CFO as a Productized Service

If you allow your messaging to change to speak towards what your clients want, then you're going to get better clients, higher paying clients.

You're listening to the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast. Each episode, we have conversations with firm owners and marketing experts about how to attract your ideal clients, foster trust, and build a marketing engine that works for an accounting firm. I'm your host, Matt Banker. I'm the founder of Benchmark Growth Marketing. You can find more episodes and subscribe to our newsletter at marketingforaccountingfirms.com now, here's the show. All right, Today I am joined by Adam Lean and Adam, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I'm really excited to be here.

Yeah, well, we always start here, Adam. Well, we're going to, we're going to talk about advisory CFO type services in the context of marketing and your firm and all that. But just to begin, why. Why are you here? Why should people care what you have to say about any of this? What's your, what's kind of your. Your credentials, your background? How did you come about your experience to get to this point?

Yeah, so I used to be an accountant and honestly, I didn't really like it all that much. I. I was. My job was to sit there and re. And record the past. I mean, that really. I mean, that's what an accountant's job is. And, and that's what they were paying me to do. But honestly, I wasn't fulfilled. I wanted to get in, you know, I wanted to roll up my sleeves and help the business grow. But I was in this lane and they told I worked for a very large company. I was in this lane and I had to stay in this lane. So at nights and on the weekends, I started a business. This is back in 2006. I started an e commerce store. And that business grew a lot. And, you know, it's. And then I joined this. This. I was living in Atlanta at the time, and I joined this really geeky club called the web entrepreneurs. Web entrepreneurs that met at Georgia Tech. And it was full of guys that were trying to start things online. And it was fun. I enjoyed it. And I started working with a bunch of people or community, talking with a bunch of people in that group. And I realized that I took for granted the fact that I understood my numbers. Now, these are all people that were growing businesses.

Mm.

And they were trying to make money at it. But it seemed like I was the only one that actually understood my numbers. I understood because, I mean, pro revenue is a number. You know, obviously you want revenue, but that's not, that doesn't define what the success of a business is. It's cash flow. I mean, even profit's a, a vanity number to, to some degree, cash flow is what matters. But I digress. So I started working with some of the people and showing them how, you know, how they can improve their business financially, you know, and make it more of a valuable business. And anyways, fast forward several years. I grew my business to well into the seven figures and then I sold it. And then I started an outsourced CFO firm to provide what I call a productized CFO service, which we could get to that a little bit later on. But essentially I was going to a business owner and saying, I'm going to help you do X, Y and Z, essentially, so you'll have a growing and more profitable business, financially successful business. And this is the price. This is exactly what I'm going to do every month. If I'm not helping you, at least generate more cash flow, flash cash flow, more than you're paying me, I'll fire myself. That's how much I believe in this. And this is how much we're going to, to measure success, cash flow. You want to hire me? And I got, I got yeses, way more than no's. And I quickly, I mean, I quickly got to capacity within a year and a half of starting the CFO firm. And then fast forward years later, I met my now business partner who had a very similar philosophy to providing CFO services that I did. So we merged firms and we built a really, really good CFO firm. But then we thought instead of hiring CFOs to be on our team, why don't we train accountants to be CFOs and they can offer CFO services in their own business. I can start a CFO practice. And that's what we did. And so we did that several years ago. And right now we have 300, almost 370 members in our membership program while we train and certify CFOs to start a CFO or add a CFO service to their practice.

Yeah, the CFO route, I would say advisory as, as a concept for firms seems to be on the rise. I don't know if it's, I don't know if it's peaked or if it's still moving that direction. I, I, I, I hear this advice, you know, in a lot of places that you gotta, you gotta offer more advisory. And I also, I believe it. Right. So we know the direction of the industry is that yeah, more things get more of the task sort of things get automated. A lot of firms are, are relying on offshore to do a lot of the data entry type, even the bookkeeping things. But that relationship between the accountant and the business owner continues to be incredibly valuable. It's not something that's easily outsourced. It's also not a natural skill that has come to many accountant types. Now you, you were a business owner and then a fractional cfo. I also find myself often in a consulting seat. And there's a natural give and take. Right. When you're a business owner, whatever your expertise area is. For me it's marketing, for you it's the financials. You think about it as like a business owner, but that's not always the case with someone who went to school or is skilled as an accountant. They don't naturally think as a business owner. They think as a bookkeeper or a tax professional. That's right. How do you maybe unpack for us a little bit with the CFO project? Is this only for people who are already in that like business owner mindset? Is that part of the training? What, tell me, tell me about what it looks like for you.

