How To Build A Strong Online Presence

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhardt.

Welcome back everyone. And today we have a special guest, our assistant Tiara, who is our background producer, everything, the everything about this show behind the scenes.

We love Tiara.

We love her. And we are going to talk about how to build a strong online presence. So something a little different, more in the marketing category. However, something that I think we've all either loved and hated in the same breath and how you deploy it and all those good things. And I feel like Steve, you had a good list to kick us off of items that you've sort of researched.

Yeah, well, I made some notes and I thought about what has made our podcast so successful and, you know, what we've learned along the way and those sorts of things. And, and just a little side note though, before we jump in, I guess Lynda is not feeling well today and we all wish her well. So sorry that she's not here, but we're really happy that Tiara could jump in today and, and join us because this is right up your alley with what you do with podcasts. But, um, so some notes that, that I have, um, I just kind of broke it down in some different categories of which we can jump in and discuss details on each one, but clarifying your brand message. So, you know, what is it that you want to do or want to be as you start building your message for a strong online presence? And, you know, the first thing that I would caution is don't do it unless you can be really dedicated to doing it, because it's not just a one-off sort of thing or 2 or 3 things. And then, you know, the busy bus is going to pull up and there's going to be all kinds of business out there. It doesn't work that way. It takes a lot of dedication and a lot of time. Look at your, your real estate. Where are you going to, where are you going to be online with your presence? You know, is it your website, LinkedIn, Google Business? Is it YouTube? Is it— we were talking before the, before we started recording, you know, is it, is it— I just went blank. The examples that you had.

Oh, the different social media.

Yeah.

Yeah. Like different ones. You know, it's funny. This is definitely Lynda's domain, which is why I'm really sad she's sick. Um, but she, what I've learned from her is the, the type of posts that you do, the consistency of them, and you can't do all of them successfully. You have to like pick a few to get started. So like what you were mentioning, Steve, is you've got your website, you've got this, you've got that. It's almost like you have to go hand in hand. If you're going to do your website, do you commit to doing a blog? Which is a huge time commitment, as I've seen through the years of watching her in the background, because she does the blog for us. Um, and then stepping into some sort of social media presence and picking one of those, because what you do on one of them is different than what you'll do on 3 others. You're not— have the same voice and the same— and Terry, chime in on this— it might not be like the same kind of medium of sort of, of posting styles, right?

Exactly. I do a lot of assisting with Lynda on the blogs and taking them to kind of more of a social platform. And when it comes to the blog posting and the social media presence for her business and your combined business for Artesani Accounting and The Proper Trust, those are really more focused towards LinkedIn, as well as kind of your, your personal social pages where the posting for the the, the podcast, for example, I do a lot of posting also on, on LinkedIn, but also Blue Sky, Instagram, and TikTok.

Ah, okay. All right.

Different platforms that might be more suitable to your audience or your style of posting.

Mm-hmm.

Well, you know what I like about what Lynda does with it too is she humanizes it. She's really good at humanizing it and making it personal, making it really attractive to the audience. So it's not all just tech talk, you know, and she really, she really flows through it well with humanizing it, with making it friendly, with making it personal. I love that, how she does that.

Yeah, we will have to revisit this another time when Lynda's able to join us because she's just— she jokes that she's our accidental marketer for the company.

Yeah, yeah.

She does have a talent for it. She's really, really good at what she does.

Yeah, it's the funny part too. It's that we crack up. She's the accidental marketer. And then she's like, I don't know, I'll turn a few knobs. I did something different. There's some things I did, right? And then we get together and she's like, she just jokingly said to me when she was feeling a little bit up for it earlier, just not as grand as she is at the moment. She's like, what'd you, how much did you sell when I was gone? I'm like, I, but I don't sell. Like I just solve problems. So she's like, what did you? I'm thinking, yeah, you're right. We've got these weird moments. To where we, you know, depending on your medium and how you're connected, you're either referral-based or, you know, you have such a strong presence, Authentically One Way, and she's got blog posts and keywords and things that she's doing and jointly together, all three of us. So the presence of who you are, and I think you said it the best, Steve, is being authentic. Mm-hmm. Sincerely, it's, this isn't just a, we enjoy this work. We enjoy, our team enjoys this style of stuff.

