The Profitable Accountant Podcast

Reza Hooda

This podcast is for accountants and CPA firm owners who want to learn how to transform the profits of their accounting firm.Fed up of working too many hours for too little reward, for not getting out of your practice what you dreamed you would ... well you're not alone. In this podcast we share common challenges and frustrations accounting owners face and give tips on how you can overcome them and make your practice something that gives you the return and life you always dreamed about.

  1. 6d ago

    #260 Three People Left At Once (Here's How I'm Replacing Them Without A Recruiter)

    This week, three people left my firm within weeks of each other. A client manager. An onboarding manager who didn't last two months. A bookkeeping manager. All while we're trying to grow. So I got dragged back into the one thing I try hardest to stay out of: hiring. I break down: Why you will only ever have two real problems in your firm, no matter how big you get The reason finding good people feels impossible (and why that has nothing to do with the market) How I used AI to write the job spec, post the ad on Indeed and screen every application that came in The LinkedIn outreach campaign I'm running for talent, exactly like I'd run one for new clients Why I deliberately exclude PAC members and coaching clients from that search The one qualifying question I ask every candidate before I'll give them an interview link Two answers from real applicants this week, side by side, and what they told me about each person Why the remote role attracted a completely different calibre of applicant How to think about the cost of a hire so you stop procrastinating over the decision The restructure we're making: back to a pod model, led by client managers I also share what I'm doing instead of timesheets to measure the team, using a revenue allocation tracker that gives every person in the firm a number they own. Mentioned in this episode: I'm running a live Claude workshop on Wednesday at 1pm UK time, building a website from scratch and deploying it on the web by the end of the session. One firm owner on the call gets their site built live and handed over on the day. PAC members are already included. Everyone else can grab a ticket here. This episode is sponsored by Karbon, the practice management platform we recently moved to after 12 years on our previous system. If you've ever told yourself it's too hard to find good people, this episode is for you. If you've enjoyed my podcasts, here's how you can get more value from me: Free stuff Get a free copy of my book The Four Pillars from here Watch a short 8 min video on how you can win new clients whilst you sleep here Join 1500+ accountants owners in the Profitable Accountant Free Facebook group My inner-circle Join 150+ accounting firm owners in the Profitable Accountants Community (the PAC) to get access to the tools, training and tribe to help you grow your firm - without wasting time and money doing it the hard way. Join the PAC NOW! For larger sole practitioner firms wanting more support, direction and accountability, access the Profitable Accountants Mastermind including 1-2-1 access to me If you're going to create an account and use OnlineJobs.ph use my affiliate link here and i'll get a few pennies back in return to fund my coffee addiction 🙂 http://store.onlinejobs.ph/?aid=377675 And if you haven't already, here's a link to sign up to Fathom AI for your video calls so you can generate those transcripts to help in your content writing.

  2. Sep 8

    #259 Why AI Won't Replace You (But Will Replace Some Of Your Clients' Reasons To Pay You)

    In this episode, I give my take on the Xero advert that set the whole profession off last week. The one where an influencer said she'd stopped paying her accountant £800 a month because she'd connected her cloud accounting. I'm not angry about it. I think it's a useful mirror. I break down: Why the software houses were never really "accountant first", and why that shouldn't surprise anyone The reason Excel, cloud accounting and OCR didn't kill accounting, and why AI won't either What clients are actually buying from you, and why it isn't the deliverable or the time The single highest value thing you offer, which almost nobody puts on their proposal Where you will genuinely lose clients to AI, and why you probably shouldn't want those clients anyway Why AI being confidently wrong matters more for your clients than it does for you The radiologist, the pilot and the £5m share sale: three analogies that explain why expertise still gets paid Why positioning is your real protection, and what "inch wide, mile deep" looks like in practice How to treat AI like a new employee, including the Loom trick for building skills your whole team can use Why the efficiency gains are yours to bank, providing you've got your pricing right I also talk about what I'm seeing inside the accelerator, including the member who went from nothing to being the go-to expert in children's care homes. [SPONSOR CREDIT LINE GOES HERE: This episode is sponsored by [Name](clean link), wording as supplied.] If you've been quietly anxious about what AI means for your firm, this episode is for you. If you've enjoyed my podcasts, here's how you can get more value from me: Free stuff Get a free copy of my book The Four Pillars from here Watch a short 8 min video on how you can win new clients whilst you sleep here Join 1500+ accountants owners in the Profitable Accountant Free Facebook group My inner-circle Join 150+ accounting firm owners in the Profitable Accountants Community (the PAC) to get access to the tools, training and tribe to help you grow your firm - without wasting time and money doing it the hard way. Join the PAC NOW! For larger sole practitioner firms wanting more support, direction and accountability, access the Profitable Accountants Mastermind including 1-2-1 access to me If you're going to create an account and use OnlineJobs.ph use my affiliate link here and i'll get a few pennies back in return to fund my coffee addiction 🙂 http://store.onlinejobs.ph/?aid=377675 And if you haven't already, here's a link to sign up to Fathom AI for your video calls so you can generate those transcripts to help in your content writing.

