239 How Your Online Network Leads to More Profitable Work

Man, I do not like networking. It just feels yucky. Like my mind goes straight to real estate agent pushing their card on you. But I can tell you what I do enjoy actually is the online equivalent of that. When it's not done slimily in a slimy way. We are all inundated with awful, slimy cold DMs that are fully automated every single day. And it turns a lot of people off to networking online. But the reality is 99% of people on social media are, are completely normal, well meaning people that could enable stuff for your firm. So I wanna run through a bunch of examples today of how networking online and just generally being helpful for people can enable some really cool new stuff. From finding new clients to getting in front of your ideal client. And how many of these problems that we have are actually network problems. And because most firms are still not leaning into oh man, social media and all that stuff is easier than you'd think to build a killer network that'll lead to a way cooler firm. Come on in. Got some ideas, let's talk about it. We did an episode previously about the art of the DM of the cold dm. When people think social media, that could also be cold email. When people think social media, they think like mega influencers, your Kim Kardashians of the world and putting stuff out that gets a bunch of engagement. But that's not really what social media is like. Social media is engaging on other people's posts and building relationships and not being afraid to take things to the DMs in a like business casual sort of way. Cause the really wild thing today is it's another example of a thing that the Internet enabled that accounting firms really haven't adapted to yet. The wild thing today is that like we have access to just about anybody. And if you know how to get somebody's attention or offer them something of value and kind of learn how to play this game, you can build connections with, you know, that, that well respected consultant in the space or the podcast host or the influencer or whoever it is, the people behind that, you know, association. We have an opportunity here to build a relationship with people who can enable some really cool stuff for our firm. And what got me, has gotten me particularly amped about this lately. We're doing this series in my online community about how to launch membership communities from inside of accounting firms. We talked about that a couple weeks back. And when you're, when you're launching a new thing like a new community like that, you get it off the ground. In day one with a launch event like a star studded big launch event that you try to drive as many people to as possible, that's just going to be super valuable. And rather than putting that entire launch event on your back, and this is, I'm talking through the context of launching a community, but this could also just be a little webinar that you run for your accounting firm. Could be something much more humble. The biggest, coolest, most impressive version of this is not one that's a hundred percent you just you doing all the heavy lifting. It is the one that assembles like the Avengers of personalities in this space. Like if you've got the, you know, high profile, attorney broker, podcast host, whoever it is, the coolest event possible for this space is a combination of a bunch of these different types of people. Think about like a movie poster. What a like ridiculous star studded lineup on a movie poster would be the ultimate event to attract people in a space to something would be that lineup of people where folks see the lineup and they're like, holy smokes, I can't, like, I can't miss that. And so as we're having these conversations, it's kind of dawned on me that most of us are network blocked. If we had access to a bunch of these folks who could enable opportunities for us, it all gets way easier. Putting together that killer event gets easier. Getting an intro to the next really impressive person gets easier because the impressive person that you do know can make a warm intro. In fact, if you think about it, if you're trying to build a more specific accounting firm, we talk a lot about, you know, content to attract people that are like a very specific type of person to your content. But if you pair that with building a network of folks who already have that audience, who are already investing in getting in front of the same type of person that you want to get in front of, networking with those people as well and cross pollinating audiences and being able to work together, that's going to make it way easier for you to ramp up the speed at which you build that very specific following. So, so who do we connect with if we have like infinite, if an in him infinite access, what sort of people should we be thinking about connecting with? First and foremost, this can be as simple as like making a new friend. And that's maybe even the most like rewarding version of this is when you actually build a real relationship with somebody and you enjoy talking with them. And maybe there's ways that you can benefit each other, but like first and Foremost, like you just made a new buddy. But other examples of potential network connections that you can make. You know, we've talked before about the value of being able to go on a podcast. Like, you've already got a podcast, somebody else's podcast out there, the big audience, you being able to go on there. That's how a ton of people have found me. Actually. I wouldn't be surprised if a very big percentage of people listening today found me from somebody else's podcast. So being able to get connected with that podcast host to be a guest, being able to connect with a consultant. Consultants are great because they're already a collection of people, people in that space. A consultant is always looking for more content and more subject matter experts. So you could probably come in and help them out with content or at least be a sounding board. And consultants also charge for what they do. So there's that filter there of who are the folks in this space who will already cut a check to get help? Like, that's, that's actually a really helpful filter. So consultant is somebody we could connect with. A software company, arguably of anyone in an entire space who's pouring the most dollars into getting in front of specific individuals, that answer