February 2, 2026
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Selling advisory isn't the problem for most firms. Delivering it, at scale, is. Clients respond well, demand builds, and suddenly the firm owner or finance lead’s calendar is the constraint. The service that was supposed to drive growth becomes the thing holding it back.
Jason Blumer, CEO of Thriveal and author of Scale With Purpose, has spent over 25 years helping firms break through this exact problem. Recognized as one of Accounting Today's Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting, Jason has coached hundreds of firm owners through the messy middle of growth: capacity issues, pricing challenges, and the hard work of getting a team to deliver what only the founder used to do.
In his Ask an Expert session, Jason shared the framework his firm uses to price, structure, and scale advisory, including a live walkthrough of the proprietary reports his team delivers to clients, built in Fathom.
"Advisory is a display to the world that you're an expert. Your pricing has to match what you're telling the world."
Why advisory gets stuck at the owner
Advisory bottlenecks almost always trace back to the same root cause: the owner of the firm is still the one delivering most of it.
Scaling a firm means scaling through people. But most firm owners default to selling services only they can deliver. That's where growth stalls.
The inflection point typically hits somewhere between five and eight team members. At that size, you've outgrown what you can personally handle. If you haven't built systems to hand advisory off by then, you'll feel the strain. Late reports, rushed prepartion, the sense that something's always slipping. Those are signals that internal work needs to happen before you keep pushing outward.
The goal isn't to stop delivering advisory yourself. It's to stop being the only one who can.
Over two decades, Jason has refined a repeatable approach to making advisory scalable. It comes down to four shifts in how you price, package, and deliver.
Bundling advisory into accounting fees is one of the most common mistakes. It devalues the service and makes it invisible to the client.
Jason's firm prices everything upfront using a three-option structure: high, middle, low. Advisory sits in the top tier as its own line item. The lowest option includes no advisory at all.
This does two things. First, it forces the client to make a conscious decision about the value of advisory. Second, it protects you later. When a client asks for more strategic input down the line, you can point back to the original proposal and offer to add it in.
"We're basically saying: do you want advisory? If you do, you have to pay for it."
Monthly reporting works for most financial advisory. But cash flow needs a faster rhythm.
Jason describes cash flow as the blood pumping through a company. For clients who are hiring, expanding, or worried about runway, monthly check-ins aren't enough. Weekly sessions keep them grounded and position you as someone with a constant pulse on the business.
This also creates a natural upsell. If a client raises cash concerns during your initial value conversation, that's a signal to price in weekly cash flow check-ins rather than defaulting to monthly. 3. Summarize the P&L to surface what matters Jason's firm condenses every P&L into around 12 to 14 lines, regardless of how complex the source data is. Everything gets mapped into a proprietary structure and benchmarked against internal metrics.
Jason's firm condenses every P&L into around 12 to 14 lines, regardless of how complex the source data is. Everything gets mapped into a proprietary structure and benchmarked against internal metrics.
The reason is simple: details distract. Clients get pulled into line items that don't actually move the business. What matters are trends across quarters, not the noise of a single month.
Using Fathom's management reporting and financial analysis tools, Jason's team builds visual reports that train clients to read financials horizontally. Eyes on the left, scroll right. What's trending up? What's changed since last quarter?
The advisor's role in these conversations isn't always to explain, often, it's to coach. Asking "why do you think revenue went up?" helps clients connect their decisions to outcomes. The insight comes from them, which makes it stick.
If you're the only one delivering advisory, you'll never scale it.
Jason's approach: bring team members into client sessions now, even while you're still leading. Have them observe. Afterward, ask what they noticed, what you missed, what could have landed better.
It feels uncomfortable. That's the point. You're building their instincts so they can eventually run those meetings themselves.
For smaller clients, consider staying out of the room entirely. Protect your capacity and let the team deliver. The goal isn't to replicate yourself. It's to sell advisory your team can grow into.
For firms just getting started with advisory, Jason's advice is to keep the first step small.
"Pick five or six clients who already trust you. People who know you're doing a good job for them. Sell them something simple, like a one-off session where you pull their last three years into Fathom and walk them through what the numbers are telling them."
It's not about perfecting the service before you sell it. It's about practice: for your delivery, your pricing, your confidence. Jason encourages firms to stay there for a while, build out their processes, and then expand.
"We should be taking risks to move into advisory. Learning how to deliver it. And doing it with five trusted clients. This takes practice."
There's no shortage of advice telling you what your firm should do next. Jason's closing point: be selective.
If advisory isn't the right fit and compliance work is going well, lean into that. But if advisory is where you're headed, start taking the risks that move you forward. Try the tool. Pick the clients. Practice the pitch.
What you do for your clients is valuable, even when they don't say it.
Jason's Ask an Expert session is a practical look at how to price, deliver, and scale advisory without burning out. It includes a live walkthrough of his reporting structure in Fathom and candid answers to audience questions on pricing, team development, and firm growth.
Watch the full Ask an Expert with Jason Blumer.
Ready to build your own advisory reports? Start your free 14-day trial of Fathom.
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