Most firm owners calculate the ROI of AI in hours saved. Blake Oliver says that math is exactly why the savings never show up in the bank account.
Episode 88 features Blake Oliver, CPA, founder and CEO of Earmark and co-host of The Accounting Podcast, the most popular show for accountants and bookkeepers in the world. Blake started as a cello major, talked his way into a bookkeeping job during the Great Recession, became one of the first Xero partners in the United States, sold his firm Cloud Sourced Accounting in 2015, and has been named to CPA Practice Advisor's 40 Under 40 twice and Accounting Today's Top 100 Most Influential People.
Three takeaways:
1. Time saved is not money earned. Speeding up prep while client document collection and partner review stay clogged just moves the bottleneck. Fix the constraint, not the easy part.
2. Great marketing exposes every weakness behind it. If a firm has no documented processes and no spare capacity, more leads can make the firm worse, not better.
3. Raise your prices before you change anything else. Price creates the margin, margin creates capacity, and capacity is what lets you actually serve the clients you keep.
Blake also gets honest about burning out at $1M, why he wishes he had held on, and the day two friends died and he started logging off at 3PM and got sharper, not slower.
Connect with Blake:
Blog and newsletter: https://blakeoliver.com
LinkedIn: Blake Oliver CPA
The Accounting Podcast: on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube
Free CPE app: https://earmark.app
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