There's a fear that comes with rolling other firms into your own: you're not just gaining clients and revenue, you're taking on someone else's team, someone else's problems, someone else's way of doing things.
Blake Meester, owner of MCo advisors — a 20-person firm based in Northern California with staff across all four U.S. time zones and a growing team in the Philippines — has rolled a handful of Renew Group firms into his own. Here's what that actually looked like.
Growing a firm by absorbing others isn't just a numbers problem. It's easy, as Blake put it, to put your head down and work in the firm — buried in day-to-day operations — instead of stepping back to work on it strategically. Add other firms' people and processes into that mix, and the risk isn't financial. It's that the firm stops being run with intention and starts being run in reaction.
Rather than treat the rolled-in firms as acquisitions to integrate and forget, Blake brought their people into the center of his firm's strategy. One team member from a rolled-in firm now runs his tax advisory group. Another became his COO, running operations.
Blake also leans on Renew as an ongoing partner rather than a one-time resource — the peer group of dozens of firms, direct strategic coaching with Colin and Shannon, and the Renew Vault of documents and playbooks other firms have already built. When he needs a policy or process, he doesn't start from zero — he starts from what another Renew firm has already published, adapts it, and makes it his own.
What lets Blake step back isn't more hours — it's a clear picture of where the firm actually stands. That's what the Model Firm Planner does: enter eight numbers you already know, and it shows you where you sit against the Renew benchmark, what releasing your lowest-value clients and raising prices does to revenue, and how many hours come back to each partner in peak season. It's one of the playbooks from the Vault — take it and run your own.
The fear said: rolling in other firms means managing complexity and other people's problems on top of your own.
What happened: the people from those firms became two of his most senior operators — one leading tax advisory, one leading the whole operation — freeing Blake to spend more time on strategy instead of less.
This year, for the first time, Blake brought both of them to Regroup with him. Not as a reward — as a structural decision. Having them in the room for strategic conversations means they're accountable to the same planning he is, and it pulls all three of them out of working in the firm and into working on it.
Blake's story isn't about roll-ups for their own sake. It's about treating growth — even growth that adds complexity — as something to be run with the same intentionality Renew brings to pricing and client selection, instead of just absorbed and hoped for the best.
If growth feels like it's pulling you further into the day-to-day instead of out of it, the fix usually isn't slowing down. It's bringing the right people into the strategic room with you.
Two ways to start:
