Succession in an accounting firm is hard enough on paper. When the person handing you the keys is the Founder who spent four decades building the firm, the numbers are only part of the work. You’re taking on clients, a team, and the habits that made the firm successful. At the same time, you’re making room for the way you want to run it.
Marilyn Melendez, EA, knows that tension well. She’s President of Dalia Tax & Business Advisors, a 43-year-old bilingual (English and Spanish) firm in West Palm Beach, Florida, with a team of seven. She took over from her mother — the firm’s Founder — who retired this year, and she now builds her advisory work around clients going through the same kind of transition.
As she puts it, the question is, “How do you honor the legacy of the past while implementing changes in the future?”
Her experience, along with lessons from Dillon Business Advisors’ leadership team, offers a practical path for anyone planning a handoff — whether you’re the Founder or the next generation. Below, we’ll cover when to start, how to handle the emotional side of a family transition, and how to reshape your clients and culture once the firm is yours.
Prefer to watch? Here’s the full conversation.
It’s easy to treat succession as something to sort out in the last year or two before retirement. The trouble is — in a firm built around its Founder — every question and client issue often flows straight to them. Starting early gives the Founder time to spread that knowledge across the team.
“Founders, please look at succession planning way earlier than you think you need it,” Marilyn says, “because if you have those things established, your business won’t suffer.”
Rachel Dillon leads DBA with Marcus Dillon, CPA, and co-founded Collective by DBA. She adds that starting early also means handing off responsibility while the Founder is still around to catch mistakes. Letting your successor try things while you’re still there, she says, “is probably easier and better for both sides than to just exit and then cross your fingers.”
As you plan the handoff, consider moving these pieces first:
Even with a plan in place, a family handoff rarely moves at a steady pace. Marilyn describes hers as a tango: “Sometimes we were going a little too fast. Every now and then she threw me for a spin.”
Part of what made it hard was that she and her mother were looking at the same transition through very different lenses. Marilyn approached it analytically, while for her mother the firm was a big part of who she was after 43 years. Her advice to Founders is to trust the person coming up behind you. A successor can “have a more objective perspective of things because their identity isn’t wrapped up in the business.”
It can also help to bring in outside examples so disagreements feel less personal. When Marilyn proposed changes, she pointed to DBA’s structure as proof that a firm of similar size had already made them work. Showing that other firms have taken the same path turns “my idea versus yours” into a conversation about what has worked elsewhere.
A transition is a natural time to revisit who your firm serves. Many owners assume a niche has to be an industry, but Marilyn’s is built around a type of person. She works with second-generation owners, women entrepreneurs, and Spanish-speaking owners who are new to doing business in the U.S. Her sweet spot is businesses with $1 million to $3 million in revenue and about 25 employees or fewer. “I want to serve people who have the same problem I went through,” she says.
That focus shapes how she advises. She treats the P&L and balance sheet as a byproduct, and she starts each relationship by asking clients why they work as hard as they do. With family-owned and husband-and-wife businesses, she reminds owners that her role is to advocate for the company as a whole. “I’m the voice of the business,” she says.
Rachel notes that this kind of advisory feels less intimidating when you serve the right people because much of the value comes from listening. When clients talk through their challenges out loud, they often reach their own answers, and you only need to ask good questions along the way.
New leadership is also a good moment to look hard at client fit. Marilyn gives clients who don’t follow through on her advice two or three years, then helps them find a different firm. Without buy-in, she can’t serve them well.
She also weighs what a client costs her beyond the fee. “Not every dollar in costs the same,” she says. Some clients drained her even when they paid above her rates, and she realized, “That dollar is costing me my peace.” Know your numbers and your true bottom line, she advises. If a client or prospect can’t fit within them, let them go with grace and, when you can, a referral. A prospect you treat well today may come back when they’re ready.
For Marilyn, the result is a smaller firm with fewer clients. It earns about the same revenue, and she can go deeper with each client. Marcus calls that idea the most important takeaway of the conversation: “Doing more with less — if anybody takes anything away from this — that is the gold.”
Every client you take on changes what your team’s days look like. “Every time we say yes, that shifts culture,” Marcus says, which is why both firms treat client decisions as team decisions too.
Marilyn backs her team in concrete ways. She has a “no jerk” policy for clients and tells them to speak to her staff in the same tone they’d use with her. She also holds company retreats that include spouses, and her firm is testing a flexible work schedule. Marcus points out that you don’t need a big budget to build that kind of loyalty. Thanking someone directly, writing a note to their spouse, or sending a gift card for a date night can go a long way.
Underneath all of it is listening. Marilyn’s advice is to “listen for the subtext of what they’re saying, because in any organization, you’ve got power dynamics.” People will only bring you hard news if they trust how you’ll respond. That trust comes from behaving consistently, inside and outside the firm. She also encourages owners to protect their own energy by scheduling rest “just as effectively and importantly as you do your CPE.”
Whether you’re the Founder or the successor, you can make progress this quarter without having every answer.
Handing off a firm, or stepping into one, raises questions about timing, client fit, pricing, and team structure that are easier to work through with someone who has seen them before. Collective by DBA’s advisors can help you map out a transition plan that protects your clients, your team, and the legacy you’re building on. Schedule a call with Collective by DBA to talk through your plans.