Low-Hanging Fruit: Maximizing Marketing Impact for Accounting Firms

Foreign. Hello. Hello.

We are back with another episode of Marketing for Accounting Firms, the podcast where we talk about marketing for accounting firms. That's pretty straightforward. I have Patrick Dichter today on the show, and he's got an interesting story and background. He's a firm owner, but he didn't come up through accounting. He actually came by an alternative route that includes some background in marketing. So I'm interested to hear his perspective on things, and he has a great perspective on how to grade your marketing for your firm. And so we're going to dig into that in a second. Patrick, tell me, how did you end up with the business that you have now? And why do you own an accounting firm?

Hey, Matt, it's great to be here. Thank you for having me. The short answer is I am passionate about helping small businesses. And for a few years I was doing small business coaching and consulting, and most of the new clients that we had had terrible bookkeeping. And I was always referring it out, and I just saw how transformational it was when they had quality bookkeeping. And then I started to hear about people that buy businesses, and I was like, what if I bought an accounting firm? And the more I looked at it, the more excited I got. And lo and behold, I went down that path. So I'm about a year and a half in now, and I've bought Apple Tree and then I bought two other firms. So it's been a fun journey. And yeah, we'll dig into more of that, but that's a quick version of how I got here.

So, no, no cpa, no accounting degree, Any of that?

No. My undergrad was international business and minor in finance and a minor in French. So I always enjoyed accounting and finance. I didn't think I'd end up in it. And then I got my mba. After that, I worked at digital marketing startup for seven years helping small business. And then when I was doing the coaching and consulting for three years, I'd be reading financial statements and in their QuickBooks and, like, trying to build out cash flow models and analyzing pricing. And so, no, I didn't go the traditional accounting path, but I've always been into numbers and, like, the puzzle piece of what makes a small business go and what. What makes them profitable and things like that.

Yeah, I found business owners, they kind of have to do everything or be a little bit good at a lot of things that they didn't expect to be good at. And then we find ourselves. You don't always know when you're 18 and you're deciding what to study, what you're actually going to be interested in or what you're going to be good at. And so entrepreneurs, business owners, lifelong learners, always picking things up as you go along. I mean, I love working with accounting firms. I don't think I do have a head for numbers. I'm definitely more of the, I wouldn't say like gray area, abstract, whatever, but kind of more on the strategic, big picture side of things rather than the details, numbers and all that. Accounting firms, I think often they waste a lot of money on marketing. And this is me as a marketer. I'm saying this, you have worked for a digital marketing firm before. What are the areas that you see, folks in this space? The mistakes or the waste that they're making? Wasteful decisions that they're making.

Most often I feel like a lot of accounting firm owners put energy and money into the wrong things and there's so much like low hanging fruit that they overlook. Right. So what I see them overanalyze or debate is should I do outbound and hire a salesperson? Should I spend a ton of money on HubSpot? Should I blog and try to get organic SEO? And like I've heard that that's a good thing. And I think all those are like expensive endeavors, less likely to hit and not, not where I would start, you.

Know, and they all take longer too. I. Yeah, especially with SEO and things like that. It's not something that you, you can do quickly or easily. And so if you start investing today, it's still going to be, I don't know, 912 months before you really get to see the results. And you're saying there's earlier stuff that you should be focusing on instead.

Right, Right. And I'm, I'm kind of the new kid on the block. I'm a year and a half in, but we've been able to successfully have some really good organic growth. And the end result has been we pick up three to four new clients per month. And those clients are small business clients averaging 800 per month for their bookkeeping and tax. Right. So it's not like I'm saying I'm picking up three or four tax returns. No, I'm picking up like solid business clients. And the marketing tactics that we deployed to do that was we really emphasized our Google reviews, we made sure our website had a big call to action. We try to have a calendly link right away. We emphasized our local SEO posted a little bit organically on social with my LinkedIn or my WordPahl Facebook and that like those are some of the main drivers. Like we can get into more nitty gritty. But like those, those things cost a lot less than the other things that I mentioned and they've just, they provided a huge lift to the inbound that we get and ultimately the clients that we convert.

