Welcome to the Escaping the Accountants Trap podcast. It's a podcast to help accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers escape what we call the accountants trap. It's where accountants are not getting paid for their value, and are forced to work long hours with high, demanding clients with little pay. Well, how do you escape the trap? One way is the topic of today's episode, and that's by getting clients at scale through packaging, pricing and niching down.

To help me with the discussion, I've invited Lee reams, the founder and CEO of Counting Works and All in One digital marketing platform built specifically for the connected tax and accounting practice of the future. Lee, welcome to the show. Thank you. Adam. That was a great intro. You got a good energy going. So, you know, for me, it's a little bit early for this podcast.

So I'm excited to be here today and talk about some things that I think can really transform the way most independent tax and accounting pros look at the way they run their practice. And, by utilizing some things, I think you, as you do in your training and what we do in the marketing side, could really dramatically change the financial results for our client base.

So I'm excited to talk about it. Yeah. Same here. I'm excited to dive in. But first, tell us why there's this need for a company like yours to help, to help get accounting practices into the future. Why is there this need in the first place? Well, I think as you know, the accounting industry as a whole is very risk averse.

They're very set in their ways. And if there weren't firms like me, and perhaps you, they would still be doing hourly bookkeeping and tracking on, paper and writing things down and sending, you know, us postage items. And, and there's a real reason we understand where the future is. We understand how to utilize technology at scale, and make it easy for tax and accounting firms to be able to compete with a lot of the tech enabled companies that are basically trying to come after their business now.

So firms like mine, we help small independent, tax and accounting firms 1 to 50 about us who we work with. And we'll we'll help them kind of look at their business in a different light. I usually say we take the commodity out of their marketing, because most tax and accounting brands, when they start out, they basically become generalist very quickly.

They start taking any client they can. They don't have a focus brand. They basically, you know, are taught how to do tax preparation or accounting, CFO kind of advice, but they really don't know how to articulate that. They don't know how to message it. And usually you'll see a website that has a lot of words about themselves and doesn't really talk to, their end client.

The pain points that that, client is going through. So we help them kind of identify where the opportunities are. When we talk about niching down, we look at things that they, are interested in. They're passionate about, you know, is there something in an area where, let's say you have a, a set of clients that are focused in it that if you targeted just that niche, could you grow that out and become very successful?

Word of mouth, you know, demand, etc.. So that is kind of where we come in. We help digitize what we call client facing user experiences. So that's anything from getting found on the internet, branding, how you communicate, how you get message out, email, social media reviews to then how do I work with the client digitally. So how do I intake them?

How do I get paid? How do I package my services to take the friction out of the buying process? So those are things that we do to make it easier for our independence. Okay I love it. Let's start with packaging and branding from a prospect's point of view, because I love what you said, that you take the commodity out of marketing because accountants and bookkeepers, you have to understand that from your client standpoint you are a commodity.

So how do you combat that? How do you help accountants and bookkeeping firms, take the commodity out of marketing. So there's a couple things here. First thing we would do is there's two ways, actually a bunch of ways you can do this. So, when it comes to packaging, you can what I'll call niche down in a vertical.

And when I say that, let's say you focus on restaurants or you focus on dental firms, the other way is to niche down within a service. So perhaps you're doing a suite of accounting services, but now you're going to do it just for a certain segment like the setup stage. That's what you market. Or at least you, you position yourselves in tax prep.

A good example is tax preparation is a broad category. Let's say we're just going to work on the expat tax market. And with all of this now you've taken a what I call a Google search that has 5 million results. I'm looking for a CPA. If it's just local, you kind of narrow it down a little bit more.

But if you start utilizing niches or service specialties, so to speak, you're taking away the amount of competition. So most accountants are generalists, even when on their website, when they think they have specialties, it might be industry search, but there's no real specialty in their messaging. So when you start speaking 1 to 1 to a specific target audience and you use imagery, you use copy, and then you actually package the services around them.

