More than 100 owners of bookkeeping, tax preparation and advisory businesses learned strategies for improving their business from some of the leading minds in the accounting industry during Day 1 of GrowCon 2025 in Provo, Utah on May 5.
Five guest speakers presented on core issues facing the accounting industry, including how to expand your vision for your business, make the most of the work artificial intelligence can do for you, and establish a system that attracts and retains top talent.
“What kind of firm do you want? What would be perfect for you?” asked Dawn Brolin, CEO of Powerful Accounting Inc. Brolin was the first guest speaker of the day, and she laid out a vision for a firm that became a theme of the conference: how to build a more efficient firm that allows you to work less and make more money.
“Define what you want your firm to look like, and then get out of the office,” she admonished the attendees at GrowCon 2025.
Attendees met in the ballroom of the Utah Valley Convention Center for the first day of three total dedicated to working ON their business. Setting aside time to step back and analyze operations is key to achieving growth, speakers said.
After the first day of the conference concluded, the entrepreneurs, professionals, and members of their families met for a gala dinner to celebrate their accomplishments in 2024.
Universal Accounting Center President Roger Knecht and Events Director Christi Richards handed out awards to attendees at the gala, including best logo, most revenue from a new service offering, and rookie of the year. Any business owner who reported earning more than $100,000, $500,000, or $1,000,000 at their firm was also honored with an award.
The insights shared at GrowCon 2025 were specifically designed to help the owners of bookkeeping, tax preparation, CFO/advisory and accounting businesses achieve the vision they have for their firm. Here are highlights from the presentations:
Dawn Brolin, CEO of Powerful Accounting
“From Bean Counter to Dream Launcher: Charting New Adventures in Accounting”
When Dawn Brolin, CEO of Powerful Accounting and The Designated Motivator, landed one of her acquaintances as her first bookkeeping client, she agreed to handle his books for $200 each month.
It felt like a lot of money at the time, Brolin said, for what was, essentially, “bean counting.” She was doing the most basic accounting task: recording transactions for her client to get ready for the tax season.
Brolin noted that some of the business owners in attendance were facing the same challenge she did 20+ years ago: finding your first client. This process can feel extremely difficult, Brolin said, and it often pushes accounting business owners down a slippery slope.
Many accountants dedicate all of their time and attention to finding their first few clients and once they do, they’re so focused on taking care of those clients that they lose themselves completely in the work.
But that mentality can be a devastating trap for accountants who aren’t careful. If you don’t have a passion outside of work, Brolin warned, you’ll always stay the same, she told the GrowCon 2025 audience.
One tax season a few years ago, Brolin wanted to volunteer as a softball coach at the local high school. She realized very early on that her firm needed to become more efficient if she was going to be at practice each day at 3 pm.
“I had a passion outside of the office that made it so I HAD to change,” Brolin said. Her desire to become more involved in her community through the high school softball team was a seminal moment in the future of her firm. She realized that everyone of her employees had a passion just like she did. Everyone would benefit from more time outside of the office, so she had to redefine her business model.
Here are some key insights on how Brolin did just that from her presentation:
- Every firm owner needs to embrace the phrase, “I am making a change in my business model,” Brolin said. A key shift that can unlock more earnings for a firm is to shift to what Brolin called the relationship-based pricing model. Instead of charging per report or hours worked, you set up a subscription based model. This allows the firm owner to charge more for clients who need more attention and make the relationship worth it. She sends her clients cookies each year on their birthdays. “Show them you don’t care about their AGI. You care about them,” she said.
- Brolin warned that, “You can’t get the job done well for your clients if your hair is always on fire.” She did away with timesheets and stopped tracking vacations for her employees a long time ago. Brolin decided that her firm would perform best if its employees had the space to pursue their passions outside of work. That meant they needed to fire clients and lighten the workload. “Nothing good comes from working on April 15,” she said.
- While Brolin considered herself a bean counter when she first started bookkeeping, she told the GrowCon 2025 audience that she realizes now that bookkeeping is “100% about relationships.” Clients want answers to their questions, and Brolin has found they’re willing to pay for it. Above all, Brolin reminded the business owners in attendance to take control of their dream firm. “If you are tired, you have the ability to change what that looks like for you,” Brolin said.
Jon Lakefish, Founder of the Lakefish Group
“Adapt Today with AI: Practical Tools for Immediate Impact”
Have you ever heard of the Selective Attention Test? Take a moment to watch it, if you haven’t.
Humans often have the tendency to lose the small details of how something works when they’re taking in the full image, just like many of the GrowCon 2025 attendees did not notice the gorilla, the background changing, and the change in passers while counting passes during the attention test.
Jon Lakefish, founder of the Lakefish group, told attendees that the same thing is happening right now with the development of Large Language Models powered by artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, Deepseek and Perplexity.
