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AI-enabled
growth
for
independent firms

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Time saved is not a value proposition. Growth is.

The Outlier Practice is a done-for-you advisory firm that helps independent accounting firms grow, by putting AI and their people to work on the firm’s growth goals.

Read our WHY

Why work with us

Find what limits your growth. Aim everything there.

Most firms invest in AI broadly and look for the return later. We start from one growth goal your partners agree on, or from the growth plan you already paid for, and find the one constraint holding it back. Technology and people go there first. Everything else is a shiny object, and it waits its turn.

Illustrative workflow with four stages: intake, prepare, review and deliver. Review is the narrowest stage, so work piles up in front of it and little comes out the other end. Review is marked as the constraint. Technology and people go there first, review widens, the queue clears, and more work flows through the firm.

The Outlier Practice approach

Our C.L.A.I.M. Method™ closes the gap between the promise of AI and the growth outcome you expect.

  1. Choose one goal

    The one growth result that matters most (revenue, margin, time back for life, etc.)

  2. Locate the constraint

    Identify the technical, process, structural, or behavioral factors limiting the growth result.

  3. Amplify the constraint

    Use technology and people to expand capacity and increase leverage where it’s needed.

  4. Invest the freed capacity

    Turn freed capacity into the exact work that grows the firm. This is where the ROI is made.

  5. Measure the goal itself

    Track verifiable progress against the growth result, not just hours saved.

Services

How we work with your firm

Leadership team

Derek Stanek

Derek Stanek

Founder

In addition to leading The Outlier Practice, Derek Stanek heads growth and client advisory at Addictive Leadership, a training and coaching company that helps accounting firm leaders with the most uncomfortable parts of leadership. Addictive Leadership works with firms from four-person practices to the Top 100. Derek spends his days with their leaders on the behavioral and technological work that helps them gain an edge in their market, relative to larger, better-resourced firms.

Derek has spent nearly 20 years using technological and human potential to help “underdog” teams and organizations win. As show director for top-40 recording artists, he built the first automated show-control system that let a small crew run sophisticated, large-format productions. More recently he built the AI platform that expanded Addictive Leadership’s client capacity about 20%, without increasing overhead or anyone working additional hours. Both projects reinforced the same lesson: the gap between the promise of technology and the outcomes that matter is entirely human.

Derek lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife Christen and their dog, Phineas Underfoot.

Advisory Partners & Collaborators

  • Michael Brody-Waite

    Michael Brody‑Waite

    Founder, Addictive Leadership

    3x Inc. 500 CEO whose leadership programs help accounting firm leaders turn what they know into what they do.

  • Growth strategist

    Helps accounting firms set their growth strategy, which our work accelerates.

  • Accounting technology advisor

    Has spent decades helping accounting firms choose their technology and get the most from what they already own.

  • Applied AI engineer

    Builds AI agents that run in production every day, with years of experience inside accounting firms.

  • L&D expert

    An expert in how firms build the skills and habits that tomorrow’s work demands.

Talk to our team

Email:
derek@theoutlierpractice.com
Phone (call or text):
402-972-6339

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Our why

Independent firms must prosper.

In a desirable world, the underdog must have a chance to win. Speed versus size, legacy versus brand, ingenuity versus strength. Dynamism requires competition. Clients and professionals must have the ability to choose independence and thrive.

Today, resources win.

Size is a proxy for power. There are few things that can’t be won with more available resources to throw at them. Industry consolidation is emptying out the “middle,” pressuring independent firms to sell, stay small, or struggle.

Technology is the great equalizer.

Every firm has access to the same intelligence. The outliers are breaking away based on how, where, and why it’s used. Firms of all sizes deploying AI strategically across the people, services, and operations that grow them can benefit disproportionately to the resources they have available. But to do so requires thinking and acting differently, aligning resources correctly, and moving boldly into the future.

Embrace the new leverage.

Leverage is the multiplier between what you put in and what you get out. For decades, the profession has embraced Maister’s vertical leverage: the staff-to-partner ratio. To increase leverage, a firm had to add people and push work down. In this model, size won. AI adds the horizontal dimension, a multiplier for every person and process in the firm. Growth potential becomes untethered from available time, headcount, and capital. This is how an outlier firm finds its unfair advantage.

Heart is now the differentiator.

In the Industrial Revolution, machines disrupted muscle. In today’s intelligence revolution, machines are disrupting minds. The heart must take center stage, so that human ethics guide financial engineering. We must ensure that AI works for us, not instead of us. This approach forces us to choose raising ambition over reducing costs, expanding human capacity over replacing it, increasing agency over reducing it. It’s easy in theory but difficult in practice. Implementing this ideology means an increasing number of professionals will have the ability to earn more while working less. The outlier firms that lead with heart will become magnets for top talent, creating an upward spiral that elevates the owners, employees, and clients alike.

Be an outlier.

History had room for slow and steady. The future will reward those who embrace it first. Our job is to live in that future, translate what we find, build what you’re missing, and teach what will help you win. Our job is to ensure your prosperity.

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