Who's Really the BOSS?

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Rachel Dillon: [00:00:03] This is Who's really the boss. A podcast for accounting firm leaders who want to grow with intention and lead with purpose. I'm Rachel Dolan, and along with my husband, Marcus Dillon, we share real stories from our accounting firm, Practical firm growth strategies, and the tools you need to lead your clients, your team, and your life well.

Rachel Dillon: [00:00:29] Welcome back to another episode of Who's Really the Boss podcast.

Marcus Dillon: [00:00:32] Hey, thanks for having me back.

Rachel Dillon: [00:00:34] Today we are just coming off of our DBA mid-year team retreat. Uh, we are recording this episode in the summer of 2026. And so we just at our team retreats, we often celebrate the things that have happened where we are on goals for the year. And so a few things were highlighted during our team retreat that I really. Until we stopped and looked at them. Hadn't really noticed what was going on within DBA. Um, and so I think that's a good place to start for this conversation.

Marcus Dillon: [00:01:14] Yeah. Um, speaking a little bit more about retreat, we've hosted those, um, here in person. When we had an office, we used to do them on location. This was another one where we actually traveled for that. Uh, we went down to Mexico again for that, we invited the team members and spouses and, you know, most were able to come, which is great. Um, it was actually a little bit difficult, uh, for us to get down there. The flights out of our airport in Dallas, um, were kind of all, all went sideways all at one time. So the, the four team members, you, me and two additional team members that were leaving out of the Dallas airport, um, had to show up a day late, which it was okay, you know. Everybody got to enjoy it. And we just shifted things around. So the name of the game is flexibility, especially when you're traveling and you're, um, you know, trying to make the most of it for others. So I think we did that in the best way possible. Um, we made the trip work out. Okay. Right. And so part of our time together, as you said, is just going over, uh, while in person highlighting celebrations, talking through anything, you know, difficult that needs to be conveyed in person versus speaking about it, uh, over a teams call, uh, once a week. So it's always a great time to get together. Uh, we've obviously spoken about team retreats and the benefits and how to structure those on a variety of different budgets. So, um, if you've got questions about that and what it looks like now at DBA compared to maybe where you're at in your firm, um, don't comparison is the thief of joy. So don't think that you have to take everybody in their spouse to Mexico just to celebrate wins. Uh, you can do that where you're at.

Rachel Dillon: [00:03:05] Yeah, that's really good. Okay, let's talk about two kind of goals or initiatives, things we were tracking. It's really two metrics that we were tracking that we set up at the end of 2025. So our year end team retreat was right before Thanksgiving. That worked out best for families, for business, for holidays and time off and things like that. And so in November of 2025, we set up certain goals and initiatives we had. We put metrics in place of how we were going to track that. And so that really leads the conversation, leads the meeting portion of our team retreats. Um, really to start with, where are we on these? What can we celebrate? Um, where are we at? Are there any adjustments to make? And then we look ahead to the future. And so two of those that we want to highlight today are new clients brought in to Dylan Business Advisors, so new monthly accounting clients or monthly tax clients. And then also we started tracking PTO. We've always tracked PTO, but there was a change to our PTO at the end of last year. Starting for 2026, we went to unlimited or we like to call it flexible PTO. We do have boundaries and parameters around what our flexible PTO looks like. However, there's not a limit of number of days that people can take.

Rachel Dillon: [00:04:35] And so, um, really interesting during that end of year team retreat regarding moving from a designated amount of PTO to an unlimited or flexible PTO setup. Uh, one of our team members voiced the, um, not, it wasn't really even a concern, Just a fact of the matter of. I've heard that when companies or organizations move to unlimited PTO, that means people just don't take it anymore because they don't really know what the expectation is there. So typically, um, kind of what's said on the internet is where kind of that comes from. But what's said is businesses will move to unlimited PTO and then actually see people take less time off. And so since that was something that was brought up, we're like, we can track this. So even though we moved to unlimited PTO or flexible PTO, we are still tracking it for just this exact reason. Um, and so yeah, so I thought that was fun. So we didn't go to unlimited PTO just so we didn't have to not worry about that anymore or not track it. Um, it plays into some of our administrative time, which we still track. And then also just comparing when we had a designated amount of PTO for team members versus now moving to a more flexible, unlimited PTO.

Marcus Dillon: [00:06:07] Yeah. So I think that's, that's a great setting, right? Those are just two of the things that we tracked and we actually celebrated while we were all together. You mentioned the November 2025 retreat. Um, so that was the team retreat as a leadership team. We met before that November and just set out the goals for 2026. And just like with anything, if you set something out as a goal, if you've communicated that to your to your team, you definitely want to track that. You want to give the team updates along the way. Uh, we felt it was most appropriate to celebrate these two things in person. Uh, but we're also giving updates about new client wins and celebrations throughout the year. We've got a teams channel that is just called winning, and we celebrate new client additions. Uh, there we, we identify who the team that's going to be serving them, the price point that those new clients came in on. Pto request isn't celebrated in a team's channel necessarily, but, um, we do encourage it along the way. And so once we get to that PTO conversation, I can kind of give a little bit of a, a look back over the different, uh, versions of PTO that we've had in DBA over the years too. And, uh, the team makeup and all that fun stuff. But let's go ahead and start like, uh, just around the numbers.

