568 How Smart Accounting Firms Attract Better Clients

Most accountants these days are professionally invisible. We are hard at work, but beyond our clients, nobody else even knows that we exist. And this is because of the M word. Marketing. The last thing most accountants want to touch. In fact, many of us will pride ourselves on never having to market right. But the risk of ignoring this altogether is the fact that your firm will only ever be as good as its client list. And the very best clients out there for you, the ones who will pay twice as much as any of the clients you have today with an even bigger smile on their face, those clients probably aren't just going to stumble through your door or the next time you need to hire someone. How's anybody gonna know about you if you don't exist anywhere, right?

The solution is marketing.

And so today we're sitting down with one of the world's leading marketers for accounting firms, Katie Thomas. She's gonna talk us through what marketing can do, what it won't do, and importantly, she's gonna help us find the version of marketing that makes the most sense for your accounting firm or where it's at today while factoring in, like how you actually want to spend your time. So enjoy this conversation with Katie Thomas.

For folks who haven't seen your cool content, this stuff online, haven't met you yet. What's the 62nd Katie Thomas intro?

So I'm Katie Thomas and I'm a cpa. For the past though eight years, I've run a digital marketing agency where we focus on helping firms attract clients and also talent. We are not a recruitment agency though, so.

Interesting. Attract talent. Okay.

That's huge.

Yeah, it's kind of hold the whole other side of marketing, right, Is the talent marketing versus the client marketing.

Yeah. And with the shortage of accountants, that has been an area that has grown so much in the business that I could not have foreseen ever whenever we started it.

So scenario for you, you're handed a million dollar accounting firm with let's say flat growth or like small growth, like the average firm that's like, we get enough referrals to stay busy, we're doing fine. You get a firm like this and you got 90 days to, quote, turn the tide or maybe unlock a new type of growth. What are you doing those 90 days? Step by step? What's that look like?

All right, so in 90 days I'm gonna figure out what is the vertical that I can help the most with the least amount of effort and make the biggest impact. And I'll pick one offer. So one industry, one offer that Everyone starts here. Maybe it's something as basic as you're going to review their tax return and you're going to find a set amount of savings and it's going to cost 500 and it's going to be, you know, you're going to 10x their value. I'm going to go out and I'm going to go to any sort of networking events where I can find these people. I'm going to look online, I'm going to start following them, commenting on their posts, asking them how their year's going, engaging with them. But more importantly than that, I'm going to look at who are they following, who, who do they idolize? So if I'm trying to target accountants, it'd be like, okay, Jason Stats, everyone's following him and I'm going to see, maybe there's a collaboration there, maybe we can do some sort of training together. And I'm going to identify all those people. I'm also going to look at, like who hosts the podcast, what kind of content are they listening to to make sure I'm using their language and maybe even I could collaborate with some of those podcast hosts. So I'd be going in all routes, whether that's in person online and just starting to get known in the industry along that I'm going to be posting content online. So hopefully as I'm adding these people and the algorithms are seeing like, okay, I'm adding people in this industry, I'm engaging with people in this, this industry, it starts learning too. And hopefully my content starts getting put in their feeds as well.

So the first step there was like finding what's the vertical where I can have the biggest impact with the least amount of inputs. Right. I've seen you talk about how most firms, even if they are generalist firms, have a hidden niche. How do you uncover that? Like, do you have like, what's kind of the diagnostic, what questions would you ask a firm to help them uncover that hidden niche?

First is who do you like working with? If they're like, oh, we like working with every, you know, service based business.

Okay, well, the service based business niche.

Right.

I love that one.

You have to start thinking about too. If you were in the seat of the person that you're trying to market to, like, would this resonate? You're an accountant, you're a service based business. If someone's talking to service based businesses, does that resonate with you? No. Okay, so let's dive deeper. You like service based businesses. Okay. Do you work with any Specific ones. Is there a reason why you like them? Maybe, maybe not. Okay, well, if you have some, we could start looking at those and say, maybe this is a good niche or vertical to go down. If not, just because you have clients in that doesn't mean you should not start fresh, in my belief. Because if you're going to pay, pick a vertical. You need to, I think, love it because you want to go and you want to enjoy working with those people. You want to enjoy learning about their industry, you want to go to the conferences. And if you pick one that's just like doctors, that's one that I've heard a lot of people say, yeah, we want to work with doctors because they've got a lot of money, they can pay me a lot of dollars. Okay, you're an accountant. The numbers make sense. But if you don't genuinely enjoy working with doctors, what's the point? That's gonna be miserable.

