Streamline Your Workflow with Sales Funnel Analytics for Accounting and Tax

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hey everybody Dave Costello here founder and CEO of Jetpack workflow and host growing from podcast today's guest is Shanita Jones she is the CEO of Jones tax and financial services and how it got connected is I was rummaging through Facebook and there's all these wonderful groups there and somebody mentioned uh shanita's name and they congratulated her on the two comma club for building out Marketing Systems and Frameworks to drive two comma acquisition inside of our firm so we're definitely going to dive into marketing and so much more but first Shanita welcome to the show thank you so much I'm so excited to be here fantastic well the first thing I I I noticed when I was kind of looking at some of the things you had online go to your LinkedIn page it says we bring Financial structure and Clarity to child care CEOs so they can focus on impacting the lives of their students I was like bam I know exactly who you work with you know if I knew Child Care CEOs I could refer them to you but sometimes that's really intimidating to zero in on who you work for and with so tell me about that journey of how you're able to specialize down how you pick that Niche and kind of what that process was like to to you know build out your ideal client okay um I'll start by first of all sending a big shout out in the thanks to Hector Garcia CPA because he helped me really refine that unique selling positioning statement UPS is what he called it um I did not choose to work with child care business owners they chose to work with me okay I had joined this marketing program by Ben Brown and one of the things we needed to do was to select the niche and I fought him tooth and now I thought that if I zeroed in on one particular group of people that I would cut myself off from other opportunities so I've decided to do this exercise and I think I was reading something from Tyler Clark and the exercise told me to basically list all of my ideal clients the ones that I enjoyed working with and then I discovered that all of them had this one thing in common they were all child care business owners so that's why I always say I didn't really choose them they chose me and were you and I mean how did you pick them up as clients in the early days was this a community you're involved in or is there a lot in your area or like how did this kind of naturally come to be okay not at all okay so my Aunt Karen she was a she is a daycare owner and she was actually my first educator and she had gotten herself into some tax situations with the city because the accountant that she was working with was not very knowledgeable in that area I was an accountant working in a large Hospital in Philadelphia knew nothing about accounting but they also had a school so I was kind of into education and Healthcare so she kept asking me for help and I told her I didn't know anything about this so I began reading IRS rags and City regs and learning all I could learn about it I was able to help her she told a friend a friend told a friend and I became known as the daycare tax lady so we're traveled and that's how business picked up got it and once you made that decision we'll link up the show episodes we did with Tyler with Hector trying to get Ben on so shout out to Ben why don't you come on the show we'd love to have you on um what what practically changed okay so you you said okay it's childcare CEOs it looks like you changed the LinkedIn obviously like did you stop running ads start running ads like what was your next step I got my Niche they chose me this is really kind of work I'm being pulled into this arena for the value I'm creating what did you do next so I actually had started my marketing and I was going very wide open service-based businesses because I had to play a state so I was marketing to service-based businesses and then I slowly began to tweak my message I have a Facebook group for for I had a Facebook group for business owners and I eventually converted it for child care business owners and then I also have one for accountants where we talk about stuff like this so when talking to people and asking them questions about niching and everything I became more and more comfortable with it but I didn't and child care wasn't my first Niche I have been through other iterations of this process and this is the one that I felt most comfortable with for the longest yeah and did your service offering itself change or was it just the marketing message or were you essentially still doing the same things or did you add you have to add some things for the market so I essentially still do the same things that I was doing for the other markets but there are some things that I hate to tweak and tailor to help them be most successful but having the corporate accounting background served me really well because I basically was able to do a lot of the things that I learned while working at the University of Pennsylvania um and I was able to bring that into the child care space okay so you were able to without a without a you know significant overhaul of your service offering Niche into Child Care CEOs but the way we got connected was everybody's talking about the two comma club and the funnels so what is the two comma club and what are funnels okay so to so the two comma Club award is something that the software click funnels gives out to anyone who is able to sell one million dollars worth of Revenue through their software which is called click funnels a funnel is a magical thing that Todd Dickerson and Russell Brunson created uh well I won't say they created but they created The Click funnel software they perfected it in my opinion and what a funnel is is a series of web pages that allow you to bring your larger audience in and then narrow them down and I like to Envision an actual funnel where your ideal clients begin to drip down so it is it off it enables you I get excited when I talk about it so it enables you to sort of kind of cast the wide net but reel them in closer and closer to being more of what you're looking for that's what click funnels is to me