The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

242 ⎸ 2026 Survey Results Breakdown w/ Alyssa Lang

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 242

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Alyssa and I are back, and this time we actually hit record (lesson learned from last year, ha). We just closed year two of the State of the Virtual Bookkeeping and Accounting Industry survey, and we sat down to dig into the data together in real time. This isn't a polished, buttoned-up report read. This is the two of us cross-referencing the numbers live, reacting to what surprised us, and pulling out the patterns that actually matter for your firm. We get into the real differences between solo operators and firms with six-plus team members, where the money actually lands, how much owners are really working, and the truth about AI that nobody wants to say out loud. Real talk, some of these numbers gave me pause, and a few of them are going to challenge what you think is possible in your own business. Grab the free PDF report and follow along.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • The revenue ceiling for solo firm owners
  • The honest truth about AI in our industry
  • Why so many of you are still pricing way too low
  • What your minimum fee should actually look like
  • The surprising connection between being the household breadwinner and how hard you push your firm
  • What the data says about working hours and profit margins at every revenue level

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Connect with Alyssa

🌐 Website: https://www.workflowqueen.com

📱 IG: https://www.instagram.com/workflowqueen

🎙️ Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/conquering-workflows-systems-for-bookkeepers-accountants/id1576274369?i=1000529139554

Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me @ambitiousbookkeeper

For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:

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Respond to The State of the Virtual Bookkeeping Industry Survey: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/survey

Opt in to get the report or just skip straight to the survey! Either way, we appreciate your support. 

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The Summer Sale for Dubsado Decoded is July 6 - 12 so mark your calendar!

