Sales lead generation tools for accounting

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hi everyone and welcome to top marketing strategies that actually work for accounting firms this is the first in a new series that I am doing with financial sense my name is Blake Oliver I'm a CPA I got my start as a bookkeeper and now I host the number one podcast for accountants and bookkeepers in the world called the cloud accounting podcast and so I love talking with interesting knowledgeable folks such as Amanda Watts who has joined me today for our session welcome Amanda having me I'm so excited to be here this is going to be great this show is brought to you by Financial sense accounting practice management software for accountants and bookkeepers you can learn more at financialhyphens.com and for those of you who have joined us live today I'm going to go ahead and put that link right in the chat so you can check them out the thing I like about financial sense is that they are trying to be the easiest practice management software the easiest to put into your firm and I think that's really important when we're all super busy we all have a lot of business more to do than we can possibly do if you put in software it needs to be easy and I guess that kind of gets us into the discussion today about marketing which is uh marketing is interesting in accounting because we've all actually got in the United States anyway too much work to do there aren't enough accountants these days and and so the traditional purpose of marketing right is to bring in clients but when you've already got a ton of clients like why even do marketing right so marketing and accounting firms is is very different than it is in any other type of business where you're constantly trying to get people in your store you're constantly trying to get people to buy stuff right we don't really have the same problem so Amanda maybe we could start with that what does successful marketing look like in accounting firms given how different we are from other businesses yeah 100 and one of the things that I love about accounting firms is that everybody needs an accountant so it's not difficult to get clients as long as you talk to people however marketing for accounting firms becomes an absolute godsend if you want better clients because we know that it's easy to get clients but marketing puts you in control of getting the best clients out there and there are lots of new businesses starting up every single year one of the questions could be do you want a new business or would you rather have an established business and when you're clear on who is a really good client for you you can purposely go out and Market them and get them as a client so yeah a hundred percent accountants can rely on referrals they can go to networking events and they will have people say I want to work with you there is not a deaf of clients but there is a death of good clients the the clients that will pay you for your expertise well and not question you on price so that's what I want to talk to you really about is how marketing gets you better clients it doesn't necessarily just get you clients it gets you the better clients clients that are happy to pay more that are nice to you and to your staff that are easy to work with yes I think we all agree we don't want the clients that are a pain right how do we replace those clients that are that just make life unpleasant with those that that help us yeah totally totally um well let's talk about some of those marketing strategies and by the way if you have joined us here in Zoom you can ask questions please use the Q a chat with us let us know what you think I'm monitoring this and I'll be happy to post any of your questions up to Amanda and take advantage of her expertise right she's normally charging people for this so we get we get free access for the next hour um different so uh we're gonna talk about marketing strategies that work marketing strategies that don't work and I really want to talk about the ones that don't work I think that's always fun is talking about the mistakes the things we've wasted money on I personally wasted a lot of money on things uh happy to share some of those stories yeah it's brilliant in uh in preparation for this webinar I was talking with my friend Tate and he he jokes he said wait you're saying there are some that work because I think a lot of times you know we do we do marketing we're not sure if it works um and and he specifically called out what about these people that are messaging me on LinkedIn in my private messages that are just harassing me you know like that's one of those marketing strategies that we get hit with all the time as accountants does that work does it not work yeah I mean it's really interesting because if you'd asked me that question in 2019 I would have been so excited and said 100 it works but there's a saying out there that marketing is great but marketers ruin marketing Okay so in 2019 there was a huge craze that started and it was very very sensible it was build an audience of people and then that audience of people you reach out to them just like you used to get oh we get them again now but we get the cold emails you would then get the cold direct messaging on LinkedIn and because it was new it worked okay if you would send 30 messages to an ideal client I would say five of those would go hey do you know what I am interested let's have a call the problem is now is we're three four years down the line and every potential client has been messaged a few times by a lot of people okay so just for me back in 2019 I could send a message to an accountant and they didn't think anything office they actually thought oh Amanda's being lovely she's reaching out and offering to help but if I do it now it's like oh my gosh Amanda spamming me it's horrendous I can't do that so marketing's changed and the question that