Kesha JonTae, also known as The Millennial Taxpert, has found a way to reach a whole new audience of people looking for tax advice: TikTok. Through one-minute informational videos, she has grown her TikTok following to over 20,000. 

Her content, which provides advice related to tax planning and strategies, has grabbed the attention of “influence-preneurs,” Kesha’s term for creatives, consultants, coaches, and content creators who use their social media influence to make a living, leaving her with a business that is more successful now, than ever. 

In today’s show, Kesha talks about how she chose a niche with an audience she is familiar with, used TikTok to connect with that audience, and built her website (and business) around providing the best experience for her customers.

Podcast

Summary

• Choosing a familiar niche
• Connecting with your audience
• Building your website to fit the customer

Connect with Kesha

• The Millennial Taxpert
• Kesha on Instagram
• Kesha on TikTok

Choosing a Familiar Niche

As a “mini influencer,” Kesha noticed that, in many cases, influencers are experiencing overnight success through apps like TikTok and Instagram. Endorsements, partnerships, custom programs, and more have become a very popular way for millennials to earn money. However, Kesha found that once their hard work starts to pay off, they begin to struggle with translating that work to their taxes. This is where she comes in.

Her experience in the tax industry coupled with her familiarity with the influencer lifestyle, sparked her idea to target “influence-preneurs” as optimal clients. She knew she could provide them with the help they needed to “keep more of their hard-earned money in their pockets and out of Uncle Sam’s hands,” as she puts it. 

*Que The Millennial Taxpert*

Kesha’s Advice for Choosing a Familiar Niche

• Utilize an audience you enjoy. This will help you avoid burnout and, odds are, you already know a lot about your audience. 
• Look for a need or problem that the audience is experiencing and fill the need. This is the best way to insert yourself into a niche.

Connecting With Your Audience

Once Kesha determined “influence-preneurs” were her ideal client, she took to the internet to find ways to connect with them. Creating an online presence has been the biggest driver for growing her business. Sounding surprised by her success, she mentioned that she has gotten good, quality leads and clients just by being active on TikTok. 

She says one of the keys to her TikTok fame was participating in the one video per day challenge. This was when her following really started to grow. For this challenge, she asked followers to leave a comment with a question they had about taxes. Then she would create a short video that answered the question. Luckily for her, the majority of questions were simple for someone with her level of experience to answer, but were super helpful and provided much-needed info for people who aren’t familiar with general tax topics. 

By participating in this challenge, she was creating consistent content, interacting with her ideal client base, and proving that she was a credible source when it comes to all things taxes. 

Throughout the challenge, she was also sharing these videos on other social media platforms to help drive interaction there as well. This made her goal of staying visible on social media more easily attainable. Once she got in the hang of actively and consistently posting, it started to become more natural and is now the secret behind a lot of her success. 

Kesha’s Advice for Connecting With Your Audience

• Stay visible on social media. This will help clients to easily find you when they need you. 
• Use TikTok (if it works for your business). Videos you post here live forever, while videos on other platforms do not circulate as long. This keeps you visible to your audience for a longer period of time.
• Use social media to build credibility. It is important your followers know that you know what you’re talking about.
• Try to consistently use just one or two social media platforms that your target customers are using. This will help you avoid social media burnout while optimizing your reach. 

Building Your Website to Fit the Customer

Once Kesha started gaining traction through social media and her website, she realized how important it was for her content and copy to convey the message of her brand. To keep things consistent, she writes her own copy, ensuring her voice shines through. She said she writes on her website the same way she would talk to a friend or post on her personal page. Her goal with this is to be as authentic and natural sounding to her clients as possible. 

One thing she tries to avoid when working on her website is appearing like the stereotype of an accountant: intimidating and stuffy. She wants to relate to her ideal client as much as possible, therefore she uses their language. Kesha emphasizes that you don’t have to talk a certain way just because you work in a certain field. 

Kesha’s Advice for Building Your Website to Fit Your Customer

• Produce content and copy that is natural and authentic. This is the best way to connect with your audience. 
• Speak the language of your market. Your audience will listen to and view you as more relatable.

Overall, Kesha taught us the importance of niching down, investing in a community you enjoy (even if it means making a few TikToks), and being who you are to better connect with your audience and build a successful business.

Kesha provided all of this info and more so be sure to listen or watch the full podcast above!

Recast Episode: This episode was originally published on May 25, 2017, but it’s a favorite among our Growing Your Firm Podcast community, so we’re bringing it back. Comment below to tell us if you’ve been listening to the podcast since the original airing of this episode.

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Michael Palmer, CEO of Pure Bookkeeping & Podcast host, works specifically with bookkeepers to help grow your bookkeeping practice. Michael spent close to a decade giving bookkeepers the tools to start, grow and scale their own business outside of the accounting firm realm.