So much progress has been made that it can be easy to get lost in all of the potential that these AI models have. Lakefish presented strategies for making these models work for your firm and demonstrated how implementing them in prompts can increase the quality of the response that is generated.
Lakefish developed marketing plans for more than 45 companies, and has found that LLMs significantly lighten the load when it comes to marketing your services.
Above all, though, Lakefish said, is that, “You cannot just copy and paste from AI. You have to have a human in the loop.”
These models are powerful tools that can make your firm more efficient. They need to be embraced, certainly, but not blindly. Here are some other key insights from Lakefish’s presentation:
- It seems like we’re hearing about new models everyday. So where do you start if you want to use an LLM? Who are the big players in the space and what are they best used for? Lakefish said that the best LLMs right now are ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Deepseek, Gemini, and Grok (though the last two aren’t quite on the same level as the first four, he said). ChatGPT is definitely the place to start, according to Lakefish. ChatGPT has connected video and image creating models that work well together.
- Lakefish gave a live example of how to use ChatGPT using the GrowCon 2025 webpage. ChatGPT read the webpage and gave him a rundown of the type of people who would be attending, who the sponsors would be, and even produced reports on the sponsors so that he would be ready for networking opportunities as they arose. He then had ChatGPT build an infographic for the sponsors, as well as other branding images. Then he had it create a script for a commercial, uploaded it to a voice over program, and made an advertisement for them. It took just a few minutes. In the past, it would have taken graphic designers, animators, voice actors, professional studio time, and a whole lot more to bring this marketing campaign to life.
- Lakefish also offered some advice on how to make the most of your use of LLMs. With all of the companies he works with, Lakefish will upload all of their marketing and branding materials to the LLM so it can learn their voice. He also recommends being nice to the model: “You have to treat AI like your best employee. You have to be polite. The data shows you will get a better answer.” Lakefish also recommended paying $20 a month for the latest version of ChatGPT, GPT 4, because it offers the most expansive responses and capabilities. Paying for GPT 4 also protects users from copyright lawsuits, and OpenAI won’t use your prompts or the materials you upload to train the model for future use.
Rhamy Alejeal, CEO of People Processes
“From Processes to People: The Key Shift for Sustainable Business Growth”
Did you know that 80% of terminations at work come down to behaviors, not skills? Rhamy Alejeal, CEO of human resources management company People Processes, said that business owners need to shift what they prioritize during the hiring process.
“We need to hire problem solvers, not task doers,” Alejeal told the firm owners in attendance at GrowCon 2025.
Alejeal offered strategies for improving the talent acquisition and retention process. He said that firm owners need to develop systems that make life easy on their employees.
“The time to look at a maternity plan for your employee is not after they’re already pregnant,” Alejeal said.
A business’ competitive advantage isn’t its process or its product. The advantage comes from the people who work there, Alejeal said.
Let’s explore some of the highlights from Alejeal’s presentation at GrowCon 2025:
- Many business owners express concern about training an employee who will eventually leave the company. Isn’t that a waste of time and money? However, firm owners should be more concerned about the impact that keeping an employee who didn’t receive proper training will have on their business. “Training is cheap,” Alejeal said. At People Processes, employees receive five hours of training each week from four full time trainers. Business owners need to make plans to train their employees well after their onboarding, and Alejeal recommends regular training sessions for all employees.
- When you hire an employee, you need to teach them the WHY of what they’re doing, not just the HOW, Alejeal said. Lower level employees will be more likely to push the company toward its vision if they feel like they have dominion over their role. Embrace their capabilities, but understand that mistakes will happen. Alejeal recommends building up systems to regularly record and evaluate mistakes outside of performance reviews. Correcting those mistakes should not be the focus of a performance review. Performance reviews, he said, are where you set the future trajectory for the employee and identify leaders at your company, he told the GrowCon 2025 audience.
- Every business should have an offboarding process. Business owners should do what they can to avoid making enemies with people on their way out the door. Alejeal has worked with businesses in the past that had fired more employees than it had served clients. It creates the opposite of goodwill. Building an offboarding process also benefits the people who stay. They’ll feel less anxious about what might happen if they have to leave the company if they hear from former employees who had a positive experience.
James Donovan, Founder of Nine-Two Media
“Local Market Domination: The Ultimate Guide to Winning Clients with Google Local Service Ads”
Google is the first and often only place that people look when they need help with something. Yet so many accounting businesses fail to establish a standout presence on Google.
If you’re looking for new clients, the last thing you want to do is make prospective clients jump through hoops to find you.
“Your goal should be to make it so easy for your prospects to get in touch with you,” said James Donovan, founder of Nine-Two Media.
