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Your Accounting Firm’s Biggest Structural Problem Is Something You Built on Purpose

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You built a successful accounting firm, and now you’re trapped inside it. Every client question routes through you. Every tax return needs your eyes before it goes out the door. Your team is talented, but no one knows whose desk the work is on, and your clients couldn’t name their accountant if you asked them to.

Sound familiar?

Unfortunately, you probably built the structure causing all this pain with the best of intentions.

In this episode of Who’s Really the BOSS?, Marcus and Rachel Dillon pull back the curtain on how they restructured their firm, Dillon Business Advisors (DBA), from a bottlenecked, siloed operation into a scalable team-based model. They walk through the exact phased transition that made it work, including the hard conversations, the timing decisions, the mistakes, and the results.

One lesson they learned the hard way, and they keep seeing other firms stumble over it: the biggest mistake accounting firm owners make when restructuring is skipping straight to the end state without working through the messy middle. Building a firm that doesn’t revolve around you requires a phased transition. First, define the roles. Then align the teams and optimize for industry niches. Get the sequence right, and you unlock collaboration, capacity, and career growth for your people. Skip steps, and you’ll create more chaos than you started with.

Let’s break down what that transition actually looks like, starting with the pain points that tell you your current structure is broken, moving through the three phases DBA used to go from chaos to clarity, and ending with what becomes possible on the other side.

 

The Problem Hiding Behind Good Intentions

Before you can fix your firm’s structure, you have to be honest about what’s broken. What makes this tricky is, the thing that’s broken is probably something you built on purpose.

Marcus describes the symptoms DBA experienced, and they’ll sound painfully familiar to most firm owners. Despite having project management software that technically showed the status of every project, they still didn’t really know where work was. Not in the way that matters, like what a team member was actually waiting on, or why something hadn’t moved in three days. When someone needed time off, or worse, left the firm, there was no reliable way to pick up where they left off without a scramble.

Then there was the silo problem, and this one stings because it started as a smart idea. DBA intentionally created three separate teams: one for individual tax, one for business tax, and one for accounting. On paper, it looked like specialization. In practice, it built unintentional walls.

“The accounting would be done and then passed the baton to the business tax team,” Marcus explains. “The business tax team would do tax returns, and then pass things over to the individual tax team.” The business tax team would be busy at certain times of the year, completely dependent on the accounting team to deliver clean financials, but they had no visibility into what was on that team’s plate. Meanwhile, the individual tax team sat idle, waiting on K-1s, unable to push the process forward or even understand why things were delayed.

Marcus was at the center of it all. Every return needed his review. Every client conversation required his voice. The org chart was a bull’s eye with him in the middle. “I was definitely the bottleneck,” he admits. “I had to have eyes on everything before it went out to a client. It had to be me calling or sitting down with the client.”

The damage wasn’t just internal. Rachel adds the client perspective, and it’s equally sobering. “Clients really didn’t know who their point person was. So when they called, they would ask for Marcus, or they would say, ‘I don’t know who’s working on my tax return’ or ‘I don’t know who’s working on my accounting.'” Things would get lost in translation from person to person. Clients wanted two things the structure simply couldn’t deliver: fast responses and proactive advice.

That’s the real cost of a structure built around one person. It’s not just that the owner burns out. Client experience degrades. Your team knows who they’re working with, but your clients don’t. And when clients feel uncertain about who’s handling their finances, trust erodes until it’s too late.

The Three Phases From Scaffolding to Scale

This is where Marcus and Rachel’s conversation gets practical. They walk through a three-phase approach that DBA used to transition from their old structure to the Team of Three model. Each phase builds on the one before it. Skip ahead, and you’ll pay for it later.

