Episode 177 | Building A Million-Dollar Virtual Firm Through Delegation And Culture With Renee Daggett

Building a firm shouldn’t feel like a life sentence of long hours and constant pressure. Michelle Weinstein sits down with Renee Daggett, founder of AdminBooks, to unpack how she transformed a burnout-driven practice into a million-dollar fully virtual firm with a long-tenured team. Renee shares the five pillars that made the shift possible—vision, clear roles, delegation with accountability, intentional culture, and performance-based incentives. Drawing from 22 years of experience, she explains how to step out of production without losing control, create career paths that retain top talent, and lead with clarity instead of reaction. This conversation is a practical roadmap for firm owners who want freedom, strong margins, and a business that runs without them.

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Episode 177 | Building A Million-Dollar Virtual Firm Through Delegation And Culture With Renee Daggett

We have a very special guest. Our special guest is an Award-Winning Accounting firm Owner, Speaker, and Author of Your Financial Flight Plan. She founded Admin Books in 2003, which is run 100% virtually, remote with ten people where they focus on QuickBooks Online, payroll, and tax planning services.

She is also an EA, an advanced QuickBooks Online Pro Advisor, and has served both on the Intuit Tax Console and PASBA‘s Board of Advisors. Her passion is helping entrepreneurs run profitable, purpose-driven businesses. She brings a very warm practical voice that she delivers which you’re going to hear. She’s fantastic.

If you’re a firm owner and you feel like you’ve created this firm that feels like a job that you can’t escape from. You don’t have any sales systems in place, and you don’t have a plan for your freedom of time and money. It’s time to make a shift. You shouldn’t have to hit burnout or get to your next revenue goal crawling. You don’t need to have more clients. You just need to maybe have better quality ones or generate more revenue from the ones that you already have.

Here at the show, I show you how to package your services, raise your prices, or if you’re a new firm owner, not have the mistakes that so many other firm owners have had. You can have a firm with high margin clients that respect your time and value you. If you’re interested on what that looks like, you can schedule a complimentary strategy call over at TheAbundantCall.com where we can lay out a roadmap that turns your firm into a real asset instead of just having a job.

Again, if you’re ready to elevate your firm to a new height, go to TheAbundantCall.com and schedule your complimentary strategy session with me and my team. We assess your current sales process. We’re going to identify the key revenue opportunities that you have that maybe you’re missing out on. You can pursue bringing on just dream clients and converting your current clients into more premium paying clients. Let’s welcome our very special guest, Renee Daggett to the show.

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From Burnout To CEO: Lessons From 22 Years In The Trenches

Welcome, Renee, to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Michelle. It’s been a long time that I wanted to connect with you but also share my heart.

I’m super excited to have you back. I feel like we did an episode. Maybe it was years ago or maybe we never did one and I’m just hallucinating because I have been a little under the weather. It took maybe too much NyQuil and DayQuil. I’ve known you for a long time. I’m super excited to have you here on the show. Before we dive in, I’ve already done your intro and other things. I always think it’s better to hear it directly from you. I’d love it if you could share who you are and what Renee does.

My name is Renee Daggett. I have been an accounting firm owner for many years. I have about ten team members. We are virtual and paperless. We’re spread over five different states. I got my EA license and my QBO Advanced. I’m located near Sacramento. If your audiences are familiar with South Lake Tahoe, I’m about an hour outside of Tahoe. I love the idea of running a business. I finally feel like I’ve grown up from the baby and toddler years. I’m in my adult years. I am constantly wanting to learn and grow. That’s who I am. I’m super excited about making a difference in the lives of other accountants to help them learn and grow as well.

I know that’s what we’re going to be talking about. If you read the show, I know you’re an accounting, bookkeeping, tax, fractional CFO firm owner or if you’re in a job and you have your firm on the side. You should probably grab a pen and paper because Renee mentioned she’d been doing this for many years. She runs the whole business paperless from all these different places with ten people.

We’re going to be talking about certain pillars that you should put inside your firm so you can be the CEO of your firm instead of feeling like you have a 24/7 job that you created for yourself. You feel like you have shackles attached to your ankles and a desk. You can’t ever work on your business and you’re always stuck in it. That’s what we’re going to talk about.