will almost always be software companies. And so if I'm working with taxidermists, what are these software tools that taxidermists are using to run their businesses? In the past, it would have been something general. These days, there's a software platform for almost every type of business. And the reality is they have entire marketing budgets carved out to get in front of more of those people every single month. And, and I have expertise that they don't have that can help them attract eyeballs. So if I can work with them to get in front of the type of people I want to serve, that's great, right? But how do you weasel your way into that software company and find the right person to make that connection? A few other examples of valuable DMs that we could be sending buddy up with an influencer. Like, I'm probably biased here, but I'm so bullish on the quote unquote influencer, especially niche influencers. As traditional media continues to be dismantled and most content is trending towards, like, entertainment and you layer in, you know, AI and not, not really being able to know what to believe. I think the future of, like, business content is people, people putting content out and then followers building relationships with those people because they trust them. And that is how they know that they're getting good information, whether that's you know, whether that's justified or not, they build a relationship with that person. So there's trust there. So, you know, I serve, for example, I serve kind of as a filter for like, okay, what are the interesting AI news tidbits that people need to be paying attention to? And folks will largely trust me to like give them the relevant stuff to accountants while like filtering out the stuff that's not relevant. Like if there's something that, something massive that drops. And interestingly, as I, as I say this, this day, OpenAI is doing a live stream, which could be very interesting, but something like that, let's say it's massively impactful for our profession. You better believe we're going to do an episode about it. So influencers in society today hold this place of trust and that makes them a very valuable person to have in your network to be able to make connections. Associations. Almost every type of business, business can belong to some sort of association. Those things just seem to crop up everywhere. They run live events, they run trainings. Not unlike software companies, they are investing in getting in front of the same folks you want to get in front of. Communities. There's communities for just about everything now and many of them are like hiding in plain sight. I've actually been this year. I get a lot of speaking requests and I've got a number of speaking requests from communities that I'd never even heard of. Many, many of which are more like mid sized accounting firm communities. And these things are everywhere. A couple weeks ago I was in Florida speaking at pasba's conference. Interesting thing about communities is they kind of move in packs. Like if one person in the community has a good experience with something, oftentimes you'll get all the other people in the community. So if I'm an accounting firm and I can enable something for a member of that community, like that can lead to a whole bunch of work. Last thing I've got here for a potential DM target is a potential client. Like, it can be as simple as man, this person would make a great client and I'm pretty sure that I could help them. But oh, how do I do that without it coming off slimy like every single other cold DM out there, right? Like, how do I not get bucketed with all of just the automated fluff that's going out on all the social media channels? So kind of wild thing about DMS is you could literally clear your calendar for the rest of the day and spend the rest of your, like, spend the rest of today sending dms to all sorts of different types of people and groups and all that. And how fruitful that will be will ultimately be a product of like, okay, how. How have we learned how to navigate the social ladder and find the right person to connect with? How tactful are we being about? Are we just asking for something or are we offering something of value? Like, it has to be the latter. We all get a million dms every single day asking you to get on a call or to do this or that. And I'm like, why would I, why would I do this for you? So that sort of dm, just forget about it. But you could genuinely spend the rest of the day sending dms trying to make new connections. And in this day and age, this is such a big opportunity. Like, it is so important. It is almost the sort of thing that's worth carving out weekly time for. Like, how do I work my way into this network or that network if I truly believe that it will enable cool new things for my firm? So of all the different types of DMs that you could put be sending out, from making a friend with somebody to connecting with a consultant, to reaching out to an association to see if you can, you know, speak at their next conference, of all the things you could do on one end of the spectrum, at the very top, you have super high leverage connections. Say there's a podcast host with a massive podcast. And the reality is if we're talking about like niche, smaller domains, the podcast, in the grand scheme of things, it will not be that huge. But podcast host is an example of a very high leverage connection because the nature of what they do is getting in front of a whole bunch of people. At the other end of the spectrum, like the one to one very simple, very humble version of this is pinging somebody who would make a great client. And so I want to run through a practical example of each of those ends of the spectrums, from a podcast host to just somebody that could be a client. And I know the question here is like, well, what's the right one? Should I, should I just go for the high leverage ones? But if I'm a DM away from like this being a great client, shouldn't I also send that? But like, the answer is probably yes to all of the above. I'm actually pretty convinced that out just outside our client bubble is a whole bunch of people who know you and have maybe seen you do other things and respect what you do or know someone who does work with you, where if they felt just the slightest bit corded, they would be like, why am I not working with this person who specializes in what