Phase 1: Define the Roles (Build the Scaffolding)

Before you can organize teams, you need to know what roles exist. DBA’s Team of Three consists of three clearly defined positions:

  1. Client Service Manager (CSM). The base of the team. Marcus describes them as “an accountant, a bookkeeper, somebody with experience who doesn’t have to have a degree.” Many of DBA’s CSMs are working parents who want a career that offers flexibility alongside meaningful work. They operate at 85% capacity, with 15% reserved for onboarding new clients and handling the inevitable surprises.
  2. Client Controller. Someone with tax experience who has “seen accounting and done closeouts,” Marcus explains. “Maybe they’ve done the bookkeeping cleanup at year end, and they can produce clean financials.” They can prepare business tax returns and advise on personal and business tax matters. When DBA hires for this role, they post it as “tax manager” because posting “client controller” attracts candidates who misunderstand the position.
  3. Client CFO. This person manages the team and drives the client relationship. “They can have larger business strategy and tax-related conversations with clients as needed or consistently throughout the year,” Marcus notes. Business ownership experience is a big plus here because it gives them risk tolerance and the ability to connect with entrepreneurial clients.

With those three roles defined, DBA assessed its existing team and started mapping people into positions. Some placements were obvious. Others required difficult conversations.

“We didn’t want to force people into a certain role,” Marcus explains. They had direct conversations with team members. “Here are the guidelines of each role, here’s what each one would do. What would you like to do? Where do you feel most comfortable?”

Rachel adds an important nuance about those conversations. “There were team members who had been with us a long time, and they were leaders within our firm. They were experienced, degreed and very good accountants. But if you think about it vertically, they’re the bottom.” It was important to help them understand that CSMs have significant client interaction and hold important relationships. They found other ways for these team members to lead through onboarding, training, mentoring, or becoming subject matter experts.

Marcus admits to a mistake from this phase. “We kept some people on too long. They clearly weren’t fully a client controller. They had a leg in CSM and another in Client Controller for just a little bit too long. And it didn’t work out.”

Phase 2: Align the Teams (Set the Team Structure)

Phase 2 is where the real transformation happens, and where it often breaks down for other firms.

After Phase 1, DBA had people in defined roles. But those people weren’t working in consistent teams. “Even with myself as maybe the only client CFO at that time, we had close to 40 different teams of three within our team of 12 or 10 FTEs,” Marcus reveals.

Rachel paints the picture. “A CSM on our team was working with three different controllers. So three people give her work, ask her questions or request things from her. During tax season, everyone’s busy. Who do I prioritize work for?”

The solution was a deliberate reorganization and locking in which three people would serve which clients. DBA used a straightforward decision framework. If two of the three team members were already working with a client, those two stayed. Swapping out two of three required exceptional justification, such as a team member having a relationship that overrode the numbers.

The timing was strategic. They planned the reorg in March and April, then communicated it to clients after tax season. “After tax season, we actually pushed through the reorg and communicated to clients,” Marcus explains.

Clients reacted well. “They said, ‘Okay, we know you have what’s in our best interest. We trust you. I didn’t lose my person.'”

The internal results were dramatic and fast. “Within a month, efficiencies and budgets improved,” Marcus reports. 

Phase 3: Optimize and Refine (Industry Niches and Career Paths)

With teams aligned and running smoothly, DBA could finally build industry specializations. They organized pods around verticals: dental, veterinary, and medical professional services. Construction and real estate were sprinkled across every team, since many clients own real estate.

This created real advisory value. “When I have advisory conversations, that’s what they typically ask me: ‘Well, how’s everybody else doing?” Marcus shares. “Because I want to know, am I the only one who’s going through this difficult time?”

Phase 3 also made career progression visible. “It gives people a clear path to move if they want to do that career ladder,” Marcus explains.

Marcus’s own evolution shows the ultimate success. “I’ve given away clients and team members to other people who are progressing in their careers.” He adds, “After the client meets the team, they forget about me.”

“Sometimes starting at phase three is the problem, or not doing phase one and phase two well,” Marcus warns. “The firms that have success with this start with role definition and then move to defining teams and then optimizing or refining.”

What The Right Sequence Unlocks

Step back and look at what DBA built through this phased approach. Each phase created the foundation for the next breakthrough.

