542 My New Favorite Referral Strategy for Accounting Firms

I've been out on the road at a bunch of live accounting firm events lately, and a really wild thing has been happening. The flow of clients between firms right now, at least like among folks in my community, is insanely high. Folks are more motivated than ever before to move, like, bad fit clients along. Not clients that are like bad people, but just clients that are no longer a great fit for what they're doing. They're meeting other firms that are making great homes for those clients. But then even very mature firms, they're taking referrals from other firms who themselves are shuffling along clients that no longer work for them. This is a phenomenal way to build a firm in the early stages, like to fill your client list for the first time. But it doesn't stop there. Like, I'm seeing some really cool partnerships form at kind of a wild rate because I feel like the profession as a whole right now is more collaborative than it's ever been before. Now, I've seen this work really well in some cases where folks come into an event and they're like, yeah, I really need to kind of build my client list. And I've seen other folks like, totally bomb. And so I've got a few thoughts on how to lean into this more intentionally. Because being able to collaborate with other firms, it's kind of a superpower and could be the thing that'll let you totally revamp that client list. Okay, so for context, I host live events and we do all this, this stuff online. But a fun new thing we've been doing is hosting live events. And in general, you get like 60 to 80 accounting firm folk out to these live events all in, like, cities. So you go to Phoenix and you've got like Phoenix area folks turning up. Folks drive from like, you know, within a couple of hours. And it's super fun because you have folks that are into the podcast and sort of like minded, but also like twice as fun because they're all local people. And there's something about local connections and willingness to refer to people who are local. Which is kind of weird because a lot of these firms are virtual firms serving people all over the country. But there's something about that where trust is so quickly built that before you know it, like, there's just, there's clients flying. And I've seen like versions of this before where it's like, yeah, no, you, like, you find another firm and it's usually two generalist firms and you're sending work from one firm to another firm, or you find a bookkeeper you like and you're doing tax work and you send stuff back and forth. Right? But I think this whole thing is actually taking off at a wildly different rate because right now accountants are more connected than they've ever been before. The live events, I would say, are still a bit of an anomaly, but at least online, I think accountants and accounting firms are now connect more connected than they've ever been before online. And this is just because generationally, I think more firms are coming onto social media. There's a growing number of like, communities and alliances online, like the one that I run that's closing in on like 700 firms now. So a growing number of firms are like part of these membership groups that are kind of a little more private, where folks are more collaborative in sharing what they're doing. And the result is you have an abundance of other firms that can be happy to send work to you and might be a great referral partner for you. Because all of us, I mean all of us have clients on those client lists where we're like, it's going to hurt to get rid of that person. I know I probably should have been putting it off. And that gets easier the better your referral partners are. If I see that other firm that's like hungry and like they're at that stage where they super need that work, that completely changes the, the emotional cost to me of having to make that hard decision and send that client off somewhere else. I still don't want to have that conversation with the client. But you know what's really cool is that client could be the one like putting food on the table for somebody else. That's a great feeling. Likewise, firms in general, I see now are specializing more than they ever have before, which is just creating more complementary lanes that we can all occupy. I just like at these events, like, I just haven't seen a whiff of competitiveness between folks as it should be. Like, there's just such a demand for what we do. And as folks find better languages for like, who they serve in a more specific way, it clarifies exactly what they'll do, which makes more clear for everybody else how they can help them. Because if we go back to everybody saying like, oh, what's your niche? My niche is it's small businesses s corps between a half million and 2 million a year, buddy, that's not a niche. That's like a third of the economy. If it's, you know, service businesses, I'm pretty sure that's like half of the economy too. But if your niche is lawyers. Cannabis stuff. Oh, my gosh. I was at an event in Oklahoma City. There's a lady there. She's like, I'm the cannabis lady. And everybody there's like, like cranes their neck and like, cool, there's somebody in town that I can send all the cannabis stuff to that I don't want that. That lady, probably. I've genuinely seen situations in the last week where I think people's client lists have, like, doubled just because everybody's like, ah, cool. I was looking for a place to send these clients. Now, this is a great argument for turning up to events. Now, I think not all events are made equal. Like going to a giant conference that's in another state or something like that. It's not as high context. It's still really cool. You'll meet amazing people. But I don't see the same, like, enthusiasm and willingness to refer just because the more context there is, like, the more you have in common with that person, the quicker you break through those nerves and reservations. But just a few thoughts here on, like, how to communicate what you do in a way that makes it more likely that other people will be able to help you. And this applies to anybody at any stage, whether you are just getting started or whether you're running a mature firm. Because every single one of us needs better clients. That. That's the entire journey, and it never stops. You may be at capacity, the solution to capacity, people who will pay you more. Some of those people are already on your client list. Others of those you haven't found yet. But that's the trap with