Yeah, marketing is like such a vast spectrum of where people are in their sophistication and what they're doing today and all of that. And so it's hard to do a version of this that lands for everybody. I would love it if you could put firms into like four buckets of sophistication. And the first bucket is, I don't do anything. And I'm, I like begrudgingly even clicked on this video because I don't like marketing to like the more sophisticated end of the spectrum. Like, can you kind of define like four buckets of what those firms look like?

Yeah, yeah. So we have just starting with nothing. I don't do marketing. I've never had to do marketing. We're just close minded. We don't need to do it. And then you have some people that, okay, we're not totally close minded. We know that we should do marketing. Maybe we have started exploring posting some online or we have thrown a couple thousand dollars at Google Ads, or we have a website that's not maybe the most up to date, but we've got a website and there's a form on it. And then I would say that kind of third bucket is they have some things that work, they're seeing some traction. They're capturing various leads on their website. They might be posting online, but there's not a predictable system in place where they're like, okay, if I am pulling these levers, I can get realistically these outcomes. So they're still not totally sure exactly what's driving what, but they are definitely making traction and they know that marketing works on the other end, we've got. We fully understand that we need to do marketing. We are still getting referrals because referrals are a part of marketing. We have a whole process to bring people in, to qualify them, to get them to. Now it could be even a BD team, a salesperson, or maybe I'm the partner. I still think they can fall in that we're advanced.

All this stuff, like the 90 day plan, like it was all these things, social media and going out to trade shows and like all these things that like, get most accountants a little bit sweaty because they're like, oh geez, like, this is all outside my comfort zone. A firm beyond a certain size, the big boss very quickly goes like, oh yeah, no, we'll get somebody to do that. That'll be somebody's job. Like, whose role is that at various size firms? Obviously itty bitty firm. Like it's the owner running out and doing all this stuff. But does that evolve? Like, can you truly like abdicate, like, get somebody to go out and do that for you effectively?

The bigger firms are, they have full BD teams. One of our clients, they're top. I think they're going to. Just talking with them, I think they're going to make top, like 50s. And they just hired their first BD rep. Whoa.

So holy geez. I think who was doing it until that? Like partners.

All partners. All partners. And they're still, they've won. It's brand new. So a lot of partners are staying involved for a long time. And what's interesting is some of the smaller, I would say newer firms, they're already thinking about building the sales team early on. I think the biggest issue that firms run into, from my experience when they're building just, hey, we're going to have a BD person or a sales rep, is that sales rep is not educated enough to talk to the prospects. Because accounting is complex and it requires a high level of trust. And a lot of times people are used to dealing directly with their accountant. And so you have to figure out a way to transfer that trust to someone who can then transfer it to whoever they're talking to or speaking to online. And that's hard. That's very hard.

What's the solution to that? How do you. Is that, is that part of your training process for salespeople? Is that something you look for in their background when you hire a sales team?

I think if you can hire someone with experience in the industry, whether they are an accountant looking for a role change or maybe They've worked with a software company before, and they have some knowledge of at least kind of what accountants do that can be great. Otherwise, it just takes coaching and mentoring and finding the person with the right interest in doing it. They're successful sales reps selling dental appliances. One of my best friends does that, and he does not come from the dental industry. So I think it just takes someone curious and willing to learn about the industry. Sure, it's faster. If you could find an accountant, that'd be great, but you don't have to.

I will say that's one thing I've been actually surprised by, is how many accountants are out there doing traditional accounting things that would happily take a new role in something else. Like, they're out there, like, going to software companies or moving to like, a client concierge role where they don't do the work anymore. Like, I think there are more people out there than we realize you mentioned.

So did you just jump into the marketing agency at the beginning? And when. Right before I left Big Four, I was talking to a partner, I was like, can I do business development? And of course, they laughed at me. They're like, you know, you're even been here long enough at all. But to your point, I think there are a lot of people that would love to do that, and they've just never been offered.

Part of that must be the entrepreneurial upbringing, because that's very unique. At what age is this that you're leaving big four?

I was 23.