I'm here again with Alyssa, but unfortunately we're not live in person, so you're just gonna have to deal with the, video screen. But hey, Alyssa, how are you doing? I'm good. Happy morning and happy whatever day this is, and I'm really excited that this is gonna be on everybody's ear, and I can't wait to go over all the results and stuff today Yeah, I'm super excited. we just closed results on the State of the Virtual Bookkeeping and Accounting Industry survey. Really wish I could figure out a shorter title for that. It's so hard to, like, it's a lot to say, but there's really no way around it. Like, Yep just how it is. Um, because we didn't necessarily wanna be, like, the state of the bookkeeping industry, because we're specifically talking about a sector of the bookkeeping industry, which is the virtual one. There's still a lot of people that are not doing things virtually the way we are, and so we're, you know, in this online world, we wanted to get that sub-section of our industry. So anyway, yeah. we just closed the survey yesterday or the day before, at the time of this recording, so we're gathering all the data, and we're really excited to share some of the results with you all. And if you're interested in getting the report, we will link it in the show notes. but you should be able to still just go to the links where you would've taken the survey, which is ambitiousbookkeeper.com/survey or workflowqueen.com/survey, and you can opt in for the PDF of the results. So anything you wanna add to that? Yeah. So just a little bit of context. This is year two of the survey. Last year was the first year that Serena did the survey. She did it solo last year, 2025. This year she brought me in to help her with, just bringing in different perspective and a different angle to some things, which has been really exciting. So this is the second year, and just to give everyone a better understanding is every year this is only gonna get better and better, bigger and bigger, and more information. But the more people know that this is coming every year, the better it can be. So the more data we have to see the progression of…'Cause I'm curious, did we pull up last year's reports? We didn't even think to pull those up this morning, if we as well, 'cause I think that'd be really cool for people to see what was last year. I know that we had a little bit more opt-ins last year to take the survey than we did this year. Also, guys, we did the survey. Like, things that we learn all the time together is we just picked probably the wrong time to do the survey. We started it in the summer, which we probably should've done a little bit sooner, but we learn these things. Data tell- doesn't ever lie. Data lets us know exactly what we need to do. Mm-hmm. it's the second year that we're doing this, and we're excited 'cause now we have a comparison against last year, and then we'll have a comparison next year and the year after. So be able to bring this data because it's really just gonna help everybody here make certain decisions within your firm, and you might not know how to make those decisions. That's kinda what we're here to inspire you to do today, is as we start going over the results and start dissecting it, you guys will start to see how we come up with ideas of how we would solve that problem or how we would come across and position something differently to have a little bit more success. So I'm really excited one other benefit is we hit record. If anybody listened to the podcast last year, we spent two hours recording this, same thing but for last year's results, and we never hit record. So this year we are so to say we've hit record. We're, we're learning lots of things this year. Another thing I wanna add about comparing previous data is we added different questions this year, and we made the questions more clear. So some of the answers that we have for this year, we don't actually have a good comparison for last year. So we'll try to, pull up comparisons where we can, but going forward, I think it's gonna be a lot better. and like to your point, about like the timing, last year we got more responses, and when we were looking at that last night when we were prepping for this, I was like, "Oh, we had it open for an entire 30 days, a whole month," rather than this year, only 15 days. We're like, "How come not so many people like responded?" And then also it's just a different time. Like last year we ran it through the whole month of May before people are getting into like the summer months and like vacations and, you know, downtime and all of that. And so I think that played into it as well. But regardless, we're really excited about the amount of responses we did get. We were able to donate a total of $471 to, um, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, and so we also did that last night, and that was exciting. so yeah, I'm r- I'm really excited to dive into the results. Okay, so this year, like I said, we had 471 total responses versus last year we had 645. So a little bit of a smaller response pool, but I think the quality of the responses we got were overall probably better because the questions were better. And the quality of your life is determined by the quality of your questions, so. so this year, One of the questions we asked was the makeup of your firm, basically. Are you a solo firm owner? you have a small team? And what i- like, what size team type of thing. So this one, the question was designed a little bit differently. but this year, 46% of the responses were solo firm owners, meaning no team whatsoever. and last year, that total was 56%. So that has gone down. People are, realizing, I think, it's really difficult to run things on your own. You're capped. like one person, like sometimes it's like one person doing two to three hours a week, like goes a really long way Yeah, absolutely. Anything you wanna add about business structure? We're gonna dive into, like, more of the weeds probably, like, as we go through the results, questions will come up. But, the next largest piece of the pie on the business structure is a firm owner with a small team of one to two people. That came in at 32%. And then a team of three to five people, which we consider a growing team, was 13%. And, 2% of the people that responded were just getting started, so they don't have their first client or anything, so we're kind of, you know, removing them from that pool. and then s- were firm owners with an established team, meaning six people or more. And so I'm really excited to kind of dive into the differences between a firm like that versus a solo firm, where their profitability ends up, where, you know, how long they've been in business, how much they're working, the firm owner. so yeah I'm excited. Can we start diving into