When we go to conferences, when I'm lucky enough to be able to join Sarah and Lynda at a conference, I've been in several sessions where the presenter will be talking about social media and an online presence, and it can seem really overwhelming at first. And a lot of people have questions of like, but I'm running a business, how am I making Funny TikTok videos every day. How do I post here? And do I use hashtags or no hashtag? You know, it can be, yeah, it can feel like a lot. And I think, I mean, maybe it's a weird way to start a podcast episode about an online presence is to say you don't always have to really have one in the social media sphere if that's not what aligns with your brand or with, you know, I mean, Sarah. brings in so much, you know, attention just from who she authentically is and how she, you know, walks through the world. And Lynda, you know, has her personal strengths and she brings attention in with like how she walks through the world. And same with Steve. And sometimes that's on social media and sometimes it's not. So I think it's really knowing how you want to represent yourself and where your strengths lie. And if that is in, you know, blog posting and marketing like Lynda's is incredible. Um, and if it's, If it's not, but you want that presence, maybe you bring on a Tiara. Maybe you bring on someone who can help support that and, you know, take that workflow and workload off of your shoulders. Um, but there's, I mean, what's that awful saying? There's more than one way to skin a cat. Like there's, there's so many ways to have a presence and there's so many ways to have an online presence. So there's no one size fits all.

Yeah. Very well. No one-size-fits-all. It's be consistent, start small, figure out one or two approaches and really focus on those. They either work or they don't. They either give you the map to move into something else or to really build what's working well for you.

There's, um, there's an attorney that I follow. I didn't realize she was an attorney. This is the funny part. So it was on—

You were following her?

I was on Instagram. I had no idea. Well, what happened was she was making— she showed a dish she was cooking. She shows this dish. She was making this dish. Dish, cutting, chatting. And I'm like, the captions at the time, I was like, wait, this isn't about food. This was about some other legal thing. It was kind of a funny moment. It's like about business. So I turn on the volume. And I'm listening to it. It was like a hodgepodge of, I enjoy cooking. This is why I do demo. I do this. But while I'm doing this, I'm going to educate you on X, Y, and Z. And I was like, wait, what just happened? I'm watching a cooking— I'm learning cooking stuff like recipes, and I'm also— and I'm watching like literally how she was cutting something. I was like, how is she doing that? I've never thought to do it this way. Meanwhile, I'm hearing all this business, uh, things and all of her workday and all this stuff, and I'm thinking, this is an interesting way to go about it. And she just said she just happened to be posting these and found people enjoyed this. Yeah. It was therapeutic. I was like, oh, that's like a hobby and a job smashing together. And it's not even her own. I don't think it's her own firm. I think that she's one of many in a larger firm. And I thought that was kind of a cool presence that you could build for yourself.

Well, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna use Mel Robbins as an example. I just love her podcast. And she was an attorney.

Yeah.

Yeah. She practiced law and she shares lots of stories about different law firms that she worked in and different experiences. And it really appeals to me when she has such a strong presence on her podcast and she shares those stories that I can relate to and that's why I listen to her. Um, yeah. So, you know, here, this lady that you're watching, you suddenly discovered she was an attorney and she has this angle going that's building her audience and that's what she's capitalizing on. That's great.

But if that was a video of her just saying like, this is my business and what it's about and why you should hire me, you probably would've just scrolled right past.

Yeah.

She got your attention with something, you know, interesting and, and appealing, but then also educated you at the same time. I think that's so smart. And so, yeah, it doesn't always have to look the same. And I think you brought this up before we started recording, Sarah, of, you know, you don't always need to focus on your business. Sometimes you just need to share knowledge that you have and a skillset that you have that others might need. I mean, it kind of makes me think, you know, way back to season 1 of this podcast when we had the wonderful Kate on with us to talk about using video in, in your business. Um, you know, she was like, I work in this software and there's nothing about this software on YouTube, so I'm gonna start making videos. Yeah, you don't always have to be out now advertising your business. You just advertise who you are and what you know, and that will bring people to you.