I’m super excited. Renee, I’d love it if you could start out by sharing what was your personal story that made you say, “I got to change things up. What’s happening is not working.” You were in your baby years, your toddler years, your kid years, your teenage years, and you’re in your adult years. Share with us what those early years were like for you and what said, “enough is enough.”

The Turning Point: Moving From Reactive Leadership To Strategic Growth

In those early years, I made a lot of mistakes. I am bold and courageous enough to share what that looked like for me. I found myself working 12-14 hour days, 6 days a week in the off season, and 7 days a week during tax season. I was preparing returns and meeting with clients. I had a local office at that time. I even cleaned the toilet.

I was doing all the things, even when I had a small team around me. I knew I could not scale the business that way. I was just feeling overwhelmed. I was not running my business as I needed to be. In fact, one story that I’ve shared multiple times is the story of one of my team members. Her name is Amanda. She was in the other office. I walked into her office and I said, “Do you need anything for me? Do you have any questions for me? How can I help?” She goes, “I think I’m good.”

I don’t know if you or any of your audience can resonate with this, but I walked out of her office saying, “Thank goodness she didn’t have anything for me to help her with because I have my own stuff that I need to do. I’m stressed. I’m starving.” All the things. I’m embarrassed to say I was a terrible leader. One of the questions somebody asked me is, would I follow the leader I am now? Back then, no. I would not follow the leader I was back then.

That’s one of the two questions that motivate me and drive me to constantly improve my firm even after many years. The second question that I asked myself is, “Is my firm the best place to work?” That helps me look at my processes, my pricing, my people, and my product. It’s like, “What can I improve? What is missing, broken or confusing?” It could be personal development in my leadership because leaders are not born. They’re built, and I’m still learning how to lead well. Those are the two questions that I asked myself.

I will say another common mistake is that I didn’t increase my prices for a long time. I was too busy working in the business. Therefore, I had a loss of income which then lacked opportunity to hire the right people to help me. I was holding on to work. Everybody says nobody can do it the way I do it. That’s not wise. I wanted to be in control. I had a control issue but again, I lacked clear processes to even delegate to my team. I avoided hard conversations and all of those things. I wasn’t leading. I was reacting. Hopefully, I’m not alone when I share some of those common mistakes.

I don’t think you’re alone. That’s pretty common for sure. Thank you for being so open and honest about that. I know you took it one step further because you’re like, “How can I help other firm owners do the same?” I know you’ve spoken on this topic on how we can become a better leader in our firm. I love the questions. Number one, would I follow the leader I am now? number two, is my firm the best place to work at?

I think that’s the number one question in my opinion. I always say that here at the show. I’m like, “Is the Abundant Account the best place to work?” Every time, it’s like, “Hell yes.” You get lots of perks. We go on trips. It’s fun. Hopefully, you don’t work too much. We get to serve our clients at a high level as you were sharing.

For a firm owner that might be feeling like you were, Renee, where they were always in control. As you said, you weren’t leading. You were just being reactive all the time. You don’t have processes in place. What are some baby steps for some firm owners that are also stressed out like, “I already don’t have time to do my client work. How do you expect me to create these processes so I can be a better leader?” What would you share is the number one pillar that a firm owner should start writing out, thinking about, and figuring out?

Pillar 1 & 2: Understanding Your Personal “Why” And Roles

I have identified five things that were key in driving me to working on my business and not in. To me, I see them as steps. The first step has to be vision and/or your why. I enjoyed meeting with clients. At that time, I needed to delegate the tax prep work, the bookkeeping work. That was my first step. I had to have a vision of what I want to do and what I want to delegate. As the years went by, I was better and better at articulating the vision of what I wanted to do.

Honestly, it was for me to get out of production. I have not prepared returns for probably ten years. I haven’t met with clients for about eight years. I haven’t done sales for about 4 or 6 years. I am completely out of production. The cool thing is that when those people in those roles quit, I don’t go back to them because I have the structure in place where my leaders step in and take over. I will tell you what forced me to delegate.

It was a medical situation where I had daily migraines every single day for a year and a half. I physically couldn’t do all the work. I could work some but there were days where I had to step away from my computer, my screen, and close my eyes. I physically couldn’t get the work done. Michelle, that was a God thing because if that didn’t happen, I would be doing all the work still, meeting with clients.

