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The Seven-Part Framework That Turned a Bottlenecked Firm Into a Director-Led One

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Rachel and Marcus Dillon were in the middle of pricing out a closet remodel when the numbers stopped making sense. Rachel was thinking maybe $5,000—and even that felt steep for organizing a space that already had decent storage. Marcus had mentally prepared for $10,000. Then the custom closet consultant dropped an estimate for $30,000.

“She equated it to a trip to Europe that may cost $20,000 to $30,000. And that’s just one trip. You use your closet daily,” Marcus recalled on a recent episode of Who’s Really the BOSS? “And I’m like, lady, I’m not spending 30 grand to go to Europe either.”

The disconnect was almost comical. But Marcus quickly flipped it into a lesson for accounting firm owners. “You could spend $30,000 on a closet. Why don’t you spend $30,000 a year on a really good accountant and know where your business is at any given time?”

That conversation about value sets up the bigger story. Because just like that closet consultant needed to find her ideal customer, Marcus and Rachel had to figure out who should truly own each piece of their growing accounting firm.

When the Owner Becomes the Bottleneck

In the beginning, Marcus was everything at his accounting firm. Business development started with him. Some preparation work landed on his desk. And he reviewed every single deliverable before it went out the door.

“You were the beginning, the middle and the end,” Rachel told him during the episode. “And there was help in between those things.”

That worked fine when the firm was smaller. But Dillon Business Advisors (DBA) is now a $5 million-plus CPA firm with about 24 team members. At that size, having one person as the center of every decision is impossible.

The first breakthrough came when they built what they call the “team of three,” a pod structure that created capacity for quality service delivery and allowed them to scale. They could keep bringing on new clients because the pods could handle them. But even with that structure and Rachel’s help, Marcus remained the person everyone ultimately answered to.

“Your org chart and responsibilities have to look a lot different than they did at one, two, or three million,” Marcus explained. The question that forced their hand was uncomfortable but necessary: What in the firm still waits on the owner?

Why Summer Is the Time to Fix It

The Dillons tackled this restructuring during what they call “improvement season,” which runs from roughly April 15 to August 15. It’s after tax season but before extension deadlines heat up. Since most firms in their network run both tax and client accounting services, summer is when they have breathing room to experiment.

“We like to do our refinements, improvements, and sometimes experiments during the times we’re not in a deadline crunch,” Rachel explained. The timing is deliberate. They implement changes in summer, practice them during the lighter extension season in September and October, then refine them once more before year-end. By January, when the volume returns, the new way of working is second nature.

“That’s really a gift to our team,” Rachel added, “to not pull a software and change it or completely rework a whole process in the middle of tax season.”

This particular improvement season, Amy McCarty, DBA’s Director of Operations and People, led the charge to formalize director roles. But before they could put people in seats, they had to define what those seats actually were. They’d learned that lesson the hard way with a director of business development hire that didn’t work out, largely because the role lacked clear definition.

The Seven Parts Every Director Role Needs

The word “ownership” does heavy lifting in this conversation, and Rachel made the distinction crystal clear by referencing an episode of The Double Win podcast. Real ownership means handling something from conception through planning to execution, at an agreed-upon standard.

“It’s fine for a spouse to say, ‘Can I go to the store for you?'” Rachel explained. “But it’s another thing for that spouse to know we need things for the weekend, to make that list, go to the store, and unload the groceries. They need to own the whole process.”

Until someone owns the entire function, the mental load stays with the original person. They’re still wondering, “Do they know what they’re supposed to do? Will it get done to the standard I expect?”

DBA built its director roles around seven specific components:

  1. Primary Focus: A one-sentence statement that captures the role’s core purpose. “If you can’t say it in a sentence, then the role isn’t clear,” Marcus said.
  2. Owns: What they’re specifically accountable for. “Not aspirational, but concrete.”
  3. Measured By: The outcomes that prove it’s working. “That’s where ownership gets teeth,” Marcus noted.
  4. Not Responsible For: Marcus called this “the most underrated section” in the whole framework. In small firms where everyone wears multiple hats, explicitly naming what’s not someone’s job gives them “freedom, a breath of fresh air.”
  5. The One-Liner: The soul of the role. For example, the Director of Technology and AI “builds the machine, but doesn’t run it.” The Director of Sales and Marketing “brings in the right work, doesn’t execute it.”
  6. KPIs: The numbers that prove success.
  7. Weekly Question: A single recurring question that keeps the role honest. For operations, it’s “Where are we overloaded or at risk of missing a deadline?” For sales, it’s “Do we have enough right-fit opportunities coming in?”