some questions?'Cause now I Yeah. Good, good are at six plus team members, what's their revenue range? And by the, by the way, guys, one of the things that we're doing right now is we're leveraging AI, which has been so fun to do this time around, to actually help us to be able to extract this type of data.'Cause a simple report sometimes can't give you the dissection between the two. So that's essentially what Serena's doing, is doing some research, which has been exciting to see how we can, like, leverage last year it was really difficult to get a report that I liked. I tried to outsource it to, um, someone on Upwork, and it just was not… It didn't, it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, and now that we have AI, it's, it's gotten so much easier to be like, "Oh, this is how I want the report to look," and like you don't feel guilty for going back and forth 10 times asking someone to change, change, change, tweak, change. Like now it's like I can have AI tweak and change and get to the end of it, then outsource it to someone to make it better, you know? Yeah, exactly. Okay, so 500 plus revenue range. These are… Okay, here, these are the revenue ranges for the, 5% people that had six or more team members. 58% of them were at 500K or above revenue. JAX out 20% were between 250 16% were between 100K and 250K. That one, I'm interested to dive more into that because that seems a little bit- That's, yeah, for six team members, unless, here's the downfall. When someone's filling out this data, so if anyone listening is like, "I have six contractors working five hours a week," Mm-hmm. be a different situation than someone who's working… 'Cause in my mind, I'm always thinking of, like, the larger, so the team member's, like, more committed to the company, more, 20 hours plus is probably in my brain. so I'm really curious why someone's carrying six plus team members for 100 to 250K. How much is the founder working? I'm, I'm gonna get to that in one second. There is one more group, 25K to 50K, 1%, or sorry, 4%, which was one person responded. So I'm, to me, that means either A, you are building before you have the revenue to support it. Maybe they're a startup, we don't really know. we can dive into that by looking at how many years they've been in business, or your pricing is really off, or maybe that was just an, a mistake of a click of a button 'cause it was one person, you know what I mean? You never really know. but yeah. what was your question? So my question is the founder-- So specifically, how much are the founders working if they're doing… Right now, fifty-eight percent of people who are six-plus team members, fifty-eight percent of them are at five hundred K revenue. I'm curious how much the founder's working in that firm specifically. Yeah. attractive number of those six-plus team members, fifty-eight percent of them are over half a million Which in my opinion actually checks out. Like, it checks out that someone working, having that many team members typically would make more, 'cause you have more room to grow. And I think a lot of people look at team members as this massive cost, which yes, they technically are, but if your team is not producing revenue for you, some- not all roles can. Like, assistants usually don't produce revenue, but bookkeepers should be technically producing you more revenue and more capacity, you know? Yeah. Or unless you're, like, really doing it to buy back your time. that's kind of my, my deal. Like, I could take more profit from the company if I wanted to, I'm really just interested in it being, like, a passive thing buying back my time. So, okay, so here's the breakdown for the owners 500K with six plus team members. 14% are working under 10 hours, which is really cool, which means they're treating this as more of a passive Yeah. and then 21% are working 20 to 30 hours. That's not bad when you consider compared to, like, working at a… working in corporate, you know? And then 42% are working 30 to 40 hours. and 21% are working more than 40 hours. So that one, that line item, that kind of sucks. I don't want those 21% people I'd be curious to see… I know we're getting like now we're starting to really drill into it, but what I wanna here for anyone listening is, because obviously a very small percentage of people who fill out the survey are at half a million, but I know that a lot of people, it's attractive to have more revenue coming in. But what I- we're trying to dissect right now for everyone listening to understand the majority of how much time a founder should be in, but also that doesn't really dictate how much time that you should be spending in it. Because if someone's working 40 plus hours with six team members at 500K, that in my opinion, there's probably not good systems. We probably aren't leveraging the right efficiency tools. I'd be curious if we can drill a little bit more into that, around the founders and how much time that they're actually spending. Like what is their, pro- their pro- Did we ask the profit margin this year? I did. I'm asking that question right now. When we're on the same wavelength here of like, I wanna see what their profit margin, especially I'm very curious about the person… Are we running it where e- every group of hours that people are working to see each profit margin per group? Okay, so it looks like the profit margin breakdown for the owners at 500K with a six-plus team members are, 28% or under 20% profit margin, and this is bottom line that we're talking about. Hopefully, people understood that question. I tried to be pretty clear with it, but there's always a risk, Yeah. however, I will say, if you're listening to this, there's no judgment, but if you have difficulty understanding profit margins and things like that, you belong in my Elevate program because this is where I teach these things. Yeah and your clients are looking to you to answer these types of questions, and if you're not comfortable answering them about your own number, it's gonna be very, very difficult to be able to advise clients and feel comfortable in reporting their numbers to them. Okay, that's my little side. Love that. 20 to 40% profit margin, 35%, almost 36% of those people had a 20 to 40% profit margin, and then 21% of them are at 40 to 60% profit margin. seems wild to me. that's pr- that's really good. That's a very healthy profit margin to be at, meaning that those people are bringing home half a mill- or sorry, not half a million. They're bringing home 250K around in profit, which is awesome. I would hope that you're at that level. And then 14% of those people are at a 60-plus percentage. That piece, that one is wild to me, and makes me feel like maybe they thought we were asking about gross profit margin. That's 'cause a lot of these