The first pillar, the first step is to understand your why and to have a vision of what you want to do. I didn’t want to meet with clients in the end, but I understand the joy that is received when you do meet with clients. The first step is to have the vision. What does that mean practically? That means I created an organization chart to figure out what my team needs to look like. My name was in the janitor box. My name was in the meeting with the client box. My name was in the IT box. It was a matter of taking those boxes and finding people that could fill those boxes.

A second practical tip was reading the book Traction, the Entrepreneurial Operating System Model, where they have the different points of what you need to do to have a system to run your business. Traction was instrumental in giving me ideas because again, I started this business by accident. That’s a whole other episode. My husband started an S-corp. I said, “What is an S-corp?” I graduated from San Jose State University with an education degree and a music degree. My background is not in accounting and not in finance.

I had no idea.

Isn’t that a fun story? I became a bookkeeper to get his books in line. Our enrolled agent said, “These are great financial statements and QuickBooks. Can you teach my client QuickBooks?” I taught his clients and I got my own and here I am many years later with ten employees. Anyway, that aside, but how to run a business? I had to learn how to do that, then setting goals. EOS talks about quarterly rocks and goals. It was just baby stepping the vision and the org chart. There’s a lot in Traction and EOS and then setting goals. I was doing all the goals until I started to delegate those goals to my team. That’s the first step.

I will say successfully the next step is I had to be clear about the roles in my firm. I had to create job descriptions from scratch. One other practical thing that was helpful in building the firm is articulating a career path. Again, why would people come work for me in my company? It wasn’t until I created job descriptions and a career path that I could attract fantastic candidates that want to work here. We have in our tax department, in our bookkeeping department, level 1, level 3, level 3, a manager, and a leader.

Million-Dollar Virtual Firm: A practical step in building a firm is articulating a career path. Why would someone work here? You have to paint a vision of what it’s like and show a clear career path.

They come in my firm. I’ve had bookkeepers wanting to work for me. They said, “I will take an admin role until you have a bookkeeping position available because I want to work for you.” That’s what I did. Erica, who works with me has been with me for a few years. She came to me. She was schooled in bookkeeping.

She wanted to work for me. She started off in the tax admin role. I had a bookkeeping position open. She worked in a bookkeeping position for years and then, I had a manager role available. Now, she’s in my manager role as a leader. She’s doing fantastic in that role. You have to paint a vision of what it would be like to work here. There is a career opportunity.

You said a career path and having articulated what the future looks like. That’s where a lot of people miss the boat for sure.

On your website, have a landing page demonstrating not only the career path but getting, in a sense, testimonials from your employees, what they say about working for you. We have all the fun pictures of what we do together even though we’re a virtual team.

That’s very unique. I must say. Renee, I’ve worked with thousands of firm owners. I’ve been doing this a long time. The number one hardest thing for people to do is hire a good team. It looks like you’ve figured out how to do that because you 100% rely on them. As you said, you wrote job descriptions from scratch. You’re articulating the career path. You’re showing them how they can move from level 1, level 2 and level 3 to get to leadership. I’m sure you’re paying them top dollar. I love that you’re getting testimonials from them. That’s cool.

Do you also invest in their personal growth or personal development? When I have employees back in my last life, anyone that wanted to go do personal development or continuing education, I always paid for. One of my brands I loved back in the day before someone bought it, was Lululemon, when it was small. They sent everyone through the Landmark Forum. I thought that was so cool. Everyone learned about integrity and all these things. Do you do anything like that for your team?

Besides the required continuing education for enrolled agents, CPAs, and bookkeepers, I made up something. The part that I made up in my firm is something that I called Assets, Liabilities and Actions. Every year, each team member identifies what they’re good at, what they want to improve upon, and then the action that they will take for the upcoming fiscal year. We do it every July.

Team members will choose different things that they want to improve upon. One person said they want to take an Excel class. All three of my leaders have one-on-one coaching. It’s developing them as a leader. Leaders are built. They are not born. Those assets, liabilities and actions, they get to choose something, and then we support them in that choice and help them grow personally. We also have professional development, which I’ll talk about in the third pillar. If you’re okay with it, we’ll move to the delegate.

Did we do the second pillar because the roles, is this what we just talked about?

That’s number two. The first pillar is vision and your why. The second step or pillar is the roles.

That’s where you created your org chart and stuff.