I do rather than this crotchety firm that I'm not particularly impressed by that I work with now? I actually think there's a whole like ring of people just outside your current client base who are probably a message or an email away from being happy to work with you. So isn't that valuable? Shouldn't we be doing that? Probably. Is it super high leverage? No, not as high leverage as like going on a podcast or something like that. So the answer is probably we should be doing a little bit of all of this. Episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow of the spring G2 little award badges just came out. You know G2 like the software platform review platform? What? The software review platform? I'm just going to read you the spring Little award badges that Live Flow won. Leader. That's all it says. Just leader. Spring 2024 next one best estimated ROI best usability most implementable best relationship AW and momentum leader. All those just from spring 2024 lifeblow. It takes your QuickBooks data, syncs it out to Google Sheets or Excel, whichever flavor you prefer. And obviously the kids are loving it because they're burning down G2. Big news lately is they now support Excel Suite Score. Huzzah. And shortly before that they released consolidations. The ability to roll up different company chart of accounts. Like whether they have matching chart of accounts or not. They give you a super straightforward way to consolidate. Consolidate those things. Man. When I was running a firm we had like 20 plus company consolidations that were so much bloody work to roll up. We actually stopped doing it monthly because it was just taking so much time. And we said we're only gonna give you the consolidations quarterly cause we can't be bothered to do it. This makes all that way easier. And because it will actually sync that data out like live in real time on an ongoing basis. You can even do some cool like near real time consolidated stuff. Pretty wild. Learn more about this one. The link in the show notes this episode is brought to you in part by Team up, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between Team up and all the other offshoring options. The Team up helps you hire staff directly. No middleman. You work directly with your new hire in the Philippines. Hire the person, not the company. Guys. Gals gang. Here's just a few reasons to hire directly. You have access to higher level talent. Makes sense. You have complete control over team culture and training they keep 100% of what you pay them and it's a lot more affordable for you so you can retain your team for the long term. Team up can source accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Zero, QBO and DeX. Also recruit specialist roles, team leaders, tax specialists, administrative assistants, thought experiment. What if you had an executive assistant for the first time this tax season? Just. Just throwing it out there. What would they do? Start at that email video I did on the main channel recently. Get help with that stanky ol inbox. I digress. Team up recruits these talented folks for a flat one time fee of 4,000 US American dollars. That's it. 4K one time. Somebody at Robert Half just did a spit take. Robert Half reference. We ever going to get Robert Half to sponsor this pod? Not anymore. And they can connect you with an affordable employer of record if you need help with payroll and compliance once you hire that person. Big fan of hiring in the Philippines. You know I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Timo. So let's start with an example of reaching out to a podcast host. How do we do that? That feels scary and kind of slimy. I've got kind of an order of operations here for five things that you can do before just sending that totally cold dm. Because a cold DM or email is the worst case scenario, right? Like best case scenario, I'm best friends with their best friends and they say you two should be best friends. If we got that. Great. That's the best case scenario. Straight up, cold DM is the worst case scenario. But there's a whole bunch of steps in between there. So I jotted down a little like order of operations here, number one. And this is where you should start before sending a cold DM. Number one, do you know anyone that they know? LinkedIn is really helpful here. You can see any connections that you have in common. If somebody has told you about this person or you've had a conversation, it seems like the two of them know each other. The place to start here is to see if somebody is willing to make an intro. And when you ask someone for an intro, make it clear why it's going to be worth that person's time. If a software vendor reaches out to me and they have asking, hey, I know that you know this other person, could you intro me to them? I'm going to be like. So that you can just send them like sell them software? No, I'm not going to burn my social Capital on an intro like that. So when you do ask somebody for an intro in as concise a way as possible, make clear what, like, why there is a good reason to do that. In order for that person to feel good about making the intro, like, they have to also see that as a win win. And if they do, they're actually excited to make that intro because they're kind of like facilitating this thing, right? They're like, yeah, I'm actually connecting two people that I really enjoy and this will probably be a net positive, but if you don't have anything to offer, it's hard to expect them to make that intro. Right? And so in how we frame what we're asking for that, that becomes very important. We're gonna talk about that next. So number one, order of operations. Do you know anyone that they know? Number two, and we're looking specifically at the podcast here. Do you know any past podcast guests? Have they had anyone on the podcast in the past that you know? If so, see if that past podcast guest is willing to make an intro, reach out to him and be like, man, I love the podcast that you did talking about this and that. I think it could be helpful for the audience if they also discuss this or that. And I would love to go on the pod to do so. Would you be interested in making an intro to the host, something like that? Number three, do you know anyone who has sponsored the pod? That's kind of a backdoor. If you got a relationship with a software company, an association, anything like that, who has like