If you think about it like a, you've got a small territory and you're, you're just trying to expand it outwards. A couple things happen. One, it's less expensive to get that low hanging fruit and to gather whatever is kind of near, nearby you. And the further out you get, the harder it is to find more clients. It's kind of a ceiling. But a lot of firms are ignoring the easy stuff and they're just going after the hard stuff that's out there trying to thinking, I'm just going to post on social media a bunch and hope that that's going to turn into some leads. And they haven't done the basic things. So we were both at this conference last month and you gave a presentation on how to grade your marketing, the marketing for your firm. And you had, you had kind of like one through a hundred, how to, how to get to a hundred. If you were going to do there. And I was really interested in how much it was weighted on some of the things early on I was wondering, could we just kind of go through the point at allocations that you would give to different tactics for a marketing firm?

Sure. So we can go through some of this and then maybe throw it in the show notes or something. But yeah, so 10 points if you have a modern, mobile friendly website. 10 points if you have call to action with a calendly link. If you have five or more Google reviews, that's 15 points. If you have 15 or more Google reviews, that's 25 points.

Okay, so let's, let's stop there for a second. 15 points if you've got five or more Google reviews. 25 points. Another 25 points if you've got how many? You said 15.

Yeah. Okay.

Why do you give so much weight to Google reviews and how have you seen that work for your firm?

Because nobody else is doing it. Right. If you look in whatever suburb you're in. Right. Whether you're in like Minnetonka, Minnesota or Littleton, Colorado or Londonderry, New Hampshire where our firm is based. If you look around at your competition and you just search like accounting firms in this suburb, most people maybe have two or three. Right. And if you're the person in town that has 10, 15, 20, 25A. It's going to help your local SEO a ton. It's going to help your conversion rate and it's just going to make people pick up the phone or submit an inquiry and call you because they're like oh, these guys are trusted. A lot of people use them. And it's, you know, that's just the way consumer behavior is, right? Like if you, if you're going to purchase something on Amazon, it's almost like you browse who has the most reviews. Are they good? Okay, like yeah, that's it.

It's not just that you need five star reviews. I know when I go to Amazon and this is really any time to look at reviews to, to think about making a purchase or hiring someone, I want to see the 1, 2 and 3 star reviews too because I want to know we know that not everybody is an ideal fit for every company or every, every product. And I want to know like what's case scenario or what, what could go wrong If I don't see any lower star reviews, I actually can distrust that company more. I think that it's just been, been gamed in some way. So you get a lot of reviews, it adds, so it does help you get more traffic. So that's one piece, right, because you're showing up higher in the rankings when someone types in accounting from near, near me. But it's also giving you a ton of credibility because people see other folks have, have hired you before. So out of, out of a hundred you're gonna get. We're given 40 points just to Google reviews to focus what just tactically what have you, what sorts of things have you done to get Google reviews from your clients?

So for us, we train our managers to ask for them when our client is about done with onboarding. So usually when we're presenting the bookkeeping and the financial system the first time, the client is usually really happy. Then the manager is asking for a Google review. There's the other thing we do is I'll pay staff $50 if they get a Google review and I try to recognize it on our Slack channel and in staff meetings. And then I look for any opportunity as an owner when a customer is happy to ask and I'll even like bug em a second time if they haven't done it right. So if somebody's like oh wow, you got to our tax return and we didn't have to go on extension, like they're happy. Like I'm like cool, here you go. Or if like we had this huge bookkeeping cleanup and they're like, you did more than our previous firm did in two years. I'm like, thank you. Can you write us a review?

And then I say that on our Google review, right?

I just try to emphasize like, hey, our team cares about this a lot. It means a lot to them. We're kind of have a friendly competition and it helps us with our marketing. Do you mind writing a review? And I just, I send them an email and then I have a link to where they can write the Google review directly. I don't use a software or anything. There's software out there that can do that, but I just hyper focused on it and over time like they stack up, staff gets excited, they get some cash for it. And that's been the way they've done it.