Marcus Dillon: [00:07:27] Um, and new client wins because what I'll say is like, I've seen like we're in conference season, if you will, with, uh, some of the summer conferences for accounting and tax going on. And while there's a lot of discussion on AI, there's a lot of discussion on M&A, something that continues to be talked about over all the years and continues to get people attracted to, to the sessions are marketing and sales. And so everybody is always interested in marketing and sales techniques, and they want to know how they can do better. And so we also like, we're no different than our friends that are also trying to grow their business through new organic wins and serving new clients. Uh, so we care about that as well. And we'll share a little bit about like, what's led to this growth. Obviously for us in 2025, we had two acquisitions, and part of that was just growth through acquisition and organically to create budget for team members that we want to do life with, create opportunity within our client list to be able to do more for people that were already in the door. And then also just to give us base, uh, of budget to have marketing campaigns, uh, additional like bandwidth to have the right amount of clients come in, uh, just on a, on a more stable basis versus just opening the gates and putting the team through the wringer to onboard a bunch of new clients in one fell swoop.

Marcus Dillon: [00:09:01] So we set out as a leadership team. What we felt really comfortable with were 15 new monthly clients or family groups. And so those are small businesses or complex families that have us track their income and expenses. We've got a few of those now where they just want a handle on things, um, throughout throughout the year. So the average that we've kind of seen, uh, on those monthly relationships are $2,000 a month. And that's, that's kind of been a floating average over the last few years as clients have come in the door. But the reason why we set goals around monthly new clients is because that's what we've structured our business around. We've structured our team of three to serve those clients. So, um, while, while it would be great to accept every phone call that came in or email request for things that we could do. We have been very disciplined to say, hey, this is the work that we are going to seek and accept because a team can do this work and we've got the team set up to do this work. So, uh, 15 new clients, I think I had that. Right. And so that's an average 2000. So about $30,000 of MRR. Um, you know, if you annualized it, that was the goal for 2026.

Rachel Dillon: [00:10:20] Okay. So for 2026 year to date, so from January through and this was taking through June, we have, um, accepted and onboarded 20 new monthly clients. That means we are doing at minimum monthly bookkeeping, uh, tax and two tax projections per year and at least one advisory meeting per year. So that is the minimum. A lot of these clients also have a payroll or sales tax filing that they are also engaged to do. That is in addition to our normal base. And so we've added 20 new we call them CAS clients and onboarded them. I think that's very important since we're still in the summer and these clients are actually onboarded. Um, and so the average price for these new clients is 1965. So kind of holding true right at our typical average amount. I will say one thing is that our 2000, if you go to our website, Dillon advisors.com, you'll see our pricing page and it has our plans and packages. Our 2000 per month package is actually quarterly CFO or advisory meetings. These clients, majority of them are actually on an annual touchpoint with that high of a price point. So if we're just thinking about capacity and how are we going to scale? That number may seem very low to people, but if it feels like who is doing all of this work for 20 new clients, that is actually a lot of those are an annual advisory meeting.

Rachel Dillon: [00:12:01] So their main focus or their main services that they'll receive will be monthly bookkeeping. And the two tax projections in their tax returns. Tax returns will be both personal and business. Um, if they have related entities we do those as well. But depending on the size and nature of that business, typically that also is a CAS client for us that gets a monthly charge with some type of monthly services. So a lot of times that is that, uh, just a few more numbers going out. Um, our highest client that we've onboarded their monthly fee was $3,000 per month, uh, in this group of 20. And then the lowest was 500 per month, which was a schedule C, um, add on. So it was an entity that is just very small, very little activity. We had another add on entity with very little activity, but that we keep up for the client. And that was added at 1250 per month. So if that just gives some context of where that average of 1965 per month comes in.

Marcus Dillon: [00:13:11] Yeah, no, really good. So 20 new clients, uh, obviously that is already exceeding the 15 goal that we said. And you had asked me like, hey, can I stop working now? Can I stop answering the phone? And, you know, we, we are at a point where we are celebrating this. We are thankful for this. We're also seeing some client exits from just natural things that are happening. Uh, M&A is a very real thing. So a lot of clients that we work with are having a succession event or had a succession event. So we've had some, uh, maybe turnover or churn, however you explain that. And that's allowing for us to accept new clients without really growing the team all that much. And then there's also just team member efficiency and effectiveness within the team of three concept that we see and technology also allowing us to do that. So what you just shared was about 20 new clients coming in at roughly $2,000 a month, or 40,000 MRR annualized, um, a high of $3,000 a month and a low of $500 a month as far as an add on. And so we'll get into how these clients came in the door a little bit in a in a bit, but there's another number that, um, wasn't pulled that I do want to share.