partnered with that podcast in the past, that that's a potential group that could make an intro for you. Number four, we're working down the spectrum of like, just how connected are you? Number four, Are you associated with any past guests? Was a past guest a tax accountant? And you're like, I'm a tax accountant too. And here's this kind of interesting spin on what we could do. Or was a past guest somebody that worked for a bill pay company and you're like, well, my accounting firm does bill pay for clients. We can give you all the best practices. Is there an association like that that you can make? Number five. And sometimes this is enough. Do you have a social media account with a good ratio? Most of us don't, but if you do, I can tell you it's a massive hack to be somebody that has, you know, 5,000 followers, 20,000 followers. Pick a number to have. That ratio is like, honestly, a golden key into a DM with just about anybody. And frankly, a Great reason to invest in, like the building an audience. I bring this up because sometimes folks will do this where they have a social media account with a great following, but then like, they'll send that person an email. And without any context, if you don't know who that is, they're not going to be very likely to respond. But like Twitter, for example, you send somebody a DM right under the name of that person at the top, it shows how many followers they have. And so on Twitter, if you have a following, it's much, much easier to like, break through that and get somebody to respond and look legitimate. And if you do have a following, but most of us don't have that. So the worst case scenario, how to navigate when you have none of the above, Write a cold dm. Honestly, if. If you have none of the above, it's maybe even worth factoring in. Is it worth sending this cold DM now, or is there somebody else who is connected to someone I already know who I'd have a greater chance of success of connecting with? So, like doing the full yolo, I don't have any other connections with this person. That's always going to be the hardest thing, right? So. So maybe a better way of this is like actually, baby stepping into, okay, I have a good relationship with this person already. I know that they know this other person very well. How can I provide something of value to this other person? And I don't want this to sound like scummy climbing the social ladder sort of thing. Like, we genuinely have to be able to come into this and say, I can give this person something valuable. Like, that's what this all comes down to is helping people. Like, what I do in my business is try to make connections and try to enable opportunities for people, even if there's seemingly no benefit to you, because it does always come back around. So the much easier version of this is the one where you're already sort of connected with that person. But let's say you can't do that. The full yolo cold dm. Here's what I'm going to do. Specifically for going on a podcast. This sucker is going to be concise. We talked about this a bit in the past DM episode, but I'll just give you a few practical examples. My framework for how I would do this. So super concise. Four sentences or less. First sentence, call out a related podcast episode that they did and you liked. You're gonna do that in one sentence. What this does is, separates you from all of the automated Folks, the people who are sending 10,000 DMs a day, they're gonna be like, okay, this person has actually listened to my podcast. They're already in the 1% of people who I get DMs from. Second sentence, you're gonna explain what you do very concisely. This is like developing some social proof. Why should they have any interest or be listening to you? And for most of us, that's gonna be. I run a accounting firm that specializes in what they do. Third sentence, I'm gonna give them three potential topics for high converting really valuable podcast episodes. Stuff that only you know because you're running an accounting firm. The six biggest things this type of business gets wrong. You know, the best, tax deductions, stuff like that. And I honestly think, like, we have a really unfair advantage here because this is really valuable information. And because accountants generally don't lean into new media, there's not an abundance of accountants going on these podcasts. So most of the time, these podcast hosts are going to be like, oh, man, this would be great for my audience. Especially because it's the sort of thing that's normally like, paywalled behind having an advisor. And then fourth sentence, give them really easy next steps. Too many DMs are asking too much of the person on the other side. Same thing with cold emails. You need to give them a super clear option for what needs to happen next. Could be a link to your calendar if they want to chat about it. Could be just asking them, which of those episode ideas, if any, do you like the most? And I'll give you kind of a bigger outline that we could work on. And so they respond like, I like the second idea. Tell me what that would look like. You just outline it a little bit further. You're going to look more legit in your response because they're going to be like, oh, yeah, this stuff is like the real deal. But the only thing that you ask them to do is which of these do you like? And then. And then you're gonna come back with an outline. And the work of building that episode is 90% done. So you've made it as easy as possible for them to reply. And they're genuinely going to be appreciative that you've done the work of, like, thinking through this and given. Basically given them content that will be valuable to their audience. So a few examples of what this could look like. I tossed this framework into Claude. In fact, I'll put. We're gonna use two prompts here today. I'LL put both prompts in the show notes if you want to try the same thing with AI to draft some cold DMs or at least give you ideas for what your DM could look like. I'm using Claude AI here. I think it's a little bit better than ChatGPT right now at this sort of writing. Basically all I did was I gave Claude this kind of four sentence framework for how to draft this and I've made up a specialization here. I said draft a cold DM using this framework. It's a podcast about game development companies which is also the niche of my firm. Okay, here's a sample DM from from Cloud AI here.

