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well the last very last thing I ever wanted to spend time on was marketing because most of us up to our eyeballs and clients Turning Away leads in some cases not even taking clients but here's the thing G bring it it we don't all need more clients but all of us all of us need better clients I recently read this book the accountant marketer by Karen rurn a super good read I'll put a link to it down beneath the like button Karen's run a marketing agency for accountants for over 20 years now really good stuff in it helped me solidify my thoughts on a small firm owner's role in marketing now here's where I'm at the most important job in an accounting firm is deciding what clients get on The Client List and what clients need to get up off of that list as a firm owner you are the curator of that list for a given amount of capacity your job is to fill that capacity with the most profitable most chill and lifestyle aligned projects that are out there you need to find the pick number 100 clients who most acutely feel the pains use sof for who will pay 2x 5x 10x what your current clients will pay because not all pains are equal your clients who are paying top dollar and are super appreciative of you it's because they feel the pains you solve for so acutely they probably happily pay even more for what you do the folks at the bottom of The Client List getting a steep discount and still griping about every single bill they aren't bad people usually they just don't feel those pains as acutely and this is is where curation comes in let's build an entire Client List of these people or better yet people who feel those pains even more extremely because it is a big old world out there and in all likelihood the 100 people who most acutely feel those pains they're just going to fall right into your lap it's going to take work to attract them and when you do you can trade the profitability of two three five even 10 Legacy projects for that one new client who values you it's marketing I don't like it any more than you do and I know the perfect way to balance your time between marketing and doing firm stuff like the work but I can tell you that spending no time on marketing buddy that ain't it so let me give you my three my three tippy top tips for where to start and why the traditional lead funnel is just fundamentally broken for businesses like ours number one let those Gates down we build these walls around our firm and the only people getting access to our expertise are those on The Client List but how's a prospective client supposed to learn about you how are they going to build any trust in you before making a buying decision if we aren't putting out any value Beyond those boundaries as Karen actually puts it in the book what kind of person wants to LEAP from I've never met you before to let's build a lasting relationship I know we just met but let's get married you need a way to warm those leads and for most firms the easy answer here is an email list it is not hard to set up you don't even need fancy email marketing tools but a weekly or monthly email that speaks to the Pains of a specific type of person it keeps you top of mind for those folks now today today for most of us on our website the call to action is to become a full-blown client dump your current accountant Take a Chance on Me based on some landing page copy that's pretty high stakes a better call to action get on the newsletter and we'll send you our top seven tips for I don't know beekeepers whatever that client is that you're trying to attract we've now Braden the base of people who are aware of our firm now number two get specific we struggle with having anything to say if you start to get on social media doing that email newsletter why are people going to read what I have to say you look at everybody and you're like well my newsletter is never going to be as good as that person and you're probably right when you start a new thing you're going to stink at it but I'll let you into a secret about the internet the more specific you get the lower that bar for Quality gets if you put out General business thought leadership you are up against every other business thought leader out there good luck if you put out tax tips for professional beekeepers okay that bar just went way down but we're so afraid of getting so specific that they can't there can't be that many people out there that would actually where I could actually build a business around something that specific right right wrong we are stuck in the pre-internet mindset of how people ran Professional Services firms the model where you sought out people locally you went to chamber meetings you sponsored the pancake feed and you hobnobbed around town when today people don't buy local like they used to they don't build trust like they used to they listen to podcast they watch online videos they scroll an algorithm to educate and entertain themselves and in this era it is not as much about finding clients as it is about attracting them and in massive social media algorithms the way you find people is through specificity being the only one talking about taxes for beekeepers being so specific to that person's needs that they can't imagine working with anybody else congrats you're now one of one that's how you rise above the noise and attract people who feel specific pains and number three reassess your pie you know that pie chart of how you spend your time it's a product of how much value you assign to the different things you do each day and it probably mirrors what you've seen other people do maybe maybe the folks above you when you came of age in accounting you saw what they were doing and what you're doing largely looks the same but that pie in the last decade how people should spend their time it has changed because on the other side of a tweet of a LinkedIn post of a YouTube video are millions and millions of people who can find you compare that to the chamber meeting right