I heard a firm owner, I think recently say they will pay a staff member if their name shows up in a Google review. So if like you as an owner reach out to a client and say, hey, could you leave us a Google review? If you mention someone by name as having given you great service, they're going to get a bonus. And that I think is another way to kind of motivate people, love to help people that they like. And so if they've had a good experience with that person, this is a, that's another way to incentivize the client and then benefit the, the employee as well for providing that good service and benefit you because you get the Google review and it's worth More than 50 bucks, I'll say that. Right? What would, okay, just like out of, out of the blue if you, if you could, for, for real authentic reviews, is there a number that you would be willing to pay just like outright for, for a good Google? What's the top end of, of what you think that's worth?

I'd probably pay 200 bucks, you know, 200 bucks?

Yeah.

Google review. I could go on and on about this. Like they, they make people less price sensitive, right? If, if they're like, can you send me some references? I'll be like, read our Google reviews. Hey, I don't want to waste the time to ask for a reference that you're not going to talk to. B Pro is right there. Our candidates, that interview with us, they read them. It's such a compounding effect and it's a moat too, right? If I eventually get to fifty or a hundred, good luck catching us to anyone else. And you really get nitty gritty. Like there's even like SEO keywords in the reviews. Right. So somebody's like, they helped our marketing agency. You can better believe that Google is going to read and recognize accounting for marketing agencies in that Google review and it's going to pick up a little bit of SEO juice.

Yeah. Well, okay, so at the top end, the heavily weighted ones we talked, you talked about you're having a good mobile friendly website, a clear call to action, with the ability to book directly on your calendar, on your website. Google reviews, that's like 60 out of a hundred. What else is on your list as far as that, like low hanging fruit stuff?

Yeah, other low hanging fruit. So if you hire a agency to help with local SEO, 5 points. If you're on Google AdWords, 5 points. Consistent Facebook and Instagram posts for the business, 5 points. The last couple here, Facebook and Instagram post on your personal account as the owner, maybe quarterly, that's five points. And then if you post on LinkedIn twice a month as an owner, 10 points. Yeah, those, those things that I just rattled through quickly, those would get you to 90. Those are all the big low hanging fruit. And obviously the reviews are.

Yeah. The stuff that's lower on this list, local SEO and Google Ads, those are definitely levers that businesses can pull on in order to improve their marketing. And usually when they go out looking for a marketing firm, they're looking for help with things like ads and SEO and things like that. You specifically said hire someone to do local SEO.

Yeah.

In your mind or just define for us what's the difference between an SEO company and a local SEO company or campaign.

You're just listening to this audio. I just want you to picture somebody in Chicago, the Google business accountant. Right. There's, in my mind there's three pieces of real estate. You have ads at the top, you have the map in the middle, and then you have the organic at the bottom. That, that bottom third is of organic SEO. Like you're never going to compete.

You will. There's just too many firms.

Yeah. Too many firms like QuickBooks is going to be there. Like all the huge players, all the big software, they're going to take the front page, generic SEO, real estate. And you're just not gonna be able to rank on those broad things nationally. So that's why I think you're better off competing like within your suburb. Right. Or your town for those local map listings. And I also think like you're, you're more likely to win that customer that is looking in their backyard.

And, and usually sometimes an SEO agency will do keyword SEO. Like articles and content writing and do local SEO. But there are a lot of firms or a lot of agencies that just focus on one or the other. And so if you are paying an SEO agency right now, you want to find out what are they focusing on. I, I have a client in Illinois. I think they were ranking really well and getting a ton of traffic for where's my Illinois tax return or tax refund or something. They were getting traffic, but none of the traffic was ever going to turn into a customer because it wasn't the type of people who are business owners that were searching for that term. But their SEO company could point to the article and say, see how much we've increased the views on your page. They would say that they're winning. But downstream, the revenue and leads, it wasn't showing any real effect. Whereas if they could show up for accounting firm in North Chicago or something more local to them, they would get actual leads from that instead of just traffic that doesn't turn into anything.

Totally.