that you ask is a different answer now than it would have been four years ago um so yeah marketing that doesn't work is things like spamming people in the inbox uh you can have that in your Gmail you can have that in your LinkedIn you can have that on your Instagram nobody wants to be spammed nobody wants to uh well know the accountants don't want the clients that type into Google cheapest accountant near me okay so that's still marketing but nobody wants that client so that marketing doesn't work if you rely on Google and you rely on being the cheapest are the marketing that doesn't work is hey buy my stuff so if you're constantly pushing by my staff uh talking about um accounting all the time doesn't work um marketing if you look up marketing on Google it says that it's a way to push your services but actually it's done we're done with marketing that way it has to be done in a way that builds relationships and we have to understand that take two years to build a relationship with someone um so yeah there's lots that doesn't work so uh spamming people doesn't work just going after the people who are searching for cheap stuff on Google doesn't work okay um you know what about like Facebook ads what about social media you know like is that also does that work does that not work tell me more about that there's some there's some strand their pains and their frustrations if you're not understanding the real reason that they're laying awake at night then your marketing won't work it doesn't matter how many times you post on social media um so what we really have to do when it comes to marketing is take a small step back and look at strategy and we have to say who's a really good client what is our message to them what is the thing that we're really good at as the accountant or bookkeeper so what is the service that we want to supply our really good client and then what is the offer and the message that we're going to take to Market and we don't say Hey by my staff we say you've got this pain here's some help like a little bit like you were saying Blake a minute ago you know ask questions you've got Amanda we're here to help this is me marketing but there's no cell there's just this is what I'm good at this is talk to me about it you know I'm going to share my stuff and then people will go you know what I know her I like her I trust her then I'll buy from her or some people will go I can't stand the sound of a voice I don't like marketers so they've already prejudged I don't trust her I'm never going to reach out okay and different people will find that they're attracted to different marketers and as a business owner you are a marketer because you have to go out and get the best clients for your business to succeed one of our listeners said we buy from those we know like and Trust yes exactly so okay so how do we then let's walk through some of some examples right some strategies how do we get potential clients to know like and trust us is it doing stuff like webinars like this what's your recommendation yeah absolutely so there the first thing that we have to understand is that if if you start marketing today there is a very small chance you'll get a client tomorrow because it takes time for people to know like and trust you and also there's only a small percentage of people that are in that kind of buy now buying window so there's this general rule that was put together and it's three percent of your audience are looking to buy accounting services now seven percent in the next 90 days 40 in the next two years okay and 50 of people are not looking to for a new account at all so if you are marketing to a thousand people on LinkedIn if all of them were taking notice of you only three percent of them are actually in that buying window so what we have to understand is that we have to build a relationship not just with the three percent but with the seven percent and the forty percent and understand that marketing can take two years to come into effect and we will build the know like trust Factor by supplying value and the more free value you give the more valuable you will be perceived and the more value you can charge after you've had a conversation with someone if they don't see you as valuable then they will actually go do you know what you're more expensive than Bob down the road I'm going to go to Bob down the road and they'll compare you on price so it's really important when we're doing marketing to do relationship marketing and the best way to do that is through content marketing so webinar is content marketing creating an e-book is content marketing Facebook advertising is content marketing you've got to get people in front you've got to get in front of people um content marketing is blogging content marketing is short tick tocks it's Instagram the thing is is choosing the right one for you and the right one for your clients so being in the right place at the right time doing something that you feel aligned with so that can be challenging though given we don't have a lot of time to you know put together a webinar or to write a blog post I struggled with this when I had my own practice I'd say okay I'm going to write a blog post every week and then that blog post would get pushed to next week and push to next week and push to next week do you have any tips for us on like the the easiest way to start doing content marketing if we're not doing it now what should I go after oh drums okay so these these way is to find uh support so normally the practice owner is really really busy so the practice owner needs to make a few decisions who's a good client what's the offer going to be what's the marketing message then when I work with my clients we say get yourself a marketing exec or even an admin person to take away that grunt work so make sure that you know you're not the one who's posting on your LinkedIn make sure you've got an admin person