If You Decide to Start a Solo Practice

Source: Insight

Advice on starting a solo practice from people who have done it.

• Explore these three issues:
  • What kind of practice do you want to create?
  • Specialization makes sense if you base it on your past experience.
  • How will you get clients? Developing marketing skills can help build your practice more quickly. Read Selling the Invisible, by Harry Beckwith, Texere, 2001.
• Solo practitioners can earn money only when they are working. So it is hard to take time off for vacations, etc. You will have to build the practice to a size where you can hire other people to do some of the work while you spend time developing new sources of revenue.
• You will need a network to refer business. Referrers may expect you to reciprocate. Be sure to tell them you will. Create your network before you start your practice.
• Getting clients means using some or all of the following:
  • Direct mail. One solo practitioner sent 187,000 tax prep flyers and got 172 tax clients and three business clients.
  • Newsletters and e-mail notices.
  • Chambers of commerce and other organizations.
  • Advertising.
• People assume all CPAs have good technical skills. They choose the personalities with which they believe they can work.
• Tell prospects how you bill for your services. They will respect you for it.

From Insight, The Magazine of the Illinois CPA Society, November/December 2007. For the complete article, click here, select the November/December 2007 issue, then select The Power of One.