So then you talked about social media being active in some of those places. I mean that could, that's how to do social media. Well, that could be its own whole podcast. To be honest, I don't really want to get into that today. But then. So that gets you to, to 90 points. 90 is like an A for in most classes. Right. If firms could do these things, that would get them a long way to having a solid marketing program running. You also had a list of some small things that you can do that could get you from ninety to a hundred. And what I'm, I think what I'm most interested about that list is some of the things on that list are the things that firms invest a lot of money in, but you don't necessarily give them quite as much weight. You want to just list some of the other possibilities that you could do.

Yeah, these are the onesie twosies and I think some of these helped me a little bit and I thought they were going to be like big needle movers and they weren't. So two points if you have a monthly email newsletter. Two points if you get referrals from centers of influence. So those would be like bankers, attorneys, centers of influence. One point. If you get referrals from employees. One point. If you get, if you have an email nurture campaign to non closed leads. Yeah. One point. If you get on a podcast, hello today. One point. If you run podcast ads for your firm. One point. If you sponsor a conference and then one point. If you do online directory ads.

Yeah, one, one Thing I. So I. I'm a certified storybrand guide. And one of the big things that storybrand and Donald Miller have been pushing for a few years now is that email nurture campaign, which is six to 10 emails after someone downloads something that's going to move them from a slightly warm lead to a really warm lead, and then you're going to be able to close them. And I've seen similar to you with some of my clients, we've invested a lot of time into developing these campaigns. And my theory is in the B2B space, there's just not enough volume to really make it pay off. You're not, you don't have enough people reading those emails that they're. Even if they're really great to, to pay off, the conversion rates on it are just so small that it doesn't actually turn into a ton of business. But it's a thing that you hear about a lot, right?

Yeah. I'm on Uncle Don's email newsletter and I haven't bought anything from him, but I get the business made simple. I get whatever his newest course is, but maybe I'll buy something from him one day. But in my mind, the email newsletter monthly helps us stay top of mind. It maybe drives referrals. It gives a little bit of a touch of like, oh, I'm getting some education out of this. Right. And then the other email campaign that I, I did hope I was hopeful for is I still had a lot of leads that they just don't, they don't decide. They sit on the fence and they. And so I built out this email nurturing that goes for six weeks and it kind of hits them twice a week with like, here's our approaches accounting. Here's the difference in like, good versus bad accounting. Here's the value. And I really thought it would drive up my win percentage and it, it didn't. The only thing it did help with is if the last email just says like, hey, this is my last email. Do you have questions about the proposal or did you go a different way? And sometimes people just reply to that and they'll say like, oh, you want something else? I'm like, cool, now I know. So I'm not gonna shake you. But yeah, I thought it was like, master when I wrote it. And then it's just like, it hasn't really done anything. Maybe as we, as we grow and there's more age, maybe it compounds or like, win a few back over time, but we'll see.

Yeah. Well, one of the ways that I Think about marketing in general is, there's two, there's two big categories of marketing. One is demand capture and the other is demand creation. And a lot of this low hanging fruit stuff that we're talking about is all about maximizing, capturing the demand that exists in the market. There's a certain number of people who are already looking for an accounting firm, and you just need to make sure that you show up and that you have the best system set up to capture those leads and turn them into customers. The only downside to that is there's a, there's a ceiling, there's, there's a total volume of people and maybe 5% of your ideal customers are actively looking for your service. And that could still be a lot depending on your area and especially geographically, maybe you, if you do rank well, that might be enough to sustain your firm. If you run out of those leads, then you have to think, how are we going to create demand and educate people? And that's where some of the things lower on your list, the social media campaigns, going on podcasts, being more active, becoming a thought leader in a niche or something like that, those are, those are some opportunities to create demand and let people know why they should consider hiring an accountant, for example, if they've never considered it before. But there's no point to jump over this early stuff. Jump right to that. Yeah, go ahead.