to support you and if you don't know what to write and you don't know what to say then speak to your clients listen to your clients so get a really clear understanding of the problems that your clients have and create content around that so say for example one of the clients say to you oh I really struggle with my cash flow I can't pay my team next month what am I going to do you go oh this is how I help you and then you turn that conversation into a blog or you turn that conversation into loom video and there you go you've got a piece of marketing okay so you can use your conversations with your clients to then become your marketing pieces and that's a really good place for you to start that makes a lot of sense so I'm already having this conversation with a client I'm now just gonna take that bit of insight knowledge and I'm going to repackage it and send it to everyone and absolutely and and I'm also saving myself time right because I'm no longer having to tell this to every single client over and over and over again so I guess yeah the way the way I would I would work on this is I'd say like what are the questions I'm constantly answering for people over and over again absolutely and the most amazing thing starts to happen because you start to become more efficient you said to me a moment ago that you know you're working all the hours Under the Sun but you are answering that question 20 times a month to your clients so you record a video with the answer to that question and they send you an email and instead of you going oh let's book a half an hour call I'll run through it with you you can just send them that video so it helps your clients as well as helps your marketing and my best marketing is when I have my q a calls with my clients they ask me questions and I go oh that was great I'm going to record a video tomorrow on that and it's great and then I then put that into my program and it becomes my marketing as well so what advice do you have for firms that are struggling to get new leads from their marketing efforts maybe they're doing this you know maybe they're doing something else what advice do you have for them yeah if you're struggling I would like you to first of all check in with yourself because there's something that I call marketing Zen and I know it sounds a bit woo-woo but it's I work with a lot of introverts so the people that I work with tend to find marketing difficult because it means that we have to push ourselves out of our comfort zone so marketing Zen is three things marketing Zen is getting the right strategy managing your energy so you've got the energy to do it and then doing things that are in alignment so the first question that I have is what marketing are you doing and does it make you feel icky do you not enjoy it does it come across the energy that you're putting into it is it not right because it could literally be something as simple as or you want me to post on Facebook and I hate Facebook but I'll do it anyway and it's not going to work so it's all about having alignment with your personality and who you are making sure that you bring energy to that marketing and I know that that can be quite difficult as introverts that there's different kinds of interest that I work with but the one of the types is that they're quite anxious and not very confident so that means that marketing is way outside your comfort zone so you've got to look at what can you do that leverages your personality your energy your integrity and has a really good strategy to it so that's the first thing I would do what do you love and what you hate about what you're doing already yeah I mean you could apply that I mean that's good advice for anything in life right is try to do the things that you love not the things that you don't love and it especially is valuable in marketing because if you don't like what you're doing it's going to come across that way when you do it so that's interesting I mean I guess you know if you don't like being on camera you could do a podcast uh if you if you don't like uh doing Live Events you know do a recorded video or if you're nervous alone get a colleague to do the video with you right do webinars together um one of the things that I love is being on podcasts and being on webinars because people ask me questions and I can answer it and that works very well with my personality because I love helping people there are other people out there that are like I don't want to talk to people I'm really nervous about talking to people so then the kind of marketing that I would say for them is create testimonials and case studies of your clients and Shine the spotlight on your clients rather than have the spotlight shined on you and therefore you're not going to feel icky and yucky when you're doing your marketing what's actually going to happen is you're going to be so proud of your clients and the success that they've had and they do your marketing for you so you don't have to be the personal brand and be out there going this is what I have for dinner and have a look at me at the gym because that doesn't fit with most people there are different ways to do marketing aligned with your personality there's not one size fits all yeah and I guess you could like you said you have to think about who are the ideal client events you want who are those people you can like see what see what they are watching what are they looking at what are they doing I was talking with a CPA Sandy um for one of my podcast episodes and she she built a whole practice on Instagram and it was not really on purpose it was she's really into personal fitness and so you know Personal Fitness is big on Instagram all these trainers coaches yoga people posting and so she just is in those communities already and she started posting advice for that community and just making like really casual videos uh not getting you know all done up for it