That's a good question. Because you know, most people become accountants because they enjoy the, the active accounting, the numbers and the organization and the systems and, and all that and they get it. But here's the problem though, is that in order to compete in today's, you know, competitive landscape, I mean we're not just competing against the accountant down the street, we're now competing against the accountant in another state. And, and there's a, thousands of counties out there, there's thousands of bookkeepers out there. Not only that, we're competing against software and these so called tech companies that are trying to get into this space. And so the, the options for a independent tax filer or a business owner are unlimited. I mean there's millions, hundreds of thousands of places they could go to. So why would they go to you? And, and that's the, the, I guess the, the crux of this problem is that in order for us to compete, we've got to stand out and appeal to what our clients and potential clients want. And what I could tell you what they don't want, they do not want to talk accounting. They don't want to think about accounting. If they didn't have to file a tax return ever, they, they wouldn't, they don't want to have to deal with the books. They think all of that is a necessary evil. And when something is thought of as not valued, not as a necessary evil, and it's on, on the laundry list of things a business owner has to think about, accounting falls at the bottom. When something like that happens, then we fall into commoditation, commoditization territory. You know, we're a commodity. If anybody could do the books, why would, why would you pay me, you know, $2,000 more than when you pay somebody else down the street? So if we're a commodity, the only way we can raise our prices, sorry, the only way we can make more money as an accountant is to either take on more clients or, or raise our fees. But yeah, the problem is if we're a commodity, we can't raise our fees. So the only way for us to make more money is to take on more clients or work longer hours, neither of which is really appealing. And so we've got to do something different. And what I propose is that we actually give the client, or you should sell to the client what they do want. So if they don't want accounting, they don't want to think about accounting. Even though we know they have to have that done. If they don't want to think about accounting, what do they want? What most business owners want, if not all business owners. They want somebody in their lives that they can trust to tell them what to do to have a growing and successful business. That's what they want. And when I look back at my, you know, when I was working, working, I remember one particular guy who owned a large, a large marketing company, actually in the e commerce world. He was an expert at what he did. But the reason why he liked me is because I didn't come at him as an accountant. I came out at him as somebody that he could trust to tell him what to do, to give him guidance on how to have a successful business. And by the way, successful, that term successful is defined in one way. Generating consistent, positive cash flow for your clients. That's success. And if you could help your client do that, then they're gonna, all of a sudden your stock and their eyes would go from being very bottom to the very top. They'll their, their view, you will go from being just the recorder of the past, somebody I have to talk to on a quarterly basis, to being the number one confidant, the number one guide in their lives, and all of a sudden they'll pay you for that. That's how you make more money in this profession. This week's episode is sponsored by Benchmark growth marketing helping your accounting firm expand your niche with branding positioning websites SE marketing strategy. If you're an accounting firm looking to fix your marketing benchmark is your go to solution. Learn more at marketingforaccountingfirms.com now back to the program.

Yeah, well, you mentioned, you mentioned the word guide a couple times there before we started recording here. We were talking a little bit about Donald Miller and story brand. And I'm a longtime story brand guide. And so I help people, I guide them on, on the marketing side. But the idea, you know, within this storybrand framework is that people are not looking for a superhero to come in and save the day. They're not looking for someone to do all the stuff for them and be, you know, be the one who gets, I guess, gets the credit. Maybe that doesn't happen all that often in the accounting space. But they're not, they're, they're not actually looking for someone to, to do it for them. They're really looking for that person who's coming alongside them to help them do it for themselves. Or that's at least how they see it. And so the more you can think of yourself as I am facilitating and helping and bringing this person along to accomplish their goals versus I'm doing all this stuff for them. It's, you know, it's less transactional. It's more about this, this relationship piece. There's more value there. And when I say value, I, I mean, I specifically talk a lot with my clients about how when you, when you get your positioning and your messaging right, it can support much higher fees. Because people understand that you're there to be the guide, not just to do the accounting tasks which every software company says they don't need you, that you can just use, you know, XY SaaS proxy.