23, okay. Yeah. You can imagine how this conversation went. 23 old. Katie, can I run biz Dev for you, partner? And they're like, really? Like, this is the partner's job. Like, this is what the big bosses do.

I thought I might as well ask, take a shot.

But some people are like, there's. I mean, there's people who are listening to this, though, who are like, yeah, no, I think that's me. Like, who are just, like, wired that way. And maybe they went down this path, but then they have all the accounting stuff. So they're a unicorn in the way that. In a way that they may not even really realize yet, where if they can take some time to, like, develop the sales skills or something like that. The combination is so powerful.

Yeah. And I think part of what also can help make them successful is having that clear offer up front or ways that people can start working with you, because it's just this random smorgasbord of all these services up front.

Yeah.

That's difficult. Not only for your salesperson to help diagnose where to start. But it's just there's too many options. So I always recommend. It's like either everyone starts at one singular offer or there's tiers, three tiers, and the person doing the discovery call or the selling, whatever your firm calls it, they should help guide the prospect into making that decision. If you do have the three tiers. So they're not wondering, okay, what's the cost of the wrong decision?

Can we all, before we totally leave that point, can we also roll back to the partner that's having this conversation with 23 year old Katie? Because there's probably a 23 year old Katie watching this. Like shoes on the other foot. What do you tell that person? Like someone who like shares? Like, I've kind of got this thing that I'm into that I want to follow. Like, how can you instead foster that? Like, what do you cut, what do you cut a 23 year old person loose with on biz Dev? Right.

I think if they come to you and they want to do it, I think it's okay. Let's first look at getting you training. What, what kind of training? Maybe I had done cold calling in the past and so I think it's definitely not trained to do business development for a big four firm. But it'd be like, okay, like what? Maybe they've been doing studying on the side, maybe they've been listening to podcasts, maybe they've been watching YouTube videos about it. Like, where are you starting? What would we need for you to be successful? The partners know a lot about, you know, pricing and if they have packages, packaging. But what do we need for them to be successful? To sell. And like, let's work out some sort of compensation because this could be very beneficial to your firm and to them if done right.

Yeah. And like that's when people are operating at their best too. And it's like they've got that spark and you find a way to kind of venn diagram that spark with something the business needs.

It'd be interesting if somehow I would have, they would have said yes. Who knows what I'd be doing today.

That's interesting. I'm glad they said no. Big four's got enough. They got enough people. Right. What does the minimum viable marketing plan look like for firms? Like what is the bare minimum that everybody needs to kind of invest in and prioritize?

You absolutely need a website, something, a landing page somewhere where people can go. I always say think about if you're hungry and you're like, okay, where should we go to dinner? And you're looking around for a restaurant. If it does not have something on the map that someone can click on, like no, it's already off, you're not going there. Same for your firm. If someone refers you because you rely on referrals or you're just getting a referral, that's great. They're still going to go to your website. So bare minimum, get a website that might not drive leads, but it can help convert them.

So start with the website. Social media. I'm obviously a big social media nerd. I think we are mutual like minded people in that way. But it's intimidating for people who haven't done it before. Just from a time standpoint, but also from like a I'm not that kind of person standpoint.

Right, yeah.

Is there like an 80, 20 of social media where there's like, here's the 20% of things you could just do that'll get you 80% of the results?

Yeah. I would say a lot of people think, okay, it's just about the content and that actually scares a lot of people away. The number one thing you should be doing is having conversations. So whether that is you reaching out to someone, and we're not talking about spamming people doesn't work. But genuinely reaching out, having a conversation, or it's you commenting on their post, just liking it. If there's someone that already gets a lot of engagement, that's great to like it, but they're not going to notice. Um, just having conversations on social media, that is the number one thing you should do. Posting content is great so that you can hopefully eventually build up a way that people are following you or they're discovering your information and they're consuming it. But with so much just junk on social media now, in bots and AI generated content, the conversations are more important than ever.

And that like we have such an advantage because we actually have expertise that's in demand and people pay hundreds of dollars an hour to like pick your brain and so you actually have something useful to add to the conversation.

Exactly, exactly. And for people who are kind of nervous or they feel like they're not that person, I encourage you to think about who you're not helping by putting yourself out there. And you just said there's a lot to share and you have expertise. If you aren't putting yourself out there, you're limiting your ability to impact people. So in a way it is selfish of you not to.

