Scaling an accounting firm is one of the most common challenges in the profession. Many accountants work harder each year, add more clients, and extend their service offerings, yet still hit a ceiling. The hours become longer, the workload heavier, and profitability stagnant. Why does this happen so consistently? And more importantly, how can accountants break the cycle?
In this episode of the Building the Premier Accounting Firm podcast, Roger Knecht speaks with CPA and entrepreneur Lahari Neelapareddy, whose journey reveals powerful answers to these questions. From Big Four burnout to launching two successful firms, Lahari shares the strategic decisions, missteps, and insights that helped her grow sustainably in one of the most rapidly evolving segments of the accounting industry.
Meet the Guest: Who Is Lahari Neelapareddy?
With a background in Big Four audit and financial advisory, she transitioned from traditional accounting roles into entrepreneurship much earlier than she expected. She describes herself as a strategic partner to her clients, saying she aims to “go beyond traditional accounting to become their strategic growth partner.”
Her expertise in niche industries, paired with her ability to build scalable systems, makes her an important voice for accounting professionals seeking sustainable growth.
From Big Four Burnout to Entrepreneurship
Lahari’s career began on the traditional CPA track. She completed her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in five years, secured a job with a major public accounting firm, and quickly found herself deep in the structure and expectations of Big Four culture.
Although she excelled professionally, she soon realized the environment was not aligned with her values or long-term goals. She recalls staying late not because the work required it, but because “we had to show face to the client” even when there was little to do. The intense hours and rigid expectations eventually led to burnout.
That pressure, however, became the catalyst that pushed her toward entrepreneurship. “I knew I always wanted to own my own business,” she explains, “but I didn’t think it would happen this early.”
Her parents played an unexpected role too. They encouraged her to consider starting an accounting firm, helping her recognize potential she had not yet seen in herself.
The Power of Specialization: Why Niching Down Matters
When she launched LN Accounting Advisors, Lahari made a decision that would define her growth trajectory: she chose a niche. Leveraging her experience working with consumer packaged goods companies, she specialized in e-commerce and CPG accounting, especially brands with complex inventory and multi-channel sales.
Niching down, she says, is one of the best pieces of advice she received early on. It made marketing easier, improved the clarity of her services, and allowed her to build deep expertise in a high-demand segment.
“Inventory accounting is one of the hardest areas,” she explains. “I still get referrals from accountants who say, ‘I don’t want to handle anything that has inventory. Can you take this?’”
Specialization also helped her scale efficiently. Training staff becomes more straightforward when every client has similar needs. Processes and reporting become repeatable. Pricing becomes more predictable. In short, a niche created the foundation for growth.
Moving Beyond Compliance: Scaling Through CFO Advisory Services
Like many accountants who start their own firms, Lahari initially offered everything: bookkeeping, advisory, and tax. Over time, she realized this approach was neither scalable nor profitable.
“I wouldn’t have been a one-stop shop if I could redo it,” she reflects. Maintaining expertise across multiple disciplines made it difficult to hire and almost impossible to scale. Eventually, she phased out income tax services entirely, opting instead to refer those clients to specialists.
Today, LN Accounting Advisors focuses on controller-level work and CFO advisory services, including cash flow forecasting, budget-to-actual analysis, KPI dashboards, and strategic financial guidance.
She describes advisory work as inherently proactive. “Accounting can sometimes be reactive,” she says, “but CFO services are about helping clients avoid pitfalls before they happen.” The shift from reporting to strategic decision-making is one of the factors that helped her raise her minimum pricing to $2,500 per month.
Advisory, she emphasizes, is where accountants unlock real value—and real scalability.
Solving a Massive Pain Point: The Birth of Tax Hero
In 2018, the Wayfair vs. South Dakota ruling transformed e-commerce sales tax compliance. Suddenly, online sellers had to collect and remit sales tax in multiple states, creating widespread confusion and costly compliance issues.