  3. Aug 28

    #258 Why Your Team Isn't Doing What You Asked (And How To Fix It)

    This week I'm talking about the pillar most firm owners ignore until it starts costing them money. People. I've just got back from two and a half weeks in South Africa, and the firm carried on perfectly well without me. That doesn't happen by accident. But I'm not going to pretend it's all perfect. We've had people leave because they couldn't handle their roles, we're recruiting again, and we're pulling apart our structure because what worked at a team of four doesn't work at a team of twenty. I break down: The three real drivers of employee motivation, and why money is rarely one of them Why hiring junior in the early days is a false economy that makes your bottleneck worse The fear that stops firm owners hiring people better than them, and how often it actually plays out The four questions to run through before you complain that your team hasn't delivered Why your internal targets get missed when external deadlines never do Why nobody ever trained you to manage, and what that costs you as you scale How I get a process out of my head in the time it takes to do the job once The one button that turns a screen recording into a full written SOP Why increasing the speed of your check-ins gets work finished faster The growing pains that hit at 200k, 500k and a million, and why they keep coming back I also share the exact list of questions I send candidates before I'll even take an interview call with them, and how to get a copy for your own recruitment. This episode is sponsored by Karbon, the practice management platform we recently moved to after 12 years on our previous system. If you've ever wondered why your team isn't doing what you asked them to do, this episode is for you. If you've enjoyed my podcasts, here's how you can get more value from me: Free stuff Get a free copy of my book The Four Pillars from here Watch a short 8 min video on how you can win new clients whilst you sleep here Join 1500+ accountants owners in the Profitable Accountant Free Facebook group My inner-circle Join 150+ accounting firm owners in the Profitable Accountants Community (the PAC) to get access to the tools, training and tribe to help you grow your firm - without wasting time and money doing it the hard way. Join the PAC NOW! For larger sole practitioner firms wanting more support, direction and accountability, access the Profitable Accountants Mastermind including 1-2-1 access to me If you're going to create an account and use OnlineJobs.ph use my affiliate link here and i'll get a few pennies back in return to fund my coffee addiction 🙂 http://store.onlinejobs.ph/?aid=377675 And if you haven't already, here's a link to sign up to Fathom AI for your video calls so you can generate those transcripts to help in your content writing.

  4. Aug 17

    #257 How Alex Grew A Remote-First Firm to £1m In 5 Years

    In this episode I sit down in a Southampton studio with Alex Norian of IWN Accountancy. Five years ago he was made redundant, had no savings, a newborn daughter and a wife who had stopped working. He's now on track for seven figures in his fifth year of trading, with a team of 12 and not a single office. Inside this episode you'll discover: Why being made redundant in the middle of a pandemic turned out to be the best thing for his career Why his first hire was a mistake, and the hire that changed everything Why he'd rather his head of accounting prepared his firm's accounts than do them himself How niching into property landlords let him win clients nationwide instead of within a 20 mile radius The video system that's non-negotiable for every team member, and why it beats an hour-long sign-off meeting Why he wrote his core values before he had a single employee, and the document that now runs to 50 pages The three pillar framework that replaced timesheets and drives performance related pay Why professional introducers have outperformed every other route to new business he's tried What he did when growth doubled year on year, then suddenly stalled at half a million The hiring mistake he says quietly damages the whole business if you cling on too long We also get into why the post-pandemic shift to remote working created an opportunity most firm owners still haven't taken, and how a remote firm can charge premium fees rather than compete on price. This episode is sponsored by Karbon, the practice management platform we recently moved to after 12 years on our previous system. If you've ever wondered how a firm grows this fast without an office, a big team or a decade of grind, this episode is for you. If you've enjoyed my podcasts, here's how you can get more value from me: Free stuff Get a free copy of my book The Four Pillars from here Watch a short 8 min video on how you can win new clients whilst you sleep here Join 1500+ accountants owners in the Profitable Accountant Free Facebook group My inner-circle Join 150+ accounting firm owners in the Profitable Accountants Community (the PAC) to get access to the tools, training and tribe to help you grow your firm - without wasting time and money doing it the hard way. Join the PAC NOW! For larger sole practitioner firms wanting more support, direction and accountability, access the Profitable Accountants Mastermind including 1-2-1 access to me If you're going to create an account and use OnlineJobs.ph use my affiliate link here and i'll get a few pennies back in return to fund my coffee addiction 🙂 http://store.onlinejobs.ph/?aid=377675 And if you haven't already, here's a link to sign up to Fathom AI for your video calls so you can generate those transcripts to help in your content writing.

