There is a version of firm ownership that gets shared in highlight reels.
The version where growth is linear, clients are a perfect fit, team members stay forever, and delegation is a clean handoff that never needs revisiting.
And then there is the version most firm owners actually live: the one filled with tradeoffs, uncomfortable learning curves, shifting responsibilities, and moments where progress looks suspiciously like going backward.
That is the territory explored in this episode of the Unbalanced Podcast, where hosts Sam Hallburn and Candy Bellau sat down with Marie Torossian. Marie started her firm in 2020, just as COVID changed everything about the way businesses operated, what clients expected, and how professional services firms stayed steady when nothing else felt stable.
From the beginning, her story is not about perfection. It is about making decisions with incomplete information, learning in public, and building something that can hold real life, not just spreadsheets.
Listen To The Full Episode On Spotify.
Starting A Firm When The World Was Uncertain
Marie started her firm in 2020. It was not just a new business launch. It was a leadership test in real time.
She described stepping into ownership at a moment when the economy felt unpredictable and the ground kept shifting. Like many firm owners at that time, she faced a choice that was both practical and personal: take on whatever work was available to survive, or stay focused on what she knew best.
In the episode, Sam reflected on the pressures of that season from the firm owner side. Firms were expected to become overnight experts in new programs and relief efforts, often while navigating restrictions on billing and unclear guidance. The work was urgent, emotional, and often uncompensated in the ways it should have been.
Marie chose a narrower path. She mentioned doing only one PPP engagement for an existing client, and then making a deliberate decision not to get pulled into pages of unfamiliar, rapidly changing details. Instead, she stayed rooted in accounting and controllership. The choice was not framed as judgment, just clarity.
For experienced firm owners, this will feel familiar. It is not always the volume of work that breaks a business. It is the lack of direction. When everything is possible, focus becomes the asset.
The Quiet Panic Of “I Know The Work, But I Do Not Know How To Sell It”
Marie was candid about something many firm owners take years to admit out loud: being good at the work is not the same as knowing how to grow the business.
She explained that early on, she knew how to analyze financials. She came from an audit background. She understood quality. She understood rigor.
What she did not understand yet was marketing. Or sales conversations. Or how to close.
She described a common early-stage pattern: connecting with people, offering a full hour as a strategy session, giving away real value, and then ending the call without a clear next step. The result was predictable in hindsight: prospects took the insight and moved on.
It is easy to interpret that moment as rejection. But it is often something more basic: the firm owner did not yet have a sales process.
Sam shared a nearly identical experience from her own firm. They used to offer free diagnostics, doing meaningful work upfront, then handing over a list of issues. It felt like good service. It felt professional. It felt generous.
And then those prospects would disappear.
The shift happened when Sam’s firm began charging $2,000 for diagnostics. Suddenly, the outcome changed. People treated the work differently. They were more engaged. They had “skin in the game,” as Marie put it. And once they had paid, they were far more likely to want the next step.
This is not about charging for the sake of charging. It is about recognizing that free can unintentionally communicate the wrong message. Free can feel optional. Paid feels real.
For firm owners who have been stuck in the cycle of long calls, endless advice, and low conversion, this moment is an invitation to reconsider what “helpful” actually means in business.
Sometimes the most helpful thing is clarity.
Delegation Does Not Remove You, It Redefines You
Delegation is often described as a solution. But most firm owners know it is more complicated than that.
Marie shared that even though she considers herself structured with time management, her biggest ongoing challenge has been leveraging her time through better delegation. Not because she refuses to delegate, but because there is always another layer to learn.
She has an outsourced accounting team supporting client delivery. The team has been working together for a year, and that structure has allowed her to do more coaching, which she said is where her passion lies. She sees coaching as her longer-term direction over the next five to ten years.
Still, she acknowledged what every owner learns eventually: you get pulled back in.
It happens when experience catches something the team misses. It happens when a review reveals gaps. It happens when a client needs reassurance. It happens when the work has nuance that cannot be standardized yet.
Marie’s approach was not denial. It was acceptance, and then reframing.
She shared that instead of seeing being pulled back in as a failure, she tries to treat it as a useful return. A chance to stay connected to clients. A chance to train the team. A way to stay close enough to the delivery that the quality remains intact.
