Marcus Dillon

How to build a bench of accounting talent in 15 minutes a day

Earmark Team · August 28, 2026 ·

A team member resigns during a demanding season. You post the job that afternoon, refresh your inbox for a week, and feel relieved when a résumé with the right title finally appears. Under pressure, it’s easy to let urgency decide for you.

Fletcher Wimbush says the posting isn’t the real problem; the waiting is.

On this episode of Who’s Really the BOSS?, hosts Rachel Dillon and Marcus Dillon welcome back Fletcher, who has helped small CPA firms solve hiring and talent acquisition challenges for more than a decade. His company uses practices rooted in industrial and occupational psychology rather than hiring anecdotes or gut feelings.

Fletcher believes accounting firms don’t have a job-posting problem. They have a talent-market-access problem. To solve it, they can use a repeatable system: Focus, Attract, Compare, and Transition (FACT).

Focus: Define success before searching

Fletcher’s best advice is the old woodworking rule, “Measure twice, cut once.” Skip that step, and you may find yourself going back to Home Depot. Hiring works the same way.

Focus begins with a job analysis. Before recruiting, define the work in clear, measurable terms:

How many returns will this person prepare?
What kinds of returns and clients will they handle?
Which software will they use?
What schedule and workload should they expect?
What behaviors reflect the firm’s values?
What should success look like after one year?

This matters because titles don’t mean the same thing at every firm. A tax manager may have worked only on C corporations, while your firm serves mainly S corporations. That doesn’t automatically disqualify the candidate, but it’s a training need you should understand before hiring.

Marcus describes another common mistake: Instead of defining a role, owners try to “replace Mollie.” But there is only one Mollie. Define the work rather than searching for a copy of the person who left.

Once you know what you need, you can stop waiting for the right person to stumble across your posting.

Attract: Build relationships before a position opens

The accounting profession hasn’t produced enough accountants for almost 20 years, Fletcher says. That leaves a limited number of people with both the education and experience many firms want.

In greater Los Angeles, perhaps a few hundred people qualify for a specific accounting role. In many markets, the pool may be closer to 50. A job posting depends on one of those people seeing the ad, wanting to leave now, and finding your opportunity more attractive than their current position.

“That’s not what’s happening,” Fletcher says. Firms must identify qualified people and contact them directly.

Fletcher says that work should begin “Today. Now. Yesterday.” Experienced talent can take a year or longer to acquire. He recommends building a bench of six to 20 relationships and maintaining it over time.

The process can take just 10 to 15 minutes a day:

Use Google, ChatGPT, or Claude to identify accounting firms in your market
Review those firms’ LinkedIn people pages
Send promising professionals a polite, low-pressure connection request
Invite them to coffee or a short conversation
Stay in touch through LinkedIn, email, text, or phone calls

Employee referrals are another path. Ask a strong team member to name the best person they worked with at a previous firm. Then ask them to make an introduction. Rachel says referral hires have performed well in production, client service, and longevity.

Thank employees publicly for introductions, even when they don’t lead to a hire. Fletcher says formal bonuses can be useful, but they shouldn’t be the main incentive. Good people often want to work with other good people.

Building the bench gives you options. The next step is comparing those options against the actual job.

Compare: Look beyond titles and compensation

Desperation makes it easy to overvalue a résumé or first impression. Rachel has seen candidates with CPA credentials, large employers, and impressive titles require extensive training because they previously owned only one narrow part of the work.

Fletcher keeps a Warren Buffett quote in his email signature: “I hire for integrity, motivation, and intelligence. And if they lack the first thing, the other two will kill you.”

That perspective can open the door to overlooked candidates, including junior professionals and parents returning to work. These candidates may become talented, loyal employees if the firm is willing to develop them.

