How to Build An Advisory Mindset with Angie Grissom

Hey. Hey. It's Jodi Paydar here, the radical cpa, and I want to welcome you to my new show, Radical Ideas. I'm launching this show in seasons, which means we'll spend time every day for one week talking about the different aspects of a radical concept. You know me. At the end of the week, you'll have a deeper understanding of how that idea can help you better manage and grow your firm.

And.

And in this first episode of the first season, I'm so glad that you're here to join us. So in this season of Radical Ideas, we're rethinking tax advisory. You got that right. Tax advisory. But before we can even rethink tax advisory, we need to dive deep into what being an advisor means and how you can actually create that advisory mindset. So I'm turning to Angie Grissom, the owner and chief relationship officer at the Rainmaker Companies, who talks, writes, and consults on a very on a variety of strategic growth areas, including what it means to be an advisor. I'm so excited to have you here today, Angie. So can you just say hello to the audience?

Hi, everybody. Thank you, Jodi, for having me. I'm so excited and very passionate about this topic. It's very timely. So thanks so much for having me on today.

Awesome. I also want to thank our sponsor of today's show, the Wealthability Network, a network of CPAs and financial professionals focused on building profitable businesses and helping clients build a rock solid financial legacy. So with that, let's get started. So, Angie, can you introduce yourself to those of our listeners and watchers who may not know who you are? I don't know how that is because I think everybody knows you, Angie, but could you give yourself a brief introduction?

Oh, sure. I don't know about that, Jodi, but I'm Angie Grissom with the Rainmaker Companies. I'm one of the owners and the chief relationship officer. I have been working in this profession for most of my career, and so I work all over the country and Globally, working with CPAs and consultants in the area primarily of growth and communication and culture. So writing, speaking, content development, consulting, all kinds of fun stuff.

Okay, cool. So let's start with the basics. What does it mean for a CPA to be advisory? I think, like, we gotta clear the air because I don't think anyone really understands what advisory means. And how might it be similar or different to what they actually do today?

That's a really great question. And we know that trends show us that our profession is moving from that of a compliance to an advisory profession because of the need. Think about how the pandemic has changed so many things over the past several years. Think about the challenges businesses globally have faced. Well, CPAs are perfectly positioned to be that trusted advisor. And so what it means to be an advisor is to truly take the blinders off as a CPA and approach your clients in a holistic way. So instead of thinking, I need to check the tax box or the audit box, or consider only the things that maybe we've done in the past, we want people to take those blinders off and really look at your client holistically and ask about goals. You know, personal, professional, short term, long term, all of those things. And it's just a different way to show up.

So do you think CPAs are ready for this?

I think so, and here's why I think it's more fun. We talk about, do you want to be an aspirin or a vitamin? And I think it's important to be both as a CPA or advisor. So you want to relieve the pain, right? You want to make sure that everybody's healthy and feeling well, but you also want to be proactive and infuse ideas, projections, help, and consulting into the future. So I believe they are. And one of the things, Jodi, that I have found in my profession is when I'm in consulting with partner groups, a lot of times they'll say, what does it mean to be an advisor? I don't know how to be a consultant or advisor. I'm used to doing the same kind of work over and over. And I'll ask the question. Tell me, can you tell me about a situation where you served a client and you really helped them keep their business or you helped them grow their business? Well, absolutely. I have 100 stories like that. Well, tell me a little bit more about how you did it, what you did, and it shows you that even the advisors or even the CPAs out there that don't consider themselves advisors in many cases are. And then we know that people that are moving into the profession want to show up that way. They want purpose, they want interesting work. So, yes, I think they're ready.

Right. And I think too, when we had to deal with all the PPP stuff, that was like the perfect storm of how we had to step into that advisory role and we did it right. Like, that's what I think CPAs forget. Like, and it was. It sometimes it seems like a long time ago, other times not so long ago, but, like, it was just Three years ago when the pandemic started, and we all really had a. Like, go into that advisory role where we were really being that advisory and walking alongside our clients during that traumatic time. Right. So, like, if CPAs say they can't do it, like, I. I prove them and say, hey, you just did it. Right. You did it with the pandemic. Now it's just, how do we do it, like, all the time, and how do we really incorporate it into our practices so that it becomes kind of the first thing, as opposed to maybe the random act of advisory, which I like to say we.