The other thing that I'll mention is like, I've, I'd been in that game for a long time creating demand. I did outbound sales, I knocked on doors. I know what it's like to go converse somebody who's never thought about you and try to find a pain point, get a meeting and get them over the line and you know, like that, that can work in other industries. But I just think in accounting, A, again, it's not worth the effort and B, it's so hard to do that. You're more likely to like win with these other things. The other thing that I've noticed is the leads that we get kind of fall into like two categories. Like my house is on fire or like I'm sort of checking you out. Right. And the house on fire person, they, they had something happen that made them reach out. Either they got a scary letter from the irs, or they couldn't get bank financing for a building because their financials weren't good, or they want to sell their business, or they're tired of their previous guy and like dropping the ball. And when those come in, they're, they have urgency. It's almost like price doesn't matter, like we're going to land them. The other ones, they're like, I'm kind of tired of my account or I'm kind of tired of doing my own bookkeeping. I wanted to reach out. Like, we tend to not convert them right away, but they, they do come back around because there's something else that like, makes them cross the line to my house is on fire. Help me, please. And so it goes back to. It's demand capture, right? It's either like really high demand or it's like lukewarm demand. And I'm gonna try to capture both of those before I go. Like, try to turn somebody who's ice cold into like a client. That's just the risk. Well, like, reward on your effort is at least in this industry right now. Like, you don't have to do those things.

Now let's, let's shift topics a little bit here. Before we started recording, we talked a little bit about. There's a big discussion in the accounting world about niching down into a specific space. Is that something that you have thought about for your firm or do you, do you feel like that's a direction that you're going or what are, what have you been thinking about up till this point on niche?

I'll give you a long answer on this. If I, if I was an accountant, I'm not Brian. Like, I'm not a trained accountant, but if I was an accountant and I was thinking about going out on my own, I'd probably tell somebody to niche down, right? Like if you're leaving a big firm and you're gonna go out on your own, you're gonna start on the side. I'd be like, okay, niche in like dentists or veterinarians or E commerce or.

Niche down in marketing agencies.

Marketing agencies, TikTok creators, right? Because there's so many things that come out of that that are really beneficial to, to owning a firm, right? Like your marketing gets stronger, your processes are easier to rinse and repeat. You speak the language that the client cares about. Your referrals drive faster, you can charge a pricing premium. All those things are, are huge. And I also think, like, today's prospect, like, if, if I'm a dentist in la, I don't care that you're in Dallas, like dental accounting and finance. Like, I'd rather work with you than like the generic guy down the street. I just think that's the way conservative behavior is. So I'll, I'll say that, like, if I were starting from scratch. I'd, I'd probably go niche in an industry. The path I went was like buying firms. Right. So we're sort of niche. We mainly focus on service based businesses. So we have professional services like creatives agencies, college folks. Then we have home services like flooring, HPC, plumbing guys. Those are our two. But it's not like a really tight, crystal clear niche. But if we can.

No one, no one says I'm a professional services company. Right. They say I'm a plumber or I'm a videographer. Right. The type of client and some of the services you offer are gonna be similar.

Yeah.

Client to client. But you can't go to a conference for professional service providers. Exactly. But you could go to a ton of different conferences for each one of those.

If you did have a really tight niche, then like your national SEO gets different or your content marketing gets a little easier. Right? Like.

Yeah, well a lot of the, a lot of what we were, we've been talking about in terms of focusing on local SEO and Google reviews and all that, that is most, those are like, those are the opportunities for marketing that are really available to generalist firms. Because if you are, if you're a generalist or semi niched, your, your niche really is your geography. It's accountant near me is what you want to focus on. And if you do have a clear niche and you want to have a national focus. Well, I should say if you want a national focus, you really have to have a clear niche because it's just too hard to gain any foothold for accounting firm, anyone, everywhere, there's just no way you're ever going to be found. But accountant for dentists, I'm sure there's a bunch that are, that are in that same niche, but there are a lot of dentists in America and so you're going to be able to find a way to get into that space a lot easier. You mentioned though you would, you would go in a niche if you were starting out in small. I think small firms can really do that even if they are general firms. Right now it's much easier to take a small firm, you got five people, you're under a million dollars and choose a niche that might be great. If you've got a big team and you've been acquiring other firms and you have a really broad customer base, it takes a long time to, to turn a big ship and it may not be worth the hassle to choose that niche. Is that kind of where you're at with your firm at this point.

