137 The Best Change You Can Make to your Accounting Firm Website

Okay, so yesterday we published a main channel video about your website and how to make it way better. The kind of thing that most accounting firm websites are missing. And the number one, the top thing that most accounting firms are missing is a specific statement about who they help and how. We've talked about this a bit before on the podcast, but I want to drill into this further. In fact, I went so far as making a resource to make this a lot easier for you to develop that I want to run you through fun little exercise about how to get way more specific and targeted about your messaging to attract a more specific type of person who will pay you more money to do the same stuff. I'll put a link to yesterday's video in the show notes. If you haven't seen it yet, this is a great follow on episode to this. Let's dive into this utility and I'll show you a bunch of examples of how you can use this to make that Website Convert to 10 times better than it does now. 10. I called it 10. Like literally 10. That's not an exaggeration. 10. Now this is by no means a hot take that we need to serve a more specific type of customer or quote unquote niche down, which I think is too general like that framing. But the hard thing for me was always how do I get to like that level of specificity that attracts a, a particular type of person and overcome the fear of everything that I'm seemingly closing the door to when I do that. Right. And so I want you, I want you to see the value of like just how clear this statement can be. Got a tool here that will let you develop your own version of that statement. But just to first acknowledge the spooky scaries is where 90% of people are, they are afraid of closing the door on some sort of opportunity. That is maybe if you left that website wide open and super generic so that it wouldn't turn anybody away, maybe there's a killer opportunity that comes knocking. And to be honest, we, this is a decision making framework that we all struggle with in day to day life. The notion that we have 2020 vision for what something is like given like our current way that we do it but are completely blind to like what's over the next hill, what opportunity could be there. And I'm firmly in the camp that believes when you close the door on taking in anything and everything, like could it close the door on something interesting? Yes. But when you don't get more specific like making that decision to not get more specific that is also closing doors to things that can happen in that like very specific domain. Right. So examples of the decisions we go through in our lives. You decided to become an accountant, you decided to not go do private, you decided to come into public. You decided to not go do audit, you decided to come do tax, to come do accounting. You made decisions that closed the door off to other opportunities. Now could there have been a killer audit opportunity out there for you somewhere? Maybe, maybe there was like this unbelievable warehouse that you could have gone and counted potatoes in for three years. You're never gonna know. Cause you closed that door right when you came in and you did that more specific thing. Did you find interesting opportunities because you had chosen that specificity? Yes. Like you did. Now one of the common like counter arguments for niching down that people talk about is well, what if we go all in on this space and then the whole space goes belly up or something like that. And if you have ever like gone into this level of specificity, what you find when you get more specific is a whole bunch more opportunities that you still have to say no to. So the more you learn about a space, the more you learn about the really nuanced peripheral players in that space and interesting business opportunities there are there where you only know that those things exist because you committed to that space and developed a deeper understanding than anyone else. And every time you make that little baby step commitment to go a little bit deeper, you will find there's more complexity and simultaneously more opportunity than you had realized there was. But if you never choose to take that next baby step, you're living back where everybody else is living. All the normies that don't have any of that specific expertise that you have. And this is the value of continuing to challenge how specific we can get with our expertise. This is what protects us long term from, from AI, from general productized solutions coming up market that serve the general problems that people have. And I think it boils down to the fact that it's really hard to trust that if I go deeper, there's actually more there, there's more there than I can see today. If I go deeper to the extent that even if the client that I think I'm going deeper to serve now, even if all those people went belly up the next day because I had gone deeper, I would have actually found all these