Never listen to your accountant for growth advice

You shouldn’t lean on your accountant for growth advice… 

But you can learn a lot from how they approach their own business.

You see, accountants are great at reacting to what's happened in the past. 

They’ll tell you how to maximize your tax advantages and classify transactions. 

But growth? That’s not their specialty. Other than telling you to go where the money has come in historically. 

What they are truly exceptional at is building a hierarchical organization. 

Think about it: accountants and law firms have a structure that's like a well-oiled machine. 

They know how to build out a team structure that's a masterclass on how to build a hierarchical organization. 

Senior partners at the top, junior partners coming up the ranks, and associates doing the entry-level work.

And this is something that you can learn a lot from.

They start with the end in mind. Knowing that eventually, the senior partners in the organization will retire and need to sell the business to somebody. 

So they have a partner track in place as a feeder program for those who will own the business in the future. 

The junior partners are buying their way into the business from a previous partner who is selling. 

You become a partner by starting as an associate and working your way up the hierarchy.

Each step of the way, it's very clear what each person does and how many people you need to support each one. 

So each senior partner probably needs five to ten people below them to support their book of business. 

And they make sure that they can afford them by analyzing their revenue so they can staff their organization profitably.

So, what can you learn from accountants? 

Not how to grow your business, but how to structure your organization. 

Be as thorough and methodical as they are. 

These firms are profitable businesses that customers keep coming back to year after year. 

And whenever a partner is ready to retire, they have somebody naturally lined up to buy their part of the business so they can retire into the sunset.

Keep an eye on your accountant. 

They may not be able to give you the perfect growth strategy, but they can teach you a thing or two about building a successful organization.