How This Accounting Firm From 0 to $10M in 7 Years with Joe Manganelli
From Growing Your Firm | Strategies for Accountants, CPA's, Bookkeepers , and Tax Professionals by Jetpack Workflow
May 23, 2026 · 40 min
About this episode
Joe Manganelli shares his journey of scaling his accounting firm to $10M in seven years without outside funding.
Are you running an accounting practice that relies entirely on your own personal production, or have you built a scalable business that can exist independently of you? For accounting firm owners, managing partners, and CPAs starting firms, understanding how to shift from manual operations to an acquirable business model is the ultimate goal. In this episode of Growing Your Firm, host David Cristello sits down with Joe Manganelli, the former founder and CEO of Calculate. Joe shares his incredible journey of launching, scaling, and successfully selling his outsourced CFO and accounting firm in under seven years. He pulls back the curtain on his aggressive top-line growth strategies, pricing models, and how he scaled his team to nearly 45 headcounts with zero outside funding. In this episode, we explore: - The Bootstrapped Blueprint: How Joe scaled Calculate to a $10M run rate without taking on venture capital or outside investment. - Top-Line Growth vs. Profitability: The strategic decisions behind running a high-growth firm (averaging 75%+ year-over-year) with modest margins. - Frictionless Client Acquisition: Transitioning from exhausting networking events to building a highly…
People in this episode
Host: David Cristello
Guest: Joe Manganelli
Topics covered
- scalable business model
- top-line growth strategies
- client acquisition
- experienced hiring
- M&A in accounting firms
Keywords
- accounting firm
- scaling business
- CFO services
- growth strategies
- client referrals
- hiring strategy
- M&A
- bootstrapping
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Calculate
More episodes of Growing Your Firm | Strategies for Accountants, CPA's, Bookkeepers , and Tax Professionals
- How This CPA Built and Sold a 2M Accounting Firm with Adam Shay · June 7, 2026 · 33 min
- 15 minutes to Complete a Month-End Close? Interview with Issac Perdomo · May 8, 2026 · 37 min
- How to Build a 90% Automated Accounting Firm · April 25, 2026 · 32 min
- Why Accountants Are Leaving Money on the Table (And How to Fix It) · April 10, 2026 · 39 min
- The M&A Shift Toward Adjusted EBITDA Margins · March 25, 2026 · 33 min
- The EOS Lite Framework for Growing a Remote Firm · March 13, 2026 · 39 min
Explore listener stats, chart rankings, contacts and more on the Growing Your Firm | Strategies for Accountants, CPA's, Bookkeepers , and Tax Professionals podcast page.