We've talked about that around sales. Like people not being willing to be salesy or self promotional. But it's like, man, like you're committing your life to doing this. Like this is your thing. Like are you going to go through life and like never like be like, hey, like I'm good at this thing. Like here's this rad thing that we're doing. And almost, I think there's almost to this expectation that, well, I will create my. Create my business and people will come to me and that'll be the least uncomfortable version of that is like getting referrals and folks coming and they've kind of already pre agreed to work with me almost. And so this little like step into the next bubble of making an ask or being more visible or saying like we created this cool outcome for people that feels like one of the biggest mental blockers to being willing to do a case study or something, something like that is that I get the impression maybe that's not something that you'd ever struggled with because you're like you said cold calling earlier and people were like, holy geez, I'm not this lady.

For me, it's always been realizing that if I don't ask or I don't try, the answer is always going to be no. And usually getting a no doesn't hurt you at all. It just leaves you in the same spot and gives you more information to try something else. It gives you data still. So it's not like if you try and you don't get the outcome that you are looking for, you still are actually getting further ahead because now you have data. Okay, that did not lead me to the outcome I wanted. So what can I try next? Or new? And that. Let's just say for sales, if someone says no to you, they're not going to be thinking about you at all by a couple minutes later and definitely not by tonight. So just, you just got to move on.

Yeah. So the only way you lose is by not doing anything.

Exactly.

I think the majority of people who don't do any sort of marketing, and we probably didn't even have the word marketing in this video because it's like such an anti. Like the fastest way to make accountants not click on something is putting marketing in it. And I would say the biggest reason why they don't is they will say, quote, we've never had to. To market. Almost as like a badge of honor. Right? We've never had to market because we have so many referrals for referral owner people like that. Obviously you And I are both bought into, like, you can do more than referrals. You can do referrals, but you can also do other things. What evidence would you put in front of somebody or what test would you run with them to change their mind to get them off that hill?

I would actually encourage them. This might surprise you to say, let's test out your marketing with your referrals first and see how that can compound quicker. Because a lot of people say I rely on referrals. Okay, if that works for you, let's spend some time being really intentional and creating some sort of like, marketing system around how we are going to get more referrals that are our ideal client from our. The people that are referring us. And a lot of times then they can see, like, okay, so doing some sort of outreach to these people, it does something. And that a lot of times can get them the confidence they need to now be like, okay, how can we. We created a system over here. How can we now create a system that's outside of our referral partners? What opportunities are there there?

Can you give me an example what that looks like marketing to your referrals?

Yeah. So going through your current client list and being like, who matches the profile of. We want a lot of times that's really helpful and starting to reach out to them and be like, hey, here's. Hopefully you have your offer or your packages. Here are the things that we're looking to do. Here are the people we're looking to help. Hopefully you've helped them in some way. You know, get similar results. If some, if you know of someone that would benefit from this, here is how they can get started with us. So maybe it goes to a landing page and it shares more information about this, but making it really easy for someone to refer you. And you can decide as a firm if you want to incentivize your. The people that are referring you or what that looks like, but creating a way to reach out to them to say like, hey, we're taking on more clients. If you know of people that are looking for this, we can help. And a lot of, you know, what is it? Birds, birds of feather, they flock together. Whatever that saying is. It's true. Like, a lot of times people have others around them that are like them. So start with the people, the clients that you really like and get along with and want more of.

You said the O word a few times now. Offer. What's a. What is a great. An example of a great offer you've seen in the wild From a firm that just crushed.

People love to save on taxes. And people watching this might be like, I've seen so many of those ads scrolling through Facebook and Instagram. But they do work and they are converting. People want to start a lot of times with some sort of CFO offer. So I'll also share that usually doesn't work. You have to move them up. From our experience, the value ladder. So finding something that can get some sort of immediate return, that's going to be key. Where it's like, hey, if you pay us 500, we are going to find, you know, some sort of value that is 10x that. And people are like, okay, that seems like a good deal. And then they open up their wallet to you. You do something small, they trust you.

What's the non scummy way to communicate that? Because people will hear that and be like, I might review their tax returns and tell them that they actually owe a whole bunch of money. Like, is it, is it? We're saying the average time we do this project saves somebody this amount of money. And that's based on past projects. Like how do you communicate that?