Money alone may not persuade a strong professional to move. Fletcher says an extra $5,000, $10,000, or even $15,000 often is not enough. Experienced candidates may care more about:

A shorter commute or flexible work location
A manageable workload
Better work-life balance during tax season
Career development
More in-person support instead of isolated remote work

The firm must also describe its business model honestly. A seasonal firm that works long hours and then slows down may suit one person. A CAS firm with steady year-round work may suit another. Both models are valid. Problems arise when a firm sells one experience but delivers the other.

That honest comparison should continue after the candidate accepts the offer.

Transition: Plan the first year before day one

Fletcher frames the goal with a mutual question: One year from now, what must the firm and employee be saying for both to feel good about the decision?

Use the candidate evaluation to identify strengths and development needs. Then create a specific, measurable, and time-bound onboarding plan. Regular check-ins should cover where the employee is stuck, where expectations are off track, and what support is needed.

Rachel’s firm sends new hires a two-week schedule before they begin. It includes calendar invitations, shadowing, observation, and the gradual handoff of simple clients. Candidates have told her that clear answers about onboarding, training, and career development helped convince them to join.

She also asks about ideal schedules, desired hours, and career goals before making an offer. Someone may apply for full-time work but prefer to begin at 26, 28, or 30 hours. Learning that early helps both sides avoid a costly mismatch.

Make hiring part of the growth plan

FACT replaces urgency and guesswork with a process. Focus on measurable success, attract talent before you need it, compare candidates with the real work, and transition new hires through a clear plan.

Listen to the full conversation on Who’s Really the BOSS? Then start with 15 minutes today. Define one role, contact one person you would like on your bench, or ask one team member for an introduction.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a national, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 28 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 “secret menu” tax service protects capacity and creates value

Earmark Team · August 28, 2026 ·

One of Rachel and Marcus Dillon’s tax services is missing from their firm’s website. That is not an oversight. It is a capacity strategy.

In a summer 2026 episode of Who’s Really the BOSS?, Rachel and Marcus explain how they built the Tax Advisory Plan (TAP). Their firm stopped accepting annual-only individual and business tax clients around 2018. But strong referrals kept coming from financial advisors, professional partners, and existing clients.

Their first monthly solution, Advice with the Intent to Minimize (AIM) taxes, proved that clients would pay for ongoing access. But at $150 per month, AIM created a new version of the 1040 practice the firm had tried to leave behind.

TAP became the better model, offering higher-value planning, clear service boundaries, and a hard limit on growth.

Better pricing starts with a better definition of value

A monthly engagement doesn’t become advisory work simply by dividing an annual tax fee by 12. Marcus says AIM clients often viewed the service that way: a tax return paid in installments, with team access included.

“What we’re doing is creating a whole new 1040 practice,” he says.

TAP changed the price and the value. The base fee is $500 per month and includes:

Preparing and filing the client’s individual tax return
Two tax projections, generally in early June and late October
Recorded commentary explaining each projection
An invitation to a planning meeting after each projection
Year-round access for questions about financial and tax decisions

That access matters. When a friend suggests using the Augusta rule or another tax strategy, clients can ask the DBA team before acting instead of relying on a web search or an AI tool.

Trust returns and other complexities may increase the monthly fee. Clients with investment or real estate entities can also add quarterly QuickBooks Online support for about $250 to $500 per month.

The best-fit clients are high-income earners, high-net-worth households, K-1 recipients, investors, and people with Schedule C or Schedule E activity. The common thread is meaningful planning opportunities.

That distinction also shapes how the firm brings clients onboard.

Clients usually arrive with life questions

New TAP clients generally pay a one-time onboarding fee starting at $750. Existing client accounting and advisory services (CAS) clients who transition into TAP usually don’t pay the onboarding fee, because the firm already knows their history.

The onboarding fee covers a review of the most recently filed return and a kickoff call with the service team. New or amended returns are priced separately when needed.

Marcus notes that accountants often assume a prospect’s main problem is missing compliance work. Compliance is familiar and comfortable for us. But clients are often worried about a life event, a financial decision, or an uncertain future.

