AI Can’t Recommend What It Can’t Understand

Intro
Welcome to the Growth Minded Accountant podcast where our experts share best practices on running your firm in the digital age. This podcast is brought to you by CountingWorks PRO.

Lee Reams II

Welcome back to the latest episode of the growthminded accountant. My name is Lee Reams II. I'm the founder and CEO of CountingWorks and I'm joined by our chief visibility officer, Rebekah Winters Barton. Could you say hello?

Rebekah Winters Barton

Yes. Hello everyone. I am excited about this one. It's a topic that I talk about often with our clients, so I'm looking forward to it.

Lee Reams II

Well, we haven't had a topic yet that you were not excited about, but this one is always excited. I love all of topics. All right. So, you know, today we're talking about one of the biggest shifts happening in tax and accounting firm marketing. uh not because marketing is dead, not because SEO is dead, not because your website no longer matters. It actually is entirely the opposite. Okay? So your website, your reviews, your service pages, your industry pages, your content, your firm story, one of the most important things, and your local presence matter more now than ever. U but they need to do more than just look professional. And we see it all the time where we see like a a nicel looking website that just says nothing, right?

They need to help both humans and more importantly now AI systems understand who you are, what you do, who you serve, where you serve them, and why your firm deserves to be recommended. And what does that mean when we say recommended? So basically the the world of old Google blue links is gone. Um, SEO is not dead, but it has changed tremendously. So, the way people search now is they typically go to an AI AI bot. They go to their preferred AI assistant, whether it's Gemini or Chat GPT or Claude, whatever it may be, and they're having a full conversation with it, right? And that particular chatbot is responding with two or three options. There's no more scroll. There's no more maybe somebody finds you on the second or third page of Google.

If you are not the recommended firm, which means that system does not think you're the best fit for that searcher, you are no longer going to show up. Now, this is a double-edged sword because while it may seem like that's reducing your chances of being recommended, it actually offers a massive opportunity for smaller firms. AI doesn't care if you're Forbes. It doesn't care if you're H&R Block. It cares that you've positioned yourself well and that you are truly the best fit for whoever that searcher is. So if you position yourself well, you have a real chance here to get recommended in ways that Google never recommended you. Yeah. And what's happening right now is a lot of very good firms are starting to get exposed. They may be excellent at what they do.

They may have the incredibly loyal client base. They're still getting referrals, right? Um they have deep expertise, but online they look generic to these referral engines. And that's the big idea for today. So most firms are at risk are not bad firms. You know, we're not saying that this is definitely an even playing field. You can make yourself look really really good online and get more recommendations than perhaps someone who has more experience and is more an expert in a in a niche than you are. Right? So what's happening is good firms are often looking very generic online. They have not invested in marketing. They have not developed a story. And in an AIdriven search environment, generic is becoming somewhat invisible. Okay. So if we before we get into a checklist uh I want to make an important distinction.

We have talked about uh AI search over the last few months uh and we've talked about Google in May at their big IO developer conference changing the way search results are done. We've even talked about ChatGPT Gemini and other AI tools becoming part of how people research professional services. Uh we've even talked about how the old SEO playbook is changing. But today is different. So today is not AI search is coming. Today is AI search is here and your firm needs to become easier to understand. And I think that's a a very different conversation than kind of predicting where things are going. So let's talk about why that is such an important distinction to firm owners that are extremely busy. They're over overloaded right now with AI AI AI.

But why do they need to do something this time?

Rebekah Winters Barton

Yeah. So the distinction is really important because of what you just said. Lee firm owners are busy. They don't have time for these kind of theatrical dramatic conversations about oh the industry is being disrupted and AI is coming and you know kind of this Terminator type of talk. They need to know practical steps and actionable items like what do I fix? Um which pages actually matter on my website? What content is important? What should my reviews say? How do I know that AI understands my firm? These are the types of real concrete concrete if I could speak concrete questions that people need to be able to answer and hopefully those are the questions that we're going to answer for you today.

Lee Reams II

Yeah. I mean just going back the old question was hey how do I rank? You know we would for our clients we would create sophisticated dashboards and we would know the keywords for all the different areas and we would rank you're you're on page one for this many search terms and you know etc etc. we go over those reports and that that's what we would optimize for. But today the new question is, you know, can a search engine or more importantly, you know, let's just call it an AI assistant um and a prospect visiting your website clearly understand when my firm is the right choice and that is the big shift. So ranking is still important because it's used by these AI engines to do their recommendations as well.

So SEO is still important. The blue links are completely different, right? Reviews are incredibly important. We have found our review site tax buzz reference quite often. It's now we're getting so much traffic by developers are saying why is there so much traffic going to tax buzz and it's all these chatbt these all these bots that are looking at our content and all our professionals and reading and harvesting all these reviews. Why? Because it helps them make a recommendation about a firm. So local SEO is still very important. most likely, you know, ChatGPT wants to match a CPA firm, for example, in Newport Beach if that's where I do business, right? Content is still really important, whether that be videos or blog. But AIdriven discovery adds another layer on top of this.

