monthly. The return is an afterthought. H&R block probably is more expensive. That’s because you’ve already done all the work all the way along. Felicia was telling me like, “Your practice is going great. How do I disengage from these 1040 people?” It doesn’t have to be nasty. We’re drafting a letter. Here’s what I would tell them.
We say, “We’re very busy. We basically focus on business clients. At this point, we’re really going forward. We can’t really handle your account. Here’s a list of other practitioners in the area. You should have copies of everything. They’re in SmartVault. If you need anything, just shoot us an email. Let us know. We’ll make sure you have it. We wish you the best of luck going forward.” That’s it. There are clients that will call up, “No, don’t fire me.” She’ll say, “We’re moving the price.” There are people that are willing to pay because they want to stay. Did you find that there are clients that just, “No, I want to stay with you?”
Value-Based Pricing & Strategic Client Disengagement
Yeah. It’s hard to switch accountants. I have to say, in my experience, those clients who are going to a tax practitioner, I have an example. Going to a tax practitioner once a year. They’re a business. This one happens to be a restaurant and they own a rental property for a brewery. This particular client, because I want to give an example of exactly what you’re talking about, paid this firm $800 to do a partnership return.
It means they’re not looking at anything. They’re taking their numbers and shoving the return.
They’re not looking at anything. I would say including the books, because you should have seen the books. They had the rental property bank accounts as a liability on the balance sheet, just using it as like a check register. It was on the balance sheet as a liability account. Train wreck to the point where they recorded on the rental property $123,000 of rental income from the restaurant, no rent expense on the restaurant. They missed $123,000 deduction. They paid $18,000 in taxes because they showed a profit of $100,000. I know the restaurant. There’s no way these people are making $100,000 at a restaurant. How many restaurants are making $100,000?
It sounds like a Department of Revenue audit and then used their standards to come up. I love that.
What happened was, I come rolling in. It’s an existing individual client who’s a partner who’s like, “Why am I getting my K-1 in August? I said to him, “We are doing relationship pricing. If you want to bring that restaurant, bring that rental property over here, we’ll take care of it. We will handle it all. You’ll have your return done on time.”
We take a look at the books. I go, “Your return will not be on time this year because nobody did anything in your books for last year. The sales were all recorded incorrectly. The payroll was being handled by journal entry and they were doing them all wrong.” It was a wreck. I said, “Here’s what it’s going to take. It’s going to be $1,500 a month,” and I just stopped. They’re like, “Oh.” I go, “Yeah, remember, because you were paying $800 a year. Do you know what you were getting for that? You paid an extra $18,000 in taxes. I think the $18,000, if you give it to me, I can save you on taxes.” They’re missing things. It’s a train wreck. They were like, “We are in.”
$800 to $18,000. Why? I’m going to give them value they’ve never received before. We give them high-quality. Anybody at $1,500 and up. We have a good hand, I think a dozen of them, that are $1,500 and up. $1,500, $2,500, $4,500 a month. I know there are some people with $10,000 a month. We have another one with $8,000 a month. That’s how we got to the $40,000. That’s the deal.
We can’t just come here for your business tax return. We won’t take those clients on. When they call up and they’re like, “We want you to do our return. Here are our books,” and we look at them in their garbage, they’re either on relationship pricing or I’ve got a lot of great bookkeepers out there who are referring their clients to us because we’ll do their reasonable comp analysis.
We’ll meet with them on a quarterly basis. We do their tax return, we do their personal return. We’ll do that for $750 a month. $9,000 for us to do their tax return, reasonable comp analysis, do their tax return, talk with them through the year on purchasing assets or whatever it may be. We’re there to consult with them and work with them and advise them. For people who are like, “Okay, $750 a month, I’ll do it.”
Basically, I’m doing the same thing I should be doing anyway when usually I just take a one-time payment once a year. As a matter of fact, I had a client, he’s seasonal. He works around like the college season because he has a calzone restaurant. He emailed me and he is like, “Dawn, do you think I could pay you the same way I pay my landlord for rent? I pay in the months that I have the students here so I don’t pay in July and August.”
I’ll pay when the cash is high because otherwise, I’m getting hit at the worst time.
