Are you an accountant, CPA, enrolled agent, or bookkeeper that is looking to develop their personal brand?

Back in the day, only major companies and wealthy individuals focused on trying to develop their personal brand.

Nowadays, you find your 11 year old building her Instagram profile with over 2,000 followers and 200+ likes on her post about how much she hates school.

Profile, branded.

As you can tell, the importance of having a personal brand has exploded over the years.

Without having a personal brand set up and running, you will be missing out on potential customers who are looking to learn more about what you are about and whether they will connect with your company’s brand.

However, trying to sift through the enormous amount of content online on building a personal brand is enough to keep you busy for a solid year.

Instead of wasting your time on trying to do the research, I have provided the 7-step beginner’s guide to building and launching your personal brand.

Let’s do this.

Step 1: Define Your Target Audience

This might seem like a simple step, or maybe even a “duh” moment, but the truth is most accounting firm owners skip over defining who their target audience is made of and what this particular target audience actually care about.

Here are a few questions to kickstart creating your perfect customer, and ultimately defining who your target audience is:
• What does your customer do (profession)?
• What is the age range of your customer?
• Where does your customer live (country and state)?
• How much does your customer make?
• What is the biggest problem facing their current professional career?
• Why does your product or service matter to your perfect customer?
• Which problem does your product/service solve for your customer?
• What would make your customer purchase your product/service?

By defining your perfect customer, you will have a clear vision into who they are, what they are thinking and how you can craft your marketing message to reach your perfect customer.

Step 2: Change How You View Yourself

When trying to build a personal brand, you need to be clear as to who you are and who you want to evolve into. This is where your mindset comes into play.

Take out a piece of paper, or open up a fresh Word document. Put in the Title, Hi, I’m [INSERT NAME].

Then list out the ideal version of who you are. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What is your end game/goal from your profession?
• What is your profession/passion?
• Who are some mentors/influencers that you want to mimic?
• Where do you see yourself in 5 to 10 years)
• What do you want your income to be in 1 year, 5 years and 10 years?
• What do you value the most (name 5 values)?

Remember, if people don’t laugh at your dreams, then they must be too small to begin with. Start by building your mindset to the person you want to become. You will begin to see the vision of your personal brand take flight.

Step 3: Do Your Research

Before you build a website, spend money on Facebook ads or try to create an e-book, you need to figure out what your target audience wants. This is called finding the “Product-Market” fit in the startup world.

You need to figure out exactly what your target audience is talking about, by putting in the time, energy and effort to do your own research of the market. To start off with, the best place to head to is your Facebook profile page. Dig through your friend’s list to see if any of them fall into your target audience as identified in Step 1.

If you stumble across an ideal potential audience, reach out to them for a call. Or set up a meeting to have coffee.

The purpose is to pick their brain to try to find out what their biggest problem is, when it comes to that niche focus, and what they are doing currently to solve that problem.

After 50+ meetings, your mind will be racing with ideas and similarities within your niche and now you have a solid idea as to where to kickstart building out your personal brand.

Step 4: Create A Platform To Launch Your Brand

Now that you have an idea of who you are targeting and what that niche actually cares about, it’s time to start building your personal brand.

There are plenty of avenues available to us where building a brand can be done over the weekend. The first place I would start is using the free services, like Facebook Page, Medium Page, Tumblr Page or Instagram Account where you can start sharing things that your niche is interested in.

Once you have played around with your free platforms, you can move into building your own website. These days, with free platforms and themes on WordPress or Squarespace, you can have a beautifully built website by next week.

You just need to put in a few hours a day for the research on how you want your site to look and a few beginner YouTube video on building a website (no coding) through WordPress.

You can also start connecting with influencers in your space by liking their pages, direct reach outs and offering to guest post on their blogs as well. This can help widen your reach as they will promote you to their audience, and vice versa.

Step 5: Build Your First 1000 True Fans

At this point, you have defined your target audience, set up your mindset to believe that you can actually become the person you want your brand to represent, and found a way to touch your target niche through comprehensive research.

But….none of this actually can get you eyes on the page or traffic conversions to your site. This is where the concept of building your First 1000 True Fans comes into play.
“A creator, such as an artist, musician, craftsperson, designer, or author – in other words, anyone producing – needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living.” – kk.org

Ideally, if you are able to get 1000 true fans, they will purchase anything and everything you will produce. Think about it. If you create a course that you want to sell for $100 online. If you have 1000 true fans that want to purchase anything you put out, you just got yourself a $100,000 business.