numbers that I'm looking at behind the scenes and where we're taking in the forms, a lot of these numbers are, like, insanely high, like 90%, 95%. Like, I think some people may have thought it was gross, and that's something that maybe next year we say bottom line rather than I think that might have just confused people. But things we learn, we learn every year. take it at face value. We'll say that whatever everyone a- answered is exactly what we were assuming, so we can dissect this a little bit more. So now that we know that, um, of the 500K people who are m- having six-plus team members, about 21% of them are actually doing 40-plus hours. Can we drill into the people who are working 40-plus hours with that team? Tell me which bucket they're in for their , profit margin percentage so there was only three people in this group and their margins are all over the place, but the average is 34%. them working, of the ones are working 40 plus hours a 34% really worth working 40-plus hours a week make half a million that you barely take anything home? You know what I mean? Yeah. I mean, If they're used to working where they worked a lot Yeah, sometimes when people work in that capacity, they love working that way, which I get. Like me and you, I know that we both can drown ourselves in and, and what we do. I just like to have a choice of when I do that. Yeah. being forced Yeah. Plus, like the other thing to consider is that was the top… actually that wasn't the top option. We had an option for a million in revenue, right? So nobody chose that. Yeah but it could be between, was one of our options between 500K and a million Probably not, 'cause it said 500K plus 500K plus, nothing else. Okay, so we can give another bucket. say those three people that are working more than 40 hours a week, say they're at a million, might be worth it to work, um, to get that profit margin if you're making a million dollars in revenue. You know, it's all kind of relative, But when you compare that to, you know, someone making… Yeah, that 60% profit margin at that revenue range is pretty, I don't know, unlikely. That was probably a gross profit margin. Yeah But that would be super worth it. I'm also curious of the people who are making 500K plus if they're the breadwinner, 'cause that was a new question that we added this year. For anyone we didn't do. And I was driving, and I remember messaging Serena. I was like, "Dude, we should ask people are you the breadwinner?" Because we both realize that if we ask that question… I'm not saying that people who aren't the breadwinner don't take their business serious. This is not what I'm gonna say. But when everything is falling on your shoulders, you sure as hell push your business way different than when something is so- on someone else's shoulders and you're building something else simultaneously. you almost always have a fallback in a sense. Like, I know me and you, we both are the breadwinners. Well, I don't have a person to split my bread with, other than my Carly My dog's gonna get all my inheritance. Um, but anyway, so for me, it's like it's do or die. Like, if I don't work and I don't push this thing, I don't make revenue, but at the same time, I don't need much revenue because it's only me. So I also don't have a fallback. I don't have someone to fall back on Yeah, and I will say as, you know, when I first started my business, I was not serious about it because it was just a side thing, and I, we had a household income. And so I wasn't reliant on that until I got to the point where I realized that I wanted to be in a different situation. And then that is when I put Yeah. And the, my, the pedal to the metal, you know what I mean? Yep. Yeah, exact- And that's like that … And I'm so glad we asked this question because I'm genuinely curious how many people at certain revenue ranges, I bet there is a correlation between those under a certain revenue range that aren't the breadwinners. And not to say, like I said, people can not be the breadwinners. It's just at the end of the day, it's like I also am super competitive, so I've always been the breadwinner in every relationship, which is crazy to me. Maybe I pick them like that. I'm like, "I need to be winning." We're not gonna dissect all this as therapy session today. Okay. Dang, Claude keeps telling me these questions don't exist, but I know it, I know we yell at it and tell it, it, it does exist. Stop lying Yeah. Um, let me ask the AI question Okay. for AI, though, um, of the … We're still talking 500K revenue, six plus team. 36% are actively using AI in their workflow. 28, almost 29% are experimenting but not consistent yet. 21% are curious but haven't started. then 7% are only using within existing tools like QBO, et cetera. And 7% are not interested or skeptical. That's totally cool. Yeah my… Can I just say a little, little-- Now that I'm doing a lot of research getting ready for AI firm by design,'cause I'm doing a whole sector on safety, and I've just done a deep dive into everyth- like anything and everything around AI and safety. One thing that just like come to my mind is that there's so many cloud softwares and so many things we already trust every day that are really using the same through line of like software and integration. But at the end of the day, we're already all exposed to it. Like everything's already exposed in a lot of ways. Like we even with QuickBooks, like whether you turn it on or off, it's already exposed you to it. Right. However… Go ahead I just think that at the end of the day, it's a decision that everyone has to make individually as a firm of what is your level of safety?'Cause I think a lot of people look to people like us to just tell them what to do. It's like, it's just like Google Drive. I know we have the same thoughts and feelings. It's like, look, could tell us all that your IT is gonna tell you it's not safe, or maybe some IT companies will say it's safe. At the end of the day, all very confusing and it's all very overwhelming. But do your best. At, at the end, we can't stop any of this stuff from happening or any changes to be made. It's just about being with people and also understanding what are you gonna allow your team and yourself to do with the data, and how are you gonna use it? What's a green, flag? Like what can you add? Maybe it's an SOP or something simple versus what's your red flag and having that yellow, red and green, signifiers to your team to have them understand. I think a lot of people… I understand the skepticism. I, I understand that totally. Yeah. I'll also add, too, like, , understanding how the AI is built into those programs. Like Xero, for instance, I didn't start using it until I read through their whole terms, software conditions about the AI and how it's