interesting other adjacent businesses that I never would have known about, that I can still go out there and serve. This has absolutely been my experience with specialization. If you talk with people who have specialized I've yet to talk with anybody who's ever been like, yeah, I'm going to go back to how it was. But most of the people I talk to have just never gone to this level of depth. And it's like a lot of things we do in our firm where it's like analysis paralysis. We think about it, it's gonna be this huge thing, and we're so afraid of getting it wrong that we never actually do it. When we gotta do the opposite, we gotta be biased to action. Are you gonna get it right on your first try? Probably not. But the valuable thing is what you learn in the process, because learning, like, what a good niche is for you. You know how you do that? By trying to niche down, by trying to get more specific. So you're not just gonna walk into it and get it totally right once, but you're also not gonna nail it without ever trying to do it. Now, do you have to go 100% in on a single one? Depends who you ask. Maybe not. But any step into specificity is better than doing anything for everyone. But we've all got that voice inside of our head that is spooked about. Spooked about? Like what you're closing the door to. We all have that nervous Ned inside of us. Let's pull up. Nervous. I wonder what nervous Ned thinks about niching down. Nervous Ned's a guest we've had on a couple times now that's like the embodiment of that internal voice we have that makes us a little scared to do that thing that we've never done before, Gang. This episode is sponsored in part by copilot. Are you sick of copilot ads on this podcast yet? Because you shouldn't be. Because, bless their hearts, they're making all of this magic come together and all of this possible, you know? Okay, I know we got some hyper nerds in the audience out there. If you saw our practice management report that we released recently, Copilot was on the list because they've got this hyper flexible approach to building a client portal. And they're not getting in all the other stuff, the workflow and all that. All they want to make is a super flexible portal platform for you. And if you are a mega nerd, boy, wouldn't it be nice if all these tools in our space had killer APIs so that we could automate all this stuff automatically? Wouldn't that be nice? Not a thing, though, right? Wrong. It's a thing. If you use Copilot, they've actually got a killer API that lets you work with pretty much everything in the entire platform. So the notion of building some like fully automated stuff where before that wouldn't have been possible. It is. It's possible. With Copilot, it's possible. But let's say you're just a little bit nerd. Not mega nerd. You're little nerd. Through stuff like Zapier and make, you can actually build a bunch of your own automations. In fact, I got the Zapier page up here and there's what the Geez, there's an absolutely shocking number of triggers and actions. Hang on. Pause. Quick count. Break 35 triggers and actions in Zapier for Copilot. If you like building your own automations. Pretty cool, right? Hey, if that is exciting to you, check out the link to Copilot in the show notes. And thank you to Copilot for your continued support. It's that time of year again, gang. Halloween? Nope. Thanksgiving? I guess it's soon. But worse than all that, it is time to fulfill your annual continuing education requirements. That old chestnut this episode is sponsored in part by Pronto Tax, and we know how that that CPE deadline usually feels, right? More boring than watching paint dry. CPE really do be like that. Especially virtual cpe. Man, you usually can't even see the person that's talking. It's like this awful like set of slides with these fade animations between each of the slides. And then you hear this like super corporate voice, which frankly might even be AI. Actually, if it isn't, it absolutely could be. Well, are you ready for better cpe? Me too. If you're ready for a continuing education experience that's different than anything else out there, and not incredibly boring, yet still highly educational, you could be ready to give Pronto Tax. The people at Pronto are a little crazy. What? Their training's not for everyone. Things can get spicy. But the people at Pronto really know their stuff when it comes to taxes, and they make a valiant effort to make completing your annual continuing Ed at least halfway entertaining. They're approved by irs, CTEC, and NASBA so that you know you're getting valid credits that match your credential. And over 4,000 tax pros choose Pronto's CE C CPE solutions every single year. Visit prontotaxschschool.com or check out the link in the show notes to learn more. Okay, now give me your take on what is preventing you from niching down your accounting firm or getting more specific about the type of people you'll solve or type of problems you'll solve.

