8 Signs You're Earning Less Than You're Worth

Are you working long hours but still feel like you're not earning what you're worth? In this episode of the CFO Project Podcast, hosts Adam Lean and Jeff Prager reveal the eight key signs that accountants and bookkeepers are undervaluing their services. From being trapped in a pricing war to offering services that clients see as a necessary evil, we break down the common pitfalls that keep financial professionals stuck in a cycle of low earnings and high stress.

If you're ready to break free from these limitations and start earning what you're truly worth, this episode is a must-listen. Discover how shifting to an advisory model, rather than focusing solely on compliance work, can help you stand out in a crowded market, build lasting client relationships, and increase your revenue. Tune in now to learn how to take control of your financial career and escape the accountant’s trap. For more resources, visit TheCFOProject.com.

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Transcript

00:00:00:00 - 00:00:08:02
Unknown
in this episode of the CFO project podcast, we discuss the signs that you may be earning less than your worth.

00:00:16:00 - 00:00:32:09
Unknown
Welcome to the CFO project podcast. Today, we're talking all about the eight signs that you may be earning less than your worth as an accountant or bookkeeper a tax professional to help with the discussion. I've invited Jeff Prager, the other co-founder of the CFO project.

00:00:32:09 - 00:00:58:20
Unknown
Jeff. How are you doing? I'm doing great, Adam, and glad to be here as always. Yeah. So I'm really excited for this episode because we're going to essentially list the top eight signs that that sort of you and I feel are signs that an accountant or bookkeeper may experience, that signals they may be getting less than their work because, you know, mountains and bookkeepers, CPAs and tax professionals.

00:00:58:21 - 00:01:22:04
Unknown
I mean, there's a lot of of knowledge and learning and experience that they go through to be an accountant because it's not the easiest profession in the world, but it's also not the best paid profession any longer. And we're going to talk through the signs that maybe you're earning less than your work. So are you ready? I'm ready.

00:01:22:04 - 00:01:27:06
Unknown
Are you? I'm ready. Jeff, you want to kick it off with side number eight?

00:01:27:06 - 00:01:28:23
Unknown
Sign number eight is

00:01:28:23 - 00:01:32:03
Unknown
What you sell is seen as a commodity

00:01:32:03 - 00:01:34:02
Unknown
in the minds of your prospects.

00:01:34:02 - 00:02:02:23
Unknown
Now, let me explain that. Commodities compete on price, not value, which means that there's constant downward pressure on your rates. And if you're seen as a commodity and people cannot differentiate you from other people, not only is there downward pressure, but you're clients are looking for the cheapest option because they don't see a meaningful differentiation.

00:02:03:01 - 00:02:22:18
Unknown
And that's being compounded by constant, barrage of advertising. Say you don't need your accountant anymore. I know, this is such I love how you said in minds of your prospect. Because it doesn't matter what we offer, it only matters what the prospects thing.

00:02:22:18 - 00:02:28:16
Unknown
Absolutely. And the prospects don't know what we do. It's like going to a doctor.

00:02:28:16 - 00:02:45:20
Unknown
Do you really know if you're going to a good one or not? Exactly. Most people choose their accountant. I would guess by asking their neighbor, Bob, who do you use or asking a friend? How do you know if the accountant, if you have nothing about accounting, how do you know if the person you're choosing is a good one or bad one?

00:02:45:22 - 00:02:55:05
Unknown
You don't. You really don't. It's a blind service. It's good. Why don't you lead us into number seven?

00:02:55:05 - 00:03:01:23
Unknown
I think so. Number seven is very similar to to the to what Jeff said about the commodity. The number seven is

00:03:01:23 - 00:03:06:02
Unknown
What you provide is seen as a necessary evil

00:03:06:02 - 00:03:07:17
Unknown
in the minds of your clients.

00:03:07:17 - 00:03:17:08
Unknown
So what I mean by that is if you think of the average business owner, they have a laundry list of things to do to focus on.

00:03:17:08 - 00:03:41:09
Unknown
They got to make sure they're getting the customers. They're going to make sure that employees show up in a productive after work. They're going to make payroll next Friday. They have all kinds of things to worry about accounting and tax, bookkeeping on that laundry list of things falls at the bottom. Why? Because they view tax prep and bookkeeping is just something has to be done.

00:03:41:09 - 00:04:07:13
Unknown
It's a necessary evil. They'd rather not have to do tax file taxes. They'd rather not have to do bookkeeping. But because they own a business, they know they have to. And as a necessary evil, which means anything that's a necessary evil. The person that buys this service doesn't value the service, which means you can't charge a lot for something that somebody does it value.