Step 6: Time To Socialize

Social media has been the new hype over the past few years and yet, most small businesses are leaving it off of the table when discussing key marketing strategies for their business.

Social media is a way for you to communicate directly to your target audience, authentically.

The first step when implementing a social media marketing plan is determining which social media platform will most likely reach your key customers and prospects.

This could be 1, 2 or maybe even 3 different platforms, but you need to put in a little bit of research to determine which outlet you should target first.

With whatever niche you fall into, do your research to make sure you stay on top of what you think.

Step 7: Track Your Results

Ultimately, the biggest driver in determining whether personal brand development is working, is the number of meetings you’ve booked each week and from what sources are these coming from.

It is essential to keep track of exactly how much time and dollars you are spending towards your marketing strategy. Then, make the determination on which outlets are working, and which ones need to be updated or scratched out completely.

The key to implementing a successful personal brand online, is to ask yourself at the end of the day:

How many prospective customers have you met with in the last 7 days and from which outlet did they come from?

I recently read Stephen R. Convey’s rendition of the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People and became very curious about how his habits could apply to Accounting & CPA firm owners who are wearing multiple hats.

A lot of the time, Accounting & CPA firm owners don’t have someone taking care of their team building, marketing, sales, bookkeeping, and service offering to their clients.

They have to, somehow, manage all of the different parts of their business, while still trying to be as efficient and effective as possible.

So I set out to do some research on the 7 Habits of Highly Effective CPA Firm Owners who are killing it for their small businesses. This is what I found:

Habit #1 – Manage Their Cash Flow Wisely

The first, and most important lesson I learned in business was “Cash Is King”. If you don’t have cash, you can’t pay your bills. If you can’t pay your bills, your business will be in danger a lot quicker than you’d probably like.

If you are running a small business, especially if it’s a Accounting or CPA firm, you have a solid understanding of how much cash is in the bank account and where your cash flow stands at all times.

I remember learning this lesson, early on in my career while having lunch with the CEO of a small community bank.

He looked at me and said, “When running a business, you need to always know where your cash is. Every morning, I have my CPA send me an income statement, balance sheet and daily bank statement to show me exactly where my business stands financially.”

“Remember this statement if you ever try to start your own business. Cash is the lifeblood of your business. Without it, you’re dead.”

Habit #2 – Set Specific Goals

The second best lesson I ever learned as an entrepreneur was to “10x my goals”, as Grant Cardone’s book states. Have a clear vision on where you want to take your business to and work every single day to try to hit that goal.

What I have found is that most CPA firm owners is they do have goals of themselves. These goals are set in stone and sought after. However most of them are too low: They wind up hitting their goals, when they should have been set way higher.

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” – Michelangelo

Research has shown that when an individual sets measurable goals for themselves, they are more likely to be achieved. Get out there, set your goals, and make a plan to review the goals and push your business towards success!

Habit #3 – Work As A Team (When Possible)

When trying to run an Accounting firm, you are literally wearing 20+ hats trying to figure out which fire to put out next. Then, try to add on another team member, and things get complicated fairly quickly.

However, if you delegate the to-do list properly, you may find yourself becoming proactive in your day instead of reactive.

Highly successful Accounting firm owners are able to assign tasks they know they are not good at to those qualified enough to handle it. Then, they focus on the items they are good at, and crush it for their businesses.

When thinking of adding a team member, some highly successful small businesses invest in bringing on virtual assistants to take on the tasks they just don’t want to be bothered with. This option saves you, the small business owner, a ton of time and future headaches.

Habit #4 – Invest Money In Knowledge

Most of us went to college and dropped thousands of dollars on our education. But for highly successful firm owners, gaining access to knowledge and growing their minds, didn’t stop in college. They are trying to constantly read up on the next new tool for their business or to spend time focusing on how they could make themselves improve as leaders.

Instead of wasting the business’s money on the next new office chair, highly effective small business owners understand the value of gaining access to knowledge and are willing to pay for it.

Plus, if this new knowledge gets the business to its goals faster, a high ticket price tag can be offered to accelerate it to success.

Habit #5 – Organize Their Business Around the 80/20 Rule

A key influencer of mine, Tim Ferriss, wrote a best selling book on working a 4 Hour Workweek.

Inside of his book, he goes on to discuss the importance of the 80/20 Power Rule, how it could be applied to nearly every avenue of your life and the life of your business.

Essentially, the 80/20 Power Rule (Pareto’s Law) can be summarized as follows:

80% of the outputs result from 20% of the inputs.