Exactly.

Yeah.

No, I love that. And you're right. You're absolutely right. Business owners specifically, they want to be the hero. They want to be the, the successful business owner. They want to be thought of as, from their friends and their families as this successful business owner or entrepreneur or whatever. And they want a guide to show them how to get there. Because the most business owners are not successful. I mean, let's just face it, mo half of all businesses, according to the U.S. bureau of Labor Statistics, that half fail before they reach their 5th birthday. And I think it was like 8 out of 10 fail before they reach their 10th birthday. Which is crazy. I mean, you think about it, the business owners quit their job, they invest a bunch of capital, raise money, go into debt, spend a bunch of time starting a business that's not going to be here in five years and they have to go back and get a job. So if somebody that they can trust comes along and says, look, I will walk alongside you and guide you towards having a growing and successful business, a financially successful business. And by the way, not to harp on this point, but you could be the best accountant in the world. But if your client still fails, does it really matter that you are a great accountant? I mean, does it. At the end of the day, your client's out of business. And you know, if the accountant sitting on the Titanic, it's like, oh well, I did my job perfectly, right? The Titanic still sung.

The metric you need to be judging yourself is not against things like I don't know, accuracy or number of tax, you know, tax filings, but it's the, it's. Your success is a reflection of your customers success. Right? That's. And that's what your customers are hiring for you for. Right. When they see, oh, you helped such and such business grow or, or become more profitable or whatever that is, then they have confidence that you could do the same for them. But if it's just that, you know, oh, I work with, you know, a hundred different business owners, 40% of them went out of business. Yeah, but, right. I have a lot of customers. That's not going to be very compelling.

Totally. The message of I could do tax work better, faster, cheaper just doesn't resonate with people anymore. But and to answer your question from two questions ago, that that's the message if, right. You're, if you're putting out the message that I can just do this work better, faster and cheaper, that's not going to land. So in order for you to compete and be successful, this, you've got to have a different message.

One of the questions I have about this whole kind of advisory CFO option for, for firms is do you, do you see it primarily as a kind of behind the scenes production operations change or do you, how do you see it if you do connected to the marketing side of a business? Like is it, are you just solving one or does it, does it impact both of those things in your mind?

Yeah, the marketing side of the accounting business. Yeah, I think it does both. But here's the thing, here's the, here's the beauty of this is that if you, if you allow your messaging to change to speak towards what your clients want, then you're going to get better clients, higher paying clients, which will then allow Your operations to be more efficient, more scalable. Think about it. You could, you could be working, you know, 80 hour weeks, especially during tax season, and you could have 600 tax clients. And you're working a lot to service those 600 tax clients. And each client you're charging, let's say $900 to, you're not making that much money and you're only getting paid once per year from your client. And your clients, let's, let's face it, they just, for $900, they just want you to do a job and they don't want to talk to you till next year. And so you're working a lot for high demanding clients at little pay. And then if all of a sudden you, if, if you change your messaging, your positioning and say that I will do your taxes, no problem, or I'll do your books, no problem. But more importantly, what I do is help you have a growing, successful business. We're going to meet every month and I'm going to show you exactly what's wrong with your business. We'll show you what's right with your business. And then we're going to put together, I'm going to give you an action plan of the two to three things that have to happen this month so that you generate more profit, more cash flow, and you can have a successful business. However, the client defines success, because every client defines success differently. So from a messaging standpoint, that message resonates way more. There's this quote that we use all the time. It was, it's actually coined by a marketing professor at Harvard. He said people don't want to, you probably heard of it. People don't want to buy a quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole, right? I mean, think about it. It makes absolute sense. People, people that go to the Lowe's or Home Depot or whatever to get a drill, they're not buying it just to have another tool sitting in their garage. They want what the drill provides, right? Which is the hole. So we as accountants have to go to our clients or potential clients and give them, sell them what they want. And they don't want the drill. They don't want better, faster, cheaper tax work. They want to have a successful business. They want to be the hero in their own story.