awesome and so at the top of the funnel whether it's your offering or we can talk about an example of an offering you know I think most marketing when you start is hey I'm here it's for everybody please buy my stuff and then you learn selling for everybody means you're selling the nobody yes and come buy my stuff it's probably for about one percent of the market that is actually ready to buy but the majority of the market might be thinking about it or researching so you're kind of moving up the funnel so you can walk through either an example of your funnel or conceptually like what do you start building at the top to start attracting those those in your case Child Care CEOs or whoever you know the audience is niching down to okay so um I strongly recommend against building a wide funnel like that I've tried it and I wasn't successful um at doing it I had some success but not the success that I had once I got more focused so generally at the top of the funnel is some sort of lead magnet now Elite magnet it may be a video it may be a free training it mine mine is an e-book so I there's different types of funnels and I run what we call a lead generation funnel meaning the sole purpose of my two comma Club funnels I have others since then this whole purpose of that funnel is to collect leads so I'm calling them out hey child care business hey seven figure child care business owner because your message can your message will evolve the more people you talk to so would you like my free gift that's going to add amazing value to your business and help you overcome this hurdle or help you solve this problem or whatever it is that you have to offer them so then typically what happens is that person will click the button and they'll land on your landing page now as much as I love click funnels I do want to say the click funnels isn't the only software that does this so once they get onto your landing page then they'll click a button give you their email address once you have their email address they can be added to your email list where you're able to nurture them through email email marketing mine is automated I became quite good at it um so much so that my mentor my friend Ben actually called me to become a copy coach in his program so I help people with their copy and messaging and um once they get into this email sequence then I educate them I invite them to my child care Facebook group and I also give them an opportunity to schedule a discovery call with me and then that's when I'm able to turn um to bring them closer they're on my funnel so they opt in they get something of value specifically tailored to themselves Child Care CEOs you invite them to the Facebook group you also invite them to schedule a consultation yeah consultation I don't do consultations oh sorry go ahead okay invite them to a discovery call um and it's important to make the distinction because if if you offer something people are going to expect that you give them that and I used to use the word free consultation and then people expected that and I had to give it because I said it so now I explained that it's a discovery call and I even explain to them what that Discovery call is after they book okay love it and for the folks that are not booking the discovery call right away what are you doing to keep them in your ecosystem is that all automated as well yeah I have a lot of fun with them so I send them emails I invite them to live trainings that I hold online I invite them to my Facebook group as well and then after so long something I actually started doing this year if they are inactive after a period of time I move them to a different email sequence where we begin to see if they really want to stay um and if they don't want to stay then we remove them from our list so that we have a higher quality base of emails to Market to and have better delivery deliverability rates and the the traffic channels you're utilizing is it Facebook Google ads LinkedIn Tick Tock Instagram I don't know Reddit is it is there anything about what so I went to expand my primary my primary Channel that I have used has been Facebook I started out on LinkedIn so I primarily use Facebook I use LinkedIn I do use YouTube but I've only run ads on Facebook and I'm considering reaching out to maybe Tick Tock and maybe um I forget the other one definitely Tick Tock even I don't sing and dance very well but we'll we'll see what happens here is a this is a side tangent there's a guy we had on earlier this year Tom wheelwright he did a video on some something something tax related that happened this year on tick tock I think it got like 500 000 views so you can do and it's him in a whiteboard so not to say every tax video gets 500 000 views but I think Tick Tock is moving beyond dancing um right I I've been actually reading a lot about that and I learned that I just like the joke about it yeah totally tick tock's really interesting in that you know this happens you know every time you think the social media has kind of reached a level where there's nothing that can be added to it so you know that you know Facebook took over the world and then um Instagram kind of was taking over the world they bought it and then Snapchat was kind of taking over the world and they try to buy it but they didn't and now it's tick tocks kind of taking over the world and everybody in the US is like we could spend 19 billion dollars you know we can't we actually can't outspend Tick Tock this is crazy um but it you know it looks like a really interesting platform we saw Microsoft recently with their acquisition of LinkedIn is starting to think about and find ways to use LinkedIn data to help you run Bing ads um still got to count on people using Bing but uh anyways it's I think the traffic sources are are a lot you know you mentioned this word earlier that I'm really passionate about and we love to kind of uncover what this means for you and how you think about it and you said the word copy okay yes so you're you're so good at it became copy coach so unpack what this word means and then we can talk about some copywriting do's and don'ts oh one of my favorite topics yeah so um what copy means to me I actually have