Podcast

Summary

• The #1 way to grow your bookkeeping practice
• How to put systems in place to maximize profits
• Ways to keep clients excited to work with you even if you double your fees

Resources

• LinkedIn: Michael Palmer
• Successful Bookkeeper Podcast
• Pure Bookkeeping – Michael Palmer’s company
• Automate Your Firm 1,500% [interview]

#1 Way To Grow Your Bookkeeping Practice

Michael Palmer is the CEO of Pure Bookkeeping. Pure Bookkeeping helps great bookkeepers grow their business. The founder, Debbie Roberts, originally worked as a bookkeeper in a company. She heard the advice, “Quit and start your own shop.” The words buzzed in her ears for over 2 years before she made her life-changing move. It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows (when is it?). 

Aside: After 18 months, Debbie was afraid to hire someone because she didn’t think they could replicate her work. That’s when she read Michael Gerber’s book, The E-Myth Revisited. Many guests on the show recommend this book, so don’t wait any longer to pick up a copy. 

Debbie realized she needed to take all of her patented knowledge and put pen to paper, documenting all of her processes for reconciling, correcting, etc. As The E-Myth recommends, make your business system dependent, or “work on your business, not in it.” This is the message Michael Palmer pushes as he meets with bookkeepers like you to grow your bookkeeping practice. 

Before he digs into concepts from Gerber’s book, he first tackles the #1 thing holding most bookkeepers back: their mindset. You must have the right mindset to dominate your space first. You must have the mindset of, “I will make my bookkeeping practice a business and not a J.O.B.”

Pro Tip: The best way to have the right mindset is to have the right focus. Know where you’re going. Don’t wander aimlessly.

Fixing your mindset starts with understanding: You may not have a clue how valuable you are to the bookkeeping profession. You have no idea how important you are to the ecosystem. Your clients desperately need you to be more successful to help them. That’s a core mindset piece to etch into your brain. You must believe those bolded statements. Read them every night if you have to. 

How do you know if you have the right mindset? Simple. Ask yourself these two questions:

• Is my business delivering to me, not vice versa?
• Am I making a living I’m satisfied with?

Many who read this might give an affirmative to both these questions. Great! But, really reflect on these questions to get to the honest truth. Knowing where you are is the first step to grow your bookkeeping practice.

How to Put Systems In Place to Maximize Profits

Debbie got more efficient at running her bookkeeping practice as she went on. The lightbulb went off as soon as she started writing down her processes. These processes and checklists to grow her bookkeeping practice provided the jumping-off point for Pure Bookkeeping. 

Creating systems is what needs to be done. The problem? There will always be “more important” things to do, especially client work. This is one of those simple tasks you must make time for. 

Start with this: A checklist. 

Take an easy task (10-15 minutes to do), and make a checklist on how to do said task. Putting these systems together now ensures you aren’t playing catch-up later on. Efficiency turns into profits, guaranteed. Efficiency and better profits turn into improved customer service. 

How to Set Up the Right Systems

Start with your workflow. Next, look at each aspect of your systems, top to bottom. Michael recommends that you ask why you have these systems. Get to the bottom of why you do everything. Putting in these systems will be met with resistance. It’s up to you to lay out your vision of the bookkeeping practice to show the direction in which you’re heading. Efficiency should be your priority after mindset.

Steps to Keep Clients Even If You Double Your Fees

As technology advances, Michael warns you: Relying on the tried-and-true old school way of accounting will not work. You cannot expect to chug along doing the same old compliance work for your clients and expect to grow. New technologies will dismantle simple bookkeeping processes. 

The Secret to Your Value: Storytelling

But, Michael reveals how you can still keep your clients and increase your fees despite the technology overhaul: Tell clients a story they want to hear. You may not be a storyteller by trade. But you are capable of it! Remember, clients hire you to take care of all the technical, in-the-weeds stuff. In the end, they just want to make a healthy living and have enough in their bank accounts to feed their families. That’s the value you bring to the table. 

How do you start? Look at the KPIs of your client’s books. Don’t just report the numbers as they are; explain the meaning and story behind the metrics. When you can spot trends and inconsistencies, that will help your client run and grow their business, and your value to them will explode.

Create Some Rock ‘n’ Roll

“What rock ‘n’ roll are you creating?” Michael asks. As technology continues to take over the industry, value is now coming from the creative side of your firm, not from the technical. You must be able to take the information in front of you and transform it into a story the client wants and needs to hear. You’re looking at the numbers and asking, “Why is this happening?” After you research what’s going on, you can safely report to your client why something is happening and what the client needs to do. 