  • Collaboration over silos. Teams know each other’s workloads and can step in when needed. There’s no single point of failure on any client. “If a team member needs to be out, the client is still going to be fully served and their team is available,” Rachel explains. 
  • Consistency through tax season. Marcus calls out a common industry problem where firms sell clients on recurring advisory work, then stop delivering it from January through April. “You should have the bandwidth and the capacity to serve those clients consistently all year long, including tax season. If you’re signing somebody up for recurring ongoing financial support, which is what most people do in CAS, you have to do that consistently.”
  • Real capacity for growth. After the Phase 2 reorg, Rachel notes, “Those team members actually had enough capacity to take on clients without being overloaded with work or going above their peak capacity.”
  • Career development without departure. Team members don’t have to leave to advance. Marcus shares, “Our team members don’t have to go outside of DBA to continue to progress in their careers.”

Marcus and Rachel have seen what happens when firms skip steps. Firms that jump straight to building industry pods without first defining roles end up with confused team members. Firms that try to align teams without clear role definitions create accountability structures with nothing to be accountable to.

The sequence is the architecture that makes everything else work.

Your Move: Define, Align, Then Optimize

The Team of Three model gave DBA a destination. But the phased transition got them there. Most firm owners who struggle with restructuring try to implement the final version on day one.

Whether your firm has five team members or 50, the principles hold: clarity before alignment, alignment before optimization. Your team needs to know their role before they can function as a unit. Units need to gel before you can specialize.

If you’re feeling stuck as the bottleneck in your firm, or you’ve tried restructuring and it created more chaos than clarity, Marcus and Rachel share more details about each phase in this episode of Who’s Really the BOSS?. They discuss the specific mistakes they made and how they coach other firms through the same transition.

Marcus closes with an invitation: “We have a lot of resources. If anybody wants to reach out about any of those resources, job descriptions, benchmarks, scorecards, all that fun stuff. We have those in the Collective community. But if something is sticking out, please reach out.”

Listen to the full episode to hear their complete breakdown of how to build an accounting firm structure that actually works.

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. 

The $450,000 Worth of Clients DBA Walked Away From on Purpose

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In 2010, Marcus Dillon sat down to hand-write more than 50 letters to retiring CPAs, asking if they’d be willing to sell their practices. One of those letters launched Dillon Business Advisors, a firm that grew from a $400,000 acquisition into a multi-million-dollar advisory practice by strategically reinventing itself every five years.

On a recent episode of the Who’s Really the Boss? podcast, Marcus and Rachel Dillon celebrated the firm’s 15th anniversary by sharing its origin story and the evolution of DBA. In the first of a two-part series, they walked through specific revenue numbers, margin targets, acquisition details, and the personal sacrifices behind each phase of growth.

The Foundation: High School Sweethearts to Business Partners

Marcus and Rachel’s story started long before DBA. They met in driver’s ed at 15 and 16 and have been together ever since. By their first wedding anniversary, they had a one-and-a-half-month-old daughter, Kinley. That young family shaped every business decision that followed.

Marcus came out of Ernst & Young’s audit practice, where travel demands didn’t work for family life. He landed at a smaller Houston-area firm with around 15 employees and under $2 million in revenue. The owner took a chance on a 23-year-old kid to build an audit practice from scratch.

“I was able to get paid 45% of my effective billings, including write-ups,” Marcus said. “So I learned really early on how to price things so it was acceptable to clients.”

At his peak, he was billing close to $400,000 a year and taking home up to $180,000. But Rachel noticed a problem. Marcus had to match the owner’s hours, and he would stay at the office until 11 p.m., midnight, or sometimes 1 a.m.

“I didn’t want to be a single mom,” Rachel explained. “I was a teacher getting off at 4 p.m. and wondering, where is my husband and the father of my kids?”

DBA 1.0: Building Through Acquisition (2011-2016)

The Dillons prepared carefully for acquiring a firm. They paid off every debt except their mortgage. Rachel kept teaching for a steady income and benefits. Then Marcus wrote those letters.

One landed with Bob, a CPA in his 70s or 80s, who recently had a health scare. First Command Bank financed about $320,000 of the $400,000 purchase price. There was a 10% seller note, and Marcus brought 10% cash to closing.