this in her gym clothes after a workout and it helped her build her whole practice practically so and that's because she bought her own energy she was happy with it was a strategy where her ideal clients were hanging out and it was in a line that's that's marketing Zen perfect great example thank you very much well you know I didn't come up with it you know it was her it was her idea so that's I love that term marketing Zen that's great um okay so you mentioned that it can take two years you know to see results like big results from marketing but that's that's too long to wait to like do something for two years what if it has zero Roi like that's we can't right that doesn't make sense so how long do you advise that we try something before we pivot or give up so I love working with accountants because they're like me and I'm data-led so if you are being consistent and you have numbers and results to look at you could try something for a month and say hey it's not working you could try an ad on Facebook and after four days you know it's not working so you stop okay and then you try a different ad or you try a different idea so it could be in as little as four days you could try something and then give up but what I would say is look at the data and you know we started this conversation talking about direct messaging on LinkedIn with direct messaging on LinkedIn you'll know after two weeks if you're annoying people and not getting traction if you're being consistent you're sending 20 messages a day or 30 messages a day very very quick Market feedback the things that take longer but do have a longer lifetime is things like blogging or a YouTube channel okay so there's different stages of a sales funnel and like like you were talking about your CPA on Instagram she will be doing short form videos getting people's attention and she's probably then taking people either into a conversation or some more marketing that's a little bit deeper um and what we have to understand is the short form content is there to get people's attention and that could take two years for it to really kick in but if you have a direct message conversation with someone and it's working you can get feedback in two weeks and know that that's a great way for you I've run campaigns Direct Mail campaigns I've tried them for two weeks sending 200 uh a day and by two weeks time it's like all I'm getting is nasty back so the email's not working the list isn't great and you can get feedback really quickly you can get that on yeah yeah that's that's good points like before you do the thing make sure that you're gonna get numbers back so that you can measure success and have an idea of what that is um when I had my firm when I was building my bookkeeping practice I was doing blogging and I know everybody's doing blogging now but this was like more than 10 years ago when you know content marketing was kind of a newer thing at least in accounting and I I was tracking on on all my blog posts I could see you know here's how many visits we got from each plug blog post and I started posting on a particular topic and I saw the the visits just shot up right that was a topic that really resonated and so I kept writing about that and I did a whole series eight of them and I think ultimately those eight blog posts just ended up driving 80 percent of the traffic to my website a hundred percent I had a client who used to be a personal trainer and this was about 10 years ago and she wrote lots of blog posts she wrote a blog post today so she was like me prolific writer and she wrote a blog post that was uh should sleeping should you sleep on the floor is it good for you and that blog post in less than a year had 300 000 hits to it wow um yeah amazing absolutely amazing because she got a topic that everybody was Googling and that's where it comes back to you can get traction quickly if you hit the nail on the head with a really good a really good idea that's where going viral comes in and unfortunately now all the social platforms also have you know the metrics that you know Twitter will show you how many people saw this tweet and Instagram will show you how many people have watched this video and so it's important to check in how often do you check in on the metrics like like once a week is that good yeah so it is good to check the metrics but if you look at my socials I have lots of followers but very few comments and likes so if you went to my LinkedIn a post would get anywhere from maybe 3 to 30 likes or comments on it okay which when you talk about marketing that doesn't feel like a lot but I do have a lot of followers and the other thing that I have is a lot of messages people messaging me and onboarding of clients so whilst I like to look at the metrics of how many people are liking and commenting how many people are looking at my blog my key metrics that I really want to look at is how many leads I get every single week so my aim and the aim that I want my clients to have is to have a hundred leads a week then we want to say how many appointments do you have because a lead is not an appointment a lead is someone that comes into your world that joins your email database or connects with you on LinkedIn and starts messaging you and having a conversation so you've got leads then we have how many appointments do you have and then from the appointments how many times can you present your offer to someone and then how many sales you have so I want 100 leads I would like to get seven to ten appointments a week that's really good I'd like to present my offer to three to five people and I want to make one to two sales a week now my marketing is working if that happens but you have to look at first of all how do you get the top of the funnel working because without the top of the funnel you're not going to get the appointments and then the clients so yes content and knowing those numbers is good