Choosing a Niche for Your Firm

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We are here to talk again about marketing for accounting firms and CPAs. And I have with me today Shauna Asper. Shauna is great. She's very active on LinkedIn. I've been really impressed with the stuff she's been posting and specifically I was really interested because she has a very specific, specific niche for her firm and we wanted to talk about that today. There's a lot of benefits to niching down in your business and it's good to learn from people who have done it. So Shauna, give us maybe a little bit of your background. How did you get into starting your own firm? And then why did you choose the niche you're in? And maybe a little bit of info about that niche.

Yeah, absolutely. So I'll start off by saying my firm is actually both horizontally and vertically niched. So we are a fractional CFO firm. We don't do tax work. We prep financials for tax preparers and we are the liaison for our clients in that respect. But we don't actually do any business tax returns or personal tax returns. And we're also niche by the industry. So we specifically serve the AEC industry, architecture, engineering and construction. And you know, there are a couple of tangential industry pieces that fall in there, but it's kind of like very specifically to them. And I guess I'll start off by. So growing up I worked in my family's businesses. I joke that, you know, I was using QuickBooks for my own personal like bank account as a 13 year old. And that's not a lie, that's not an exaggeration either. And you know, most accountants out there are like, wow. But it's true. I started working in the family business, learning about invoicing and bills and all that kind of stuff. So my dad was a, is a civil engineer. They had a civil engineering and surveying firm and then also a construction company and still do to this day. And so I grew up, I grew up working in those two businesses, really learning the ins and outs of businesses. I joke that business was the language we spoke around our house. Some, some families keep business pretty separated from the kids and everything. And that was not the way it was for us. We talked about business at the dinner table. Like we knew what was going on, my brother and I in the business. It was a very open conversation. So I kind of grew up seeing the feast and famine of small business life. There are a ton of perks to being a business owner and there are a lot of hardships. Right. And specifically in those industries Watching recessions, that type of thing. It was very eye opening and I always had the intention of being an engineer. But I got into college and I think like a lot of people do, got in my second calc class and was like, why are they adding these variables? It was very like not taught in a way that made me desire to continue even though I was doing well. And I was like, what makes more sense? I'm going to go over to accounting. And accounting came very naturally to me. Really enjoyed being in that space. But my accounting path beyond college kind of took a windy path with my husband being active duty military until I finally got to this point. I was three years into my PhD program to be an accounting professor and I realized that it was too far removed from small business. This thing that I had grown up in and really loved. I knew the impact that being a CPA and working directly with business owners could have on business owners lives. The lives of employees and academia was just very, very far removed from feeling any of that sort of impact. So about that time in 2019 is when I made the transition to opening my own firm and kind of finding my way into what, what do I want to offer, who do I want to serve? And having that experience with my family's businesses is what led me to be like, you know, I want to serve them operationally so that they can have really good financials and also have the answers to the questions that they ask on an operational basis. Can I hire another employee? Can I purchase that piece of equipment? How much cash do I need? Can I take a distribution? All those questions that like that's what business owners come to their accountants or they don't know the answer. I wanted to be able to answer those for them. And that's kind of what I guess birthed this idea of who we serve as a firm.

Yeah, I love that. A couple of things that you, that you touched on that I think are super important. One is, so I, you know, I'm coming at this from a marketing perspective, but you're talking about you've built your business as kind of an advisory first rather than like a task first firm. And the great thing about that is that people will, there's like a limit, like a ceiling to what people are willing to pay for your time. But the advice and like the advisory piece, there's a lot, you know, the ceiling is much higher from that because it's a lot more valuable. Right. And people want, they don't just need someone to like do their books or do their taxes I mean, they do need some of those things. And that's not. You don't even really do that. You connect them with maybe the right people. But really what business owners want to know, a lot of it is a lot more internal. Like, am I doing it right? Am I going to be okay? Like, all of these questions of. Because being a business owner is, I always say it's only like 30% being good at the thing that you're good at. And then it's like 70%, like mindset and internal work and all of those things. And a lot of those emotions and the stresses around that are focused around money and finances and things like that. And there's a real opportunity for CPAs and accountants to fill that role of not, not just someone who can, like, do their books, but who can be their advisor or their guide in that space. And that's really, that's super valuable. So I think it's super smart. So question though, like, you have this background in this industry, so it, it kind of made sense for you to choose it. Did you have time saying no to, you know, businesses that aren't in that area, or was there. Did you have any fear around, like, having too narrow of a focus, like there wasn't going to be enough clients for you in that?