We practice a lot. Yeah.

So, okay, so how are clients responding to this idea of advisory? Because we want to actually serve our clients. Do clients like this? Are they willing to pay for it? Right. I think at the end of the day, right, like, if we. If we have this advisory service line, our clients wanting it, and are they willing to actually pay for it? Because, like, we want to make sure that our businesses are profitable.

Well, you mentioned the pandemic three years ago, and I'll tell you, I'm getting calls from people that we've coached for years, and they're saying, angie, finally my client is seeing me as that trusted advisor that you all have been training and coaching us around. They finally said, you are my advisor. I might not be in business had it not been for you throughout the pandemic with the CARES act and PPP and all of those things. So the good news is it created awareness, I think, for CPAs, but also for a lot of clients in terms of how do they respond? I would say positively for the most part. Now, it's just like anything else. Not all clients are meant to be what we call at the top of the value ladder, where you're considered a trusted advisor, a partner, where you have, you know, gosh, less competition, less fee resistance. Some are sort of middle value ladder, and some actually at the bottom that are at a commodity level because they want to be. And so what I would say is there are many, many opportunities for you to show up as that advisor, but it might not be for 100% of your clients because A, they don't want to pay for it, or B, they're just not ready to. To look at those things yet, which I think is a mistake. But in general, yes, I believe that they're ready, and I believe that they will pay, but it has to be about the value received, not the time put in 100%.

And I think that's important because, like, when we think about Bringing things into our practices. We have to realize that not every solution is right for every client. And we as firm owners have to think about what's important to us and how we want to evolve our practices as well. So I think that's really critical to, like, say you can't sell advisory to every client, but probably 50% of them have been asking for it. You just didn't realize that they actually wanted it. Like, we just didn't make that connection, that this is what they've been asking for, and we didn't realize that that's what they really wanted.

And honestly, sometimes you'll find that clients are getting advisory services from somebody else, which is a bummer because they didn't know you did it. So. Yeah.

And what kills me, as you see their P and L and when you see them paying for coaching and they pay, like, these exorbitant amounts to outside professionals, and it's like profit coaching or something like that. And you're like, wait, like, we do this, right?

Like, every day. Yes.

Like, we're in the data. We actually understand the numbers and everything else. And then we see that they're paying, you know, an outside person for this. This coaching, and we're like, wow, like, we missed that opportunity. I can't tell you how many times I saw that happen in my practice. And it was just. We weren't having those conversations.

Yeah, I hear it a lot. It's a kick in the stomach because you're thinking, oh, goodness, I wish they had known. Should I have told them? Or how could I have communicated that? In a way, I. I hear it a lot, too, Jody.

And. And I think, too, that's where one of the things where we as CPAs have to get out of our mind of pricing, of what our clients are actually willing to pay for, too. Because I think that's sometimes a roadblock. Right? Like, we think, oh, like, they wouldn't pay for it because. And I think sometimes it's us who think, oh, well, well, they already know that, or whatever. And so we kind of put our own. Our. Our. Our own things.

Our bias.

Yeah, our own biases instead of actually asking the client what they want. So I think we gotta, like, kind.

Of get rid of that.

All these things.

Yeah. Yeah.

So accountants are driven by deadlines, and we know that there's a staffing shortage. Everyone talks about, you know, we can't find talent. How can we think about even going after advisory when we're so busy just doing the work? And is the return on investment actually Going to be worth it.