Though this idea might sound a bit confusing, Tim Ferriss clears up the uncertainty by summarizing this Principle into two simple questions:
1. Which 20% of sources are causing 80% of my problems and unhappiness?
2. Which 20% of sources are resulting in 80% of my desired outcomes and happiness?

It is simple, yet highly effective when you start applying these questions to not only your business, but your personal life as well.

Highly effective small business owners have mastered these two questions. They have taken steps to remove the sources of unhappiness and increase the sources of happiness in their lives.

Habit #6 – Great Role Models

If you are a small business owner, you already have the hat of “owner” or “boss”. But do you consider yourself a leader? If so, what are the qualities and policies you have in place in your business and in life that showcases your leadership skills?

Most highly effective small business owners practice what they preach and tend to lead from the front. Instead of saying one thing and doing something completely different, they are true to their values and their team members and tend to mold around the type of leader they are watching.

So for example, if you have a great role model who is the leader of the company, they will spark interest in from other aspiring leaders who want to learn from the best and follow along the path in becoming their own great role models.

These great leaders also make sure to have a healthy work/life balance and tend to invoke awesome work perks (Fridays off, Jeans Day, etc)
Making time for a personal life should be a priority because it makes for a happier and more successful business leader.

Habit #7 – Ready, Set, Move

A successful habit of small business owners is knowing that to just need to keep the momentum going, even if there is potential risk that lies ahead. What holds a lot of people back from making the leap into their own business with the idea that they either need more experience or time to get things right.

The truth of the matter is that there is no real “right” time to do anything and you won’t have the perfect playbook to follow. You just have to jump into the arena, get dirty, and start to figure out where to head to next.

Even Richard Branson, Founder of Virgin Records, was quoted: “If someone offers you an amazing opportunity and you’re not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later.”

Over the years, Jetpack Workflow has interviewed hundreds of accountants and CPA firms owners. During these interviews, we have dug deep into what is working in the industry and what are some things to avoid.

To cut right to the chase, here are the top 7 new age tactics highly successful CPA firm owners are implementing, as discussed on our Growing Your Firm Podcast series.

1. The Billable Hour is Reexamined – Ron Baker, Founder of VeraSage Institute

“Ever since the billable hour business model came in, we lost site of the value. We tend to think in terms of time and hours and that’s not how the customer thinks as they want to see the value (or the results).” – Ron Baker.

As discussed in the interview, the ‘creating value’ section of the business model aims to describe how your customer feels and experiences your services.

This change goes beyond technical expertise and more into how your customer feels about your listening skills, communication skills, ability to empathize with you, and ultimately, talk in the same language as you.

Here are three examples of how accounting firms can create more value for their customers, per Ron Baker:
• Structure payment terms around the customer’s cyclical cash flow rather than your firm’s workflow.
• Offer various ‘Value Guarantee Options’
• Bundle in Unlimited Access

Note: Jetpack Workflow’s workflow software supports both billable based and velocity based tracking.

2. Create A One Page Only, Strategic Plan For Your Firm – Dan Griffiths, Director of Strategic Planning at Tanner LLC

The goal in creating a strategic plan is to make it simple to understand and tangible for your team members to rally behind.

Dan calls it the “One Page Plan” rule.

Dan Griffiths states that if you cannot fit the strategic items on a single page, then you need to go back to the drawing board and begin to trim it down.

“The key is simplicity when building a strategic plan” -Dan Griffiths

As an example, with Tanner LLC, they have four key areas of their plan. They call these areas, “buckets”, and are outlined as follows:
1. Top Talent Bucket
2. Business Development Bucket
3. Client Relationships Bucket
4. Internal Process Excellence Bucket

Every 90 Days, Tanner LLC asks an important question:

What can we do to move the needle forward in each of these four areas?

As Dan goes on to mention, “we’re not trying to change the world with things. We are just keeping it short and focused.”

3. Shrink The Services Offerings = An Increase In Profits – Darren Root, Founder of RootWorks

Originally, Darren’s old firm offered roughly 40 to 50 different services. Any time a client asked for something, the firm said: “Sure, we can do that.”

This mindset had to go. Darren had a skill set in US tax, so he wanted to limit the amount of services to offer and train his staff to be experts in those core areas.

From 40 to 50 services, Darren knocked down their offerings to just 4 to 5 services. A few of them included:
• Bookkeeping for service based businesses
• Payroll
• Client accounting for service based businesses (not manufacturing, etc)
• US-based residence Tax Work

Darren believes the key is to understand the product that you are going to deliver.

