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Donald Button, CPA, NC

Monday, October 4th, 2010

300K Annualized Billings in 12 Months

Donald Button, CPA

Donald Button, CPA

In August of 2002, Donald Button was looking to purchase an accounting practice when he contacted NCI. Having spent the last seven years working for an executive benefit consulting firm, Don was ready to go out on his own. “I always wanted to start my own business, so I called NCI to discuss buying a practice. Your representative explained to me the benefits of building a firm and I found it intriguing that, for less money, I could build, rather than buy.”

Don’s wife, Patricia, has worked for the past five years developing her own financial planning clientele. Therefore, with her sales experience, it was a logical step to have her function as the Client Service Representative for the accounting practice. With their combined skills and NCI’s Client Processing and Acquisition Program, they felt they could be successful, and boy, are they!

Patricia Button

Patricia Button

In just over 12 months, they have grown to $300K in annualized billings and that’s for accounting clients only. I asked Patricia about her financial planning business. “Our initial plan was to put that on hold for the first year and focus on obtaining accounting clients. However, after introducing the financial planning services separately, I’ve actually doubled that line of business with minimal effort.”

What about working together as a couple, how has that been? “It’s had its moments, Don said, but for the most part, we both think it’s been great. We set up certain parameters in the beginning, like not discussing the office on personal time. ” From a sales perspective”, Patricia says, “Working together as a couple has had another unintended benefit. Many small businesses I’ve called on are also husband and wife teams. I believe that our arrangement may have helped me make the sale because of the immediate commonality.”

What has been the most difficult aspect of the last year? Don replied, “Handling the very rapid growth, while continuing to maintain a quality service, has been a challenge. One area that has really helped was my attending NCI’s Advanced Processing Seminar with Duane Gravley. We would never have been able to handle the growth without it. Also, having the highlights tape of the seminar on CD-ROM has been great. It continually reinforces what I learned, and each time I review it, I learn something new.”

What are your plans for the future? Don answers, “We know that with the NCI system we can grow to any level we want. However, our goal is to reach $500K – $750K over the next few years and focus on providing quality, personalized service.”

How would you sum up your decision to use NCI? Don says, “We are extremely pleased. I talk to other accountants considering using your service but they question the initial cost. I simply tell them it’s money well spent and they’ll get it back ten-fold if they stick to the system.”

You can contact Patricia Button at (336) 324-8572.


Chris Clark is the oldest son of New Clients Inc. founder and CEO Bruce Clark. He has worked as a Senior Account Executive at NCI for the past four years. During that time he has presented at the Practice Development Seminar on Internet and E-mail marketing and he also plays the prospective client during the seminar role play sessions. Chris also edits and contributes to the NCI newsletter, New Client News.