The hard part, I feel, and Steve, maybe you can chime in on this is it— in the beginning, it's daunting.

It's—

I mean, the presence alone of like where to start, what do you do first, and then the fear of exposure because you hear about people getting bullied and you hear about people getting criticized. And it's kind of— and I'm kind of leaning to you, Steve— it's sort of like you opened a business, you're already doing that. You're already opening yourself up to that exposure, right?

Wouldn't you? Right, right, exactly. Well, and you know, this isn't online, but I teach classes at our local bar association. And I mean, if you look at a video of me 10 years ago, 'cause I've been doing it for about 15 years now, I looked like a deer in headlights. You know, it takes time to build that up and become brave. You're going to make mistakes.

Yeah.

And you know, especially with an online presence, you know, you can, like with this podcast, we can stop if we need to right now and fix something and then go back in and the editor will fix it and make it look like it's just seamless. And, but it is daunting at first. And that's why don't bite off more than you can chew with it. Just start with one thing. And like Tiara said, make it about you. Get your message across, but it doesn't have to— your business is going to show through, I guess what I'm trying to say. That becomes second nature, if you will.

It doesn't have to be perfect.

It doesn't have to be perfect. And if you make it personable and fun, oh my gosh, we've had bloopers on this and we published one of my bloopers a couple of weeks ago and I was like, oh my God, everybody's going to see this. But that's part of the fun of it.

And it sort of makes me think of, I mean, if you put yourself out there, people might say things, they might have opinions, and that's just sort of the risk you take. Um, but it makes me think of the, the Teddy Roosevelt quote, the man in the arena. If you've heard that, I know Brené Brown quotes it a lot. I have it pulled up here where he says, it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes up short again and again. So it doesn't— are they putting themselves out there on social media? Are they building their business the way that you are? No. So yeah, they can say whatever they want. Let 'em, but let you— I guess if we're gonna follow, you know, a Mel Robbins timeline here, let you, you know, show up authentically yourself. It doesn't have to be perfect, but someone out there is going to have a question that you have the answer to.

Well, when we started this podcast, you know, Sarah, you had this wonderful idea and we all banded together, all 3 of us, you and Lynda and I, and Tiara with the work that she does. And, you know, we're almost what, year number— we're going into year 3. We'll be starting year 3. That's just so hard to believe. Next, in a month and a half, I'll be starting year number 3 on this podcast. We're talking about accounting, you guys, law firm accounting and things that relate to it. But look at all of the wonderful subjects that we've come up with that are personal, personable, I guess is the word, because we have fun with it. And we, we stumble through it sometimes, but we get a message across. And it's not always debit, credit, ledger, you know, that sort of thing. But it all— Mm-hmm. It all intertwines together really well. And thank you to everybody that's helped make it successful because we were us. We were just our personable selves through this whole thing.

You know, if you think about it, I've always, at the beginning of it when we were putting together just what our cover page would look like and our caricature and kind of a playoff of it, I've always, like, for myself, enjoyed— I guess the way I describe myself is my own Punky Brewster for myself. Like, I've always been me. Um, and the trend might go this way, and I'm like, yeah, okay, that's fine, you all can do that, I'm just gonna do me. And I've always surrounded my presence, and I just feel like this has been instilled in me and I do this even online, is just— it's just— it's— you are— this is what you get. You're not going to get this perfection and this— like, you're going to get this person. And it's interesting to watch. You meet people in person and you see one presence online and you see a completely different individual, and you're like, those don't correlate. And to me, that's why the thread of this entire start of this podcast in my brain was it just needs to have a fun play. Yes, I'm strongly opinioned, and yes, I can raise my voice loud enough to say I like it done this way. This is my— and I have my little things that I do, but In the end, I still enjoy being fun, cheeky, playful, have a good time, laugh. I just— life is— it is what it is kind of moment, and you just take it for what it is. And I feel like that's maybe the same idea. It's like the apple is so big, what section are you going to bite off to do this one little piece to have your little corner of the world and and share your knowledge or share your interests or share— there might be people that are feeling like you and just don't have a like moment or find a little kindling of happiness when they see things that you post. Like, I post a lot of family stuff, walking with my moms, and then I post some random duck that just wants to say how happy the day is, you know. And then we've got work stuff. It's just, this is my life. Welcome to my world. And I feel like that's okay. And I know that we're both in professions like legal profession and accounting profession that really is like this, this look like, no, that's not the look. We're, this is who we are. We can chop food and talk about business and legal things. I guess I don't know what I'd say if I'm chopping food and talking about debits and credits. Like, I guess you'd have to pick the color of a fruit or a vegetable, but.