What we've done for people a lot of times is say that, you know, if we don't find this or you aren't happy, your money, you can get your money back. So that's why it's important that for you picking an offer, it's something where you know that you can hopefully find a lot of value for them, but it's not a lot of time. So if they do want their money back, and I will say we've tested a lot of offers with a lot of firms, people rarely want their money back because if it's like you and you say, oh, we found out you owe a lot of taxes, now it's like, okay, I probably don't want my money back. Like I want to work with you because you just found out something that I was missing. So pick something that if you did it for free and you lost some money, you would feel okay about.

Yeah, found money. That's super juicy. Is there hope for bookkeeping people though? Like, what's a version of an offer you've seen work for bookkeeping folks?

For bookkeeping, it is more challenging because people are very excited by finding money. We've seen some offers around cleanup their books that can be a little bit more time intensive. So you have to put parameters around like how many months or you know, some sort of number of transactions. We've seen that work. We've also seen for Firms that are working with technology and have like a SaaS vertical, some sort of accounting system setup, we've seen that work a couple times pretty well. Where they'll like, review your tech stack and recommend, you know, how to improve it. That can work pretty well if they are a firm that wants to help their clients implement some sort of systems. So it kind of depends on like what route you want to go and how you want to help your clients too.

There is nothing better than money, though. And like that framing. And even in the like, app stack advising, like, there's a version of that where you can get to like, here's your stack now here's our recommended stack. Here's the estimated time savings. But then like, don't frame that in time savings. Frame that in like, that's half an FTE. That's, you know, $40,000 a year.

Exactly. Yeah. That's 100%. Right.

I think a lot of accountants are still allergic to that. Like, and it's probably because of all the scummy versions we've seen of it of like, come do XYZ and we'll save you X amount of dollars. Like, it's, it's, it's almost like another part of our brain that we have to like remove and get over somehow. Because that is just human behavior. Right.

I think a lot of people don't like seeing that because they're too scared to put their self out there. If you genuinely are making that offer and you feel good about it, you're not claiming to do something that you don't feel confident you can do, that's something different. We're not ever in the business of scamming people. Then that's just triggering you that it's out there. And if you are doing it, do you think the other one ads or the other offers out there would bother you? I don't think so.

Okay, so say I'm doing some of these things. I've got some web traffic coming through. Obviously this is a big part of what your practice does, helping kind of guide accounting firms through that and the best ways to set that up. If there's like one underrated lever of like make this change on your website or this change in your messaging or this text on the button do different. Like what's. If you could put your finger on one really big driver to, let's say, conversions to book a call, what would you say that is?

I would say having transparent pricing on your website.

Oh.

Is so, so underrated because the last thing someone wants to do is feel like when they get on a call, they're going to just be sold something that they can't afford or they don't expect. So just being really transparent and clear up front, I think one gives the person more confidence, like, hey, this is in my budget, this is in my range. And then right next to that, I would say having really good client transformations on there, that it's not just about the outcome that's important, but about where they were when they first came to you and how you help them. Because people like to see those transformations. It's kind of like, I don't know if you watch TV growing up much, but the infomercials of like the before and after of the weight loss, like, people like to see that transformation. And so doing the same thing on your website, where it's like, here's where they were, here's where they are now. Both of those, I think, are really, really important.

So on that kind of transformation thing, you've written a lot about this, like investing in kind of some evergreen outcome based sort of case studies, that sort of thing. If people look in their client base right now, like, what's one specific sort of transformation they ought to be looking for that would be worth making that investment and doing the uncomfortable thing of being like, hey, client, can you come.

Do this weird thing for me? And we'll put you on blast a little bit.

Like, what should they be looking for?

I think thinking back to your offer is really great. So if it is the, the time savings and you're replacing that many full time equivalents, if it is the tax savings, maybe it's that they had no financial clarity. Everyone wants to sell those CFO packages. So if you can get some of your clients talking about how you gave them more clarity, that's great. And if you're kind of nervous to ask for those, think about right after you got a win. That's a great time to do it. Whenever their clients are singing your praises, sometimes people even say like, I will sing your praises. It's like, hey, could we do some sort of case study? They're probably gonna say yes. Have you ever had anyone say no to a case study?

