Hey 👋👋
I’m Michael. I’m an accountant for marketing agencies and consultants. And, you’re (presumably) a marketing agency or consultant in search of a new accountant. Nice to meet you 🤝 and, welcome to the bottom of my funnel 😋
Let’s skip the cliché homepage framework and get straight to the point, kk?
You’re here because you have a few questions. Specifcally, you probably want to know:
- Who is Michael Eckstein?
- Who does he work with?
- What does he do?
- What’s all that cost?
- How do I get started?
And, the high-level summary is: I’m an accountant that offers year-round tax, bookkeeping, and consulting subscriptions for marketing agencies and consultants. You can get started with a quick chat.
But, let’s really dig into those questions for you –
About Michael
Like I said, I’m Michael. I’m an accountant, have a bit of a resting business face, and am best known for yapping on LinkedIn.
I’ve also been quoted by dozens of websites, guested on podcasts, was named on CPA Practice Advisor’s ’40 under 40′ accountants list, am the treasurer of a local non-profit, blah blah blah, other very impressive brags, ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐, etc. You get it.
My solo-practice is a modern, good-humored accounting consultancy. All the same money math you know and love, but with a lil more levity and few wisecracks, because saving taxes and improving cash flow may be serious, but the rest of this doesn’t need to be.
And, it may just be me behind the screen, but I’ll meet you where you are on your accounting journey and get you where you need to be.
- Just getting started? Perfect.
- Struggling with messy books and back taxes? Perfect.
- Already running and in need of a change? Perfect.
We’ll get you right as rain, without the shame 😉
🤓 Enrolled Agent: I’m an Enrolled Agent, which is an IRS license that allows me to defend clients against tax audits. It’s different from the CPA, but that’s okay. Both licenses are more than enough (and, what’s really important is the professional behind the letters).
🤔 Fractional CFO: I’m not a fractional CFO tho. I can help with forecasting, taxes, and accounting. But, won’t be involved in other traditional CFO tasks, like risk management, board meetings, loan applications, or deeper financial analysis.
I have a lot of anxiety around matters of finance and of course, that translates double into taxes. So being able to be comfortable, laugh, ask ANY questions, and be shepherded through the process by someone who is serious about getting it right is a HUGE relief. … He’s also kind in explaining things and doesn’t talk down to folks about it. …
(Did I mention that he is damn funny?)
Who I work with
While there’s no velvet rope or strict dresscode, my clients tend to have a few things in common. Obviously, they’re marketing agencies and consultants. You’ve figured that bit out by now, but they’re also:
Lean teams: My clients are usually smaller agencies, ranging from a single consultant to around 10-ish employees and under $2,500,000 annual revenue.
Boutique specialists: They’re experts in their domain. That could be – demand gen, Storybrand, fractional CMO, SEO strategy, messaging consultants, public relations, outsourced MOps, etc. They’re great at what they do.
Growing intentionally: Clients tend to have lifestyle businesses and a strong work/life balance. They care about their team, clients, and creative work product.
By the book: They don’t comingle funds, won’t take sketchy tax interpretations, don’t inflate expenses, definitely don’t wink wink nudge nudge, and would never commit tax fraud.
And, these clients typically needed help with similar issues. Above all, they wanted a deeper, less-transactional relationship with their accountant. They also wanted:
An IRS translator: Taxes are confusing. Clients wanted an accountant to translate IRS rules, letters, and notices into plain English (and, explain why they don’t need to lose sleep over it).
Proactive planning: They’re tired of playing catch up, unexpected tax bills in April, and making blind decisions. Clients wanted help managing (and legally minimizing) taxes and peaking into the future with Growth Forecasts.
Financially-minded feedback: My clients have done a great job getting where they are, but they’d been managing from the heart and wanted a finance-minded voice in the room.
A weight off their shoulders: Taxes, finances, and making sure they don’t all fall apart are ✨a lot.✨ Many clients simply wanted to outsource their accounting AND remove their accounting stress.
What’s included
🎀 Business & personal tax returns: Tax returns are more complicated than just typing numbers into the computer. You want the right numbers in the right places, so you pay the right tax (and not a penny more). I’ll review your accounting, ask more questions than your last accountant ever did, pay close attention to multi-state issues, and check for last-minute opportunities.