Rachel, drawing on her background as an elementary teacher, explained why the “not responsible for” section is so powerful. “Our brain is forming pathways, right? And trying to connect to something that we already know. You help your brain out by saying it is not this.”

The Five Director Roles at DBA

With the framework built, DBA mapped out five director positions. Each deliberately combines two related areas. This is a design choice that works at their current size but anticipates future growth.

“At a $5 million company, the directors can handle those two areas,” Rachel explained. But at $10 or $15 million, those roles might split. Sales and marketing could become two separate directors. Technology and AI might divide.

Here’s how the roles break down today:

  • Director of Tax and Financial Planning: The technical authority who ensures everything the firm delivers is correct, sound, and within the firm’s risk tolerance. He doesn’t own workflow enforcement (that’s operations) or sales (that’s marketing).
  • Director of Accounting and Advisory: Focuses on client experience and ongoing advisory value. “It’s not just accurate financials,” Marcus explained. “It’s the perceived insight and the conversations that you have with clients.”
  • Director of Operations and People: Runs the machine and the people inside it, owning execution capacity and accountability. “She runs the thing, essentially,” Marcus joked.
  • Director of Technology and AI: Builds the systems and automation layer. After 18 months on the team, DBA’s Director of Technology and AI, Angel Sabino, has moved from playing with AI tools to actually deploying them across the firm.
  • Director of Sales and Marketing: Brings in the right work without executing it, working closely with operations to pair new clients with teams that have both capacity and expertise.

The process of defining these roles surfaced some surprising overlaps. Rachel’s previous title was “Firm Administrator.” It was a catch-all that mostly meant she didn’t do tax or technical accounting. When they formalized the director structure, they discovered that Rachel, Amy, and Marcus were all holding pieces of the “people” function.

“When we did this, we really created a clear divide,” Rachel said. “Amy’s really going to own people. Can I help her? Can you help her? Yes, but she owns it.”

Making It Stick Through Scorecards and Trust

Defining roles is necessary but not sufficient. “If you never review this again, if you only bring it up at someone’s annual review, this is not going to be successful,” Marcus warned.

DBA’s accountability lives in a spreadsheet. Each director has a tab to log their KPIs, which feed into a color-coded dashboard showing whether each area is on track, at risk, or off track. Directors update metrics weekly and rate their KPIs monthly.

But the magic isn’t in the spreadsheet. It’s the question they ask when something goes red. Instead of “What went wrong?” or “Why didn’t you hit your number?” they ask, “What do you need from this room?”

Rachel gave an example. If sales and marketing show zero right-fit leads, she might tell the other directors she needs educational materials or downloadable resources, something technical that makes the firm attractive to prospects. “That’s something where they could help me, since I’m not an accountant,” she said.

This only works with genuine trust. “If you have people that are not there to really ask what you need from this room, and they’re okay with either you failing or wanting you to fail, that’s an awful situation,” Marcus said bluntly.

The owner also has to resist the rescue instinct. If Marcus jumps in too quickly when someone struggles, “you’re always going to be the person picking up the pieces and quote unquote rescuing that person. And they never fully own anything.”

The Payoff Is A Firm That Can Scale Without the Owner

The shift from owner-led to director-led reduces Marcus’s workload while creating real opportunities for talented team members. These are the kinds of opportunities that, when missing, send good people out the door to create their own.

It also positions the firm to scale differently. “With the director levels plus new technology, we’ll be able to grow and scale a little bit more without adding the same number of team members,” Marcus explained. They can contemplate growing to $10 million without doubling their headcount, especially as AI and automation reshape what capacity means.

Marcus offered a simple example of how it works now. Someone forwarded a news article about COVID-related penalty and interest clawbacks. Instead of Marcus making a snap decision, three directors evaluated it together. Sales assessed the opportunity, operations checked capacity and tax confirmed feasibility. They made a collective, informed decision with no bottleneck.

“The minutes that exist here in improvement season are maybe more important than the minutes that exist during busy season,” Marcus reflected. “Because here’s where we’re planting the seeds to harvest later on.”