built. Like, usually, not saying always, but especially with systems with access to financial information like Xero, they're using the Claude LLM model, but it's contained. Your information training model that is widely used, so like that a little safer. know what I mean? but that's why a lot of people don't know. So anyone listening to this right now, I'm gonna tell you, if you're on a free version of AI, whether Claude or ChatGPT, you need to run. Like, you stop using it. The one benefit is ChatGPT will automatically have data sharing turned on. This is what I learned. Claude will not on the free version, which is cool, but there's still a toggle that does exist, but you still have risk with Claude being publicly exposed in some sort of sense because it is a free version. So if you guys are on the free version, please just commit to paying. But I will say, going to what you just said about how they're still using Claude's underlying LLM for, um, AI within Xero, if you guys are on the ChatGPT Teams or Claude Teams version, their parameters are very similar to what you just explained, which they have just very con- like, very strict contractual, like, parameters that they get put into that they're required to stand by when someone's on the Teams paid version. Granted, you're paying, like, I think the Teams started, like, 500 a month for Claude, but then you're all- oh, no, for ChatGPT. Claude is way more cost-effective in the Teams version. At the same time, you get what you pay for. you guys to scale with AI, you have to be willing to invest in it, but it also can save you a ton of money But there could be a f- a line where it just, it's not more cost-effective anymore depending on how much you're utilizing it and how many tokens you need. I mean, you guys can be putting in systems, processes, AI is just another tool that's in your toolbox. When we're looking at how people are using things, I'm genuinely curious about the people who are actively using AI, what do they mean by that?'Cause someone just responding to an email with AI is not actively using AI. I think next year we could probably put a little bit more of like, are you incorporating agents? Are you incorporating more like autonomous AI. I think we should switch gears a little bit and dive into the solo… one more t-, Oh, yeah gonna do the breadwinner. I really wanna do the breadwinner one, 'cause I think that's the last one we can do, and then we can move on to the next one Okay, so most of those firm owners are the breadwinner, 87%. gonna be the case yeah, 4% of them are partially, so like less than 50% of the household income, Yeah then the rest a no. So, Sorry, let me specify. That is of the group with six plus team owners, Yeah. or team members, and then, um, 100% of the group that are at 500K in revenue. So it, like, split them up basically. Does that make sense? So it pulled, those percentages weren't just the 500K group. So if we're just looking at the 500K in revenue, 100% of those are the, the primary income earners Yeah, that doesn't surprise me at all Yeah. Okay. So I wanna look now to the opposite end of the spectrum, the solo firm owners and what their breakdowns are. a good chance for people to see like what, what can come from 500K and what that actually looks like behind the scenes. Yeah, and if you're interested in seeing more data for the mid-range, where probably most of us fall, can opt in and get the report. Yep And I just wanna reiterate for anyone, that took the survey, your name and email were never associated with the data, and that's part of why we decided we are able to build something like this, because even if I ask AI, like, who answered this, like, that information wasn't captured because logistically, we built the survey in a system called Airtable, and where we collected emails was a totally disconnected system, which was our email marketing. so worries there. No one's ever gonna be able to identify you. We were serious. one will know. okay. So of the solo operators, the number of hours people worked, 19-- almost 20% are under 10 hours We're gonna caveat their, their revenue might be pretty low, but maybe not. We'll see. 40% were working 10 to 20 hours, 23% work 20 to 30 hours, 12% are working 30 to 40, and are working above 40 hours, which that group means you guys, 11 of you need to start hiring. Hire a VA at least. Get something off your plate. We don't want you working over of this? Like, w- were we in a bucket this one? Not yet. Not yet. I wanted to just kind of start out diving into with their hours, and then what was the percent of people for the 30 to 40 hours? 12%. 12%. Okay, cool. Perfect. Yeah. average, 60% of solo operators are working 20 hours or fewer per week, which is great. and they're keeping 60%, 60 to 70% profit margins. Yeah So that's really exciting to hear,'cause if you're solo, you should be making at least 60 to 70% profit margin 'cause you're not paying a team. Yeah Now, the average profit margin for solo teams is 59%. and 13% of the solo firm owners are actively using AI as far as revenue breakdown goes, of all of our solo operator responses, 35% are under 25K in revenue Which to me means they're maybe just getting started, so we can dive into, like, how many years they've been in business. or their, you know, their pricing is a little off. Oh, that was one question I wanted to look into with the larger firms, like what their average price is. Remind me to come back to that. and then let's see, 29% are between 25 and 50K, 26% are between 50K and 100K, and only 10% are between 100K and 250K. So that tells me that those people are pricing probably at a premium, but I'm interested to see how much they're working. this also shows you, like, almost, like, the ceiling. Not, not to say… Obviously, we had a certain number of submissions, so if we had more submissions, it might be a different story. However, right now, it almost tells you you're, if you're f- solo firm owner, this is your revenue cap that you can hit. Yeah, 'cause we did have an option for people to report over 250K and nobody selected that in this group. So that means your cap is 250K if that… And at like a certain profit margin. And going back to, I think one, one of the things that you teach really well is taking numbers backwards to understand, like, what do you wanna take home? So if we have someone making, let's just say 250k, or I'm, I'm gonna use a easier number, 100k. Let's just say 100k, and their profit margin's only 30%, you're tr- taking home 30,000. Is that enough for you? so, people are like, "I don't wanna manage a team," or, "I don't wanna have to have the headache," or, "I don't want this." And I'm like, "But what's more of a painful headache to you? Having a team that you have to manage only Monday through Friday from 9:00