I’m like, “Absolutely, let’s do that. Take your $18,000. You’ve already paid me this year. It’s going to be $2,400 on those months instead of $1,500.” No problem. I went into Ignition, there’s a billing schedule. I just went into Ignition and changed the amounts for those months. It’ll charge a zero invoice. It’ll send it over. There’s flexibility there for me. A client needs to make a change? No problem. You’re a great client. He’s got two restaurants, $1,500 for one restaurant and $1,000 for the other restaurant. That’s $2,500 a month. “You know what, Corey? No problem, buddy. We’ll change it and we’ll make it work.”
Ignition’s Impact: Doubling Closed Cases & Revenue Growth
I’ve got to tell you, the getting your money upfront, knowing your lender signed. What I like about Ignition on the rep side, by the way, it follows up. I made a comment on one of my YouTube videos that I think it was $170,000 I made on Ignition. I got a whole slew of comments. “How? Ignition, your billing, how did you make that?” Someone was saying, “Are you selling it to other people?” No. By the way, neither of us get paid if you buy Ignition or not.
We’re just trying to help you.
I don’t have some affiliate relationship with them. Here’s the way it breaks down. People would call, Nicole would take notes. We would then send an engagement letter, or I would do the consult, send the engagement letter and I have the notes in the file. At the end of every year, we have prospective clients in that folder. We would pull out the yellow legal sheets, 22 to 25, just because like you, like everybody, the letter goes off. Out of sight, out of mind. I got other meetings. I forget about it.
Once we implemented Ignition, last year, three. That means I closed somewhere between 19 and 22 other cases. The average fees across all my cases is around $8,500. I got some big payroll or a tax court thing that’s $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 all in. We got the $1,500 transcription, whatever, the transcripts analysis for people. It’s $8,500 on average. $8,500 times 20, it’s $170,000. I think I told that to Kate at Ignition and she said, “Can I quote you on that?”
I said, “Let me just put a little explanative,” in other words like yeah, I say made $170,000 with Ignition. I said, “Because of the automated follow up and letting me know when things are done, we closed 20 more cases at an average of $8,500. I put an extra $170,000 on top of my practice I added to my revenue that I did not have the years before.”
It will change your practice. It is so simple to just set up and just get it going. Your 1040s. You make sure you do your price increase. December, I’d start looking at everyone from the year before. You know what, I’ll get Dawn and I’d like your take, but I actually, I think you told me this, now that I think about it. Somebody had said, “Eric they’ll come in, they might have an extra Schedule C.”
How are you not automating everything you possibly can? Share on XI said, “It doesn’t matter.” I’m going to take last year, let’s say we’re going up 5% across the board or whatever it is, here’s the price increase. If they upload their stuff and I realize, “We got another Schedule C. You can message them. You can add stuff on the fly, but I told them, “Even if you didn’t collect that money, I could live with that.” You’ve got 90%, 95% of your money upfront.
With that January 31st idea, I remember you told me in January, you were flush. We didn’t really get into the details of it, but knowing what a feeling it is to get into February, March and have the bank full versus, I remember this twenty years ago, being in a firm, they’d be like, “We’ve got to get this stuff done because we can’t bill it until it’s done.” I don’t know why. No, you get your money up front, you make sure everything is done. It works with QuickBooks.
Beautifully with QuickBooks. It’s beautiful. The integration’s amazing.
It’s simple to use. I love the video. For people don’t understand what we’re talking about, in Ignition, we have our tax rep templates and you can use them. I gave Ignition permission to share them. What happens is, let’s say you get an offer and compromise candidate. I used to do the double consult. What I mean by that, let’s say it’s a married couple. The husband comes in. I sit and walk through because I told my wife, “I really wish they’d bring the brighter half of the pair.”
The husband comes in and I explain everything, “Mr. Green, this makes perfect sense.” Now, a couple of days later, I get an email. “Could you get on a call or meet with my wife because I can’t really explain now what you said?” Now I’m doing the double consult. What I have now is I have a letter. I told my tax rep members. Let’s say I send out our $5,000 retainer for an offer and compromise to Mr. And Mrs. Jones. With it goes my letter saying, “We’re going to do the review for an offer.” It walks you through the basics of an offer and why the analysis is important.
