Using Video to Grow Your Accounting Business with Kate Johnson

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

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And this week we have a wonderful guest and it's Kate Johnson, a friend of ours. And she's going to speak about growing your business using video. She's an expert on that and she's actually done a few sessions at some of the conferences that we've been at. So we want to welcome her and let you kick it off, Kate, telling us a little bit about yourself, and then we could just kind of dive into the topic.

Yes, I'm Kate. I have met, been a fan, been a mentee of, I mean, I've watched y'all ladies. Steve is new to me, but I've learned from y'all as I've grown my own bookkeeping business. And I have a firm, small solopreneur shop called Heritage Business Services, and I've recently niched in FreshBooks. So that's kind of my like actual, like I'm a real life accounting professional world. And then I run a community called the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Community, um, and there's a whole story there. Happy to share that with anyone if y'all want to connect with me, if anyone wants to connect about that. But just run an online community where I feel like I'm kind of uniquely gifted to be a cheerleader of helping people take that step to building a career in the cloud accounting space, whether it's through employment or entrepreneurship, that kind of allows you to kind of do what I've done, which is sort of use accounting to like build the life that I love, which is helping people. I make money. I'm able to build my life and do the things I want to do. And so there's all different ways that we can build businesses. And I know that y'all's podcast talks about that. And, you know, my, my kind of operation is just one of them. But yeah, and then I got to speak a little bit about video at a couple of conferences recently. And so I'm glad to be able to share this to this, you know, bigger audience that can listen to it at any time.

I remember being in the room at the one at Scaling New Heights and all the questions. I remember all the questions people had and it was about a whole variety of things, but it's actually a topic I think even attorneys could use or accountants that work with attorneys could use because heck, I grew my business that way and, you know, I'm a big believer in video and it takes a lot of time. It's much better now, now that we have other tools. But back a long time ago, I can remember, and maybe it was my Type A personality, I can remember making the video and trying to cut cut and paste it. But then sometimes today you'll see a lot of people do like the short videos, and we can get into that a little bit, or just regular videos themselves. And they seem to have— if you're younger, you want to make them all cutesy. And Sarah and I had this conversation where I'm like, should I be making videos where I go, yeah, it's not me.

I've never made a video like that. I don't dance, I don't sing, I don't pose on my thumbnails. Like, you know, I don't do any of that. I— and you can, there's nothing wrong with that. Some people can do that. Um, so That's a good point. Like there's as many types of videos as there are people in the world. And the fake, if you're fake, people will smell it. And being authentic is the best way. Being authentic is the best way.

Yeah, I love that. Steve, I guess we have to get a side hustle on pretty nails or something. I think we gotta do that.

Yeah.

Well, Steve's just, you know, envious of hair. So he's already envious of Kate's hair.

He's got a gorgeous head of hair.

First thing I zeroed in on was Kate's hair, so.

I know, it was beautiful.

Thank you.

And then you said you just moved to Texas and I'm like, okay, you got the y'alls down, so you're all set. I don't know where you came from, but you definitely got that whole southern thing going on.

I grew up on the Texas border, the Mexican, Mexico-Texas border. So I got the y'all authentically and now I'm back.

You've got it nailed down.

And she's a mom of 3. She's a busy mom of 3.

Oh my goodness.

And she does all of this.

And does all this.

Yes.

And I think if I'm right, you work with family too, right?

You have a family? I have a sister who kind of does VA work for me.

See, it's all in the family. Like, just like right here.

Yeah. Oh yeah. You're the—

you employ your whole—

My whole entourage.

Entourage.

Pretty much.

You can tell which ones aren't part of the family when you see us because we're a lot taller and we all look different. And then there's Sarah's tribe. They're all so cute.

We have fun. We keep it fun. Kate, you, in the session that I, that Tira and I got to see, you really showcased a couple of things, but you also highlighted areas that people could kind of like your side hustle, like you could delve into. And I think for the audience that's listening, if it's intimidating, you gave some kind of first, first touches. You were like, just practice and listen to yourself. I, I forget how you worded it, but you had a couple good ideas in just the beginning stages of just the dauntingness of that.

Yeah. So I think my overall advice of how to get started, like, and when I say use video, I just mean any place where there is some sort of like moving picture on a screen that's related to your business. It doesn't even have to be you. It could be a cartoon. Some people use that. That's kind popular and there's like apps to do that. There's— but just any way that's taking, you know, I don't know, in the early 2000s it would have been like the equivalent of blogging. We needed to blog. Like now I just— I think we've got to figure out how to use video. It catches people's eyes. So it is not like— it's not being cute necessarily. You can be. It's not— but it's not about you being cute. It's not about you being long. It can be short 1-minute videos. It's just wherever you're comfortable is my advice of how to start.

I like that. I like the short. Advice, especially for introverted type people, which bookkeepers and accountants generally are.

Yeah. So one of the things that you can start using video if you're really, really scared. But I mean, I want to push you to like eventually let people know, like, and trust you by seeing your face. But, you know, just internal SOPs is one of the quickest ways I think people can start to use video. It's becoming popular. I don't know if lawyers are doing that yet, but I know in the accounting world we have a lot of workflows. Video is a great way to do that. Start editing that. Just say, hey, I made this video to show my staff. It's 5 minutes long. Can I chop it to 3? Can I, can I, can I improve it to make it 3 minutes? And just doing that, like Lynda was saying, like, it's hard, but you don't have to be perfect for your staff, right? So like, can you get that? Can you slice and dice that way? Can you think about how to put a thumbnail so when you create a library for your internal processes, they have a visual starting place, right? That's what a thumbnail is. Even just learning how to do that and starting to think, oh yeah, well, when you have a video, you have to have kind of like the book cover, right? Like, what is my cover going to look like? Let me figure out that skill. It's a tiny skill, but we— but you could practice that. There's all sorts of little ways to start. I think internal videos are one. The other two buckets that I think all service-providing industries, whether it's, you know, attorneys or accounting pros, there's two other 3 buckets that I called it at the, at the conference. One was communicating with your clients, or I also put hot prospects in there, someone who's almost a client. Can you use video in trying to like land those deals? And so that's sort of starting to get external. And then the third category is like the true external videos, the know, like, and trust where you don't even know who's watching your video. Y'all, if you use a client video, you know that video's for a client, right? And hopefully you'll start with the client who you know loves you anyway. That's the perfect one to start with. Make them the video. You're not going to scare them off. To do those external videos where maybe it's the pointing and the little messaging about like, should I buy this software? I don't know, call me. You can do that and you don't know who's going to see that.