Okay. So let's, let's play with something here, Sarah and Tiara. Okay. I'm a brand new legal bookkeeper/accountant. I've decided, okay, I want to do this. I'm scared half to death. I'm working with attorneys. They, you know, they challenge everything. They make me think about stuff. Where should I start? What should I pick as the one place to start getting my message out there that's going to be consistent? All the things we just talked about, where should I go and how should I do it? Yeah.

Okay.

And that's what goes on in their minds.

If I take a spin off of it, it's like, is there maybe— and this I could be wrong, Terry, you can chime in on this— maybe there's a recurring question that you're getting from potential clients or existing clients.

Oh, good.

That needs to be just voiced. It's not a— you're not delivering confidential information. It's just the fact. The fact is you ask this question and this is what the answers should look like, or the question could be posed this way, but this is what you should be asking. And it's hard to know that. It's hard to know that in business. It's hard to know that as an individual. You know, I'm going to travel overseas and I have some questions about what that looks like. What is my risk exposure if I'm traveling for business versus personal? I'm just using something simple, lame, or, um, I have my operating agreement and I really want to update it. How do I— what are the things I should be thinking about at this day and age? Because 5 years ago when I wrote it, AI wasn't a thing. You know what I mean? Like, I'm just thinking of simple things and through the lens of a business attorney or an immigration attorney or pieces that are relevant, the questions that are repetitive that you can actually answer without revealing, or, you know, you're not giving away the whole house, but you're giving away enough knowledge that it makes sense for me want to hire you. I would want to hire you to support me as a business owner. That's what I think. I, I don't know. T, what do you think?

Um, I mean, well, I want to preface this with I am, I'm not an accountant. I'm not I'm not an attorney and I'm just, just, just the assistant, which I know you will rebuke, just, but—

Yes, assistant. Definitely, you are not just the assistant.

I did, you know, as someone who, you know, has been like, you know, I want to start this and I feel really passionate about this. Where do I, where do I start, right? I think when I very first was hired by Sarah and Lynda at The Proper Trust, I think my first project for you guys was designing your website. That was, that was like week one. And, um, so I think having a strong website is really a good starting off point. You know, I mean, I'm sure that you've got like a nephew somewhere or a granddaughter or someone, you know, who is, who knows their way around some sort of web design or, or, you know, we use Kajabi, which I think is actually very simple for web design. There's a lot of, you know, Wix and Squarespace. There's a lot of platforms that make designing a website pretty simple. And I think just having that and being like, this is who I am, this is who I work with, this is what I have to offer, is a great starting off point. And then start sharing that on LinkedIn. I think obviously we all—

Oh, I like this path.

I love this. Start on LinkedIn. Yeah. So you, you know exactly, okay, I am an attorney, I'm a bookkeeper who specializes in legal accounting. So you send that message out into the world via LinkedIn, via your social, even starting out on your personal, like, Instagram or Facebook pages. Excuse me. And then, you know, you can start branching out to having, like, a business Instagram, or if you are the type of person who wants to make videos or content, on Instagram or TikTok. I just, as you were talking, Sarah, I was thinking about the journey from being like, okay, I'm a bookkeeper, I'm an accountant, I'm a, you know, a generalist. But then, and, and I get, I'm so fascinated by this with our Law Lab members, is what led you from point A to point B? What led you to this niche?

Mm-hmm.