Unexpectedly, clients followed Marcus, despite his non-compete agreement with his old firm. He fully honored the agreement, paying a third of the collections back to his former employer for three years. But the client migration pushed DBA from $400,000 to about $700,000 almost immediately.

The first office wasn’t glamorous. Marcus inherited a lease in what he calls a Class D building right off a major Houston interstate. “It had the old school atrium, and it just smelled like crap whenever they brought new mulch and plants into that atrium,” he recalled. He worked alone until 9 or 10 p.m., and his was often the only car in the parking lot.

Rachel’s first day at DBA in 2013 was moving day. “I remember doing a couple of collection calls on the floor as we were packing up,” she said. “I was not coming to work with you at the other place regularly.”

By then, they’d built their own 2,500-square-foot standalone office, figuring, if they were paying rent, they might as well pay it to themselves.

From the start, the Dillons prioritized same-day invoicing. Returns would flow to Rachel for client delivery, then straight to Marcus for billing that same day. “That’s something that was always a priority to get done immediately,” Rachel noted. “I hear some people spend days doing billing and invoicing, sometimes months after the fact.”

That diligence paid off. By 2016, DBA reached $1.5 million in revenue. The Dillons had paid off the acquisition loan and bought a lake house. They were successful, but as Marcus observed, “Every time someone wished me success, it was because I had just gone into debt.”

DBA 2.0: The Merger That Taught Them to Let Go (2016-2020)

In 2016, Marcus had breakfast with his mentor, Tom, who was winding down his practice. Marcus asked a question he now admits was the wrong way to evaluate an acquisition: “How would we be worse off by coming together?”

Tom brought about $400,000 of work, pushing DBA past $2 million. On paper, it looked perfect. In practice, it was a disaster.

“Tom’s clients loved Tom,” Rachel said bluntly. “Tom’s clients hated us.”

These weren’t just any clients. They were survivors of three or four rounds of exits, and they stayed for Tom personally. Plus, Tom’s service model was completely different. He offered every client two in-person meetings during tax season. DBA didn’t operate that way.

Meanwhile, the Dillons built a 12,000-square-foot office building: 7,000 for DBA, 5,000 to lease out. Marcus describes it as having “an attorney feel with wood wainscoting and leather-bound books.” It was supposed to be their forever office.

But the cultural problems didn’t solve themselves. So DBA started strategically shedding clients.

They spun off about $100,000 to their friend Julie, who mentioned she wasn’t as busy as she’d like. “She made that mistake of telling us that,” Marcus joked. Another $100,000 went to a CPA closer to Tom’s office. The next year, they went bigger, spinning off $250,000 along with Tom’s office location.

In total, DBA shed about $450,000 in client work. Yet they never dipped below $2 million in revenue. “That was definitely a consideration,” Rachel explained. “We never wanted to dip below $2 million.”

By 2019, things had stabilized. The team was mostly part-time working parents who arrived at 9:30 and left by 2:30 to match school schedules. All work happened in the office.

Then came January 2020. At their annual team retreat, Marcus asked, “If you could do anything in this life and not fail, what would you do?”

The leader of their audit practice answered, “I would be a stay-at-home mom.”

“When you have a leader in the firm respond that way,” Marcus reflected, “it’s like, okay, this is likely not going to be the person to help lead that aspect of the business.”

By March, the COVID-19 pandemic sent the team home, and they never came back. DBA funded home office setups and kept the physical office available. Nobody used it.

The audit practice spun off during 2020. Tom pursued receivership work full-time. And DBA hit $1 million to the bottom line for the first time, maintaining 40-45% margins before officer compensation. That’s a target Marcus has carried since his days at his old firm.

But remote work didn’t mean balance. “We did the kids’ routine of dinner, activities, bath, and bedtime,” Rachel said. “And then we just went straight back to work again for the next three or four hours.”