The org chart was my vision. The Roles were the job descriptions and the career path.

The org chart is still part of step one. Let’s go into the delegation department, pillar number three.

Pillar 3: Mastering Delegation And Monitoring Performance

Again, I struggled to delegate because I wanted to control, micromanage everything. This was hard for me, I have to say, but this is a goal. This is the golden nuggets of delegating and monitoring. How did I get tasks off my plate and delegate that to my team? The first step was I did all the work. That was the client. The second step is I had somebody prepare the tax return behind the scenes and then, I would meet with the client.

The third step is I had them prepare the return and join me in meeting with the client so that the client could see them, hear them, and build a relationship with them. Mind you, we’re in a virtual environment. This is all on Zoom. We’re sharing our webcam, meeting with the client, walking through the tax return line by line, doing tax planning strategy, and all of that. The fourth step was I had them prepare the return and meet with the client without me.

All the emails go to them. They meet with the client. They prepare the return. I’m brought in to give advice on how to handle different situations, maybe just to get some input there. It’s more than a delegate because I need to monitor how they’re doing. I don’t want to micromanage. I don’t want to know every single detail. You take ownership of client A, B, and C. That’s your responsibility. It’s to take ownership of that.

How I lead and how I monitor is from four cards, dashboards. As you can imagine, we’re numbers people. We have dashboards for everything. I can give you the KPIs that we track. It’s for the firm. It’s KPIs for tax preparation and for bookkeeping. One thing that I wanted to highlight in the delegation and monitor pillar is something that’s called KRAs. KRAs stand for Key Results Area. Key Results Areas are basically KPIs for each person in their role.

Imagine in your mind’s eye three to four results that each role is required to provide in order to be successful in their role. Also, imagine in your mind’s eye, we use a Google Excel document. On the left side are the three or four items, and then there’s twelve columns. One for every month. We do a fiscal year and it’s July through June. Every month, each team member gets feedback on those KRAs to let them know if they are successful in their role. We mark the dashboard, green.

If they are not exceeding expectations or meeting expectations, we put the cell or the box in pink. Why pink? It’s because I’m not confrontational and I don’t like red. It’s green and pink. This is a common mistake that I made. Every year when I would do my performance reviews, I’d be so embarrassed because I have nothing to tell them on how they were doing because we never recorded or created KRAs and gave them monthly feedback. It was embarrassing. It’s like, “This is awkward.” Delegate and then monitor is the third pillar there.

That sounds so confusing, but having all the KPIs will be very helpful. We’ll get to the confusing part later because I know if you’re reading, and you’re like, “Renee, this all sounds great, but how do you help me?” She can maybe help you if you’re a firm owner, you want to get out of production and be like her. Renee, I have a question. When you were thinking about your why, because you said you had music and some other degree?

Elementary school.

Education, and you got into this because of your husband. There’s a lot of people reading and I’m going to play devil’s advocate. It’s like me in my business. I still love to review client homework. I still love to be on the coaching calls. I want to be a part of it. I’m not looking. I’m trying to do the opposite. I don’t want to delegate everything. I’ll delegate some of it because we need help in order to help more people. I don’t want to do all that hands-off. What would you say to that firm owner that’s maybe like, “Renee, that’s great, but you don’t meet with any clients. You don’t do any enrollment meetings.” What would you say to someone that wants a hybrid approach?

You can do it. My question to you, the reader is, let me see your job description. Where is your job description?

For themselves as the firm owner.

For themselves. I have a job description for me and my why.

Can you tell me your job description? I want to hear Renee’s job description.

I looked at it, but I can come up with it off the top of my head. It’s basically mentoring and investing in my three leaders. I meet with them weekly. I’m constantly challenging them, mentoring them, and investing in them. I’m a reader and there’s one book called The Coaching Habit. The premise for me that I took away was coaching them for development and not performance.

Let me put a practical way of saying this. My firm’s mission is to make a difference in the life of my client in their business, and in their life. That is the mission, make a difference. I have converted that mission. Renee’s job is to make a difference in the life of my team, to invest in my team, and to be the best place to work.

Million-Dollar Virtual Firm: My job is to make a difference in my team’s lives, invest in them, and make this the best place to work.