And what, you know, was it just like, oh, someone reached out to me and I just wanna learn about it, but it's, you know, what is exciting to you that you loved learning about this, or you found particularly challenging as you were getting started, or, you know, where did your interest and curiosity take you? Mm-hmm. And then start posting about that because there's probably a lot of attorneys out there who are asking themselves the same question, like, how do I figure out this, this trust account problem that I have? And you just learned how to do that. So I think if you are thinking about creating content, that's an excellent place to start. You know, share the new knowledge that you have. Don't just assume, I think, that it's common knowledge that everyone knows. Something that you can break down that's a beginner step can be really helpful to people. But I think if you decide not to go the social media route, just having a really strong website, a strong LinkedIn page, and then—

Those are good beginning places.

Yeah.

And having, having help, whether it's you know, your cousin's nephew's friend, or it's hiring an assistant, or, I mean, gosh, Lynda and I use AI all the time in our marketing. Mm-hmm. All the time, you know, in the blog posting, in the, the shorts that I create for this podcast. You know, we use AI as a tool. You can go to ChatGPT and say, hey, I want to share this thought with people. Can you help me turn it into a, a piece of copy? That I can share to whatever platform of choice. And you can tell it, you know, I want this SEO focused. I want it to be driven towards this audience. And, you know, you're, we're in such an exciting time that it might feel like you're just kind of floating out there alone. But there's so many fun tools and so much help out there to get started.

You know, you're making me think, so Steve, you're, you do a lot. Of, you know, the, the educational at the bar level. And you probably have heard repetitive questions or have felt like, oh, that's a great question. I've never thought about that. Let me think about it. Or how would you tackle this? You're building such a foundation. And I feel like you probably have a different angle from that point of view than you're working. Point of view with your current clients because they're established. It's a different— these are beginning, this is established. So you probably have an opportunity, not that you want to run out the door and do this right now, but if you wanted to, you have an opportunity to sort of maybe post or blog or video blog. Like, you don't have to write blog, you could video blog or host a channel that's just dedicated to the questions that Steve gets at, you know, for—

No, I've thought about doing that and I stumbled across an AI recording platform that I really like a lot. I've been playing with it the last couple weeks and I've thought about doing short YouTube postings to your point about questions that I've—

Drop the name, Steve, we don't gatekeep here.

It's VEED, V-E-E-D.

VEED, yep.

Love VEED, I do. I really like it a lot. It's kind of fun. I've been playing with the VEED characters, you know, the AI-generated people that can do the videos and those sorts of things. It's kind of fun.

Yeah. Steve uses VEED. We use Descript for ours, which is a super helpful tool, but I'm so fascinated by VEED. I need to take a peek. I so might.

It looks pretty cool.

Yeah, it looks pretty cool. You know, it's—

You know, just if I could real quick, when you mentioned You know, like if I don't have the answer to a question when I'm live in front of a class of new excited attorneys who just are like, oh, trying to absorb everything like a sponge, I turn it back to them. I'm like, has anybody else had this experience? Has, have, have you, how have you resolved this situation?

Mm-hmm.

And it kind of gets my mind thinking in that direction. And, and I think that this is an important thing to bring up with when you're on your own trying to get a presence online. Is realize you're going to lock up, you're going to forget things, you're going to, like you said a minute ago, Tiara, you're going to be all alone out there doing this, but there are people who will help. There are, you know, our Law Lab group that meets every Friday. Oh my gosh, I love, I love the energy in that because it's just this big think tank of overflowing ideas that come out.

Yeah. Yeah. Something I was going to add is, you know, because we're talking about established or beginning firms, but established firms, it's even just like You know, you have the new regime coming in and they want an online presence. How do you do that? Or how do you implement AI? Or how do you make it so that your tech stack, your legal tech stack, is actually going to deploy and sustain and so forth? But one thing I was thinking about through this whole process is somebody who impacted me. Lynda introduced him to me online. And she's like, oh my God, I feel like it's you a little bit. I just don't have this. I don't. Post this very often, but, um, it's, uh, Jefferson Fisher, who I had— I got to see him. I'm sorry, I didn't meet him. I got to see him at the CLEOCon in Austin this last fall, and, um, he just talked about— and he's very open about this— his natural state. He talks about, you know, basically how do you have these conversations with people. It's having a conversation in a nice way. If you're feeling frustrated, how do you navigate that? How do you have the conversation? How do make it so that you can actually have a conversation with somebody versus a defensive moment, understanding who they are. And that's one spin off of what one attorney did, which blew up. Now he's got a book, which I'd love to see. But it's like these— I feel like it's like these little doors of opportunity. I feel like we're in an Alice in Wonderland moment.

