Try balancing playing cards on their edges and building upwards. With enough patience, you can create something that looks remarkably impressive. It may even stand for quite a while.
But it only takes the smallest knock for the whole structure to collapse.
From a distance, it appears solid. Up close, you realise just how much depends on everything remaining exactly as it is.
I sometimes think established accountancy practices can be a little like that.
Many sole practitioners have been serving clients successfully for years. Fees are coming in. Referrals continue to arrive. The work gets done. Nothing feels obviously wrong.
Yet beneath the surface, there can be a degree of fragility that rarely gets talked about.
Not because the practice is failing, but because it has evolved gradually rather than intentionally.
Success has a habit of masking weaknesses. When things are going reasonably well, it’s easy to assume the underlying foundations must be sound.
Sometimes they are. Sometimes they’re simply being protected by favourable circumstances, established habits and the continued willingness of the practice owner to keep everything going.
The problem is that you may not discover how fragile things have become until something changes.
Here are five warning signs I regularly encounter in conversations with established sole practitioners.
1. Your pricing reflects history more than strategy
Many established practices are still living with pricing decisions made years ago. It’s true isn’t it?
Some long-standing clients pay fees that no longer reflect the work involved or the value they receive. Payment terms remain unchanged because they’ve never been questioned. New clients may be paying considerably more than existing ones for comparable services.
None of this necessarily causes an immediate problem. The practice continues to generate income, so the underlying decisions rarely receive much attention.
But the cumulative effect can be significant.
The question I often ask isn’t simply whether fees could be increased. It’s whether today’s pricing supports the practice you want over the next ten years rather than the one you had ten years ago.
Consider these questions:
- Are most clients paying monthly and in advance?
- Have you reviewed the legacy fees paid by longstanding clients in recent years?
- If you didn’t win any new clients in the next six months, would your existing fee base comfortably provide the income you want?
That last question can be particularly revealing.
Some accountants are so accustomed to being busy that they rarely stop to consider whether their existing client base is delivering the financial return they deserve.
And when they do recognise the problem, they may still hesitate. They worry about upsetting long-standing clients, losing fees or having difficult conversations.
These are understandable concerns. But avoiding those conversations doesn’t make the underlying issue disappear.
Being busy isn’t the same as being commercially strong.
2. Your client base has become a collection rather than a strategy
Very few practices begin with a carefully designed client portfolio. I think I always knew this but the interviews with sole practitioners on my Accountants Success Secrets podcast have confirmed this beyond any doubt.
Most grow through recommendations, opportunities and saying yes to work that seems sensible at the time. Before long you have a varied practice that has grown through chance rather than design. This isn’t always a problem as a diverse client base can be perfectly appropriate, especially if you enjoy the variety and have the expertise and resources to serve those clients well.
The difficulty comes when there is no longer a clear answer to a simple question: Who is your practice really built to serve?
It’s easy to confuse having plenty of clients with having the right clients.
Some may generate reasonable fees but demand disproportionate attention. Others may require you do work you no longer particularly enjoy. A few may have been unsuitable from the outset, but you’ve continued looking after them because they’ve been with you for years.
And sometimes the clients you most enjoy working with are not the ones your marketing and referral relationships are attracting.
The result can be a practice that is commercially viable but increasingly difficult to manage.
Business owners are increasingly looking for accountants who understand their circumstances and the commercial realities of their world. The clearer your focus becomes, the easier it is for prospective clients and potential referrers to recognise when you’re the right accountant.
This doesn’t mean every sole practitioner needs a narrow niche. Nor does it mean you should suddenly dismiss clients who don’t fit an ideal profile.
It means being more deliberate about the work you accept, the clients you retain and the sort of practice you are building.
Sometimes the most useful question isn’t how to attract more clients. It’s whether you really want more clients like the ones you already have?
3. Your long-term plan exists mainly in your head
Many established sole practitioners have a rough idea of how they would like the next stage of their career to unfold.
Work a little less. Earn roughly the same. Prepare gradually for retirement. Enjoy more flexibility.
Perfectly reasonable ambitions.
The interesting question is whether the practice is actually moving in that direction.
When I’m mentoring an accountant, we often spend less time talking about today’s workload than you might expect. That’s because understanding where they want to get to can change how we look at the decisions they’re making today.
For example:
- How many more years do you want to work at your current pace?
- Could you reduce your hours without reducing your income?
- Is your current client mix helping you move towards that outcome?
- What would need to change for you to take a proper break without worrying about the practice?
These aren’t questions you need to answer with a detailed ten-year business plan. But they often deserve more attention than an occasional passing thought.
Without a reasonably clear destination, it’s surprisingly easy to drift into working harder each year simply because that’s what happened last year.
You accept another client. Take on another responsibility. Postpone another holiday.
Each individual decision seems sensible enough.
Collectively, they may be taking you further away from the life and practice you actually want.
And that’s one of the reasons I encourage accountants to think beyond their immediate workload. Sometimes the issue isn’t how to get everything done.