Marcus Dillon: [00:14:34] And so we also charge for onboarding. And so this is a concept like we, you know, with firms and with friends, some charge for onboarding, some don't, um, on our website, our standard onboarding, which includes, um, you know, review of multiple periods, you know, multiple years, multiple tax returns, um, maybe getting them caught up if they come in mid-year. We've got some accounting to do. Uh, but also it may include a tax return that needs to be filed that hasn't yet been filed. So we do all of that in onboarding, as well as just look at systems and processes, things that need to get documented, reports that need to get set up. There's client communication, there's internal communication, all that fun stuff. So 7500 is kind of the base where we've started. Um, and that's the amount that really we flex on, uh, whenever we're looking at new clients and giving capacity, or do we really want to make this work to accept this new client? We'll get creative on onboarding. So we'll either our first goal is just to take that 7500 and divide it by three and charge it three times versus just one fell swoop, or we'll actually discount it depending on what's going on. So you said you like to do it over two times versus.

Rachel Dillon: [00:15:50] I actually don't ever offer three months. Um, some I don't ever offer three months. I will offer over two months. And typically, um, I would say we've only ever done it over three months, one time in the life of DBA, but two times is usually plenty for them. And so 37, 52 times in in addition to their monthly fee for that month. So even the very first month when they're paying the onboarding, they're paying the first month of services with that half of onboarding or full onboarding. And then the second month, if we've split it again, they have their regular monthly service and their onboarding fee. We don't hold it to where we do onboarding, and then their monthly service starts sometime later. It all starts the day that they sign their engagement letter.

Marcus Dillon: [00:16:37] Yeah. So and that's a really good point. Um, we don't, we try to remove thought from the equation. So when they sign the engagement letter, it automatically makes them put their payment information in. There are multiple platforms that do that now. We use HubSpot for our engagement letters and that first draft. And so, um, once they put it in, that's their anniversary date and it charges, like you said, it charges both their first month and their onboarding fee and then recurring, their monthly charge is on that date. And, uh, we used to say the first of the month, everybody's going to get charged on the first month. And then you have to like do either math to say, we're going to prorate the first month or we're going to waive the first month. So none of that happens now because when they sign is that anniversary date. And it's actually nice because you have sales, you have deposits happening all month long versus it all coming in at one time. So that's, that's what we currently do. I know there's other models out there. Um, but onboarding is a very real thing. And as we've discussed in the past, like we share onboarding with the team of three that is accepting that client and that is onboarding that client. So there is an onboarding bonus that they partake in depending on the speed of that onboarding going from 2 to 6 weeks, um, is what we hold out.

Marcus Dillon: [00:17:59] But year to date we've done or we've, we've charged for 20 Onboardings. So that's good. Uh, that, that we've charged for every single one of those. So if you think you can't charge something for onboarding, there's the proof, right? And we have charged a total of $101,415 for those onboardings. So the average, if you take 100,000 divided by 20 is right above 5000. Uh, but just looking at the amounts, we had one onboarding that was $10,000, just because it was a little bit more complex, a lot of moving pieces, uh, one tax return in there as well, all the way down to our lowest onboarding charge is $2,500. And that's, you know, one that we looking at that one, it's somebody that we know very well. And we already were doing other businesses for it. And like it was a new entity. So there wasn't a lot of complexity and a lot of back work. So all that to say, like position it to where, you know, you're coming out of the gate, um, showing value and getting paid for the value that you bring from the very beginning. So that's just another number, right? I know that the people that listen to this love numbers typically, so $100,000 onboarding for the first six months of 2026/20 clients. Yeah.

Rachel Dillon: [00:19:20] Thanks. Thanks for sharing that. Okay. In addition to those 20 CAS monthly clients, we also, uh, onboarded and accepted two new tax clients. Our tax clients look a little bit different. We call them tax advisory plan. We are going to record a whole nother episode after this one. So don't miss the next episode where we go into more detail about what that includes and who and how they're served. Um, but we brought on two new, we call them tax advisory plan or tap for short clients, one at $800 per month and one at $500 per month. So if you notice, it's still monthly recurring revenue, even if we are, even if they're not a business owner. And so what that looks like is the tax return, the two tax projections. And then of course, if they have an opportunity or a question throughout the year, they can email the team or message the team to kind of talk through what that looks like. But we highlighted all of these not to just say, these are our clients and here's the prices that we charge. Yeah. Even though we way exceeded our goal for, um, bringing on new clients in the first six months. We also were tracking that PTO to see. And of course, we do tax returns. So we had busy season during this time of the year as well.

Rachel Dillon: [00:20:38] January through June. Um, but we looked at PTO taken during this time. We do not have blackout periods for PTO. Um, what we do have is we have team setups and we have some boundaries around how you request PTO and work it out with your team members so that clients are fully served, even in your absence, that deadlines are met even in your absence. And so PTO up to this point, um, is actually up 75% from 2025. So we have essentially done more work and our team has been able to take off more time. And so to us, that's a win. Um, that looks like we're still growing and our team has more freedom to prioritize other things rather than only work during Q1 and Q2, which could be unheard of in a lot of accounting firms. A lot of people in our industry. That is really why we're highlighting these two. Uh, maybe seems like random metrics of PTO and new clients onboarded. Um, but really that's what we're looking at is how do you continue to grow and scale without burning out your team? And we feel like this year, we have some good examples and some good data to go behind how that that is actually happening. Not we think this could happen or this should be able to happen. Um, it really is happening in DBA.