00:04:07:14 - 00:04:14:17
Unknown
Plus, you're not going to get a lot of face time with the business because they don't really want to spend a ton of time talking about taxes and accounting and bookkeeping.

00:04:14:17 - 00:04:29:02
Unknown
I think you're absolutely right. Business owners tolerate bookkeeping and taxes, but they don't want it. And that's the bottom line. So that's putting more downward pressure on what you could charge the client.

00:04:29:04 - 00:04:32:07
Unknown
It's a necessary evil. That's all it is.

00:04:32:07 - 00:04:42:11
Unknown
All right. Side number six. There's a ton of competition. Is side number six. A crowded market means that there's going to be price

00:04:42:11 - 00:04:59:06
Unknown
War and low client loyalty. And if they perceive and the word is perceived that anyone can do what we do, then they don't see a reason to pay extra or what your worth.

00:04:59:08 - 00:05:28:13
Unknown
Again, it's perception. They don't perceive us as adding a great deal of value. And there's a lot of competition. It used to be from our fellow accountants, but now it's from corporate America and they're saying, hey, again, like I said before, we don't need you. We don't need the professional. Anybody can do it. All you need is our software and you can do it.

00:05:28:15 - 00:05:34:06
Unknown
And they don't even talk about the nuances and the reason why most tax returns are incorrect

00:05:34:06 - 00:05:56:16
Unknown
or most bookkeeping nowadays is incorrect. And that's something I've seen over the course of my career, that books were more accurate when we did them by hand than they are by computer, because computers don't think and people think they do, and that's why we're being commoditized.

00:05:56:18 - 00:06:27:14
Unknown
I also I get an email I don't know about you write emails constantly from these outsourced like like overseas accounting firms that say that we'll do your bookkeeping on your taxes for pennies on the dollar. I mean, that's the competitor you mentioned, software. That's a competitor. Technology is only going to get worse. Yeah. How many of you have heard hey, let's outsource is to India or or Philippines or wherever the whichever country Brazil I think is being highlighted now.

00:06:27:16 - 00:06:49:20
Unknown
And what do they know? You know, I know, but and I know your point is, is very, very sound and that when there's competition the price goes down. I mean, that's how are you going to get into for sure. So, right, how do you raise your prices when there's somebody around the corner that could potentially, in the minds of your clients, do a cheaper and better.

00:06:49:20 - 00:06:54:08
Unknown
sign number five is it. It's if you find your work boring or repetitive, then

00:06:54:08 - 00:06:57:16
Unknown
it is a sign that you're earning less than your work.

00:06:57:16 - 00:07:00:12
Unknown
In other words, you spend a lot of time.

00:07:00:14 - 00:07:27:19
Unknown
And if you think about the course of your life, you spend a lot of time working and if you're the time you spend working is boring and repetitive to you, then you're probably not going to feel energized and want to do and grow in and do a fantastic job and grow and expand. And that will have a significant impact on how much you want to.

00:07:27:20 - 00:07:48:15
Unknown
I mean, you know, if I find that I, I used to be an accountant and I honestly, I found it boring, I really did because my job was to record the past and I didn't want to I didn't want to move up in the ranks because I didn't want to keep doing that and having more responsibility. And of course it was going to impact my salary.

00:07:48:15 - 00:07:54:07
Unknown
So I left the accounting profession to do something else I thought was way more interesting.

00:07:54:07 - 00:08:01:22
Unknown
Well, what you're getting at is we're spending more and more of our time doing low margin transactional tasks

00:08:01:22 - 00:08:10:11
Unknown
we we have too much education, background and everything to be doing the low margin work. And I think that's what you're getting at.

00:08:10:11 - 00:08:15:14
Unknown
And it becomes repetitive. It gets boring. Work becomes a four letter word,

00:08:15:14 - 00:08:26:12
Unknown
Everybody listening. If you haven't already, sign up for our five minute weekly email with practical tips for accountants and bookkeepers to escape the accountants trap. Go to the CFO project.com/newsletter.

00:08:26:12 - 00:08:30:10
Unknown
which really gets me to sign number four,

00:08:30:10 - 00:08:35:15
Unknown
which is if you're really if you're working really long hours,

00:08:35:15 - 00:08:43:14
Unknown
there's a couple of things worth working long hours, working hard, and working long hours are not synonymous in my mind.

00:08:43:16 - 00:09:07:23
Unknown
Okay, sort of like working smarter. What we're doing is we're trading time for money, and that's not scalable. You only have a finite amount of time, and you want to live. I mean, did we forget why we work? We work to live, not the other way around. So you hit your income ceiling very quickly. Number one, if you're billing by the hour.