ever saying like, oh, we stopped taking new clients. The day you stop taking new clients, the entire business stagnates. Because you usually stop when you're at capacity. And the solution for capacity, it is client turnover. It's finding folks who will pay you better. And so not taking any more clients, like, you're. You're kind of committing to. To being stuck in many ways. Okay, five thoughts here on how to. How to optimize how you communicate about what you do in a way that will make it easier for people to send you work. Number one, don't do everything. If you're like, yeah, we do tax, we do. We do some books, we do some wealth management, we dabble in cfo. Then, like, where does anybody else fit in there beyond it just being really hard to do anything well, it is like, orders of magnitude hard to do things well. We've talked about this on the podcast before, but the way to win clients I mean, the hardest way to win clients is on breadth, is on doing more than anybody else. We think this is the move because our clients will always ask us to do more. You're doing a good job on tax. And the client's like, could you just. It'd be really nice if you just do a bookkeeping or vice versa. That's maybe the more common one. They come to you for some bookkeeping and they're like, man, you're great at all this stuff. Could you also do tax? And before you know it, you're like taking on all this extra stuff that you didn't really want to do, but you're doing it because your clients are asking for it. It's worth recognizing there will never be a day when they stop asking. You can start doing that thing that they asked for. There's going to be another thing after that. I'll just tell you right now, the only person that's ever going to pump the brakes is going to be you. And it's really hard to build a business that does more than one thing well. Blair Enz talks about in his book the Four Conversations Instead, winning clients with a armor piercing approach that is do something that they're. That someone's current provider does not do do. They'll come and engage you to do that specific thing and they're like, dang, you're good. And then when they see that you do other things, they're like, okay, I'll bring that work to you as well. That's the value of serving a specific person is you can actually have a service that is not something that's universally relevant to small businesses, but is only relevant to a specific type of SMB. They need it, they come to you to do it, and then you get all the other general stuff too. So first thought here, just don't do everything. And even if you're talking about what you do, talk about what you want to do more of. Because even if right now you're doing a little bit of everything, all that matters in how we talk about what we do is what we want to do next, which almost never looks like what we've done in the past because we're trying to grow to something better, right? So number one, don't do everything. Number two, don't be for everyone. So, like, have a very clear elevator pitch, a clear way to communicate exactly who you want to work for. Usually people jump to like, industries and that's fine, but there's usually a little more to it than that. Company size, the way they work. I myself like steer clear demographics. It feels like it generalizes a little too much. The more concise, the more clear here, the better. Cannabis lady, pretty straightforward, right? Real estate investors, how do we make that more clear? Real estate's very broad. Maybe that is short term rentals. Airbnb folks be super clear about who that is. And then the next time that person hears that, they'll be like, oh, that's right, I met that person. What was their name? And they're funneling that stuff your way. Even better if they've already got some of those folks on their list and they don't want em. Funny thing happened recently when I was at a conference with one of this episode's sponsors, Maker's Hub. So Maker's Hub, they're like an AI accounts payable platform. The party trick is they're using like AI vision models to do extraction at a level that was kind of never before possible with OCR technology. But I was doing something at their booth. Some of the customers came by like, it is one of those tools where the customers are kind of raving fans. But a funny thing kept happening. Like people kept throwing out these ridiculous document situations they have where they're like, I got this client, I have X, Y and Z problem. It's a total mess. We spend so much time on it and they just start riffing on it, like with the Maker Sub team. And they're like, oh yeah, no, I can see, like you do this potentially. Like our product doesn't really do that, but actually if we change this or that, this could potentially work. The team is just like, they're just a bunch of like document processing geeks who are also AI nerds. And the product very much is like the marriage of those two things. And it's what Maker Sub does best right now. Like the biggest, ugliest accounts payable stuff that you got, man. I had some gnarly clients where Maker Sub would have saved us so much time. But if you got any ugly bill pay stuff, class tracking projects, inventory manufacturing, stuff like that, definitely worth giving Makers Hub a look. Learn more Check out the link down in the show notes. So I'm out of some live events that we're hosting this week. And I was talking with someone the other night. We were actually at a table they were sharing with some other firm owners stuff that they were doing from like different pricing methodologies to some of the tech that they were into. Some of the folks around the table were like using some of the old, like traditional legacy tech and stuff like that. And then they got to offshoring and everybody sat up and they're like, hang on. What? Tell us exactly how you're doing this. And you know who they were using? This episode sponsor Team Up. No lie. They were using. Team up is basically just a recruiting group that works exclusively with accounting firms to go out and find you the most talented accountants in the Philippines to go and work directly with you. You pay the accountant directly. No middle, middle folk taking their own cut. Team up is just going to be there to help you find a super talented accountant, place them into your firm, usually 4,000 bucks for a placement. Compare that to Robert half charging you quarter million dollars and actually heard the other day somebody had to pay a body organ to get an onshore accountant. That's not a lie. Team