Marcus Dillon: [00:22:16] Yeah. What I, what I would also say there is, uh, maybe we are lying to ourselves because we weren't tracking it as well in the past and maybe the PTO was always there, but now the data is just better. Um, because it is, it is unlimited. There's no fault to the person for taking the time if they need it versus in the past. Like maybe there was just it was it was taken and not tracked a certain way. So, um, obviously the goal is to have the best data possible. And I think now, even if that was the case, even if we're celebrating 75% more and that's not accurate, at least we have better data to build upon. Um, so I like where, where you've shared that, you know, for somebody to stand up in front of their team and really celebrate PTO taken, I don't know that that's ever been done before. Um, but there's been different versions of PTO within DBA. Um, at one time, you know, we had the complex, hey, everybody gets three weeks and then after five years of service, you get a fourth week after, you know, that whole build it and then you go from there, which is, um, that was just carried over from the firms that I grew up in. Right. And then I was a part of. So that was the first PT version. The second we did move um, just recently, uh, to, um, actually aligning with some of the states that we work in to actually, it's not use it or lose it.

Marcus Dillon: [00:23:51] It's paid out at the end of the year. It's same in line with your years of service. That was also coupled with, um, allowing team members that are part time to also have access to paid time off. And some, like we value our part time team members just like any other full time team member. So we wanted to make benefits, uh, similar across the board. And the way that we did that was we had our part time team members fix their week. So what were they committing to? What were we committing to them? And so let's say that's 24 weeks or 24 hours a week is your base week. Well, then that's what we agreed to. And that's what we actually pay. Regardless if they work all 24 hours. Because as employers, it's on us like we've committed to their family to meet them at 24 hours a week, and we should have at least 24 hours of work for them to do. And once we set that, it was a lot easier to then apply those weeks to that standard week, much like you would do a 40 hour person, um, full time and, you know, apply the 3 to 5 weeks. We just did that with a 24 hour a week person and the 3 to 5 weeks. So then when we went to this new, um, flexible time off or unlimited PTO at the beginning of this year, uh, we, we just did that same thing.

Marcus Dillon: [00:25:16] So flexible time off. It's 24 hours a week, 52 weeks a year. That's going to be your comp. Obviously, if you work over and above that, we're going to pay you for that, but you can at least count on this amount of money. Um, because that's what we've agreed to as a business and as a family. And so that was that was kind of the shift. And then as people take time off as needed, right? They just, they put it in the system and the system tracks it. And so hopefully kind of that background also helps people understand the different shifts that we've made. And, you know, we definitely appreciate our team. We want them to be healthy and balanced. So that's why we also don't believe in blackout dates. Um, you know, people, people probably need to take more time off during tax season than any other time or they're going to go crazy. So why in the world would you block that time off? Or, you know, it's like one of those things where make it available, obviously, if there's team coverage. So within our teams of three, obviously we have to make sure that the team is covered. And if a client has a need that somebody on that team of three will step in for the person that's out. But it's been working. Uh, we would also share if it wasn't working, but it seems to be working right now.

Rachel Dillon: [00:26:30] Yeah. So the goal of us moving to the unlimited or flexible PTO was not in hopes that our team would take less time off. It really was to help the help clarify the question of we work remotely. We have flexible start and end times to our day. Um, we have expectations of billable work, of getting work done, of serving clients, meeting deadlines, responding to people. Um, all of those things are expectations within DBA, but we were getting questions of I'm, I need to go to a doctor's appointment for three hours, but I'm going to work earlier in the morning and I'm going to work later in the night. Do I need to take PTO or not? Or I'm going to take this day off, but I'm going to make it up all the four other days during the week. Do I need to put in for PTO or not put in for PTO? And so when we talk about maybe things weren't tracked properly or not tracked at all, it was some of those things where people didn't want to use a doctor's appointment that they were going to get all of their work done. They were going to be responsive, but they didn't necessarily want to use up a day of PTO for for fear that they would need it later in the year. And so instead of tracking it, they're just like tied to their phone, making sure they're answering questions, even though they're not necessarily on and then didn't track it. This gives again, the freedom to say, I have a doctor's appointment. I'm not going to check messages for three hours. I will be back. I will get my work done, but I'm going to go ahead and put this PTO in so I can turn messages off and go do what I need to do and then come back. So I think that that's super helpful as people are considering, um, what that looks like, and maybe just some more information as to why we moved to that versus what we were doing before.

Marcus Dillon: [00:28:20] Yeah. Nobody wants to take PTO when they're sick. They want to take PTO for vacation. Right? You know, it's like, I'll work through sickness and save those PTO days. Um, yes, I'm. I'm as guilty of that as anybody.

