Is it sacrilegious to call this book a revelation? Because that's what Time's Up! The Subscription Business Model for Professional Firms is.

This book reveals a whole new way of thinking about economics, business, and even accounting. And this way of thinking—this relatively new business model—is the solution to many of the problems that plague professional firms.

Let me explain. But first, let's go back over a decade, to the last time I had this feeling about one of Ron's books.

I'd just finished reading Ron's book Implementing Value Pricing: A Radical Business Model for Professional Firms. I was immediately sold on the theory. I implemented Ron's ideas in my own firm, dropping hourly billing and cost‐plus pricing in favor of fixed monthly prices determined not by my own costs, but rather by the value created in the mind of the customer. The result was a great success.

I observed my colleagues and the broader accounting profession struggle to do the same. They seemed inexorably fixated on billable hours and job costing, even in the face of so much evidence that these methods are far from ideal.

I wondered, why? Why do accountants resist dropping their timesheets?

I sold my firm and went to work for a large accounting firm. My coworkers there struggled the most. I realized within a year that implementing value pricing at that firm was a lost cause.

Disillusioned, I abandoned public accounting to work for a startup company that made SaaS (Software‐as‐a‐Service). We sold cloud‐based software to businesses on subscription. Like many SaaS startups, we were growing like crazy.

What surprised me is that hardly anyone in SaaS cares about financial accounting. Especially GAAP. We did it because we had to, but we never looked at the financials.

Instead, what we used to run the business was a whole host of alternative SaaS metrics, an alphabet soup of acronyms that included MRR, ARR, ACV, LTV, CAC, CRR, NPS^®, and Churn.

At the time, I was so excited to be working in tech that I didn't think too much of it. But it never sat right with me.

As a CPA, it felt somehow wrong that the fastest‐growing technology companies in the world don't care about accounting. I asked myself, what's the deal with all these non‐GAAP metrics proliferating across financial statements? It seemed irresponsible.

There was a disconnect in my mind between the excitement of contributing to the growth of a tech startup and the general disdain for the outputs of my chosen profession. But I didn't know how to articulate it.

Then I read this book, and it all clicked.

The accounting profession struggles to change because it doesn't understand the subscription economy.

And the reason the profession doesn't understand it is because our accounting theory can't handle it. Our accounting theory taught in universities and applied in public accounting firms is still rooted in the Industrial Age of railroads and assembly lines. It is transactional. It is focused on tangible assets. It's a system that developed over a hundred years ago and was perfected in the Gilded Age. But it hasn't changed much since then.

Our generally accepted accounting principles don't know how to value intellectual capital, intangible assets, and customer relationships. These are what drive value creation in subscription businesses, not equipment or inventory.

Ironically, the transactional mindset of accounting itself is what is holding back our profession from embracing a business model that has the potential to bring us closer to our customers, give greater meaning to our work, and make us wealthier, too.

It's time to unlearn the accounting of the Industrial Age and invent a new accounting for the knowledge economy. We need to go back to putting relationships at the center, not just with our rhetoric, but with our business model.

But that takes a significant mind shift. That's where Time's Up! The Subscription Business Model for Professional Firms comes in. This book is about replacing a transactional mindset with a relationship mindset through the lens of the subscription economy.

There is so much opportunity. Many professional firms are a perfect fit for subscriptions. The firms that have embraced subscriptions are growing the fastest and are achieving valuations at multiple times their annual revenue. But the best part is, you'll have better relationships with your customers and your team.

So dig into this book. And perhaps you'll have a revelation, too.

Blake Oliver, CPA

Email: [email protected]

Website: https://blakeoliver.com

Twitter: @BlakeTOliver