For firms still centered on the owner, the Dillons’ journey offers a warning and a roadmap. The warning is that growth will eventually make the owner-as-bottleneck model impossible. The roadmap is clear role definitions, genuine ownership transfer, and the trust to let capable people either succeed or occasionally fail.

DBA is sharing its complete director role framework with members of the Collective by DBA community. To learn more about joining, listen to the full episode.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a national, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 25 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. 

Growth and rest aren’t opposites when you build the machine that makes both possible

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When someone tells Rachel Dillon they landed 20 new clients in six months, her first thought is chaos. Overworked staff. Missed deadlines. A firm running on caffeine and adrenaline. So when the team at Dillon Business Advisors gathered for its mid-year retreat this summer, Rachel noticed that her firm celebrated not just new-client wins but also paid time off taken. More clients and more rest, in the same six months.

On Who’s Really the BOSS?, hosts Marcus and Rachel Dillon walk through the numbers behind their first half of 2026. They measure those results against the goals they set at their November 2025 team retreat. The numbers prove fast growth and a healthier team aren’t competing goals; they’re two outputs of the same well-built system. DBA landed 20 new client accounting services (CAS) clients (five more than its annual target) at an average of $1,965 in monthly recurring revenue. Meanwhile, the team took 75% more paid time off than the year before. It turns out sustainable scaling is a system.

In this episode, Marcus and Rachel look at the numbers behind the growth, the team structure that absorbed it, the PTO shift that proves it didn’t come at the team’s expense, and where the clients actually came from.

The numbers tell the real story

Back in November 2025, DBA set a goal of adding 15 new monthly client or family-group relationships in 2026. These are small businesses or complex families that need income and expenses tracked year-round, at roughly $2,000 in monthly recurring revenue each. Annualized, that’s about $30,000 in MRR. The firm built the goal around what it could capably deliver, because its teams of three are structured to serve exactly this kind of work.

The results beat the target. Through June, DBA accepted and onboarded 20 CAS clients. At DBA, base CAS work includes monthly bookkeeping, tax returns, two tax projections per year, and at least one advisory meeting, plus payroll or sales tax when applicable. As Rachel points out, most of these clients are on an annual advisory touchpoint rather than quarterly or monthly meetings. That’s how the team scales without drowning. Fees ranged from a $500 Schedule C add-on to a $3,000-per-month engagement. On top of the 20, the firm added two monthly tax advisory plan (TAP) clients at $800 and $500 per month. That’s recurring revenue even from clients who aren’t business owners.

Then there’s the revenue from onboarding fees. Standard onboarding starts at $7,500, and across those 20 engagements, DBA charged $101,415 in total, averaging over $5,000 per engagement. The charges ranged from $2,500 for a well-known client setting up a simple new entity to $10,000 for a complex engagement with lots of moving pieces and a tax return.

The reason DBA charges onboarding fees is straightforward. In Marcus’s words, “position it to where you’re coming out of the gate showing value and getting paid for the value you bring from the very beginning.” Both the monthly service and the onboarding begin the day the client signs the engagement letter. No delayed starts, no prorating headaches. The signing date is the anniversary and charge date.

Why 20 onboardings didn’t create chaos

Big numbers only stay healthy if you engineer the work behind them. DBA’s clearest proof that growth is a system is its onboarding engine.

There’s no single “onboarding person.” New clients are spread across teams of three. The firm started 2026 with five teams that could accept work and grew to about seven by mid-year. That meant more homes for incoming clients. Every month, Marcus meets with Lezlie Reeves, CPA, DBA’s Director of Accounting & Advisory, and Amy McCarty, Director of Operations, to review client exits, the pipeline, and each team’s workload, all of which DBA tracks in Excel.

DBA clearly defines roles within each onboarding so no one drowns. 

  • Tax admin: sets up projects, folders, and client communication
  • Client service manager: builds the QuickBooks Online file, chart of accounts, reports, and workflows
  • Controller: reviews the compliance work, moves it into the tax software, and issues the first set of financials
  • CFO: supports the team, fields early advisory questions, and starts building rapport

They document the whole process in Canopy, beginning with a kickoff call, and an insights report tracks how many days each onboarding takes.

