Episode 15: What We Fired, Cut, and Walked Away From

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In this episode, Nat and Sarah reflect on a decade in business and get honest about the clients they've fired, the tech they've ditched, and the revenue they've walked away from to build better firms.

They kick off with the current market, noting more leads than ever but also more tyre kickers and ghosting. Re-engagement season brought some clients dropping to quarterly and a few filtering out from the early "say yes to everyone" days.

The core of the episode is about boundaries. Sarah shares the hard lesson of stepping back from a major client she loved, realising she'd become an in-house outsourced CFO rather than building a scalable practice. Nat talks about keeping mobile access to roughly 10% of clients and training everyone else to go through the team. They explore why women in the industry tend to struggle more with saying no, and how they're now learning from male peers who've scaled bigger with fewer hours.

On firing clients, they discuss balancing AML obligations and risk management with supporting businesses doing it tough. Red flags for new clients include bashing their previous accountant, multiple accountants in two years, and slow onboarding. Tech that didn't last includes My Firms App, Futurly dashboards, and Modano.

Tea time covers a call-out against negative competitor advertising, a reminder not to adopt AI without measuring real ROI, renaming their Viktor bots, and whether recruiters charging 30% of salary is justified given the talent crisis.

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