to 5:

00, or you only making 30k and not making enough to actually produce and make you happy in the way that you need to in life, paying your bills and making that you're, you're stable and taken care of?" So sometimes there's like a trade-off for everything. So I'm saying that more to empower people to understand that, like, this will most likely be your ceiling, and sometimes you have to take a step back and say, like,"If I have this type of profit margin, yes, I might be cutting into it for the short term for a team, but I can now excel by using the data into two team members. What's my new cap? What is my new threshold, my new ceiling?" Your ceiling's gonna keep growing as that money, a- as the team grows with it, if you're managing the team correctly, because that's a whole nother beast. Oh, yeah. And one thing I want to, like, also bring up, one of the stats that we just saw was 60% of the solo firm owners are only working 20 hours or less a week. even if they're only making 100K, if the average profit margin is 59%, that's still really good if you're only working 10 to 15 hours a week because you're making over 50K in profit at part-time hours. So, like, that's okay. There's no wrong way to do this, but it just highlights, like, what is possible. So yeah and then that other thing that we just saw, like, 22 people are making between 100K and 250K without a team member. Like, how did they do that? You know what I mean? Like, like, what are their pricing structures? their pricing?'Cause if they're pricing higher, then that is more feasible for somebody. But if you're pricing lower, I mean, we know a couple of those people who have a lot more clients, but they're just drowning and they have 100 clients and they're only making 250K and they have one team member and they're working over 40 hours plus and exhausted. their job. what they do, but they st- they, they do it every day because there's more shame around closing it down and feeling like a failure. Yeah you know what I mean? The deep, the deep stuff Or having to disappoint clients by letting them go even though it's like it makes sense You're literally losing money serving people. Like, it's how often people do that. yeah. thing we were able to see though, it seems like overall the average, like, sweet spot of number of clients to be served is 20 or less. that was like 75% of the people are serving 20 or less clients. Now, we can dive further into that detail and, and figure out, like, are those people even profitable? Do they have a team? Like, what else is going on? but that seems to be really, like, the size of the, most of the data that we got. 20 clients, average solo firm owner. So that right there tells you, like, you can serve probably around 20 clients effectively as a solo firm owner w- or with a very small team, and that's totally fine. Okay, so here's the breakdown of the solo earners that are making between 100 and 250K without a team. 59% are doing fixed fees, 13% are doing a tiered pricing package, 13% are doing value-based. So really, all of those essentially are the same thing. Yeah, just what you wanna call them, and that's why we broke it down because we wanted to make sure that people kinda gave us how they're pricing, but also, like, those are all flat fees most likely. Yeah Um, and so the majority of those people are charging a flat fee. of them are charging hourly, and then 4% are charging project-based. And then the minimum monthly fee for recurring revenue in this category is, the majority, 50%, I guess it's not even the majority. Half of them are in a 200 to 400 per month range, which still feels really low to me, Yeah, I was gonna say low. you just, if you, if everybody listening literally just, uh, changed their clients by, uh, just an additional $50 changes your profit margin drastically. Like, you know what I mean? Yeah, which is like what books a I know, especially becau- Well, I mean, granted, if they're passing along the fee to their client, then they need to be increasing their rates, but if the client's paying for it, they risk losing a client who's not willing to keep going with an increase, unfortunately with QBO directly Yeah. Um, 32% are between 500 and 750 as a minimum. This isn't people's average, this is your minimum pricing. So it is different than average. Did we ask that question Yeah. that's the minimum pricing. But even 50-- Like, I still feel like 200 to 400 is still too low of a minimum price. 100%. Not in this day and age. Like, it's, it's… That's just way too low. If you guys are pricing, if you're, anyone here is pricing at the 200 mark, I'd really say, like, guys need to value yourselves more. And I, I know it's hard to value yourselves, especially under- I'm curious how many years in business these people who are in the 200 to 400, how many years in business they've been in, 'cause I'm gonna probably say a lot of them are probably newer. Because I get it, like, I also underpriced myself when I had first started, 'cause I didn't know my Yeah. Yeah. There's not-- There's still people that were choosing under $200 as a minimum too. There's a few of those. and then there's s- there's one person whose minimum monthly fee is between 2,000 and 3,500, so whoever you are, I'm super impressed. You're probably an advisory firm. no, they're probably also working with construction. They're probably e-commerce or niched down. I don't know if we asked the niche question, but Yeah, we did down, that's another reason why niching down actually allows for you to have better efficiency in SOPs, allows you to get more specific and smarter in something. Your marketing gets easier. You get to charge more money. There's so many benefits of niching down. Yeah. And then client count in this, solo firm owner between 100 and 250K, just to remind you what s- what section of people we're looking at right now. the biggest group were between 11 and 20 clients. That was 36%. 23% were between 21 and 30 clients. and then were between six and 10, and then there was the outliers that were five or fewer or between 31 and 50 clients, just a few of those. the services that are being offered, this one is kind of tricky to look at because it was a multi-select, so you know, there's gonna be varying here, but 95% of this group are offering bookkeeping, cleanup, catch-up, and then, 68% are including financial reporting, 54% are including budgeting and forecasting, and 50% are including advisory CFO, 50% are including payroll, 45% are including AP and AR, 36% are doing sales tax, and then 27% are including tax prep, and 27% are including controllership or management accounting services. The fact that there's here make- doing advisory and still have a minimum… I mean, obviously advisory fee might be a little bit different than their average monthly bookkeeping fee. really hope people, whoever's advising their clients and you're charging less than $1,000 a month, we need to change that Well, yeah, I mean, to your point, my firm minimum doesn't include advisory, so, like, I was one of those responses that, like, my minimum is, 500, but I still offer advisory services, but not at that price. So there's context, you know what I mean? year we can definitely put, um, a tier of, like, what's your minimum starting price, and then what is your average client fee? Because my minimum, just because… it, was 400. The average was, I think, 695 something like that, was the average. So, like, I think that's a little bit different than, like, someone giving… But you said there is an average. Okay, Yeah, we did ask that. perfect one point of data was the person that whose minimum is 2K to 3,500, they have five or fewer clients, like that person specifically. So They're probably right now. Hell yeah, dude. Love that right now, hell yeah. yeah, which is the cleanest path to 100K or more in revenue without burning out, hopefully. Hopefully they're not working that much. Yeah okay, so what's the average client fee across this solo group in 100K to 250K? And the biggest group was 36%, average fee was between three and 500. That still feels super low. wow. That's And then 13% were between 1,500 and 2,000, so that is better. 