The Hard-Earned Wisdom of 15 Years

Looking back, Marcus is clear about what drove their early success. “We were successful because we put the hours in. We weren’t necessarily working smarter. We just worked more than others around us and said yes to others around us, which doesn’t work anymore.”

Other firm owners likely recognize patterns in the Dillons’ journey:

  • Financial preparation matters. They eliminated personal debt and kept Rachel’s steady income before taking the acquisition risk.
  • Invoice immediately. Same-day billing became a cornerstone cash flow practice. You have to send out the invoice to get paid.
  • Not all acquisitions are equal. When clients survive multiple rounds of exits, they’re bonded to a person rather than a firm. Tom’s clients proved that.
  • Set a revenue floor and defend it. DBA shed $450,000 in work but never went below $2 million because organic growth and price increases filled the gaps.
  • Listen when people tell you who they are. One honest answer at a team retreat revealed the future of an entire service line.
  • Hours aren’t everything. The model that built a $1 million firm through sheer effort won’t build the next phase.

Growth isn’t just about what you build. It’s about what you’re willing to walk away from, whether that’s clients who don’t fit, service lines that aren’t growing, office space you no longer need, or the version of your firm that got you here but can’t take you further.

This is just the first half of DBA’s 15-year story. In part two, Marcus and Rachel will share how the firm evolved after the pandemic, what they’re seeing in today’s market, and where they believe the profession is headed. For now, listen to their full conversation in Part 1, including all the specific numbers, deal structures, and decision points.

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.

The 90 Days After Closing That Most Firm Buyers Never Talk About

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When an accounting firm announces an acquisition, the industry responds with congratulations and LinkedIn likes before quickly moving on. But for the acquiring firm, that’s when the real work begins and when most deals quietly succeed or fail.

In a recent episode of Who’s Really the BOSS?, Marcus and Rachel Dillon sit down with Amy McCarty, MBA, to discuss what actually happens after signing on the dotted line. Having completed two acquisitions in 2025—one in January and another on October 1—the Dillon Business Advisors (DBA) team shares the specific decisions, timelines, and hard-won lessons that transformed signed deals into a unified firm.

When “Growth, Not Comfort” Means More Than You Bargained For

At the start of 2025, Marcus proposed “growth, not comfort” as DBA’s rally cry for the year. Rachel and Amy thought he meant leadership development and personal growth. They discovered later he had something else in mind entirely.

“You totally tricked us,” Rachel tells Marcus during the podcast. “You said it was completely about leadership growth and personal and professional development. You never let on that this was really about revenue, team size, acquisitions.”

Marcus’s real motivation was building the budget to hire director-level talent. The firm brought on Angel Sabino as Director of Technology in January and Arin Neucks, CPA, CFP, as Director of Tax and Financial Planning in August. Supporting these hires required top-line growth, and acquisitions offered the fastest path to it.

“To have the budget to do great things, the top line had to grow a little bit,” Marcus admits with characteristic understatement.

The first acquisition closed in January with a longtime friend from a consulting organization. It was intentionally small, what Marcus calls a “dip your toes in the water acquisition.” They retained most of the revenue and one excellent team member who now has a clear career path at DBA.

After news of the January acquisition spread through their St. Louis market, other firm owners approached them directly, asking to be considered for future acquisitions. By Q2, DBA was in serious discussions about a second acquisition that would be three times the size of the first.

The First 30 Days: Change Nothing (Except Communication)

The October 1 acquisition created an immediate challenge because it closed just two weeks before the October 15 tax deadline. DBA’s response was counterintuitive but crucial: they changed almost nothing.

“The biggest changes for them are the name of the company that they worked for changed, and where they’re getting their paycheck from changed,” Amy explains. “But otherwise, same clients, same daily functions.”

This restraint matters because acquired team members arrive in a fundamentally different situation than new hires. A new employee has time to learn systems and absorb culture. An acquired team member comes with a full client roster and deadlines that can’t wait. DBA’s standard two-week onboarding stretched to four to six weeks for acquired teams, with the timeline threaded between ongoing client work.