At the time, Lahari was working as an outsourced CFO for a large cosmetics brand and saw firsthand how unprepared the industry was. She also noticed that existing software solutions were incomplete, generating notices and errors that accountants still had to manually fix.
“I was getting very frustrated,” she recalls. “The software did a small portion, but everything else was ‘consult a tax representative.’”
Her response was to build Tax Hero, a full-suite platform that handles registrations, filings, audit support, reconciliations, and even acts as a PO mailbox for client notices. Today, Tax Hero partners with both e-commerce sellers and accounting firms, allowing firms to outsource complex sales tax work without sacrificing quality or profitability.
Tax Hero now represents a scalable extension of her niche expertise—a system-based business that solves a real, pressing problem.
Why Most Accounting Firms Fail to Scale
Through her journey, Lahari has observed repeated patterns that explain why so many accounting firms struggle to grow:
1. Serving too many industries
Without a niche, marketing is harder, systems don’t scale, and clients receive inconsistent value.
2. Offering too many services
Generalist firms stretch themselves thin. Lahari notes it is nearly impossible to hire someone who is “really good with tax and really good with financial reporting.”
3. Scope creep
Even with clear engagement letters, clients often push beyond the service agreement. Scope creep eats into margins, causes burnout, and destabilizes growth.
4. Underpricing services
Low pricing forces firms to take on too many clients, leaving no room for quality control or advisory-level work.
5. Hiring challenges
Each service area—bookkeeping, controller work, CFO advisory, sales tax—requires different expertise. Firms often mis-hire because they are unclear about what they actually need.
6. Unsustainable growth practices
Rapid growth without proper systems leads to burnout. Lahari experienced this firsthand during the pandemic. “I did not see the sun during COVID because I worked like a machine,” she admits.
How To Fix It: Lahari’s Blueprint for Sustainable Growth
Lahari offers several key strategies that helped her build scalable, profitable businesses:
Choose one niche and become known for it.
This accelerates marketing, strengthens reputation, and improves systemization.
Define clear service tiers and minimum pricing.
Her firm’s minimum of $2,500 per month ensures alignment between pricing and service quality.
Build specialized teams.
Advisory staff should not be the same people handling sales tax or bookkeeping. Each role requires unique training.
Leverage automation and purpose-built software.
Technology like Tax Hero allows firms to offload complex, low-margin work while maintaining service quality.
Outsource or partner for non-core services.
Lahari no longer provides income tax services because they are not scalable for her model.
Grow sustainably.
“It’s not about growing as quickly as you can,” she says. “It’s about growing as efficiently and sustainably as you can.”
Lessons From Lahari’s Journey: Advice to Her Younger Self
The episode ends with a moment of reflection. Lahari wishes she had prioritized sustainability earlier in her career.
She warns against burnout and losing sight of the purpose behind the business. “Don’t forget why you started your company,” she says. “You need to keep your passion alive.”
She also encourages continuous learning through podcasts, books, and mastermind groups, saying, “I never want to reinvent the wheel. We have so many knowledgeable people around us.”
Conclusion: Scaling Is Possible with the Right Strategy
Lahari Neelapareddy’s journey illustrates that scaling an accounting firm is not about doing more—it is about doing the right things with clarity and intention. Specialization, systemization, advisory services, and sustainable growth practices can help any accounting professional move beyond survival mode and build a thriving, impactful firm.
For a deeper look into these insights, listen to the full podcast episode with Lahari Neelapareddy.
Enjoyed This Episode? Listen to the Previous One Too
If you want to continue learning how to build a resilient and profitable accounting firm, make sure to check out the previous episode as well. Each conversation adds new perspectives, tools, and strategies that support your growth as a firm owner or accounting professional.
Offers:
Get a free discovery call, whether you’re an e-commerce business wanting to simplify sales tax or an accountant interested in partnering with us, you can book a time with me at https://taxhero.net/contact/#demo
You can download our up-to-date Economic Nexus Chart, a quick guide to understanding sales tax nexus across the US, at https://taxhero.net/blog/economic-nexus/#download
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