Yeah.

But hopefully someone will call you after they, after they see that. Right. And those are the external videos. And if you're extroverted and if you know how to, you know, if you're really comfortable talking to people, maybe start with those external videos because maybe you stink at processes. You know, don't start with process videos if you're terrible at workflows. So just starting where you're strongest is the best way to just start developing the, the rough skills. That's what I think.

I know for us, Sarah and I have a tip that when we, because we use Ignition for our, our presentations and sometimes we, people pay us, we do the file review and sometimes it's easier to go through a file. So we'll pull up the customer's file that we're doing the pricing on and we just go in and show them. At a high level, we see this and Sarah gets her little pink pen out. This is, this shouldn't be negative and this shouldn't be here and this is wrong. And we go through it and I'll tell you that usually closes a deal on a contract because you have a place in Ignition, which we could, we used to do it also in 17Hats because you could just add a link, but Ignition, it kind of has it right built into the whole system process. Uh-huh. And we were, we would do that. And a lot of times the client will come back to us, they'll sign the contract and they'll say, you know, that was so helpful. Because if we try to just kind of write it all out, they don't know what we're talking about. That's not what they do. And they get confused. So for that purpose, clarity, and maybe practicing with like Loom and just doing short videos to your clients. A lot of them are busy. They're attorneys, they're super busy. They, yeah, yeah, yeah, I wanna do financial strategy meetings. And then they don't show up to meetings because they don't have the time. Mm-hmm. So a short video going through the profit and loss and the balance sheet. Now they've got the video, they can rewatch it, maybe learn a little bit more. Uh, if you're introverted, I think if you're, uh, extroverted and you wanna start working in video, I don't wanna see my very first videos. I really don't. I know my very first ones when I started doing video, which is years now, I didn't have my face on it at all. I didn't think it was a good idea. I was like, no, don't want my face in. It's just a distraction. I just don't wanna be on the camera. And I can remember Matthew Fulton said to me, why aren't you on this? And I'm like, I don't want my picture on there. What? Why do I have to have my face on there?

I remember that.

Well, what about my face on there? You know? And he's like, no. What were you teaching in those?

What were you teaching in those videos?

Just fixing QuickBooks messes. So. Yeah.

It's fine. Like I actually have started because whenever I'm fixing a problem, I can record that because sometimes it's, I know how to blur things so I can do real work in a real client file and say, ooh, this is, this is good. This is juicy. And I can't, I don't have a file, a demo file that I can duplicate this in. So recording that and You can go no picture at all, or you can just put a headshot of yourself now in Zoom, in Loom, instead of having your face pop around.

My blog, and he said I need to, cuz trying to promote my brand, which your brand is you.

Yes.

And putting my face made a difference. And I, I get the biggest kick out of it when an attorney will meet, you know, sign up or wanna meet with us and we'll have that conversation. And I've had them say to me, oh my God, it's really you. And your background, I've watched all your videos and that is your office. You were in your office. They get all excited and I'm like, Yeah, but you know, it, that helped them relate to me. And I got over the camera thing. I mean, totally got over the camera thing cuz I was constantly at a microphone and a camera and I got, you get very comfortable the more you do it. But if you go back and really, I'm, I should probably dig 'em up just for fun, just to show people that yeah, you're not really great at the beginning and editing takes time. So if you don't, you get really good at recording. And if you mess up, I've done this where I'll be like, da da da, and I'll say something stupid like foot in my shoe or something like that. And I'll go blah, blah, blah. Then I stop talking so I know where to cut it. Yep. And then I start back up so that way I know where to do the editing. But yeah.

I've heard, I've heard if you clap, if you clap really loud, it'll go up, make spikes in your, it makes spikes in your audio track.

Oh, those are good tips. Yeah, I did. I just did a lot of pauses. I did, I did some kind of recording for us and on the subject. And every time I had a mix-up of my words or I found myself, like you're saying, Kate, where you don't have a demo file, but I knew I was tripping up because I was like 3 screens ahead. I was like, oh, God, I got to go back. So I'd pause really long, go back.

That's how you know, because then there's a gap where there's no sound, and then you know where to cut. It makes it faster. But you learn all these little things as you go along.

What I'll say is How bad were you at trust accounting when you first started, right? Like you were bad at it.

Yes, thank you.

And then you, it's just this, it's just a skill. It's not rocket science. We're not sending someone to the moon here. We're hitting play on a video and maybe putting our logo in the top corner at the very end and have it fly in. And then that's the bar that our industries are at, right? Like we need to be smart. They're not hiring us because we're movie stars. They're hiring us because we're brilliant accounting professionals, right?

And we've shown them.

And we've shown them.

And we've shown them what we do.

Yeah.

And that helps people understand that you know what you do.

And similar to an attorney, if you're trying to convey, like, if you— we have an amazing client of ours that does a lot of tailored for a specific niche that he works in, tailored videos. And that has really kind of resonated with him. It's helped him. But then, like— and I wanted to ask you this, Kate, because what he did was he found us through Lynda's videos. Yeah, I said, I like because you guys are on the same plane as me. You understand my language, what I'm doing with my marketing.

Well, you know, let's not forget, let's not forget that attorneys are very accustomed, many of them very accustomed to doing video depositions with their clients. So that's why we, these types of videos from us would appeal to them. You totally hit the nail on the head.