Whoa there. Let's not barrel into the pumpkin patch without checking for the ripest ones first. Niching down feels a bit like picking only the small gourds when you've got the whole patch to work with. Sure, I could specialize in, say, boutique coffee shop finances or indie game developer budgets. But then I'm just the guy with the tiny pumpkins. What about the rest of the autumnal harvest? I get it. I do. The logic is there. Focusing could streamline my services, make me the go to guy for that particular vine. But here's the thing. I'm an accountant to my core. Certified and framed, no less. That means I'm about balance. And niching down tips the scales too far into the unknown. Could miss out on big, diverse clients. Like opting for the predictable sweetness of a pumpkin spice latte when you might have sipped something new. Familiar is cozy. And in the accounting world, cozy is as good as a warm blanket on a brisk October morn.

Okay, Ned. Ned is packed with fall vibes right now, evidently. I mean, I think that pretty nicely captures like, where most accountants are at. What did he say? I'm an accountant to my core, certified and framed, no less. That means I'm about balance. This probably boils down to a lot of accountants being risk averse and not knowing what's on the other side of a new path, even though you know it could be great. Just not willing to make that commitment. Like that's, that's probably as a product of us just being change averse. Ned said he didn't just want to be the guy with the tiny pumpkins. And yeah, I mean, couldn't blame him on a number of levels. But I think the analogy was if you've got like a. A field full of various types of pumpkins, you're inevit. Like there's this element of you're inevitably missing the boat. Right. Like you're inevitably missing the boat if you decide to just do that one thing. And we're all curious and we love seeing new things and getting exposed to new things. And so I think there's also an element of fun where it kind of feels less fun to specialize in some ways. But you know what else isn't fun? Running a business that doesn't make that much money and you have to work a ton and all of that stuff. I. In my opinion, while this is, this is actually aligns with the argument most accountants would make, I would argue there's actually like A lot of nuance and fun to be found. The deeper you go there. It's just you don't see it yet because you're not in there. Like you're, you're up to your ankles and the next step is to go on up to your knees. But I get it. I think a lot of this comes from accountants. Natural sort of natural aversion to risk taking. But just humor me here. Let's work on defining your unique selling proposition. Your usp, if you want to call it that, that's actually not exactly a usp. Everybody's got their different ways of doing this, but what I like about this is I've got a, a whole kind of mega prompt built out on ChatGPT that you can grab in the show notes. Literally just click through it. It will take you into a conversation where it asks you one question and then what it gives you back I think is going to be really helpful for you to think through what that more specific version of your firm could be. So I, I developed this notion of like what your statement, your firm statement ought to be a bit in the video yesterday, but it's basically what do you need to absolutely punch somebody in the face with the moment they get to your website? I can tell you what you shouldn't be punching him in the face with a picture of an old white guy and his wife on a beach looking relaxed. Statements like peace of mind, stock photography, whatever, CCH firm website builder gave you that hero statement at the top of your website, in my opinion needs to hit on three things. The pain you solve, who the person is whose pain you want to solve, and what that person does. So the pain you solve, what is that like very explicitly, what do they do? Are they dentists? Do they run a creative agency? Are they a professional badminton player? And then who they are, are they a mom? Are they change averse? Do they like meeting in person? Do they want to work with you asynchronously? Are they elderly? Combine those three things into a concise statement and then this statement is the thing that sits at the top of your website. It is front and center on LinkedIn. Because you get that short little statement, it'll show under your name anywhere people see you on LinkedIn. It's the kind of thing that's going to live at the top of your bio on social media. And you're super sick of this analogy by now. And I'm sorry, but it has to be so specific to make somebody stop in their tracks. And I know I'm Going to do the whole book on the shelf thing in a bookstore, you want it to be so specific that somebody goes and stops in their tracks when they're like scrolling past. And then they're like, what? Someone who solves for the cash flow pains? In my seasonal taxidermist business, you're looking for something hyper specific because that's how you find people, as specificity. And I know that's counterintuitive because we think the more we open it up, the more we'll find people. But that's how you find the little league coach and your spouse's friend. Those aren't AAA clients, bud. Like, there's, there's a community element to that where it's like, hey, great, you're the one helping them out. But if you're looking