up 4,000 bucks. They're going to find you a super talented and capable accountant. My last four hires in my accounting firm were in the Philippines and they were fantastic. Honestly, it totally changed how he staffed in our firm and got our stuff done. I actually talked with another accountant the other day who's like, I think I'm going to go start a Philippine staffing agency because we are having so much luck with the folks we're finding in the Philippines. I know you're like, not another one. Anyways, there's a reason people are doing this because it turns out accounting is a universal language. Kind of in some ways yes, in other ways no. But people don't hop over the border and then all of a sudden not know how to do what we do in our accounting firms. Does that. Am I making sense? You know what I'm saying? If you haven't done this before, you're going to have a whole bunch of questions. Just hop on a call with the people who have done it more than anyone else. The folks placing accountants in affirms would encourage you to do that with Team Up. Check out the link down in the show notes. Thought number three here. Have as many high context conversations as possible. A low context room is walking into like a tax CPE event where it's like everybody's kind of just there to get some technical training and duck out of there. Maybe have a twice baked potato pocket, a few snacks on the way out. A high context room. I'd say there's a couple dimensions to consider. I would say one is how like minded are you and kind of your, your methodology and thinking for how to run a firm. And so if you get, you know, folks going to Zero Con or something like that. Like they're probably a little bit higher context than people that are just going to a general bookkeeping conference. If you're part of, you know, a membership group like a pasba, you're going to be much higher context there than just going to some AICPA conference. That's one dimension, I would say, of how like minded are you and how you're trying to run your firms. The second is honestly region. From a human standpoint, how much do you have in common? It's weird that this matters, as much of it as it does, but with what I've seen lately, I think it really does. When you're from the same place and you're bumping around like your kids go to the same school, you know the same things for whatever reason, that just blows through any reservations that you have in a way that doesn't. For folks that like meet at a conference but live on other sides of the country from each other, it's better than nothing. And it does still happen because I see it in the online community all the time. Folks referring workaround, they've got one of those two dimensions. They're very like in those online communities you have folks that are much more like minded. So they've got the first dimension but generally aren't going to be in the same region. Man, you combine those two things, that's really exciting. So think about how can we show up in as many of those rooms as possible? The more you've got both of those dimensions, the better. One dimension is better than no dimensions. And when you're there, like have the conversations make it worthwhile to go there. This isn't a natural thing for any of us. The fun thing though about going to events with other accounting folks is that the icebreakers are just paper thin. Like it's really easy to get to something that you're geeking on. Like most people, like I go to, I go to a kids event right now, man, and I gotta talk with other rival dads. And it is a lift. Like you're just trying to find anything you have in common to grab onto that you can talk about. And it may take 10 minutes to plow through small talk and find something. And many times you may never get there. But I find for accountants, we suck at small talk. But the saving grace is it's pretty quick and easy for us to get to that thing that we're both into. And then we're just like, oh, the hours just fly by. Cause we're talking about that super nuanced thing that not many people understand and that's really exciting. So if you're going to be at those events, make the most of them like you're there. Sometimes we get afraid of like the nose and the people that will think that we're weird and most of the time that's all in our head. Occasionally it will happen, but being the person that biases to like assume they're going to be a cool person. Like if you're coming in with good intentions, assume the other people have the same and you're going to win way more than you're going to lose that. And when you do, who cares? They're a weirdo if they're not nice. That's the last person that I want to look impressive in front of. So first thought, don't do everything in terms of scope. Second thought, don't be for everyone. Have a clear language for who the type of people are that you want to work with. Third, have as many high context conversations as possible. They can be online, they can be in person, but in person's pretty great. 4. Ask other people what they're looking for. Who do they want? What type of client are they trying to attract right now? The more you can build that pattern recognition into your own head and be like shooting clients all around the galaxy to different people that are specialized in different things, the more reciprocity you are building with the universe where those folks are going to are going to be really helpful to you too. That's actually a fun thing in what I do right now is I have a lot of folks that come to me asking for this or that and I can't do those things. But I could send those folks out to other experts who do do that stuff and as a result like you just end up being front of mind for those people and you can enable really cool things. And there's like some gratitude there, man. Like the number of folks I know who at one point in time were like, I'm thinking about doing some coaching with accounting firms and I've been able to send them some firms and like before you know it they're going full time on, on coaching or on practice management implementation. Which is awesome because we need more people that are supporting accounting firms. But you then have like, you have a special relationship with those folks because you were connected kind of from the beginning. Just imagine for your firm how powerful it is for people to send you great clients and how appreciative you are of that. A lot of those relationships you would go to the end of the Earth for those people. And it's not a hard thing to do. Just be listening