Yeah, I, I've, I've focused us a little bit. We were very general when I started and I said like okay, we're going to focus on these service based industries. So our website speaks to those on the front page. Some of our content speaks to that. And then the other niche I've sort of developed is I've been active in a small business M and a community. So when somebody goes and buys a business, we love working with them like to do their bookkeeping and tax post close. But that's sort of a different niche as I'm in this.

Yeah, one, one tactic that I, I've heard and I think can, can work well is if your, if your firm has a partnership model or a way for people to become partners. Having individual accountants or client facing people develop their own expertise within a niche and you kind of grow that. Where the reason niching is really helpful is through personal networks and becoming. Having a person who becomes known in a space as a subject matter expert or as a guide that really knows that. So your firm could have multiple niches that are based around individuals within the firm. The reason I say that that's good for a partner track firm is that you need people who are going to be committed to the long term stakes of your business. Because if they build an audience and a reputation for being the guy who knows about real estate, real estate taxes and then they decide to go start their own thing, they're taking that audience with them. They're not going to leave it with your company. And so you also, you have to be careful about that. But if you want to develop a few different areas of expertise, you can build it around a person who has that long term stake in the business. And it sounds like with your experience with the M and A stuff that's, that's built around your personal network and what you're interested in and you're going to become known for that.

Yep. Yeah, I totally agree. I think you can't do that and I've, I've heard from other people that that works well. There's a, a guy at Prio that I connected with and they bought a ton of firms and they, they bought a dental specific one and they said that guy is a partner, he focuses on dental and he crushes it. I've seen that with some law firms where like one guy was like cannabis lawyer, the other guy was a real estate lawyer and like it works well.

Yeah, you've been in this a year and a half. What's your experience with hiring and finding good talent, I think there's a close relationship between marketing and attracting and retaining staff. But what's your experience been up till this point?

Yeah, it's been one of the most challenging hiring environments in the past couple years. Right. But we've been able to do it. We've hired, oh, probably a dozen people that are either staff, accounts, or tax managers. And it really starts similar to a customer pipeline. You envision your recruiting pipeline. So you start at the top, right? It's like, let's try to get as many people as we can in the top of the funnel. And the way that you do that is like, you get a ton of eyeballs and you make your job ad really compelling. And then the next step is like, you really gotta sell the job. And I think a common mistake that I see people make is they either like, they screen too hard early on or they never end up screening. But I think the right mix is like, the first half of your recruiting process should be like, sales and marketing, right? So you're. You're getting a lot of eyeballs. You're selling the role, you're selling why your firm is different. So for us, what that means is my job ad literally says. The very first thing it says is what this job is not. And there's bullets. This is not a hundred hours a week during tax season. This is not overworked and underpaid. This is not having to bring in their own clients. This is not old tech. I'm literally just selling against what all.

Of the, all the objections when I.

Say what this job is, is like work life balance, surrounded by a great team, production, pay, so you can decide how much you make, what else? Like, there's a couple other bullets in there. And I've had so many people be like, as soon as I read that, I was like, nodding my head. So that's, that's the, the marketing of the role, right? And then my first couple calls that I get on, I'm selling them, right? I'm like, what are you looking for your next role? And if I think we have that, I'm speaking to that and telling stories about that and telling stories about other people on our team who are like, one of our team members has a daughter in competitive cheer, and she travels with her during tax season and still gets her work done. Or I paint the story of, like, being able to have a career path with us or a lot of it is kind of working moms, right? So it's like that work life balance thing that I'm painting a picture of. And I think if you can look at hiring in the same way as like, it's, it's truly a marketing funnel these days. Those are gone where like somebody's gonna walk through your door.

Well, pay, pay scales are what they are. Right. The market is gonna kind of determine what it's gonna cost and, and there's some, there's some flexibility in that. But beyond that, it's a competitive hiring environment and you have a lot of competition for those, the best people. The thing that I think about is I've heard it said you businesses tend to sell solutions to external problems, but people buy solutions to internal problems. And I think that's. No, that's especially true when it comes to jobs. Obviously you have to have pay that is reasonable and that fits within whatever your, your market is where, where you are. But beyond that, just having the right salary range is never going to be enough to get the best people. And so all this other stuff is about selling your firm. And it sounds like you kind of oversell. Like you said, you don't over qualify or disqualify candidates early on because you don't really know. And so you, it sounds like you're kind of overselling how great it would be to work for you early to get a large candidate pool and then you can narrow it down from there.

