James Buss decided to open a CPA firm on April 1, 2005. Yes, April Fool’s Day, which he now admits was “a bad day to open a CPA firm.” That first year, he had about 50 clients and ended with just $50,000 in revenue. Today, nearly 20 years later, he and his wife Cindy run Buss CPA, a $1.1 million practice from Hartford, South Dakota, a town of 3,000 people just outside Sioux Falls.
In a recent episode of Who’s Really the Boss?, hosts Marcus and Rachel Dillon sat down with James and Cindy to talk about what it’s really like when married couples run accounting firms together. They shared stories of making tough decisions during crises, building systems that take emotion out of business choices, and finding a community of peers who actually share what works.
From Law Enforcement to Million-Dollar Firm
James worked in law enforcement before he became a CPA. He went to school for criminal justice and worked for Minnehaha County for about four years before, as he puts it, he “saw the light.” He’s still an EMT basic and has been a volunteer firefighter since 1995—longer than he’s been a CPA.
This background shapes how he approaches business. Growing up in a family that owned a plumbing and heating business since 1978, James has been around construction his whole life. That’s why today, 70% of his clients are construction companies. He understands their world because he lived in it.
When James opened his firm at 35, he’d already worked in public accounting for about five years and spent two years with a Fortune 500 construction company. But starting from scratch meant building everything from the ground up. About two or three years in, he brought Cindy into the business. As she explains it, she got some advice not to marry a CPA—advice she obviously didn’t take. “Sometimes advice isn’t taken well,” she laughs, “but I think one of the best pieces of advice beyond that is to treat people as you would like to be treated.”
Today, they’re a blended family with six adult children, including one who just graduated with a master’s in social work and another getting married next year who has a master’s in accounting. Between volleyball games and football seasons with the grandkids, they run a firm with four hybrid employees and one remote team member in the Philippines.
When Crisis Forces Change
The 2008 financial crisis changed everything for Buss CPA. James is clear that it was harder than COVID. “In 2008, it was a bumpy ride for companies,” he explains. “We were advising on whether companies should keep their employees, keep a line of business, keep their location, or if they should even stay open.”
During COVID, it was about navigating Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) programs and rules that changed every weekend. In 2008, it was about survival.
After joining a peer group in 2009, James made a radical decision: fire half the clients, let the staff go, and drop back to just himself. The firm was doing a little over $200,000 at the time, which was solid growth from that first $50,000, but the mix wasn’t working.
“We kept what we call now CAS,” James says, noting that the term might be new but the concept isn’t. They also went virtual after their server died, which turned out to be perfect preparation for COVID a decade later. “Going virtual during COVID was nothing new for us. We had been virtual for years.”
The crisis also pushed James to rethink pricing. He remembers pitching his first fixed-fee client around 2009, offering monthly accounting for about $900 instead of a $2,000 to $3,000 spring cleanup bill. The client’s response was, “So my wife won’t have to do this on the weekends?” Deal closed.
James had to abandon hourly billing simply because, “as the software got better, the hours went down. So in theory I’d be doing $50 tax returns now.” When clients push back on fixed pricing, he uses an analogy they understand. “When you bought your truck, did you ask them how many hours it took to put the truck together?”
Today, about 75 of their clients are on fixed-fee contracts, representing 70% to 75% of revenue. They’ve cut their tax-only work from nearly 1,000 returns to about 450, with more staff to handle them.
Taking Emotion Out of the Equation
One smart move Buss CPA made was creating systems that remove owner emotion from critical decisions. James no longer decides which clients to accept. Instead, a committee of two client managers and Cindy makes those calls.
“I don’t know if I can ever get out of this mindset that every client’s a new client. It might be my last one,” James admits. The committee asks questions prospects won’t answer honestly to the owner. They can find out if someone hasn’t filed taxes for four years or doesn’t believe in paying taxes—things they might not tell James directly.
