Two Hills CPAs - Alumnus Spotlight
Starting from the Ground Up
An Interview with Brian Hill of Two Hills CPAs
Building business is our passion at Office Evolution. Having a small role in the success of our members’ successes brings us great joy. Even more so is when a member grows so much that they move on to their own office building!
We sat down to talk with Brian Hill from Two Hills CPAs about business and his time with Office Evolution. Brian was a member at our Denver office, until his business became so successful that they graduated to their own office building! We love success stories like this, though we do miss our alumni.
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About the Business
Hello, my name’s Brian Hill. I’m the founder and principal at Two Hills CPAs. We started our business about five years ago and we’ve helped a number of clients with their financial and tax needs. We help clients with their basic accounting and all their required filings for income and sales and payroll tax.
We found that throughout the years, one of the most enjoyable things about what we do is working with the clients and helping them gain an understanding of the financial aspects of their business and working with them on making those decisions. We think by working closely together, both we get the opportunity to work with them and it’s very rewarding for the clients in terms of they get that understanding and have the right information to make their business decisions.
What makes you different from the competition?
I think there’s two things. First, it’s a very personal and customized attention to our clients. We really value that relationship. It’s one that we’re here year round and available year round for our clients.
I think the second one is that we’re constantly growing and learning, whether that applies for the technology and taking on new technology as fast as we can, or researching new tax codes, or staying up on new industries or industry changes. We constantly, through myself and the employees, we really take time to learn and grow and make sure that we’re developing as individuals. I think that really helps our clients as well.
Business Tips
Business Tip #1 – Understand Your Financials
The first one would be have a very good understand of your financials. That’s easy to say as a CPA firm, know your financials, but we’ve seen businesses that come in and they know their gross margins very well and they know “Ok, we need to have this many clients or this much in revenue to maintain all of our costs.” Knowing those very well and having up to date financial information is critical to running a successful business.
Business Tip #2 – Cash is King
Having enough working capital, whether that’s 3 to 6 months of business, having that cash that you can sustain any ups and downs and stay in business. Having that cash on hand.
Business Tip #3 – Have Good Customer Relationships
Outside of the financials, we just find that having great relationships and providing really good service to our clients has been really important for us. We really care and take an interest in our clients, and I think that matters. If you really feel passionate about your clients and what you’re doing, I think you’ll do a much better job at it.
Business Growth
The first year was pretty quiet. We founded it together in 2011, and the initial firm, I think with us, we started pretty conservatively, in terms of just the two of us using Office Evolution’s conference rooms. We kept our costs down and we met with clients. By working with a lot of clients and providing great service early on, we started to get referrals. That helped us build our business, and we just started slowly.
Each year we would do the processes, as we do with our clients of planning out: what’s the next year going to look like? What’s our revenue going to look like? What do we so we can provide a high level of service to our clients. And trying o think ahead and plan that out.
Future of Two Hills
More and more of the process will be automated. The tools are getting better, whereas when they started, some of the automated tools just weren’t there yet, and they needed a lot of hand holding. They’re getting much more efficient and a lot of it just works. So really it kind of moves towards how can we look forward or help you plan? How can we get you the right information at the right time and make sure it’s accurate, and really playing that role more than a technical role.
Staying on Top
One of our core values is growth, and we really feel that applies to our people, processes, and technology. We are continuously trying to improve in each of those areas. Obviously, we started from the ground up, so we had very little in place to begin with.
As we learn more about our business and clients’ needs, we’ve continually taken on new processes and improved, making our business more efficient. We can pass a lot of that on to the client, whether it’s in terms of helping them grow their business, or the services and products they receive from us.
What led you to Office Evolution?
When we started, our need was primarily for office space to meet clients. We started just using the meeting rooms, and that worked great for a specific time. It kept our expenses down and we still had a professional image and a good support for call answering and that kind of thing.
After about the first year, we were looking at the next tax season, and we said we needed to be available for the drop-ins and be there most of the time, and we’re getting enough that we just need to have a space. And so we said, let’s go ahead and go with full time space, and we did that, and it worked great for another year or two.
We finally reached the volume that we couldn’t handle it on our own. We decided we needed another staff member and needed another office for her, so we added an office. The next tax season, we needed two more people, and so we added another office at that point. It was great, we were able to grow and have our space needs matched there by Office Evolution.
Benefits of Office Evolution
The big thing is being able to use two locations. As a small firm, we were able to expand our geography significantly between the Golden and Denver markets, which we wouldn’t have been able to do with a different kind of space. Just having the facilities and staff, we really felt taken care of. We had a lot of clients who would call last minute and say, “Hey, I’d like to come in,” so having meeting space available, both Constance and Jan at the Golden office always helped us find something at the last minute. When information came in, it always got to us in a timely manner, so that was really important for our business.
For more information about Brian and Two Hill CPAs, visit: https://www.twohillsaccounting.com/
To rent an office space at Office Evolution or to learn more about how we can help you grow your business, visit our website at https://www.officeevolution.com/locations/denver or call (303) 447-6876