  5. Aug 3

    #256 Why Good Service Isn't Enough To Keep Your Clients

    This week, I'm talking about something I rarely cover on here. Not how to win clients. How to keep them. We spend so much time obsessing over pricing, positioning and winning new work that we forget the thing that quietly makes or breaks a firm: whether our existing clients stay, and whether they shout about us to everyone they know. I break down: Why "we get their stuff in on time" is the bare minimum, not a selling point The difference between customer service and customer experience (and why most firms only do one) The two reasons clients actually leave their accountant Why losing a client costs you far more than their annual fee The Maya Angelou line that sums up client experience better than any textbook The car hire company that gave me a genuine "wow" experience, and what accountants can steal from it How to build proactivity into your team so it doesn't vanish the moment things get busy The simple one-letter tracker I used to measure client contact (and why we binned timesheets for it) How to give your team a bank of proactive ideas so they're never stuck for what to say I also share a bit behind the scenes on this month's PAC deep dive into pricing compliance profitably, and why compliance is still the most scalable, most profitable foundation your firm has. This episode is sponsored by Karbon, the practice management platform we recently moved to after 12 years on our previous system. If you've ever taken a long-standing client for granted, this episode is for you. If you've enjoyed my podcasts, here's how you can get more value from me: Free stuff Get a free copy of my book The Four Pillars from here Watch a short 8 min video on how you can win new clients whilst you sleep here Join 1500+ accountants owners in the Profitable Accountant Free Facebook group My inner-circle Join 150+ accounting firm owners in the Profitable Accountants Community (the PAC) to get access to the tools, training and tribe to help you grow your firm - without wasting time and money doing it the hard way. Join the PAC NOW! For larger sole practitioner firms wanting more support, direction and accountability, access the Profitable Accountants Mastermind including 1-2-1 access to me If you're going to create an account and use OnlineJobs.ph use my affiliate link here and i'll get a few pennies back in return to fund my coffee addiction 🙂 http://store.onlinejobs.ph/?aid=377675 And if you haven't already, here's a link to sign up to Fathom AI for your video calls so you can generate those transcripts to help in your content writing.

  6. Jul 27

    #255 Why Outreach Feels So Cringe (And How To Do It Anyway)

    In this episode, I'm talking about the thing that stops more accountants from winning clients than any lack of skill ever will. Fear. Specifically, the fear of putting yourself out there. Sending the message. Posting the content. Being seen. I've just finished a 10 week accelerator cohort, and the last two weeks were all about activation, which meant outreach. I hadn't realised quite how hard people find it to press send. I break down: Why you only ever have two problems in an accounting firm, whether you're a sole practitioner or PwC Why "this feels icky and salesy" is your brain protecting you from discomfort, not telling you the truth The networking event test that instantly fixes bad outreach Connect, compliment, question: the sequence that starts real conversations in the DMs The three C's that turn strangers into booked calls Why posting once or twice a week makes you invisible, and what I've actually done for five years The order you have to get right before outreach will work at all What happens when you send 50 to 100 DMs every single week The worst thing that has ever come back to me from a cold message, which is not what you're imagining Why we let what other people might be thinking cost us the things we say we want I also share what's been going on behind the scenes, including a few weeks back in the UK with family, and a studio interview coming soon with a firm owner who went from a standing start to seven figures in five years. This episode is sponsored by Karbon, the practice management platform we recently moved to after 12 years on our previous system. If you've known for months that you should be doing outreach but haven't been able to bring yourself to press send, this episode is for you. If you’ve enjoyed my podcasts, here’s how you can get more value from me: Free stuff Get a free copy of my book The Four Pillars from here Watch a short 8 min video on how you can win new clients whilst you sleep here Join 1500+ accountants owners in the Profitable Accountant Free Facebook group My inner-circle Join 150+ accounting firm owners in the Profitable Accountants Community (the PAC) to get access to the tools, training and tribe to help you grow your firm - without wasting time and money doing it the hard way. Join the PAC NOW! For larger sole practitioner firms wanting more support, direction and accountability, access the Profitable Accountants Mastermind including 1-2-1 access to me If you're going to create an account and use OnlineJobs.ph use my affiliate link here and i'll get a few pennies back in return to fund my coffee addiction 🙂 http://store.onlinejobs.ph/?aid=377675 And if you haven't already, here's a link to sign up to Fathom AI for your video calls so you can generate those transcripts to help in your content writing.