A former client named Jerry illustrates the difference. Jerry left the firm around 2017 or 2018 after winding down his consulting business. His tax return became simple enough to prepare himself. Years later, he contacted the firm after his brother-in-law died in California.

Marcus first assumed Jerry needed a referral for a California trust matter. Rachel took the call and learned that Jerry already had a California attorney and CPA. His real questions involved inherited property, investment accounts, retirement income, his wife’s retirement, and future required minimum distributions.

Within minutes, Rachel explained that moving from a self-prepared return to TAP would cost $500 per month. Jerry continued the conversation and signed a $500-per-month engagement with a $750 onboarding fee within 48 hours.

His last return was a simple Form 1040-SR. Pricing based only on that return would have missed the point. The value was helping him make decisions early.

Once a client signs, the next safeguard is a team-based service model.

A team of 3 prevents partner dependency

Each TAP client works with a tax administrator, tax controller, and director of tax and financial planning. Before the client kickoff, the team holds an internal Sales-Onboard-Service (SOS) meeting to transfer notes and identify unanswered questions.

The client then joins a 30-minute virtual kickoff call. Rachel attends to ensure the service team’s expectations match what she promised during the sales process.

The roles are clear:

Tax administrator: Manages Canopy setup, document requests, engagement letters, organizers, e-signatures, return delivery, and filing notices
Tax controller: Prepares returns when needed, performs much of the review, and helps manage the client relationship
Director of tax and financial planning: Provides higher-level review, technical support, tax updates, and team education

Although the titles may suggest a hierarchy, the administrator and controller often have the most client contact. Clients receive help from the people closest to the work instead of waiting for a partner.

Pricing, payment, and engagement changes go back to Rachel. This allows the service team to focus on serving clients while one gatekeeper protects scope and capacity.

That structure also gives TAP room to support clients through major transitions.

TAP can be an off-ramp or an on-ramp

One longtime CAS client moved into TAP after selling his business. He continued consulting for the buyer as a 1099 contractor, so the firm added quarterly QBO support for his entity.

Three months later, he wanted help tracking sale proceeds, investment accounts, personal spending, and several large purchases. He moved back into a CAS-style engagement, this time for his family group.

TAP can serve several purposes:

An off-ramp after a client sells or closes a business
An on-ramp when personal finances grow into family-group CAS work
A source of continuity during a major life transition
A respectful exit when a client doesn’t want to pay $6,000 per year for planning

However, the model only works if the firm controls how quickly it grows.

A 10-client cap keeps TAP off the website

The firm doesn’t have a TAP growth target. In fact, they accept no more than 10 new TAP clients per year. At the time of the episode, it had accepted two for 2026.

These clients still have individual returns with fixed deadlines. Too many new engagements create seasonal pressure, even if the work is priced well. The cap protects service quality and supports a steady year-round workload.

That is also why they don’t advertise TAP. “I don’t want to have all my calendar filled up with the wrong-fit prospects,” Rachel says. “I need room on my calendar for right-fit prospects.”

The website promotes services the firm wants to scale. TAP remains a “secret menu” option for trusted referrals and existing clients in transition.

Build the guardrails before accepting the work

TAP offers several practical lessons for firm leaders:

Define the planning, access, and outcomes before setting the price
Qualify clients by their planning needs, not just their tax forms
Use a team so the relationship does not depend on one partner
Give one person authority over pricing and scope
Cap deadline-driven work before it strains the team
Advertise only the services you truly want to scale

Growth doesn’t always mean serving more clients. A deliberately limited service can create stronger relationships, more meaningful work, and better use of team capacity.

To hear Rachel and Marcus explain TAP’s pricing, onboarding, staffing, client stories, and secret-menu strategy, listen to the full episode of Who’s Really the BOSS?.

Rachel and Marcus Dillon, CPA, own a national, remote client accounting and advisory services firm, Dillon Business Advisors, with a team of 28 professionals. Their latest organization, Collective by DBA, supports and guides accounting firm owners and teamss with firm resources, education, and operational strategy through Streamlined OS , groups, and one-on-one advisory.

