The SECRET to Landing Better CFO Clients

Hey there, numbers nerds. Welcome back to the Connected Accountant, where we believe that bookkeepers, accountants, and fractional CFOs that own their own businesses should make more as CEOs than when you work for somebody else. We believe that you should be serving clients that you love, and we believe that your personal life should direct your business, not the other way around. My name is Michael King, and I'm the creator of the Connected Accountant. And let me tell you, I'm super giddy right now because just as I was getting ready to sit down and film and all of this stuff, my wife sends me this text message. And she says, hey, babe, I hope you're having an amazing day. Can't wait to see you tonight. She does stuff like that all the time. And I think back to before I met her, back when I was in the dating game. And, you know, I was on all the different dating websites. And you filled out the profile and it says, you know, who are you looking for? Well, I want somebody that's, you know, a certain height and has a certain level of education. And no smokers, Definitely, definitely no smokers, please. You know, and you come up within 50 miles radius and, you know, all these different things. And so I started meeting some of these women from the different dating sites and I got kind of disgruntled pretty quickly. I just wasn't finding anybody that I was really vibing with. And I remember talking about it with one of my friends, and he says, well, what are you looking for? And I told him, you know, certain height, certain hair color, all this kind of stuff. And he's like, no, but who are you looking for? Like, what kind of person are you looking for? And I said, that's a good question. And so I, I sat down and made a list of the values that I was looking for in another person. Like, I literally got out pen and paper and wrote them down. I'm big on writing things down. And I went back to some of those dating profiles and I started putting those characteristics in there. I wanted somebody that was joyful. I wanted somebody that really woke up every day and was just happy to be alive. I wanted somebody that was a lifelong learner. I needed somebody that was patient. As you might imagine, I can be a handful. So I needed somebody that just had so much patience. And I got really clear, though, on who I was, like, what type of person I was looking for. And once I put those kinds of messages and words into my profiles, it wasn't long until I met Misty. And, man, she's Just absolutely amazing. I can say without a doubt, she's my dream girl and we're happily married and just doing life together. And as I was thinking about her text, I started thinking back to a few years ago in business. I was so fed up with a lot of the clients that, that we were working for. I was disgruntled, much as the same way as I was disgruntled about a lot of the women I was meeting. And I remember that Monday, many of you have heard me tell the story about the day that I fired all of my clients. Part of that day when I fired my clients and got into the rebuild, is I said, okay, we know who our ICA is in the traditional term. And for those of you who don't know, ICA is ideal client avatar. In other words, when you're thinking about who you want to work with, what does that look like? And a lot of programs and books and coaches will say, you should define the demographics of who you want to work with. So, for example, we wanted to work with professional services firms. We wanted to work with businesses that were in a certain revenue range and had to be on QuickBooks, because that's all we like to work with, is QuickBooks. And, you know, they had to be located in North America. We had a whole list of what we thought our ideal client was. Yet when you looked at our clients, they all met those checks in the box, but they were still not clients that we loved to serve. Many of them didn't respect boundaries. Many of them undervalued the work that we did. Many of them had products and services that, frankly, we weren't super proud to represent. And so part of the rebuild process that I went through all those years ago was very similar to what I did with the dating profiles. I said, I want to get clear on the values that the businesses that we serve have. I think that's such an integral part of that ICA or that ideal client avatar, because just like with finding my dream gal, I found that there was a very similar process to landing dream clients. So today I wanna share with you some of the, like, the three steps that I found that we went through in my firm to start landing our dream clients. And I can tell you, we have some amazing freaking clients today. We have some clients that are serving their customers and their employees and their communities at just a ridiculous level. And I'm so honored that we're able to be part of that. We're able to be part of a team that's doing those things. And I Want that for you as well. So get out your pen and paper if you don't have it out right now, because I want to share with you the three steps that I would like to encourage you to walk through so that you can get your dream clients. And number one, just kind of, like I said, the first step in this process, you've got to define your values. Before you can get clients that are in alignment with your values, you've got to know what your values are. And I think that there is this process of literally sitting down with pen and paper, kind of clear the deck, clear your calendar and turn off the notifications and just say, what are the values that are important to me as a person and to my firm? And so, for example, in kfe, my firm, our values are serving with the heart of a teacher. Generosity, gratitude. Those things are so important to us. We've also got some what we call pay to play values. And these are things that if you violate them, you can't work here and we won't serve you as your fractional cfo. And that's integrity, doing the right thing when nobody's looking, and professionalism and humility, not always knowing the right answer. So we went through this whole exercise at KFE where we came up with this whole list of different kinds of values. And I'll share with you a great resource if you want help with this is a book called the Advantage by Patrick Lencioni. I'll drop a link to that below. But that book really