  7. Jul 16

    #254 Why Your To Do List Is Quietly Killing Your Firm

    In this episode, I'm back after a few weeks off, walking along the beach in Fareham on a 28 degree UK evening. And I explain exactly why the podcast disappeared. It wasn't discipline. It was friction. I break down: The real reason I stopped recording for weeks (and why it had nothing to do with motivation) The four criteria every habit needs before it will ever stick Why environment design beats willpower every single time The reason your to do list guarantees you'll never feel finished Why nobody can book a call with me before 1pm, and what that time is for The difference between deep work and busy work your brain will lie to you about Why your inbox is a place for other people's agendas How I now run my businesses from my phone by talking to Claude instead of typing The two high leverage activities you should be working on every single week Why I stopped going to my own office and started working in a coffee shop I also share what's been going on behind the scenes: the PAC LIVE event in Newbury on the 1st of July, our team day and the 2030 growth plan for Capture, and the Power Positioning Accelerator cohort that's just wrapped up. This episode is sponsored by Karbon, the practice management platform we recently moved to after 12 years on our previous system. If you've ever struggled to find time for the work that actually moves your firm forward, this episode is for you. Free stuff Get a free copy of my book The Four Pillars from here Watch a short 8 min video on how you can win new clients whilst you sleep here Join 1500+ accountants owners in the Profitable Accountant Free Facebook group My inner-circle Join 150+ accounting firm owners in the Profitable Accountants Community (the PAC) to get access to the tools, training and tribe to help you grow your firm - without wasting time and money doing it the hard way. Join the PAC NOW! For larger sole practitioner firms wanting more support, direction and accountability, access the Profitable Accountants Mastermind including 1-2-1 access to me If you're going to create an account and use OnlineJobs.ph use my affiliate link here and i'll get a few pennies back in return to fund my coffee addiction 🙂 http://store.onlinejobs.ph/?aid=377675 And if you haven't already, here's a link to sign up to Fathom AI for your video calls so you can generate those transcripts to help in your content writing.

  8. Jun 19

    #253 Which Social Media Platform Should You Actually Be On?

    This week, I'm tackling a question I get asked more than almost any other. Which social media platform should you actually be on? And what on earth should you post once you're there? I break down: Why a podcast feels lonely while social media doesn't, and what that taught me about marketing The reason it now takes 7 or 8 touch points before someone trusts you enough to get in touch Why "when you confuse, you lose" should shape every post you write The one platform I'd tell any accountant to start with, and why the algorithm is on your side Why your audience is on LinkedIn even when you're convinced they're not How to create content that gets a booked call, not just likes The contrarian truth about using AI to write your posts, and why I ignore the people who say don't Why video will make you stand out, especially if you're a female accountant How one of my Accelerator members found a warm lead worth £25-30k in fees within a week of posting daily This episode is sponsored by Karbon, the practice management platform we recently moved to after 12 years on our previous system. If you've ever stared at a blank screen wondering what to post or where, this episode is for you. If you’ve enjoyed my podcasts, here’s how you can get more value from me: Free stuff Get a free copy of my book The Four Pillars from here Watch a short 8 min video on how you can win new clients whilst you sleep here Join 1500+ accountants owners in the Profitable Accountant Free Facebook group My inner-circle Join 150+ accounting firm owners in the Profitable Accountants Community (the PAC) to get access to the tools, training and tribe to help you grow your firm - without wasting time and money doing it the hard way. Join the PAC NOW! For larger sole practitioner firms wanting more support, direction and accountability, access the Profitable Accountants Mastermind including 1-2-1 access to me If you're going to create an account and use OnlineJobs.ph use my affiliate link here and i'll get a few pennies back in return to fund my coffee addiction 🙂 http://store.onlinejobs.ph/?aid=377675 And if you haven't already, here's a link to sign up to Fathom AI for your video calls so you can generate those transcripts to help in your content writing.

About

This podcast is for accountants and CPA firm owners who want to learn how to transform the profits of their accounting firm.Fed up of working too many hours for too little reward, for not getting out of your practice what you dreamed you would ... well you're not alone. In this podcast we share common challenges and frustrations accounting owners face and give tips on how you can overcome them and make your practice something that gives you the return and life you always dreamed about.

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