Hi Name I enjoyed your recent episode on funding challenges for indie game devs. Great insights from the game studio founder. I run tax quest CPAs. Ooh, tax question specializing in tax and accounting for game development companies. Three potential episode ideas Tax strategies to maximize government funding like video games credits Accounting best practices for game devs to avoid costly mistakes Financial forecasting tips for studios to better plan new game budgets. Let me know if you'd like me to flesh out any of those topics or feel free to book a time on my calendar to discuss. Calendar link.

Calendar link. Not bad. I'd maybe make the suggested like podcast episodes a little more concise. Like tax credits for game dev companies. The most costly accounting mistakes for game dev companies. Forecasting tips for planning new game budgets. And then at the end it says let me know if you'd like me to flesh out any of those topics. Or feel free to book a time on my calendar to discuss. I'd probably say let me know if any of those ideas sound interesting and I'll flesh one out further for you to review. Or here's my calendar if you want to chat. Because I literally just want them to say like one or two or three. Which of those ideas do they like? Super quick and easy to respond. Nothing for them to lose, right? And then I'll give them the outline and they're like, well, we got to do this now because you may not believe this yet. You have so much to offer these people. You really do. And so it's in the podcast. So it's best interest to let you Come on, let's generate one other idea. What sort of specialization should we do here? How about taxidermy?

Hi Name I really enjoyed your recent episode on the challenges of scaling a taxidermy business while maintaining quality taxidermy. As the founder of Taxidermy Tax. Oh, Taxidermy Tax A Tax and accounting firm specializing in the taxidermy industry. I help business owners like your listeners navigate these challenges every day. I think your audience would find tremendous value in an episode where we dive into the top five tax deductions most taxidermy business owners miss. How to structure your taxidermy business to minimize taxes as you scale accounting best practices to ensure profitable and compliant taxidermy operation. If any of these topics resonate, I'd be happy to book a time on your calendar to brainstorm how we could deliver an impactful episode. Just let me know, Just let me know.