Rachel Dillon: [00:28:36] Okay. You brought up the onboarding, um, a little bit earlier as far as how we charge for that, I think what also is important is that, um, we have committed ourselves to exceptional client service, also to a great place for team members to work, to have a career to develop and grow in their career. But first and foremost, if someone is paying us money to do a job, we want them to, uh, feel like they're getting a lot of value. We want to exceed their expectations. So I'd love to talk about just that onboarding fee. You mentioned that we split it among team members. So I'd like to talk about when you're bringing on 20 new monthly clients and two new monthly tax clients, essentially, um, what does that look like as far as onboarding? Who's doing it? How long does it take? Um, did it slow down because there was such a large volume? Did it speed up? I just want to talk through what that looks like, because when I hear somebody say that they brought on a large number of clients in a short amount of time, I just think, oh my gosh, I bet it is chaos in their office. So I would like to just shed some light on what does that actually look like for the client, for the team, and then give a timeline? Because I think that that is where our team is really doing a phenomenal job.

Marcus Dillon: [00:30:05] Yeah. I would say, um, part of the reason why we set out to onboard 15 new clients is because then it would be evenly spread amongst the team. Uh, we started the year, uh, with about five different teams of three. So we have five different teams that could accept new clients that are serving new clients. And we just want that to be a natural rhythm. We try not to have a team onboarding two different clients at one time. Now, if it's a family group, that team is serving that entire family group because we want that knowledge to stay in team, the same team. So.

Rachel Dillon: [00:30:44] Um, we say when we say family group, we mean they might have a primary business of a dental practice. They may have the real estate entity that goes with that dental practice, and then they may have something completely unrelated to dentistry altogether, um, where they're a partner or a sole owner in another business. And so when we say family group, that's what we're talking about is all of the entities with that same owner.

Marcus Dillon: [00:31:14] Yeah. And so now where we're at, we've had some, some elevation and some shifts. So we're roughly at seven different teams that could be onboarding new clients. And so if you think about that, like we've increased the number of potential homes for new clients that are coming in. Um, and it's no different. Like we look at the team's capacity, we look at, have any of their clients exited through, um, just natural occurrence, right? People come and go or, um, they've sold their business and they're down scaling down a little bit. So we look at that on a monthly basis. That's a conversation that Leslie, Amy, and I have. So Leslie is our director of Accounting and advisory. She's really the one leading the entire team of three structure and helping us sign and make sure people are healthy in that. And then, uh, Amy is the director of operations and people. So just making sure everybody's working efficiently and that people are carrying similar loads of clients throughout the year. So that's a conversation that we have monthly. Uh, we track that in good old Excel. Um, so we track all those monthly clients and make sure, hey, here's the pipeline. So that's what I bring to that meeting with conversations with you, it's like, hey, Rachel and I, we've got a prospect coming in.

Marcus Dillon: [00:32:32] I've got eyes on the QBO file. This is what it's looking like. And so that's also spoken into those meetings. Just so as we know who maybe is exiting, we know who has availability to accept new clients. So those 20 clients, they were, they were moved into, uh, teams. Uh, and I think there was one instance where a team was wrapping up an onboarding and then another, they just had capacity built because one of our clients sold their business and like we were phasing down. And so they accepted two new client relationships in a smaller window, I would say about a month. They, they had two family groups come in. So all that to say, there is a method to the madness. And so we don't want to overwhelm the CSM or the controllers because they're the ones that are doing a majority of the onboarding. And when we look at the administrative needs of an onboarding, I would say that's going to be the tax admin, someone that's setting up projects in our practice management software, setting up folders for where files will live, kind of communicating with client on needs. Um, but then also the CSM, they're building out the GL, the QuickBooks and the chart of accounts. They're helping set up, uh, reports and workflows and double. And then they're also there to support the client controller.

Marcus Dillon: [00:33:57] Client controller is taking all the compliance things and making sure that it's accurate and reviewing that, getting it into the tax software and doing proformas there. And then there are also the ones that are fine tuning the reports, speaking into the chart of accounts with the with the CSM, and then ultimately issuing that first month set of financials. Cfo is also there. Um, CFO plays a role, but it's, it's really to support the team to also act as a blocking and tackle person for the client needs that may come up during onboarding, because they may come in with a lot of questions, and they may need some advisory straight out of the gate. And so the CFO can step in during onboarding and have some of those conversations, even with limited knowledge of like where they're at or the data that would be best because we can get a feel, we can start building rapport and we can, you know, say, hey, once we, once we get, uh, you know, financials ready and everything good to go, then we'll have another conversation about this. So that's what that onboarding looks like. Um, you can share about, uh, how long those are taking because that's also part of the bonus structure that we share with the team.

Rachel Dillon: [00:35:14] Yeah. And so we track this through canopy and we actually have an insights report set up for how many days onboarding takes. And so we start, We. When we create the new client, we set up an onboarding project and that way we can track when it starts and when it ends. The onboarding project actually starts at the kick off call with the client. So when a new client signs, I meet with the team of three that will onboard that client as well as Deidre, our tax administrator, they start reviewing everything that we've received during the prospect and sales phase, and they start generating a list of questions. They start setting things up, cleaning up. We already have access to Qbo, so they can start doing any cleanup that's needed so that when we go into the kickoff call with the client, they can give them a good overview of expectations of onboarding, but then also tell them specific information that's needed and send a follow up with a checklist. We also have that onboarding checklist set up in our canopy account that we can generate directly out of canopy, so the client can upload those requests directly to their canopy portal. So so far, all of our onboards have been within the two week time frame, most of those ending around 13 to 14 days, um, except for two. So of those, 22 took over the two weeks.