22% were between 500 and $750 on average. So that seems like the most realistic bucket. so the majority are averaging thir- 300 to 500 per client. When you pair that with the client count, it shows that most have 11 to 20 clients. So then when you multiply the 15 clients times the 600 a month average, that's when you get like your 108K a year. So hopefully that illuminates for some people like how you can actually hit six figures with a amount of clients, but that means your minimum needs to be higher. Yeah, the minimum needs to be higher or, like, increasing the current, or maybe you guys just haven't done evaluations, 'cause I do know we asked this question at one point asking people how their average number of people who actually raised their rates the year. And, 'cause I remember doing an Instagram reel about this, that raising the rates, I forgot what the data was at the time, but essentially a lot of people did not do a raise rate in the past couple of years, and that's also a bigger problem. Like, the bigger problem is, like, we need to make sure we're increasing fees. Like, things have changed. I know we talked about this in the, um, first teaser podcast where we talked about AI's making things a little bit easier. But guys, just because AI's making it easier, my philosophy is if you're gonna lower your rate because bookkeeping is now getting easier, it's to have the long game of an upsell process into a higher fee into advisory. So you're essentially doing what we call here in the course world, where you're creating just an entry level offer that's just getting people in. Because once they're in, people who are buyers once are buyers twice, and it's easier to sell someone who's already on, uh, your client list, which we both see this all the time where people are so desperate trying to find new clients. But it's like you probably have clients who are willing to pay you more, but you haven't ev- ever told them more things you do. Or people will be like, "Oh, I told them I do payroll," one time on a call in passing. You think Yeah. Like onboarding, overwhelmed with everything else you're asking and telling them. until it's years later when they find out, "Hey, I'm introducing you to my payroll company that I'm gonna do payroll." You're like, "What the heck? Why didn't you tell me? it. know or to the advisory point, like, and I, because I work with so many accountants and bookkeepers who want to offer advisory and it almost feels harder to offer advisory to someone who is seeing you as just a bookkeeper. So there's a whole shift that has to happen in the way you carry yourself, your confidence, and all of that, which I actually have something coming around that, so on the lookout this too in, uh, Advisory Edge, that session we did where remember I gave them upsell emails? emails to give people the chance to, if you guys are in that position, which there o- obviously Serena has, like, way more resources diving into this, but we did give an email template for those who are like, "How do I get clients to tease them these advisory services?" Because it's like sometimes just pitching it to someone won't immediately convert them if they don't even know what's to come. But there are ways to do that in a way where you're almost, like, teasing it out to them and, like, giving them samples of what that would look like, so they can see the potential and then wanna move forward with the potential. so that was a really good session that me and you did where we talked about a lot of those different things. Yeah, we'll link that in the show notes too. Um, it's a really great workshop. Yeah okay, so to your point about raising prices, overall, only 30% of people did in the last 30, or the last year. Yeah and about almost 30%, only raised to new clients, which is good. Rai- raise the price easier every new client comes in because that's how you test the market, what it's willing to pay. And so if you don't have that process in place of testing where is your s- where is the ceiling for the type of clients you're working with, like you're, you're gonna stay way lower than you could. Um, And one caveat on that, just because one person tells you no and you're expensive does not mean you're expensive across the board. There are people out there who will value what you do if you put, if you position yourself.'Cause everyone's like, "But everybody else does bookkeeping." I'm like,"And that's your problem because you just find yourself being just another bookkeeper." If you have a mindset of you're just another bookkeeper, you'll always be just another bookkeeper. But if you're someone who's like,"I'm so unique. I have a different stance. I come from this, and I do that," gonna … That is gonna exude. That's gonna, that's gonna shine out and make it really easy for you to find people and attract people. Confidence goes a long way, baby Mm-hmm. It does. 18% did not raise rates, but they're planning to Plan. doing bunny ears. If you guys can't hear the bunny ears, those are bunny ears. Anybody who's saying they're trying to do something means they're not. Guys, trying is Or planning to. Yeah. D- doing is doing. Like, are do it? would say let's just give them a little bit of a task. If you are here right now and you are one of those people who said that you are going to or planning to do a price increase, I want you to say and commit right now while you're listening, on a piece of paper, the date you are gonna do your rate increase, and I want you to commit to that right now. Because right now, if you're saying somewhere in the future, there's always 10 million other projects that you will put in your way, not knowing subconsciously, that you will put in front of your way to avoid a have, have a hard conversation. There's something I saw the other day, that, like, changed the way I was thinking about something that I was dealing with it said something along the lines of, " your inability to have a hard conversation means that you're willing to make less money." So you're willing to make less money to, to not be in an uncomfortable position and tell someone about a rate increase. times out of 10, every client's like, "Okay." Like, literally, and everyone will be like… I hear it all the time in breakthrough where people will be like, I r- I did all this rate increase and they… I lost two clients, but I also upped 10 of them. Now I have less clients and I'm making more money." And everyone was like,"Hell yeah, you deserve it." It's like fearful of losing the two, or they think everyone's gonna leave them. Not everyone's gonna leave you Yeah, most people are not going to leave you, like statistically, as long as you've been delivering. And if they were going to leave you, there's probably another reason besides price that they decided it's not worth the increase. So if you are gonna increase, you gotta make sure that you're actually delivering the value worth the increase. I mean, a $50 increase doesn't warrant changing any really much, but if you're gonna do 100 to 300 to $400 increase, hopefully you're matching that value, or you've already been providing that value and you can show them. And now you just have to tell them. You have to restate it to them that like,"We've underpriced you for quite some time, and s- that's d- based off market research. We're deciding that we're gonna move forward in this route, which is actually meeting what the standard average fee is for a company in your position. so at this point you've kinda gotten free services." That's how I'd pitch it. I'd be like, "You've pretty much gotten a really good deal up and to this point." And like when you pitch it like that, it's almost like, okay, like I've just been getting a whole time. It's everything is way you pitch it and the way you twist it in a good way Yeah, absolutely. is there any other piece of information that we wanted to dive into in this six-figure range with a solo owner? I'm gonna ask about the AI, I think Cool So 73% of them are engaging with AI in some form, which is in line with the overall survey average. But only three of the 22 people in this range are actively and consistently using AI, and they're already hitting 100K without it. So, that raises the question If the people who have figured out how to clear 100K, six figures, on their own are mostly just s- what this is saying is most of them are just ex- still experimenting with it, Yeah meaning they're probably not gaining any return on that time invested. Yeah. when they actually lean into using it? It's pill at the end of the day. So like I think a lot of people think that like all of a sudden AI, they're gonna start using it, and someone's gonna tell them one profound way to do it, and all of a sudden it's gonna change your life. Here's my philosophy. If you don't know your own processes, if you don't know your own audience, you don't know your own marketing strategy, you don't know what you want , you don't know your values in your business, you don't know where you wanna go, AI's not gonna help you. AI can only help you if you have clarity, and yes, AI can help you get clarity by interviewing you. So this is my biggest tip is like have AI interview you. Like ask it, have it ask you questions about your values. What is your vision? Have it help you paint that picture, but it's never gonna be able to do it for you. So I think people are trying to, when they say like they're getting into it but they're not really like leveraging it, it's probably because they're hoping that it's gonna magically like solve my onboarding. Just like me and you, we're not gonna give you our exact step-by-step processes and SOPs in our business,'cause it wouldn't help you.' Cause your values are different than… We're best friends, and y- we still have way different ways that we run the firm. Like there would be no