INTRODUCING:
SAFE Investment Round of Makana Enterprises, PBC.
Welcome to a Game-Changing Investment Opportunity!
We invite you to partner with us in our mission to become an industry leader that is reshaping the accounting industry and addressing one of its biggest challenges: work-life balance. With your support, we aim to become the top solution for accounting professionals seeking to take control of their careers, leave over-demanding jobs, and live more balanced lives.
Our bold vision? To launch the largest number of women-owned practices in the accounting industry. This is more than just a business - it's a movement that will transform the future of work for women in accounting.
Select Any Icon Below to Access Supporting Documents
Franchise 4 Year Track Record
$4.1M
Gross Billings
(7/1/2020 to 8/31/24)
>$200K
Avg LTV of
Franchisee
2,133
Satisfied Entities
Served
12
Franchises
Granted
8
Franchisee
States
12
# of CPA Practices Launched
9
States
Since 2008, we have been on the growing edge of the accounting industry. We started ahead of the curve as an Agency to accountants with 100% virtual work-from-anywhere practices. We switched to a recurring value billing model in 2010 before there was an industry term. We have been early adopters of cloud-based technology, and even custom built our own fully integrated back office tech in 2009 when no such solutions existed. In 2020, we launched the first licensed CPA franchise brand out of 4,000 franchise brands.
it is not all unicorns & rainbows
What We Learned.
Discover how we turned lemons into lemonade.
Encourage professionals to grow their strengths.
We started by requiring all owners to provide both accounting and tax solutions.
Those who excelled at accounting, but lacked the tax experience invested in professional growth, learned how to deliver tax services, and even became a Certified Tax Coach. This investment didn't generate a love for tax. Instead, it had the opposite effect. We noticed a common theme - turnover on tax teams run by professionals stronger in accounting especially during tax season.
Those who excelled at tax, but lacked the accounting experience usually hired bookkeepers, moving away from the CPA level technical expertise that was our standard.
We ultimately removed the requirement to offer both accounting and tax solutions and allowed CPAs to focus on their strengths and encouraged collaborations with other complimentary franchise owners.
Work-life harmony must come first.
In the beginning, we focused on top line growth and franchise owners were allowed to hire team within the first year. The training combined 2 stages of growth: Employee to Solo and Solo to Firm Owner. It was too much too soon. They were growing, but they weren't happy.
Realizing that we had misprioritized, we corrected course in 2023 and split the training system into 2 Tiers:
Tier 1 (Employee to six figure Solo practice)
Tier 2 (Solo to seven figure Firm)
This split allowed Tier 1 owners to enjoy a flexible, work-from-anywhere solo practices (working 20-40 hours per week). Those who wanted to grow into firm ownership could do so without external pressures.
The Tier 1 training shifted focus from top line growth and began a system of tracking work life harmony scores in 4 areas (finance, family, firm, and fitness). This resulted in a massive improvement in satisfaction and work life harmony scores increased to an avg 8/10 for each owner in 2024.
There is freedom in structure.
Though most of the tech stack was defined and under management at franchise launch in 2020, we gave owners the choice on which tax software and client workflow management tool they wanted to use. That freedom of choice took away family time and forced owners to research, train, and implement new systems.
Realizing more choices isn't always better, we selected the tax software and workflow management tool and took complete control of the tech stack in 2023.
looking ahead
Redesigning for the Future of Accounting.
With your help, we are excited to become known as THE solution to the work-life balance issue in the industry, launching and growing the most women owned practices in the industry. Let's 10x our national network of accountants and entrepreneurs!
5,534
Number of
Accountants
3,250
Number of
Entrepreneurs
2,100
Active Facebook
Group Members
308
Podcast
Episodes
99,317
Podcast
Downloads
12
# of CPA Practices Launched
9
States
Expand the Addressable Audience to All Accountants
We cracked the code in launching successful practices for the hardest segment in our industry (professional working moms) for the most risk adverse group (CPAs).
Now, we are ready to expand and serve the entire accounting and tax industry. Rather than segment by gender or licensing, we would like to replicate our franchise system and offer our "business in a box" solution, plus a live Incubator and Accelerator opportunity for those who resonate with our work-life harmony culture and want to Take Back Control of their Career and Be More Present.
We believe this audience is includes:
working moms
those with aging parents
parents who have children with special needs
gen Z
professionals who have overcome health issues
It is our assertion that the accounting industry has to adapt to address the growing need that those who need/want to work, and want:
flexibility
ability to work-from-anywhere (WFA), not just work from home
unwilling to tolerate the stress & grind of current industry model
to be present to their life and family
We are currently exploring the best model and approach to accomplish this and look forward to finding the right partners to assist with this expanded offer.