Rachel Dillon: [00:36:40] And perhaps we should have given some exceptions here. One of those, they were onboarding actually three entities for a family group and it ended up taking them, uh, 21 days, 29 days. And then another one took 21 days just because of some complications. And out of town of the client. And again, these are, um, the onboarding bonuses are above and beyond majority of the time, the team finishes within the two weeks to earn their onboarding bonus. Um, we don't really do a lot of, uh, exceptions or creativity around that. We either get it done or we don't because it's not necessarily punitive in nature. They're not losing money or anything like that, but the amount that they earn in their onboarding bonus does decrease each week after that two weeks. And so they have a lot of incentive to do everything in their power to encourage and motivate the client to get what is needed. And then to kind of prioritize that onboarding because we know the way we're going to exceed that client's expectation is when they're actually in their regular normal services, when the client CFO has the good data to be able to answer the questions. And so if we're stuck in onboarding, they're not getting the service that I have sold them on the front end.

Marcus Dillon: [00:38:09] Yeah. No, that, that, that has been in place for over a year now. I believe the onboarding bonuses and just the results, um, the experience for the client, the timeline to get them actually on the wheel of service. It's just so much better than it used to be. And the other change is that we actually have the team of three that's going to be serving that client long term, doing that onboarding. So that was another big change versus we have friends and firms that, um, you know, they have one point person that does all the onboarding and we did two, but there were, um, frustrations in that where maybe it wasn't moving along as fast or that person wrapped up the onboarding, uh, a little less than perfect and pass it on to the service team. And the service team had to continue onboarding, which is not what they were doing at that time. So, but yeah, now it seems to work out and we pay out that onboarding bonus after the financials go out. That's kind of the end of the onboarding, um, window, if you will, even if there's additional tax, if there's additional, um, some compliance needs that are getting worked through or, you know, some payroll onboarding that's still happening. Uh, we know that that will get done, but once that set of financials goes out, like that's the true commitment that the clients coming in with, they need a better vantage point on their data.

Marcus Dillon: [00:39:33] It needs to be timely. So that first month of financials that goes out, that's the end of the onboarding. And then that, that kind of closes the window in our insights report. And we know how much to share right. As far as, um, that onboarding bonus and it gets paid out the very next payroll. If for some reason it gets left off the payroll, I'll do a special payroll bonus run for onboarding. Just it's a little bit easier to track actually, that way. And the way that we track that is the CFO that is on that, that client, they actually track and calculate the onboarding bonus. So that's another like, you know, double click into how it actually works. Um, that CFO will actually put, uh, the split for each person in the notes within canopy. And then that onboarding task when it's it's very last step within canopy is to pay out the onboarding bonus. And so when I do that, the, the breakdown is there in the notes of the canopy task of onboarding for that client. So just going a little bit deeper, uh, for people that, that are asking like, how does this really work? And we landed on that because now that we have multiple CFOs and multiple clients being onboarded by different teams, that was just the best way that we saw to make it make sense and to kind of have just clear communication across the board.

Rachel Dillon: [00:40:59] Yeah. And if, if there's any additional information or more details, we are always happy to share. We share with the collective community and members all the time. And so if you just want to contact me through collective dot CPA or email me. Happy to share and answer questions about details about our onboarding process. But before we end this episode, I do want to talk through where are all these clients coming from? I think that that is a big question that we have that our friends in the industry have. Where are you finding clients who are willing to pay $2,000 a month for monthly services and an onboarding fee of $7500 or $5000? And so I want to maybe end the episode with that. Uh, where are we finding all of these new prospects and clients?

Marcus Dillon: [00:41:53] Yeah. Um, it would make sense if we onboarded 20 new clients and we spent $100,000 on paid ads, right? Or lead gen or built out a social media team. Uh, but that's not the case. And so we did allocate budget to a marketing company to fix our website and to make us, uh, visible again. Uh, when it comes to the internet. So we paid somebody to do schema, uh, in the background of the website and different, uh, technical things. You could probably now, like we started those engagements a year and a half ago, you could probably now go do that, um, with one of your, you know, chat or clawed buddies that are working alongside you, but you have to have knowledge into like your website and being able to put code in. So, but that's, that's where we started to see improvement and just gaining visibility and ranking again for searches. But what I would say is the majority of these came in through existing relationships. And nobody loves to hear that, right? Because it's not sexy. Um, so staying in front of your clients and making sure that your clients know that you have capacity and I will send our best clients, don't send this to your worst client, but send it to your best client. Hey, I've got some additional capacity. Would you like to meet once a month or would you like, you know, like questions like that to where you can go to people you already know really well.