Yeah, when we, we, I look at a lot of websites and we, we talk about a lot of websites, I think of, I, I have young kids, so, you know, like I connect the dots picture, right? You just have all these dots that are numbered. A lot of times you Land on an accounting firm's website, and it says things like, like bookkeeping and like, monthly reconciliation and like tax preparation. And it lists, like, a bunch of the different forms or special. The types of filing that they specialize in. And. And I think about that that's like putting a bunch of dots on a page, but you're asking your customer to try to connect them to say, but how does this add up to something that I actually want or need, which is a growing business or more profit.

That's a great way to put it.

It is. And so, you know, leaning into that, what's the real want? Right. Like, they want accounting services, but that's only to serve the goal of growing their business, which is really an advisory function. To the degree that you're helping them grow their business, yes, you're probably fulfilling a lot of tasks, but ultimately you're fulfilling the right tasks that you've guided them, you know, into. And they're doing their part as well, so that it. It equals that thing that they want. But you have to. Yeah. Cast a. Cast a vision for. For the future. What, what you're talking about kind of made me think, you know, chicken or the egg. Do you first say, I can provide advisory services and then you. And then you get clients and then you do it, or do you first prove, like, with your current clients that you can do advisory services and try to sell them? Sell those. It sounds like you're kind of on team. Like, build. Build the plane while we're flying it. Or like, like lean into. You have the skills, you can be an advisor. And then if and when you start bringing in clients who value that you can charge high enough fees so that you can deliver it. That's.

Yeah.

Are you kind of. Maybe. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but take the leap? Is that sort of the. The message?

Yeah. Essentially what you're asking is, how can I offer advisor services when I'm not an advisor yet? Yeah, I mean, we get that question all the time. And, and here's the thing. Most accountants and bookkeepers and enrolled agents and of course, CPAs are equipped to provide advice to their clients. They just need some training and some experience to do that, which is why we started the CFO project. Yeah, but. But you're. You are equipped. You're. You're qualified. Now, what you're not probably qualified for is to be the CFO for Coca Cola or General Motors.

You're.

You're probably not. Not qualified to be that CFO tomorrow. But you are qualified to be the CFO for small to medium sized businesses. Because what those two organizations need, big businesses versus small business, what they need is totally different. The CFO for Coca Cola needs somebody that understands how to navigate complex billion dollar decisions and a competitive marketplace. Small to medium sized business owners need something different from their CFO advisor, if you will, their accountant who offers advisory services. What they need is advice, specific advice on how to improve cash flow. Cash flow is a number financial concept. So between the business owner and the accountant, who would have a better grasp on how to improving and how, on how to improve a number, it would be the accountant. So, but the accountant needs, you know, guidance and training on how to do that. But, but the, at the core financial. Cash flow is a financial concept. So the accountant is absolutely the best person in the business owner's lives to guide them on how to improve that. Contrast that with like a, you know, a business coach or consultant. Most business coaches and consultants, nothing against them, but most of them approach things from a leadership standpoint or management standpoint or operations standpoint or sales standpoint. And I'm shocked at some of this, some of the, at some of the advice they give their clients because they'll, they'll offer this advice without knowing how that advice will impact cash flow. Yeah, and what we're training accountants to do is to start with cash flow and say that's the goal, we need to improve it. Because cash literally solves everything in business. I mean literally everything in business. You, you have more cash, you could do more marketing, hire more employees, hire better employees. You could take time off because then you can hire people to come in and replace what you do. You can own a, you could finally own a ca. Own your business instead of owning a job. I mean, the cash solves everything. And so we've got to improve cash flow. And so you are absolutely qualified to do this with a little bit of training and some experience to offer advisory services. Now to directly answer your question, I personally started a CFO firm without having any clients, without doing accounting or without doing bookkeeping. And so I just hung out my shingle and I said, I talked to a business owner. This is what I propose. Actually, the very first client was the guy that I met almost 10 years earlier at that Atlanta web entrepreneur club at, in Georgia. And I said, this is what I'm thinking, do you want this? And he says, absolutely, I need this because I positioned it as advisory first, not accounting first.

