Grow your accounting firm sustainably with the Prototype Components Model for Growth

This model is designed to help you prototype your firm to achieve strong and sustainable growth. It’s been in development and has been used by other firms over the last five years at conferences, monthly mastermind programs and intimate personal consulting engagements.

Here are the three key elements that have brought many firms clarity on their growth, including why they struggle to grow, what growth ceilings they are hitting, and how to build their firms in more ordered and sustainable ways.

For a more in-depth overview and how you can use it to grow your firm in a balanced way, watch this webinar recording: Prototyping your accounting firm towards sustainable growth

1. Balance

In the image above, you will notice that it is divided into two sides:

1. Market

2. Service

As many firm entrepreneurs struggle to maintain a healthy balance in their lives and work, the model aims to highlight ways firm owners can become imbalanced. 

When we work with particular firm leaders, we find they either lean towards the Service side, or the Market side of the model. 

One firm leader may stay more inward and focus on producing revenue, building processes, and hoping the leads just come in. While another firm leader may enjoy the market aspects of the business, selling their amazing team, and enjoying the thrill of the win when they get a new client. 

The Market side is what we call the leading side of the model, while the Service side is the responsive side. 

The Market side embodies the external components a firm leader must attend to, while the Service side embodies the firm’s internal components that a leader must attend to. 

Many leaders struggle to maintain a healthy balance between these two sides when scaling and building a firm. The Prototype Components Model for Growth is meant to define or confine them in a path to build their firms in more balanced ways.

2. Components

The next key part of the model are the 10 white boxes.

These are the components to the model, and they represent all that it takes to scale a firm in a sustainable way. 

Of course, there are many things a firm leader must attend to, but we have found (through testing the model in consulting sessions, courses, and conferences) that focusing on these 10 components—and the teaching that is embodied within each component—allows firm owners comprehensive coverage across building and growing their firm. 

We consider these 10 components foundational. 

There are many things that demand our attention as entrepreneurs, but when you have a key set of foundational components to focus on, you will be a firm with more intention and success.

3. Order

You might have noticed that these white components are numbered in order. This is intentional—the order at which a services-based firm builds and grows can mean either great success or calamity. 

Chaos is often the result for many firm owners as they grow larger. Things get out of hand, people stop following processes, leaders begin to lose track of what their team is doing, and the firm’s culture can suffer. 

These signs are usually due to trying to build a firm backwards, or out of order, from the way a services firm is meant to be scaled. You’ll note from the model that the boxes are not only in order, but they also aid in seeking balance as the ordered building moves back and forth from the Market to the Service side.

The importance of relationships during growth

It’s important to note that this model is for service-based organizations. These are organizations we call ‘Human Organizations’ as they are founded on relationships with vendors, teams, clients, and leadership teams. 

This means that any scaling or prototype modeling of the organization is being done within the realm of human relationships. Firm leadership is the key to scaling human organizations in sustainable ways, since leaders lead people. 

Are you seeking growth?

If you are experiencing chaos in your growth, or perhaps you don’t know the next steps for your firm, or if you are at a growth ceiling you can’t identify, or you are just ready to grow as a leader, then the Prototype Components Model for Growth will provide you with the roadmap to build a firm that will outlast you and allow you to work with team and clients that you love.

We are running a webinar that will demonstrate how you can use the Prototype Components Model for Growth to manage your firm’s growth sustainably. Register here.