522 How To Launch Your Accounting Firm’s Online Community

A lot of accounting firms still talking about or doing some version of running a community in support of the accounting firm. Like it's a way to find new clients. Also a way to make a little bit more passive revenue on their existing clients. Online communities still huge. I think we're coming off the community bubble a little bit. But my business, I mean what, what got me out of running an accounting firm, it is running an online community. Recently I gave a talk to a whole bunch of community runners and had to kind of organize my thoughts, maybe for the first time, about my own journey and how I built mine. I want to give you some really practical advice if it's something that you've considered, who it's a fit for, who it's not a fit for, and just get very, very tactical about what worked for me. So you can see if a community might make sense for you. Let's do. Some context if you're new here. So on this podcast we talk about running accounting firms, but in the last three or four years, communities have kind of been bolted to just about any type of business. That can be a very good mechanism for growth, but also just to get you out of one on one work and transition a little more to one too many work, which can just be a vastly more efficient way to help people. Now my approach for community, so my community is called realize. If you listen to the podcast, you've heard me talk about it before. It's got just shy of 600 accounting firms in there. And there's first thing to say is there is a ton of different types of communities out there. My community, it is a, it is a. Almost like a networking group. It is just about connecting with your peers. A lot of communities out there, I think actually where most communities go wrong is you have a single person that's built an audience and then a community is just a paywalled version of access to that person. It's like a fan club. And I think that kind of sucks for a lot of reasons. One, that the whole premise of a community ought to be that we have value to exchange with each other. So why are we just now creating, coming and consuming content from the same person in a more private space, but also for the person running the community. And this is very important for you. If you've thought about running one, consider this, that every amount of effort that you put into the community behind a paywall is effort you could have instead put out for the entire world to benefit from and thus build your own personal brand and increase your reach and so oftentimes, as soon as people spin up a community, all they're doing is now opting into a whole nother job. They're putting stuff out for the world to see. Now they're putting stuff out also for the community to see. That's supposed to be, like, better and higher effort because people are paying to see that, right? And so if you're working your little buns off just to be known in the world without a community, and then you say, hey, you guys want to pay me more money or pay me money for the first time, for even more of this stuff, then you're not only like, doubling what you're doing, you're like tripling it, because the expectation is going to be an even higher bar for what you're delivering to that community. So what is the solution? In my opinion, it is designing a proper community where people get value from each other. And so the way we talk about my community is like. And it says right on the landing page, is this a way to get access to Jason? Like, no. Like, not at all. Am I in there doing stuff, like, for sure, just like everybody else is. But the whole point of that community is for you to connect with other people like you. Because in my personal journey, the most powerful thing I ever encountered was just making friends with people that did what I did. And it took me about three years to build my own peer group, to feel like I had people I could go to with tech questions, with, like, family questions, with client just said this, what do I do next questions. It probably took me three years and a bunch of travel and meeting people to feel like I had that peer group. My community is designed in a way so that when someone comes in, they can feel like they have that within 30 days. And so if you're looking for a version of a community for you that doesn't just become another job, here's what you gotta look for is what are the problems for my clients or for the people that I'm serving that can be solved by other people who do the same thing. And you know, in accountingdom that there are so many examples of this, a big one for accountants is we're always worried we're on the wrong tech stack, right? We're like, oh, is this tool better than that tool? Or this company just put out a press release and says they do this cool new thing? Is this even real? Well, if you got a whole bunch of peers, this is the only solution I've found to this fear is if you have a bunch of peers that you can ask like, hey, is this real? Did this work for you? And some people will be like, yeah, yeah. Others will be like, no, but xyz, like, that is as real an answer as you can possibly get. A whole lot better than what you're going to get from a sales rep or putting something out on social media. But there's also just like more of a isolation problem. And I think every business has this where you may run a team and there's like, nobody that you can talk to about business owner stuff because you can't talk with your team about that stuff. And, man, the