00:09:07:23 - 00:09:22:17
Unknown
But number two is if you're doing low perceived value work. And notice I use the word perceived. It is high value to us. But is it perceived that way? So what you're doing is you're

00:09:22:17 - 00:09:35:08
Unknown
Trading time for money, which isn't scalable. And the more hours you work, probably the quality of your work is going down because you're burning out.

00:09:35:10 - 00:10:04:01
Unknown
And when it's transactional work, is your mind really on it? Are you looking for. What does that mean? How does that translate? What can I do with this information to add value to my client or you? Just in a rush to get it done so you could get to the next client. So if you're really working long hours, I think that's a sign that you're earning less than your worth.

00:10:04:03 - 00:10:31:02
Unknown
Yeah, I read a statistic that the average accountant is making. If you if you take the amount of hours they work, the average account is effective. Hourly rate is around 43, which is crazy low base, nothing compared compared to the amount of value they could provide to the organization or to a client. And that's saying nothing about the risk you're taking in terms of compliance work.

00:10:31:13 - 00:10:40:10
Unknown
Penalties for taxes, penalties for sales tax, penalties for income tax. And and if you do something wrong, you're liable.

00:10:40:10 - 00:10:56:06
Unknown
Well that's actually side number three if you're assuming too much risk I mean it being the accounting profession, profession is the bookkeeping profession is you are taking on cash that you could be held accountable for.

00:10:56:06 - 00:11:15:17
Unknown
so, as an example, I knew of an accountant who his client thought that they were responsible for paying certain taxes. I believe it was payroll tax and sales tax. But the accountant that thinks that they thought the business owner was responsible for paying there was a giant disconnect. When the business owner got this letter. It was nasty letter in the mail.

00:11:15:17 - 00:11:44:06
Unknown
Guess who they blame? And there was this huge fight and the client essentially lost their business under fire. The accountant. You're taking on a lot of risk and you're responsible for things which is impeding how much you can earn. Well, not only I mean, there's a financial risk, but what about the fact that everything's a fire to them and the urgency risk that they call up and say, I gotta have this by tomorrow?

00:11:44:08 - 00:12:14:19
Unknown
Or even worse, the unpredictability of getting paid? I was just talking to an accountant the other day and his receivables were sky high. Said, don't you collect when you deliver the return? And he goes, no, should I? And and I go, not only that, I charge in advance when I had that kind of a practice, but the urgency and the liability and the fact that their fires become yours.

00:12:14:21 - 00:12:27:20
Unknown
So it's the risk of that additional stress in your life caused by a third party that you can't control. So yeah, I think so. I think that's absolutely right.

00:12:27:20 - 00:12:52:10
Unknown
Hey there, Adam Levine with the CFO project podcast. Are you an employed accountant or bookkeeper that would like to start an advisory service on the side? Well, we have a free training for you called Side Hustle CFO, where we'll show you how to start a business on the side, offering CFO and advisory services to small business owners. We conduct this training every Friday at 3 p.m. eastern and 12 p.m. Pacific.

00:12:52:11 - 00:12:57:02
Unknown
Go to the CFO project.com and click on Free trainings to register.

00:12:57:02 - 00:13:01:03
Unknown
Well, number two is if you're on a marketing roller coaster.

00:13:01:03 - 00:13:10:14
Unknown
Now think about this. All right. Normally what happens is we take on clients and every time we take on a client it's like a new part time job.

00:13:10:16 - 00:13:32:02
Unknown
So you finish the job and your time is devoted to getting the book straightened out, the tax return done, whatever it is, and your marketing stops. So then you go, now the work is done. So now you got to go back and start marketing. And so you market market. And then you get the work and then you work and work and then you get the work done.

00:13:32:02 - 00:13:57:15
Unknown
You got a market market market. And then you got to work work work and market market market and your whole life goes by because you're, you're struggling. And again, another stress point, as opposed to having a constant stream of clients that come to you month after month for a fixed fee or something of that nature where you're paid for value and you're paid for what you're really doing.

00:13:57:17 - 00:14:03:23
Unknown
So in the roller coaster, clients only come when they're desperate,

00:14:03:23 - 00:14:31:12
Unknown
and you're not a trusted advisor. You're fixing a problem of the day. Yeah. So it's a whole different relationship. Again, it gets to that perceived value versus actual value. I agree I you know, the you know, the the roller coaster injuries is very key here to you. Just like you said, you spend all this time going out getting clients, which is not the most favorite thing to do, marketing itself.