They complete most onboardings in 13 to 14 days. Only two ran past two weeks, and those were a three-entity family group at 29 days, and another at 21 days due to complexity and the client being out of town. Incentives keep the rhythm going. DBA pays onboarding bonuses after the first financial statements go out, and the bonus shrinks each week past the two-week mark. Just as important, the same team that onboarded a client serves them long term. That eliminates the hand-off friction Marcus has seen at firms where one person onboards and then tosses the work over the wall.

Celebrating time off as a growth metric

A system that spreads out the work also makes rest possible. In 2026, DBA moved from a designated, accrual-based PTO model to flexible, “unlimited” PTO with guardrails.

The firm tackled the obvious fear head-on. At the year-end retreat, a team member raised the well-known concern that unlimited PTO can lead people to take less time off. So DBA kept tracking it. They confirmed PTO taken was up 75% compared to the same period in 2025, even during tax season and 20 onboardings. Marcus offers an honest caveat, noting past tracking might be imperfect because some of that time was always being taken. But better data now means a stronger foundation either way.

The change built on years of evolution. DBA started with tenure-based weeks that included three weeks of PTO, plus a fourth after five years of service. Then it moved to a year-of-service payout model that extended benefits to part-timers by establishing a reliable base workweek, such as a committed 24 hours. Flexible PTO now has the same base: 24 hours per week, 52 weeks per year, guaranteed comp, with pay for anything above it.

The real goal was removing uncertainty. When employees have doctor’s appointments, they don’t have to wonder whether they need to make up hours or use PTO. That system kept people tethered to their phones instead of disconnecting, and often meant time simply went untracked. Flexible PTO lets a team member “turn messages off and go do what they need to do.” And there are no blackout periods, even during tax season, because, as Marcus puts it, “people probably need to take more time off during tax season than any other time.” Coverage is handled inside the team of three.

Key lessons:

  • Track what you value, even after you make it “unlimited”
  • Guarantee a reliable base so time off feels safe, not risky
  • Cover the work inside the team instead of imposing blackout dates

The growth came from relationships, not ad spend

Systems for onboarding and rest explain how DBA absorbed the growth. But where did the growth itself come from? Not $100,000 in paid ads, a lead-gen company, or an in-house social media team. The firm invested in its website about 18 months ago to fix schema and technical SEO to regain visibility and search ranking. But that wasn’t the engine.

Eighty-five percent of new wins came from existing clients or referrals:

  • 10 (50%) came from existing clients expanding into new businesses, acquisitions, or new entities. In one case, a client left a W-2 job to open their own practice and upgraded from a TAP to a CAS plan. Simply adding more advisory meetings does not count as a new client. Only a new entity or client ID does.
  • 7 (35%) came from referrals.
  • 1 came from website or search (Google or an LLM). More prospects entered through search, but they didn’t convert.

The tactics behind that are low-tech. Tell your best clients you have capacity. “Don’t send this to your worst client,” Marcus warns. Push back on the reflexive “I know you’re busy” culture that stops clients from asking for more. Talk naturally about your team and services in everyday settings. Marcus points to cars-and-coffee conversations and a morning workout, during which his trainer asked for 1099 help. And help people even when they aren’t a fit. “Leave people you know better than you found them,” Marcus says. In this case, he pointed his trainer toward simpler tools rather than selling him a service he didn’t need.

Marcus also cautions against taking on annual, tax-only clients, hoping to convert them to CAS later. If you already deliver great annual service, clients have little reason to pay more for monthly work. You’ll end up with a pile of tax clients and no base to build teams around. Meanwhile, an emerging trend fuels onboarding demand. Businesses are migrating from QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online as longtime staff retire. Marcus cites a large oral surgeon group whose office manager, after decades in QuickBooks Desktop, was nearing retirement. These conversions justify onboarding fees precisely because the firm gets to build the systems right from the start.

Build the machine, then let it run

Landing 20 clients in six months wasn’t luck or hustle. It was the payoff of intentional systems. Defined pricing everyone can articulate, a separate onboarding fee that funds the real setup work, onboarding shared across teams of three, monthly capacity reviews, and people-first flexible PTO. Growth and a healthier team came out of the same machine.

For firm owners, spouses, and accounting professionals, that reframes the classic trade-off. You don’t have to choose between scaling revenue and protecting your people. But you do have to build the infrastructure that lets both happen. Rest and growth stop being opposites when you design capacity rather than hoping for it.