first time you sit down with somebody else that understands that so well, it's like, you get it. You just do. You get it. And in my life, in my journey, like, I had all sor of supporting people around me. My wife was extremely supportive, which I'm forever appreciative of. But she didn't run an accounting firm. And so for that reason, I didn't listen to her. No, I'm just kidding. For that reason, the first time I sat down with a bunch of other accountants who ran firms, I'm like, man, this feels good. This feels so good. Those are problems that my avatar, like my ideal customer, which is an accounting firm owner, can have solved by other accounting firm owners. And so just about every type of entrepreneur has some version of this. This, to me is the most pure version of a. Not something that people join to have more direct access to me, but something that people join to have access to my network. And so this is really like your Rolodex, because at the end of the day, at least in. In the design of my community, that's all I can share, is what has worked for me. Someone has to attract folks to that space. And so you're kind of the lighthouse for a specific type of person, which is what then makes the whole peer thing even better. Because if what you do resonates with them and the way you talk about things is a great fit for what they need, then when they come into the space, they all have like that commonality, that common thread. And, man, I can vouch to this where, like, the even better version of this is you get those people in person and you're like, oh, man, what am I going to do? Thinking about the programming, how do I make sure everybody's entertained? You get all those people into a room and the vibes are just off the charts. And the worst thing you can do is try to, like, interject yourself into what's happening. And so if you are kind of that figurehead, yes, there's still tremendous power in you attracting a like minded person to that space. But you got to get them plugged into exactly the value there is in building relationships with the other folks in that space. I think that's ultimately the solution to how do I build a space that is not another job for me? I'm already running an accounting firm, man. I don't need like this whole other little space of folks to babysit. By the way, Free communities. Holy crap. Just don't. Not worth your effort. So many folks that run, you know, quote unquote Impressive 40,000 people communities, but it's like they don't make money. It's a massive moderation nightmare. Don't like, don't fuss with that. Like there are a hundred person communities, there are 30 person communities that are amazing places, like creating amazing transformations for people and are super profitable. Don't get like, as with everything else, don't get sucked up in the vanity metrics. Now in reality, virtually no one is in the market for a community. The notion of running a community for a community runner, like that's juicy, right? Like, oh, okay, people just come in here and things just happen. And then they pay me money for that. Like you can understand the attraction of that. But people on the other side of it, like most people are not rolling out of bed in the morning going, you know what? I need a community. Because the implication with a community is that I have to put things into it to get stuff out of it. And even that it is very ambiguous. What value am I even going to get from this? And so if you stand up a community and you just say, ta da community for beekeepers, everybody come in now, nobody will. And so that like your plan for getting people into the community can look completely different than your plan for people staying in the community. And we talk about this in like how we market our services. As an accounting firm, what you need is an attraction offer that is something that solves a pain somebody's feeling right now. But then once you complete that and you solve that pain, you know right now what their next problem will be. And the goal is to find a next problem that is then solved by their peers. So like, this is, this is it. This is the secret. Find that incredibly painful pain that a specific type of person is suffering from right now, give them the solution to that problem, which then reveals what their next problem is that can be solved by their peers. That is the flywheel for getting a community going. If all you do is you stand up a community that is not inherently something that is juicy enough for people to commit the time to, but if you give them something really, really, really juicy. And this can be eu centric, like a lot of the folks we've got into my community have come from me running limited series just for community folks. And that's an example of an attraction offer where they're like, dang, okay, I want to see this series from Jason. I super don't want to miss this thing. But then for that to be worthwhile for the business, it is designed in a way where when you get to the end, they now have a new problem. To be clear, it's a better problem. You solved the original problem, but now the new problem is solved by their peers. And I mean, there's 100 examples of this in our business and an accounting firm where it's like someone has never had bookkeeping anymore. And so the problem is they need books to be able to file a tax return. So you do their books and they think they're going to get some sort of value from that, but then they don't really. They're like, well, I don't know how to read these