but the key thing for me is how many calls are we booking in that diary every week because for an accountant if we can get them three calls a week and they get one to two clients a month they're probably quite happy yeah you don't have to get a lot of clients to make a difference in the business most firms and I just want to highlight the the the big changes as you went down that funnel from a hundred leads we're aiming to get you know one or two clients a month and you're talking like a hundred leads a week so that's really it could be you know 400 leads to get two clients and that's what it takes right to find the right fit because most of those leads are just going to be totally the wrong fit yeah absolutely and remember member as well though that maybe you get 400 leads in January don't forget that seven percent of those so whatever 7 or 400 is I'm not the accountant um but seven percent of those are going to buy maybe in three months time and maybe some of them are going to buy in two years oh yeah the nurture them as well um so you have to do what we call keep in touch marketing so hopefully they're on your email and then you need to send a newsletter out to them every single week and I don't mean a traditional accounting newsletter with this is what the latest government has said because nobody really cares they want information that helps them with their business yes and this is where niching or knitting really matters because if you're targeting your content then they're gonna really want to open that email every week yeah absolutely and for me I I started working with accountants in 2017 and I knew that I needed to get traction fast and build the know like trust Factor so I said to myself I'm gonna write a hundred blogs in a hundred days and those blogs are going to be what I'm going to ask people to pay me for in six months time they're going to be so in-depth they're going to be so good that I'm going to position myself as the expert and I'm going to test the Niche because I you know I didn't know if working with accountants was the right one I'm going to test this Niche and if I get clients off the back of it then I know that it's a viable Niche and I'm going to carry on working with that but I knew within 90 days whether or not accountants were for me and actually I was really lucky and they've been an amazing amazing journey for me and for my clients um but I I had to work so hard at the beginning I didn't play at it I woke up at half past five every morning and wrote a 1500 word article because I was testing a new niche that's great yeah you didn't have to do it one a week and wait two years to figure it out you figured it out within three months or four months that's that's great um yeah I like that because when I when I want to do something and I think a lot of accountants like this we just go all in on it right so this is a good this is a good like Sprint kind of effort we got a question from an attendee about cold email Outreach what does Amanda think about cold email Outreach she mentioned that she was sending 200 emails per day how does she measure the success of the cold email Outreach campaign yeah so the problem with the Kodi email Outreach is it's not relationship based so when we talk about marketing Zen and being in alignment with it it doesn't actually sit in alignment with me um so my numbers might be slightly skewy just because of the energy that gets put into it but I get well okay you guys who are listening today you're going to get cold emails in your uh inbox how does it make you feel okay unless you're in so much pain right now that the right email shows up at the right time it probably feels icky and you're either going to delete it Mark it as spam or send a horrible email back and I would say that out of every 200 emails I would get 10 nasty emails back so that for me and and no calls booked in the diary um and that for me very quickly told me that cold email Outreach doesn't work with accounting firms that to be said um told email Outreach does work for some people so I've got a friend who targets uh coaches health and wellness coaches Fitness coaches and cold email Outreach to them does work so and what he does is he sends 200 emails a day and he gets I think it's about seven calls a week from cold email okay so that's yeah so again we're going back to the strategy which is the right strategy for your client with the right message um and I love working with the accounting profession but you don't make decisions quickly you're quite you know like skeptical of marketers you you don't trust us very much um and you kind of you already got your your barriers up when we reach out to you you're like I don't need a marketer I can get clients and and don't sell me I don't want to get sold absolutely yeah absolutely so I have this rule that when I have sales calls I never say to people people give me your credit card details I never say to people do you want to sign up I'm like have a sleep on it you have to make a really good decision on this and that served me really well and I've had over 700 clients since 2017 because of that because I start relationships off with if it feels right for you and I'm a real feely person if it feels right for you then we're a good fit if you are a tall nervous don't do it don't do it don't give me your money because we're not going to get on well because you're going to be scared of me I want to emphasize what you said about the email being the right message to the right person at the right time if it is it can be really effective and an example that I've heard of a firm that does well is they serve startups and they monitor fundraising rounds for startups and so when when a startup enters a certain life phase you know they raise their series a for instance that startup accountant knows that that startup now is going to need certain services to satisfy the investors and so