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 crafting an amazing client experience.

To help me with the discussion, I've invited Katie Tolan. She's an outsourced growth officer for CPA firms and is the chief growth guide of CPA Growth Guides, where she'll share where she shows accounting firms how to achieve profitable growth. Katie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me, Adam. So I'm really curious, starting off, what is the chief growth guide of CPA Growth Guides?

And I think what it comes down to it is there's many different ways a CPA firm can grow. And so really just listening and you know, pulling in the right team and the right resources to help a firm hit those, those growth goals and and probably even more importantly, defining what those goals are because a lot of times they don't know.

Interesting okay. So you said there's multiple ways to help that that accounting firms can grow. Of course. What are the the top or the most common ways. Well I think the to me I think a smart strategy is to focus on specialization. So I do a lot with that. It's also, you know, digital marketing. If you are not in digital today and you're not developing leads online, you're probably missing, the both there as well.

And so digital is so broad and encompasses so many different things. But to me, those are two things that firms really need to, to be focusing on today. Got it. Okay. Well, let's start with specialization. The well, first of all, tell me what you mean by specialization. Yeah. Okay. So I think, you know, falling into an account was trap is accountants try to be everything to everyone.

They think like, oh, I need to service everyone. Because if I miss that one opportunity, that's going to make and break me. But in reality, if you develop a niche, a service line specialization, you know, some sort of outsource CFO kind of service and you target it, maybe to a specific buyer or a specific industry, and then you really get to know that group.

You need to get to understand, you know, what they're doing. You get to be one of them. You actually get to grow. You know, I think thinking smaller is what it enables accountants to get bigger. And I think that just goes against our national, our natural thought process. Thinking smaller allows us to get bigger. Which which goes again I agree it goes against the natural thinking.

But expand on that thinking smaller helps you get bigger. So if you decide you just want to tackle and I'm going to do, you know, outsource accounting and CFO work for contractors who then know where to go find the contractors. We have limited time to market. We have limited money to market. Instead of trying to, you know, to cover the ocean of everything, we can be, go focus on contractors.

But we're there hanging out. Talk to them. Show up at their events. Communicate with them directly, and you will become known in that contractor space as the go to person for the service you provide. And then that really allows you to grow at higher levels than, you know, you putting your, you know, your stake out that says, I can serve anyone and everyone well, I might not.

Well, it might be true. It's not necessarily effective. Yeah. Now that makes sense. So specialization could be what you're saying. Could be in the form of niching into a particular industry or vertical. So, you know, construction or dental practices, architecture firms or restaurant. Could it also be niching into the type of service that you do like? I'm only going to do bookkeeping or I'm only going to do CFO work?

Or is there a world where you can do multiple services for the same industry, or are you saying get really granular and say, I'm only going to do CFO work for architecture firms in the southeast? I think it depends on your strategy. There's a couple different ways you can go. You can go that specialize that says, I'm only offering this service to this buyer.

Yeah. Minimally, I would say you could focus on a buyer group. So your contractor is a real estate broker or a manufacturer, whatever it might be. Yeah. And then here are all the services that this buyer needs that I can offer. And then you create that suite of services. So it can be that it can be, I'm going to offer a service, I'm going to outsource accounting.

And with that outsource accounting, maybe you can do like two industries and go, okay, well I'm going to outsource accounting. Maybe it's 2 or 3 industries. You know, professional services, nonprofit. And you know, whatever your third one is. But it's even when you pick a service, you still have to narrow down that buyer group. Those verticals, to a smaller number than everyone under the sun.

Yeah. Okay. So specialization in terms of, you know, but like you said, niching down, getting as granular as you want to or can so that you're speaking to a specific target audience, what are some of the roadblocks that you see? Accounting firms and bookkeeping firms run into when they try to specialize? I think it's getting ingrained in the industry.

It's hard work. You can't just, you know, say, hey, I'm going to focus on this type of buyer. You have to be seen as one of them. You've got to go to their conferences. You've got to read what they read. You've got to be writing for those publications. You've got to be speaking at the events that they're going through.

You've got to ingrain yourself so, you know, like all good marketing, it takes effort and I think a lot of people say, you know, I want to just say, this is what it is, you know, build it and they will come. When in reality, that's not the way it happens. So are you saying that the the firms that grow that that sort of break through that glass ceiling, they're ran by business owners or accounting firm owners, practice firm owners that are willing to go out and do those things.

In other words, the firms that are being held back and are not growing, it's because the owner is not willing to to do things other than accounting or bookkeeping. I think that's true. I mean, they're probably exceptions to that rule everywhere, but for the most part, you've got to roll up your sleeves and do the work. And that work is, you know, not only the service that you provide with the work and growing your business.