Michael tells us the story of a bookkeeper he knew. This bookkeeper specialized in restaurant bookkeeping. A great advantage of having a niche: you learn to see what a restaurant’s books should look like. You can see the successful restaurants and what they do right and transfer that value to your restaurant client who might be struggling. This particular client saw many worry points in the restaurant. So every month, she compiled five specific reports for the restaurant client to follow. Every month, the owner would just base decisions off of those reports. Soon, the owner took months off. The restaurant’s profits soared, and more locations opened! All because this restaurant bookkeeper didn’t settle on simply doing the numbers, but studying them. 

Michael packs a lot of punch into this episode, so check out the full audio above for more goodness!

John Seiffer has been an entrepreneur all his working life. In 1994 he started working with other entrepreneurs helping them learn from his mistakes. He was part of the team that founded the International Coach Federation and was its third president in 1998. He is a past president of the Angel Investor Forum. John has worked with company owners and CEOs across the USA and in Europe through his platform, CEOBootCamp.com. John can be reached at john@ceobootcamp.com.

Today, John will discuss the three reasons why management is hard and tips and solutions to make it a little more simple.

Podcast

Summary

• “Management is getting work done through other people.”
• Reason #1: It’s not your full-time job.
• Reason #2: You’re afraid of micromanaging.
• Reason #3: Management is not social intercourse. 

John’s Management Background

As an entrepreneur turned business owner coach, John has been in a variety of positions that required success from a management standpoint. He has learned exactly what it takes to run a team that produces impressive results. In his words, “management is getting work done through other people.” By translating this truth into approach and his willingness to help others reach their professional goals, he is left with the ideal background to help you better manage your team. John is aware that management is hard, but he also knows plenty of ways to make it a little more simple. 

Reason #1: It’s not your full-time job.

Managing people can be difficult because it is not the only thing you do. In many companies, a manager is expected to manage people and complete their own workload. This can cause resentment towards your responsibility to manage because you feel like it takes you away from your other tasks. However, you and your team will be far more productive when you designate a set time to complete your management work.

John’s simple solution: time blocking. Time blocking allows you to complete your tasks and set aside time to work with your team (even if it is just a few hours a week). He suggests making it a routine by scheduling regular team meetings and time to meet individually with each member. 

One-on-one meetings allow you to get a sense of a person’s career goals and give you a better idea of how you can support them through their professional development. One tip John offers is to let the employee come to you with an agenda for each one-on-one meeting. This will allow you to see where they feel they are professionally and create a more trust-filled relationship. When you do ask questions, make it clear you are searching for answers that will help you better support them. 

For sample questions, read John’s recent blog, 1:1 Meetings Lead to Loyal Employees.

Reason #2: You resist micromanaging.

Oftentimes managers avoid giving detailed, defined tasks because they are afraid to come across as a micromanager. However, as a manager, it is your responsibility to break down work into specific tasks and allow employees to use their creativity from there. Knowledge workers may be good at their jobs, but that doesn’t mean they don’t require support to complete their tasks. 

One of the ways John suggests doing this, without sounding like a micromanager, is by making sure everything relates back to giving the customer the best service. It is important your employees know why the detailed instructions you’ve created have a positive influence on the quality of work the team produces as a whole. 

Another bit of advice he offers is to define a communication protocol. Setting a standard way to relay information “gives people the freedom to know how they’re going to communicate and when they are going to get a response.” These internal communication rules should be similar to external/client communications rules in that there is a particular way that information should be passed along in order to receive a timely and accurate response. 

Designating specific responsibilities and setting a communication structure enables people to do better work, which ultimately is the goal of management.

Reason #3: Management is not social intercourse.

Being in management is an unnatural act. The way we are required to communicate with our team members is unlike the way we communicate in our other relationships. For example, giving constant praise when you see good stuff happening in the workplace is essential, however doing this outside of a work setting is not natural. 

Taking the social route in workplace relationships can also lead to behavior that wouldn’t normally be tolerated. John explains it this way: “You wouldn’t put up with things in a good manager relationship that you might in a good social relationship.”

John introduces the idea of radical candor. This is mixing showing you care with the willingness to challenge your team members with things that might make them uncomfortable. Again, this helps create a good balance between a professional relationship and a social relationship. However, he stresses that radical candor is a two-way street. Your team should trust that you trust them and are open to receiving radical candor in return. Their feedback is essential to helping you create a productive, well-run team.

To encourage a kinder, yet productive work environment, John suggests getting your team to agree on language that gets your point across but won’t be taken personally. Something like “can you laser that for me” instead of, “can you get to the point” comes off much nicer. But the phrase itself doesn’t matter – what works is the agreement about how the team will use it.

Ultimately, John makes it clear that being intentional and willing to improve your management style based on the feedback from your team are essential qualities. He explains that it is your job to “improve them so they can improve you.” 

Management is hard but it is not impossible to simplify.

To learn more tips from John, listen to or watch the full episode above!