Exactly. Isn't that amazing? But I think it's an opportunity and I'm curious, Kate, if you've had this. Because you're out there. How many clients have gravitated to you because you've built this trust in your knowledge and how you do things?

All, all my inbound marketing is now because— so I'm— I, I have made a choice. I wanted— I didn't want to be a small fish in a big pond in the QuickBooks world. I wanted to be a big fish in a small pond. And so I decided to niche in a software and like, I am the only one doing that. If there's some obscure law topic because you only need like, you know, we just need a handful of clients, right? Like we don't, we don't need 1 million clients. If you want a big firm, you need 100 maybe, or, you know, like whether whatever service you're in, right? So if you can niche in something. But now because I'm the only one making tutorials in FreshBooks, all my inbound marketing is because people have watched me on YouTube. People like to call me and they're like, I'm watching you in bed in the middle of the night trying to learn. And my spouse just says, just call her, like, let her do this. You're not going to figure it out. Like multiple people have said that. They're like, I— because, because people are working so hard, right? Like when you're a business owner or when you're an attorney by like, and you're, you're scrapping, you know, it's like you don't know exactly. No one, no one gives us the rule book for this in school, right? And so that's what these people are doing and they're finding me as a resource. I'm helpful. You know, I'm not really having to exert myself that much because I'm just answering questions that existing clients like already have. Seriously, the last few videos I've uploaded have been no-face videos that I've captured from Loom to answer one client's question, and I just spoke generally, and then I saved that. And then when I got around to it, I put some mascara on and brushed my hair, and I made a 20-second intro and 20-second outro and said, this client had this question, you know, accounts receivable report for a client. I answered him, thought you might want to know too. Let me know, you know, call me if you need me. And upload to YouTube and someone might watch it and I've proven my expertise, like real niche expertise, right? Like I'm not trying to get a million views on that video. Never.

Never. Yeah.

Yeah.

You're brilliant. You're brilliant.

And people ask me like, you don't even really have that many, you know, people in your YouTube. I like 1,400 or something like that and I've had it for years. And I'm like, you know what? It gets me work. I'm not looking to have 10 million people watching videos. That's not the point of this. So don't go in with that thought that you're gonna be, needing to get however many so you can monetize YouTube. No, don't, don't go in with that mentality. Go in with the mentality that you're, you're showing your brand. You are showing what you know and you're sharing what you know. Maybe you help people, they don't have to call you, or maybe you help people and they're like, this girl really knows what she's doing, or this guy knows what they're doing. I'm gonna call them because you've already proven without having to meet them that you know what you're talking about.

Mm-hmm.

That's really what it is. And I think about when you say FreshBooks, I think about Twyla, our friend Twyla, because if you wanna get real comfortable in front of video when she does those challenges, Oh my God. I got to the end where I was like, I didn't have makeup on. I'm like, that she did. Nobody had half the people that had makeup on. They were so real and raw and did that whole 30-day challenge that she did on camera that every day you had to pop in. That gets you over your— and then you got this little group of people that rally behind you and you meet all these new friends. And it was such a wonderful thing. I think I've done it 3 times that she's done it.

And it's just—

it's—

she's so like, twyla, so she's so wonderful and caring and it's just, yeah, it's just. Yeah.

Yeah, that's called the VPD experiment. Video per day experiment. And it's a hashtag on LinkedIn and Twitter, I think. And yeah, Twyla is— I've actually asked her recently, hey, you gonna do it again this fall? And she's like, I'm kind of busy, I don't know. And I was like, well, just tell me when you do, but you know, I'll share it with my community. I'm sure y'all will share it with you, yours. Let's bring the attorneys in too. Just, you know, and when I have done that challenge, I really wanted to like, think about using my phone. I'm really good at teaching from my computer, right? But the off-the-cuff that's kind of popular now, like I wanted to practice that a little bit because I had kind of— I got it. I can make a tutorial, an accounting tutorial. Okay. Like several years ago, could not. Now I can. What else is my horizon, right? And so I, I kind of did the walk and the talk and you see what other people are doing. I figured out how to get like words to captions, which is cool. And like, no, now I could— now I kind of have a concept of how that works. I don't really make those videos, but it was— you kind of are starting to figure out like, oh, this is what— this is what video is. This is what— this is where I get my sounds. This is where I get my captions. This is where I get, you know, myself to a photo to myself again. You know, if I want to clip something in there, all that's just Good. Just good practice.

And when do you think you should be posting these? Should they be YouTube, Instagram, or where do you think?

So I'm a YouTube person because I want to answer people's questions. I'm— that's the approach I'm taking is I'm— I want to be like the smartest teacher. Okay. That is not— that's not everyone else's like persona. But YouTube is a— I think it's the number 2 search engine in the world.

Yes.

So that's what I'm going for. That's what I'm going for. I want people to ask a question like, which bookkeeping software should I choose? And I want my video to come up when I'm comparing softwares. I want people to know, how do I interpret my profit and loss statement in FreshBooks? They're gonna, I want them to find me to answer those questions.

Yeah.

There's a lot of, you know, you can build social authority with more like philosophical or like conceptual things. That's probably more talking head. That's the word I use for that, talking head videos where, you're the star of the show versus the software that you're demonstrating.

Yeah.

You know, so for attorneys, it'd probably be more talking head, I would think. I don't know what they're— what they could possibly be teaching. They're teaching concepts more than technical stuff, I would guess. But that, that is how I've taken the YouTube approach because I want to do the teaching and I think it helps with the search engine. But Lots of people are finding success on TikTok. I think TikTok's easiest if you want to go viral. I've heard that, you know, LinkedIn is probably a little more professional.

Yeah.

And one of the complaints I got at the Bookkeeping Buds retreat, that which is where Sarah had one of the places where I kind of had this talk before, was people said, well, I don't know that I want the clients who would find me on YouTube. And that has like stuck with me over the last month. I was like, ooh, boo.

Yeah, what's that about?