The single exception to the “change nothing” rule was communication infrastructure. Getting the acquired team into Microsoft Teams became the only day-one priority, even though the acquired firm ran on Google and Slack. Angel worked his technical magic to make it happen.

“That is where we live from an internal communication standpoint,” Amy notes. Without unified communication, the teams coordinated work via email, creating delays and missed context they couldn’t afford during the integration.

This stability was possible because they laid the groundwork long before closing. In late September, DBA visited the acquired team in person to present job offers and handbooks. Rachel initially thought this pre-close access seemed risky. She learned it’s actually common practice. Some private-equity-backed firms even begin data migration before deals close.

Days 31-60: Methodical Technology Migration

After maintaining stability through the October deadline, DBA began the complex work of technology consolidation. The preparation made all the difference.

When Angel joined as Director of Technology, he knew acquisitions were coming. Within 30 days—while tax season was underway—he built an enterprise-level Azure environment from scratch. This meant when October’s acquisition arrived, DBA had infrastructure ready to absorb new users rather than scrambling to build it during integration.

Similar tech stacks between firms simplified everything. Both acquired firms used Thomson Reuters UltraTax and QuickBooks Online, matching DBA’s setup. This synergy was a factor in acquisition decisions.

Where systems differed, results varied. Intuit’s realm consolidation tool worked beautifully. Marcus migrated all the acquired firm’s QuickBooks accounts from his phone’s hotspot while driving to his child’s swim meet. ADP proved more challenging because they wanted to re-onboard clients with new signatures. Rather than confuse clients, DBA maintained two separate ADP logins and will migrate opportunistically over time.

Client communication platforms required careful handling. Both acquired firms used Liscio, while DBA uses Canopy. For the January acquisition, DBA kept Liscio running through tax season before transitioning. The October firm had already been planning its own Canopy migration.

“We told them, ‘We love that you’re going to be on Canopy. Why don’t you hold off on that migration for now?”‘ Marcus recalls. “Because we’re going to have to migrate everything into DBA anyway.”

For systems they couldn’t immediately eliminate, Amy reduced subscriptions to the minimum level rather than canceling them completely. “It’s like when you clean your closet, and you turn the hanger the other way,” she explains. “If you don’t ever use it, then you need to get rid of it.”

Protecting the Cash Flow You Bought

“From a business owner standpoint, I would much rather talk about getting paid and sales and receipts and deposits over tax returns and general ledgers,” Marcus says bluntly.

The revenue structure of the October acquisition required immediate attention. Two-thirds was monthly recurring revenue with auto-drafted payments. Without intervention, that money would continue to flow into the previous owners’ bank accounts.

Rather than rushing clients onto new systems during integration chaos, DBA kept the acquired firm’s payment processor running for three months. The previous owners were a husband-and-wife team, with the husband joining DBA. They agreed to reconcile deposits and forward funds within days. This required an enormous amount of trust, built during 90 days of pre-close due diligence.

The arrangement had a natural endpoint. Monthly clients’ annual agreements expired with their January payment, creating a perfect transition moment. DBA sent new engagement letters with updated payment information to all DBA clients, using the acquisition as a catalyst for firm-wide standardization.

Alison Sharp, the operations and administrative professional who came over from the acquired firm, proved invaluable during this transition. She handled client communications about payment changes, maintaining continuity for clients who knew and trusted her.

Looking Ahead to Tax Season and Beyond

As 2026 begins, DBA faces its first full tax season serving both acquired client bases. The January-acquisition clients are returning for their second year, while the October clients will experience DBA’s processes for the first time.

“It’s going to be a fun tax season,” Amy says with a laugh that suggests “fun” might be understating the challenge.

The integration work continues, but with infrastructure in place and teams unified in communication and technology, DBA has transformed two separate acquisitions into growth that actually supports their expanded director team, even if that wasn’t quite what Rachel and Amy thought they were signing up for with “growth, not comfort.”

For accounting firms considering acquisitions, the DBA team’s experience shows how crucial it is to invest as much in planning the 90 days after closing as you do in the months before. The deal terms matter, but integration execution determines whether you build something lasting or buy an expensive headache. Listen to the full episode for all the details.