That comes in different formats from mentoring them every week and meeting with them one-on-one. Also, my job description is I teach webinars. It’s education so I’m doing what I was trained to do. I have the heart of a teacher. I love to teach. Instead of teaching my clients what’s deductible, what’s not and tax strategies. I’m teaching my team.

You’re doing your education and what you got your degree in. I love it. You’re also doing webinars then driving people to your different areas of expertise than what you guys do in the niche that you target. When you have a team of ten, what’s your revenue?

Over a million the past couple years.

Is around $1 million or is that like $1.2 million or $1.5 million or $1.6 million or $1.7 million?

It’s about $1.1 million.

It’s about a $1.1 million firm with ten people. That brings things into context. That’s important. Cool.

Are you ready for step number four?

We’ve figured out how we have to delegate, how you’re going to have your meetings and manage our KPI and monitor our dashboards, our scorecards, and our KRAs, which also means Key Result Areas. Let’s go into pillar number four.

Pillar 4: Cultivating Culture And Core Values

Pillar number four for me is culture. I have to start out with this step by saying, when I was young, my mom would buy that marshmallow fluff in a jar. That’s exactly what I thought.

I don’t even know what that stuff is. That sounds gross.

I’m a little bit older than you. I don’t want to say liquid marshmallows, but it’s basically melted marshmallows that you would put in food.

I know what you’re talking about. It’s like a jar with white stuff in it. None of it makes sense. How is that food and how should a human body ingest that? That’s just gross. The whole thought of a marshmallow is pretty gross, but white goo in a jar is gross.

Don’t you like chocolate S’mores with the graham cracker and the marshmallow? I love those, but not in a jar.

Not in a jar. It’s weird to roast this thing that turns into goo basically. I would love to run that by a chemist one day to ask how was this designed to begin with. I will just eat the chocolate. I’m not a fan of the graham cracker part. I’m not a fan of the marshmallow part. I am a fan of the coziness around a fire pit and roasting something. Anyway, culture reminds you of marshmallow fluff in a jar. Keep going.

Culture, values, and mission. When I started my business, I thought, “That’s a bunch of marshmallow fluff. I just need people to put their nose down to their desk, to their computer and get work done. Do not talk at the water cooler in the breakroom. We got to get stuff done.”

I was like that in my 30s with my last business. It didn’t work out very good.

For me, I had to learn that culture is crucial. Core values are so important. In fact, we hire to our core values, work done with excellence, innovative to new processes and new technology. In fact, when I’m hiring, I tell them, “We’re innovative to new technologies. Are you comfortable on the computer?” People might say, “I like programs. I work on this program and that program.” What I do is I show them the technology that they will be required to use. I press it hard because I either want them to say, “I’m so excited to work with Renee and her team or this is more than I want.”

I’m trying to weed out people that do not fit our culture. In fact, we had a big discussion with my leaders where years ago we would hire for skill. Skill is super important. It still is, but the importance of hiring for a culture fit, hiring for core values that match, is almost like 55% and skill is 45%. I can teach somebody how to reconcile QuickBooks.

Million-Dollar Virtual Firm: Hiring for culture fit matters more than skills — roughly 55% values, 45% skill. Skills can be taught; values and attitude cannot.

I can teach somebody how to do the balance sheet on a tax return, but I can’t teach values and attitude. I want to be able to enjoy hanging out with my team. Our team has been together for a long time. We have team members that have been with me for 11 years, 10 years, 9 years, and 8 years. It does show that there’s longevity there. Culture, core values, and mission are so important.

I’m sure you’ve got a book that led you into figuring out how you were going to come up with your culture, culture, values, and mission. How did Renee come up with it for the firm?

I don’t know that there was one book. I will tell you that I’ve always been a fan of having one-on-one coaching because I feel that I need to learn how to be a good leader. I’ve been doing Mastermind groups with other Mastermind people in other industries as well as accountant-only Mastermind groups. Learning from other people who have been there and done that. Having them talk about culture and core values. I just learned from them. I learned that I needed to be intentional. You’d always hear people saying, “People don’t leave companies or firms. They leave leaders.” I have a constant drive to improve and grow.

It’s so true. I evolved as a leader. I’ve had my team since 2018, pretty much most of everybody. I think a lot of firm owners struggle with this too, Renee. People quit all of a sudden and you’re like, “I wonder what happened.” I’ll never forget. I had a personal assistant at the time that left her computer overnight one night and said, “I’m done.” No two-week notice. No nothing.

