The Radical CPA: A Million Dollars?

Call me crazy, but making a million dollars from my firm was never my intention.

Yes, I want to make a comfortable living.

But I want more.

I want to do work where I’m satisfied professionally.

I want the freedom for myself and my team to do good work but to also have time to live life.

Those lines even get blurred for me as my own drive pushes me, having little to do with actual customer expectations.  I want to have a bigger impact on other professionals to help them improve their lives.  Some might even call me a social entrepreneur.

We all know the traditional “old school” firm culture is horrible.  That billing by the hour shows a true professional no value for their actual worth and firms eat their young.  That balance between work and family is lip service if you actually want to advance within a firm.  That the partnership firm model just doesn’t work anymore.

Yet a million dollars is foreign to me as something to achieve as the only GOAL.  So I find it bizarre that I am being inundated with advertisements for why you should move to the cloud and change your firm model because you can make a MILLION dollars per partner.  WTF.

 What am I missing here?

The marketing company selling the event has some good insight.  I’ve read his book and don’t disagree with what he thinks is important, in fact much of it I say all the time as well.  But where I don’t agree is that money should be what drives your business.

Now I didn’t say you shouldn’t be profitable and I didn’t say you shouldn’t make a nice living, but if making a million dollars is your ONLY goal.   I don’t think you are a Radical CPA.

Radical CPAs believe in community and in changing a profession from a lifestyle perspective.  They believe in making the world a better place for small business.  They believe in keeping the profession relevant.   They believe in a holistic value-based approach to business.   They believe in abundance.  And someday maybe their firms will possibly make a million dollars per partner.

So, if you want to become Radical because you want to make a million dollars, you’re probably with the wrong people   That’s not what the Radical CPA movement is about. After all, money will only get you so far.

Originally published on The Radical CPA blog. For more content like this, subscribe to The Radical CPA newsletter or buy the book, "The Radical CPA: New Rules for the Future-Ready Firm."