How not to let your firm devour your life

Most firm owners don't intend to build businesses that devour their evenings, weekends and sanity. But it happens more often than anyone likes to admit. Adam Shay, CPA and founder of Share the Knowledge, has spent years helping leaders untangle themselves from firms that depend on them far more than they should.

Here, he digs into the early warning signs of misalignment, the two deceptively simple questions that clarify what you actually want and the weekly rhythm that keeps your firm from slipping into chaos. 

—Interview by Janet Berry-Johnson, edited by Bianca Prieto

Many accounting firm owners unintentionally build businesses that trap them. What are the signs your firm might be misaligned with your goals?

You know you’re misaligned when the firm needs you more than you need it. The biggest signs are subtle at first. You start working nights and weekends because you’re the only one who can fix things. You hire people, but you still keep most work and decisions on your own plate. You feel a constant tension between client work and the business you want to build. 

Another sign is when you can’t step away without everything slowing down. If your firm can’t operate without you for a week, it’s a job (or prison sentence) dressed up as a company. The last sign is emotional. You feel resentment creeping in toward clients or team members. That’s usually the moment your goals and your firm have drifted apart. 

How can firm owners create a clear vision for the kind of business and life they actually want?

Start by stripping away everything you think you’re supposed to want. Titles, revenue milestones, firm-size comparisons. None of that matters if it doesn’t support the life you want to live. I encourage owners to take a blank sheet of paper and answer two questions. What do you want your life to look like Monday through Friday? And what role do you want the firm to play in that? Once you define your life vision, decisions about pricing, team structure, client fit and service mix become easier. The challenge is giving yourself permission to design your business around your life instead of the other way around  

If you could wave a magic wand and help every firm owner implement one system or practice to support sustainability and growth, what would it be?

A simple operating rhythm.

Not an EOS implementation or a shiny dashboard. Just a weekly cadence where you look at workflow, people, capacity and client issues before they become fires. Most firms are reactive because they lack a consistent rhythm. The right rhythm forces you to slow down long enough to see what’s breaking, what’s improving and where the bottlenecks are forming. It builds a more sustainable business because you stop letting the weeks run you. You start running the weeks. 

What's one mindset shift you had to make in your own journey to create a business that truly supports your life?

I had to let go of the idea that doing more made me more valuable. For years, I defined success by volume. More clients, more work, more revenue. That mindset created a firm that consumed every ounce of capacity I had. The shift happened when I realized the firm was never going to love me back. It would always take as much as I was willing to give. Once I started valuing my time, health and family as much as the business, everything else changed.  With that realization came better pricing, better clients and better boundaries. That mindset shift is what made the business finally support my life instead of the other way around.  

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The Net Gains is curated and written by Janet Berry-Johnson and edited by Bianca Prieto.