Yeah.

And, and he's been a client for a very long time.

Yeah, A lot of firms, I think they think of advisory as a separate set of services that they add on top. Right. So they lead with accounting, bookkeeping, payroll tax, whatever, whatever that is. And then also if you also want advisory, it's this other thing. But I, I think that other firms lean into it more as an advisory first. Where, you know, our, our number one goal here has to do with helping you build your business, not do your taxes. And then in order to do that, these other things come into play. But it's almost like advisory is the umbrella that encompasses all the things that they do versus an add on service. I'd love for you to unpack. We've, we've kind of been operating with maybe an assumed definition of what a CFO is. I have some ideas in my mind. Yeah. You know, there's this whole, you know, fractional cfo, CMO is, is a thing now too, you know, CRO, all these different kind of fractional roles. My, my assumption is what you're teaching and coaching is for, for CPAs and EAs and, and everyone to be in sort of a, a fractional role in those industries. But what's your definition of it? What is, what's an attainable and, and kind of reasonable version of that look like, you know, for an average accountant?

Yeah, that's a good question. We came up with this term product as CFO in that if you think of what a product is like, think of Apple, they, they invented the iPhone, they created it once and then they manufacture it over and over and over. So it's scalable. The problem with most products though is that you can't charge a lot for it, which is, you know, why Amazon exists. Everything is priced, you know, very cheaply. And so what we came up with is this idea of a product ties CFO service where you're getting the best of both worlds. You're, you're selling a service, it's the cfo. At the end of the day, it's a CFO service. You're able to charge for it, but you're delivering it as if it's a product. And so we go to our clients and we say, I'm going to do these five things with you every single month. The goal is to ensure that you have a growing successful business. That's the goal. Contrast that with a fractional, what most people think of as a fractional CFO service where fractional CFO services come in and either they'll do one of two things, they'll come in and do and Solve a particular problem, they'll do a particular job for a, for business and then leave. Or the fracture will come in and literally be a CFO, but on like, you know, 15 hours a week basis. And then that fractional CFO will have like four clients. Problem with that is that it's harder to scale that way. You, you can't take on more than a handful of clients without feeling like you have a ton of part time jobs. That's not scalable nor sustainable. And what we're more interested in is scaling. We want to escape what we call the accountants trap, which is where you're trading time for money. We think in order for you to make more money, you've got to stop trading time for money. So the way to do that is to offer something that's scalable. So we suggest instead of offering a fractional CFO. And by the way, most businesses that are under 5 million, they don't need a CFO anyways. They don't need a fractional CFO, but they do need somebody that the business owner could trust to tell them what to do. So we say instead of hiring a fractional CFO service or instead of what most business owners do, which is nothing at all or have nobody to lean on, we're saying for the fraction of the cost, hire me as your as and I'll be your outsourced CFO advisor. But I'm going to deliver a product task service. Where I'm going. You wouldn't say this to the client, but essentially you're saying I'm going to deliver you a product has CFO service, where I'm going to do these deliverables, these, these set of deliverables every single month. And it takes about four hours per month to do per client. And then you're charging anywhere from 1500 to $5000 to do these things.

Yeah.

And so you could have, at four hours per month, you could have 20 to 30 clients and still work less than you would at a day job or doing taxes or bookkeeping while making way more than you would. Because the, the average accountant salary is about $73,000 a year, which is terrible for the amount of training and experience and knowledge that an accountant has. And if you're charging, you know, $2,500 a month, which is the average that it, that we recommend that you charge, you know, 2500amonth times 10 clients, of course, that's 25 grand that you're making per month. At 12 months, it's 300,000 a year, which is 10 clients. And each client takes four hours per month because it's a productized service.