financials. And so now their next problem is, well, somebody needs to interpret this stuff for you. Maybe we meet once a month. That is the progression of an attraction offer. Solving a problem and then revealing a new problem like this isn't like a sneaky thing like we're trying to trick people, but the trap and the mistake that we make is that client comes in the door and we're like, oh, you know what you're going to need next? Yeah. As soon as we do that bookkeeping, you're not going to know how to read it. So you got to pay us for an advisory package too. And now they go from having sticker shock at what just bookkeeping costs because they're paying for that for the first time, to now having triple sticker shock because you're doing bookkeeping and advisory. And they will never say yes to that because they're not feeling the advisory pain right now. And so you just lost that work as opposed to. Yep, I can see you got a bookkeeping problem. Let's get you going on that. You solve that problem and then a new problem reveals itself. Right. We're not being sneaky about this. I'm just not selling them something that they don't need right now. And so if you're thinking about how to get people into a, a peer led community, which I think is the most pure kind of hands off version of a community, then you gotta find a problem you can solve that then leads to a new problem that is solved by your peers. Maybe the most direct, like accounting firm example I can give you of what's kind of worked in our community, but we haven't nailed it, is you. You have an attraction offer around text selection and you walk them through a process that gives them vastly greater peace of mind over the tools that they are picking. But then they find when they get to the end, yes, they are in a fundamentally better place, way better place than they were before. But I'm never going to stop having tech questions. In fact, now I'm using this practice management system and I can see there's a million different ways it could be set up. What do other people's practice management systems look like for everybody that's using this tool that I, that I use, Are other people using it the same way? You now have a new problem that is solved by the community and you can say, yeah, every couple months we have meetups for all these different platforms and people share their actual live setups. Like that doesn't really happen anywhere else. You can see how people are actually using it. And this is important. Like the average accounting firm spends 5% of revenue on software. So buying the wrong software, big expensive problem, but then not using it, right, equally big and painful and admittedly hard to do. Right? So to be able to see the very best ways people are using it and then pick and choose what makes sense for you and have that ongoing feedback loop because you're going to change tech down the road too. These tools are going to change. You still want to see how other people are using them. That's like maybe the most relevant to what we do. Example I have of an attraction offer leading into what is called a continuity offer. An offer that gives them a reason to stick with it for the long term. So if I am serving beekeepers, what is the offer? The series, the juicy thing that will get them in the door? This, this can really be anything because the only thing you're giving them is, you know, over this five week series or whatever it is, we're going to lead you through this transformation. And for that five week series, that's it, that's the deliverable. But then on the back end of that, if you want that to roll into like a recurring revenue sort of thing, does that then hand off to a problem that can be solved by peers that is like the most powerful version of a community to Me. And vastly better than one that is simply access to this influential people. This episode is brought to you by Team up, who will find you talented accountants in the Philippines. Team Up. Their motto, hire a person, not a company. So Team Up's difference is there for the folks that literally just want to engage the people in the Philippines to come and work for them, rather than like Accounto Corp. Who then employs a bunch of Philippines accountants. And then you pay Accounto Corp. Because sometimes the problem with Accounto Corp is you're paying as much to Accounto Corp as the actual individual that's on your team gets. That's kind of a bummer. I'm paying 2,000 bucks a month and only a thousand of that's going to my team member. Very common progression that I see with folks building offshore teams. They start with Accounto Corp for the first few hires and then they're like, we just want to do this ourselves. We actually don't like the middleman. And oftentimes it's actually impossible or insanely costly to get your team member out of a counter corp. So then you kind of like trapped. Anyways, Team up, they've got recruitments, recruiterments on the ground in the Philippines who will find talented folks for you. You just work with them directly, same way you'd work directly with somebody in the States. If you haven't done it before, you're gonna have a bunch of questions. What about computer stuff? What about security? The answers for those usually the same as whatever you do for your, like, domestic team. What about disclosures? If you do tax work? Yeah, you gotta put something in the engagement letter. If you're using them for 1040 work, there's a standalone disclosure that you do. But I did both these in my firm. Wasn't a big