Marcus Dillon: [00:43:17] And maybe they're walking through something that you knew about, like expansion, or maybe they're thinking about succession. Maybe they're trying to true up some stuff and they're going to take you up on that. Um, versus like if they, if they thought you were always busy because I've talked to so many people, clients and non-clients and friends and they, and, you know, it's like, hey, I know you're busy. Um, like that's just what they say because we're just this culture of how are you doing? Uh, busy, you know, like that's just how people respond. So I hate it when someone says, I know you're busy or I'm going to let you go because you're busy. Maybe they just want to get off the phone. But, um, it's just if you can tell people where you're at and communicate that, that you do have capacity, that you do want to serve them in more ways. Ten of those clients. So 50% of those new clients came in through existing clients expanding. So those are the clients that we'd love to work with, right? Because they're buying new businesses, they're setting up new entities. They're doing real estate transactions that they want us to be involved with and get our hands around.

Rachel Dillon: [00:44:20] So just for clarification, those expanding clients weren't just adding on monthly advisory calls. That was a different scenario. These clients expanding actually started new businesses, bought new businesses or a couple of them. One for sure went from a tax advisory plan client and then left like a W-2 job and opened the doors of their own practice. Um, and moved over to that full time. And so then they were kind of upgraded from a tax plan to a CAS plan. So clients expanding, just clarifying that that wasn't, we don't count them if they just increase the level of meetings, because that is our differentiator between our plans. We actually don't count that as a new client. Um, we count a new client really as pretty much like a new client ID, like a new entity that we're serving.

Marcus Dillon: [00:45:22] Yeah. That's right. Sorry for any miscommunication there, but, um, the, those ten clients, they came in expanding. A few of those were annual client relationships that actually, you know, became a CAS relationship. And we're always hopeful that we can convert all these annual clients. But you know, the likelihood that you do that's pretty, pretty low. And, you know, even people that say, well, I'm an accept them now as an only client, I'm going to do their tax return. And then with the hope that I'm going to convert them to CAS down the road. Uh, maybe, maybe you're more successful at that than we have been. But, um, if we were to do that today, we would look up and have a lot of tax clients and not a lot of monthly recurring clients that we can build a team around.

Rachel Dillon: [00:46:08] So, so we, we actually advise against that Strategy because most of us, and probably most people listening to this podcast do. Provide great service and always want to improve their firm. So why would a client go to paying you more if you're already giving them good service? Is what we found is so hard to convert someone who's annual and getting great service to a monthly client if they're already getting great service. So very, very hard in our experience to convert.

Marcus Dillon: [00:46:43] Yeah. Um, seven came in through referrals. So 35% came in through referrals. So existing clients referrals made up 85%. Right. And so, uh, you can spend all the money in the world on paid ads, lead gen and social, but it's not going to account for that 85% that we saw, uh, year to date as far as new client wins, the other 15% though, you know, it's, uh, we had one come in through website, uh, search and that was either maybe Google or now ChatGPT or some LLM that they come in through. We actually had, uh, more prospects. So these are actual clients. One. We have had other people that have entered the funnel, but did not become clients that are more in line with marketing kind of, um, metrics, right? Like search engine or LLM now.

Rachel Dillon: [00:47:37] Yes. And so we, uh, we recorded, uh, maybe two already this year podcast on kind of my calendar and process and who I'm talking to and, uh, where they're coming from and how we're talking to them. And so yes, these are ones that actually converted to clients, but, um, I'll say pretty confidently, maybe three times this as far as prospects, uh, calls or initial inquiry, um, were, have come in the door. So yeah, and that's still probably a high percentage when you look at sales. Um, and so I think that that's really important. I think it's important to highlight that for 2026, for year to date, January through June, it wasn't paid ads, it wasn't a lead gen company. It wasn't social media marketing for Dillon business advisors to gain fees. It really was relationships. And I know you said like, people might not want to hear that. Um, but also at the same time, maybe you don't have the budget or don't want to spend your budget on things like that. Maybe your team is not big enough to hire a sales in a marketing person in-house or outsourced. Um, I think the, the encouragement and the comfort in that is serve your clients well. Let your clients and people close to you referral partners know how much you love your clients, how much you love your team, and that you're available to do more work for others. So constantly talking about how great your team is is likely how we got the two personal connection clients. It's just that we are always we really are proud of our team. We really do love our team. And so it's easy to talk about that and people see that. So people see it online. People see it in real life. Um, yeah. Marcus, you've talked about joining like hobby clubs. Um, as far as if you're really into cars, when you're talking naturally with people, work will come up, um, different church groups or Bible studies or things like that. It just natural conversation. These types of things come up. And so those may be your best next clients or your best introductions to your best new clients.

Marcus Dillon: [00:50:00] Yeah, I was at a, I was at a cars and coffee, you know, like the work and weather conversations come up, like, what do you do? All that fun stuff when you first meet somebody and like, that's great. That's when people learn. Learn what you do. And then over time, they get to know you, they get to trust you, and then they'll come back around if they ever need that or know that you're a person that can help them out, and maybe you're just pointing them in the right direction of who can help them out. This even came up this morning. We were working out at F 45 and our trainer, Moses, he's like, hey, I know y'all are accountants. Um, like, I'm going to need some help. I'm 1099 at the gym and I need to know like, we all do my stuff and what can I work? What can I write off? And I'm like, you gotta talk to Rachel, man. Like, she won't let me do stuff like this anymore. So, uh, if he made you lift heavier or do more cardio, that's because, uh, you're probably going to tell him no, that we won't accept him as a new client.