Smart hack the Solo to Firm Owner Transition w/Proper Capital
In the accounting industry more professionals start as a solo and slowly add team (usually underqualified) as their client demand increases. This creates a delicate balance of supply and demand which is generally a slog-fest of time and energy, and willingness to be underpaid until you build the practice to a certain size that can afford to pay the owner as well as the team. This takes years and most never survive.
We recognized that we wanted the transition from Solo to Firm to be more aligned with a McDonalds model. If you buy a McDonalds franchise, you don't operate the restaurant with only one restaurant manager who is then expected to operate the front registers, drive-through, fry station, hamburger station and shake machine alone. You have to prove that you have sufficient liquidity to start with a full staff on day one and focus on growing customers.
The upgraded model we want to deploy for Tier 2 (those looking to grow from a six figure Solo practice to a seven figure Firm Owner) has a predetermined Gross Billing (GB) and salary structure for owners & their team. We want to provide funding to those who proven that they can serve and retain clients as a Solo practitioner so they have proper liquidity for growth and operating capital in order to:
hire exactly the team to satisfy the predetermined GB that can afford the predetermined team, and ensures that the take home income in their first year as a firm owner replaces their solo income.
acquire books of business speed up growth of the GB required to support the min required team.
Overcome Hiring Challenges in the Industry
It is well understood that one of the greatest challenges facing practitioners looking to build a firm is hiring and retaining team. It was not in the original design to have franchise owners hire in the first year. The promise of the franchise system was to help them built a six figure solo practice. However, many saw the potential of a firm's leverage and started hiring during their first year. This coincided with the shut down of our full service placement agency.
We didn't have a formal training to replace the "done for you" hiring process we used for years prior, and it wasn't well executed by the franchisees. Most of the franchise owners experienced turnover and other employee issues especially with tax professionals usually during critical times of the year.
Our response has to repositioned the system to a tiered model where "Tier 1" is for the solo practice or side gig and they are not able to hire team during this time. "Tier 2" is an optional formal upgrade and separate training fee for a 1 yr program called Mastering the Business of Accounting (MBA), which focuses mainly on team acquisition, training, and retention and strategic growth through acquisition and other business development/marketing strategies.
That said, it is our intention to relaunch the full service placement agency to provide leveraged hiring services to our national network of accounting firm owners.
Client Generation & Client Acquisition Services
Solo practitioners are buying a flexible job for themselves. Some still struggled with the sales process and were never confident in asking for the right price. We resisted setting mandatory pricing for a number of reasons, but ultimately we prefer to have the first year franchise owner focus on raising the bar in client service and technical work.
We have offered lead generation services for almost 15 years. We now want to take our model to the next level to irradicate "busy season" from the industry by systemizing the B2B exclusive client offer to 80% monthly recurring accounting and 20% tax recurring clients (only for business clients, no personal tax).
We would like to experiment with a new model to upgrade our lead generation technology to create instant quotes for basic accounting and tax services. This eliminates some of the friction in the sales process.
We believe the most effective approach to accomplish this would require us to expand our current offer to include 2 new offerings: client generation and strategic client acquisition services:
Our redesign is intended to provide new franchise owners the following 3 options:
1) Client generation services (best for side gig and solo practices)
2) Lead generation services (best for those looking to transition from solo to a firm owner)
3) No lead/client gen services (best for those that bought a book of business)
OUR TEAM.
Mayumi Young
Founder/CEO
Christine Silvas
Care Manager
Joan Weiss, CPA
Controller/Billing Manager
K'Lani Bowers
Financial/Billing Specialist
Dawn Goldberg, CPA
Community Manager
Gaurav Kamboj
Tech Manager
We are proud to be part of an organization where values and family still matter, where we enjoy all of the people we interact and collaborate with, and where everyday we have the opportunity to make a difference.
Meet the Founder.
Mayumi Young
Entrepreneurship | Finance | Education
CEO of a Public Benefit Corporation & Founder of 4 mission driven ventures since 2000, Mayumi is a former CPA, Price Waterhouse auditor, and International Finance Director with over 30 years of accounting industry experience. She has personally consulted start-ups to Fortune 100 multinational corporations, and has launched & mentored countless entrepreneurs. Mayumi has faithfully served thousands of people around the globe, and has lived her passions: entrepreneurship, finance, and education.
