How to Come Up with a Business Idea

Our Journey Combining Vision and Execution to Create a $5M Business

Start with Your Vision

My partner, Adam Hale, and I started Summit CPA in 2002 with a vision. Every business idea first starts out as a simple vision. My first inkling of a business idea started by wanting to change the usual CPA firm dynamic. I wondered what it would be like if accountants found a sustainable, family-friendly work environment so they wouldn’t have to work 60-80 hours a week during tax season. Then, I considered what a positive impact accountants could have on their clients by providing real, tangible value. The kind of value that helps business owners make sound business decisions with data to back up their choices. These ideas soon became a passion, and I decided to start my own startup CPA firm with Adam to change the way people think about accounting.

Make a Launch Plan

Once you have your business vision, you are ready to build a launch plan (also known as a business plan). Your launch plan should help you discover your target audience’s pain points and build your product and service offering. When Adam and I first launched Summit CPA Group, we wanted to help our customers understand the financial side of their business on a deeper level. Often, when accountants talk about a customer’s past numbers, their eyes gloss over. Our customers didn’t want to know about their past. They wanted to know about their futures. We discovered that our customers’ most common pain point was not understanding how their current financial position would impact and build their future.

As a result, we discovered a new business model and started implementing forecasting into our service. We wanted to teach our clients how to read their financial statement and how their actions were impacting their future. We found that our clients were really intrigued by this and wanted to start meeting with us more often. Our monthly meetings turned into weekly meetings to go over cash flow, forecasting, and overall business strategy. The benefit for us was that when the end of the year came, it took a lot less time to do their taxes because we’d been on top of things and handling their questions throughout the year.

In 2004, we created the “Virtual CFO” role to meet our target market’s needs and to put a name to the services we were providing. To start and grow a business, you must understand your customer’s pain points inside and out. Without this foundation, your business will struggle to launch and prosper. Think about it, when was the last time you bought a product or service you didn’t want or need? Probably never. That’s why getting this step right is important.

Execute Your Plan

We have evolved into being the leading provider of Virtual CFO services in the nation. How? It comes down to two things: vision and execution. Once we created a launch plan based on our vision, we executed on the plan. As a Virtual CFO Firm, we have done far more than run financial reports and file tax returns. We created services and products that helped businesses understand their current financial position and how they can make changes now to reach their future goals.

To support our clients, Adam and I made sure our team and our clients were both aligned—from our core values and the direction of the company to how we execute on things, what our deliverables are, how we’re communicating, etc. We have clear processes in place so that we can blow our clients away with the knowledge we give them. These processes have also helped us accelerate growth while staying true to who we are as a company. Of course, we change processes as necessary, but having common processes has helped our teams stay aligned and execute on goals efficiently.

If you don’t have clear processes in place, I encourage you to develop processes that will help you meet goals, stay true to your core values, and serve your clients an exceptional experience. The key to a successful execution is focusing on efficiency and effectiveness.

Even now, after merging with Anders CPAs + Advisors, we have used our shared vision and our love for efficient execution to build a better virtual CFO service than ever before. Now as Summit Virtual CFO by Anders, we continue to pioneer change within the accounting industry and provide our clients with the advice and knowledge they need to scale and grow.

If I were to give any advice to someone trying to find a great business idea, it would be to start with a vision. We all have something we would like to change within the industry we work in or even an industry we consume goods or services from. Use that something you’d like to change and create a vision. After that, you are ready to create a launch plan.

I hope this helped you understand the power of vision and efficient execution in building a business. If you’d like to learn more about our story, check out the book I wrote called Building the Virtual CFO Firm in the Cloud.