It's going to speak to them more. They're willing to pay more, they're going to pay a premium for it. And more importantly, you're going to stand out so you can become easily become a thought leader versus just being lost in the wave of literally millions of millions of competitors. Yeah, I love that. I mean, if I was a dentist, I don't a dental practice and I was looking at two different accounting websites and one was just a generalist that is does the best taxes and the most timely manner.

And then I looked at one that says I do accounting for dentist. I'm going to probably choose that one well and think about it too. You would have a bunch of reviews and testimonials on your site, maybe some case studies, from actual dental firms that you've worked with and, I'm going to give you a different idea here, Adam.

And sometimes people don't think about this, but think about the amount of time it takes when you bring in an on board a new client. So if every new client is in a different vertical, you have to learn what are their KPIs that are important? What are their unique, pain points, you know, how do they get set up if you're in a practice that specializes in dentists, dental firms, and every client you have, you know the profession, you know more than anyone else.

So you're actually able to save a ton of time and you're asking the proactive questions versus trying to learn about that, you know, the dental practice and how they're working. So you're going to add a lot more value and more importantly, get right into the advice side and be able to serve a lot more clients. So it's not every new client.

I have to relearn the industry. I have to learn what's important to them. You know, what are the trends? You know? You know, what should the cost of goods sold? Look, what should you know? My what are the the areas of risk, things like that. Yeah. So it almost makes sense from getting a client and servicing a client here is easier to attract a client if you niche down, if you position yourself in certain in a certain way that that that helps people self-identify with you.

This is this is the accountant for me. I need to work with this accountant. And it helps with the servicing side because you're able to be more efficient, you're able to scale, you're you're servicing better. Right. And from a marketing and branding point of view, it's easier to just develop content. So let's say you wanted to do a webinar like this to focus to, dental practices.

If you wanted to create blog content around it, if you created your newsletter that it was only focusing on those issues, they're going to feel more valued. It's just like, you know, I always explained kind of in the entertainment industry where there are certain, you know, CPAs that are charging lawyer rates, when they're working with entertainment firms and all have other very qualified CPAs say, well, there's no difference between what they do as far as experience and what I do.

They're charging five times the rates. And I'm saying, well, that's the perception exam. They know something that you don't know. And that it really works. As far as a marketing and branding point. So it's much easier to convert. Also, you'll see that a lot of times the your web presence. So I so I always talk about websites that it takes much more than a website to get found online.

So when I talk about marketing and things like county works pro, what we do for our clients, it's not just setting up a website and to sit there, you need to generate reviews. You need reviews from other dental firms that are going to talk about you. They're going to use language in those reviews that are going to be relevant and speak to the audience of new people.

So what you want all this marketing from your social media posts, your Google business profile? The review profiles that you have and lots and lots of reviews. You want this to be consistent and you want it to tell a story by the time. And basically it does the selling for you. So by the time they reach out to you, if you set up your website properly and you take them through kind of a narrative of what is the pain point that you have as a prospect, so speak to the prospect.

This is how now I can solve this and make your life better. And then here's all the other people that have worked with me and that have been successful. It's going to be much easier to convert them as a new client. And then where packaging comes in, and I think this is a good transition to packaging, is you want to take the the risk out of the buying.

I always I call it the friction out of the buying process. So, you know, think of the traditional model. You don't show your pricing, you don't show the services that you offer. It's kind of a black hole. So I trust that you're not going to rip me off. I trust that when I talk to you, I'm going to get real value.

But I don't necessarily know all of the bullet points of what you're going to do for me. So if we can at least start the conversation off where here's three packages that I offer. Here's the price levels they have. This is what the support comes with it. One is much more transparent. So as a buyer it's like I know what I'm getting.

There's less risk for me now to say, okay, I'm going to do this package. And a lot of times you'll see people self-identify with a package. If they're a premium buyer, they're going to the premium package. So if they're used to buying a Mercedes, they're going to buy your high level people that are used to, you know, Toyota.