Here are Rachel’s practical things you can do today:

  • Assess your pricing: define service plans and base pricing that your team and clients can all articulate
  • Charge an onboarding fee: it funds the real setup work and lets you reward the team
  • Define and delegate your onboarding process: never one person doing it all, since shared responsibility prevents bottlenecks when clients flood in
  • Communicate capacity to your best clients and referral sources

For the deeper numbers, the full onboarding-role breakdown, and the evolution of DBA’s PTO models, listen to the full episode of Who’s Really the BOSS? And don’t miss the follow-up episode on the firm’s tax advisory plan (TAP) clients.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a national, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 26 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.

She Tried to Sell Her Firm Three Times Before Moving It to a Beach in Mexico

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Sandra Koch tried to sell her accounting firm three times over ten years. She was burned out and ready to quit. Today, she runs that same firm from a beach town in Mexico with dirt roads and one stop sign. And she’s never been happier.

In this episode of Who’s Really the Boss?, hosts Rachel and Marcus Dillon talk with Sandra, founder of Aurora Consulting Group. She shares her journey from owning a building in California to running her firm remotely from Baja California Sur. The conversation gets real about the anxiety of closing an office, the grief of letting go, and the unexpected freedom that followed.

The Dream Building That Had to Go

Sandra did everything by the book. She founded Aurora Consulting Group in San Diego in 2011 with one assistant. Three years later, she was juggling two offices—one in San Diego and one in Visalia, deep in California’s farmland. For 16 months, she went back and forth between the two locations. Eventually, she closed the San Diego office. “That wasn’t really working too well,” she admits.

Then came the building in Visalia. Sandra searched for a year before finding it. She bought it, remodeled it, and made it exactly what she wanted. “It was ego feeding, and it was a status symbol,” Sandra says on the podcast. She’s not embarrassed. It felt like success.

Marcus gets it. He grew up believing the ultimate achievement was having your name on a brick building where clients came to you. “That meant you made it,” he says. The day before recording this episode, Marcus and Rachel had just sold their own “forever building.”

By August 2023, reality hit Sandra hard. Clients weren’t coming to the office anymore. Some staff had moved away and were already remote. She was paying for an empty building.

“I wouldn’t wish the anxiety that I experienced during that time on anybody,” Sandra recalls. “But I knew it was the right thing to do.”

When Aurora Consulting Group went fully remote, Sandra was surprised by the grief she felt. “I had this dream, and then the dream kind of fell apart,” she explains. “Letting go of the dream felt like, wait, what do I do now?”

Marcus admits he also tends to remember only the good parts about having an office. You forget the commute, hiding from walk-in clients when you don’t have time, and dealing with frozen pipes. “I only remember the good days,” he says.

Sandra went through the same mental battle. “I’ll get sad about it. But then I’m like, Sandra, do the math. The math says it doesn’t make sense.”

A year after going remote, Sandra realized she could live anywhere. She wasn’t tied to Visalia or even California anymore. In 2024, she moved to Baja California Sur, Mexico, a coastal town with 1,800 people, dirt roads, and 25 varieties of whales passing by.

“The freedom I have from letting go of a physical location has been profound,” Sandra says. Every morning, she watches the sun rise over what Jacques Cousteau called “the world’s aquarium.”

She keeps a small office in Visalia for when she visits and has a part-time assistant who handles the occasional bank deposit. She learned some lessons the hard way, like discovering U.S. banks require a physical presence in the country to maintain accounts.

But that building with her name on it is gone, and she’s more proud of her firm now than ever.

Staying Close From 1,500 Miles Away

Going remote created new challenges. How do you stay connected to clients you genuinely care about? How do you keep a scattered team feeling like a team?

Sandra’s approach to clients is simple. She flies back three or four times a year and takes them to meals, one-on-one. No group events or presentations. Just food and conversation.

“I care about them and miss them. I want to see them just like I would want to see my family,” she explains. The one-on-one format is intentional. “That’s where the magic is. They tell me what’s really going on with them.”

Her clients’ warm response surprised her. They’re genuinely excited to see their CPA up in person.

Marcus shares a similar story. When a client who had sold his business invited Marcus to visit his farm, Marcus took him up on the offer and saw the excitement in the client’s eyes. They spent the day at the farm. No tax talk, just relationship building.

Building Team Culture Without an Office

Sandra’s team of six is spread across California and beyond. Her first remote hire four years ago turned out to be the right fit and set the standard for what worked.