No. People say stuff like that. And then you're like, no, no, no, no. Really, it's all right. And we get like bashful about it and we're like, no, we just appreciate getting to work with you. Yeah, yeah, I'm bad at that too. Are you good at that? Asking for case studies and reviews and stuff like that?

I asked For a case study today, just having lunch with a client.

Oh.

So. And yeah, right after they're talking about all the great outcomes. Can we do a case study?

Could you give me a case study for being interviewed on my podcast?

Absolutely. See, that was so hard.

Could we get, like, let's think through the numbers of this. So if you're not taking this seriously, you don't have, like, a proper website. This. We talked about the bucket three and the bucket four. The bucket four, they have consistent, like, input of, like, inflow of leads, and they know what levers they can pull that will drive those. What's the cost of not doing this that we may not be considering? So, say, for like, a $2 million firm that just. We get by on referrals, like, we don't have people that come to our website, but it's just, like, people who are referring and wanting to learn more of us. Like, what is the real dollar cost potentially of not investing in this at all?

I think that it's difficult to give an exact cost because how much you invest in marketing can somewhat scale. So if. Let's say you're running ads and you're putting more money behind it. But I think just being like, okay, the cost we're losing today by not doing this. You know what? If you know you're losing, let's just give it 40, $50,000 a month, something like that. If you're selling a high ticket, that's not even the burn. It's that you just said that you rely, like, on referrals. What does that. Losing that one client. What does that mean if you don't capture them? Because they could refer somebody who then refer somebody who then refers somebody. So there's this long trickle effect that by not doing marketing today, it's not just. It's kind of like putting money away to invest. It grows over time, and the sooner you do it, the better.

Is that where people should start is just going to their favorite clients and being like, hey, do you have any friends?

Absolutely. Most of firms have grown by referrals. So, like, let's just get an intentional referral process in place right now, and then we can look at acquiring totally cold new leads in the future.

Are there bad referrals? Like, if a C or D client sends me somebody, like, how do I. I guess those are just the people that I'm not proactively going out and asking for referrals then, right?

Yeah. And I think that as part of your intake process, you can hopefully weed some of those Out. Of course you can't weed out bad personalities right away. Always. That's pretty hard. But you can at least say like, hey, our minimum pricing is this. You know, we don't work with, say E Com. Have a few qualifications where you're like, okay, if they pass this now it's more of like a vibe fit check, right?

Yeah. Packages, like putting several options in front of somebody. People who listen to my podcast are so sick of me talking about three tier proposals because I just geek so much on every little detail in those and like, oh, we can do this and that and they'll pay a little bit more. What are kind of some of your best suggestions around, like how you present the proposal and the options and how you do the price spread and what you call them and what are your thoughts on all that?

I think that each package is going to be a little bit different for each firm and what they want. But personally, what we've seen just the best from talking to clients is having typically the standard package be where they start the middle package. Because it should be one where it's like, okay, I get a lot more if I just upgrade and pay a little bit more for this. And then it also for the large package, it's like, okay, there's room to grow. Because if I'm coming in and I'm starting at the largest package, psychologically, it's like, am I already maybe kind of going to outgrow the sperm?

Are your packages fixed? Like, do you, do you have three and they're the same for every client that you present a proposal to?

No, I think that they should have a general idea of what would fall within each. Like, okay, usually this package costs this. But let's say that, you know, someone comes in and they have a lot more transactions, but they're still getting the services that are on the middle tier. I think that that should slide and.

Adjust just based on volume of the.

Underlying or whatever that kind of like work input is going to take.

I ran a, so I ran a poll on social media the other day of what month do you usually do annual renewals in? And 2/3 of people said they never do annual renewals.

Not surprised. But that's horrible.

Yeah, so I guess, I guess we already like, we jumped straight into the 200 IQ version of that question. But like, what is, what is the case? Or what is the test you would run? Like, how do you go to that person and be like, here's why it's worth having a formal re engagement process.

Scope can change A lot businesses are growing. Maybe they're shrinking. And a lot of times, you know, we're talking about increasing our pricing. There's inflation, there's that business grew, and there's more work and more scope. But also what I never hear people really talk about is maybe a business had a hard year and you're proactively reaching out and be like, okay, we, you know, we don't need all this right now, and we can scale for you rather than we just get cut and dropped for someone new. Maybe there's something else that you can work with them on to help them bring them back to life as well. So your kind of goes back to, like, growing your firm. It's not just growing it by, you know, pushing people up to higher packages and paying more, but it's also like looking at your clients who maybe are struggling and need some support in different areas as well.