Yeah, no, that's a great question. And it's a great question with where we're at with the economy right now too. Right. Everybody is, you know, fearful of heading into a recession and especially on the backside of the Great Recession, who did really poorly. You know, the real estate, construction, all of that was really bad in the Great Recession. So, you know, I've had that question from employees from, you know, other firm owners that I'm in masterminds with, that type of thing. And in these conversations, the reality is that I, in my firm, we should be the last ones to go in cost cutting for these companies, if we're doing our job correctly, because we should be the thing that's the saving grace that's helping them make the decisions to pivot and to survive any sort of downturn. This is where they truly get all of their value from us. Not that we don't provide a lot of value when, you know, they're making hay, but this is the time where it's like, oh, I really need answers. Like, right, right now, I can't afford to make a bad decision. I have to make the right decision right now. And that's where we come in as advisors. So from that standpoint, it. As long as we're positioning ourselves as the advisor and kind of hitting back on what you said. I always know that I'm not a right fit for someone when they refer to me as their bookkeeper. And this has not to do with like the title of bookkeeper. But I know that I haven't positioned myself well or I'm not in this space that they're looking for. If they see me as like a check the box compliance type thing, like, I should be the person, my firm should be the team that they're coming to when they're really having those hard questions that they're like, hey, I need help. Like, how's our profit doing? What should we be changing? What should we be thinking about as we head into this next period of the economy? And so that's where our value is really coming in. And if they need to see us that way in order to be the right client for us. And then as far as just like the size of the industry, you know, I definitely have the abundance mindset when it comes to accounting services. There are way more businesses in the world than any of us could possibly serve. So I don't feel any sort of like, need to like snatch up, you know, anyone from other industries or anything like that. And I think it helps us by, by staying this narrow focus, we really can start to create some really good systems and processes and training within the team. Whereas if I was like, you know, I think we should take this like e commerce client just because there's a lot of work that goes into that that doesn't benefit any of our other clients. And having that specialty for that one client, it's just a lot of essentially wasted time. We can't create that efficiency.

What I found is a lot of entrepreneurs are very good problem solvers and that actually is a thing that they're really excited about. And this idea of niching down, there's a concern that you're going to get bored by just working with the same clients over and over again. And the, the problem is most people you hire are not of that same mindset. They, they are not, they're not as like comfortable with the sol, the problem solving. And so you end up putting yourself if you have to solve a new problem for every client, like, that's fun at first and you might feel like you're really good at it because you're like you're doing new things for clients, but you can't build on it and you can't build the processes that you can train and hand off to other People you bottleneck or the linchpin every time. And so it can really limit your ability to grow into like, a more sustainable firm that doesn't. You can't take a vacation if you're the linchpin. Right. Build processes within an industry niche. Every time you solve a problem for a client, you add that to your stack of solutions that you can offer to all of your clients, and then it becomes easier and easier to serve each one, and that improves your profit margin and all of that. So how did you find your first couple of clients? And how do you. How do you get business now? How do you grow?

Yeah, that's a great question. The first couple of clients, honestly, it was just within my network I worked with, I guess within my network I had someone that was. She did more operational advising, so more like org structure, that type of thing. And this was a client. My first couple of clients were actually people she worked with and they were in the process of making some decisions, needed a forecast built out. And I was like, yeah, sure, I can do a forecast. And then from there, after working with me, they're like, well, we actually need, you know, like this on a recurring basis. I'm like, perfect, yeah. And got to have that conversation. And so the, you know, the network is definitely a big thing. I think everybody feels that in this industry, the no, like, trust factor is huge. So referrals are huge, but you can't bank on referrals. There's no time. There's no, like, timely way that referrals flow into your firm. And so outside of, you know, that kind of networking is really focusing on being a thought leader. Being a thought leader on LinkedIn, sharing good, valuable content, that kind of gets me in conversation with those business owners. And then I. What I've really noticed is that that helps lead into doing webinars and trainings within the industry niche that we're in so we can have more of those types of conversations and get in front of that pool more specifically. And again, building that know, like and trust factor so that it's a warm lead. I think especially with being in this focus of being the fractional CFO space. You know, it's not just a check the box of like, hey, we need our bookkeeping done or we need our taxes done. So you do have to have a little bit more of that warm lead for people to say, like, oh, yes, I want to work with you on a monthly basis in that way. So it's important to kind of show up in that manner and kind of Help them see what the benefit is because it's a little bit different from the traditional CPA firm, but yet it's where pretty much all you can read in the accounting world is how we're all pivoting that direction.