That's a great question too. Definitely driven by deadlines, which can be good and bad. I think in terms of finding the time to think about a client strategically, we teach that you need to build it into the rhythm of your day to day. I don't know of one professional out there really in any industry or profession that has a lot of time, has a lot of extra time because the world has sped up and information is coming at us so quickly. And then you couple that with a deadline driven profession and you have people saying, I'm going to keep my head down to get the work done. We don't have staff. How can I even have those strategic conversations? So we hear that build it into the rhythm of your day to day. Look at clients differently. There are opportunities to call clients, there are opportunities to right size clients. There are opportunities to adopt a lot of technology to streamline, as you know, a lot of the things that our accountants are doing. All I can say is if you don't get creative and figure out how to make those top clients a priority, somebody else will. And I always say your top clients are your competitors top prospects. They are showing up on their growth plan. So you need to think about it like that. And we talk about the time utilization matrix where quadrant one is urgent and important. Those are activities that are deadline driven, they're client driven, Quadrant two is more. They're important, but they're not urgent. I think advisory comes into that in a lot of ways because as an advisor, you've got to use your head, right? You've got to use critical thinking. And CPAs are so stinking smart, but we get in this mode of just responding, responding, responding, not necessarily using our critical thinking brains because we don't think we have time. But the reality of it is that's what we should be doing most of the time. And so is the return worth it? Absolutely. And you know what? It's a recruiting tool and it's definitely a retention tool and it's. The fees are better and it's more fun. So yeah, we gotta get out of that cloud because if you don't, you'll be doing the same thing over and over and over. There will always be work most likely, but you want to do the right kind of work, right?

And I think that leads into like kind of the next gen, right? Like, and what, what it means for your firm and how we're gonna, like how we're gonna give this advisory mindset to our team and how we can teach them to Be advisors because, you know, traditionally I think partners most of the time have been those advisors because they have years of experience. But we know that we can't wait for the advisor, that advisory relationship to happen only at the partner level. Right. Like, we just, we can't wait to, to make all these partners either. Right. So how do we help push that skill set down? How do we help teach the next generation to have these conversations sooner and kind of build advisory as part of the firm as opposed to, oh, the compliance work is all done by the staff and the senior. And if I have a really important question, I'm going to talk to the partner. How do we change that like, kind of business model that CPA firms have been like built on?

You know, it's definitely a needed change. I was in a meeting recently interviewing three up and coming superstars in an accounting firm and we were asking them, hey, what would you change about your educational process? What would you change about onboarding? What would you change about your role? And they said, we want to know how we're making an impact sooner. We want to know how to talk to a client. We're not sure because we haven't done that and we forget that. We forget that a lot of people don't have the experience of picking up the phone and having a conversation or having these in person meetings, especially those that were onboarded during the pandemic. So I would say get them involved early on, tell them about the why. Why are you doing the work that you're doing? Introduce them to clients, introduce them to centers of influence. Take them along on client meetings, have them involved in your teams and zoom meetings, your virtual meetings. We teach an equation that we're all probably familiar with, the management consultant David Meister, and he has a really great trust equation that we use we like a lot. And it's simply trust equals C plus I plus C plus R plus I, all divided by si. And what that means is trust equals credibility. Showing up with a background and showing up with the knowledge and the expertise plus reliability, not only doing what you say you're going to do, but asking the hard question, showing up with additional opportunities plus intimacy, which, hey, CPA struggle with that sometimes because we're so focused on the technical piece. But intimacy is that relationship because people are not going to share the most intimate details of their finances and their worries with you unless you have that big relationship. So you've got credibility, you've got reliability, you've got intimacy. We have to teach those things. But you, you divide it all by self interest. Which means if you go into a client opportunity and it's all about you, it's all about, I'm going to check the box, I'm going to meet the quota. I'm going to do this. Because this is an area that we're focusing on. They know it. You cannot simply cannot fake interest. And so low self interest is showing up for a client and saying, hey, what the heck is going on? Hey, what are your personal goals? What are your professional goals? And even if you can't solve it, which is a barrier, One of the biggest barriers, Jodi, I see in showing up as an advisor is that people are afraid to ask questions of clients, of things they might not be able to address. So if I ask you what your biggest issue is, and I think, oh, my gosh, we don't have a staffing service, I can't help you, and I don't want to ask any more questions, then that limits us. But if you. If you holistically approach a client and you ask questions, then you can work with your partner and other people to determine, do we know somebody? Is there somebody else we can bring in? So in terms of getting people ready, bring them along, have them shadow, tell them the why. Focus on continually updating their credibility, not only through the CPA exam, but otherwise, reliability, intimacy, and make it about them.