to build a killer biz, the world is a whole lot bigger than that. And our brains really aren't. Like a lot of this stems from our brains not being able to comprehend how big the world is and how specific the problems are that people have out there. And the fact that you can build a big business around an itty bitty, very specific tiny profile. So onto this thing that I put together and then I'll run through kind of some example uses of it. So to bring it back to the three things I think we need to define, let me start first with the pain that you solve for this individual. So this is one of three components in your usp. What is the pain that you solve? And the easy thing to do here is say, I do accounting and I do tax. But honestly that's kind of boring because everybody knows what that means. And if you're serving a very specific type of person, there's usually a cool service that you can add on to what your firm does that is going to differentiate you from other firms. Because you know who else solves for accounting and tax problems? Every other accounting and tax firm. And while it's better that you're doing it for seven figure gig worker beekeepers, it's still not as specific as it can be. It's like there's a version of pains you can solve that I feel like 90% of the time can be more specific than tax and accounting. And so for me and practice that was like managing the back office for a dentist who like, what they wanted to do is practice dentistry, they didn't want to do that stuff. Or it was, you know, managing cash flow for a company that was doing tons and tons of purchasing and they had money coming in from jobs at Very different times. And so that became really hard to manage. Stuff like that where it's something that today you may not even explicitly outline in your services, but it is a very specific to them problem that you fundamentally make better for them. And so in the question of what is the pain that we solve, see if you can do something better than accounting or tax. Even if you go accounting or tax, you're going to be better than 95% of firms here. But I challenge you to go like even further to what is an avatar specific version of that pain that you can really hit on in that statement. So first, what is the pain that you're solving? Second, what do they do? And this is basically just like the nature of their work, their industry. Are they a dentist? Are they an emt? Are they a beekeeper? And then third, who are they? And this is one where like there's a ton of nuance in this. And this is actually the meat of the tool that I kind of built out here in ChatGPT because can you, can you throw this who they are out? Yes, you can say I solve pains for dentists. Better than nothing, but not as good as it can be. We help realtors save on taxes. Like better than nothing, but not as good as it can be. And this is where the who they are really drills down into something that that'll make people stop in their tracks, Gang. This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow. Live Flow is the easiest way to sync that QuickBooks data back and forth to your spreadsheets. You may see this actually a big announcement lately. So this fall G2 gave them the top spot in their fall 2023 report as the leader in the financial analysis category. That's right. They won number one. Nice work. If you've been around my channels for a while, you've seen Lifeloat kindly. They have sponsored quite a bit of stuff. And I'm not, I mean I'm not saying I'm taking credit for it, but that was probably why I'm not familiar with Live Flow. Super easy way to sync that stuff. Sync your QuickBooks data back and forth with Google sheets. They got a whole pile of templates too to make the process of building that stuff for the first time as easy as possible for you. Stuff for managing cache, AP KPIs, like everything you can imagine. Sync that data into your existing sheets to make them smarter, get it to auto sync or build your like custom new sheets that with QuickBooks totally from scratch. Pretty cool tool. Check that one out@liflo.IO this episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at Cloud Accountant Staffing. Do you hire accountants? Bless your little heart. Not the best part of the job, in my opinion. Not something I ever enjoyed. Well, listen, you can build your accounting dream team with talented offshore accountants in the Philippines that work 100% full time for your firm. Their accountants aren't freelancing or contracting for multiple firms. They're all yours. They work exclusively for you and are incentivized to stay with you and your team long term. They're not going to get swiped. Cloud account staffing is 100% dedicated to the accounting industry and founded by a former accounting firm owner that understands your business, knows your pain points. They had to hire some accountants and they said, you know what, we're going to build our own pipeline in the Philippines, going to pull in some super talented people and then open that up to other firms. Basically that's the story. I've been talking about a lot about staffing, building more resilient staffing pipelines for your firms. I had staff in the Philippines like totally red pilled me to like, oh geez, like we need to globalize the way that we get our work done. Check these folks out. Link in the show description Cloud accountantstaffing. Com. So I've got a whole bunch of categories