Yeah. So but what if what if somebody's listening is like, I get it, I think, but I'm really good and really comfortable being the accountant doing the work. What what what do they do? Well, there's different ways you can go about and grow your business. You've got to figure it out. If you are incredibly comfortable walking into a room of 400 people and starting a conversation, then just don't walk into a room of 400 people.

Start a conversation. Let's figure out what you are comfortable with. If you know your craft inside and out, maybe it's writing and you're fine because you can sit behind your dash. You can get all your thoughts out on paper and you can, you know, share your information. That way. You know, maybe you're like, okay, I couldn't go to a large group, but if you put me in front of 20 people, I can have one.

Heck of a conversation with them and educate them on what it is that they need to know. Or maybe I can be incredibly active on social. It's that personal interaction I don't love, but I can go out there and connect with people. There is something that's going to work for you. It's not going to be what works for everybody, and you have to spend some time figuring out what it is that you're you're comfortable with, and you can learn and actually work into your business operations.

Yeah. And that makes sense. And so I mean, just to flesh that, I'll flesh that out even further. How would somebody know what they're they're starting from scratch. They've over the past let's say eight years, they've built a, a tax practice, for example. And, and most of their clients are local and they're just sort of burnt out. They don't necessarily want to go through another tax season.

They want to grow their firm, and they want to be able to take some time off for themselves without having to doing all the work themselves. But there's sort of this catch 22 where they need money to hire more people, but they they need more clients to hire, to hire, to be able to afford the more people.

So they're sort of stuck. What would you say their very first step is? So usually what I do when I, when I talk to firms is, let's understand your strengths. You know, let's dive into your revenue. Let's segment it. Let's go. You know, how much of what service do you provide to what buyer group? Let's figure out where you have natural strengths because you do.

And then what do we do with that? You know, if I sit there and say, guess what? You know, you have a lot of expertise with dentist. You know, believe it or not, when I looked at everything that you do talk to me about dentists. What do we know about dentists? And so it's really, you know, understanding where your strengths are.

There are very few people that can go in a totally new direction. You know, I was on a call with somebody just yesterday, and, you know, there's a need from influencers and out there that, that need certain things, they need specialized accounting help and they need, you know, bill pay and insurance and credit and all of this other stuff.

Well, it's probably not every accountant that would be comfortable talking to an influencer. It's probably a smaller group of people, that would be comfortable doing that, but it could be a great niche for them. But who are you comfortable? Who do you like to relate to? Who do you like to talk to? More importantly, who's in your network?

If we downloaded your LinkedIn contacts, your outlook contacts and put them in buckets, where do they fall? If you really want to focus on the health care arena, but yet you don't have any dentists and doctors and your contacts might be a little bit harder. Yeah that makes sense. So in terms of the this sort of umbrella topic that we're talking about having an amazing client experience, I'm assuming that if you and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think what you're saying is to specialize to niche into a specific specialty.

You're now focused on doing one set of things for one set of people, which means you can have a give them a great client experience and amazing client experience so that hopefully they'll tell other people and word of mouth will grow your firm. Yes, that is true. And you know, even better is you can charge a higher price.

And so, you know, don't we all want that where you create your expertise that you can actually get a premium for what it is that you do. Yeah. So if we. Yeah, I've heard the term, the phrase the riches are in the niches. And this is definitely, definitely the case in this, you know, with what you're talking about.

So let's talk more a little bit about the client experience. In what ways. What have you seen that accounting firms are doing? Well, that help them have an amazing client experience? And then also, what are some things that you're saying that accounting firms need to improve on in order to improve the client experience? So I think you're seeing more and more people understand that the client experience is important.

And so to me, that's a huge step in the right direction. Everyone has a perception of your business whether that's intentional or not. So why not be intentional about it. And so your client experience is really how you do that. And, you know, and I think you're seeing firms utilize that from where are they doing it.

Well, from an onboarding. Well, here's my onboarding process for a new client. And so they've got really well, like I'm been introduced into the team and connected to our portal and teach them about this and on all these other things that they need to become a client. And your process is should be different than every other firm's process.

You know, it's really hard to sell yourself today by saying, I'm a better an accountant. I'm a smarter accountant. How do you prove that? Like, are you kidding me? There's no way to say that I'm better than than somebody else. But I'm different in my process and how I'm different. And you're engaging me because my process is different.

So I love that accountants are starting to understand that, and they're starting to implement it. However, where do they need to improve? It's all of those aspects that where we touch a client. I was on the phone with the firm, and they were explaining to me that the handoff between the outsource accounting and the tax could be better.