Oh, I can kind of understand it a little bit because in some ways it's the type— some of them were in a position of a certain level, tier, firm that in their minds that was that DIY conceptual thing. I think that's the way I heard it was a mistranslation. And what I wish we had time to chime in because I could have easily joined in with where Kate is like, look, you— the clientele that comes your way, you just don't know. You just don't know what you're going to— like, some of our most amazing clients came to us because of the videos, or for my side, it was because of referral or local work in the community. But I think, Kate, you've done. And I— you've taken this, this what is daunting to a lot of people across, I think, almost all industries. You've taken this to a stage where you're like, look, you just start here, you level up to here a little bit better. It's here. Like you said, it's a skill. So I'm dying to know, were you ever a teacher before, by the way?

So, um, I actually, in undergrad, I was an undergrad TA for an econ class, which is— I'm proud to say. Um, and then I got selected during grad school for our required— for it's a, you know, MBA programs are 2 years typically. And so for my, my first year econ class, they take second years to be the TAs for the next, for the next year. And I was selected to be— I taught economics my second year too. So I am like a whiteboard, think on my feet, answer questions kind of a person.

Yeah.

And I'm just sort of taking that to 2023. Instead of early 2000s, um, which is, you know, me in front of an actual whiteboard with like a pen in my hand, right? Um, so yeah, I like to teach, I like to break it down. Um, but again, it's whatever, it's whatever your skill set is. Some people are good at sales, some people are good at, um, just encouraging people or getting ref— like, so here's a, here's a video. This is, this is completely crazy. You could get your clients to give you testimonials. That is using video in your business. That is not you being on camera at all. Um, you could, you could be on camera if they if you have an in-person situation where some attorneys, some accounting professionals might do that, say, hey, while you're here, can we just get 30 seconds of you like talking about how our project ended? Um, and then you would be on the screen too. But like, there's, there's all sorts of ways where when someone goes to search your name, what is going to come up? And are they going to see, you know, evidence of your, your brains and your capabilities and the work that you've done? And if it's via video, it's a little more compelling. In 2023 than if it's, than if it's not. So.

Oh, I need to do work. I just looked about my name. So I guess Lynda, we need to do more work on my name. Steve, what you got? What do you, what do you think? What, this is your first time meeting Kate and it, she's amazing.

Oh my God. I love her energy and I love some of these tips. I like the tip that you had about blurring the background. I really like that a lot. I got over my fear of cameras with the classes I teach at the Bar Association because they video all of those. And to Lynda's point, if you go back to my early videos, because I think you can go clear back to 2010 and the faculty page there and look at my videos, I'm horrible, just horrible. And now I just get up there and go, you know, and I like using Loom for— I've used it to record different procedures for SOPs.. And that works really well. And when you've got a client who likes to meddle in their QuickBooks file, it's real easy to do a Loom and send it out to them and say, okay, if you're going to do it, this is how you need to do it. Because you've got those clients that just will not leave their fingers out of the books. And so you can help them with the video rather than calling them or trying to explain it, like you said, in an email or something like that. So these are all great tips.

So Steve, I'll challenge you. Ask that client that you make the Loom video for, say, hey, if I blur out all personal identifiable information, can I use this video to share with other clients who do— who are doing the same thing?

Like that.

Yeah. And then you can just— yeah, just record yourself saying this video is about blah, blah, blah. A client did it. He needed help. We solved his problem. Maybe this will solve your problem.

I really like that.

All these great tips, like She has— what did you show us? I wanted to know about your teleprompter thing.

Is that what you— Oh, I got it. I got it right here behind me.

Oh yes, you got to show that.

So let me— so yes, I had a teleprompter. This thing costs about $180 and it uses your phone to show and scroll and you look inside. It fits over your camera. So the camera's here and I'm looking at it and I'm reading. Now it takes skill. My first teleprompter videos, I describe myself, I look like a deer in the headlights. I was kind kind of like, like bug-eyed. I'm like trying— so it's again, like for a few videos I had gotten worse, right? I had done videos for a while, then I was like, okay, I'm finally going to make this— buy this teleprompter. And, and then I got worse because I was bad at that new thing.

Um, yeah, yeah.

But what I'm going to say about that, using a teleprompter means you have to have a script. So that's a whole different flavor of videos because you have to type words on a word processing system to put on the teleprompter. If that may or may not work for some people, if you need to flow then and then and not read, or you don't take the time to write, you can't use a teleprompter. But one of the things I found was scripting really allowed my editing to go better because I put my— I put myself in the chair 10, 15, 20 minutes depending on how long it was the video was gonna be, and I had to think about what I was gonna say. So my videos consequently got shorter. Which is good for the short American attention span, right? And but then I was able to have less of those, those dead times. Lynda, like you were talking about, we're like, okay, I messed up, now I got to do it again.

Editing.

Messed up, now I got to do it again. And then you're like, how many times did I repeat myself poorly? Okay, I don't. And so it helps with the edit, reducing editing time, even though the scripting time got better. But I think even coming up with an outline is probably best. And so I would encourage you all, definitely do not buy a teleprompter until you've made 15, 20 videos. But if you write down just like your 5 points of like the flow you want to do for a Loom video for a client, then you can use the pause button. And that is, that is kind of making you follow a script. It's making you get into this concept of like creating content and then producing it first, rather than just, hey, I'm opening your QuickBooks file. What do we got here today? Like, no one wants to listen to that, right? Um, so you'll come across even more professionally if you just take time to even outline what you want to say because— and then maybe get your 5 tabs open that you're like, I want to show them balance sheet, profit and loss. And like, you're going to— you'll get a rhythm and you're like, oh, now, now every debrief video I have these 5 reports open and I walk through them and my clients appreciate it. And you've become a movie producer all of a sudden because you've been thoughtful about it.

I—

Well, Lynda, have you used a teleprompter? I think you have, haven't you?

Yeah, I've used BigVu, which is a software. I got it on AppSumo, so I got it like $80 or something like that.

