Growth by Design: Growth Takeaways from the Boomer Circle Summit
Many firms resist the idea that more revenue does not automatically create a better firm. Several growth sessions at the 2026 Boomer Circle Summit identified that assumption and sought to answer the question it raises. What kind of growth should a firm intentionally create, and for whom?
Growth needs a target, not a wish list
Heather Robinson of Boomer Consulting led a session on Known & Trusted: A Personal Branding Playbook for Accounting Professionals. The session framework centered around creating a defined target client profile. She was careful to separate this from firing existing clients or treating it as a rigid checklist. Instead, it’s a focus tool that shapes how the firm prices services, chooses content topics and evaluates referrals. From there, Robinson walked attendees through building a brand statement using the Problem, Solution, Result formula, then applying that same formula across articles, video and presentations.
Robinson's other session, Elevating Marketing's Impact by Driving Profitability, made a similar argument at the firm level. Reactive growth, she said, lets referrals, individual partner relationships and available capacity decide a firm's client mix by default. Her Intentional Growth Framework runs firms through five decisions:
Where to grow
Who to target
What to be known for
What has to work together internally
How to measure movement toward a more valuable portfolio
Her leadership reframe replaced “we need more leads” with “which opportunities would improve our client mix.”
Differentiation lives in the relationship, not the deliverable
Jon Hubbard of Boomer Consulting kicked off his session on The Future Client Experience with an interesting statistic: 95% of what a firm delivers is technical work clients assume as table stakes. The other 5%, how clients feel about the relationship, drives retention and referrals. Hubbard introduced the Relationship Manager role, one seat with visibility across a client's entire journey, responsible for the two stages where competitors most often win a relationship away from an incumbent firm: the advisory conversation and the transition to what comes next.
Diana Kander's keynote and workshop, Trusted in the Age of AI, pushed the same idea further. Her core argument is that real connection comes from research and personalization that competitors won’t bother doing. She drew a line between client service (solving the problem in front of you) and client experience (noticing that three clients hit the same problem and fixing the process so it doesn’t happen again). The world is full of mediocre experiences, and she challenged firms to create memorable ones instead.
Real firms are already proving the model
Kelly Boggs and Ben Nathanson of Reese Henry facilitated Strategic Objectives for Independent Accounting Firms: Competing at the Highest Level. Rather than presenting theory, they opened their own $23.5 million firm's balanced scorecard, which includes financial growth, client and market position, people and culture, and operations and innovation, each weighted at 25% with specific targets attached.
Their client strategy bet on depth over volume. They cap relationships at roughly 50 per partner with a $50,000 target value, and net revenue roughly doubled over five years as a result. Their people strategy produced an employee net promoter score of 78.
But Boggs and Nathanson were candid about where they still have work to do, including freeing up capacity, moving technology investment beyond incremental gains and keeping change communication clear as the model scales. While private equity was a common theme across several Summit sessions, they recommended thinking about how to compete at the highest level, regardless of who owns the capital.
What this means for your firm
Across all Growth sessions, this year's Summit focused on choosing a target client before chasing revenue, building rewarding relationships and measuring progress toward a more valuable portfolio rather than more activity.
Do you want to fast-track your firm’s success in the areas of marketing and business development?
The Boomer Marketing & Business Development Circle is a peer group of top marketing and business development leaders in the accounting profession who are committed to aligning marketing and business development initiatives with firm strategy. Apply now to get plugged into the Circle and start growing your firm.
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