The FirmLever Weekly Roundup: Issue #49

This week's newsletter is jam-packed. So I'm going to kick this off with a little poll I ran this week.

71% of voting members in this week's FirmLever Pulse said their 2025 tax season was more profitable than 2024--with the same or fewer hours worked.

That number stuck with me. So I went looking for what the firms outpacing the room actually did differently.

One model kept showing up: a U.S. partner out front, a vetted offshore prep team in the back, the client never sees the seam. Margin on a $650 return moves from 22% to 52%. Same fee, same client experience, double the take-home. Across 900 returns a season, that's $175K of margin you didn't earn by working harder.

I wrote a full take here: Why the White-Label Tax Prep Model Is Eating the Midmarket. Short version: the firms making more this April aren't tax-season heroes. They built a back office that doesn't need them in it.

This Week's Numbers (the FirmLever Network)

• 301 admitted member firms on the platform to date
• 212 firms still pending on the active waitlist
• 43 states represented
• $122.6M in combined member-firm revenue
• 98 firm-to-firm connections (8 new this past week)

What's New

Quick context if you're new: the FirmLever Network is a private network where vetted accounting firms, CPAs, fractional CFOs, and now RIA Wealth Partners refer, buy, sell, and trade clients with each other. No brokers. No success fees. No six-month exclusives. Members post what they want; the platform auto-matches based on what each firm actually does.

1. Pulse – what your peers just said

We introduced FirmLever Pulse, a tap-once, anonymous, realtime poll across our membership. Two Pulse questions closed this week:

The first question is the engine behind the lead piece above--71% more profitable with same or fewer hours, and the article walks through why. The second one stood out. Two years ago this conversation would have been mostly talent. Now 79% of you say tech-driven risk (disruption + commoditization) is the biggest 2026 threat. Talent dropped to 21%. Regulatory at zero (I'm guessing not too many auditors participated).

The next Pulse drops Monday. You only see how the room voted if you participate. → Vote in the next one

2. Wealth referrals are now operational

The wealth-referral side of the marketplace went live this week with vetted RIA Wealth Partners on the receiving end--and the first match is unfolding right now. A CAS firm posted a referral. A Wealth Partner picked it up as their first match in the network. End-to-end flow live.

For CPAs and CFOs: the next time a $4M business-sale or estate-planning client walks through your door, you don't have to Google a wealth advisor anymore. Post the referral. There's auto-match infrastructure on the other side now--and RIAs who refer back (tax, bookkeeping, CFO work) rise faster in the algorithm. Two-way flow by design. → Post a wealth referral

For RIAs reading this: we're admitting a few each week → Apply at firmlever.com/ria

3. 13 specialty seats just opened. Most are still wide open.

Until last week, niche specialty referrals depended on whoever you knew personally. That's what "know a guy" means. We just shipped 13 vetted, auto-matched specialty seats so it doesn't have to:

• Quality of Earnings (QoE)
• Cost Segregation
• 1031 Exchanges
• RSU & Stock Compensation
• R&D Tax Credits
• Real Estate Tax Strategy
• SALT (State & Local Tax)
• Forensic Accounting
• Business Exit Planning
• Retirement Plan Design
• High-Tech Compensation
• Entity Structuring
• Nonprofit & Tax-Exempt

Most specialty seats currently have fewer than 5 firms claimed. If one is genuinely yours, you'll be one of the first names that auto-matches when a referral lands. If you're a generalist (most of us are), you finally have vetted specialists who get auto-matched to the work you don't do. → Claim your specialty

4. Full-firm buy/sell beta – spots filling

About 1 in 8 Network members told us during onboarding that selling their entire firm in the next 1-3 years is the plan. So we decided to move forward with a way to help firms achieve this--without brokers, success fees or retainers.

The beta is first come, first served. If you're considering buying or selling a firm in the next 1-3 years reply "buy/sell beta" and you're in. (No fee. No commitment to transact--just early access to the matching layer when it goes live.)

Deal Flow Spotlight

Three interesting listings members are competing on right now:

1. One QoE specialist's referral – 16 firms expressing interest. This is the proof of what claiming a specialty seat actually does. One post. 16 potential referral partners.
2. $200K/yr PE fund admin client – 6 firms want it. Alt-credits strategy: needs fund admin, portfolio management software, and bank/workflow automation.
3. $100K/yr High-Tech Comp tax block – 5 firms in. RSU-heavy clients--a niche that just got its own seat in the new specialty list above.

The above are still open as of this posting.

In Other News

Other pieces my team and I published since Issue #48:

• Effective Hourly Rate and Utilization. How to hack your firm's productivity and valuation--a special playbook.
• Juno Just Raised $12M to Automate 90% of Tax Prep. My personal reaction to this news and how to make more money with 1040s while doing less work.
• Guest piece: The Founder's Guide to Buyer Landmines. Mike, a self-funded buyer hunting for a $700K+ profit firm offered to give Firmlever members access to his personal playbook.

Coming next Saturday

Next week's newsletter will have the biggest announcement of the year to date.

I'll just say this: when we asked FirmLever Network members during onboarding what they'd most want help fixing, about 62% picked the same thing. So I've spent the last few months building specifically for it.

More next Saturday. You'll know it when you see it.

One ask

If any of the above is useful, forward this to one peer who'd want it. Email me at marc@firmlever.com if you have something interesting that our members would find helpful and get it in front of over a thousand firm owners who read this weekly.

And if you're reading this from a forward and not in the Network yet--line skip works the same way. Get invited by a current member, or apply directly.

That's it for week 49.

Marc
Founder, FirmLever

P.S. – Reply "buy/sell beta" if you want a seat in the full-firm beta. First come, first served.

P.P.S. – One thing I keep hearing from members: "I would've claimed [X specialty] but I didn't know we offered it." That's why I listed all 13 above. → Claim it