Three things make remote work function, according to Sandra: training, culture, and communication. “You have to be religious about it,” she says.

The centerpiece is their Tuesday morning meeting at 10 a.m.. The key to this meeting is it’s not about work. The team shares what they need help with, their wins, and their struggles. Then they discuss their monthly book, with a $100 bonus for anyone who finishes it. They wrap up with “happies and crappies” (highs and lows).

Rachel points out that putting even modest money behind expectations shows the team you value the activity. “Start lower than you think,” she advises. “You can always increase an incentive, but it’s nearly impossible to reduce one.”

Sandra also discovered her team loves company swag. Nice jackets at Christmas had everyone excited. “It makes me realize they’re proud of the team they’re on,” she says.

In-person moments matter too. Sandra took the team to Intuit Connect in Las Vegas, where some team members met face-to-face for the first time. “They still talk about it,” she says. These investments show “I’m putting my money where my mouth is.”

As a result, Sandra believes she’s actually better at her job now.

“My clients get a better version of me,” she explains. “They get a less stressed-out version of me. I’m more present for them now because I’m not dealing with all the things attached to a physical location.”

The Science Experiment That Changed Everything

Sandra managed a lot of change in a short time period by changing how she thinks about trying new things.

“I used to think trying new things meant it would either succeed or fail,” she says. “When I changed to thinking ‘I’m doing a science experiment to see what happens,’ it really helped me.”

A science experiment doesn’t fail. It gives you data. You try something, see what happens, and decide whether to continue or pivot.

“I don’t have to commit to anything,” Sandra explains. “Not to software, not to a staff member, not to a client. When I go in thinking ‘I don’t have to commit, but I’m willing to try because I’m curious,’ it takes all the pressure off.”

This requires humility. You have to be honest about what’s working. Sandra’s team serves as a reality check, and her husband keeps her grounded when her curiosity pulls her in too many directions.

The results speak for themselves. “Our internal workflows went from practical nonexistence to a well-oiled machine very quickly,” Sandra says. “When something wasn’t working, we dropped it and went on to the next thing.”

Her 2026 goals show how far this mindset has taken her. Aurora has just three goals this year, down from 29 last year and 52 the year before. The three words: align, refine, and define. No big initiatives. Just steady improvement of what’s already working.

Finding Her People Made the Difference

Sandra credits one encounter with saving her firm. In November 2022, she heard Marcus speak at Intuit Connect. She got on the mailing list for Collective by DBA and signed up for their first in-person event.

“I heard a message of hope,” she remembers. “Aurora would not exist today if I hadn’t met you.”

Before that, she felt alone. Now, “I feel like I’m part of a community for the first time in my career,” she says. “A community that cares about me.”

She hasn’t missed a single Collective event. She brings team members. She reads every email, asks questions on the forum, and shares what she knows with others.

“It feels safe,” she explains. “I can be my messy self with you guys.”

When Rachel asks about her best advice, Sandra doesn’t hesitate: “Trust God, clean house, and help others.” Keep your side of the street clean. Look for opportunities to serve. Know you don’t have to control everything.

That philosophy carried a burned-out firm owner from trying to sell her practice to running it from a beach in Mexico. And she’s more proud of her work than she’s ever been.

Your Turn to Experiment

Sandra tried to sell her firm three times. Today, she wakes up to the sun rising over the Sea of Cortez and runs a thriving practice. Her transformation required questioning one assumption: What does a “real” accounting firm look like?

Here’s what she learned:

  • Physical space isn’t mental space. Without a building’s demands, Sandra became more present and effective. Her clients and team got a better version of her.
  • Remote doesn’t mean distant. One-on-one client visits, weekly team meetings that skip the work talk, book clubs with incentives, and company swag can build stronger connections than any conference room.
  • Make everything an experiment. Calling new initiatives “science experiments” removes the fear of failure. You’re just collecting data.
  • Nothing has to be permanent. You don’t have to commit to software, locations, or structures forever. Curiosity beats fear every time.

For every firm owner wondering if there’s a better way, Sandra’s story says yes. But only if you’re willing to run the experiment.

Listen to Sandra’s full conversation with Rachel and Marcus on Who’s Really the Boss? The details that don’t fit in an article make her story even more valuable for any firm considering remote work.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a national, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 26 professionals. Their latest organization, Collective by DBA, supports and guides accounting firm owners and leaders with firm resources, education, and operational strategy through community, mastermind groups, and one-on-one advisory.