An interesting thing. Another thing about being in a narrower industry. You mentioned that you're mobile, you've been moving your business place to place. A generalist firm usually is limited to like a geographic footprint. Like if you serve everyone, the only marketing play you really have is, is like local SEO or like local. You're trying to capture demand for your services for people who, who live near you. It's not that you couldn't work with people anywhere, but it's just too big of a market to target. And so it does limit you as well to build your business in a place you have. Whereas you have this flexibility to go out there. And also you can go and you can find groups and lists, people who fit criteria. Do you use LinkedIn Navigator or like some of the other tools with LinkedIn to target around like industry?

Not right now. My focus on LinkedIn really is just content creation and kind of having those conversations. And I assume that like using some of the hashtags, finding some of the people in that industry is kind of like helping get me in front of their network, which is creating this nice snowball effect from that standpoint. But no, not, not really using any of like the cold connection type targeting.

Yeah, it's, it can be tough to like break into an industry. Most, I think most accountants, if they pick a niche, they already need to have like a foothold in there in some way, either know some people or, or have a reason to kind of be speaking about that industry. We, we do a lot of marketing work with accounting firms and really the way we've buil I, I don't have an accounting background. I've, you know, I'm a marketer. But we, we had a few really great clients early on who were in that space. And then they referred us to some friends and all of a sudden we started to build this and realized that there's a lot of benefit to investing into those networkers because so from my perspective, accountants know accountants, they're in groups with them, they're in masterminds, they're, they're talking to each other. And for you, you know, architects, know architects, they're following each other. I statistics on LinkedIn or about LinkedIn that, you know, basically CEOs something like 90% of their interactions are with other CEOs and marketing managers, 90% of their interactions are with other marketing managers. It just, we, we connect with our peers. And so if your business is built on word of mouth and referrals, having those, those connections across industries, those are tighter connections than geographic connections. You might have a chamber of commerce or some kind of general business group, BNI or something like that could be an opportunity for you. But those are weaker and less frequent connections as well. People aren't interacting in those spaces.

Yeah, absolutely. I think if anyone's thinking about getting and focusing in an industry, also looking at, is there some way to get into a mastermind with those people? Like, I'm part of an architecture mastermind where I'm. Well, I'm not in architecture. I'm an ally of architects. And so I'm in that group like helping serve, answer questions, do that type of thing. And I think that just again, it helps create like those warm connections of people. And then when they interact with your content, all the architects in their network see that interaction. They're like, oh, who is this person? And it really helps.

Yeah. Your firm is not that old. Right. You started it in 2019. I think it's maybe both easier and harder to start with a niche. I think that for a lot of larger firms, especially ones who have multiple partners or who have a pretty broad base of customers, it can be really hard to refocus. And so it's not to say you shouldn't do that in certain cases, but it can be really difficult. Whereas it's, I think it tends to be, it's a little more straightforward at least if you start off in, in a direction, you know, with, with some specificity rather than trying to pivot later on. But it's hard to say. The thing that I always think about when people are talking about their niches is what I think the hardest thing is to say no to wrong fit clients when there's like money on the table in front of you that you could, you could say yes to and you could, you could choose to, to work with even though, you know it's not in your, in your exact wheelhouse. I don't know, maybe you don't have that problem, but.

Well, no, I mean, I've even, I've had that problem with even staying within the same industry. Sometimes you do say yes to the clients that in some way still don't. Like, maybe personality wise or like I said, if someone refers to my team as like their team of bookkeepers, again, there's nothing wrong with being a bookkeeper, but that's really phrasing how they see us. And we will never be elevated to the advisor that we truly are if that's the scoping they put us in. And so we've definitely had those clients that are like, not necessarily. You know, there were probably red flags that were ignored. And then at some point, we had to make the decision of, like, okay, it's better to let them go, but it is hard to let go of revenue. Right?