an acronym for coffee that's how important copy is to me and um copy first of all is all of the words that you're writing and your messaging copy isn't just an email an ebook copy isn't just emails that you write copy is everything from what's on your LinkedIn bio as you saw you as you said you mentioned my LinkedIn bio copy is what you write on your social media posts and I think we get so hung up on copy because we try to write copy if you try to write copy that can be difficult but if you just write what you think and write what you feel it'll translate a lot better in my experiences so um copy to me is where you're able to clearly communicate your messaging to your ideal to to your ideal people it's not it may not even always be your it may not always be a potential customer but it's where you're able to clearly identify your message and the acronym that I came up with I actually just came up with it not too long ago so I had to look it up while we were talking and to me copy is clear outgoing positioning of your message or offer copy I'll repeat it again clear see outgoing oh positioning of P your message or offer why and that's what I teach my my copy friends what copy is and you mentioned something really cool which is you know uh not not to undermine how hard it is to create crisp clear copy that uh I'll say sizzles you know sometimes you read something you're like I need this or I want this right it just speaks so much to the pain Point you're like I never realized that was my pain and I've never heard it articulated in such a way I mean you want your reader to kind of feel that like oh my gosh like I've never thought of it that way but that's exactly what my problem is it's like she's in my head right you know and I think it's becomes easier and easier when you talk to a lot of your clients or prospects because you just hear the same things over and over and over again and you're like I have to put that phrase I have to put that phrase in the in the in the comments in the in the description in the headline you know whatever it may be and you know what it's not just what we hear over and over again it's also what we don't hear it's also what we hear that they do not have but they do not understand what they are unable to accomplish or overcome it's those things too I'm a people person I'm the oldest of seven I guess I have to be um so for me just getting to know the people and being having an opportunity to speak to more people has given me a deeper insight into my Niche and another thing that I encourage everyone to do if you're thinking about niching or specializing niching however you want to pronounce it is I encourage you to do a lot of research you have to know your people and once you know your people and you understand it people you're better able to communicate with them yeah absolutely absolutely well just to carry on copy a little bit more let's say you're getting ready to rate something for a landing page or an email whatever it may be blank page is really intimidating so let's say you have you do feel like you know your Market well you're like oh gosh I would love to write something that just you know flies off the page and really people connect with but I'm staring at a blank email blank pay whatever have you found anything to kind of help overcome the blank page anxiety syndrome which I just made up but is there anything that is helpful there I have I have some of my own techniques but then I also have a friend with a secret weapon um and she's a friend a mentor and sister to me her name is Alyssa J Dillon and she has this bookkeeping boot camp uh well I'm sorry not a bookkeeping boot camp it's basically a boot camp for accountants and bookkeepers where she helps them to communicate their messaging and she gives out all sorts of useful prompts I really like her content and her material but I don't use it um for the most part what I do is I gain a lot of inspiration from it I also read a lot of books I read what my people read I read if I'm working with and I've written copy for other Industries for some of my students some of my clients so what I'll do the first thing I'll do is I'll go find out who else is selling to these people and what are they buying and then I'll go read how the other people were talking to them I'll read the comments and see how they're talking to their other vendors or service providers how do they talk to one another so I probably spend more time reading than I spend writing even I'll write a lot that's amazing in your typical week how much time are you spending on what just use a blank term marketing could be researching could be writing just anything that falls under that umbrella honestly I spent a lot of time marketing because I'm launching a lot of new things right now so I would say probably in my accounting firm I probably spend 40 percent of my time doing marketing related I call them money making activities I love it money making activities and what is the team behind you that is running fulfillment well we didn't get to like what's the quantity of folks and then what's kind of the seniority breakdown so there are seven of us on our team we have one accounting manager we have one client success manager we have one primary tax per one senior level tax person who also does bookkeeping one junior level tax person who also does bookkeeping and then we have another we have another bookkeeper and then my husband is actually our uh chief of operations so excuse me there's there's seven of us and is is and who's running kind of the if you're spending 40 percent is it between your husband and the accounting manager they're kind of making sure the trains are running on time and everything's flowing so that gives you the space to invest in marketing activities or is there a different layout yes that's pretty much what happens and when they catch me um tinkering in their areas they're quick to remind me that you know this probably isn't the best use of your time or they'll say how is that new funnel coming along um but I catch on I know what they're doing yeah that was going to be my question how do they politely nudge you away because sometimes that's hard for uh well