We are.

And you just look at all the doors and pick one door and just try it. And then if it doesn't work, that's okay. But if you're consistent with it and it's getting a little bit of things, or you break off and try something else— I mean, that's the evolution of trying different things and, uh, and experiencing it and being present with it. And, um, so I feel like what could possibly stagnate you is not trying at all, is not giving your chance, your opportunity to yourself. You've given everybody else the opportunity. You've given pay clients the information but not giving yourself the opportunity to share it in a different way, um, I think is—

Well, your intuition is going to tell you which one to start with. Probably the one that scares you the most, you know, is going to be the one that attracts you. Yeah, that's how I operate.

Well, there are so many people who have such strong online presences, you know, on— yeah, or TikTok, or, you know, insert social media platform of choice, you know, follow them and dare I would say copy them, you know, learn from what they do and try to learn from them.

Exactly.

You know, what, because they, it got your attention, so obviously it worked.

Yeah.

And yeah, don't be afraid to, to try and to fail. But also I think it's important, I know that, you know, I have, I have a friend who recently just started, um, you know, her own coaching business. She does confidence coaching for young girls, for girls in like high school.

Nice.

And I remember her saying like, oh, but you know, people might think, well, who does she think she is? Great. I love that. Let them think that. That's the point. That's the point. Let them think, who does she think she is? And also like, oh, but there are already other people who do this. Yeah, but not the way that you can.

Yeah, so what?

If someone else is doing what you want to do, that's your permission slip to also—

There's the door. You're seeing it for a reason.

Yeah, like you said, Sarah, all those doors, they're all open to you. They, they all are. You just have to start opening and just see what works.

What works for you. Yeah. And just remain true to yourself. Just be you in that. I don't know why it's so deeply ingrained in me, and probably just how I was raised. You just— you're not the— was it the sheep and the followers? There's, there's some kind of phrase with that, and I don't know how to say that well, but I just do my thing.

That's what I love about you.

Thank you. Well, this was amazing. I'm so grateful you stepped in, Tiara. Thank you for stepping in.

Yes. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. Well, I guess you could just take us out.

I guess I could. Yeah. I'm stepping out from behind the curtain. Once again, though, I did get to do this on the 100th episode. But so as always, if you liked this episode, we would love your support. Like, share, and leave us a review to help more listeners discover the show. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your favorite podcasts so you never miss an episode. And to go along with everything we've been talking about, if you see a post that you like of ours on Instagram or TikTok or LinkedIn, leave us a comment, engage. We'd love to hear from you. Um, if you have a question or a topic that you'd love us to cover, reach out anytime at info@accountantslawpod.com or send us a message through our website at accountantslawpod.com. And to to sign up for our weekly Accountants Law Lab mastermind sessions, you can join us at accountantslawlab.com and connect with accounting professionals just like you.

That was good.

Thank you, everybody.

I would love to hear from the audience more. I would love to hear what topics you're interested in, if we can cover more things. If we need to do homework, we'd love to do it. So, right, Steve?

Absolutely, absolutely. There's nothing that we can hold back on here.

Thank you.

Thanks. Have a good week, everybody.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Bye, everyone.

Thanks for your support. Like, share, and leave us a review to help more listeners discover the show. And don't forget to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you get your favorite podcasts so you never miss an episode. Got a question or a topic you'd love us to cover? Reach out anytime at info@accountantslawpod.com or send us a message through our website, accountantslawpod.com. Sign up for our weekly Accountants Law Lab mastermind sessions at accountantslawlab.com and connect with accounting professionals just like you.

Well, that was awesome. Thank you.

Thank you very— I just got distracted by, by something that crawled across my desk and I don't know what it is. Oh my God. That's why I was looking down.

That's— oh, not for me.

I was sitting at my desk one day and a spider came down in front of me. I'm like, not now. That's just not right.

That's happened to me in a car and I hate it.

But— oh my God.

Yes. Thank you so much, Steve, for leading us. Thank you, everybody.