So cloud AI is just text chat back and forth. I'm using a different app to give it a voice. This one is very, very like mysterious. I like it. Same notes for this one. Really? I'd probably try to keep the episode idea is a little More concise. Top 5 tax deductions for taxidermists. How to structure your business to minimize tax accounting best practices to keep your taxidermy company compliant. This one is very tax focused. I wonder if it's because of the word taxidermy. Like it seems like it was talking a lot about tax rather than accounting, but basically I want them to be like, yep, tell me more about this one. Keep it super simple for them to respond. And if they look at that gang like, they're almost certainly going to be like, yes, please. Because podcast hosts are on that content hamster wheel. They're always thinking about when is what is my next content going to come from? And if somebody can spoon feed it to them, hand deliver it, they're generally gonna be super thankful. So I'll put that cloud prompt in the show notes. Feel free to swipe it if you need any help. Remember, as you're drafting anything with AI you can do, I mean, you can keep iterating over and over again. So give me more concise versions of these. These podcast ideas. Give me 10 draft emails. That's kind of the beauty of AI is like, it's not like working with a human where when it brings you one thing, you kind of go with that thing. You literally have nothing to lose. Asking it to do it 10 times and then choosing your favorite starting point. This episode is sponsored in part by tech guru. I'm in Florida right now at an accounting conference and you know who else is? I think I probably spoiled it already. Tech gurus here. They're here exhibiting at a conference, an IT company. You know why? Because they understand accountants, they value them. They go around hobnobbing at stuff like this, having conversations about, you know, computer things and whatever it is that IT companies talk about. But the main thing is that they are focused on us and our product problems and the tools that we use and the best way to get that IT stuff handled so that we can focus on the important stuff, which is not it. Now, any old run of the mill IT shop, they're not going to understand your needs same way that Tech Guru does, right? You think about all the other accounting firms. Tech Guru is working with the best practices that they see and develop, working with those firms, and then your firm joins the squad. You better believe you're going to benefit from a bunch of the stuff they've learned with working with other people. Right? Who are you using for IT right now? Huh? Let me take a quick look out the window. Nope, I don't see them here. They're not here. Okay. That's why you should use Tech Guru, because they're here. And I think that about sums it up. Okay, Tech Guru Link in the Show Notes this episode is sponsored in part by Cloud Accountant Staffing. Tell me how this resume sounds. Graduated with an undergrad in accounting in 2012. 14 years experience now. Now the last five with US public accounting firms. Software experience QBO, Xero, Netsuite bless your heart. Bill.com stripe, Shopify, Gusto, Justworks rippling full cycle Accounting Oversaw the monthly close and review. Onboarded new clients, coached and trained staff. Oversaw a small team of bookkeepers getting stuff done. Not bad, huh? That is a real resume from Cloud Accountant Staffing. A super talented accountant in third Philippines that could join your team. Not this person specifically because this ad read might be old, but to find the accountant of your dreams, all you gotta do get on the horn with Cloud account staffing. Talk about what your needs are. They've got recruiters on the ground in the Philippines. They'll find you somebody great. You get some resumes, you do some interviews. You wanna know the wild thing? You don't pay a dime until you decide to hire somebody. Literally. What do you have to lose? The only reason you're gonna end up cutting a check to Cloud account staffing is if you got somebody that you absolutely love. So why not? I shared before I hired a bunch of people in the Philippines. Completely changed how we approached staffing our onshore firm. Give it a try. Link to Cloud Accountant Staffing in the Show Notes so that's getting yourself on a podcast. The one other example I wanted to run through is how do I get somebody to become a client? Which feels much harder and There's a very different approach that you would take to that than getting on a podcast. And this is because we get so many slimy dms of people soliciting their services to us. And like, you just can't do that. Like, that's just not going to work. Maybe it'll work. I don't know. I actually get a ton of those DMs because I'm connected with a ton of accounting firms. And a lot of these accounting firms have automated DMs going out. And so I'm getting messages saying like, hey, we, we help clients say blah, blah, blah on tax and solve these accounting problems and all that. But I think people have pretty largely tuned those out, maybe with the exception of something super, super specific. Honestly, automated DMs might work for mega specific use cases still, but that's in the process of being phased out. It needs to be more personal. So for me to start a relationship with somebody who could potentially be a client who is a good target, you may already have people in mind who you know, who are like, man, this person, they know a bunch of these other clients that I already work with. They would totally be good with this. And if you already know that person, great, that's a good place to start. And I've been saying DMs. This could also be emails, but think about any other data that you have that could indicate interest in what you're doing. Let's say you run a weekly newsletter and you've got a tag in there for who are my clients and who are non clients. Definitely worth taking the time to do that because then I can run a list of who are my most engaged non clients. As we talked about in that sort of email marketing for beginners episode last week, email newsletters are a super rich source of engagement information. Who's most engaging with your stuff, and that could be who's opening the emails. Could also be who's clicking on the stuff in the emails, like who's really going deep. Go out and find the three most engaged people on that email list. That's a great place to start for people who are very interested probably in becoming clients. And like I said, there's a huge number of people out there who, if they felt they were being ever so slightly courted or pursued, they'd be like, yeah, I'll happily change. Because the bar is just so low for what accounting firms are doing today. If you serve people like them and you go out of your way to make them feel special and smart, they're probably happily going to bring their stuff over to you. So last time I shared kind of for podcast I shared that sort of four sentence framework for how to do outreach. I've got a similar kind of three sentence really simple thing here. I'll put a link to the cloud prompt for this one as well in the show notes. My three sentence framework here. 1. Call out how you know them and and something you respect about what they're doing. 2. Explain what you do in one sentence. If they don't know, if they're already on your newsletter, they already know. 3. Then simply offer to provide value to something they're doing. Promoting a webinar, a fundraising event that they run. Adding value to a session that they're running. Like offer to go on it and you know, if they're running a session for other folks like them, like a study group or something like that, offer to come in and talk about what you do now. No, no, not talk about what you do, but deliver something of value like best practices, the common traps that you see, that sort of thing. So we are not asking them to become clients. We are offering to provide something of value to them and, and open the door to a, a more of a relationship, saying that you respect what they do. Which is very different than saying I do this, if you ever want it, come pay me for it. Like that's not what we're doing. So let's give that a go with like say, a potential taxidermy client.