deal. And Team Up, They've helped so many firms go through this that they can give you, like, great expert answers and best practices for how to navigate any of these things that may be spooky. Even if you just want to have a conversation to learn more. Hit them up. That's teamup. Learn more. Check out the link down in the show notes. You know what I was just thinking about? Just how much I accommodated my clients. Crappy old banks that just created so many workflow nightmares for us. This is an ad read for Mercury. Just say no. Literally having clients share their password with you so you can log into a client's account to a bank. Having to have them send you two FA codes, little two FA codes where the text literally says never share this two FA code with anybody, so many problems with that. Don't get me wrong, like it's an essential part of delivering like bookkeeping work. But then I would be so apologetic like, yeah, no, I'm sorry. This is such a headache. I wish it didn't suck like this, gang. There are solutions for this. Like Mercury, I literally ditched a traditional back and you Mercury now myself. The client gives you firm access and then you assign user access for the people in your firm and it can get super, super granular like the way that user management actually should be. So next time when you get that stupid situation with a client that is not secure and they're annoyed about two FA Olympics, just remind them, buddy, this is, there's a, there's a solution to this. We can help you with this. We'll help you make the switch to Mercury. You'll have a vastly better experience, get a bunch of razzle dazzle features your, your traditional bank doesn't have. But then we can lock it down with proper access to whoever needs access to it. So the next time they complain, don't apologize, say here's the solution. Do you want us to help you through it? Think about it. All right. To learn more about Mercury, check out the link down in the show notes. Super common traps here. Getting sucked into vanity metrics. Into comparison when you look at other communities into just the idea of, of doing numbers. Well, 5,000 person communities, way cooler than a 50 person community. Not always. In fact, I would say most of the time it isn't also really easy to get sucked into playing house. This is how we talk about it in my team. We can go play patty cakes on like some new notion setup and oh, we want this to do that and this system can do X, Y, Z. It is so easy to get sucked into that before you even have like a business justification for it. So most people, when we talk communities, somebody's going to ask it in the comments, what platform should I use? Should I use Circle? Should I use Mighty Networks? Should I just do it all on Slack until you have people that will actually like show up. Like start with a zoom call. Start with an email newsletter that says we're all going to get on this call at this time. Will people do that? Make sure that we have people that will actually like consistently show up and engage before we make them have to remember to go to a new place to do that. I'm a big advocate of like a minimum viable platform. Like don't build all this infrastructure until you actually need it. Keep things as lean as you can for as long as you can. And the same logic applies here as does selling any sort of accounting service. The more specific you can get, the better, the more specific you get, the easier it is to find the people that you actually want to work with. Because there's loads of communities out there, right? Like if I'm going to build an entrepreneurship community for women, that's better than just a community with no sort of filtering. But that's still a lot of people, right? And so to do that successfully, like you have to be world class at communicating what it is that you do. Like you got to be like a Cody Sanchez. Like the bar is just so high to make something that general. Which is where I like, which is why I love micro niche is the bar is low. I want to, I want to set up a game that I'm, I'm pretty sure I can win. So I always come back to beekeeping. Are there any beekeeping accounting firms that listen to this? Please let me know in the comments. There might be loads of them, I have no idea. But find a very specific like rare, nuanced, pain and entrepreneur that you can speak to with this community. Like, just like anything else that we do now. Only other thing I'll share the big blocker here for most people is like how do I start it? How do I kick it off? It's got to start with a really good attraction offer that will get you to a critical mass of folks that will make it feel like a community. Like you can't have a community without some people in there. But to be clear, you can have an eight person community. You can have an 800 person community. Like it doesn't have to have a hundred people, but what does this impact? This impacts, you know, the pricing for people. In the beginning you're going to give them an insane value because you just need to get people in there to have a critical mass. The fact that you would never let people in for this cheap in the future doesn't mean that you can't let these initial people in for that cheap. And my, my, my approach has always been I will never increase the price on anybody because they are literally the foundation, like we are building the foundation of what is required for a community to exist. Those people that were willing to do that, I will always let them live there at that cost. And maybe