5 KPIs That Separate Million-Dollar Firms From Expensive Jobs

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What if the difference between building a million-dollar asset and simply having a job came down to tracking just five numbers?

In this episode of Who’s Really the Boss?, Marcus and Rachel Dillon share the exact metrics that helped them grow DBA from $400,000 to nearly $6 million in revenue. These are the same KPIs they presented to over 200 accounting professionals at Intuit Connect and their Gather conference, backed by real benchmark data from firms ranging from $500,000 to well over $5 million in revenue.

Most accounting firm owners can rattle off their revenue figure without hesitation. It’s the go-to metric when someone asks about the size of your practice. But as the Dillons explain, revenue alone won’t tell you whether you’re building something valuable or just running faster on a hamster wheel.

While you could track dozens of KPIs (Dillon Business Advisors tracks over 20), five metrics form the essential dashboard for any accounting firm owner serious about building value. These numbers measure your business and determine whether you’ll have options when it’s time to step away.

The Five Essential KPIs That Form Your Firm’s Dashboard

Think about the dashboard in your car. As Marcus explains, you could scroll through dozens of gauges showing everything imaginable, but the instruments front and center are the ones critical to getting where you’re going safely. The same principle applies to running an accounting firm.

These five metrics create what Marcus calls a “level playing field” for understanding firm health and value. Let’s break down each one and see how firms in Collective by DBA benchmark data perform.

Gross Revenue (Trailing 12 Months)

This is your speedometer. It’s big, central, and impossible to ignore. The collective average sits at just under $2 million, representing a 10% increase from Spring of 2024.

But Marcus recommends tracking the trailing 12 months, not calendar year. Why? Because that trailing 12 months removes seasonality and shows what investors actually evaluate. “Think about how much has happened at DBA in the last 11 months,” he notes. “We’ve done two acquisitions. We’ve continued to grow Collective. We’ve added different people. It would be very deceiving to only focus on that last calendar year.”

That 10% growth could come from price increases, culling the client list, or organic growth. Revenue alone doesn’t tell you which, but it confirms movement.

Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) as a Percentage of Gross

The Collective average now sits at 47% MRR, up 2% from Spring. DBA operates at 70% MRR.

“It’s very unlikely that 70% of our business or revenue is not going to show back up next month,” Marcus explains. “That just helps us run a more stable business. It helps cover payroll, rent, technology subscriptions, and all those other expenses.”

A panel at Intuit Connect featuring firm owners who had completed acquisitions delivered a sobering insight. Matthew May from Sorren; Chris Williams, founder of System Six; and Becky Munson, Partner at EisnerAmper confirmed acquirers will buy firms without MRR, but they won’t pay as much for them. 

“Would you rather get a better valuation? Would you rather run a better business by moving them over to monthly recurring? Or would you rather somebody else do that after you sell the firm?” Marcus asks.

Revenue Per FTE

This efficiency metric shows how much revenue each full-time equivalent team member generates. The Collective average is $194,000 per FTE, up 1% from Spring. That means your typical $2 million firm operates with about ten people.

“It’s not so much about finding ways to cut people out of your business,” Rachel says, emphasizing an important point. “It’s more about not having to find that next person when you bring on two more clients or three more clients.”

The goal is moving toward $200,000, then $250,000, and eventually $300,000 as technology enables greater efficiency. But context matters. A firm heavy on bookkeeping won’t look the same as one staffed with tax attorneys billing $500 per hour.

Earnings Before Owner Compensation (EBOC)

This is where profitability gets real. EBOC equals your net profit plus owner salaries and benefits. It creates a true comparison between firms regardless of how owners structure their compensation.

The Collective average sits at 40%, down 1% from spring. For potential buyers, Marcus notes the attractive range is between 35% and 50%.

Why not use EBITDA? 

“EBITDA typically has a value in there for the owner’s role,” Marcus explains. “And if you have a succession event, they will look at EBITDA and beat you up based on the amount you pay yourself.” With a $2 million firm at 40% EBOC generating $800,000, an acquirer might value the owner’s role at $250,000 and calculate EBITDA at $550,000 for valuation purposes.

Even if you plan to give your firm away, “you want to give something other people want. You don’t want the receiver to say thanks, but no thanks,” Rachel points out.

