$100K Club Case Study
80% of prospects said yes. That was the problem.
A mother-daughter tax firm was saying yes to everyone, at prices set too low. They rebuilt their pricing and added $119,921 in one year.
→
$1,600 quote
Same client type. Same work. One hot seat later, Deva put it on the record: “We quoted a client 1,600 that we would have probably quoted about 900 usually.” The client said yes.
“If I’m getting everyone, then I’m pricing too low.”
— Randy Joseph, on a weekly progress review · $100K Club Winner
Underpricing is the most expensive habit in accounting. Let’s look at yours.
The Transformation
Before Dream Firms VS. After Dream Firms
Their own numbers, in their own words.
The Partners
She built a 1,000-client firm. Her daughter asked her to do it again.
Randy Joseph started her first tax firm in downtown Seattle and grew it past 1,000 clients before selling it after more than 20 years. Then her daughter Deva, a former professional poker player with an art degree, asked her to pass the baton and teach her tax. They opened Joseph & Hetrick LLC as business partners, built around one specialty: the tax lives of employees paid in stock options and equity.
Experience isn’t the bottleneck. Pricing usually is.
In Their Own Words
“We Are Over Givers. But We Need To Be Paid For That.”
Randy and Deva on camera: the growth question they couldn’t answer, the pricing they had to unlearn, and 26 leads in a week.
What would your firm look like at the right price? Let’s run the numbers.
Behind The Breakthrough
The Full Story
Before Dream Firms
Joseph & Hetrick had everything a small firm is supposed to want. A clear specialty in stock-option taxes. A cloud-based setup clients liked. A mother and daughter who genuinely enjoyed the work. And a close rate most accountants would envy: roughly eight in ten prospects said yes.
That last number was the tell. Randy put the growth question plainly on camera: “How are we going to be able to grow? We don’t want to be gigantic, but we want to grow a little bit more.” Seven years of slow, organic growth on simple returns had built a nice firm. It had not built a profitable one.
“We’re used to 80% of people just saying yes to us in the past. Tyler’s telling us to be hoping for more like 30%. Otherwise, we’re not charging enough.”
Deva Hetrick, weekly progress review
Randy found Dream Firms the way many members do: through a CPA Academy webinar. Her words for what followed: “It’s been this amazing roller coaster ever since then. It like revolutionized our practice.”
The Three Moves
- 1
They rebuilt the price list
Dream Firms’ value ladder replaced one flat quote with tiers. Randy: “Through the program, I came to realize that we were really underpricing.” The first test came fast. A client they “would have probably quoted about 900” heard $1,600, and said yes. Then Randy quoted a stock-option client $4,000 on a video call, face to face: “They got back to me within 24 hours.” - 2
They said no to everyone outside the niche
Deva, nine months in: “Finally pulled the trigger on 100% denying anyone who wasn’t super, super in our tiny, tiny little niche… it’s made our life a lot easier and we still have a ton of lead flow just in that niche.” The Dream 100 outreach paid off too. The owner of a stock-option education site on Randy’s list invited her onto his tax-season webinar panel. The audience: entirely people with stock options. - 3
They let Google do the prospecting
The firm stacked Google reviews. Deva: “Now we’re like high ranking in Seattle, even with just like 15 reviews. And so last week, our highest sales week, we had like 26 leads.” Randy noticed something she had never seen in her career: “It’s May and we’re just getting all these leads all the time in our niche and this has just never happened before in May.”
The Result
Three months in, Deva reported “our biggest client acquisition week in firm history… we tripled our weekly goal.” A year in, the average new client was landing at roughly $1,600 against a $1,500 target, which she called “double what we were bringing people on at last year.”
“Our main win is just our revenue… our success for tax season, 40 something percent growth from the prior year, which was really big for me and my mom and just for my life.”
Deva Hetrick, weekly progress review after tax season
The $100K Club verification for that year: $119,921 added in one year. The $100K Club bar is $100,000 in new cash collected from one year to the next. They cleared it while working less: Deva took a full weekend off for the first time since joining, then two full weeks after tax season, with a team member covering the inbox.
How many of your yeses are costing you money?
The Journey
From Over-Givers To The $100K Club, And Beyond
Every milestone below was said out loud on a recorded weekly progress review, or comes from Dream Firms’ $100K Club verification.
🏆 $100K Club
Twenty-four months. One repeatable system. Ready for yours?
The Receipts
In Writing, In Public
Their public reviews and posts, exactly as written. Nothing staged. Nothing polished.
We have been able to raise our prices significantly and change the way that we talk to prospective clients. Basically just do what he says… And your business will be transformed.
Randy Joseph, CPA · from her public Google review · $100K Club Winner
The Why Behind The Win
What Made the Difference
Pricing Is a Belief Before It’s a Number
An 80% close rate felt like success. It was a discount. Once the target became 30%, every no turned into evidence the price was finally right, and the yeses got bigger.
A Niche Narrow Enough To Say No
Stock-option tax for employees paid in equity. Specific enough to rank for, valuable enough to command $4,000 quotes, and clear enough that referring everyone else out made life easier, not scarier.
Reviews That Do the Prospecting
Fifteen Google reviews put a two-person firm at the top of Seattle searches. Twenty-six leads in a single week followed, in a niche, without paid ads.
Your niche. Your price. Your Google front door. Let’s map all three.
The Next Chapter
The Firm Was Worth More Than They Were Told
The First Number
Most case studies end at the award. This one has a second act, because a firm built the Dream Firms way is worth more on the day you sell it.
When Randy’s retirement came into view, Randy and Deva did what most owners do: they listed the firm with a business broker. The valuation that came back was multiple six figures below what the firm would go on to command.
They brought the sale to Tyler S. Clark, Dream Firms’ co-founder. He knew what the previous four years had built: premium pricing, a tight stock-option niche, a fully virtual team, and a client list of exactly the people they wanted to serve. That is a different asset than a generalist tax practice, and it deserved a different price.
Dream Firms put AI to work on the listing itself, drawing out what made this firm unlike anything else for sale: the stock-option specialty, a virtual team a buyer anywhere could step into, and pricing that already matched the value delivered. The listing went out with that story attached. Within the first few weeks, several highly qualified buyers had expressed interest at the premium valuation.
“If we go back to four years ago, we would be selling our firm for only 25% of what we’re hoping to sell it for today, because we’ve doubled our revenue, first of all, and then now we’re valuing the sale at two times our annual revenue instead of one time… I mean, we almost kind of thought Tyler was full of it when he suggested that.”
Deva Hetrick, on camera during the sale process
Buyers saw the difference too. Deva again: “All the firms that are for sale are not virtual. They’re very much clunky and haven’t made that transition.” Theirs had. And it came with “a niche that we’re willing to train a buyer” on.
The Outcome
A purchase price above what they had first been told was possible. Randy retired. Deva merged the practice into a culture-matched firm where she keeps doing the work she loves, with a team behind her to carry what her mother used to.
From the $100K Club to a retirement on their own terms. Same system. Same firm. Finally priced right.
Build a firm someone will pay a premium for. It starts with one call.
The Program Behind The Result
The Create Your Dream Firm Program
Dream Firms is the only CPA firm growth program built specifically around expert positioning, niche content, and high-value client acquisition. Randy and Deva’s result isn’t an outlier. It’s the system working exactly as designed.
“We are over givers and I like that about us, but we need to be paid for that.”
— Randy Joseph, from the firm’s on-camera program review