One time you sent me and you had a video and I’m like, “How do you do that?” You can record the video. I can say, “Mr. Jones, it was great meeting with you. Please share this with Mr. Jones. As we discussed, I think you’re a clear offer candidate. Here’s why. These are the steps we need to take. Please, I will send you a link. I need the letter and obviously paid. Please upload the stuff as soon as possible. Once it’s uploaded, we can work on this. I can get you a definitive answer.”
If you’re an offer candidate, why? What would the offer would be? If you’re not an offer candidate, but I have some ideas where you could be. For instance, get disability insurance. Maybe get a new car, a lease payment up to $620 or something is allowable. Are there some legitimate strategies we can implement? Since doing that, no more double consults.
What I like about it, and I didn’t think about this, so first of all, to me, I can just explain it and it’s to them and whatever. You know what, some folks have mentioned it. “It was nice to actually see and hear you, Mr. Green.” I didn’t think about that. There’s a comfort level when the spouse can watch the video and be like, “Now I know why you like them. This makes sense,” whatever. To me, it pulls out together the best of all the technology.
I have the video. I’ve got built-in standardized automated templates. It feeds right into QuickBooks. There’s no double entry. I get alerted and it will do the follow-up with folks if they up to four times. Follow up, “You still have a letter to sign? You still need to pay,” and all that. When we were at Scaling New Heights in 2024, Nicole messaged me saying, “Do you want me to start working on this? They signed and paid.” I was like, “What is it?” She said, “You met with them two months ago. They just signed the letter and paid. I got the alert.” I’m like, “By all means, make sure they upload the documents and let’s get earned in that money.” I had forgotten about them. Ignition didn’t.
Automation Is Key: Simplifying Your Tax Practice
No, Ignition didn’t forget. Ignition doesn’t forget that. Especially sole practitioners who don’t have a Nicole, they don’t have, for me, a Tracy. They don’t have that admin person overseeing things. How are you not automating everything you possibly can? If you are a sole practitioner, this is a no-brainer. You’re going to eliminate four steps of things that you normally would have to do.
The other thing, Eric, too, that what I do love is they also have a follow-up. After they sign, there’s like a next steps email that can go out. In there you can put, let’s say you use SmartVault, you want to upload a SmartVault. You can put their specific link in that email and it will follow up for you. There are so many more things. My clients get a big kick because of course I’m going to be animated in my video.
I’m going to be me. I’m a crazy person with you. I’m a crazy person with my clients, my staff, my family and my friends. Nobody’s exempt from my crazy. The clients will come in, they’re like, “I love that comment about this and that,” whatever. I had one client that came in. I think I had increased my price and making people prepay. That was the first year in ‘24. This is a couple that comes in and I love when they come in because they’re just funny people. They’re just funny.
We've automated everything we can automate, so we're more profitable than ever. Share on XThey came in and they were like, “Your prices went up. You’re making us prepay. What the heck’s going on?” I said, “Yeah. You know what else I’m going to charge you for? If you take one of these paperclips, you’re paying for it.” Through the whole meeting, the return I could probably do in twenty minutes, but I like them and they’re fun. I’m like, “No, I charge for everything. If I have to open up the envelopes, I’m going to be really upset. If I have to remove staples, all of that’s an extra charge. Can’t you come prepared?” We just joke about it. It’s funny.
It’s how we get people to scan their stuff. Ignition goes out, I send the SmartVault link and people are like, “I’d rather drop it off. I’d rather just mail it to you.” I tell them, if you send us scan copies, you’re going to pay. There’ll be $150. Maggie’s going to have to stand there and scan. We’re not Kinkos. If you send me originals, now I’m going to start removing staples. By the way, the utility bill isn’t 8.5 by 11. I can’t just feed them all through. You send me copies of bank statements sideways.” Remember we have that client? Can’t feed them. She was committing fraud. Anyway, so yeah, whatever. The point being, when we tell people, “It’s $300. My staff will do it, but you’re really sure you can’t do this yourself and upload it?”