Do you ever think about, like, what if I just launched an accounting firm someday?

All the time.

Do you really?

Yes.

This makes me feel better all the.

Time because I'm like, well, I'm sure you see it. You could play around and tinker with things and experiment and test things out all the time. But then I go back to. I do not want to get the call, like, this tax return had this issue. That's what's like, I'm good, but I'm kind of not good. I'm still always curious.

If you did it, have you thought about, like, what would you do? Like, who would. What would your vertical be like? How would you make that amazing?

I would want to work with online content creators because I feel like they are underserved, and I think that the services would be relatively straightforward, and I think there'd be a lot of ways that you could not only save them on taxes, but help them just plan for the future. Because a lot of times they're not educated on finance at all. And so being that person could be like, hey, you know, you really need to reach out to a financial advisor. Like, you're thinking about kids. Okay? Like, let's talk about 529s. Just all those little things. That's what I find really boarding about accounting is you're actually. You're making a big difference in people's life. So I think the services that I would want to offer and then the impact I could make, that's where I would go.

I've totally thought about the same thing. So I'm gonna have to beat you to it now.

There you go.

We can do it. Together.

Hey, strike up a partnership.

The problem is we're both gonna want to do the same thing. So we're just gonna be. We're both gonna be messing around on social media all day and the clients are gonna be like, is somebody gonna do my work?

It's actually pretty easy to find talent.

Is it? Oh, hang on, we got to circle back to that. We didn't talk about that. The whole like, talent acquisition side of marketing. Tell me more about that.

So two and a half years ago. Yep. Two and a half years ago, there was a firm that was talking about like, hey, you know, what you're doing online on our social media is like working really well. They're like, what do you think about attracting talent with it? And I was like, you know what, I think it would work. So this one client was like, let's just run a test. And our same process that if we're just doing organic social media, where we're basically engaging on your behalf, creating content on your behalf, being you, we focus on whatever they're looking for. Whether it's like seniors or managers. Goes so well that we have multiple top 100 firms that have usually a lot of open positions, that have zero open positions. We tax managers straight in the inbox, the people that people can't find. Yeah, we get inbound all the time saying, hey, I want to come work for you. Actually, right before this interview, there was a tax manager at EY saying, I don't see an open role for a position at your firm, but here's my resume to keep on hand for a tax manager. Yeah. That everyone talks about not finding.

So, so, okay, so what are they posting and is this going out on like the company channel along with all the client facing stuff?

No, it's not at all on the firm side of things because these people, when you think about, I don't know if you still get hit up by recruiters, but somehow I still get some of those messages and it's just, it's very inauthentic. You just click off. But if you have like a partner at a firm reaching out to you in a direct message asking maybe how busy season's going to. Don't take our ideas here. No, it's fine. How busy season's going, how your time at the firm's going, what you're working on, how you know your career has been and you just get in a conversation, maybe they aren't thinking right now, but now they start following you and they start seeing your content. And a lot of the Content we make more personal. Maybe it's some about, you know, how they, a lot of times we're working with the partners or the managing partner, how they became partners, some of the favorite things they do at the firm, what's unique there. And then they start getting interested. Like that sounds pretty good. I would like to work at a firm like that. And suddenly that person you reached out to a couple months ago is back in your inbox saying I'm looking for a role. And it really snowballs. Where it takes a little bit initially because you're kind of nobody online, but then people start listening and following and it's pretty crazy.

Okay. So for smaller firms, they're writing about kind of the inside baseball of their firm on their personal channel and then the company stuff's going out on like the company page.

Ye. We actually don't see much transformation from company pages. I kind of think of it as like the news ticker should be there, but it's never really driving any monumental change. And I think there's a couple things there. At a base level, the social platforms want businesses to pay to run ads.

Yes.

People trust people, not logos. And finally a firm's brand is the sum of the peoples brand.

Yeah.

So you've got to get your people out there and branding, that's, that's what people are going to follow and that's what ultimately they're going to tie to your firm's logo. It's not what this firm posted. Hey, the tax deadlines coming up.