Then, create a system around the product being offered and train your people to learn how to implement and deliver product.

The outcome provides a great consistency throughout the firm, and less and less stress (as he is no longer trying to offer auditing services as a tax professional).

4. Recruit the Right Client and the Right Talent, Simultaneously – Paula Allgood of Beaird Harris

In meeting client needs, Paula says it is important “to be able to have different folks on your team service all the different elements of [clients’] growth.”

Paula says when hiring, focus on skill sets that are client-centered. While the firm cannot be everything to everyone, find those common denominators and build your services around them.

Refer the rest of what you cannot meet to outside partners and resources you trust.

We “want to say to clients – here’s what we do; here’s what we are like; here’s the way we do it; here’s our approach our business; here’s our team,” says Paula.
She suggests having prospective clients come into the office to meet the staff so they can “gel”.

The same goes for recruiting for the firm. When meeting with candidates, explain what your firm stands for, what are its core tenants, and what makes the firm tick.

In providing a clear picture of who you are you and your hires will forge a better and longer-term relationships, according to Paula.

Their end result is creating a team that is:
• cohesive
• diverse in expertise
• works well together
• builds alignments
• and communicates openly

5. Create a plan to sell your firm, Today! – Joel Sinkin, President of Transition Advisors

Ask yourself how many more tax seasons do you want to work full time before starting to slow down.

If your answer is 5 years or less, then Joel suggests it is time to start your succession plan.

“It is best to start this process 3 to 5 years ahead of time before you actually transition.” – Joel Sinkin

Clients of small and medium-sized CPA firms are loyal to the partner of the firm.

These clients do not have a good understanding of tax intricacies.

Otherwise they may have chosen to do their tax work themselves. You are their trusted and valued advisor.

Joel reminds you that the clients have a choice of accounting firms and they have chosen you.

Take advantage of this loyalty.

Typically, you are meeting with your clients at least once a year.

Joel says it is very important to give yourself a 3- to 5-year head start for selling your practice or slowing down your services because with each meeting, you are properly and gradually preparing your clients for this inevitable change.

Be upfront and transparent with your clients in advance of your succession and you will be thankful you did, 5 years down the road.

6. When trying to implement change within your firm you must start with baby steps – Tim Shortsleeve, Partner at TYS LLP

Tim found that within the CPA world, in general, most accountants do not like to embrace change. Period.

“These professionals are successful, well respected, and trusted advisors,” Tim believes.

There is a degree of pushback and resentment to new methods since the typical way of doing things for them has always worked well.

For those resistant to change, “Anchors” as Tim calls them, he engages with them to understand their viewpoints for not wanting to do something.

Tim tries to get them comfortable with what he is trying to do and tries to provide solutions to mitigate what is holding them back.

If he identifies too many challenges to overcome, he would make the decision to step away. To start the conversation, it is “people first” for Tim.

He identifies the people he believes would be receptive of change and then champions the initiative internally.

According to Tim, CPAs fix problems for people – they provide the “whats” and the “hows” in their services to clients. Tim provides the “whys” to the CPAs.

Here is Tim’s Blueprint to Grow a Successful Accounting Practice:
• Identify early on what success looks like
• Be prepared.
• Create a sense of awareness
• Respect the business
• Rework plan as things happen along the way
• Keep head up
• Make it happen
• Lastly, setting good examples for your team is highly important. Management must keep good composure around their team, at all times, or else, the change will not work.

The goal is to create a business environment that is collaborative where people feel safe and welcomed to perform their very best.
When this environment has been created, nothing will hold you back from success!

7. Implement A USP (Unique Selling Proposition) – Nate Hagerty, Owner of Tax Pro Marketer

According to Nate, the basic take away for CPA firm owners is to understand, establish, and execute their USP.

Here are the 4 steps in implementing a USP in your firm:
1. Start by understanding different business demographics and markets
2. Next, zero in on a selected niche: Do not be a jack-of-all- trades, master of none.
3. Of the niche group, focus on the clients that are great to work with and are profitable
4. Finally, speak the language of these targeted clients when providing them what they need

Busy season is officially over, and of course, the first two questions I want to ask you are:

1. How many potential prospects have you spoken to within the past 7 days?
2. What have you done to get those meetings on your calendar?

The second question is ultimately what I want to focus this article on: Lead Generation.

For a large majority CPA firms, their strategy for lead generation is to go to one networking event a month in hopes of speaking with one new potential client. But they are completely missing out on the incredible online strategies used to start generating leads and convert them into actual paying clients.