She went on to go have a baby and start a family. I’m like, “Where’s the respect?” It’s just like you said, it’s a direct reflection of you. You’ve had people there for 8 years and 11 years. For firm owners, it’s like we have to put a pause on things and start to take a look inward in ourselves. You had to become the better leader.

It’s investing in them in their career and building their professional development, but it’s caring for them as a human being. We had a team member whose grandmother was ill. We had a team member that lost a dog after fourteen years. Life happens. How you treat one another tells how engaged and invested the employee is with your firm. Are they going to leave their computer there and walk away and start a family? Are they going to have conversations with you? I have a firm survey. One of the questions is, “How long do you see yourself here? One year, three years, five years, and other.”

I will tell you that most of my team puts others first. There was one year where one of my leaders marked three years. I’m like, “What if she’s going to leave me?” That created a great conversation where I could say, “Nikki, you marked three years. What’s going on? Tell me more.” She goes, “I would like to retire. My husband’s getting ready to retire. I’d like to spend more time with my grandchildren.”

We had a three-year exit plan for her to delegate and promote within. It was a great conversation. It was a win for her because she left well. It was a win for us because we loved her and then promoted within. You just have to treat people like human beings and be willing to have uncomfortable conversations.

Pillar 5: Implementing Performance-Based Incentive Pay

The last pillar is incentivizing. I will tell you this was the last pillar for me that I implemented. I only implemented this recently. For years, employees would say, “I want to raise, or I expect to raise.” I assume they want to raise. Perhaps they lacked motivation, poor quality of work, before I had KRAs, or even after I had KRAs. They weren’t meeting expectations. It can be a huge problem because we all want to feel valued. Partly, how we feel valued is getting a raise. Don’t give a $0.50 raise. A $0.50 raise is not good.

That’s not a raise.

Minimum of a dollar, if not more. That’s another topic we can talk about. The best way that I solve the problem with giving raises is through incentive pay. Basically, they are paid a base pay and then they get rewarded, bookkeepers and tax preparers based on their performance. The more that they do, the more money they bring in for the firm, the more money I can pay them. At first, I did a baby step on this.

When they move to a higher-level like from level 1 to level 2 and level 2 to level 3, etc., they would get more money for the role and the responsibility. The second step that I did is I gave bonuses when they were productive. Maybe after-tax season or I would do a Thanksgiving bonus. Now, I am rewarding my team that the more that they are productive, the more I’m able to pay them. It’s a win-win situation.

Can you give an example of what this looks in slightly more detail just a tad?

Let’s just say I have a tax preparer. We pay them $30 an hour as a base pay. What I do is based on the work that she does, let’s just give two examples. Say she completed twenty returns in February as one example. I would pay her a percentage of those returns. I’ve surveyed a lot of different other accounting firms that do incentivize their team. Remind me, Michelle, to give you some books that I recommend on this.

Email them to me. I’m going to have a Renee section of her top books that you should read as a firm owner. That’s what I’m going to do.

I love reading and I have other books. Based on other firms, they incentivize 5% to 30%. It depends on if their pricing is accurate, meaning where it needs to be. If they’re underpricing, they might go higher on the incentive percentage until they catch up on charging clients more. This is a whole another workshop. In this situation, if they prepare twenty returns. They would be paid a percentage on that and would get a bonus in February.

If she did 30 returns, she would get a higher bonus. The more that she does, the higher the bonus that she would get. It’s a way for her to holler when there’s like a 1031 exchange on a tax return. On the bookkeeping side, if a client added three credit card accounts. Typically, what happens is the bookkeeper or tax preparer doesn’t say anything when the scope increases. You bet that they will holler if the scope increases. They want to increase the client’s fee because they did more work, understandably. We stay within the budget hours.

We also look at accuracy. We keep within our margin goal and then upsell services there as well. I hope that’s an example that makes sense. The percentage could be 10%. It could be 15%. I know a lot of my friends will be 17%. Again, the wide range of percentage based on firm, but it’s also based on the service. For example, you might get 10% for preparing a return, but you might get 5% for reviewing a return. You’re not doing as much work in reviewing versus preparing. As I said, it probably took me two years to wrap my brain around how to set up incentive pay and I’m still learning.