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

Earmark Team · July 31, 2026 ·

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:

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.
Owns: What they’re specifically accountable for. “Not aspirational, but concrete.”
Measured By: The outcomes that prove it’s working. “That’s where ownership gets teeth,” Marcus noted.
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.”
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.”
KPIs: The numbers that prove success.
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

Earmark Team · July 31, 2026 ·

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.

Private Equity, Proprietary AI, and the Self-Reinforcing Cycle Coming for Independent Firms

Earmark Team · July 9, 2026 ·

In 2025, there were roughly 900 roll-up transactions in the accounting profession. Only a handful were mega-deals that made Accounting Today headlines. Most were small firms merging, tax-only shops joining advisory practices, and everything in between. Of those transactions, 200 were directly linked to private equity investments. Meanwhile, half of the top 30 accounting firms have now taken private equity money or adopted alternative ownership structures.

And while all that was happening, AI tools started being built exclusively for certain platforms, and locked behind walls independent firms can’t access.

Marcus Dillon, CPA, sees these forces clearly. As co-host of the Who’s Really the BOSS? podcast and leader of Dillon Business Advisors (DBA) and Collective by DBA, an advisory community for firm owners, he spent five consecutive weeks this past May traveling to industry events. His journey took him from the Collective Recharge conference in Mexico to Intuit’s council in California, ADP’s council in Nashville, meetings in Katy, Texas, and finally the Firm Growth Forum in San Diego. Across all those rooms, the same interconnected forces kept surfacing.

Firm owners need to understand that private equity timelines drive centralization. Centralization enables AI deployment at scale. And proprietary AI makes consolidated firms increasingly competitive against independent practices. It’s a single, self-reinforcing cycle that redraws the competitive map for firms of every size.

In Season 5, Episode 13, Marcus and Rachel Dillon unpack what he learned across those five weeks on the road, and what it means for your firm right now.

The M&A Wave Moving Downmarket

The numbers tell only part of the story. What makes this personal for most firm owners is where this M&A activity is heading.

MBA graduates from Harvard, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and similar institutions enter the market armed with a concept called “entrepreneurship through acquisition.” Their professors specifically identified accounting as ripe for a roll-up. Now you have freshly minted MBAs, search funds, and pooled investor groups actively hunting for accounting firms ranging from $2 million to $20 million in revenue.

“Private equity gets a bad rap,” Marcus explains in the episode. “All it is is pooled money. There are great people to work with. Some people aren’t so great to work with. And some people have a great investment thesis and culture and treat team members well. And some people don’t.”

In practice, evaluating a capital partner is no different from vetting a new hire or vendor. The label doesn’t automatically make it good or bad.

Marcus and Rachel speak from experience. DBA completed two acquisitions in 2025. When Marcus mentioned firms that acquired eight companies in a single year, Rachel’s response was, “After acquiring two firms in one year, I think you need an award if you acquire eight firms in one year, whether good or bad, it’s not the easy way out.”

Three distinct models emerged among the firms being celebrated at these conferences:

Fully centralized firms like Aprio and Armanino that integrate acquisitions completely from day one
Decentralized platforms that preserve autonomy for acquired firms while sharing ownership
Hybrid models that centralize certain functions while leaving others independent

All three were celebrating wins. But something unexpected happens beneath the surface.

The Rush Toward Centralization

“Since I’ve been back in town, there’s been a big movement with people stating they’ll remain fully autonomous and fully decentralized,” Marcus observed. “They’re now moving towards centralizing.”

Two forces drive this reversal.

First, you can’t deploy AI effectively across disconnected data. Picture a platform with 20 firms operating independently, with their own tech stacks, databases, and processes. If that platform discovers a breakthrough AI automation, they’d have to install it 20 separate times. As Marcus puts it, the data is “so much more valuable when it’s all together, and you can deploy those efficiencies at scale .”