I'm not putting anyone down that as a Toyota. I'm not pushing for Sandies. But my point is they're going to self-identify and it helps actually start the conversation. If instead of, you know, when you're ready to sign up, it's like, well, let's go through the package, see which one is right for you. You know what, Lee? I was looking at premium.

I thought that made sense. And now you're not talking about price. You're talking about all the things I'm going to do for you. So it takes a lot of the conversion process. The, you know, the pushback, the objections kind of out of it. And you, it'll be easier. Accountants are trained salespeople. You know, if I'm talking now more from authority and what I'm going to do for you, and something I'm comfortable with versus trying to walk you through kind of a sales process, it makes it much easier to convert more people.

Yeah. It talks. Hey there, Adam here from the Escaping the Accountants Trap podcast, I'd like to personally invite you to a free masterclass that we're conducting this Thursday called How to Start a CFO service. To register, just go to the CFO project.com and click Free Training at the top. See you then. One of my favorite quotes is from a marketing professor.

He said that people don't buy quarter inch drills. They buy quarter inch holes. Meaning you. Here's the outcome, right? Exactly. People want the outcome. People will go to. They want they hire accounting services or bookkeeping services because they want what you provide. And so that they want the benefits of what you provide. So you can't market to them.

Talking about features like I do tax returns better, faster, cheaper. They want what's what benefits then user would you agree with that 100%. And then think of it this way too. They're not buying necessarily your designations. So I, I have a couple customers that have they're more educated than anyone on earth. You know, they have more designations, commas after their name.

But the reality is they're they're all kind of pumping their chest and they're not really speaking to their end user. And it sounds great. I, you know, I'm hoping because, you know, I can tell a good CPA from a bad CPA, you know, I don't know if they know what they're talking to. They could, you know, sell me, so to speak.

But, you know, if you're using good marketing and you're speaking to the pain points and you're promising some sort of better financial outcome, you know, that's going to make me move, you know, because you think about it in, in any of the, the client lifecycle, you know, are they even aware they have a problem? So now maybe they're aware they Google I need to improve my cash flow for my dental firm.

Okay. Now I'm aware and they find an article that you have written or an article that you've been interviewed in a dental trade, you know, media. So we do PR for our customers and we get them out there. So that's another way they get clients. But basically, are you a thought leader in this space? It's easier to be a thought leader if you're targeting.

But now there. Okay, I found your article. This person knows how to increase, cash flow for dental firms. This guy's an expert, or, you know, this this person's an expert. What is the next step? So now I'm aware, and now I'm also considering. Should I hire somebody to solve this problem? Should I do it myself?

Is there technology out there? You know, what are the trade offs for both ways? And as I go through that process, if your website and your marketing material is communicating why it's so much easier to go with you, then you're going to convert that person. And they come from an awareness stage consideration to an intense stage. And if you've cut down the barriers at the intent stage, packaging your accounting services.

Or again, I we're talking virtual CFOs stuff. Hopefully here most of your audience is is into that and it's more lucrative. And it's also higher end level advice. Right. So if you can transform yourself getting out of the mundane tasks, a bookkeeping technology can automate so much of this now, and you're more into the high level, you know, virtual CFO services.

Think about the the advantages for your client. They don't have to hire a full time CFO. You know, they're saving money. You know, you're actually an ROI for them. You're going to give them a great return on their investment. So all you need to do is communicate. I can do all this. And because I'm a specialist, for example, since we're talking about that, I have more knowledge inside baseball knowledge than anyone else.

And and then if you can translate that into these are the different outcomes that I can do for you. You know, people are going to be waiting to get in line to sign up with you, and that becomes a scalable product. So now you've created processes. That's where digital workflows come in. That's where if you have a process for a new client that's ready to sign up, how do you get a digital proposal out to them?

How do they make a payment online? How do you get them to pay upfront once they pay? How do you kick off an engagement letter to them automatically? Once they sign that, kick out an intake form and make it so you can save a ton of money in onboarding. But what I'm getting at is if you do this correctly, you can create.