It’s a work in progress. It’s not set in stone. It’s incentivizing enough to keep the people around. The end outcome, I always like to think of outcomes, is that you have a happy team. They feel valued. They feel part of it and they don’t want to leave. I got an invoice from my assistant. She goes, “Grateful to be a part of the team.” I love that. I’m like, “Me too. I’m grateful that you’re here.” I think that’s awesome. It’s the way it should be. That’s how it is and hopefully, with everybody. I’m totally aligned.

I think we covered all of the pillars. For those of you reading, I do recommend you might want to go and re-read. Renee, as you said, you like to invest in yourself and coaching and so do I. I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in coaching for myself and being in Mastermind groups. I know that you have a Mastermind group too for firm owners.

If they don’t want to figure out how to become the CEO of their firm on their own, to get out of the production, and do all this. They can figure it out and do it on their own. It will probably take a lot longer. They’ll have a ton of mistakes, or they can learn from someone who’s completely organized like you and has all of these things figured out. What’s the Mastermind group about? How can they learn more? What’s the website to go to?

Growth And Accountability: Joining A Mastermind To Scale Faster

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

Thanks for asking. The Mastermind, as I mentioned, has been so helpful for me, challenging me, helping me to think outside my box and grow as a firm owner. Several years ago, I offered a Mastermind group to

accounting firm owners. We have two groups. They both meet on Wednesdays. We have a morning group and an afternoon group. It’s a time where other firm, like-minded business owners get together and get perspective on, say, an issue.

Again, we go by the book Traction. It’s called IDS or Identify, Discuss, Solve. You get perspective on an issue. You get accountability. You get to give feedback and share your knowledge. We do quarterly planning for the upcoming 90 days. We track our KPIs and we do a book club. I think we’re reading Who Not How. We did The Ideal Team Player. There are different things that I do within this Mastermind group.

I do invite any of the readers. If they’re feeling overwhelmed, if they need perspective or space and time to think about working on their business, this is a great time to do it. In these calls, there’s two 90-minute calls per month via Zoom. We do a preview meeting where people interested can come to our workshop where we do quarterly planning. We ask five specific questions to get them to have a definite plan in place for the upcoming 90-days to discern who’s going to do what by when.

Where do they go to see the preview thing?

To sign up and get more information, it’s my firm name AdminBooks.com/Accounting-Mastermind.

Renee, thank you so much for being here with us on the show. This was so fun. I love how you have created this business for you that works. That’s part of your culture and what you wanted. This would support some other firm owners. Thank you so much for taking out the time and being here with us.

Thank you for allowing me to hang out with you. I enjoy sharing and teaching. That’s where my heart is.

You got that education degree putting it to use. Thank you again, Renee.

Thanks, Michelle.

—

That was a super fun episode with Renee as always. I feel like she’s been here before. Maybe it’s just because I’ve known her for a very long time. If you want to go check out her Mastermind because you don’t want to figure this stuff out on your own. I am a very big proponent of that. If you need help on the sales part because you’re good at the technical part. You’re not ready to farm out everything and outsource everything just like Renee has done.

Here at the Abundant Accountant, we can show you how to get paid upfront, how to have enrollment conversations with confidence, and how to stop trading time for dollars, even if sales calls make you freeze or you feel a little pushy. If you’d like to speak to us about that, then you can go to TheAbundantCall.com. Book your complimentary strategy session with me and my team. It was lovely to have you all here.

Important Links

• Renee Daggett on LinkedIn
• Admin Books
• Your Financial Flight Plan
• Accounting Software & Solutions
• PASBA
• Traction: Get A Grip On Your Business
• Entrepreneurial Operating System Model
• The Coaching Habit
• Who Not How
• The Ideal Team Player
• AdminBooks.com/Accounting-Mastermind

About Renee Daggett

Renee Daggett is an award-winning accounting firm owner, speaker, and author of Your Financial Flight Plan. She founded AdminBooks in 2003, which runs 100% virtually with a fully remote team focused on QuickBooks Online, payroll and tax planning services. Renee is an Enrolled Agent and Advanced QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor who has served on both the Intuit Tax Council and PASBA’s board of advisors. Her passion is helping entrepreneurs run profitable, purpose-driven businesses. Renee brings a warm, practical voice to every presentation she delivers.