for folks that might fit for, you know, that other firm. But step one is, ask them, what are they looking for? Like, what do they need? What are they excited about? Who do they want to work with next so that you have the opportunity to be that person who can help them. Last number five here. Ask those same people what they don't want. And this is like 3D chess. You are now the ultimate facilitator when you know both what somebody wants and what they don't want. You have 10 of those conversations. Now we're drawn doing, like, the red yarn strings for all the firms that we know. Like, okay, that that firm's actually trying to get rid of, you know, these 1040s under 600 bucks, or these vet clinics they used to do, or maybe generalist bookkeeping clients, because they're niching down into vet clients. Well, great. Over here we've got a firm that's just trying to fill the client list for the first time or trying to take on more 1040 work because they want to do wealth management. And they see now that actually taking in more individual tax work, that's how you build the wealth practice. You start being able to make connections for other people, by the way. It's the same way you make connections for yourself. When that person says, like, actually, I'm trying to get rid of X, Y and Z. And you're like, oh, tell me more. We actually love doing that kind of stuff. You think about, you know, if you are. If you're a firm that's been around for a bit and you reach capacity, you just think about the abundance that you see everywhere. From the folks that you're turning down because you can't work with them. From the folks that are on your client list where you're like, I probably shouldn't be working with these people anymore. Most firms have some version of that, which just means they are bursting at the seams with clients that are ready to move around. And I'm not even talking about selling stuff. I think sometimes people get too caught up on the idea, like, oh, I have these 3,010 40s that I don't want. But is it worth the hassle to sell 3010 40s? Like, no. Like, it's the best thing for you, for you to have the attention back and the focus back. If figuring out some sort of transaction is going to keep you from doing that, then just. Just let them go like devs in the wind. Okay? It's really cool to see how much of this is happening right now as I feel like. I feel like the accounting firm world is getting smaller. If you're listening to this podcast, like, and you don't feel this yet, like, you are on that track, is what I've experienced as folks. Like, I think there's folks that do stuff like what I do that kind of have this orbit, and people will kind of see it for the first time and be like, I don't know that I trust anybody on the Internet talking about accounting firm stuff. And then they listen for a couple minutes and they're like, okay, maybe I can maybe see that. Maybe that's a little bit interesting. Before you know it, you're like, binging stuff. It's just. This isn't just my content. It's. It's other people, too. And you kind of get pulled further and further into that orbit, and then you start meeting other human beings that are into the same stuff, and you're like, dang, these are actually really cool people. Dang. I can actually see a world where it's like, we're all sharing ideas and not having to reinvent the wheel and figure this all out for myself. And that even extends to, hey, what are you doing with those clients over there? Like, somebody not cleaning their plate. You going to eat that? Every accounting firm's got scraps right now. We've all got leads that come in the door that aren't a great fit for us. The more of those conversations we have, the more opportunities you'll be exposed to. And I can tell you, in my experience, just from a human standpoint, it's also the funnest way to do this stuff. Tremendously rewarding, being able to share ideas with other folks, learn from their experience of what's working and what's not working. You deal with stuff like, you know, tech stack overwhelm, just kind of being paralyzed on really hard decisions. Nothing will make you feel better about that than being able to run those questions by other people that do the same thing. There's honestly no that, like, this is not a thing that coaching can solve. There is nothing better having other firm owners you can bounce that stuff off of. And there is something just like that recharges you as a human at your core, because nobody understands what you do in the same way that other people who do what you do do. I just. I think I just said do, like, four times. We should probably end on that. Don't be afraid to make a new friend ask that question. What are they looking for? What are they trying to get rid of? It's amazing how quick you can actually build a network, especially locally, if you can just find a way to get folks out. That is one thing I've heard from the local events I've hosted. As people are like, why is nobody else doing local events? This is really fun. It'd be good to see these people more. Don't be afraid to be that person. Honestly, you've got nothing to lose. I found it pays dividends in like, really amazing ways. That's it for today, gang. Got any thoughts on that? Drop a comment. In fact, got anything you're looking for? Got anything you're trying to get rid of? Oof. On YouTube doing that, that might be a bit of a free for all. Who knows? Give it a try, see what happens. That's it for today. I'll catch you in the next one. A heads up for my podcast friends. We put together the biggest, scariest project my team has ever worked on. A big old run of live events around the country headed up until year end to ensure that your 2026 is just the best year ever. Let me run you through the cities real quick. We're coming to Austin, Oklahoma City, Phoenix, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, DC, Philadelphia, NY City, and Boston with some super cool half day workshops that roll into dinners. You get CPE for it. It is an event that is built for your entire team to get the whole squad feeling inspired so that if you are a firm leader, you're not feeling like you got to put everything on your back. Headed into 2026 going to be a super fun experience. It's going to be a surprise guest at every city. We're going to record an installment of the podcast live at each of these events. You're gonna be part of the podcast itself. What? And man, I would love to see you there. To learn more, head over to jasononfirms.com events and I hope to see you there.