That’s usually enough. I have one client, she’s very wealthy. Every other year, she’s like, “I owe $800,000, I’ll pay it, but I just need 5 or 6 months or whatever.” Okay, no problem. We can buy you time. She’s the only one who says, “I’m going to come and I’m going to bring my documents,” because she wants to sit with me. She’s like, “I don’t care. You can charge me. Honestly, we don’t charge her. You’re going to pay for this.
It’s a deterrent.
Training Clients: Behavior Modification & Payment Expectations
You know what it is? We are creating behaviors. We are training them. If you’re reading this and you’re like, “My clients would never do that,” you have trained them that way. You have allowed that. When you start telling them, “There’s going to be a charge for this,” watch how quickly they want to avoid that charge.
Nick, my buddy, charges $50 for drop off. If you’re a drop off, it’s $50 extra because my team isn’t going to handle the scanning for free for you. It’s $50. Again, it’s a deterrent. Some people, they don’t care. They’re going to pay the $50 or whatever. I don’t do a drop off fee, honestly, myself because I do charge the crap out of people. I hammer them. I think I have maybe a dozen clients that drop off. Some people that just live near me. They come swing by.
Same thing the woman, she pays us a lot of money and I like her. I will tell everyone, he has a big podcast, Michael Franzese, he’s the former Colombo capo. He’s got a bunch of books. He’s fascinating guy to listen to. He was interviewed once but getting along like in prison. His dad, Sonny Franzese, did 50 years. He was the underboss of the Colombo family. He said, “My dad told me, ‘You know how you get along? Please. Thank you. Excuse me. I’m sorry.’” I can tell you right now, my clients, if you’re a nice person to me, you’re going to get a lot more out of me than if you’re not. You can sit and you can threaten, my fees are only going up. Do you know what it is? It’s a pain in the ass fee.
I have a great client. We went through the retainer, and we’re now done. They gave us $5,000. It’s like $222. I just wrote it off. They didn’t have to ask. I just wrote it off. “Forget it. We’re good.” If you’re a pain in the butt, that might become $5,700 because I’m going back and forth with you and I’m billing it and I want it.
The whole honey versus vinegar thing is absolutely true. I just wanted to catch up with you and do this video because what I’m hearing from the folks, we’ve been pushing people. Automate everything you can. Put Ignition in place. I’m getting great feedback from the folks that have it. The two that I didn’t, both admitted to me they never really implemented it. They never set it up. I’m like, “That’s dumb.”
There’s no wand. You got to take some time in the beginning to once it’s set up, you’re done. You’re going to spend three hours setting it up. It doesn’t take more than that.
Think about this. Once it’s done, you got it for life. Tax season after tax season, consulting, it’s in place and it’s done. Look at all the hours you’re going to save. My friend who’s now going to start billing 2,000 clients. Who wants to spend a week doing that and then we’re hoping you get paid? Chasing people. No. The takeaway, they’re running a deal right now. I know it’s after-tax season. Now is the time to do this. Do this now, this spring.
One, you could use it for any extensions. The people are going to come running in October because they waited all of that. Now, your year-end is all in place. Everyone’s like, “Yeah, I’ll do it,” and it’s December. It’s the holidays. It’s vacation, the kids, whatever. It doesn’t happen. Now January comes, “I have no time to figure this out now.”
The cycle goes again. Insanity. You’re going to go through it again. You’re not going to have money in your bank account and you have no systems. Now you got to do the accounting. I used to have Tracy. She’d have to reconcile. Did everybody pay us? She would spend twenty hours going through everything and making sure. She would say, Brolin, you didn’t bill $8,000. Here are all the clients and how much you need to bill them.” Now I look like an idiot because it’s August. I’m like, “I didn’t really do my own accounting, but I’m an accountant.” I’m your accountant. How great do I look? It’s not a good look.
You’re not giving me the warm fuzzies.
I don’t know, Eric. What I do know is because of the way I put my systems in place, I think I had 26 extensions. I did five of them. I was actually just waiting for my tax partner to review them. Other people, I’m just waiting on. I don’t mind. They’re people that I’ve been working with for a long time, but I’m not doing taxes all season. Keith and I met to finish up those five.