Second, the next buyer doesn’t want a project. Private equity funds typically hold investments for three to five years before seeking a larger capital partner. When platforms go to market, that next investor “doesn’t want to own 20 different brands on a loosely connected platform,” Marcus explains. “That doesn’t make sense to them. It doesn’t make sense to pay a premium for that.”

We see this play out in real time. Springline is rebranding acquired firms under a single brand. Crete Professionals Alliance just rebranded to Current. These are structural changes designed to make the combined entity more valuable and competitive.

Rachel offers practical wisdom for those watching these shifts. “You always want to level up to your top firm. It would be a little naive to think you can keep doing exactly what you’ve always done with the same tools.”

Marcus validates this from DBA’s own experience. When they integrated their two acquisitions, they immediately moved them onto DBA’s tech stack and systems. If they’d left everything separate, “it would have been a nightmare,” he says.

The AI Divide Takes Shape

Current counts Thrive as its biggest investor. Thrive is also connected to OpenAI. Together, they’ve built AI software available exclusively to firms on that platform, and the software won’t be available on the open market.

“When you have big technology companies like OpenAI or Anthropic partnering with firms and creating proprietary software, you have to question who’s going to win the technology battle at the end of the day,” Marcus says.

These AI-powered platforms are competing with smaller firms. You don’t have to join a platform to be affected. You just have to compete against firms that did.

Meanwhile, the broader AI landscape is chaotic. New AI products launch daily. Every platform is embedding AI. Canopy released Co-work, Carbon is building AI features, and Intuit Intelligence is rolling out within QuickBooks. “Everything we open up on a daily basis has some form of AI or agent now being built into it,” Marcus notes.

DBA takes a practical approach. Currently, they deploy Microsoft Copilot across the entire team because it integrates with their Microsoft ecosystem. Select team members also have Claude Enterprise for testing advanced solutions. Once something works in Claude, Angel Sabino, DBA’s Director of Technology and AI, productionizes it in Copilot for broader deployment.

“It’s hard right now to understand what’s real, what’s conceptual, what’s just a great video that somebody put together, or what is actually a true demo of a useful product,” Marcus admits about the current AI landscape.

“Be really aware and ready to start experimenting with it so when you do have a change in the firm, you can immediately solve for it and not try to figure it out when it’s too late,” Rachel counsels.

Your Window for Action

The accounting profession is facing an interconnected dynamic in which M&A drives centralization, centralization enables AI deployment, and AI makes consolidated firms more competitive. Each force feeds the next, and the cycle is accelerating.

But understanding these dynamics gives you power to act with intention. Here’s where to start:

Review your software spend now. Vendors push price increases in the summer. As Marcus advises, if you turned on software to experiment six months ago but only have one client using it, turn it off. DBA specifically moved clients to consolidated platforms like Ramp for bill pay.
Start experimenting with AI before you need it. Set aside a budget and designate a small group to test tools in a controlled environment. Don’t wait for a crisis.
Know your non-negotiables. Whether it’s a PE-backed buyer, a platform acquisition, or succession planning, understand what matters most before negotiations begin.
Take control with your dollars. “You can be a very reactive player in this market, or you can actually be proactive,” Marcus says. “And the best way to be proactive is with your dollars.”

At the San Diego conference, Marcus overheard a woman celebrating finding a session that didn’t mention M&A or AI. She called it “refreshing.” Her instinct isn’t wrong; good business fundamentals still matter. But ignoring these forces won’t make them disappear.

If you want to dive deeper into these dynamics and learn more about navigating this inflection point, join Marcus, Rachel, and other firm leaders at Gather this October in Grapevine, Texas. Visit collective.cpa for details while tickets remain available.

Listen to the full episode of Who’s Really the BOSS? to hear more of Marcus and Rachel’s discussion about preparing your firm for what’s ahead.

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.