they can retail at exactly that moment and say hey by the way you know I've done this for all these other startups that are like you you are now going to have to be doing this if you don't have anyone who can help you I can help you and that works really well yeah that feels like Serendipity for the person that receives that email like oh wow how did you know I needed you right now that's very different from hey I've got this thing do you want to buy it it's very very different yeah it's like uh and in the non-accounting space when that happens is like you buy a house um another time is like oh you have a baby right there's there's a lot of companies I don't know how they get this information but they know when you have a baby and they just hit you with everything and some of that is actually really useful so yeah it's all about prime example this morning um I had my oven cleaned like three years ago and my oven cleaner this morning sent me a text message going hey let me know if you want your oven cleaned normally I would ignore it but at seven o'clock this morning I'm sat in bed going oh your timing's excellent I definitely want my oven cleaned and I've booked him in and that was the easiest sale he had to make if he hadn't reached out to me I wouldn't have got round to doing it and I wouldn't have remembered who he was I don't even know his name um but he texts me going hey Amanda it's time you had your oven cleaned so that's another thing for accountants is if you do one service a year for a client don't forget to reach out and offer your other services because they might not know that you do it and actually Market to your clients as well as Market to non-clients would be my my advice on that too yeah so smart Mindy has a question asked how do you know when a startup gets funding good question uh so they often will brag about it if if it's a big enough round they'll do a press release and you can do saved Google searches and you can follow that um also there's a database called crunchbase where startups put in their funding rounds so you can monitor that for certain types of funding rounds whether it was an angel round or a series a that sort of thing so whether or not you serve startups think about in the space that you're operating in is there publicly available information that you can monitor to to see when new businesses start or when they enter a certain phase of Life bankruptcy filings if you if you do uh restructuring and and help people you know sell off assets or something that could be one as well so just some thoughts there if anyone in the in the Stream has any suggestions uh for that you know please go ahead and share those in the chat we'd love to hear them we had another question for Amanda can Amanda share some ideas for a newsletter what topics to share in a monthly newsletter and I I can I think I already know you're what you're going to say Amanda that it depends on who your clients are yeah absolutely it depends on who your clients are depends on what their problems are and hopefully if you decide to run a marketing campaign then what you can do is listen to your clients that are like the people you want to Market to and just answer their questions in a newsletter so I did a newsletter that went out last week I think it was and it was a simple one is what is a sales funnel and how can I get it to work for my firm literally people ask me that question all the time so I created a newsletter that was about that I get people say to me things like how do I follow up on proposals and make sure that someone signs it when they've ghosted me there's another example of a newsletter so for accountants and bookkeepers it's very very simple you say what are my clients asking me how can I provide value in a newsletter to my potential clients to show them my expertise and the value that I can share yeah as you get questions from clients or prospects that week write those down and answer those in your newsletter it's just absolutely a good follow-up for every meeting uh Joe said in response to my question about how do you you know detect when businesses become the right fit we called email job listings for finance managers asking if they would consider Outsourcing if they say no we offer recruiting so that's brilliant right you can go and look at job listings for finance managers somebody's trying to hire a finance manager and uh you can say well hey you're having trouble finding somebody to fill this role we can do this for you on an outsourced basis I love that so so clever box yeah it's thinking outside the box that's like do you do this no well that's good because actually we offer this it's it's very clever yeah I love it uh so Amanda you are you've been doing this for a little while now I think your company is called oomph I love that I love that name oomph you know give you a little oomph in your marketing there um tell us a bit about your firm and you know I'm sure you get this question a lot when should I Outsource marketing and when should I do it internally yeah that's a great question so the problem that I see accounting firms do is they Outsource too quickly and that's because they haven't worked on the strategy and if you give your uh your marketing to an agency and you don't have a niche and you're not sure on how you want to help so you don't have an offer that is scalable um if you are putting in the agency's hand three thousand pounds or three thousand dollars a month and you say hey I'm going to take a step back now get me leads what's going to happen is you're going to get bad leads because you're not putting the essence of your business into the marketing so what we do at umph actually is set our clients up to in Source not Outsource so for outsourcing you'll be paying 30 to 50 000 pounds a year Thirty to fifty thousand dollars a year but you could actually hire an admin person once you've got your strategy