Like, why are we waiting till the last minute to do our tax return clients for the people that we do the outsource accounting for? Well, we have their books wrapped up in January. That's part of the client experience, diving into that part of the process and understanding, you know, what it is that we can do to to tighten that, that up.

I actually did a survey earlier this year on social media as well about succession planning. And are we involving clients in our succession if you've got if you're more a multi partner firm and you have somebody who's leaving, you know, what do we do? How do we involve the clients in that? Who do they talk to?

What do they do? Or are we just going to tell them what to do. Because honestly, clients want to say interesting. Okay. You mentioned the word intentional, and I like that word because here at the CFO project, that's actually one of our core values is being intentional with everything that we do. What what do you mean by that?

So intentional is here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to map out my onboarding process. I'm going to map out a process for, when my client has to reengage on an annual basis, or I'm going to develop a process for when one department, passes something off to the other. And this is a defined process. This is going to be written out.

This is going to take into consideration the voice of the customer. And when I say that that's that's two people. That's your external buyer. You're who we traditionally think of when and our customer, our client, but also internally those people that touch something before or after in a process and making sure we're giving them what they need. So being intentional about this spelling stuff out, that's taking into the consideration of the people whose opinions matter most in this situation.

And, you know, spelling that out and making it repeatable. You know, it's not something you just do once. Oh, that was great. It's gotta be the same experience. When you go to a McDonald's, you can walk in the store set up might be a little bit different, but it still feels the same. You order something the the the process is the same.

It needs to happen at that level within accounting firms as well. Yeah, no I agree. I mean and that's, that's what we mean by the core value that we have about intentionality is almost putting yourself in the shoes of the your customer or, you know, a client or, you know, employee or whatnot, and seeing how they experience something and being intentional about crafting an experience that is positive for them.

Yeah. And I think part of it is, is, you know, I tell counselors regularly, is your opinions interesting? But it's irrelevant because you're not your buyer. You have a say in it, but you're not the one who's writing you the check. You got to talk to the people who are. Yeah. Make sense? Let me ask you this.

We're talking about a client experience and specializing in intentionality. Where do you see the accounting profession going in? Let's say the next five years? Well, we know since, 2020, we have, skyrocketed in terms of what we've been able to accomplish and how we do it. And I don't think that path is going to, to change.

I think we're going to use automation and technology to do grunt work. I think we've got to train our people, maybe ourselves in some cases, how to be that advisor level. But one thing the machines are not going to get on us anytime soon is that added value we provide as a human, that insight in that input.

And so we need to figure out how we're going to capitalize upon that. So in five years that's what we're getting paid for. Yeah. And that's exactly where I was going with that question. Because, you know, when it comes to having an amazing client experience, the one thing that I cannot replace and the one thing that technology cannot replace or software is that human to human element, that experience, you know, people don't really care what you say, they really care about how you make them feel.

And if you, as an accounting firm owner, can make your clients feel special or make your employees and, and, and vendors, anybody that you work with feels special, then that in itself will help you have a great experience. I mean, think about it. I could call you and say, hey, Adam, I'm waiting for that document. I need to complete your tax return.

That's one interaction we can have. Another interaction is. Hey, Adam, I noticed your revenues were down a little bit this last quarter. Let's talk about what's going on in your business, and see if there's anything I can can help you with. That's a totally different conversation. And what do our clients value? Not you calling them to ask for form.

They value. You trying to make a difference in their business. Right. Exactly. And that's a lot of what we teach in the CFO project is, you know, your clients don't value the fact that you record the past as much as they value that you're going to help them have a better future. Yeah. And I think I think accountants find that scary, because it's not a role that they've been in.

It's not their comfort zone. And when you say, you know, you've got to figure out how to do this, you know, the good thing is, is accountants deal with so many different businesses that they don't have the insights of just the one relationship they have the insights of many that they can bring into the conversation. And so I think we sell yourself short some time.

And, and accountants actually do have that skill set. They just need to be able to tap into it and utilize it. Yeah, yeah I agree I agree. Well Katie, we're almost running out of time. Let me ask you if somebody is interested in getting your help in terms of figuring out what is my strategy to grow my firm, where should they go?

Why do you guys go to my website? CPA Growth guides.com. I'm also all over social. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can find me on Twitter. Slash ax. You can find me. So so I'm out there. So go out and and feel free to reach out and in whatever way you feel best. And if it's email it's Katie at CPA Growth guides.com.

All right. Perfect. We'll put all of those in our show notes the CPA Growth guides.com and your email address and the LinkedIn profile. We'll put that in the show notes. Katie, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you so much, Adam. 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 accountants trap.

Bye for now.