Yeah.

You're only working 40 hours a month, not a week, a month to earn that 300,000. I mean, imagine if I'm half wrong in this.

Right.

I mean, my high. When I started my CFO firm, I had 17 clients at capacity, and I didn't want to take out any more clients.

Well, at some point too, you know, you, you get the, whatever that number you want, you still have capacity to raise your fees within that. Right. So you get to 17. Oh, of course, 20. The answer isn't like, okay, like you said, the goal is not to therefore just add more clients, which means more time. It's to, how do you increase the value of what you're offering so that you can increase your fees to match, you know, what you, what you want to do? You know, I can hear this as a, you know, it sounds great for, for, you know, for smaller shops, kind of solo or, you know, when the business owner, the firm owner is also doing a lot of the work. I work with a lot of firms that are part of the PASBA network and other firms that are, you know, that might have three, four, five senior accountants. This is a, this is also a way, though, for them to add more fee, you know, service value to the work that their team is doing, not just owner. And this kind of goes back to that earlier conversation where business owners, I think, naturally find themselves in kind of a consulting advisory sort of role. But the staff level folks, I mean, if they were entrepreneurial, they probably wouldn't be working for you.

Right.

So giving them a productized system, something that they can really execute and feel confident in, is so important in order for them to be able to add that value. Because if you're just saying, hey, go advise these business owners, you know, deer in the headlights, like, I don't know, they don't want to take on the risk of giving advice that they don't, that they don't understand. Right, right.

And the beauty of this is, is that we know whether or not our advice is good because does cash flow increase or not? And so you could train your team on how to, to execute this and, and, and measure whether your advice is working or not. And usually it is working. And so we have actually have a lot of people that we've worked with. A lot of the members in our program, because we have a membership program, we call them members that own accounting firms. A lot of them, I'd say probably 20 to 25% actually have, you know, three to five people on their team who they delegate the advisory services to. So you have, let's say you have five accountants on your team. You teach these five accountants how to offer advisory services and now all of a sudden your, your team's tax services is differentiated between all the other, all of your other competitors because you're not just a tax service, you're enhancing your tax services by also offering advisory services.

Yeah.

And that's huge. Not only will you attract, you have a better messaging to attract new clients, you'll retain clients longer because not they're going to stay in business because you're helping them stay in business and they're, they like you because most, most business owners, even if you weren't helping them increase cashflow, would, would love for their financial personal life to talk to them. I mean, I've had people tell me, I've felt like leaving a therapy session after they've had a meeting because it's therapeutic. Who, who else can a business owner really talk to about potentially embarrassing things like their state of their financials? Who else?

Right.

They, they can't talk to their employees.

One of the things we often tell our clients is different is better than better. You know, the amount of energy that it takes to become the best or to come better and better at say, tax planning totally to the payoff is very small. I love that you're seen as something, someone that's offering something completely different, much easier to compete and you generally can charge more for it.

You're, you're absolutely right. And I bet there's a lot of accountants listening that, that hate the fact that they, they, they know another accountant who they know is not providing as quality accounting or bookkeeping services. They are, but they're making way more money. It's because like you said, better. What was that saying better?

Difference is better than better.

Exactly. And those people, those other accountants are offering something different, not necessarily better, because your clients are not equipped to know. What most business owners don't know the difference between a good bookkeeper and a bad one, a good accountant and a bad one, they just go to somebody who they like and say, you're my accountant.