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.

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.

From Stuck to Strategic: How Top CPA Firms Break Free from Endless Problem Loops

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Picture a CPA firm owner sitting across from the same colleague at the same conference, one year later, complaining about the exact same problems: the same staffing issues, same client complaints, and same technology frustrations. Marcus Dillon sees this scene too often, and it breaks his heart. “One of the most disappointing things to me,” he shares on the latest episode of Who’s Really the Boss?, “is whenever you have a conversation with somebody a year later and they’re in the same exact place they were when you previously talked to them.”

But in a packed ballroom at Hotel Vin in Grapevine, Texas, 105 accounting professionals gathered this October to make sure they’d never be that person stuck in an endless loop of unaddressed challenges. Over two and a half days in October 2025, firm owners, leaders, and carefully selected team members came together for Gather 2025, an event that offered CPE credits but delivered something far more valuable than continuing education.

About two-thirds of attendees were firm owners and leaders, while the remaining third were team members positioned to create ripple effects back in their firms. “You want to bring a team member who can learn and take part in table discussions, but then also take what they’ve heard and learned back to others on your team,” Marcus explained.

From Growth to Excellence: A New Chapter in Leadership

After a year focused on “the goal is growth, not comfort,” Marcus introduced a new rally cry for 2026 that signals a shift in how successful firms approach leadership: “Lead Change, Create Impact.” This evolution is more than a tagline change; it marks a maturity in thinking about what drives firm success.

“We’ve had a very large growth year,” Marcus reflects. “We added a couple of director level positions, did a couple of acquisitions, and continue to grow Collective by DBA very intentionally. So now we’re going into a season of refinement and then excellence.”

This natural progression, from growth to refinement and excellence, mirrors a cycle that successful firms navigate intentionally. But growth isn’t just about numbers. As Rachel emphasizes, when they adopted their previous rally cry, “We’re really thinking about growth personally and professionally, of what does it look like to delegate to someone else? What does it look like to upskill and learn that next new thing, or say yes to something we don’t feel we have the skill set for?”

Rachel shares a particularly striking insight she heard recently from author Ruth Chou Simons, “You don’t have to be blooming to be growing.” Sometimes the most critical development happens underground, in the roots and foundation of a firm’s culture. These invisible victories, such as saying no to wrong opportunities, developing team members’ skills, or refining internal processes, often matter more than year-end revenue numbers.

The data from Gather 2025 validates this approach. While participating firms showed revenue increases, the standout statistic was a 10% decrease in owner production hours. For an industry where firm owners routinely work 2,000+ hours annually in production, this reduction shows genuine progress. As Marcus points out, this matters enormously for succession planning. “If there was a firm owner working over 2000 hours per year, as a buyer, you probably have to hire two people to replace that outgoing owner.”

The Four P’s Framework: Your Roadmap Through Change

Change doesn’t fail because people resist it, but because leaders haven’t provided the clarity teams need to embrace it. The Four P’s Framework, which Marcus discovered through his C12 leadership group, transforms vague announcements into actionable roadmaps.

“We used to talk about change and how we communicate change to the team,” Marcus recalls. The standard three questions (What’s changing? What’s staying the same? How does this impact me?) weren’t enough. The Four P’s provide a complete structure:

  • Purpose answers “Why are we changing?” But “the lens that you answer that question through should be your mission, vision and values,” Marcus emphasizes. “You’re not changing your mission vision values based on a change. You’re seeing the change through the lens of those mission vision values.”
  • Picture addresses “What does success look like?” Marcus admits this is his personal weakness. “You have to paint a great picture of what it looks like on the other side of this change and what it looks like going through this change.” Teams need to visualize both the journey and the destination.
  • Plan tackles “How do we get there?” This includes specific milestones. “You’ll know when you’re 20%, 50%, or 80% there and you can celebrate and then maybe push or sprint to that next threshold,” Marcus explains.
  • Part clarifies “What is my role?” This component “helps foster ownership, provide clarity” by making it crystal clear how each person contributes.