spouses are you know obviously a whole different uh a ball of wax but for its staff it'd be like you're my boss but I kind of have to say please politely go do your thing so is that was that what they say how are the funnels coming along is that like the phrase that says you know you're tinkering yeah I love them but they're not that polite um we're more informal they feel comfortable with talking to me I believe um saying whatever needs to be said and sometimes I don't always catch on when they're saying it politely so they'll flat out tell me Shanita aren't you supposed to be working on did you ever fit and say do you need me or my favorite is I'll say do you need me to review the slot the presentation that you're working on for something and then I'll say okay I got the point let me go back over here yep yep yep that's beautiful I think uh everybody's team kind of needs to you know have those phrases because it's founder owners founder CEOs yeah sometimes you I mean because you know so much of the business you want to dive in sometimes unconsciously into parts that you hire people to take on um interesting um well I'm very curious what are you launching this year what's on your plate to Launch oh so the first thing I'm doing is I'm doing a relaunch of our child care accounting and Business Academy is for child care CEOs where we help them build scalable sellable businesses through proactive use of Financial and business strategies so we're going to relaunch that and accept some more students in so we're super excited about that and then the next thing that I'm going to actually launch is I'm going to launch something under our account and sign letter Facebook group where we're going to also help accountants build the scalable sellable practices of their dreams what's that Facebook group again what was the name it's called accountants unlettered um and the name actually was created because I was doing double duty for a long time working my corporate job and running my business and all I wanted to do was get off the corporate ladder and build my own business so the group was originally created to support accountants that were trying to do that and those that had just started their firms and were looking to grow and get out of the mindset of being on the corporate ladder but since the group has grown and evolved and there's some people there that just want to hang out with us because we're really cool um so now all accountants bookkeepers and tax professionals are welcome I love it uh final question you well one thing I do want to call out and then there will be a question is you've mentioned it so many times just how much you invest in other groups mentors advisors courses I think it's really important to call out um that you don't need to learn new skills alone in fact you can accelerate and different courses or different mentors or different groups will land for different people so if you find the one you love great if you pick one you don't like it move on to the next one it seems like you've done a good job of trying to pick up pick out great insights from many different Arenas and obviously I think that's been a key to uh to a lot of the success you've had um as a as a kind of a a step function from that comment uh for folks that are looking to enhance their marketing brain are there you know you mentioned some some courses but are there any books that folks can pick up like one or two or three books that you're like if you're trying to start this journey in the wonderful world of marketing be sure to check out these books or these authors ironically enough oh there's a ton of books I'm a complete book nerd so the first two books that I suggest that you read are not marketing books at all the first two books I suggest that you read are traction um and Clockwork and the reason why I suggest you read these books first is because when you're learning your way and navigating marketing is going to take a lot of time and energy from you and you don't want your other business and your quality and Service delivery to go down because you now have to invest in this other area so once you get that together the second thing that I would invest I would suggest that you read oh y'all get ready is the list um I love the book there's a book the first marketing book for accountants I read was by Saleem Omar and it was called million dollar firms it was a really good book I don't hear about it a lot I don't know why but I enjoyed it I would also suggest you read all of the Russell Brunson secret books there's traffic Secrets um there's copyright and secrets by Jim Edwards marketing Secrets um one of my favorites is actually by Alex hermosi 100 million offers a hundred million dollar offers that's a really good book um and then once you begin to read these books you know you'll see the ads and other books like it will come up other suggestions and depending on your style just read the reviews before you buy the book or ask people if they read it to see if it fits with you but even if you read something and you don't necessarily like it you may find it as you get deeper into your journey you want to go back and reflect on that book I love it we'll throw everything up in the show notes uh Shanita if people want to reach out learn more say thank you ask a follow-up question what's the best way for them to connect with you the best way to connect with me is on Facebook you guys are all invited to join accountants on ladder um my Facebook community and um send me a friend request let's be friends all right sounds good if you couldn't jot down everything we talked about today all the books all the tips all the tactics they'll be linked up at jetpackwordflow.com blog that's jetpackworkflow.com blog love the shout out for books like clockwork which talk about Building Systems and processes and workflows which we of course love and is near and dear to our heart if you really enjoyed this interview uh leave a five-star review and share it with a fellow Farm owner that needed to hear something maybe they've been ignoring marketing and you're like this is the interview they need to hear uh thanks again for coming on thank you so much for having me