Hi Name. I noticed your incredible taxidermy work showcased at the recent National Taxidermy association conference. I was taxidermy con by your artistry and attention to detail. I run Taxiderm Tax, an accounting firm specializing in tax services for tax and taxidermy businesses across the country. I would love to sponsor refreshments at your upcoming taxidermy demonstration workshop in exchange for the opportunity to introduce myself and my firm services to attendees. Please let me know if you would be open to discussing this idea further.

Okay, so sponsor refreshments at your upcoming taxidermy demonstration workshop. So we're putting our names on the, the water cups or the solo cups or something. AI came up with that idea on its own. Not a terrible idea. So we said that we respect what they do and we offered to be helpful. That's. That's it. That's all we're doing. And you're like, am I really that interested in playing the long game of courting somebody that may or may not someday become a client? The reality is when you go through this process and you actually show up and you meet this person, say you do sponsor this thing, they are then going to have a relationship with you which is unlike a relationship they have with any other accountant. You are now one of one. Mission accomplished. You're there like, and if there is any reality in which they switch, be it now or five years from now, they're gonna go to you first and foremost. You're the first person that's gonna come to mind, right? And especially doing this with well connected people where ultimately that person could even connect you with the next person. Like that's the goal of building that network is the second connection and the third connection. You don't wanna like end up being this hussy that's just asking everybody for introductions. But the more connected you are, the easier all that stuff gets. Let's do one more example. I mean, it's gotta be beekeepers, right? We haven't done anything with beekeepers yet.

Hi Name I've been following your beekeeping journey on platform and I'm impressed by your dedication to sustainable honey production. As the founder of Beekeeper Tax, a firm specializing in accounting and tax services for beekeepers, I'm on a mission to support the financial success of businesses like yours. I love to offer our services to streamline the accounting for your upcoming beekeeping workshop and ensure all proceeds go directly towards your hive expansion initiative. Let me know if you'd like to discuss further. Best.

Ooh, that's actually a good idea. So this person's doing some sort of initiative and we're offering to provide the accounting services for it. That is a great idea. AI, there's some sort of like public service, like good element of this that this person is driving and you come in and you say, we'll do this stuff for you because we believe in your mission. That's great. I actually, especially if they are hub type people and well connected, I have no problem with doing some free work. Like I think about this through the lens of influencers, like high profile people where getting connected with them will ultimately be a big benefit to you. Even if you're a big firm, even if you're a ways down the road. I would argue we don't need to be afraid of doing that if it can lead to more meaningful connections. It's not something that you want to broach with all your clients. And like you got to be really careful not to make your fees negotiable. Right? Like that's the worst thing that we can do. But particularly if it's a A service or a mission oriented thing here, maybe that's even a better example than giving free work to some influencer who frankly probably doesn't need it. They're probably making money. But a mission oriented thing here, what a great way to get into that person's network, right? Oh, that's actually a really good idea. So. So on the outside, the notion of using a DM to like attract a new client feels kind of slimy, right? But man, there's totally good ways to do it that don't need to feel that way. I don't know what the right amount of time is to be investing in this, but like most marketing related things, I just, I just know that the answer is probably not no time, zero time. I know oftentimes we focus with the idea of delegating more and getting out of the client work and all of that. And there's an element of I don't know what I would even do if I did that. The reality is just like doing client work and running an accounting firm, there's always more to do than you're going to have time to do. Turns out the same is true when you get yourself out of client work. There's an abundance of other things that you can do that all work in support of both the business and yourself and your network long term. I think we don't talk enough about just how important it is to that you are the curator of your client list. It's arguably the most important job in an accounting firm is who's led on the list and who's kicked off the list. If you think about a baseball team, by and large that baseball team is going to be as good as the roster of the baseball team. Now the baseball team has an internal staff and folks who train the