Therefore, I have created a list of the top 14 proven strategies that my clients are using to grow sales in their CPA firms.

Here we go.

1. LinkedIn Advanced Search

If you haven’t had the chance to check out LinkedIn’s Advanced Search capabilities, you are clearly missing a huge opportunity to reach potential clients.

When you log in to LinkedIn, you will see “Advanced” on the top right hand corner of the top bar. Click on “Advanced” and a drop down table appears where you can start to enter in certain criteria (i.e. First Name, Last Name, Title, Company, Location, Similar Groups, Industry, and more).

For example, let’s say you want to connect with dentists in your area. Head over to LinkedIn Advanced Search and put in the following Criteria:

Keyword: Dentist

Title: Owner (Current)

Location: Zip code Near You

When I entered this search, I came up with 350 dentist who own their own businesses within 100 miles of …where I am located. Cool right? Now it’s your turn. Enter in your specific criteria of your ideal customers and start connecting.

2. Facebook Profile

Do you currently have a Facebook Profile?

If your answer is anything but Yes, you are missing out on a ton of potential clients!

Facebook has become the new place for businesses to go when trying to drum up additional customers. When I get on a call with a potential client, 10 minutes before the call

I invite the client to become a friend of mine on Facebook. This simple maneuver, showcases to the client that I am a real person, have a real family and that I am someone with whom could potentially want to work with.

I know this idea sounds a bit weird, but the truth is, when you are connected as friends on Facebook and the potential clients starts rummaging through your old posts, they get a better handle of the type of person you are. Then, when the phone call comes, they feel like they already know you.

The other benefit to having your potential clients be friends with you on Facebook, is it gives you an audience to share client testimonials on. You never know who is reading your profile so if they happen to stumble upon a great client testimonial, you might have just locked in your next client!

3. Direct Email Outreach (4 Parts)

How many times have you answered your phone and been annoyed with someone trying to sell you something on the other line?

If you are anything like me, I tend to get annoyed when someone randomly calls me to try to sell me on something. And I’m a sales guy!

People don’t like receiving random sales calls in the middle of the day, especially when they are taking up your free time. So instead of trying the “Cold Call” technique, try using a direct email outreach method to get in touch with cold leads.

Let’s say you have a list of emails from potential customers that you want to reach out to. Gather the emails and spend about 2 hours on a Sunday night/Monday morning to draft the first email. Here is a great example to use:

First Name,

Great to be connected on LinkedIn and great work on [Insert Company]!

I want to reach out as I’m doing a bit of research and have been working with a few software companies in the accounting/small business space.

Are you available for a call sometime this/next week? I’d love to have a strategy session and share some ideas of what’s working.

Thanks,

Come Tuesday morning, hit send on your direct outreach emails (personalized to each client). Then, wait 2 days if you haven’t received a response and send a follow up email. Here is an example:

Hi First Name,

I never heard back. Are you available to chat next week?

Thanks,

Continue with this follow up method two more times until you receive a response. Here is the third email to use if you have yet to receive a response from your prospect:

Hi First Name,

I still haven’t heard back. Are you still interested in meeting? How do these times look?

Tuesday at 11am EST

Wednesday at noon EST

Thanks,

The last email you will send (#4) will include something a little different in hopes of getting a response:

Hi First Name,

I hate to be a pest, but I want to follow up one last time. Are you free for a strategy session this week?

Thanks,

This email is the last one you will send, and usually it gets the highest response rate. Some people will reply with “I’m sorry for not getting back to you” or “I apologize for keeping you in the dark”.

Follow up is one of the most successful ways to turn a cold prospect into a hot new client. You just have to stick with it. Here is the structure to use:

4. Social Media Groups

Most people tend to gather around similar interest/likes or things they are trying to do within their businesses. This research makes lead generation super easy for CPA firms looking to speak to a specific niche or industry.

Go to any social media platform, search for groups, and type in the industry in which you are looking to do business with.

For example, head to LinkedIn Groups, and let’s say your industry is salon owners.

If you type in “Salon Owners” into the search, you will find over pages of groups with 15k+ people within each group.

Once you join the group, you will have access to each one of the members and you can start connecting and sending out emails directly from that platform.

Do a similar process on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter lists.

There is an endless amount of people online – it’s up to you to go out and find them!

Good luck!

Article originally created by Andrew Argue for Jetpack Workflow. You can learn more about his work at AndrewArgue.com