And sometimes, it is more personal than that.
Marie described a moment where a client told her directly: they liked the team, but they missed her. They missed spending time with her. For many firm owners, that comment cuts both ways. It is affirming, but it also reinforces the truth that relationships are part of the value.
Firm ownership is not purely operational. It is relational.
Delegation does not remove the owner from the work. It changes the owner’s role inside it.
The question becomes less about how to disappear, and more about how to lead the handoff without breaking trust.
The “Under 100 Clients” Decision And The Power Of Boundaries
In a culture that often rewards bigger and faster, Marie offered a quieter perspective: she is intentionally not trying to scale her accounting client base beyond a certain size.
She said she is not trying to go beyond 100 accounting clients, and that she is making that decision because her focus is coaching, which she sees as more scalable. She also outsources tax work to a colleague, allowing her to stay focused on the parts of her business that align with her strengths and interests.
This is not a strategy for everyone. But it is an important reminder that growth is not a single definition.
For a firm owner, setting a ceiling can be a leadership choice. A form of protection. A way to ensure the business model supports the life behind it.
Marie also mentioned shifting her onboarding focus this year toward clients where she can operate more in an advisory capacity, using her CFO background. It is a practical adjustment, but it also reflects something deeper: the ongoing evolution of what the firm is for.
Some firms chase volume. Others chase alignment.
Both require discipline.
When Someone Leaves, The Story You Tell Yourself Matters
One of the most human parts of the conversation came when the hosts asked Marie about losing team members.
She shared that her marketing hire, someone she had trained deeply over several years, recently took a full-time role elsewhere. The departure was not dramatic or bitter, but it was still a break. It forced her to step back into tasks she had delegated, revisit strategy, and make changes to her website, content, and systems.
Marie said she could have prepared better by asking earlier questions, specifically around whether the new employer would view outside work as a conflict of interest. She named the mistake simply: she assumed.
And then she offered a phrase that softened the entire moment.
Instead of saying her employee left, she said he graduated.
Candy responded immediately. She called it a beautiful way to look at it.
Sam responded too, noting that she uses “graduated from the University of Sam,” but in her story it carried a negative tone, tied to betrayal and cost. Marie’s version was different. It was pride. It was leadership. It was a genuine belief that building people up is part of the job.
Marie added that this pattern has followed her throughout her career: strong team members grow, and many move on. But they often stay in touch. The relationship stays intact.
That framing matters.
Firm owners carry so many quiet emotional weights: fear of churn, fear of turnover, fear of instability. When someone leaves, it can feel like the firm is less safe.
But Marie’s perspective offers another possibility. People leave for reasons that can be healthy. Growth can be a shared outcome.
The question is not whether someone will ever leave. It is whether the firm is resilient enough when they do.
A Firm Is A Business, And A Business Is Built Around People
Toward the end of the conversation, Marie shared her advice for the Unbalanced community.
It was not a tactic. It was a leadership mindset.
She encouraged firms to run like a business, not just a practice. And she was specific about what she meant.
She suggested that firm owners pay attention to people with transferable skill sets, even if the “right” role does not exist yet. She used herself as an example: she believed that if her former firm had created a business development opportunity for her, she would have stayed. She was naturally good at talking to clients. She had strong soft skills. She could have grown in that direction with training.
Instead, like many firms, business development often falls onto the people who get promoted for technical excellence, whether or not they are suited for sales, networking, or relationship-driven growth.
Her recommendation was clear: create opportunities for team members who are social, client-facing, and motivated by connection. Give them incentives. Give them a structure. Let them earn bonuses, referrals, commissions, or other forms of “skin in the game.”
In other words, stop assuming one promotion path fits everyone.
Firms retain people when they build careers, not just jobs.
A Simple Listening Note For Firm Owners
This episode offers something many firm owners rarely get: a conversation that treats leadership as lived experience, not a checklist.
Marie’s story is not about having everything figured out. It is about staying honest while figuring it out anyway.
There is relief in that.
Because the reality is, most firms are built in the messy middle. Not in the clean moments. Not in the polished ones.
And the owners who last are often the ones who can hold complexity without turning it into self-doubt.
Listen To The Full Episode On Spotify.
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