And it—

it has AI in it, so I can take my article, dump it in there, it'll— and I tell it to write a script for the article that I wrote, and then it'll make a script. And then you have to go in and edit it because sometimes it gets a little bit like this, too many words. You tell it to be more concise. You can do this with ChatGPT too. Plunk it in there and it— and you can control the speed of it. So if, you know, sometimes it'll go too slow or you have— Or it's going off the screen and you're not,— you know, trying to keep track of it. It's definitely a science behind it.

Yeah.

I've had it, and I thought I would get really smart because sometimes Intuit asked me to do a minute video, and those are the hardest videos to do because they give me a topic and they say, you get a minute. I want it under a minute. You know, they'll tell me, the marketing people tell me, I want it under a minute. And I'll tell you, 100 takes later, I have it, but it takes takes. So you just go in and take 2, record again. I let Sarah play around with it too. But I noticed the first ones I did, I sound like a robot talking, like I was reading. You could tell I was reading and I'd like, oh, I hated like trash can, trash can, trash can. But it also has features where it's cool software because it's features where you can add the subtitles to them. It also has features where if you just record a video, it'll create the blog post out of that too. I think it's the software. And I have all these tools. I have all these little tools that I use for— Cool. Software.

It did something like that because you had me use it.

I mean, it did. And then it takes the words. So you tell what you know, and then it creates, you know, it'll create the words and put it into a blog post that you still have. None of this is like perfection. It just kind of gives you a base. But I like what you're saying, Kate, because I've done videos in the past where I'll go off on a tangent and the next thing you know, I'm scrolling off on some other topic and I've not kept it to the topic that I was intending to write about.

That's easy to do.

Or it'll be out of order. Like, I'm all here, then I'm down here, and it should have gone here, here, here, and I'm here, then I'm here, then I'm here. And for consistency and to make it make more sense and clarity, I should have really had an outline where I could have stuck to the outline, kept it more concise. Because like you said, no, you get going on too long, people are gonna stop watching. And that's how YouTube ranks you in searchability, is about how many people like your video, how many people interact in your video.

And watch the whole thing. And watch the whole thing through.

If they leave.

Yeah. I mean, and I've had debates with people about, you know, doing a long-form video. The beauty of that is you can do a really long video when you get really good at this and then cut it into pieces. Tiara does that with our podcast. She'll cut this into pieces and highlight sections, shorts, because people are all into shorts right now. So not only has our American attention span shortened, it's even shorter than it was before.

Yeah.

Like you got like this really short attention span 'cause of TikTok and the swipe. I don't like this. So you only have very few seconds to text, to get someone's attention, to grab it.

I'm curious because Lynda, you figured out this craft with me, and I don't know how you figured this out because I'm freeform. I really have a hard time following a script, but she's rewritten my presentations in bullet points. So I'm curious, like, for Steve and Kate, like, how does it work for you? Do you prefer to start yourself with an outline? Or like, I, for me, it starts to make me kind of like, oh God, I don't want that in front of me. I get nervous if I have to read and try and remember. I just go, I guess. I don't know. It's just a little different. But I'm curious how the two of you approach this style because, Kate, you mentioned if you— you got to get past so many videos and be ready to do this style of work if you're going to invest in a teleprompter or something like of a software like that. So how do you approach it?

Well, I, I just think being comfortable with your style is okay. You are not going to be the only accounting professional who wants to free flow videos. And so if that's you, that's fine, because again, you're not trying to get a million views on YouTube. And if people don't like you and they stop you, stop watching your video, you don't care that much because there's probably not a whole lot of true legal accounting experts like y'all, right? Like, you, you just need to tell them these obscure hard things that you've learned, and then the people who actually— like, their eyes are gonna get— they're gonna be like, oh my gosh, where's this woman been all my life? I need her. And like, all my money, give it to her now. Like, and that's— who cares if 100 people say no, or 99 say no, but one says yes? So I, I— my advice for our industry is just to start and you'll, you'll get better at it. If you need to have people who can take those clips, you know, if you, if you free flow, then probably outsourcing like shorter clips is probably a great idea, you know, and you're like, well, I'm just going to talk and my, you know, podcast VA is going to make it work because her brain thinks that way and mine doesn't, then that's fine. One of the tips that I had shared was at this conference was there's like 3 ways to get these done. Do it all yourself or take, take a paid training to like figure out how to use a teleprompter, take a paid training, how to pick, you know, how to do your best, your edit in your preferred software. Like I use Camtasia. I took a training on that. And then the third way to do it is just to outsource it. Like if you want to outsource collecting video referrals, there are people who do that for you. You can say, hey, we just wrapped up a big legal project. We just wrapped up a big accounting project. I want you, referral video generator guy, to go get a video for this. And then they'll give you the MP4 file and, and that's using video and you've completely outsourced it. So I just think working with wherever your strengths are, whatever, you know, your target clients really want. Half the people probably want to see you talk for 2 minutes and they're going to fall in love with you. And they just— I'm just making sure she's, she's the real deal. And now I'm going to call her and pay her money. And I don't— and we're going to get to know each other as a client rather than a prospect.

I love that. Yeah, Steve, how do you do it? Do you like to write out?

It depends on what the subject is.

Okay.

And that, you know, one of the things I love about our podcast, and we've talked about this so many times, is it's so free-flowing. We have more of a conversation than a presentation, and I really like that. However, you know, I've found a couple times where I'm not as, as knowledgeable about a subject maybe as you guys are, and so I will I'll go research the topic ahead of time and then I'll make notes. And like our KPI one, I really was nervous. I have to admit I was nervous about doing the KPI one with you guys.

On your favorite show?

Our favorite show. And you have no clue how nervous I was that day. But I was like, I want to really wow these two with my KPI knowledge. And I did, but I had written it all out and it was sitting on my keyboard. And I had it right there in front of me. I'm like, I've got to make sure and say that. So I— it just depends on what the subject is.

Okay.