Donovan shared valuable insights for rising through the ranks on Google at GrowCon 2025, with special emphasis on appearing in the “Maps” based section at the top of search results.
He also highlighted a pay per call advertising campaign that Google has implemented called Local Service Ads that could be a game changer for your firm.
Here are a few of the strategies that Donovan shared in his presentation:
- At least once a quarter, firm owners need to update their Google My Business page with their current address, phone number, and hours. This, along with posting regular blog post-like updates and relevant photos, shows Google that your business is worth sending people to. “You don’t need more prospects. You need more trust from Google,” Donovan said. He recounted a time where he was working with an HVAC business owner. The phone number on the company’s Google My Business profile was different than the phone number on the company’s website. When they called the number listed on Google, it led to a rival HVAC company in the area. If you don’t manage your own profile, you’re opening yourself up to other people reporting crucial information about your business.
- Donovan recommended using Google’s Local Service Ads to find more clients. With these ad campaigns, also known as Google guaranteed ads, a business only pays for in bound calls that Google generates, rather than paying to place an ad on Facebook or Instagram. You have to jump through some hoops to get it set up, Donovan said, but you don’t waste money advertising to people who aren’t interested in what your business has to offer.
- Every firm should install systems that allow the easy collection of reviews from clients. Donovan noted that the period directly after tax season should be a ripe opportunity for getting Google reviews because your service is fresh on the client’s mind. He recommended building template emails to ask for reviews after filing a client’s return or sending them their PnL. The average number of reviews for an accounting business on Google is just 10 reviews, Donovan said, so if you can get into the double digits, you’ll surpass most of your competitors. Donovan also suggested replying to each review with keywords relevant to your business.
Nicole McMillan, Senior Vice President of People, Canopy
“Hiring and Retaining the Best Talent”
In the accounting industry, we often hear about the “talent crunch”. There aren’t enough accountants entering the profession compared to those retiring, so that should create a number of opportunities for those already in the industry to earn promotions, right?
Well, as Nicole McMillan, senior vice president of people at Canopy, shared during her presentation, 53% of accountants are considering leaving their job within the next year.
With more than half of the industry considering changing positions within a year, it’s more important than ever to establish your company’s hiring brand and strengthen your company’s culture, McMillan said.
“If you aren’t carefully managing your GlassDoor page, you’re going to end up with reviews from angry employees who have moved on,” McMillan said. Canopy works hard to maintain its GlassDoor presence, and she regularly hears about that during her interviews with prospective employees.
McMillan shared a number of strategies for finding and retaining the right people at your business, including red flags to identify during the interview and onboarding process, how to get ahead of your onboarding process, and managing motivation to keep good people from moving on.
A key factor in a company’s culture and the performance of individual employees is the relationship they form with their immediate supervisor. McMillan shared this quote from Clayton M. Christensen:
“The single most important factor in workplace happiness is the relationship that employees have with their immediate manager. Managers have an opportunity to profoundly shape the lives of people and their families.”
Let’s explore a few of the strategies McMillan covered in Provo at GrowCon 2025:
- The onboarding process should begin well before an employee arrives for their first day. All of their paperwork should be ready. Key information like passwords and tasks should be laid out for them. Their workstation should be set up. McMillan recommended giving new hires “onboarding plans” which explain key information about the company, its goals, and who it serves. This plan also includes regular meeting schedules and performance reviews and goals at the 30, 60, and 90 day marks. McMillan said that employees are mostly likely to succeed if they add value to the company during the very first week they’re in office.
- McMillan identified a number of “red flags” to watch for during the interview and onboarding processes. She said recruiters should carefully observe how the candidate talks about their current or previous employer. “If they talk bad about them, they’ll talk bad about you,” McMillan cautioned. She warned against hiring people who avoid direct questions, appear disengaged, or ask for vacation time or exceptions from rules early on.
- What do employees really want? To McMillan, the most important factors are a stable environment, competitive benefits and compensation, and flexible schedules (which are becoming increasingly important as Gen Z enters the workforce). McMillan recommended setting up ways to regularly recognize the success of your employees and to celebrate them. McMillan cited a Gallup study that found that employees who were recognized once a week showed twice the level of engagement compared to less recognized employees. To increase retention, McMillan recommended “stay interviews”, where management asks employees what is keeping them at the company. What might incentivize them to leave, and what interventions can be made to keep you here?
Looking Ahead to 2026
Thank you to all of the speakers who shared their incredible insights at GrowCon 2025 in Provo, Utah. We are extremely excited to announce that GrowCon 2026 will be held in Salt Lake City, Utah. Learn more and grab your ticket here.
To learn more about how you can start your own accounting business, improve your services, or train your employees, call Universal Accounting at 435-344-2060, or schedule a time to discuss your future online using this calendar.