You're like a SAS business, a software business that you've created processes, you can duplicate them. You're not doing every single client, one, you know, every single client's a custom deal. It's then you're just an agency. You're just a service business versus creating a product that is scalable, recurring revenue. You know your value of your entity is much higher.

So that's kind of the the model that we try to get our clients to follow. Yeah, yeah. Completely makes sense. I could I completely agree we're all about systems because otherwise unless you have systems running your business, it's not scalable. And every client is going to feel like a different part time job and you're going to own a job instead of them instead of a, a machine that makes money for you.

And that's, that's the waiting list. So literally you say, I only have capacity to add ten clients this quarter. So now you have a fear of missing out. And you could use this in marketing to, you push this out, an email campaign. The first ten I have kept. Hey, by the way, I had a couple clients retire or sell their businesses.

I have a couple more openings. You know, the first acts I have capacity for this. And then you literally can end up where you have a waiting list. So if someone does retire or sell their business, you have people waiting in line to jump on board. Yeah, that's the best case scenario. That's great. Let's shift gears just for a moment and talk about the future of this industry.

What do you view as the future? What is the future of the accounting industry? Well, I think it's I'm very bullish. First of all, the pandemic kind of cleaned out. A lot of people retired. We obviously have the boomer retirement wave coming up. So those that are left are going to be very, very successful. There's a reason private equity companies are coming in and buying a lot of these, because there's tremendous cash flow that comes through it.

So what's happening now with technology, and I'll get into a little bit of artificial intelligence is a lot of things that you were doing. And I a lot of people I know in your audience are probably, oh, I'm all into the technology and there's a lot of people that still aren't. They're still stuck in their ways. They don't want to make a change.

But, my feeling for those that adapt, those that understand having a high end digital presence is real value for the the worth of my company, and utilize technology. They're going to have better life experience, work life experiences. Right. They're going to be able to automate a lot of tasks, and they're going to be able to use tools like artificial intelligence.

We launched, recently, our taxpayers AI, which is basically a hybrid of ChatGPT for with training from thousands and thousands and thousands of articles and content and guides and continuing education courses that we created to get incredible results. So meaning there now efficiency tools out there that can respond to a client inquiry, just, you know, click a button and respond right.

A response to this call this client question. You can come back with the tax research if it wanted to. Do you know, look at pubs. If it wanted to analyze an income statement, a balanced statement, a tax return, create a tax planning strategy, write a blog article for you, you name it. Now, artificial intelligence can do this in a very kind of personalized tone.

We have it set up that you can add your own preferences. We kind of get your why. We ask some questions when we are on board. You and we can feed it that every time. The AI is now writing on your behalf or creating content, it's going to know who you're all about. Where are you located? Do you have a specialty?

You know, who are the principals? Those kind of things. And what you can find is what may have taken you eight hours could take you 20 minutes. 30 minutes. Wow. You know, not everything is perfect, but as a time saving tool, you know, it's remarkable how much work you can do. And then for your end client is now you have humans working with the power of AI.

And I think that's really important to understand because I only looks at what the inputs are. Humans. And I know and we're big into this. We've been working on it for about nine months. I don't know when or if AI is ever going to be able to do some of the human thinking things and the variables that the AI only you know, it's garbage in, garbage out, humans that are working with AI, and the power of being able to look at incredible amounts of data instantaneously is not.

It's never been there before. So as a human adding on to artificial intelligence, I think you could do some great things for your practice. And, we have some webinars. We've talked about this. How many different time savings use cases there are? I just threw out a few of them, but it is pretty powerful tool. And you'll end up where you find out you're using a daily.

It's basically your assistant. We're developing a bot that will go on our client's websites that it will be a lead generator. You know, people will be able to ask questions. The leads will be, you know, brought in to you and, you know, a lot of things that you may not have wanted to do in the past, the bot will do for you.