Or you'll see me every once in a while, you'll see me look down and I'm writing something because I'm already making a bunch of notes from what Kate's been saying today. Because, you know, I'm like, okay, I want to talk about this now. So it depends on what the subject is, but I'm generally more of a free flow person. I just like to talk about it.

You are. Okay. Yeah. Kate, do Do you freeform in the— like, have you changed your style in all of this breadth of knowledge you have now?

Yeah. So one, so I have the Bookkeeping Side Hustle Community. I try to do a video every 2 weeks for that. And that's usually a video interview, kind of similar to this. I don't have it on a podcast platform. I just have it on— I just livestream to YouTube. And so I create about 5 or 6 questions as like I— things I want to kind of hope to get to. Sometimes we don't even get to them all. So the guest knows a little bit what we're talking about. And then for tutorial videos, sometimes I'm like very scripted. And I think if you want like AI to do videos for you, you probably need to be a little bit more scripted. Like I could see taking screenshots of bookkeeping software and saying like, add a client in QuickBooks, something like that, right? And then you would need to be pretty scripted for that, but that would be a short video. But that's, hey, you're not on it.

Yeah.

It's what, you know, if that's what you need to do. So I usually script my intros and my outros, Okay. And then I free flow for my tutorial. I feel confident enough in the software where, you know, I might have like 4 or 5 points. Like, I know that— I know I wanna make sure to click in these 5 spots because this is the flow to do whatever I'm doing. But I also internalize it so much that I don't have to think that hard anymore to do my technical tutorials. But I do like to script my intros because of what Lynda said about YouTube. Like, I wanna tell them in the first 20 seconds, here's what you're gonna learn. You're gonna learn how to convert a proposal to an invoice. In FreshBooks. And I say that, I say that as fast as I can. I've gotten better at saying it even faster because I think it's client-centric. Like the people who are watching my videos, they want to know. I don't want to tease them, you know, like tell them exactly what they're here for so they can leave if I'm not, if I'm not going to help them. That's, you know, that's kind of how I do it.

That's— you just hit a nail on the head there with me. One of the things that drives me crazy is when I'm reading news articles on the internet and it takes them 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 paragraphs to get to the subject. Drives me nuts. I like to know what you're going to talk about right away and you're going to keep my interest in. I'm either in or I'm out. That short attention span thing again. That's brilliant.

I've learned on YouTube that they really do like you to watch to the end. So one of the things like I've kind of gotten good about is if I know in my tutorial there's going to be like 3 main parts, let's say, then I will say quick intro as the title of what kind of like what we're talking about in this day. And in this video, we're going to start here and we're going to go here and we're going to end here. So I really hope you watch to the end because that's where the— that's where the juicy tip is. Um, because I'll wow you, I'll wow you with the blah blah blah, you know. And then I'll say, I'll say whatever it is I'm gonna— impressive thing, like trick that I know because I'm great and I know that like '90%, you know, or most people are going to do just this much, but if you take it one step further, you're doing awesome. And so watch my video so you learn that one step extra.' Um, and I'll say something like that, but I try to, I try to keep them as short as possible to get into then the teaching. Um, I wanted to jump in about one thing Steve said about how you, you have done teaching. Um, and I'm wondering if with Lynda and Sarah, I know that y'all I kind of consider y'all educators in a lot of ways, even though you have a firm, like a technical firm. Recording yourself, like Sarah, I was thinking if we had been able to fully record ourselves teaching at the BUDS retreat, or Steve, if you are going through a full day of bar certified classes about your obscure topic that you're an expert in, if that was recorded, that's almost content, right? Because we're— we have the luxury of like, again, it's just our brains. You don't have to look pretty. You don't have to— it's like you want someone who wants to re-listen to that thing that you taught about, Steve. And if you had somehow been able to capture it, maybe you hire a— bring an assistant, set up a camera somehow. I mean, I've never done anything like this, but I know that there are some accounting professionals who are comfortable, you know, teaching at their chamber or their small business development center. And it's like you teach QuickBooks all day long and yet you won't make a video teaching, teaching it because it's on, because it's on YouTube or on TikTok. Yeah, just, just plop your camera in the back maybe and see if you can capture it that way. And that could be a good way to start and hire someone to like splice it better. You know, like you can, you can outsource that part, let's say.

Well, you know, our firm has reaped a lot of business from those classes that I teach because they are recorded. And then the bar puts them out in the format so that they can go in and take their CLEs from it and they pay for it. And so they can, you know, it's there all the time. You can see it over and over and over if you want. And that brings business because people are like, okay, he talked about this. I want to find out more.

But you don't own that content. You're saying the bar owns that content. I don't own it. So do it. Figure out how to do a lunch and learn yourself., and teach the same thing, right? And then you hit record and you're like, and now I'm going to take all that money. You're not going to get your CLE credits for it, but you're, the reason you're learning it is because you have a question. Sometimes we don't need just the learning or the credit. We need the, we need the knowledge. Um, so I don't know. That's a, if you've already got the material, what's, what's the harm? You know, probably just, it's probably a pretty low risk in terms of financial or time involvement to, to take that knowledge and try to record it. Yeah.

Man, you're like a wealth of like tips and tricks, knowledge, just like— it's just, it's so perfect to what you do currently and how you help others in the community. And I really, I think what we really should also highlight that we haven't touched on is this piece that you're a part of for the nonprofit piece that you can talk a little bit about. Yes, I think that would be amazing to talk a little bit about that if you want to.