there's different considerations here if you are more hands on with them or coaching or something like that. But in a peer community where it is largely you're Just creating all the sessions that will create those connection points. I am totally fine with those folks being there forever at whatever that ridiculous introductory rate was, because they are what ultimately makes it useful for the subsequent people. And then your job is not to deliver all the programming in the community. Your job is to find the next amazing person that can join that community and unlock something for everybody else. So in my case, my effort goes into content creation that everyone can consume so that it finds the most amazing accounting firm owners in the world, pulls them into that community and makes everybody better as a result. That is, that to me is like pure community. That's not access to gym, access to Tina, who we all love. We may have the common thread of all loving Tina, but here, like, here was the, here was the wild thing for, for me to come to terms with and get my ego out of the way about is it doesn't matter how much people love you and how smart they think you are, There is not a person on this planet that has more to offer you than the collective has to offer you. It's why, I mean, it's why I put peer stuff above coaching in order of importance. I think I would probably be a great coach for many firms just because of all the conversations I've had, all the things I've seen in my own real world experience running an accounting firm. But I cannot help anybody as much as all of your peers can help you because your peers has a vastly bigger lived experience than I do. They can dig into very, very specific things. Like the way we choose sponsors on this podcast is like, who's the best at hosting stupid ultra tax stuff. This is just a solution people need. I literally go on, I search in the community on the app. I see like seven people in a row just raving about Verito. Verito is now a new sponsor of what we do. There's like a huge hunger still, especially in an increasingly decentralized world, for connection through a very specific lens. And like this could be exactly what you're accounting firm needs for you to create that space that then leads to folks discovering your accounting firm. Or maybe you've learned that the community is actually the thing you're even more passionate about working on. I can tell you for me, it like it's the most scalable way I've been able to find to support the people I love working with, which is accounting firm owners. And so if your North Star is, is helping people, like there might be a version of this that makes a ton of sense. Like, yes, you can Always do tax accounting. You can also find other people that can do tax accounting. You can refer people in your community to other firms even. But we're living in a time where people are very hungry for connection with people who do what they do. And accountants, we are very unique hubs. If you have a niche that you work with and you know, 80 of these people, there's not very many people out there that have a network like that. And the beauty of the community is people are coming to pay you as the hub, not as the facilitator, not as the person doing all that work, but they're paying you just for creating the space. And that's a, that's a really cool business run. I can tell you from my own experience, it's also a very rewarding business to run. And if you go into it with that mindset of just how do I enable things for other people? I mean, it's just like social media, where it's like, yes, there's problems with all of these systems, but the systems, I would say more than ever before right now, are designed to help good people win. And the fact that bad people can win, like, doesn't make this not the case. But so much of it is just about being helpful, like, relentlessly helpful, and spending more time helping people than, than other people do. Like, I mean, I respond to hundreds of emails and DMS and all that stuff every single week. I think I've probably done more of that than just about anybody in the world the last couple of years. I'm almost certain I put out more content than anyone else has in the last couple of years. And I wish there was more of a secret sauce to it all. So much of it is just about doing it more than anybody. El. And every day, new people still stumble into my stuff. Meanwhile, there's people that have been here for four years. It's like, how have you not heard of that? So, like, finding success these days, to me, like, it is so much about just committing to being helpful and enabling successful outcomes for other people in whatever form that takes. And unfortunately, in an accounting firm, everything is inherently done behind closed doors, one on one, which is just by definition the lowest leverage way that you can go out and help people. And, like, maybe this is why it's something that accounting firms are looking more at running their own community, creating a space for the people that they want to serve, to, I don't know, build real connections with their peers. Because a lot of people don't have that. That's a bummer. Man, if you run a community in your accounting firm, I would love to hear. In fact, link it down in the in the comments. I would love to see that. I'm kind of fascinated by this because obviously I am a community nerd. Would love to learn more about that. Gang, thanks for being here. Bit of an inside baseball episode. I'll catch you in the next.