Geraldine Carter is the founder of She Thinks Big Coaching, where she helps CPAs get out of the accounting rut. Her clients routinely double their margins in 6 months or less while working fewer hours. Geraldine holds a BS in Engineering from Cornell University, is the co-founder and CFO of a company where her cashflow forecasting models resulted in millions of dollars for climate change efforts.
In addition to her coaching practice, She Thinks Big Coaching, she is also the podcast host of “Smart Strategy For CPA’s”.
In her free time, she can be found mountain biking forested trails or running after her two small children in her hometown of Ketchum, ID.
Here are the highlights from this interview:
- She co-founded a business and quickly realized that her accountant was not providing the cash flow forecasting that her business needed
- She created her own forecasting tools and realized that other businesses could use these tools
- A CPA reached out to her to help them build their business
- She learned that CPA’s are confused business owners just like everyone else, even though they have the ability to help their clients with the financial side of their businesses
- There’s a lot more to running a successful business than understanding the numbers
- What’s she’s found is that CPA’s can have a difficult time planning for a nebulous future and creating something that hasn’t been defined yet
- Accounting in general attracts a certain type of thinker – someone who likes math and linear thinking
- What business owners need is someone who can help them forecast the future and explore what can get them the results they want
- The same applies to CPA practice owners as well; they need to learn how to forecast their own future and explore what can get them the results they want
- We need to learn how to stop underestimating what’s possible
- While data entry is being replaced by automation, what cannot be replaced right now is emotional intelligence
- The single best investment you can make in your business is your personal and self-development because it offers the single greatest ROI
- The single biggest challenge she sees for CPA’s is being a generalist; the riches are in the niches
- The second biggest challenge is hourly billing; she recommends value based billing
- She suggests that CPA’s need to narrow what they do for clients and lay out services in 3 to 4 packages
- You price it in a way that you have more time to serve the client
- If you have too many emails, you probably have too many clients
- You are leaving money on the table when you have too many clients
- To find out more about working with Geraldine you can contact her at geraldine@shethinksbigcoaching.com, her website is https://geraldinecarter.com/, and her podcast is Smart Strategy For CPA’s