within this, who they are. And this is all built into the ChatGPT prompt that you can swipe so you don't have to type any of this out or anything. But just to give you a bunch of ideas for how specific this, who they are, these demographics can get, I'm going to run you through a bunch of these their revenue level. So you already have in your head a notion of how big this company ought to be to be a good fit for you. You got to define that in your statement. So is this micro businesses? Is this seven figure creative agencies, what we talked about in the video yesterday? So revenue is a big one. Demographics, Are they moms? Are they millennials? Are they zoomers? Although are they elderly geographics? Are they in a specific region? Are they in a specific country? I know with tax stuff in the US there's a lot of very regional and state specific reasons to just serve a specific state or even smaller than that if you're doing international stuff. Obviously that's a monster. These are all different levels of specificity that you can layer in and I'm in favor of always looking for more specificity. Next, Tech Stack. Is there a niche industry tool that you've got expertise in talking with somebody the other day that like they've nailed this really kind of awful software in the interior design space that most people use and they finally like through building some of their own stuff, got it to work the way that they need it to and now like can absolutely get that thing humming. I think in the Q and A we like, we ran through an example of somebody that was working with a specific construction software. That's absolutely a level of specificity that you can lean into. Because if you already have expertise in that tool, I want my next client to be using that tool. Right? So put that in there. The business life cycle stage. So are they a startup in growth mode? Are they a mature company? Are they pre seed venture backed? What is their business structure? Are they sole proprietor? Are they a nonprofit? What is their appetite for tech? Are they early adopters? Are they late adopters? Are they digital native? Their management style or management approach to the business is, do they want this to be like a passive thing for them? Are they very hands on? If you got folks who are treating this as a passive investment, there's a way that you can deliver that service that's going to feel very specific to them. What is their decision making profile? Are they a CEO? Are they a CFO who needs like say controllership help? Are they board members? Are they investors? The way that you deliver that service can absolutely be optimized for the profile of the person who's going to make that buying decision. What are their growth objectives? Are they scaling? Are they bootstrapped? Are they looking to make acquisitions? What, what is their service preference? Do they prefer self service where they only have to talk with someone when they absolutely have to, or do they prefer the other end of the spectrum, white glove where you're gonna sweep in and do everything for them? What is their value sensitivity? Are they price driven or value driven? Do they just wanna pay somebody for hours? There's a very profitable business to be made around that. Especially as things trend one way. There's always gonna be a great business to be built around the folks that don't want it to trend that way. Time sensitivity? Do they expect you to get back to them right away? Can they pick up and call you anytime? Do they want to bring work to you ad hoc? Are they night owls? Do they want to work on the weekends? Client work style, virtual in person? I think that stuff there's going to be even more of a premium on now as as we're kind of going the other direction, but a whole bunch of different demographics to where you can get very specific with the type of person that you want to work with so that they see this and they're like, oh my gosh, finally, yes, somebody that will solve this problem in the way that I prefer. It can align with the type of people that you want to work with and the type of people, the ways that you want to turn up to work every day. Maybe that's remote, maybe you love doing the in person stuff. It can be aligned with the way that you want to work and the way that people want to engage with you. And if you're resisting this level of specificity, I hate to break it to you, but this is the thing that's keeping you up at night right now is the fact that you love working this way or you want to do this, but your clients don't align with it. And so as we're thinking, how do we bring in our next client? That is the perfect client profile. Don't be afraid to get specific. The least impressive thing in the world to me is that website that's bringing in 500 leads a month. I could drive down the highway on a motorcycle without a windshield, note my mouth and catch a lot of bugs and I could open it so wide and say, look at me, look how many bugs I'm catching. But at the end of the day, that's not going to fill my tum tum. So I'm going to pop over to ChatGPT here and just as an example, show you how easy it is to use this prompt. So again, the link is in the show notes. All you gotta do is click through it and it pulls you into the conversation. It's a big long prompt you don't have to mess with when you get in chat. GPT is just gonna respond, tell me about the types of clients you