Yeah. So going back a little bit to marketing and how you've done, you kind of built your own personal brand. What. What has influenced you? Or, like, are there sources, resources, and things that you've. That you've looked into, or, you know, books, authors, podcasts? What do you. What do you look to for advice and in terms of building your own business?

Yeah, that's a great question. And so I actually. We connected on LinkedIn, and I actually started the LinkedIn marketing that I do after watching or I guess participating in a course by Justin Welsh. I'm not sure familiar with him. Yep, I highly recommend that course. It was, like, very beneficial to kind of walk through. There's a lot that I still have to put in practice from his course, but sitting down and kind of thinking about, like, what questions my clients ask and then trying to figure out how I can phrase that in a way that's interesting and kind of, like, pulls people into my circle to try to engage on LinkedIn has been really helpful. And so then I end up finding people along the way that I'm like, oh, like, you took Justin's course sitting you. And they're like, yeah, I did. Like, I can tell by the way you write your post, but it's a good thing. And so that's really been the, I think the biggest thing for me. I mean, there's been a lot of work I've done over the past few years of working on copy and learning from people and thinking about marketing. But that's probably been the biggest one recently of, like, what resource do I use?

Yeah, no, that's great. I think you. I think you do a great job of identifying and talking about specific problems. I think a mistake I see with a lot of people who are trying to be active on LinkedIn is they're. They're either posting really, like, like surface, fuzzy, fluffy, like, inspirational quotes or just like, reposting, you know, something by Elon Musk or, you know, it's a. It's a lot of. It's. It's like. Have you ever heard the term content Free content. Like, there's nothing really there. It's just, like, activity to get it out there. And then they wonder, you know, why isn't this really clicking? Why. Why don't I have engagement? And. And. And you really have to. I think if you're. If you're going with kind of a personal branding marketing project, which LinkedIn, that's kind of what you do. People want to connect with people. They don't want to connect with businesses. And so you have to build yourself as a brand and as the firm owner. Owner, it kind of has to be you, because if you hire someone else to be the face of your company and they leave, they'll take their audience with them. And so it's got to start with you. So even large firm owners, I think it's a mistake to think that you can outsource all of your expertise to a copywriter or someone else on your team. There's a lot of risk involved in that, and you're. You're not getting nearly as much benefit, in part because they're not. They don't know as much as you do about this stuff, but you also run the risk of them. You know, they don't have a stake in your business. And so you're not building something that. That is great for yourself. We're going to wrap up here in a sec. Just what. Where are you going with your. With your firm? Like, do you have. What are your goals and aspirations as a business owner?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I have this, like, I don't know this, like, very altruistic goal of, like, we're here to change lives. And some people would be like, well, you're changing lives by doing accounting. And it's like, yes, but I want to, you know, change 10,000 people's lives, like business owners, family members, employees. Family members of employees. Because if I can help business owners run better businesses, they can pay their employees better, they can have better lives for the employees. And that's really what I'm after. After growing up, seeing the family business and everything and how great it can be and how hard it can be, I'm trying to make businesses more great and less hard on everybody.

More great and less hard. Exactly. That's a good. I like that. That's a good tagline, so. Well, Shauna, thank you. Thanks for being a part of this conversation. This is great. I think it's really enlightening. I would love to see more of my clients and the accountants and CPAs that I interact with choose a niche. A lot of them are afraid of doing that. But I'm a big believer. There's so many advantages to it, even as you see some of the. There's some complications, especially for more established businesses. But where can people find you, especially architects and other construction companies? LinkedIn, I suppose.

Yeah, LinkedIn's definitely the best place. Connects with me. They're always happy for that. And my firm is cultivated strategy so they can connect with us online there. But yeah, I Love being on LinkedIn, love interacting with people and if there are accountants that have questions or like want to talk to someone about, like what it's been like to niche down to an industry and or talk about LinkedIn and how it can be valuable, I'm always open to those conversations too.

Great. Well, thanks again for being here and this has been a great conversation.

Absolutely. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

This podcast, marketing for Accounting Firms, is brought to you by Benchmark Growth Marketing, a marketing agency that helps accounting firms get more calls booked through their website. You can find us@benchmarkgrowthmarketing.com Next with me, map Banker on LinkedIn.