Yes. And then on the second half, it's kind of making them feel like, okay, you have to earn this, like picky with who we hire. And it's true. And then I'm like, okay, I want to make sure that they have excellent client communication skills. I want to know that they have like accounting tax jobs or they'll pick things up quickly if they, if we're training them and just lifestyle wise that it matches the, the commitment that they're looking for. And another thing that's similar between like our client marketing and our recruiting is like, you gotta move fast. Right. So when a new lead comes in on the client side, I'm trying to talk to them as quick as I can. When a candidate applies, I'm trying to get on the phone with them as fast as I can. Otherwise people bounce and they go on to the next thing. Mm.

What channels do you use when you're putting out like job ads or job descriptions and stuff like that?

Primarily, indeed. I dabbled a little bit like LinkedIn ads. I haven't tried ZipRecruiter. So it's, it's primarily indeed. And then we've gotten a couple via referral from our current team. Yeah.

Let me end here. What, other than marketing or accounting are you really interested in these days? What's on your mind or what are you. What are you into?

I don't. I'm a small business geek, so, like, I'm always thinking about these things and I love finding out what makes businesses tick and learning more. So I'm listening to podcasts. That's kind of on my mind.

Do you have any recommendations for other podcasts that you love?

I go in phases, but right now I'm really enjoying acquiring minds. So he interviews people who have bought businesses and there's always fascinating stories there. My first million is always kind of entertaining and inspirational. Tropical MBA is a oldie but a goodie. That's about location independent entrepreneurs. So those are kind of the main business ones that I listen to right now. The other thing that's kind of interesting and fascinating, my. My wife is a veterinarian. And from the day we started dating when she was in vet school, I thought, oh my gosh, if she would want to own her own business, like, that'd be the best she did. She's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Well, finally a few months ago, she was like, I think I wanna open my own mobile practice. And I was like, wow. So she opened her own, like, mobile practice on the side. As weird as it sounds, she does mobile home euthanasia. If it's time for your dog or cat to go, she'll come to your house that's more comfortable for you and for the dog versus, like, taking them into the clinic. So that's just been a fun, fun new project of, like, helping her get going and, like, helping set up her marketing and set up her accounting and just like, seeing her kick ass. Like, she's crushed it and she really enjoys it and she feels like she's like, providing like an amazing service to the families. And she gets these, like, incredible glowing reviews and testimonials and, like, people send her flowers and like, that's been. That's been fun to see her, like, really do great and just see, like, the demand that's there.

And yeah, yeah, that does sound like a great business model people are in. That's a tough time when you're. When your pet is. Is elderly or needs to. Needs to move on. I'm trying to think of the right euphemisms here, but that's a. To be able to have that in your home would be, I think, a great service. And you can do it with empathy and all that.

That's.

That's awesome. Patrick. Where, where can people find you or connect with you? And are there any other types of folks that you say? I mean, this is mo. This, the audience here is mostly accounting firm owners, but are the types of folks that you really want to be connecting with some of your accounting firm?

No, I'm kidding. Don't sell me your firm. But I'm always happy to try and connect with folks and just talk shop. So you can find me on Twitter or LinkedIn or just put it in the Google machine. I've got a personal website as well, but I'm always happy to chat and connect and yeah, I really appreciate you having me on and I think it's awesome what you're doing and happy to try to help your audience grow their firm. Yeah.

Well, I appreciate you coming on the show. This has been the Marketing for Accounting Firms podcast and you can find us at marketingforaccountingfirm.com or Apple Spotify. If you liked this show, you should rate and review us. That helps us show up for other folks as well. And I think that's it. We'll leave it there. Talk to you next time. Thanks, Patrick.

See ya.

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 Connect with me, Matt Benker on LinkedIn.