Why “We Have Too Much Business” Is the Worst Excuse To Stop Marketing Your Firm

I’ve been in the marketing industry for over 30 years, and here’s something I’ve noticed: almost every accounting firm falls into one of two camps.

• Camp A: “We have so much business we can’t take another client. We don’t need marketing.”
• Camp B: “We need more work. We have extra capacity. Bring it on.”

Sounds obvious, right? But here’s the twist: Camp A often thinks they’re doing great… until they realise that most of that work is compliance noise that doesn’t make money. Meanwhile, their team is buried in volume, never able to step back, evaluate, or invest in smarter strategies.

So: no, having too much business is not a “get out of marketing free” card. It might just be the signal that your firm is not optimized.

The Real Question: Is All That Work Actually Profitable?

Being busy doesn’t always mean being profitable. Sure, your calendar is packed and your team is logging long hours, but what’s all that effort really earning you? If most of your clients are once-a-year tax returners, you’re not building steady, predictable revenue. If you don’t have a healthy mix of monthly or quarterly service work, you’re constantly chasing the next big deadline with nothing reliable in between.

Add to that the constant juggling of apps, the endless admin, and the feeling that nobody quite knows where the “real” numbers live, suddenly all that busyness starts to look less like success and more like a vicious cycle. Margins are thin, cash flow is erratic, and there’s barely a moment to step back and think about growth. So yes, you’re busy, but the better question is: are you busy in a way that’s building long-term profitability, or just busy keeping the lights on?

First, Get Your House In Order Before You Market

You can’t pour from an empty cup. Before you double down on marketing, you’ve got to tighten up your internal systems. Because if your back end is messy, adding more clients will just make the chaos worse.

One of the biggest issues we see? Too many apps doing too many things, with zero central command. Think about it: your team logs into five different tools to get one job done. Data lives in silos. Nobody knows what the “true” number is. Rework, version control, frustration - it all creeps in.

So one of the first things you should always do is build a firm operating system. Something that gives you a single source of truth. Something that reduces your app sprawl, brings order, minimizes redundancies.

Once that’s in place, then your people can operate efficiently. And then you can start investing in marketing and growth, with the confidence that your firm can absorb more without imploding.

Why Efficiency = Freedom

When you set up a smooth internal engine, a few magical things happen:

1. Empowered team: less grunt work, fewer context switches, more time for value-add work.
2. Capacity opens up: when you're not maxed out, you can step into strategy or client work that pays more.
3. Better client experience: fewer screw-ups, faster turnaround, happier clients.
4. True growth (not just volume growth): you can attract recurring services, advisory clients, retainer arrangements.

Those are the clients you actually want. Predictable, valuable, less trouble.

Introducing Arrive 

One tool that embodies what a clean operating system should do is Arrive (See what I did there).

Firms running on Arrive report margins as high as 80%, and some accountants are servicing over 300 monthly clients while staying lean. It’s being praised as possibly the best accounting firm platform of 2025. 

I’m not saying Arrive is a silver bullet. But when a platform is built to replace the chaos of “a little bit of this, a little bit of that,” it can help you ditch the spaghetti of apps and finally get organized.

Quick Audit: How Messy Is Your Tech?

Here’s a mini checklist. If you answer “yes” to more than 3, you have work to do:

• You use more than 7 different tools across client service, communication, document management, billing, reporting.
• You often copy-paste data from one tool to another.
• The team complains they can’t find correct files or numbers.
• You don’t have a unified dashboard showing firm health (revenue, capacity, bottlenecks).
• You avoid adding new clients because you’re afraid of collapse.

If that sounds familiar, welcome to reality. But the good news: it’s fixable.

What Comes After the Clean-Up

Once you’ve done the hard work of cleaning up your systems and building a strong foundation, things start to shift. Marketing stops being scary because you know your firm can handle the influx. This means you can start pricing for the actual value you deliver instead of competing on who can be the cheapest option in town.

With a clear operating system in place, you’re able to confidently promote recurring services, like monthly accounting or advisory engagements, rather than just loading up on seasonal tax prep. And instead of every new client adding another layer of chaos, growth actually feels manageable. Even enjoyable.

In other words, the clean-up phase isn’t just about reducing stress for your team. It’s about setting yourself up so when you finally put your foot on the marketing gas pedal, your firm doesn’t crash and burn. It glides.

Your Firm, Your Move

Don’t fall for the “I’m too busy to market” trap. That’s often the illusion of chaos. First, fix your house. Build the system. Tame your tech. Make your team into a well-oiled machine.

Then, when you open the doors and bring in new leads, your firm has the breathing space, the capacity, and the control to actually make money, not just make more work.

If you want help auditing your tech, mapping the right tools, or even considering Arrive as a backbone - reach out. Let’s get your firm operating so well that growth feels like a breeze.

The choice is yours. Stay stuck in “too much business” mode, or create the breathing room to market with confidence and grow on your terms. Your firm, your move.