(💸 available à la carte. S-corp & partnership fees start at $2,000, personal at $1,000 💸)
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
💊 S-Corporation eligibility assessment: If you Google, “I own a business and taxes make me sad,” the internet will tell you to form an S-corp. But, taxes aren’t that simple and S-corps don’t alwaysss save money. We’ll check and make sure they do before helping you make the S-corp election.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
🟠 Reasonable compensation & payroll: S-corp owners need to pay themselves payroll. The IRS left how much open to debate tho. We’ll run a reasonable compensation study, optimize your payroll to save tax without adding audit risk, and get payroll set up.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
🏦 Personalized tax savings plan: Saving for taxes is a pain. Feels like you’re always playing catch up. I’ll show you an easier method, with a series of bank accounts, and give you a personalized tax savings rate bassed on your tax situation.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
👷 Capture and categorize every transaction: Everything starts with your bookkeeping – your business tax return, cash flow forecasting, tax planning, financial decision-making, quarterly estimates – everything. We’ll capture and categorize every transaction for more accurate books, and more importantly, a more accurate everything else.
Tax Hero
👷 Managed bookkeeping: Bookkeeping is an energy vampire. Let me do it. I’ll tame the accounting software, categorize the transactions, reconcile the accounts, and track down any annoying errors. You’ll just have to update the bank connection (I’ll remind you 😉), send me the statements, and answer a few questions. I got the rest.
Tax Hero
Michael is the best. Literally. Hire him.
He makes taxes, accounting and all things financials very digestible. He’s casual approach is refreshing, but he knows his stuff. I highly recommend him.
☎️ Onboarding call(s): You probably have lotsss of questions that previous accountants ignored. We’ll start with two calls about taxes & finances, to teach you the best practices and give you a chance to finally ask all those questions.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
🤐 Confidentiality: It should go without saying, but everything we discuss is just between you, me, and the IRS. I don’t share client names, my client list, or any details about them with anyone. And, while you may inspire a LinkedIn post, I’d absolutely never bully you via LinkedIn (I cannot believe I need to point that out, but people have asked 😅).
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
💸 Flat-fee subscription pricing: No hourly. No surprises. No ‘the tax return costs extra.’ One monthly price, everything included, and revisited yearly.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
🙏 Please & thank you: My mom would say I don’t have manners. But, I know how to say please, thank you, and send a polite email. And, nowadays, that’s saying something 😅
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
🥼 Industry expertise: They say marketing has too much jargon and too many acronyms. Go ahead and use it. I’ll know what you mean, because you aren’t the only agency I work with.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
🔔 Quarterly tax estimates: Your quarterly tax payments are due April 15th, June 15th, September 15th, and January 15th (with any remainder when you file). A week before each payment date, I’ll remind you how much to pay, how we arrived at our estimate, and where to pay (with links).
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
🧠 Year-end tax review: Tax season surprises are the worst. We’ll get ahead of them with a tax planning meeting in November/December to discuss your business, any updates, and look for opportunities to minimize your tax bill.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
…Working with Michael has been amazing. Two parts Real Talk, one part Therapy, with just a drizzle of sass – exactly what I needed. … You are getting exactly what you think: the Edna Mode of Business Consulting.
🏛️ Year-round tax support: Tax questions happen all year. When you have a Q, shoot me an email and get an answer within 24hrs – without the dreaded surprise invoice.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
🦸♂️ Audit protection: No one likes a tax department letter, but you’re bound to get them. There’s a tech hiccup, the IRS misplaced a payment, a state claims they never got a payroll return, an automatic letter got spit out, you forgot to register for something, etc. Forward those letters to me and I’ll write responses – included.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
🔍 Prior tax return reviews: I’m sure your last accountant was wonderfully competent. I’ll review your prior returns just to give us all a lil more peace of mind tho.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
… He was incredibly professional, efficient and knowledgeable and managed to get a very challenging project organized and done on time. I will continue to use him for bookkeeping/accounting services for my small business and personal side, as well as tax preparation services for the future. I would highly recommend him to anyone looking for tax, accounting and bookkeeping support.
