The boundaries behind a $1 million accounting firm

You've structured your schedule around your life, not the other way around. What does your typical workweek look like during peak season?

During peak season, I protect my routine fiercely. I work out three days a week after school drop-off, then settle in from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. with minimal meetings—that block is heads-down, focused work. I pause networking and relationship-building with referral partners during tax season and we close our doors to new business from February 1 through April 15.

When the school day ends, I shift into mom mode—fully present. After dinner and bedtime routines, I usually jump back on for a few hours. I also put in some weekend hours during the day from late February through early March. All in, I'm averaging about 45–50 hours per week during the peak six weeks. I never miss a family dinner, and I'm at every school event, practice and everything in between. That's not an accident—it's a choice I've built my business around.

You've built a $1M firm but aren't working 80+ hours each week during tax season. What are the most important boundaries you've set with clients, and how do you reinforce them without hurting relationships?

We barely meet with clients during tax season—and that's intentional. The planning we do throughout the year means there are very few surprises come tax time. Eliminating unnecessary meetings during peak season is one of the single biggest efficiency gains we've made.

Instead of review meetings, we record detailed video walkthroughs of most tax returns using a comparative summary from our tax software. Clients love it—they can watch on their own schedule, rewind, watch again with a spouse and actually absorb the information. It's also become a valuable internal review tool: when you have to read every line out loud and explain where each number comes from, you catch things.

Our systems handle the rest. We operate through an electronic portal with an organizer, and we are a 99% paperless firm. Every client answers a standardized set of questions and uploads their documents by a required date. If we don't have what we need by that deadline, we file an extension—no exceptions. Clients learn this from the moment they're onboarded: it's in the client info sheet, the engagement letter, our automated reminders and personalized emails as deadlines approach. The expectation is set early and reinforced consistently.

How have your pricing and client selection decisions supported your ability to maintain those boundaries?

By the time someone gets on a discovery call with us, we've already learned a lot about them. The way they write their first email, whether they follow our scheduling instructions, whether they've pulled their prior-year returns—all of it signals how well they'll work within our systems.

We charge a fee for the discovery call, which naturally filters out fee-sensitive clients before we've invested any real time. We post our base fees on our website so there's full transparency from the start. We lay out exactly what we need and how we need it—partially as a test. Can they follow clear instructions? If not, that tells us something important.

Our pricing and our process work together to communicate one thing clearly: we run a tight ship. If our systems don't fit how you operate, we're genuinely not going to be a good fit—and we'll say that directly. That's not a threat; it's respect for both parties.

For firm owners who feel stuck in long hours but want a different model, what's the first change you'd recommend they make?

Honestly? Start with an honest audit of where your time is actually going—and why.

So many firm owners are still running on outdated models, buried in inefficiencies they've never questioned. Are your processes documented? Are you leveraging software, staff and AI for everything that doesn't require your specific expertise? Are you charging what your time is actually worth? And—real talk—are there clients who drain you, ones where you see their name and feel your stomach drop? Those clients exist at every firm. Let them go.

There is no shortage of great clients right now. Shed the dead weight, align your fees with your value and get serious about your systems. And if you don't want to do it all yourself, you don't have to. Hire support—even per diem staff. There are talented people actively looking for opportunities to contribute. You don't have to build a $1M firm alone, and you definitely don't have to do it at the expense of your life.

(Image courtesy Kelly Rohrs)