Happily. So about a year ago, I met this woman, Dawn Brolin, and we kind of both had the same idea at the same time where I think accounting professionals, I think their careers and lives will change if they can get to an accounting conference. So we created this nonprofit called the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation, and it is, it sends people to their first accounting conference. That's kind of the only criteria. If you've never been, apply. This year we were able to do Scaling New Heights and QuickBooks Connect. We are hoping— the plan is to be able to send people to quite a bit more in 2024 and then just kind of beyond. We sent 3 to Scaling, 3 to QuickBooks Connect, all expenses paid. There's a— we have a— we try to have a sort of robust application process to avoid the tire kickers. And we interview them, like interview some finalists because it's a big gift. It's, you know, it's, it's a whole week of Las Vegas, right? So it's a place where you can donate. So we would— I would love to, you know, if anyone's listening to this and if you were that young professional who either, you know, if you worked for a firm and they sent you to a conference and all of a sudden your eyes opened, or if you took that leap to entrepreneurship and you're like, golly, every day I'm not working, I'm not getting paid. I hear it's important. I better go. Like, and you knew that, like, yeah, it— who cares that you're not getting paid? Like, this was— the ROI was amazing. And when I'm surrounded by my peers and I'm learning and I'm not by myself behind my computer nerding out on my reconciliations, right? Like, that's what I want people to experience because it really kind of catapulted my business. And then, you know, Dawn has— is seasoned. She's been to a lot of conferences and she's just pouring back into the the younger folks, the folks who are kind of putting their neck out there. And so we're just helping you put your neck out there a little bit. That's really cool. One of the cool things is we're trying to do it in like little cohorts. So I think the plan is to never send just one person. So you're not like sitting by yourself in the back of the room or accidentally like hiding in your hotel room because you don't know anybody. We're having like little meet and greets too. So it's a really positive experience for the winners. And I think we're doing a good job of that. So yes, please donate. Accountingcornerstone.org is the website. So thanks for letting me share that.

Of course. It was so impactful. And I know Lynda tells this story about all of her years in doing this, and you should share the story, Lynda, because it's just, it was so, and the fact that you and I just at the same time had this moment together, we didn't even know, and now here we are.

We didn't know each other, but the first year I went to Connect, I was afraid to go, but knew I needed to go. It was 2016 and, uh, first time traveling alone, going West Coast to East— I mean, East Coast to West Coast. Didn't plan that out or put any thought into it. So I hopped in there and, you know, waking up, I wake up at 3:00 AM in the morning the next day and I did yoga and I had a nice day, but 6:00 at night I was toast. Like all that fun party stuff I didn't go to.. And, but I came back all energized and excited and I was like hooked. And then the next time, the next year I went, I remember my husband going, you gonna do it again? I'm like, yep, I'm gonna do it again. And I went and Sarah and I realized we were there. We didn't know each other at all. And we were sitting in the same session cuz Mariette was on the screen, up on the stage. And we both recall the same exact story of the same thing. And I said, well, I sat in the front row. And she said, so did I. We could have been sitting right next to each other, just didn't know it. Which is kind of cool.

Well, it was the same. It was 2016 because I literally—

Oh, 2016. Really?

Yeah. I didn't open my doors for my business, had not actually, like, I had just opened maybe the month before. I, I formed the month prior to, 2 months prior to it. And then I didn't actually, I was nervous. I wasn't ready. I had, thankfully, I had a little list of people asking, when are you ready? I was like, I'm not there yet.

Let me get there.

And I had gone to the conference. We were in the same session. And so, and it changed both of us. It changed our worlds. But then here we are. Who would have thought we would have been in the same community groups, met each other, had the same alignment of practice area niche that we wanted to serve, almost the same background. But Lynda, the most amazing— Yeah. So I was new, but here's Lynda. You know, 20-some years in the practice, and she went to her first conference for the first time after all that time. So to your point, Kate, you could be brand new, you could be long-term, like, you could just— we see it a lot, people dismiss, like, oh, I don't need to go to these things. They change your world, right?

Yeah, it's not, it's not that you had— you could be 80 years old and have never been, and we would want you to apply. So it's just never It's just if you've never been to an accounting conference, that's what it's for. And like, I, I think conferences and video are kind of pretty tied together, y'all, because it's scary. It's awkward. You're, you're not, you know, you're in public. There's a publicness about video. There's a publicness about conference. It's uncomfortable. It's just like you're like with video, you know, maybe you're going to sweat, maybe your neck turns red. There's like all these things, right, that you can and make yourself not want to do it. And it's very, very similar. And then what happens? Then you become Lynda and Steve and Sarah who are going to speak at QuickBooks Connect as industry experts. And we've been blessed. I'm just going to guess you wouldn't be speaking at QuickBooks Connect if you had never attended your QuickBooks Connect first, right, Lynda? Like you, it started—

I saw Mariette. I wanted to be her. I was just like enamored. I want to be Mariette. I want to be up on that stage. That was it. Like, I had that in my head, and then I ended up being on the Intuit Council, and, you know, everything else, all the doors open. It was just kind of like magic from being—

And you, you start, right? Like, then you make the one bad video with no face on it because you're like, well, I gotta start teaching, I gotta practice, I gotta start practicing teaching. Oh yeah, that's a, that's a tip. Don't make a video until you say, I do solemnly swear I'm about to make 10 bad videos, because you will. And so say that, just, I'm gonna make 10 videos that I will want to hide under a rock in 5 years when I watch. And you know what? In 5 years, you're gonna have more money in your pocket. You're gonna have better ideal clients, less stress because you're—

A lot more friends.

A lot more friends.

Doors that open. Like, I got to go to Chicago to teach with Sarah. Like, who am I? Because I just took some steps. Like, I'm not— I'm not an— I'm not— I've started my business 5 years ago. I didn't come from the accounting space. Like, I have everything, like, reason to not be the person who gets all these opportunities. And it's kind of just because I'm like, well, I am turning— I'm putting my face out there. And so they're like, well, I need someone to talk about this. This lady talks a lot. Okay, we'll call her.

Um, now everybody knows Kate Johnson.

Well, I mean, it's, it's—

I love it.

But I don't think it's anything like— I, I'm wearing this nerdy headset, y'all, and I'm wearing it on purpose because I do have a fancy mic, but I'm kind of wanting to let people know that like like, it's okay to be like nerdy too, okay? Like, the sound is better than it would be if I didn't have a mic. It's cheaper than the Yeti. I bought this a long time ago because I'm like, I'm not going to spend a lot of money on this video thing, but someone said sound is important, so I'm gonna buy this like cheap thing, and it really helps. It's better. Um, and again, I'm not trying to be cool, I'm trying to be smart. And I think that if you approach it that way, it probably becomes a lot less scary, because how see people who are worse at doing what you're good at, and they get the opportunities, they get the clients, they get the doors open, and you're like, I know you're bad, I've had clients come from you and you're terrible. Um, like, that happens.