Rachel Dillon: [00:50:57] So I know you totally pushed him off and are going to make me the bad guy that, um. I'm. I'm sad to hear that for the first.

Marcus Dillon: [00:51:04] Time, but I did, I did tell him like, yeah, I did tell him like, hey, I'm happy to help you. Like he's a young guy. He probably dropped this into ChatGPT and be so much better off than paying somebody like us. And that's why, you know, there's just different options in the market. So even if they're a friend, if they're a personal connection, it's a time to educate him. So I was like, hey, this is, this is who we work with. This is what we do. And like personal connections like that, we're going to leave him better off than not because, you know, we care about him. We care about him being served, but we're not going to be the best fit for him. But we're going to educate him along the way about who we are, the best fit for her. So I think those personal connections, uh, you can always leave people you know better than you found them. Uh, it's funny, even like when we've had people that we've let down or that we thought we were letting down. Uh, I had one former client tell me one time, I, I hope I can get my business back to where I'm a client again, you know, and it's like they were almost striving to get to this point of success because then they knew that success, you know, at a certain level that then they they could be a client. And so I, you know, I'm like, that's, that's great. But, you know, it's just one of those things that I just want you to be successful. I don't want you to be successful. So you become a client. Like, um, that that's just a goal in itself. So, but, uh, but yeah, like, as we recap kind of year to date, obviously celebrated this with the team.

Marcus Dillon: [00:52:30] Um, don't want to boast about it, just want to share about like what we're seeing and that things actually do happen. The one thing that I will say is, um, there is right now a trend, uh, that I do see and that's people that have been on legacy systems like QuickBooks desktop or there's kind of patching it together. We, we are seeing people finally move and finally raise their hand that there has to be a better way. So we have done more QuickBooks desktop to QBO conversions this year, uh, than what we would have thought. And some of that is like we had a large oral surgeon group that came to us and they were on QuickBooks desktop. Well, their office manager, who's been doing things the same exact way for decades in QBD needs to retire. And so one of those were like, this just gives them the time to assess their whole working relationship and get on to a more cloud based product. Um, and I just think that's the trend as you see technology developments. Ai, you'll, you'll continue to see people that want their data in a lake, uh, to where you can apply AI and technology. And if we're a part of that story for people, then great. Um, so, so I do see that trend happening. And part of that is people knowing where to go for that conversion. And because of those conversions, people are willing to pay onboarding fees. And it's just, you're able to set things up the right way from the very beginning. So that's, that's just been a little side note experience. Uh, these, last few months, and I would expect that to continue. As technology develops.

Rachel Dillon: [00:54:12] Yeah. I want to give some real practical and then wrap up because we've we've gone long. So some real practical things people can do today. So if you don't have your calendar full of prospects or your inbox flooded with inquiries about becoming a new monthly client, here are some things that I would say to get in place today as you continue to work on that client service, the relationships and or if you do go about with a paid outsourced, some type of solution. Um, some of the things that have to be in place before any of this start, um, assess your pricing. Do you have defined service plans and base pricing to communicate what you do and how much it's going to cost. And so that all of your team and your clients can communicate that to others as well. That needs to be very clear. Are you charging an onboarding fee? Marcus, you already shared that was lucrative. It's necessary. We get to incentivize the team and reward the team for their good work. But also, there is a lot of work that happens in the very beginning of a relationship. And then the third I would say, is your onboarding process. Two things defined and delegated. So not one single person doing all onboarding for the entire firm. You're going to run into a bottleneck, a capacity issue. Even if that's not the owner, they have to take a day off every once in a while. And if you have as many prospects coming in, it's better to have that shared responsibilities. One person could be in charge, potentially, but it's better to have shared responsibilities amongst a group of people so that you don't run into a capacity issue. When you do have all of these great clients flooding in.

Marcus Dillon: [00:56:06] Yeah, really good stuff. Um, hopefully this has left somebody better off than, uh, they started. And if you have any questions, just reach out, uh, Rachel at collective dot CPA. We've got all the resources. We're happy to talk through it as well. But just sharing a part of our story on the first six months. And even though we've seen some client exits, uh, we've seen a lot more client client wins, which is a great thing to celebrate.

Rachel Dillon: [00:56:33] Yeah. Thanks for helping lead the conversation.

Marcus Dillon: [00:56:35] Yeah. Thanks so much.

Speaker 4: [00:56:39] Thanks for listening to this episode. If you enjoyed the conversation and want to learn more, be sure to visit collective CPA. You can schedule a meeting directly with me, Rachel, by clicking on the Contact Us page. Be sure to subscribe, like, and share so you don't miss any future episodes. We look forward to connecting with you soon.