And then basically now people will go, okay, now my choices. Do I want to DIY this? Or, you know, should I be using a professional? And we we lean obviously we're the our client is a tax and accounting firm. So we're all in that you you know, you guys provide better financial outcomes when you work with people.

Wow. Okay. So and that's at tax bodies.com. Yeah. Taxpayers.com. We have a a button up top called taxpayers I and you can go in and it's still experimental. So the one thing I, I, I laugh at is when we start using ChatGPT for. And I'm sure we'll keep upgrading as it goes. Plus our data that we, we, we basically throw our data on top and it looks at our data first and it kind of combines and learns between the two.

But it's a little bit slower than traditional. Like chat, GPT three five is faster and spitting out answers, but the accuracy, you know, was under 50% for GPT three five and it's over 90 for what we're doing, so it might take a little bit longer. Like 30s to get an answer. But, I think having it be right is, it's worth the extra 25 seconds away, I agree.

So essentially, the moral of the story is that the accounting profession should view technology. Things like I typed GPT and all that as something they should embrace rather than something they should feel threatened by. Because if you embrace it, it will help you do your job even more efficiently so you can take care of higher value client facing things.

Yeah, it's not going away. So putting your head in the sand is kind of it's not going to all of a sudden go, oh it's it's gone. It's not right. And legislation isn't going to get rid of it. This is to me the next great, movement in, technology, you know, with a mobile phone and, you know, the internet, whatever internet speed, it is going to be something that the firms that are using it and embracing it are going to be much more successful.

They're going to outcompete the others. And I go back to this time savings. I mean, can you imagine firms right now that are just, you know, dying with their 350 clients and they're doing the old model of hourly, you know, billing in their cap. So basically, I only can make X dollars unless I keep raising my rates and versus the client who said the accounting firms said, well, let's niche down.

Let's do virtual CFO only, for example, and let's do it for the restaurant industry we're post-pandemic. I used to say restaurant industry and, well, they're all out of business and blah, blah. I think they're they're still doing well now they've come back. But, my point is, if you could then say instead of having 350 clients, I had 35 and I make as much money as I did with 350, or you probably can.

You know, once you start doing the math, you can start realizing, I actually can make more money with 35 clients than I did with the $350. Now what do I take that to 70? What if I take that to 140? And how do I scale that? How do I make that a machine? And then what you'll see is if you're in the right vertical, you're going to start dominating.

There's only so many companies that can dominate it. And and you see it now on the internet where people become thought leaders. People dominate verticals and niches, and it's much easier for them to get high paying clients in demand waiting lists. Then the the commodity player, the generalists, is sitting there waiting for that 1 to 1 referral. So think about the demand and you're now waiting.

Waiting for your clients to refer people versus people coming to your door every day has opportunity is totally. As the saying goes, the riches are in the niches. Lee. Yes, if somebody is interested in learning more about you, learning more about tax buzz or accounting works, and getting some marketing help, where do they go? So County works.

Procom is our software. So that's our software division. We basically have our thought leadership at tax Bazaar.com our marketing and a practice automation platform. Accounting works Procom either one of the sites. Go check it out. Definitely tax buzz right now the the tax was I is free. You could also demo set up a demo or trial. County works procom through that website.

But, you know, we're a team of people, seasoned veterans. We've been in this vertical for a long time. We know how you guys work. We know insights on how to get things done. And we also learn from our best producers. Right. So who are the top firms who have the most traffic? Who's getting is more you know, we have a proposal builder who's closing the most proposals and filling.

So there's a lot of tricks and data that we give so we can really help you. And you're not an island. You don't need to be out there on your own and and try to figure out and iterate, you know, until you're out of money with Google. So we know a lot of the tricks of the trade and how to get you set up very quickly.

So definitely take a visit. Schedule some time with us and someone on our team would love to talk to you. Love it. Well thank you. We'll put those those links in the show notes. Lee, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you. Adam, that was great. Hopefully, hear from your audience soon. And to everyone listening or watching.

Thank you so much for spending the last few minutes with us as we discussed how to escape the accounts trap. Bye for now.