🔎 Bookkeeping review: Every set of books gets reviewed before using them to prepare your tax return. I’ll drill down into your Profit & Loss, check your Balance Sheet for any bodies, and make sure everything’s looking good for you and the IRS.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
😇 Judgment-free support: Accountants aren’t exactly known for their sparkling personalities or bedside manner. We’re known for being gruff, grumpy, and grouchy. Not exactly a pleasure to work with. I can’t promise to be a pleasure, but I won’t judge you for where you’re at in your business journey.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
🎥 Recordings: You’ll get recordings of all our calls. Rewatch them, run them thru AI, or let them collect dust in your cloud storage. I don’t care, but they’re yours. (Just don’t try to clone my voice 😤)
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
✅ Tax-ready books: Tax season is stressful for two big reasons: the April tax bill and getting your books ready. Once we implement a savings plan and get bookkeeping off your plate, it’ll be smooth sailing.
Tax Hero
💾 Secure portal & tech stack: Your taxes and financials include a lot of sensitive info. Safeguarding it is mission-critical. All your documents are held in a SOC2 audited secure portal, my accounting software requires two-factor authentication, and I’ll never ask for full-access bank logins.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
😂 Jokes & stories: I may not be a comedian and you won’t see my jokes on TikTok any time soon. But, I’ll crack a few jokes, tell a few stories, and we’ll have a few laughs. At the very least, you won’t dread our meetings.
Tax Hero
Tax Buddy
Tax Essentials
How we can work together (and how much that costs)
Pricing FAQ
What factors affect your pricing?
Pricing depends on:
- your gross revenue
- number of partners
- number of states
- entity type (ie, sole prop, SMLLC, S-corp, partnership)
- general complexity
‘Tax Hero’ pricing also depends on:
- the number of financial transactions
- the number of financial accounts
- whether you have payroll, loan, or complex transactions
What’s the minimum commitment?
Both ‘Tax Hero and ‘Tax Buddy’ packages are 12-month commitments.
‘Tax Essentials’ is just that season’s tax return and a meeting at the end of the year.
Do you prepare à la carte tax returns without a subscription?
Yea, S-corp & partnership returns start at $2,000, personal start at $1,000. But that won’t include any year-round support, check-ups, letter support, or tax consults.
Do you offer one-off consulting calls?
Sure do. You can schedule one here.
Getting started
Step 1. Vibe Check: Everyone jumps right into sales and discovery. But, what happened to hello? how are you? my name is?
Before we jump in, let’s take some time to chat, get to know each other, and discuss your business.
Step 2. Discovery Phase: If we mesh and you’d like to pursue working together, we’ll start the deep dive.
I’ll review your tax returns, poke around your books, and we’ll schedule two calls to dive deep into all your questions that previous accountants ignored.
Then, at the end, we’ll discuss my findings, send you the call recordings, and forward my proposal.
Step 3. Catch up & Clean up: Once you’ve signed on the dotted line (and paid my first invoice), we’ll get started by cleaning up any messiness, like inaccurate books, unfiled taxes, or audits.
Step 4. Smooth Sailing: Finally, we’ll get into an annual rhythm of filing returns, paying estimates, reconciling your bookkeeping, updating forecasts, and discussing your agency’s finances. Before you know it, you won’t even remember the time finances stressed you out.
I just got off an hour-long strategy sesh with Michael and I can’t be more fricking pleased.
…Anyway, so we had an amazing call where he answered all of my questions, helped me prioritize what to focus on where, and identify and plan to fix my most pressing business financial hiccups. He was so realistic and supportive and did a great job reminding me that 1. I don’t need to feel like shit for not having a good handle on this naturally, and 2. that it will take a couple of years to really unravel what’s been going on. And. you know what? That’s exactly what I needed to hear. …
If you need intelligent, coherent, and comprehendible tactics and suggestions for how to get your business financials in order, I can do nothing but praise Michael and suggest his expertise to you. You won’t regret it.
Unless you want magic.
Then you need to find a magician.