and a proven strategy just to take away the the pain now you do need experts so you Outsource things like Facebook advertising if you can't get it to work if you want to do SEO you can Outsource that as well you can Outsource YouTube advertising you can Outsource the techie side but you can't Outsource strategy because that's in the partner's head that's that's that's a lot deeper if I would say to say to you Blake can you talk to me for an hour about how a business can increase their profits or how a business should be doing bookkeeping you could do that really easily if you went to an agency and said hey can you talk about how Blake helps people with profit they go I've got no idea I'm not Blake okay so that's why I like to in-source to have have somebody sat next to the partner watching the partner listening to the partner and listening to the team so Outsource isn't my favorite thing in sources apart from the techie side I love that Amanda is there anything else you want to share with the audience any tips you have you know regarding strategy success like what what can we do to be more successful have more fun like why do we want to create a business that makes us stressed and gives us heart attacks and gives us heartburn on a good day you know it's why do we want to do that so create a business that gives you freedom and I'm not talking about having a million dollar business and you know that that's what you have to Aspire to or a five million dollar business I'm talking about get up in the morning have a spring in your step work with people that you love to work with have a small team so you don't have a headache like don't build a monster business with huge number of Team unless that's what you that's your idea of fun okay um and just enjoy it and if you hate marketing then understand there will be one bit of it that you enjoy and you need to speak to someone to find that strategy that you are prepared to try and that you enjoy and if you don't like marketing I can bet your bottom dollar you like the tills ringing so enjoy the fact that marketing gives you money and then that can take away the pain of you having to put together a strategy but yeah have more fun business should be fun it should be um it's hard work out there don't make it anymore difficult than it needs to be 100 yes I agree with you completely Amanda and I guess what I would add to that is I guess from my own experiences I I like I don't like sales I don't like marketing but I do like teaching I like helping people learn and I think a lot of my fellow accountants and bookkeepers are the same way we like teaching our clients and so if you partner with a marketer such as oomph such as Amanda and you get set up so that you can just record yourself teaching you know write content record create a podcast whatever it is then they can go and they can get it out into the right channels right and that's that's fun um another thing actually before we go man I want to get your take on this the hot thing that I'm seeing now is uh some really cutting edge accountants bookkeepers too are creating these private communities for their clients and it can be as simple as just a Facebook group or a slack Channel where you you get people you allow people in who aren't even your clients yet and they can ask questions and then you answer them you can put your stuff into there and and they're even starting some of them are even starting to charge for it like 50 a month to be a part of my accounting Community for Fitness coaches or for X whatever it is um yeah have you seen that you see your clients doing that is that what do you think that I do and we have to think about the psychology behind that I don't know I'm sure you're familiar with uh Maslow's hierarchy of needs but as you go up Maslow's hierarchy of needs you've got the basics which is I need food and shelter and water and as you go up you've got community and people want to feel something um they want to feel part of something bigger than themselves and the reason why marketing has changed is you can't just say hey buy my stuff you've got to make people feel like they're part of something and especially with everything that's happened with covid we've been stuck in our houses we've been on our own and actually we've been nervous and scared and we just want somebody to hold our hand and that's why those communities are so great so yes it gives the accountant the opportunity to teach but actually it gives the accountant to create something bigger than them and that Community is what people will stay for they come to you because they need a problem solved they'll stay with you for Community I love that uh Amanda where should people go if they want to learn more about oomph if they want to follow you online where will you send them yeah so the best thing to do is Google Amanda C what what so don't forget to see um so Amanda see what's he wants please find me on LinkedIn uh LinkedIn is my channel that's where I really love spending time and also you can go to Amanda C watts.com or you can go to oomph.global and umph is spelled o o m p f not m-p-h so mpf unph dot Global okay that's great thanks Blake that's super sure and I've just put the link to your profile in the chat for everyone who has joined us live uh do follow Amanda lots of great tips content uh tricks on your social media which you know is as it as it should be right if if you're a great marketer you should be doing great marketing so that's awesome thank you thank you all right well thanks for joining me today Amanda and thanks everyone for coming I hope you will join our next broadcast we're going to be doing these on a monthly basis and um actually don't have the next one up on my screen like I'm supposed to so I'm but I'm sure it's going to be great you know so I hope to see you there and uh we'll we'll see you next time bye Amanda see you later take care bye foreign