EP288: Ron Baker - How Pricing On Relationship Can Transform Your Bookkeeping Business

Ad Read: The average accounting firm sells for 1x gross revenue. If you value price, I've seen bookkeeping firms sell for 2-3x gross revenue. If you're in a subscription model, you can probably get somewhere between 5 and 10x because annual recurring revenue is much more valued by the market than is even value pricing revenue and certainly more valuable than hourly billing. You're listening to The Successful Bookkeeper with your host, Michael Palmer. Listen each week as inspiring guests share their secrets of success to help you increase your confidence, work smarter, and build a business you love. This episode of The Successful Bookkeeper is brought to you by purebookkeeping.com. The proven system to grow your bookkeeping business. Welcome back to the Successful Bookkeeper Podcast. I am your host, Michael Palmer, and today's show is going to be not only valuable but an amazing one. I am honored to have our very special guest return to the podcast. He is the, the authority on value pricing. He's an acclaimed author, speaker, entrepreneur, and co-host of the Soul of Enterprise podcast. Ron Baker, welcome back to the show. Thrilled to be back. Thanks for having me, Michael. It's great to have you, and it has been a while. We were talking pre-recording that you were on the show back in 2016, one of our very first guests. On the podcast, The Successful Bookkeeper Podcast, and I'm sure you've been up to a lot since then. So maybe tell us a little bit about what's been going on for you since 2016.

Ron Baker: Wow, I know it seems like eons ago, doesn't it? In probably, I think it was around 2018, we started to notice just, you know, a trend that was, you know, unmistakable in the economy around the world. And this This is all pre-COVID, and that was the subscription economy. More and more, we're subscribing to things rather than owning them. And we tried to keep track of this. We tried to keep track of businesses that were offering either products or services on a subscription basis, whether they were B2B, business to business, or business to consumer. And we just started to see more and more and more and more, where today I can subscribe to a Porsche. I can subscribe to a boat. I can subscribe to a home in 40-odd-some countries. So the subscription economy's here. It's actually one of the fastest-growing segments of the economy. It's growing something like 7 times the S&P 500 index. And during COVID these businesses thrived. Not only did they not shrink, they