serve, their industry, demographics, character traits and the services you provide to them. That's what it's gonna ask you. Just answer that question. That's literally all you have to do. So, for example, I replied, we provide real time accounting services to Series A blockchain startups. Based on my response, it's going to give me 10 example USPs, so I'll read a few of these here. Instant financial clarity for Series A blockchain innovators. We synchronize finance with innovation for Series A blockchain firms. Tailored accounting precision for Series A blockchain visionaries. Accelerating Series A blockchain success through proactive accounting. And then it's going to give you 10 ideas to get even more specific because the reality is where most of us are at right now I think is not in a place that is specific enough. So after that it will give you 10 examples how you can get more specific. So for this series, a blockchain example said highlight specific blockchain niches like NFTs, crypto exchanges. Emphasize tech integrations. It says we leverage, for example in brackets, specific software. 3. Geographical expertise for the timing of how you deliver services. Let's do another example that isn't quite so cutting edge. I can say I prepare personal taxes for the elderly and person at a retirement home. Some example USPs easing tax burdens for retirees enjoying their golden years. Oh boy, think we missed out on a golden bachelor joke here. Personalized tax services for seniors right in your community. Compassionate tax help for elder residents without leaving home. And then some examples of how to get more specific local community focus. Level of experience with seniors has decades of tax experience. Privacy assurance confidential and respectful. I would encourage you if you feel like you've gotten specific yet or not. It is as simple as opening this ChatGPT conversation from the show notes logging into ChatGPT, giving it one line or two about either the type of people you help now or of your current profile. Like who are your favorites? Like who would you like to work with more? Or man, take a flyer if you're like there's nothing here I'm super jazzed about. But I actually love tennis and I want to spend all day talking with people who run tennis centers or you know, professional, semi professional people who play tennis. Put that dream client in there and this thing's actually going to give you a pretty darn good starting point for what those one liner statements for your firm could be the kind of stuff that you want highlighted on social media and at the top of your website. But then it will also give you even more specific ways to drill down into that further and in fact you could then use that to take take the conversation further. So I'm still on this elderly example. I'm going to say give me 10 more USP examples using the specificity recommendation. 5. You gave me having a more local community focus so I'm just continuing this conversation and now it's giving me more specific ones. Neighborhood Tax guide for our Senior community heroes your next door tax ally for retirement home residents bracketed your city's trusted tax partner for senior care centers. Homegrown tax expertise for the retirement homes retirees. Super helpful for brainstorming. I'm not great at naming stuff and like the catchy like how to be concise. I've never been very good at that stuff and I think most accounts probably share that disease because we're just not really marketing minds to begin with. Super encourage you check that out. If you land on something you think is compelling, please post it in the comments and, and we can kind of share some ideas. Some of these are really good, some of them aren't. But being able to visualize really good ones and the ones that people liked and were drawn to, I think that's helpful for all of us to pull us closer to something that works for us. So super, super recommend you make that big upgrade to your website. I challenge you. Remember, this is not a forever thing, but the flywheel you're looking for here is a super specific like, call out on that website and then going out and finding where those people are hanging out. What are the podcasts that that type of person listens to? What are the problems those people have that I can show up and talk about on social media every week so that you have people bumping into you? Because the big struggle most of us have with social media is what do I have to say? But the more specific the people you're helping and the problems they have, you'll find the more you have to say that matters because you just go, if you just go shout general tax thoughts or small business advice into the ether, you're up against a million other people every single day. More than that, if you talk about, you know, how you can work with retirement homes to like handle these tax obligations or the families of retirees, you get really specific about those things and then talk about them consistently. People will be absolutely thrilled that they found you because you are for like such a specific to them sort of problem. Encourage you to check that out if you have any, like stories of going specific and that being a positive experience too. That goes a long ways with people to be able to see others having success with that. Please share that if that was you. Thanks for coming to Hanging today. I'll see you tomorrow.