The same approach works for pricing. Their current average monthly fee is about $900, with new clients coming in at $1,000 to $1,500. James is planning a 5% to 7% increase for January 1st, pushed through systematically using Ignition. One client who initially rejected their pricing came back after trying another firm. His comment? “My wife is really mad at me for not taking your fixed-fee contract.” He’ll now pay more than the original quote because, as James notes, “we have something called inflation.”
They also charge onboarding fees of about $1,500, sometimes quoting $2,500 initially then “negotiating” down. “It gives you that buffer for them to feel like when they walked out that they did some negotiation,” James explains, while still covering the 20 minutes it takes staff to set up a sales tax license and other setup work.
Even succession planning gets the emotion-free treatment. Back in 2021, Cindy announced she’d retire in December 2024. Now she’s taking Wednesdays off and edging toward the door more gradually. “When we get tired, we don’t have to quit. We can rest,” Rachel observed during the conversation. Cindy might stay two more years part-time while they search for the right operations manager. It’s hard to find someone you trust with the books, invoicing, and “all those things near and dear to us that we don’t necessarily want everybody in the world to know.”
Finding Your People
Perhaps the biggest accelerator for the Buss firm’s growth has been community, specifically Collective by DBA, a group of accounting firm owners who share what actually works in their practices.
“I can’t get five accounting firm owners from Sioux Falls together in a room to talk about how we run our businesses,” James says. “Everything’s top secret.”
But in Collective by DBA, he has a Rolodex of people to call with specific questions. Should we use a Professional Employer Organization (PEO) now that we have seven employees? How did you implement fixed-fee pricing? Why is my tech stack so expensive? He couldn’t ask his old firm these questions because they’re still in suits and ties with everyone in the office—not dealing with hybrid teams and virtual infrastructure.
James participates in forums where ten firms take turns being the “focus,” sharing deep challenges and getting candid feedback. When it was his turn, they gave him nine different perspectives on hiring challenges.
He compares it to a military obstacle course. “The community lifts one person up so they can reach to the top of the wall and pull themselves up. Then they can reach down and grab you and pull you up over the wall.”
The results are concrete. James wouldn’t have his team member in the Philippines without community. He wouldn’t charge onboarding fees. “I don’t think we’d be at $1.1 million in revenue if we didn’t have this.”
For Cindy, it’s about more than tactics. “It’s the safe spot to go to. We’ve made great friends through community. Nobody makes you feel bad if you ask kind of a dumb question.”
The Real Secret: Communication
The importance of communication is a recurring theme throughout the conversation. “People don’t remember what you did for them. They remember how they felt,” James says, paraphrasing the poet Maya Angelou.
This belief drives everything from client service to team management. CPAs are notorious for not returning phone calls, but James and Cindy make communication a priority. “All you have to do is communicate with your clients and you’re 80% or more ahead of the game,” James says.
He shared a recent example where he got double-scheduled and missed a call. His message to the team member who made the mistake was clear. “You gotta remember that this person’s not going to remember how I took care of their IRS issue. They’re going to remember that we skipped their telephone call.”
Building Together, Growing Together
After nearly 20 years of working together, James and Cindy have built something remarkable from that risky April Fool’s Day start. They’ve weathered the 2008 crisis, adapted to virtual work before it was necessary, and built systems that let them make better decisions than either could alone.
Their story shows that you don’t need to be in a major market or acquire other firms to build a million-dollar practice. You need the courage to make hard decisions during a crisis, systems that remove emotion from business choices, and a community of peers who’ll share what actually works.
As they look toward the future, with Cindy gradually transitioning toward retirement and James continuing to grow the firm, they’re proof that working with your spouse can work, even in the demanding world of public accounting.
Want to hear more about how James and Cindy navigate working together, including the jokes about age differences and one-room schoolhouses? Listen to the full episode of Who’s Really the Boss? for all the stories, laughs, and wisdom these two couples share about building successful firms with the person you married.
Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a Texas-based, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 15 professionals. Their latest organization, Collective by DBA, supports and guides accounting firm owners and leaders with firm resources, education, and operational strategy through community, groups, and one-on-one advisory.