When small business owners look for guidance, they often turn to the most accomplished people they know — executives at large companies, advisors with impressive credentials, firms with recognizable names.
The problem is that big company experience and small business ownership are not the same thing. And the gap between them is wider than most people realize.
Two Different Worlds
Tom spent the first half of his career in the corporate world and the second half building and advising small businesses. That combination is genuinely uncommon. Most people who rise through large organizations stay in that world, and most small business owners have never operated inside one. The result is that the two sides rarely develop a real understanding of each other.
In large companies, the original energy that drives a business — the founder’s vision, the direct connection between decisions and outcomes, the personal stakes — has long since been absorbed into layers of process, hierarchy and institutional tools. Sophisticated systems exist to manage complexity that small businesses don’t have and don’t need. The people running those systems are skilled at what they do, but what they do has little bearing on what a small business owner faces day to day.
When a small business owner takes advice from someone whose entire frame of reference is the corporate world, they’re often getting solutions designed for a fundamentally different set of problems.
The Right Fit Matters More Than the Biggest Name
The same principle applies when it comes to choosing an accounting or CPA firm.
Most firms price their services based on technical capability — the more sophisticated the firm, the higher the fees. That structure makes sense in the abstract, but it creates a real problem for small business owners who don’t match their needs to the right level of support.
Going with a firm that’s too large means paying for expertise you don’t require, becoming a small account in a practice built for much bigger ones, and getting less attention than your business deserves. Going with a firm that’s too small — a bookkeeper without broader advisory capacity, for example — means you may not get the strategic guidance that becomes critical as your business grows.
The right fit is a firm whose technical capabilities align with where your business actually is, and where it’s headed.
Experience on Both Sides of the Table
What makes Dunn CPA Firm’s position unusual is that Tom has lived this transition firsthand. Moving from the corporate world into small business ownership — with all the adjustment that requires — gave him a working understanding of both environments that most advisors simply don’t have.
He’s also been fortunate. In those early years navigating the small business world, he had a mentor who understood it well and could help him see the difference clearly. That experience shaped how he thinks about advising clients today.
The small business world operates on different terms. The connection between decisions and outcomes is more direct. The margin for error is smaller. The owner is closer to every part of the operation. The tools and frameworks that work at scale often don’t translate, and applying them without that understanding can point a business in the wrong direction.
Meeting Business Owners Where They Are
At Dunn CPA Firm, we work with businesses across a range of sizes and stages. Some clients are in the early years of building something new. Others are established and navigating more complex financial and operational decisions. What they share is a need for guidance that’s calibrated to their actual situation, not borrowed from a playbook written for a different kind of business entirely.
If you’re a small business owner evaluating whether your current advisors truly understand your world, that question is worth taking seriously. The right support doesn’t just handle the technical work, but instead, helps you make better decisions at every stage of your growth.
Very unique background in that the first half of my career was in the big company world and second half of my career is in the small company world. So I understand both worlds and that is rare because most big company people don’t come back to the small company world. And then what happens is a lot of small business owners, they admire people who work in the big company world so they go ask them for advice in the big company world people really don’t understand the small company world. They’re two different worlds completely different worlds.
So what happens in the big company world is kind of like the spark of life that created the small business that works for a business owner and their family. That’s all lost and the big company world. No one knows what that is anymore. I mean these businesses have gotten so big and they use all these sophisticated techniques and tools to try to help them keep their arms around the big company business that they don’t really understand and don’t have the power to really influence the whole thing. So none of those things typically will help a small business owner in the small business owner world. So what so what our firm that makes it our firm is really unique in that we understand both sides of that equation and we can guide the small business owner to the right solutions for them.
And I’ve lived this. I’ve lived it from the big company world transition to a small company world with my own businesses and thank goodness I had a brother who’s really good with small business world. And he was my coach in those first three years to learn the difference between the big company world and small company world.
And then really with regard to the support that a small business needs from a CPA from a bookkeeper or whatever is all the administrative firms, CPA firms, accounting firms out there are charged based on their technical ability. So the greater their technical ability, the bigger the fee and the less their technical ability, the lower the fee. So what you want to try to do as a small business owner is match your technical skill needs to that of an accounting firm that can help you. So if you get in with too big a firm, the rates are going to be too high, you’re going to be a small fish in a big pond. And if you get in with a firm that is to small like just a bookkeeper, then they probably aren’t going to have all the skills that you need to be successful with your company. So and we help with that. We help. We have lots of solutions that meet people wherever they are on their growth.
Chart spectrum.
So yeah, that’s a that’s a big factor is to get in with the right firm for your size and your technical needs as a small business owner.