I said to him, “By the end of May, we’re done.” Guess what we’re going to do the rest of the year? We’re going to golf and we’re going to go on boats, but we’re going to do resolution work. We’re going to pick up some cases and we’re going to do some resolution work and make more money because we have time to do it. We’re not doing tax returns throughout the whole year. It’s not happening.
For the folks reading, I mentioned Scaling New Heights. Dawn and I are both going to be there. It’s in June. When I went used to go to conferences, especially accounting conferences, I go speak, go back to my room and bill because I’m a lawyer. That’s what lawyers do. You’ve got to come to the exhibit hall. I’m like, “Why? They’re accountants.” It was mind blowing. All the stuff that they have for everything. Tracking your mileage, inventory. It is a game changer.
I’m not surprised because, like Joe Woodard, you’ve been very much in front of this on the edge as this has been building. No one likes change. Trust me, I get it. Putting Ignition in here, we had a whole big back and forth with the other partners. “We do it this way, that way works.” No. Once you just decide to do it, just make the decision. It will change your practice literally.
I say this a lot. We’ve given 7 million webinars, we’ve done 7 million podcasts, we’ve done 7 million of everything. I don’t understand why I’m still seeing practitioners struggle with this. I don’t understand it. Although I have to say and give grace, because it’s only been two and a half years since I implemented it. Through the years, because I was not pre-billing, my pricing wasn’t spot on, I was billing by the hour, I was doing all of that stuff. I didn’t have time to do anything else. I was exhausted. I’ve been doing this, at that point, 22 years.
Exactly what you’re saying, I got to a point where I couldn’t do it anymore. I couldn’t go through the pain and suffering of not having money and billing by the hour and hoping my clients paid me and let them be in control of the relationship. I guess you have to get to a point of no return. If you are at that point of no return, and I know there are still hundreds of thousands of people that are in the position I was in two and a half years ago and they’re still there. I want to push them out of that nest, get out of my comfort zone and do something different. It will change your life. Right now, I’m going to get ready to go golfing. I’m doing eighteen holes.
By the way, just for the record, I called Dawn on April 14th. I texted Dawn saying, “Do you have time because I have this question?” She’s like, “I’m on the golf course. I’ll call you back in half an hour.” On April 15th, she couldn’t respond in time because she was on a boat. If that gives you an idea of getting your practice under control, how many accountants do I know who were working until 11:00 on April 15th?
Still working on extensions and all that. No.
Dawn, listen, thank you very much for coming in and updating us. I just think it is eye-opening, the change in practice from a number of years ago when you and I would sit and whine about this to where it is now. For everyone reading, again, if you’re not familiar with Ignition, we have a link. They have a deal going. May and June, tax season’s over. Now is the time when you have the time when you’re not doing your billing. Implement this so you never do your billing again. You will gain all these hours back tenfold over the next couple years. You’ll collect more money, have your money in the bank, make sure your letters are signed. It’s a game changer.
Absolutely. Thanks for having me, Eric. I always love to hang out with you. Anytime.
All right. Thank you. Thank you, everyone. I’ll speak to you next time.
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About Dawn Brolin
Dawn Brolin is The Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals and the CEO of Powerful Accounting, Inc.
For more than two decades, Dawn has been a well-known and respected educator and motivator for her clients, other accounting professionals and technology solution providers. She is known for innovative collaborations within the accounting profession including with her technology ecosystem partners which are included in her Team Brolin Starting Lineup.
Dawn is a member of the Intuit Tax Council, the ADP Advisory Board, and the Avalara QuickBooks Advisory Board. She has also received many designations and recognitions throughout her career including the most recent “The 2022, 2023 & 2024 Top Presenters Awards“ by CPAacademy.org as well as Insightful Accountant’s 2020 Top Niche Practice ProAdvisor: Forensics” and one of Accounting Today’s “2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2023 Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting.”
Dawn is also the President of the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation Inc where she and other industry leaders provide scholarships to accounting professionals to attend in person learning. Her passion to support others drove her to work with other leaders to create this amazing non-profit organization.
As an in-demand thought leader, speaker, and the author of The Designated Motivator and The Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals, Dawn believes that motivation and strategic planning is not a one-time event, it is a critical part of being able to achieve the success you want for yourself and your team.
