if this is 'growth', why the heck am I more stressed?

Because revenue counts everything.

Including the work you said yes to that costs more than it pays you.

The fixed-fee model makes this particularly quiet. The margin leaks in five-minute chunks, and by the time you feel it, its already done the damage - aka your stress levels.

Wait, isn't growing revenue the whole point?

It's a point. But revenue is just a tally of everything you agreed to. It doesn't know the difference between the job that took 2 hours and the one that took 22.

A bookkeeping firm at $2.5M, 35 clients, average retainer $1,200. On paper it adds up. But:

• 3 of those clients have historical cleanup that's been "almost done" for six months.

• 4 involve payroll edge cases that were never in the original quote.

• 2 are early-stage businesses at $400/month while a senior manager personally handles their questions, because the relationship matters, and nobody wants to be the one to say it's costing more than it earns.

And the signs are innocuous enough:

• A client emails about a payroll notice that came in on Friday. That's 40 minutes on Monday, unlogged.

• Then a new account that "just needs connecting."

• Then a call that wasn't in any agreement.

None of it billed.

Isn't this just a pricing problem? 👇

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38 years in business and they were hitting a brick wall.

Cameron Varner, principal at Banbury Lane, an architectural and cabinet hardware industry veteran, shares his experience overcoming these challenges and finding a fresh position and honing in a distinctive target market in this episode of The Art of Positioning Podcast.

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Pricing is downstream of positioning.

If your positioning says "we adapt to what you need," your pricing will keep trying to honour that.

Meaning every proposal bends to fit the client, not the scope.

You end up building retainers for the tidy, well-organized version of the client in front of you.

Not the actual one.

Firms holding margin well aren't necessarily more expensive. They're just more specific about what a job actually includes.

But let’s do something about that now. 👇

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😎 Enjoying your read so far? I've built a diagnostic that shows exactly where your brand may be bleeding revenue.

5 minutes. Spots the gaps and gives you fixes that you can sort right now, not in 6 months.

Time to get ahead of the competition.

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🏏 Badass tip – One scope trigger. One script. This week.

Pick the one thing that most reliably derails a month in your firm. In accounting and advisory, it tends to be one of these:

• Historical cleanup ("the books are just a bit messy from last year")

• New entity or payroll setup mid-engagement

• Emergency compliance notices ("it came in Friday, can we sort it Monday?")

• The unscheduled call ("can you just hop on something quick?")

Now do this:

1. Name it. One sentence. Somewhere your team can see it.

2. Write the reply. Three lines. Everyone uses this exact version: "Happy to help. This sits outside what we originally agreed, I can quote it separately or add it to your monthly. Which works?"

3. Decide the default before the moment happens: project quote or add-on rate card. Not mid-conversation.

4. Use it once this week. Not perfectly. Just once.

5. Track it. Client reaction. Time it would have taken. Whether you billed it.

This isn't about a pricing overhaul. The goal here is to stop those 5-minute chunks turning into $50,000+ of unbilled annual work.

The real cost of not doing this

Every month, without it, the quiet discount program keeps running.

The $400/month client, the Friday emergency call, the cleanup nobody quoted, none of them individually sink a month.

Together, they're why a firm doing $2.5M can feel tighter than it did at $1.5M.

Nobody says out loud: growth makes it harder to see.

More revenue means more clients, more exceptions, more places for exactly this kind of leak.

It doesn't shrink as you grow. It comes with you.

- B