players and keep them healthy and help them grow and develop and get better and all that. But if you draft somebody that's just a stinker and not any good at playing baseball, you. You don't put your head down and go, okay, let's just keep training them and doing this. Like, no, A lot of that is just about who are they, what type of business do they run, are they ever going to be a good client for us or not? But instead we like cling to the roster that we have and we're like, no, we'll fix them next year. We'll have one more phone call about it and we'll fix them. When in reality we should be thinking about how do I get a better roster, how do I attract clients that Are that are even better for us. But it's hard because it's just that it's one more step of abstraction away from doing the work, which is how all of us got into this, right, doing the work. And a lot of us still really enjoy that. And so if I love doing the work, how do I ever make time for all this other stuff? It's kind of the hard trade off, especially if you're a solo operator. Right. I can tell you, for me, there was a time when I enjoyed doing this stuff, but that actually changed over time as I started exploring more of what it looked like to like manage the business and run the business and not do the client work. I didn't know it beforehand, but the more I waded into that, I actually loved that stuff and I came to enjoy it. And even more than working with the clients, five years before I was out of the firm, if you'd asked me, I would have said, man, I just love helping people and supporting people. But then when we started thinking more tactically and finally made space for a person whose role could be just working on the firm, I found as I started like dipping my toes into that, that I loved it. And a byproduct of doing that work was actually enhancing my personal network to a really exciting degree where I made great relationships with, with a bunch of folks that I still consider friends and just had an abundance of opportunities going forward where, because you now have that network, like it's easy to get connected with this person or that person because you've invested the time in building the network. There was part of me that wanted to make this into a week long series. I won't because I know this is one of those things that I'm really into that is still feels foreign for most people. But I just kept bumping into situations where I realized, man, most people right now they're just network blocked. Like if they could buddy up with that consultant that already has a hundred clients, who would be dream clients for you, then the question is not how do I start building a new niche practice. The question's as simple as how do I buddy up with this consultant? How do I provide value to them so that I can get in front of and support the same people that they support. Right? It's a network problem. And network problems have never gotten easier to navigate than now thanks to social media, thanks to LinkedIn and all that stuff. And not everybody is online, but generationally, more and more people will be. So this is the worst and the least connected. All this stuff will ever be. It's like, I mean, coming up in a firm when you're younger and you're like, man, all These clients are 20 years older than me. This is really hard. How do I actually advise somebody that is 20 years my senior? And then you grow up a little bit and you start getting clients that are your age and you're like, oh, my gosh, this is so much easier, like, to be able to speak the same language and not to have to constantly be trying to prove yourself to folks that just have way more life experience than you. I absolutely think that's also the case with social media. Every day, more people are coming online and more of the profession is coming online, not only in accounting, but in every other space that there is. You look at the next generation like taking over a legacy business. There's a big transition there, and that next generation has a different approach to how to run that business. And more of that stuff is coming online and is becoming accessible for folks who are spending time there and being visible. That's all I got for today. If you've had any, like, DM wins or cold email wins, would love to hear it, man. I've had more than I can count. In fact, Jonathan Stark. I'll call it out. I don't know if you know Jonathan Stark. I read that guy's stuff like, five years ago, and I've always followed him. He commented on one of my LinkedIn posts recently and I sent him a DM. I'm like, hey, you just want to chat sometime? Because we kind of run similar businesses now. Hopped on a zoom last week. Lovely bloke. And that never would have happened if I hadn't been like, I'm just gonna send a DM. And the cool thing about DMs is, like, what do you have to lose? Usually not much. So, got any cool DM stories? Drop them in the comments. I'd encourage you to get uncomfortable, take a risk. Send a DM today, and if it pans out for you, let me know. That'd be really cool and it'd be good to share with the rest of the folks who engage with this stuff. Thanks for coming and hanging today. I'll see you tomor.