00:14:31:14 - 00:14:46:10
Unknown
But you spend all this effort getting clients, you get a bunch of clients, and now you don't have time to do any more marketing because you have all these clients. You got to do the work, and then you spend all this time doing the work. And then what happens next year? The tax percentage of those clients didn't come back.

00:14:46:17 - 00:15:06:08
Unknown
It's too late to get out. If it's if it's April 1st and you haven't heard from a third of your clients and you because essentially they fired you in your mind, you don't have time to go out and get a whole nother set of clients. So then you spend the rest of the year going back on this marketing, really, because you're getting a whole nother set of clients and it's exhausting.

00:15:06:08 - 00:15:08:04
Unknown
You're on this roller coaster. There's no

00:15:08:04 - 00:15:32:00
Unknown
State course of work. You're just up and down, up and down. And that's exhausting as well as on your checking account. Yes. I mean, that roller coaster affects the way you live. And most of us earn our money during peak times. And then whatever we earn has to make it through the next peak time.

00:15:32:02 - 00:15:40:10
Unknown
That's not a way to live. Yeah. I mean, at least if you have a salary, you're no, you're going to get paid every two weeks or whatever it is, right?

00:15:40:10 - 00:15:50:07
Unknown
So the last sign that you may be earning less than your work is if what you're providing is disconnected to business success,

00:15:50:07 - 00:15:56:22
Unknown
and this sort of goes to to the points we were making earlier about what your offering is seen as a commodity or a necessary evil.

00:15:57:00 - 00:16:18:19
Unknown
If you think about this, you could be the best bookkeeper or the best accountant in the world and do your job perfectly well, but your client may still well. Why is that? Well, the job of bookkeeper. You're not going to count is to record the past, make sure everything's recorded in compliance, is there? You could do it perfectly well.

00:16:18:21 - 00:16:41:18
Unknown
And that has no bearing. Your job has no bearing on the success of the business, because your job is to record what happened in the past. So therefore your job is just connected to business success. And as we've talked about business owners don't necessarily care about business owners, or rather the financial person in their life helping to have a better future.

00:16:41:18 - 00:16:48:14
Unknown
Which means if they'd rather you help them have a better future, they'll pay more for that.

00:16:48:14 - 00:17:05:04
Unknown
Which means you'll make more. Put it another way if all you do is focus on the past, and what you do has no bearing on the success of the future of the business, you're not going to get paid as much, which means you'll be earning less than you.

00:17:05:04 - 00:17:33:04
Unknown
I built my whole career on that concept of we are dream makers. We sell hope. The average accountant sells the past, and you can't change the past. So, yeah, I'm an absolute believer that our job is really to use numbers to map out a clear path into the future, and it better be a better future. And I truly believe that, it is.

00:17:33:04 - 00:18:01:06
Unknown
I, I pride myself in trying to be the most expensive accountant in town. In town. And but I don't present myself as an accountant again. I'm selling hope. I'm selling the future. You have personal goals. You have dreams. You want to live a certain lifestyle. You want your business to be financially healthy. Yeah. How do you help your clients reach their dreams?

00:18:01:08 - 00:18:29:21
Unknown
And by the way, that's how you should be measuring your success by the impact you have on your clients. The positive impact. So yeah, I, I really think that we need to change the paradigm of this profession. Yeah, yeah. But rather the person that the financial person in their life help them have a better tomorrow and just being aware of what happened yesterday.

00:18:29:23 - 00:18:51:10
Unknown
So those are the eight signs that you're earning less than your worth. So what are you doing now? If you feel like you're earning less than your worth will be, the answer may not come surprise to you, but the answer is to provide something where you can charge more. That's something that's not seen as that's not a necessary.

00:18:51:10 - 00:19:15:04
Unknown
You okay? There's not a ton of competition where your work isn't boring and repetitive. Well, you don't have to work for any long hours. Well, you're not assuming too much risk where you can get off this marketing rollercoaster and what you're anyway, what you're providing is directly correlated to business success. So, Jeff, what is that thing that meets up everything I just talked about?

00:19:15:07 - 00:19:43:10
Unknown
Oh my God, it's called the CFO project offering services. And that's what we do in the CFO project. We treat accountants and bookkeepers to provide the CFO advisory service. So, Jeff, you want to explain what CFO advisory services are? Well, it's very different than a fractional CFO. Number one, we specialize in small business CFO, which is very, very different than big business CFO.

00:19:43:11 - 00:20:09:22
Unknown
And the reason is, is big companies have a lot of resources, a lot of people they don't make every decision isn't as critical as it is with small business. So really our job is to communicate with our clients, to help them derive a clear path to a better future. And that's what we do. And the reason we could scale is because we have a system to do it.