helped us get clear on what our values are. So absolutely. Step one, before you can find those clients, your dream clients, you need to be really clear. Beyond just the demographics and sociographics and all those things, what are the values of the people and the businesses that you want to be serving? The second step, I want you to share those values. I want you to put those values out in the world. What I mean by that is I should be able to look at your website. I should be able to look at your social media, your blog posts, your YouTube channel, if you have one. You should be talking about those things. Kind of similar to what I did with the social media profiles where I'm putting, putting in those values and said, hey, I love life. I enjoy waking up every day and just seizing the day. I started talking about those things, and I know that it started attracting people that also believed in those things. And I'm also confident that it detracted people that didn't think that, you know, I know there was somebody that looked at that profile and was like, oh my God, he gets excited about waking up every day. Oh, I'll get annoyed quickly, somebody that's all giddy and excited like that, right? So when you share those values, it will start to naturally attract people that are in alignment with them. And it will kind of just send messages that say, hey, stay away if you don't believe in these things. You know, so often when I look at social media profiles of bookkeepers, accountants and fractional CFOs, all I see are reminders about 1099s and the importance of having your books reconciled. And those things are important, but I'll tell you that those aren't going to be nearly as effective messages in attracting the kinds of clients that you want to work with, your dream clients, as posts and stories about the things that you believe and the things that you value. So I want to encourage you have those things intentionally on your website and in your social media, in your blog post, because it's a great magnet for attracting that ideal client. And the third thing I'll share with you, once you've defined your values, once you've kind of shared or communicated those values, I want you to deliberately and intentionally screen clients through the lens of those values. Now, a lot of times we do that when we're screening teammates. You know, we're in the interview process and hey, talk to me about integrity or humility or how do you show up with the heart of a teacher? Share with me how generosity is part of your effort. We do a decent job during interviews, but I want you to use those as a screening mechanism when you're on sales calls with clients. Okay, I'll share this example with you. Earlier I mentioned that showing up at the heart of a teacher, it's a big part of what we do. I mean, it's just in our DNA, it's in our blood. Everybody on my team, it's just a big part of what we do and why we're here. Six months ago, now I'm on a sales call with a pretty big client. They were in the 30 plus million dollar range. They were in manufacturing, which is definitely in our wheelhouse for the types of industries that we can serve. Well, one of their big clients with Tesla, and I'm a huge Tesla fanboy, so I was really, really excited to work with this company. And so we go through the whole process and we're at the send the contract over part of the sales process. The CEO says to me, hey, one last thing, I noticed that you guys are really big on this Teaching kind of model, the coaching kind of model, and said, you know, I've been in business for all these years now and I've never had a coach, never had somebody that taught me that kind of stuff. And I'm just not interested in it. You know, I've made it to this point where I've got this business that's, you know, 30 some odd million dollars and we're doing this and this. So I just want to be really clear. I'm not interested in any of the coaching or their teaching aspect. I really just want your insights and I want your perspectives. But you can skip all the other stuff. And man, I'll tell you, my heart dropped, my stomach dropped because I was so excited to work with these guys. But I looked at him and I said, that's a bummer, man, because we're not going to be able to work together. And he said, well, what do you mean? And I said, you're right, that that coaching thing, the teaching thing is a big part of what we do. It's a big part of why not just me, but my whole team gets up every day. And so if that's something that, that you don't value and you don't want, that's okay. There are a ton of fractional CFOs out there that will do an amazing job for you, I'm certain of that. But it won't be us in these. Like, why? And I said, because I know this to be true. Very quickly you're going to get frustrated with us because we're going to be trying to do that teaching thing, we're going to be trying to do that coaching thing. Very quickly we're going to get frustrated with you because you're going to be fighting it. And I said, I'm certain that it might be a month, it might be a year into the relationship, but sooner or later, you know, we're going to butt heads and it's not going to end well. So I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you, but I'm going to respectfully withdraw our names from consideration. And he was mind blown. But you know what? I know that that was the right thing to do for us and I know it was the right thing to do for him. I know he would not have been a dream client for us after he shared with me that he just doesn't value that. And so I really want to encourage you to take that same filter or that same lens that you would for screening employees or team members and apply it to the screening process. For your clients, Because I know I've had clients, a roster full of them, that weren't in alignment with our values. And it just. You don't get excited about waking up every day and going to work or going across the house to go to work and serve when you've got clients that just don't line up with your values. So if you thought this episode of the Connected Accountant was helpful, it would mean the world to me. If you'd share it with a friend, share it on Instagram or social media. Feel free to tag us Connected Accountant Instagram. In the meantime, I can't wait to see you right back here, same time, same place, next week. See you later, my friends.