compare that to only building a firm locally but then stop to consider uh how it firms changed to lean into this right like virtually not at all we are so focused on one-on-one work that happens behind closed doors for our clients the very lowest leverage way of using your skills that we can't make time for anything but doing the work and as much as I hate to say it marketing is like the diet and exercise of an accounting firm it's what dictates the clients who are on the list in the first place and until you've optimized that nothing else even matters that cool new app that's going to save you time it's secondary to finding a client who will pay you better and appreciate the work that you do getting time back it means stopping something right and this usually starts with challenging an assumption do you need to be the one to do that will everything really fall apart if you aren't the one to do that and gang I can tell you truthfully the biggest assumption too many accountants are stuck on right now is that they can't leverage offshore hiring this feels like a weird time to throw to the DJ thing but yep okay so today's sponsor cloud account Staffing their backstory is they are an accounting firm that hit a wall and needed to find talented staff sound familiar they hired through some offshore groups and the Philippines eventually started hiring their own Recruiters in the Philippines now they help other firms find staff just like they did in the case of cloud accountant Staffing it is genuinely that simple you can hop on a call with them just to learn more ask the embarrassing questions about security about tech Hardware how do I get him a computer comp in this case you actually don't have to pay them a dime until they have placed a hire with you which means you can go as far as getting resumés doing interviews before you have to make any decisions now in my case I had a super Legacy 80-year-old firm all of the blockers to this that you would expect we dipped it toe in the water and we blowing away at how good the people were and never looked back it completely changed how we got the work done within our fir so if you are stuck on how am I going to make time back for marketing you got to break something you got to find an assumption to challenge and if you have even slightly considered offshore hiring give it a try today's sponsor is a really easy place to start I'll put a link in the video description if you want to get to a better place it starts with acknowledging okay something's got to change the framework for for how to run a firm that I have right now has gotten me this far in order to get to here something back here's got to break you got to change something right now I mentioned that traditional lead funnels are just broken for businesses like ours here's what I mean we trade on trust clients can't compare our output to that of another firm can't really shop around a tax return or a month-end close and figure out who did it best that's a really hard thing to do and when that is the case when your customer doesn't understand what you do then perception becomes reality they'll make buying decisions on the peripheral things they do understand how was the client experience how responsive were you and how much is the big one do they trust you in a traditional lead funnel you got your leads way out here vaguely interested at the top and the folks were almost ready to buy down at the bottom but our goal as firm Runners shouldn't be to just pack people down into the bottom of that funnel as quickly as possible I'll give you an example comparing two new clients one is a referral they jumped the line went straight to the bottom of the funnel and are ready to be a client Without Really knowing anything about me besides what their buddy told when they come in they are learning from scratch about how you work they have no existing relationship with you they are just buying due to a bit of social proof from a friend but compare them with a second new client who's been in that lead funnel for the the last 2 years they've been reading your Weekly Newsletter for beekeepers because it was helpful for them maybe they've been listening to your podcast just spent 40 minutes last week on the riding mower with you and their ear here's the thing that person has built a relationship with you people throw around the phrase parasocial relationships for creeps like a thirst traps on social media but this is a thing on a micro scale too in a less creepy way if you've tuned in this channel for the past couple years if you listen to my podcast we have a relationship if you bump into me a conference you know a lot of about me we have a lot to talk about when you have that first conversation with a new client who already has a relationship with you there is implicit trust that you know what you're doing that you are the solution for them and it means they will happily pay more for what you do because you are one of one it means they'll get out of your way and trust your expertise and it is a new high watermark for what a great fit client can be now we can get stuck on the notion that this is like a yearl long investment I'm not I'm not an influencer I don't want to pump years into a PO podcast I'd argue it actually doesn't have to be that bad though the shortcut is specificity finding the people online who are talking about beekeeping whatever it is launch the first Finance podcast for beekeepers find the influencers in that space and learn how to support them you know start building trust at a scale that will attract a client that values you more than anybody else on your list today is marketing like it or not okay check this out the account marketer I'll put a link to it down below and on my podcast we've been doing a segment called roast my post where I give Anonymous feedback to firms trying to trying to baby step their way into social media to start attracting a better client I'll link the most recent episode we did on that right up [Music] here