Yeah, that's been my experience too. I get virtually no company stuff on my feed and I think it's infinitely harder to build an audience from a company page and from a personal page. But like if I've got like two employees and my employees are like, I don't want to post on social media for you, but I'm trying to get in front of potential hires. Like do I do both of those things through my personal channel still? You think?

So you're trying to attract talent and clients. Yeah, I would pick if you can, one platform for one thing and another platform for another. Because if I am, I think you use a beekeeper example a lot. If I'm trying to attract beekeepers and then they start seeing my post about the firm and inner workings are a firm, they're like, that's not relevant. So it just confuses people and honestly makes both sides just be like, yeah, yeah, not interested.

The algorithm doesn't know where to put you.

Exactly.

Okay. All right, last question for you. As someone that's been like, super close in this stuff and helping a bunch of firms with this. What's a belief about accounting firm marketing that you held five years ago that you no longer believe they think it's changed, either has changed externally or has changed in, like, your perception and understanding of it.

I would say that you can still get great results, at least on social media. And even if you are someone that is like, I'm not good at marketing, I can't put myself out there. This isn't my thing. It's scary. If you're just willing to do it, you are going to get results because 99.9% of people aren't willing. So if you can set that aside, which I understand, that's a big ask. You don't have to be good.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of times people start comparing their self to people that have been doing it for so long because that's what's showing up. Because those are the few people that are doing it. But it's like, no one's. No one's coming to you as you're going to be their accountant. To be like, oh, I'm actually hiring you because you great. You create great content. No, they want you to be a great accountant and they want to work with a great firm. So it's really just. I think that the stakes are so much lower than five years ago. I probably, having not worked with as many people, would have said, like, okay, you need, before we start, like, posting. It needs to be more polished. No, you just need to, like, put yourself out there.

Just be visible. Right.

Which I know that sounds very basic, but it's the truth.

Yeah. People don't know you exist otherwise. Like, there's so many anonymous accountants out there that are like, could be amazing technicians, but they just, they don't show up anywhere.

Right. And they don't have. You don't have to make it some big production or thought process. If you just start thinking about the conversations you had during the day with clients. You know, I love, like, even Chad Davis. He did that series and he's a great content creator. Don't.

Chad can do it. Anybody can do it.

But he's like, documenting his RV life. Like, all that stuff, it's just so cool. And you feel like you know them. It's.

Yeah, he's an amazing story, actually, because he's told me. He's like, I make these stupid videos of me with my dogs and knowing all these things, and it's driven unbelievable client growth for them. He's like, I'm not even talking about accounting stuff and we get clients hand over fist just because, I mean he's a very likable person. Like he's a giant Canadian teddy bear. But he's like, yeah, I've committed to making a video every single day that's like two to five minutes. And it's been the biggest new source.

Of business for us because it's all about resonance, not reach. Those people, they resonate with it, they feel like they know him. It builds trust. It doesn't matter. I mean now he reaches a lot of people, but probably just started out by reaching a few people and expands over time.

Who are you the very best for? As we're wrapping up here, if somebody's watching this, like, who is your practice gonna be most helpful for? Like the type of accounting firm that.

You'Re amazing for firms that are doing at least a million dollars a year so they should have a little bit of budget for marketing and they offer ideally a full suite of services. So you aren't just accounting or just tax, you offer a full suite of services. And the biggest thing is that you are curious and open minded to trying new things. And experimenting found that that is very important to like have a point of view, to be willing to test things. Try something a little bit different. You're going to get infinitely better results than someone who is closed minded and not willing to put yourself out there or take a stance or have a point of view because then you're just kind of regurgitating what everyone else is doing.

Is there a version of this where somebody can be like, you just do it or do they like, they've got to be engaged in this, right?

Yeah, I wish we can do a lot, but you have to have or your firm, someone there has to have some sort of leading thoughts. If we're on your social media, we could talk about running paid ads and everything. But ultimately those people are still going to go look you up. Like no one can be you if you aren't sharing what's going on in your brain. Kind of like, AI can't replace you, it can't do thinking. It's taking what's already out there. So you still have to think. And if someone comes to us and is like, I just want you to do it all. We don't have your good ideas, we can't come up with that. So we need you involved at least.

A little bit more information about Katie and working with Katie's team down in the video description. Go and check that out. And, Katie, thank you so much for doing this.

Thanks for having me on.