Is that a thing?

It is a thing. It is a thing.

It is a lot of hot air out there, so don't be hot air. Like, be, be smart. But let that frustration about like, well, I'm better, but they're getting the work. Like, sorry, I'm going to send that Loom video. I'm going to, I'm going to close this deal for a lot of money, for more than I've ever asked for.

Yeah. And those videos really are impressive. They, I mean, even if you're just doing it with clients, they, they are impressive. And you took the time and made them feel important and special when you use videos, even internally. I just, it takes, it makes, it's actually easier than having to write everything out. And for me, And making the video is not a big deal. And I know a lot of times they are— I mean, we've done it with 3-way bank reconciliation. We're pulling up the 3-way bank reconciliation and it's this needs to be this, this needs to be this, explaining what to fix, action item, you gotta do this. And Sarah and I'll just go on a video and this is exactly what happened. And then you're letting them know how it happened, what they did wrong to make it happen, and then how to fix it. Mm-hmm. Maybe they put the money in the wrong bank account. Maybe they transferred the money the wrong way. Maybe they put the wrong amount in. But you're talking and saying it and you're taking the time to care for them. And that little bit of time which you do on your own and you control it, it's just genius to do, to use video like that, I think.

Mhm.

Oh yeah. Okay, so dying question we have is lavalier mics. We're gonna, um, so we, uh, we're just talking right before we jumped on with you about microphones. And I think Steve and I are Android users and Lynda Artesani are iPhone users, but we just need a set of mics so that when we're walking about, I think sometimes our videos get lost, Lynda, right? Because he can't hear us when we're walking the showroom floor.

Yeah, they did. Well, I was just gonna say they did an update on the iPhone where it's, it's ma— it gets rid of all that background sound, but you don't have an iPhone, so.

Well, I have some thoughts. I don't have a louder mic, so that's first. I can't tell you too much, but there's a guy on Twitter named Logan Graf. And he is becoming a video guy. And he just recently, like within the last few months, put a picture of his kids wearing his lavalier mics because he was testing them out. So he would be someone to potentially reach out to. He is trying to become a support person for the accounting world. So I'm sure— and it's after tax season. So I think asking him would be good. The second thing is if you can caption your stuff, You can have lower quality sound. And so if people, if you're like, you know, let's just say like, don't, don't not do it because the sound's not good. Because at the very end you can be like, what did we say again? And like, probably an AI will get it about 80% right. And then if you need to go in and type something, but then like if it's really important to y'all, kind of do it anyway because you're probably going to be bad at it your first time. And so you're going to go to QuickBooks Connect in 2024 though, and all these other conferences, and you will get better at the like the roaming video ladies, right? Like, and Steve, the video ladies and Steve. So those are— that's just some advice I have about that. Um, also, if it's really important and, and iPhone's the solution, buy an iPhone.

Like, I'll just get another iPhone if I need to.

I mean, that's a pretty cheap device. That's a pretty— and like, it can just be your audio equipment. Um, so there's a lot of ways to think of it. Don't not do Do it. Don't expect it to be perfect. You know, perfect, better, because guess how many people are going to be walking around QuickBooks Connect creating content with lavalier mics? Not a whole lot. Not a whole lot is the answer. And if you're willing to put that effort in, people are going to appreciate what you've done. Maybe you have to pull yourself aside to like, you know, find a way to like stand next to a wall and kind of get into a quiet spot.

Mm-hmm.

But I just say go for it. But Logan, I know, has recently bought lavalier mics. They were a little more costly than I was interested in. Because I want to say they were in kind of like the $300 range. So for me—

Oh no, Sarah's not at that.

They're more than that.

I found ones that you plug to the base and they're wireless and the sound quality— this guy was in a noisy kitchen and he was doing a demo. I think it was on YouTube.

I think it was on YouTube.

And he was doing it and I was like, whoa, that just snapped, flipped. It was—

For how much?

It was like $30.

Oh, heavens.

Okay. I think Logan got more— I think Logan got more expensive ones. So I don't, I don't know what— maybe the range is not as good. Maybe he wants to use like a different kind of camera. Some people like to really care about their cameras. And if that's the case, you know, like if you want to— but phone cameras are pretty good. And again, the bar is low because no one is doing it.

Like, I, I joke I am a Pixel phone photographer. My husband is the photographer. Lynda, like, gifted him a camera because he is a paid photographer, so he can, uh, he does that. And I'm like, uh, I would be all thumbs with your technology, but give me, give me an accounting file and I'll tell you how to do it. So I, I love what you're saying. It's, it's, it's perfect. Perfect. It's so many great tips and it's applicable to, like you said, all industries. I mean, you could do wills and estates, you could do videos on that, clips on that, moments of— like, there's so many things that across all industries, if you're listening to this, I think the biggest thing, and Lynda will tell you this because she got me to do it, is just start. She rips off my Band-Aid so fast sometimes. I'm like, okay, I guess we're doing that today. Which is the best part of our partnership. I love it. So, well, Kate, thank you.

Lots of tips buried in here, and you gave Tiara some work to do to kind of dig through and give all the links and things. In fact, things, but it was really a pleasure having you here.

Absolutely.

And we'll let Tiara take us out.

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Yes, definitely check out the links and, um, learn more about video and FreshBooks and the side hustle. So I hope everybody does check out our links. And Kate, thank you so much for joining us.

Thank you, Kate.

What a pleasure, Steve. Super nice to meet you. Um, Lynda and, Lynda and Sarah, it was good to connect with y'all again. And I'm, uh, just tickled to be a part of this.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Bye-bye everybody.

Bye.

Bye.

Hehe.