Yeah. Well, and where I, I'll tie it back even to some marketing things, is that they, they may not even be offering something much better or different. It's that they're messaging it better. The perceived, they're able to perception, you know, at the end of the day, marketing is a promise. And I think one of the things I Take from this conversation is that one of the problems that a lot of firms have is that they're not making a big enough promise. And so the perceived value of what they offer is very low. Now you obviously have to be able to deliver on that promise because otherwise you bring clients in through the front door and they leave through the back because you're not, you know, able to actually provide value. That's right. But I think a lot of accountants, this is a, this is a true thing that I've heard as I've talked to some of them, they are hesitant sometimes to make a big promise because they're not sure that they can deliver on it. They don't have the tools on the back end to be able to be an advisor. And so they'd rather just say, and that's why we just do bookkeeping or just taxes, because that's an, that's a, it's an easy, predictable thing. Totally fine. I want you to be great at bookkeeping and taxes and, and all of that. But, you know, to take it to that next level where, in your words, you're getting away from trading time for money. The only thing that you can trade instead of your time really is your knowledge, you know, your, your advice, your experience. And so it doesn't take as much time, but you need to have a way to be able to deliver that. And so I guess, yeah, my advice is start. You got to think, is your promise to your clients big enough to be compelling and something that people would pay, you know, a premium price for?

Yeah, I love that.

It sounds like working with the CFO project is, is an important. That, that would be a way for you to then develop the ability to, to deliver on that as well.

Yeah, I mean, and not only do we help you deliver it, we'll help you overcome the imposter syndrome or the idea that you're, you're not qualified to provide these services? Because a lot of accountants are giving their advice away for free because the cause most business owners are asking questions. They're asking advice seeking questions like, okay, you, you say, I made a hundred grand in profit last year, Therefore I owe 25 grand in taxes. Then how come I only have 10,000 in the bank? And the accountant's thinking, I don't know, But I have 200 other tax returns I gotta get to before next Tuesday. And so business owners are asking these questions. They want you to answer questions like, you know, should I buy this truck? Should I hire this employee? Can I raise my prices? What should I do? And the accountants giving surface level advice because they want to keep their client happy. And they're not charging for this advice because they're, they're insecure in their ability to give advice. I don't know if their advice is good, so they're not charging for it. And, and there's a lot of things we help you overcome in our program. Yeah, but giving away advice, to your point, is like you working in a retail, your own retail store and giving a customer something off the shelf and handing it to them for free because they asked for it. That's exactly what it is when you are giving your advice because your advice is, your advice is knowledge. That's, that's. There's a value assigned to that. Why would you give away inventory?

Yeah, I, I have a friend who, he, he maps out a triangle and each point on the triangle. It's positioning people and process and this idea that in order to elevate your product or change it, all three of those things have to change kind of in tandem. And so, you know, in this, in this case, the goal is to increase, increase your fees. And, and I mean, we, we talk about it as increasing fees, but really it's like increase the value of, of the thing that you're offering so that you can appreciate. But it's not just about charging more money. But in order to do that, a, you need to update your positioning and say, we're not bookkeepers, we're advisors. Then you need to upskill your people to say, I'm not an imposter. I'm. I am an advisor. I can do this. And then you have to update your processes that allow you then to deliver on that service. And if you can get those three things working in tandem, you know, it ends up being, you know, an upward spiral. That, that's good for your business.

I love that. I love that concept. I completely agree with you.

Well, Adam, this is, this is a really great conversation. Thanks for being on the show. Where, where can people find more about the CFO project? You know, connect with you? What, What. Yeah, what would you direct people to?

Our website is the CFO project.com so t h e c f o project.com and then every Thursday, myself and my business partner, Jeff, we do a training called how to start a CFO service every Thursday at 3pm Eastern, 12 Pacific. So just go to the website, the cfoproject.com@the very top under resources, Free training. Just click that sign up. We'd love for you to attend and, and meet you.

Yeah, so that's the way to, if you're thinking maybe this is for me, that's the best introduction to cfo.

Yeah, perfect. And you get CPE credit for your.

CPE and you get CPE credit. So that's, that's good too. All right. Well, I think we're going to leave it there. Adam, again, thanks for, thanks for coming on the show and this is, this is a fun conversation.

Thank you so much for having me.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast. If you liked this conversation and found it valuable, please please rate and review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It's really good for the algorithm and it helps other firm owners find this show. You can subscribe to our weekly Marketing for Accounting firms newsletter@marketingforaccountingfirms.com and you can connect with me, Matt Banker, on LinkedIn or Twitter. We hope you tune in next time for another episode of Marketing for Accounting Firms. It.