Happy Frye-Day. Belated Canada Day to anyone celebrating north of the border, and happy Fourth of July tomorrow to everyone in the States. Stay safe out there.

This week: something that comes up in almost every firm I talk to.

The most valuable client in your firm right now is probably the one you never hear from. They are patiently waiting while you put out everyone else’s fires, and at year end, that patience runs out. They leave without a conversation, without a complaint, simply because they spent twelve months feeling like they could always wait.

NO ONE’S IN CHARGE.

Here is what I usually find when I start working with a firm: nobody is really in charge of operations. There is no visibility. No working cadence for the week. What gets done is whatever is on fire, or whoever is screaming the loudest.

Before adding any tool, I encourage firms to build a reporting cadence.

Same mentality as sales. In sales you have a weekly number: what revenue is coming in this week? Apply that exact thinking to ops.

What work is getting done this week?

Which clients’ books are closing?

Which returns are going out?

The more you practice planning and forecasting work, the faster you see where the bottlenecks are.

What to do:

One person should own both sides of the equation. Total ops output and revenue coming in. When nobody holds both, you end up either overcapacity or undercapacity on one side. Either way, something breaks, and it usually breaks on the client experience end.

A useful frame: apply the same thinking as a 13-week cash flow forecast to your operations. Measure it in units, points, or dollars earned. Build a cadence around it. Sales gets easier when delivery is tight.

Worth watching

If you missed the Canopy Coworker demo last week, the replay is up. This is probably the most real, tactical AI demo I have seen that is native to your practice management. Not a plugin to Claude or something bolted on. Worth watching if firm ops is on your mind this month.

👉 Watch the replay

Coming up

• How to Upsmart Your Firm with Practice Management Software — On July 8 at 2 PM ET, I’m joining Jim Boomer and Lera Kooper from Proactive Advisory Group for a Canopy webinar on modern practice management. How a unified operating system helps firms simplify delivery, improve visibility, and create actual capacity for growth. One CPE credit.

👉 Register here

Helpers worth following

Someone doing the ops work I’m talking about, for real, for firm owners.

—
Luke

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