00:20:10:02 - 00:20:41:06
Unknown
We meet with our clients monthly. We get a, paid in advance every single month. And my oldest client is going on over 25 years at this point. And Adam still has his first client and we meet with a monthly. They pay us monthly. So yeah, there are ways to do it. And in some of the things we're doing with bookkeeping and taxes, but it's low value work most of the time.

00:20:41:08 - 00:21:13:23
Unknown
Most of the time. And what we want you to do is charge for your value, not your time. Yeah, yeah. My favorite part of our offer, the CFO advisory services to clients, is other. That is, is the pay or not, is that you're actually helping real business owners who are struggling, like you're helping real people out there who have responsibility of putting the food on the table, but also the responsibility of paying their employees and and keeping their business afloat.

00:21:14:01 - 00:21:44:06
Unknown
And you're helping them not only understand the things that you do to improve cash flow of profit and revenue, but you're helping them mentally and emotionally, like there's not that many people that an average business owner can turn to real help, and you're giving them this peace of mind. And if you could do that as well as help them, you know, generate more cash flow and profit relative, they'll pay you for this handsomely.

00:21:44:08 - 00:22:09:01
Unknown
Right? We're offering a lifeline and and you know, think about that is, is that lifeline has so much impact on their lives, their employees lives. And they don't have anybody that they can talk to. I mean, they could talk to their spouse, their banker, but they really don't know what it's like to be in the trenches or in the shoes of that business owner.

00:22:09:03 - 00:22:36:23
Unknown
And we accountants or CFOs, why do we get paid so much? And believe it or not, our risk is so much lower is because they now have somebody to talk to, to confide in, and they're willing to pay for that. It's sort of like a therapist, a financial therapist. I mean, I've had clients call in me. I've had people I mean, people will be clients will even.

00:22:36:23 - 00:23:03:13
Unknown
And there's been stretches in the marketplace where I personally don't feel like lot, but they love getting on the zoom calls or because they just want to talk and they just want to be they want to be confident that somebody is just, oh, they need affirmation. They need somebody that could say, am I online or offline? And, you know, yeah.

00:23:03:15 - 00:23:30:13
Unknown
And and if you could provide that service again, think about this. How many of your clients look forward to your meeting? Whereas I could say in this role, my clients love this meeting. They can't wait for me to show up. Yeah, I agree, so you know, the eight signs that we talked about in this episode? You know, these these are signs that you may be earning less and you work.

00:23:30:13 - 00:24:02:19
Unknown
And I hope the premise of this episode, the reason why we want to put it together, is because we feel that accountants and bookkeepers, energy professionals, are undervalued for we. We as a profession should be doing way more than what we're doing. And in light of the current competitive environment, in light of the fact of software that these big tech companies are trying to compete with us, there's a better way to earn what your work without having to just reduce your price and take on more value.

00:24:02:21 - 00:24:44:21
Unknown
There's a better way, and the better way is to become an advisor and what we call CFO advisor, which is part CFO, a party advisor to just help guide business owners towards doing the one thing that they need to be successful, which is to generate positive cash flow. We just do that every month, and we're going to have a bigger impact on our financial lives, and we're going to make more money with a lot less work, especially if you offer what we call what we teach in the CFO project to this Productized, CFO financial service based on systems, not a fractional CFO service, where you're customizing each engagement and each hour, each client will

00:24:44:21 - 00:25:11:09
Unknown
feel like a part time job. So if you're interested in learning more, just go to check out our training. We have a ton of free training and resources and, calculators and other tools on our website. Just go to the CFO project.com. Jeff, any last minute words? No, it's just it's time to control your life. And this is the way to use your background.

00:25:11:11 - 00:25:36:03
Unknown
What your accounting background. Taxes, bookkeeping, account thing, whatever you want to call it, and take that background and make more money in less time. And that's one of the things you could see in our Google reviews and stuff like that, that people just really enjoy. And I'm going to reiterate what Adam said. This is a system.

00:25:36:05 - 00:26:05:11
Unknown
So we've productize the way we approach it so that it's repeatable and that you're not constantly reinventing the wheel. And that works. We have hundreds of testimonials saying it works, so just give us a peek, take a look at the CFO project. Com and maybe one day we'll see you in one of our meetings. Sounds good. That's a great way to end it.

00:26:05:13 - 00:26:11:19
Unknown
Thanks for being here Jeff. Thank you Adam. All right everybody we'll see you next time on the CFO project podcast.