Owner Production Hours

The final metric addresses what many firm owners care about most: their time. The Collective average is 1,152 production hours annually out of a standard 2,080, and that number dropped 12% from Spring.

“That’s not skewed by tax season,” Marcus clarifies. “This is all being pulled trailing 12 months.”

Owners successfully delegated over 10% of their production work while other metrics improved. As Marcus notes, “I know most owners would welcome that decrease in EBOC to work 10% to 12% less year over year.”

How KPIs Influence Each Other

Understanding these metrics is just the beginning. The real insight comes from recognizing how they push and pull against one another.

The Collective data reveals healthy, balanced growth: Revenue up 10%. MRR up 2%. Revenue per FTE up 1%. Owner hours down 12%. EBOC down just 1%.

But Marcus warns about the dangers of optimizing one metric at the expense of others. “What does revenue growth at all costs look like? It’s accepting anything that comes in the door. Probably your owner hours go up, or your costs go up because you have to employ people to do this work that may not be the best work.”

Similarly, you could improve revenue per FTE through mass layoffs. “My revenue per FTE would shoot up because I just have less FTEs,” Marcus explains. “Sure, my EBOC will increase, but my quality of life will probably go down.”

The key is finding balance. Revenue growth while owner hours decrease or hold steady, maintaining EBOC without burning out the team, and MRR creeping upward for predictable cash flow.

A Real-World Example of Pulling the Levers

The Dillons advocate for backward mapping. Start with where you want to go, identify the lever most likely to get you there, estimate costs and risks, then pressure-test results.

DBA tested several levers over the years: price increases, automation, hiring an operations manager, evaluating their client list, monthly recurring packages, and specialized hiring at the director level.

The Price Increase Lever at DBA

In 2024, DBA tackled pricing that had slipped on legacy clients. With an average monthly client at $2,100, they still had several below $1,000, which was unprofitable given their team structure.

They targeted a 14% increase, higher than typical because they’d delayed too long.

“We knew some people were on the bubble, “Marcus says, sharing his thought process. “We knew this would either move them to churn or invest and go deeper with our team.”

The messaging was crucial. “Don’t make the price increase about yourself,” Marcus advises. “No client wants to hear that. You have to have a better value perspective than your costs are increasing.”

Rachel adds that peer networks prove invaluable here. “You can talk yourself out of doing price increases. But in a peer group, you see what other people charge and what other people plan to do for their price increases. You think, ‘Well, I’m doing the same work as they are. Why am I still charging so little?’”

At the Gather event, when asked about planned increases for 2026, most firms indicated 10%, with some going up to 20-25%.

The Results

DBA lost $12,000 in monthly recurring revenue from churned clients but gained a net 4% in total billings while serving fewer clients. Revenue went up. EBOC went up. MRR percentage went up. Revenue per FTE improved. Owner hours decreased.

“You could improve all five of those metrics more than likely by price increases alone,” Marcus concludes.

Rachel emphasizes this wasn’t about pricing out clients. “The goal was to continue to serve them at a price that made sense for the business.” For truly problematic clients, she recommends direct action. “Just have the conversation and help them find a new provider. Don’t keep serving them because they’re paying you.”

Your Next Steps

The Dillons follow an Improvement Season framework:

  • April 16 – August 15: Assess progress and implement changes
  • September – October: Pressure test during higher volume
  • November – December: Reevaluate and adjust
  • January: Launch with refined plan

Some changes show results quickly. For example, price increases make a mark within a quarter. Others, like absorbing a director-level hire, might take a full year.

Marcus emphasizes involving your team. “Do it with your leadership team. Do it with somebody beyond yourself. And then invite others to improve that KPI and celebrate it with others. The cool thing about having a team is to be on a mission together.”

Rachel adds two key questions for listeners:

  • Which KPI do you need to move to increase your firm value?
  • What KPI are you not tracking yet, but you should be?

Whether you plan to sell, pass on, or simply run a better business, these five metrics determine your options. “You will have a succession event in your lifetime because you’re just not going to live forever,” Marcus says. “You’re either going to sell, give it away, or shut it down.”

The choice is yours. But it starts with measuring what matters.

Listen to the full episode for the complete conversation, including more details on implementing these strategies in your firm.

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.

How a Small-Town CPA Practice Transformed Into a Million-Dollar Firm

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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.