How a CPA firm owner cleaned up an inherited book of clients and raised her price floor

The challenge

When we started this round of coaching, the owner told me she kept bringing people in and still didn't feel like she was getting ahead. A lot of the drag came from the clients she'd picked up in a practice purchase. Many of them were paying a fraction of her standard fee, and she described some of them being touched 15 to 17 times by her and her staff.

Unresponsive clients were eating time too. The team chased documents and signatures from people who had gone quiet, and cash flow suffered while work sat in limbo.

Results

Here's what happened:

1. Revenue close to double. When she compared the first half of 2026 to the first half of 2025, revenue was close to double, after letting go of about half her clients over the year since the first letters went out.
2. The firm identified 62 clients who needed either a price-increase letter or a disengagement letter.
3. The first 30 disengagement letters went to clients who had stopped responding. Within days, 3 of them came back and accepted the new price to stay.
4. By early spring, 28 of the 62 had been disengaged, and the team was still working through the list.
5. A new standard price for a tax return, with a deposit due before work begins. Some legacy clients told her she'd tripled their price. Some of those clients left, which was part of the point, and for a few she settled on a smaller increase.
6. A rule the whole team knows: without a signed engagement letter, client care plan and organizer, the work doesn't move.

She told me she felt some relief once the first letters went out. By now the firm has caught up on two years of back tax work, and she's running it with what I'd call half the stress she had when we started. She's finally not drowning anymore.