It’s whether everything you’re doing still deserves a place in your future practice.
4. Too much depends on you
This is one of the most common characteristics of practices run by one person, whether or not they are supported by a team.
Your experience built the business. Clients trust your judgement. Naturally, many important decisions sit with you.
The question is whether they all have to.
Imagine you were unavailable for four weeks. What would happen?
Would someone else know where everything is? Could clients obtain the information they need? Are your processes documented? Is important client knowledge stored in accessible systems rather than in your memory?
And would you genuinely be able to switch off, or would you spend those four weeks worrying about what was happening in your absence?
Of course, a sole practice will always depend to some extent on its owner. That’s part of the model, and many accountants have deliberately chosen it.
The objective isn’t necessarily to build a larger firm, employ more people or create a business that can operate entirely without you.
But there is a difference between choosing to remain personally involved and having no realistic alternative.
I sometimes encounter accountants who have built practices that provide a good living but leave them feeling permanently responsible for everything.
They’ve become exceptionally good at keeping all the plates spinning. The problem is that they’ve also become indispensable to the continued spinning of every single plate.
Building resilience may involve better systems, clearer processes, more effective delegation or suitable arrangements with another practitioner.
It may also involve reconsidering which clients and services create the greatest demands on your time.
The important thing is recognising that your continued availability shouldn’t be the only thing holding the practice together.
5. You carry the important decisions alone
This is perhaps the most overlooked risk of all.
You may have capable staff, excellent software and loyal clients.
You may also have years of experience and a perfectly respectable practice.
But who challenges your thinking?
Who asks the awkward questions?
Who spots the assumptions you’ve stopped noticing because you’ve become so close to your own business?
When you work alone, it’s easy for your own experience to become the main reference point for every decision.
You know what has worked for you in the past. You know what your clients expect. You know which changes have previously caused problems.
All of that experience is valuable.
But it can also make it harder to recognise when circumstances have changed or when an alternative approach might produce a better outcome.
You may assume that clients would resist higher fees because a few objected years ago.
You may believe that a particular type of client is inherently demanding because that’s been your experience.
Or you may continue doing something yourself because you’ve never seriously explored how other practitioners handle it.
None of these assumptions is necessarily wrong. But how often do you test them?
This is one of the recurring themes in conversations with accountants I mentor and in meetings of my Sole Practice Club.
Someone describes an issue they’ve been wrestling with. Another practitioner explains how they’ve approached something similar. A different perspective emerges.
And suddenly, something that seemed fixed and unavoidable becomes a decision with several possible options.
It’s not that the other accountant necessarily knows more. They may simply have encountered different circumstances, tried a different approach or recognised an assumption that the first accountant hadn’t thought to question.
Sometimes the most valuable contribution is a question rather than an answer.
“Why do you still do it that way?”
That can be surprisingly difficult to answer when you’ve been running your practice for years.
And it can be even more difficult to ask yourself.
Strength comes from deliberate design
A house of cards can stand for years if nothing disturbs it. That doesn’t make it robust.
Equally, an established accountancy practice can continue generating good fees while relying on arrangements that no longer serve its owner particularly well.
The warning signs I’ve described rarely exist in isolation.
Historic pricing may leave you needing more clients than you really want. An unfocused client base can create unnecessary demands on your time. Those demands make it harder to think about the future. And when you’re carrying every important decision alone, it becomes easier to accept the whole situation as simply the way things are.
You may not even recognise how much could be different until someone asks a question you haven’t asked yourself.
That’s why I believe established sole practitioners benefit from periodically looking at their businesses through someone else’s eyes.
Not because they’re incapable of making good decisions themselves. Quite the opposite. They’ve already demonstrated that they can build and sustain a successful practice.
But experience, familiarity and personal involvement can make it harder to see opportunities for change.
This is where conversations with other experienced practitioners, or with an independent mentor, can make a real difference.
They provide an opportunity to explore the decisions you’ve been postponing, challenge assumptions and consider approaches that may not have occurred to you.
And, importantly, to work out what makes sense for your practice rather than simply copying what someone else has done.
The strongest practices I encounter aren’t necessarily the biggest or the fastest-growing. They’re the ones whose owners periodically ask whether the practice they’ve built is still the practice they want to run.
And then make deliberate decisions about what needs to change.
If you’ve recognised one or two of these warning signs, the useful question isn’t whether your practice is about to collapse. It’s what might happen if you continue doing everything exactly as you do now.
Will you still be happy with the practice you’re running in three or five years? Or will the same frustrations have become more deeply embedded?
You don’t have to resolve everything at once. But you do need to create the space to recognise what deserves attention.
That’s a large part of what I help sole practitioners do through my one-to-one mentoring and the Sole Practice Club.
Sometimes you need a confidential conversation focused entirely on your own circumstances. Sometimes hearing how other experienced practitioners approach similar challenges is enough to help you see things differently.
Either way, the objective isn’t to turn your practice into somebody else’s idea of success. It’s to help you build a practice that works better for you.
Before something gives your house of cards an unexpected knock.
