Episode
EP529: Anne Napolitano - Stop Undercharging: How To Price & Sell Advisory Services
- Published
- Apr 28, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2087
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Summary
See what the team at The Successful Bookkeeper has on right now → Anne Napolitano started her firm a decade ago as a solopreneur with an accounting degree, a background as a controller for Hermès of Paris, and a stint as a personal chef. Today she runs a 10-person firm with a specialty niche in food and beverage — and she has learned, often the hard way, how to charge what her work is actually worth. This episode is a practical, honest conversation about building advisory services into a bookkeeping firm, pricing with confidence, and communicating value so clients never have to wonder what you do for them. Chapters [00:00] Anne's Background and Firm Journey [05:03] Early Mistakes and Hard Lessons [09:07] Building Advisory Into the Practice [12:24] Tools, Confidence, and Clean Data [14:33] Selling Advisory to Skeptical Clients [18:20] Segmenting Clients for Higher-Tier Work [20:42] Packaging and Proposals That Work [23:34] Pricing Courage and Recovering from Undercharging [28:19] Communicating Value Before Clients Leave [30:29] Pivotal Moments and What She'd Do Differently From Bookkeeping to Advisory: It Takes Time to Grow Into It Anne didn't launch as a full advisory firm on day one — the advisory side evolved as her confidence and team grew. She credits closing the books fast (her target is the 10th–15th of each month) as the foundation that makes advisory possible. "The faster we can get the bookkeeping done, that allows us 2 weeks at the end of the month to meet with clients and to do the advisory type of work that we really enjoy." Without clean, timely data, there's nothing to advise on. Selling Advisory When Clients Don't Know They Need It Many clients assume advisory is bundled into their basic bookkeeping fee. Anne's approach is to start with bookkeeping, buil…