reason why I'd come in and just give it to you. It, you would just be back to square one, and I think that that's the problem right now with a lot of people is that, "Oh, well maybe if I start using AI more, I'm gonna all of a sudden make way more money." That's not true. If you don't have Right you will not grow, regardless of AI, regardless of SOPs, regardless of the process. You don't know where you're going Which is what this basically says, like most of these people have already like, cur- 23% are curious but haven't started, and another 4% are not interested and skeptical, which means of this group of solo firm owners that are already at six figures Yeah aren't using AI. So that means if they decide to adopt AI, they can just probably exponentially grow their results If if used correctly and not get distracted. Yes. to produce revenue, like, and actually move the needle and make life a little bit easier, um, but not to replace the team. Like, I mean, I know that they don't have They don't have a team, so it's like they have to could be the question of… Because there was a lot of people, when I did my workshop recently, a lot of people were like, when we asked them, like, what are their biggest reasons why they wanna adopt AI, a lot of people were like, "I just don't wanna manage people. I just wanna manage." I'm like, "You guys do realize you're still gonna manage something, and AI still talks back, so let's be real." And also, guys, AI is biased, and it also, it hallucinates. Like, I would way rather have a team member, that's managing some sort of AI. But at the end of the day, that was a big thing, so, like, there could be a lot of people in this bucket as well who are using it, but in replacement to not have to hire a team, and that's probably why they're capped at only staying at 100K is 'cause they refuse to hire a human because they don't, they don't wanna manage a person. Once again, going back to I don't wanna feel discomfort, so therefore I'm gonna do the easier thing, which is actually hindering my growth. Yeah. if they've, if that, there's, you know, 3 per- 13% of these people are actively using workflow or actively using AI in their workflow, what that means is they're probably successfully using it. It's probably helping them hit this number. They can probably go further, with humans or additional AI, but, like, you've already, these people have already developed some sort of skill in managing the AI and directing it. Like, you can translate that skill to managing and directing people. You just have to have a little prompt AI, you know how to prompt a human. Like if anybody here has ever like prompted AI very vaguely, but you probably also talk to your team like that, and then you wonder why you have really crappy results, it's because you have to give them context information details. I'm actually really curious about the people who are using AI. So I think you said it was the 13% of people. How many hours are they working in comparison to people who are not using AI? Okay, so of those using AI in some form, this includes all types of AI, not just using it in their workflow, but of some form, 43% of them, almost 44% are still working between 30 and 40 hours a week Exactly. So it doesn't, AI doesn't magically fix, and sometimes AI actually makes it harder to work because you have Or it makes you work more because you're distracted and you're like,"What else can I make? Yeah, I do that. I wouldn't have normally done." Yes, and I think this is something that a lot of people really think that it's gonna change your life, and it's gonna be this… But it's all about, like, not getting yourself distracted. It's also people are probably using it really inefficiently, or they're prompting it really terribly, or they don't have a system for communicating it, or they don't know… Like, for me, I just built-- This has nothing to do with the accounting industry, and I know I told you this, but my biggest hiccup is right now trying to find a new RV site, and I actually built an agent that actually goes out. I just tell it what, like, where I wanna travel to, and it literally clicks into each and every RV site to tell me what's available. That right there just saved me a bunch of hours. But me going on and, like, finding a Claude prompt that's gonna tell me pull all the RV resorts, sure, that's great, but now I'm still having to physically go into each RV resort. So I think that that's where most people, the level based off the workshop I just hosted, everyone said they were level one and two, which a lot of people have not even explored three and four, which is agents and real automation through AI. And so right now, a lot of people are going down this rabbit hole of trying to, like, do level one and level two and obsess about it, but they're spending way more time, they're having bigger headaches because they're on AI all day, and they're not actually moving the needle because they keep getting stuck and being in a little hamster wheel Yeah. So what's also interesting is the group of people in this revenue range, solo owners, six figures, that are not using AI, of them are still only working 10 to 20 hours a week. Yeah 50% of them are only working 20 to 30 hours a week. Yeah and then a couple people are still working above 30 hours Yeah. 40 hours, sorry. And that And at the end of the day, it's like AI can be a good tool, but it al- can, also can be your biggest distraction. And it's a matter of how you use it, how you leverage it, and how you're gonna incorporate it within the firm. So a lot of people think it makes them faster, but like I said, it's because they're using it at the most basic level and not really to do things autonomously and actually in automation format. And also, guys, instead of using AI, I would really go down the rabbit hole of automating more things. I mean, I'm all about AI, but I think automating should be the num- I mean, how long ago was Zapier introduced and people are still not using Zapier to its capacity? everyone in this of AI replacing them. I'm like, "Yo, you guys didn't, you have, you guys thought Zapier was gonna replace you, and w- here we years later and y'all are still not using Zapier, like, And Zapier is now so much easier to use because it has an AI agent in there down more of the N8N route, which is way more powerful than Zapier, but I do not recommend it to people who have not mastered Zapier fir- first. that's where I built my agent from, but it's incredible the question about niching. 31% of this group are yes, they are niched. 32% are working on narrowing their focus. Trying. Nine Yeah. Well, there, there, there is a transitional period when you decide to niche how we were saying earlier about the trying. Um There is a transition period though, 'cause you have to let go of, like, all your prior clients to move into serving the to. Yes And an evaluation process. There's a whole thing. No and 23% are generalists by choice, 9% are niched by a client type, so instead of an industry. That first one was by industry. And then f- one person wants to niche but hasn't yet, and they're still hitting six figures, so that's interesting. I, I would probably drill more into that detail and be like, "Okay, where else, what else are they doing?" Like, you know. Yeah. the services of those in this group By AI usage Most of them are doing cleanup, catch-up, and bookkeeping, financial reporting, budgeting, and forecasting. So it seems like, yeah, and a lot of them are offering advisory CFO. So what we can kind of glean from this group of hitting six figures is you do have to have an elevated service to be able to command those prices. obviously we could spend literally all day diving into, all of these results. and stats because they're nerdy and fun yeah. Uh, but in the interest of, I mean, there's so many different angles you can look at this, But you can still get the free PDF report. Go to ambitiousbookkeeper.com/survey or workflowqueen.com/survey. Where's my link?'Cause we're competing over here Any closing remarks that you have, Alyssa? No, I think at the end of the day, just the biggest reminder is that just because on paper someone else did it a certain way doesn't mean that that's how you have to operate. Like, at the end of the day, like, this is all data that's just gonna help you, but it's gonna show potential and opportunity. really make sure that you reflect on, like, what feels good for you. Like, what feels good for the way that you wanna operate your firm? How many clients do you wanna serve? If you're really happy with only charging $200 a month, then stay at $200. If you're happy, like, just know that this is just data that helps to empower you, not to discourage you Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for, meeting with me and going, diving over into these results. and we're really excited to share them with everybody. so yeah, we'll talk to you on the next episode Bye

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