Yeah, I think those are all really good points. And I always say, you know, one of my quotes is, is, you know, as a cpa, you're hanging out in their financial underwear drawer, but the only way you can get in there is to really build that relationship. And we as firm owners have to do a better job of letting those relationships go across the firm. And it's not just held at the partner level, because, too, when you think about succession and all those other things, if you step out and you own that relationship, guess what? The client is going to step out as well, because they don't have the relationship with the next generation as it evolves anyways.

It's like they're changing firms anyway.

Right, right, right, right. So, I mean, it's. It's healthy for the firm as a whole to really kind of share that relationship.

Agree. Agree. Yeah.

So, okay, so we know that, like, we need advisory. We, you know, everybody's talking about it. Realistically, how long is it going to take for us to kind of shift our firms to this advisory mindset, kind of get the skills that we need and kind of move forward as we should be? Because I think that's one of the, the, the scare things that people are afraid of. It's like, oh, yeah, I know I need to do this advisory, but I got all these other things. How do I get there? What do, what do I need to do? And realistically, is it, you know, a two month journey, six year journey, like, like, where's my roadmap to get me there?

That's an interesting question. I've never really thought about it like that. I would say start right now with the mindset that you want to go, go to clients as an advisor, educate people around what that looks like, talk about success stories, talk about what's happening in the economy, in the business world, so that you're up to date on this, make that a priority in your firm. So that needs to start and continue. Make sure that your offerings reflect advisory offerings. Make sure that your people are educated on what those are and that you're bringing people into meetings and you're making education a priority. That's important. And I think three years is a magic number. And I am making this up, Jodi. But I'll tell you, I remember when I took over and built the consulting practice and academy, Rainmaker Academy, and I remember thinking, somebody said to me, it's going to take you a good solid three years to feel completely comfortable in all of the areas of consulting. And I thought, gosh, that's a long time. And I remember working really, really hard and coming up with my own methodologies and working with clients. And I remember at the three year mark thinking, gosh, this is what it's all about. We're in here doing it and it takes a lot of work. So I think if you focus hard on that and focus on that transition and you just do more work and you get repetitive work and you learn your lessons year after year, I think you can do it quickly. I think if you lollygag and you think I might do a little advisory here or there, it could take you forever. But I think those that are committed can get there sooner rather than later.

Yeah. And I think you're right in that you have to really kind of say, this is strategic for us and this is what we're going to focus on and this is what we're going to build. Because if you kind of do it halfway, I don't know if you'll ever get there. Right. Because then it's kind of like these random acts of consulting and. But I think it really has to become part of your DNA so that when they come into your firm, they know that this firm is really an advisory firm. Right. It's really doing strategic advisory. And if you teach your team and they all have kind of the same mindset, then, like, it just becomes part of your DNA, which I think is ultimately what clients want. Right. They want to know that doesn't matter who they talk to in your firm, they're going to get an answer that makes sense and is going to help move their business forward. Not just a tax return.

Absolutely.

Because I think tax returns are so, like, I don't know, like you need a tax return, but nobody wants to buy a tax return.

It's an aspirin.

Right? Right. It is. It's that aspirin. So we need. We need vitamins. So this has been an amazing conversation, Angie, as always, I always learn something from you. So if people want to find out more about Rainmaker and you, how do they connect to you? How do they. How do they sync up?

Sure. Absolutely. Well, check out our website, rainmaker companies.com. i'm on LinkedIn, Angie Grissom, and my email is angietherainmakercompanies.com Always love to meet new people and new collaborations. Jodi, I always learn a lot from you as well. You're amazing at everything you do. So thank you so much for having me today.

Awesome. So thank you. I'd also like to thank our sponsor, the Wealthability Network. Be sure to tune in tomorrow at 1pm Eastern for another episode of Radical Ideas at as we explore what a tax advisory practice can look like. See you then. I'm Jody Padar, the radical cpa.