The framework came to life during DBA’s recent acquisitions. Purpose aligned with their mission of “impacting others and creating a great place to work.” Picture showed “a fully integrated team under one brand, serving very similar clients in very similar ways.” Plan mapped out specific 30-day and 90-day milestones. And each team member received a clearly defined part. Some continued with existing clients, others mentor new colleagues, and  others take ownership of new relationships.

Rachel’s reflection provides crucial context. “We have not always done it this way. We communicated the change, but rarely thought through all four parts.” The difference is dramatic. “You as the leader will not be in it on your own, trying to drag people along,” she notes. “You will have people who step into their role and know what it looks like to be successful.”

Solving Problems Together: The Power of Collective Intelligence

While firm owners tackled KPIs and succession planning in one room, team members gathered in another for a revolutionary session called “Borrow a Brain, Share a Solution.” With over 24 anonymously-submitted real firm challenges, participants tackled everything from lead generation to remote team connectivity to AI adoption.

“Even staff members had great ideas for lead generation,” Rachel observes. “It’s not always up to the leader to solve every challenge in the firm.”

The structured approach went beyond brainstorming. Teams identified questions needing answers, developed solutions, assigned implementation responsibilities, and specified necessary tools. They documented all frameworks and made them available through the Collective Community Resource Center, creating a permanent library of tested solutions for the 300+ team members now on the platform.

Angel Sabino, Jr., Dillon Business Advisor’s Director of Technology, demonstrated exactly how firms could build their own AI agents using Microsoft Copilot. “He built this AI agent for internal DBA team members to ask questions,” Marcus explains. “What’s our PTO policy look like? What firm holidays exist? What do I need to do to get this approved?” The agent pulls answers from the firm’s knowledge base, providing instant, accurate responses.

“He can also break it down into simple enough terms and pictures,” Rachel notes. This wasn’t about showcasing technology for its own sake, but solving the real challenge of making standard operating procedures accessible and useful.

The case study sessions added another dimension. Firm owners could submit data anonymously and pose specific questions to peers. Marcus calculated the value. “I did quick math. It was about $20,000 per hour in that room.” But the true value transcended hourly rates. It was about getting honest feedback from people who “truly care about you without having a vested interest.”

Putting It All Into Practice

The event’s structure reinforced its practical focus. After sessions on everything from KPIs to AI implementation, the final afternoon wasn’t filled with more presentations. Instead, teams and firm friends gathered to process what they’d learned and create action plans. “What did you hear? What are you going to work on?” became the guiding questions as DBA and Collective team members wove through conversations offering support.

The result? As one attendee shared with Rachel, “This is the first time I’m leaving feeling confident about what I’m going to do and not feeling overwhelmed and defeated that I’m not doing enough.”

Even the venue contributed to the experience. The Hotel Vin’s European-style food hall offered variety without leaving the building, while The Baked Bear ice cream truck (featuring customizable cookie ice cream sandwiches) provided a sweet networking opportunity in perfect October Texas weather.

Your Next Step Forward

For Collective by DBA members ready to continue this journey, Recharge 2026 awaits in Mexico (April 22-25) at an all-inclusive, adults-only Marriott resort. “We’re going international,” Rachel announces, promising two days of CPE, karaoke, collaborative dinners, and the option to extend your stay. Given that the group will occupy over 50% of the boutique hotel, spaces are limited.

But you don’t need to wait for an event to start implementing these insights. The frameworks, tools, and collaborative approaches shared at Gather 2025 offer immediate value for any firm ready to move beyond the cycle of unsolved problems.

Listen to Rachel and Marcus Dillon’s full conversation to discover how two leaders who’ve “been in this game since 2011” learned to stop dragging people through change and started leading them toward impact.

As Marcus reminds us, when you look back at your biggest wins, you won’t remember the change itself. You’ll remember the people who journeyed alongside you. The question is, will you be remembered as someone who helped others navigate change, or as someone who kept showing up with the same unsolved problems? The choice (and the tools to succeed) are yours.

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.