A support group for accountants

Considering opening your own accounting firm in 2026, but are afraid to take the plunge alone? You don’t need a business partner in order to share the burden. Instead, Charles Harris, CPA, shares how early-stage firm owners can benefit from joining a business support group. 

Here, Harris explains how he transitioned from working with side hustle clients to launching his own firm, plus how connecting with other CPAs at a similar stage has helped grow a sustainable business.

—Interview by Lauren Ward, edited by Bianca Prieto

For starters, please share a quick introduction about your professional journey and when you launched your solo firm.

I graduated with a degree in music and made my way to oil and gas, doing QA work for a few years. I went back to school and got my master's. I started my accounting career at BDO, working in tax with high-net-worth individuals. Then I moved to a VC-backed Insurtech startup and helped grow the team. Lastly, I went to a mid-size company doing internal accounting and quickly grew antsy and wanted a challenge.

I was debating about finding another startup to join, and talked with a friend who was an entrepreneur. He gave me a referral, and then I talked with one other person and got another referral. Next thing I knew, I had a handful of clients and realized I could go out on my own very quickly.

You’ve written about creating a side-hustle to firm ownership group. How did you come up with the idea, and how did you find your first members? Was it strictly other CPAs, or did you include other types of entrepreneurs? 

I commented on a Jason Staats video about needing to network, and three other side hustlers commented as well. Jason commented back, saying we should connect. Next thing I knew, we were emailing back and forth, and then we started a small Discord server. I highly recommend finding a group.

We still invite all bookkeepers and CPAs who want to form a firm. We do have some other entrepreneurs sneak in, but we are generally not the best group to make sales to, as we stay low to the ground on expenses, so generally, they leave or stop engaging.     

How did the group support you with things like decision-making and accountability as you launched your own firm? 

Especially at the beginning, everyone in the group was terrified of how to bill clients, how to market, what software to use and a million other tiny things they don’t teach you in school. I think by the first week, my wife was tired of hearing me talk about all these things, but this group was a swarm of activity, answering every question. We all had the entrepreneurial fever that really helped us all build out.

What kind of value do you get from the group now that your firm is more established? 

Now that it is established, we still share our financials at least once a year and check in with each other. We still always have questions and advice for one another. I’ve shared how my marketing is going, and things I’ve learned and others have done the same. We still compare how we price and bounce pricing off one another to make sure we are being fair to our clients and ourselves.

Another big advantage is, because we don’t know everything, if we run into a situation we are unfamiliar with, we can still reach out to each other. In fact, I have contracted out my New York returns to a New York CPA in the group. The sounding board and help are invaluable.

For other CPAs who want to start their own group, how do you recommend they structure meetings and other touchpoints? 

I think the big thing is to become active on social media. Oftentimes, locally, there are not enough people to even create a group, but I guarantee there are many people who would love to be a part of a group if you are online. One of the biggest unlocks for me and my firm was just being available and opening up to people around me. Once you are active, I think a lot of things happen naturally. 

The group I’m a part of is really unstructured, but the focus is all the same for us, and so engagement happens naturally. I think the key is to find those core people who are serious and very focused, and the right questions and comments will happen naturally.

People are still able to join our group, just reach out to me via LinkedIn and I’m happy to add you. But if you want to start a group, just start engaging and you’ll be shocked at what happens.

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The Net Gains is curated and written by Lauren Ward and edited by Bianca Prieto.