And this is what I want you to kind of explain a little bit more, Rebekah, is, you know, now your firm has to be interpreted. It has to be understood as it's it's basically your a brand and you want AI to totally understand exactly how you do things, why you do things, why you were different. What is your story that takes you from being what I call a cookie cutter firm to something much more. So explain Rebekah what this means and I think it says a lot about being more human.

Rebekah Winters Barton

It does. Absolutely. So this has actually made my job a lot more fun. Um, back when I started doing this, you know, 17 years ago, it was all about how many times do we need to say tax professional in Chicago on this website and it was a lot about the technical aspects of how many keywords and which keywords. Now, we really get to tell a story. So, the creative side of it, the technical aspects are still important, but telling a story is critical. These AI systems can understand things in a way that that old search systems never really could. They're much smarter. They they can understand language better. they understand stories better. So basically AI is trying to understand your firm as a real thing um as an entity not just as a website not just a URL but as a business with a location with services with specialties with niches with real relationships with real people.

And you have an opportunity online to showcase that. If you've talked to me in person ever on a call, you've probably heard me talk about your brand footprint, your web footprint. And we look at that in my field as much more than your website. Everybody and their brother can have a website, right? What not everybody has is a great website combined with great content combined with YouTube videos combined with a Facebook page and a LinkedIn page and blogs they're posting that all drive home the same messaging. That is your brand footprint. So AI tries to answer questions like you know what does this firm do, who do they serve, where do they operate, what are they known for, and what evidence supports that. In most cases, not all of that can be found from your website.

That's where review sites are very important. That's where social media is very important. It's where conversations people are having about you around the web start to matter. Back links you're getting if you've been quoted in an article about, you know, taxes on a local news station or something like that. All of these things work together to build credibility within these AI systems. Um, so basically the answer ultimately that AI wants to answer is should this firm be recommended for this specific client query or this specific conversation that I'm having with a user. The internet only knows what we tell it. So you could be the best pediatric accountant in Boston, but if you're not telling the internet that and posting content related to accounting for pediatricians offices, it's never going to know that it should be recommending you to people.

So you've got to put concrete information onto the internet that then these AI systems can scrape so that they can recommend you in the appropriate situations. Yeah. I mean the reality is can the outside world understand your firm well enough to recommend it and can these AI chat bots do the same and think of it as an army of salespeople basically you've now have a if you do this correctly you have 247 bisdev you know sales development representative out there reaching out and and being part of your sales pitch every day and the best way to see how AI is talking about you is asking it you know what do you think about this firm uh you know I am a pediatric trick blah blah blah blah blah is this a good fit for me and it will look and say well you know I don't see much information I don't see any blog articles I don't see any services I don't see any expertise I looked at his reviews and they don't they don't work with these type of people so the answer is probably no okay and that I think is very important so let's start jumping into this uh in a future episode we're actually going to talk about what a predictive firm is but this one is all about internal AI relevance so this is about whether your own systems can understand your clients workflows, documents, communications and data well enough to surface opportunities before the client asks.

So today we are focused on external AI relevance. Okay, so can AI understand your firm well enough to recommend you? So let's talk a little bit, let's set this up a little bit more about the old game versus the new game. I know this is redundant to a lot of people because we've talked about it, but I am in awe how many IT professionals we've had sit in with meetings with our clients who don't even know what geo means, right? And again, things have already changed. So, if your IT department is still trying to figure out, you know, they don't even know that blue links or they don't even know that Google made changes, then you have some problems, right? So, let's kind of go through this or refresh.

I'm going to go through it the same way. uh you know the old days a prospect type CPA near me they got a list of results so that's the blue links right then they clicked around and they decided what link they clicked on okay they then looked at websites they compared reviews maybe they even asked a friend right so then they had a referral and then they decided to reach out to a few firms and this still happens but the new journey increasingly looks quite different a prospect and this is what's the beauty of AI systems actually know the prospect as well. So, they're asking a a question and they also have a history that Chad Chippy knows for example. So, I'll give you uh like a query.

They may ask, "Hey, I run a growing dental practice in Orange County. What should I look for in an accountant?" That is totally different than clicking on blue links. Okay? Or, can you recommend an accounting firm that helps restaurants with payroll, sales, tax, and cash flow? So now I have in one sentence I'm looking for a recommendation an accounting firm that helps restaurants who I am and with a specific set of services that is completely different than the old blue links. You know I'll give another example for individual my spouse and I both have W2 income. Let's say we even have some stock options maybe a rental property. What type of tax advisor should we be looking for? And it will start doing that matchmaking. And why is that so different Rebekah versus the old day of blue links?

So, it's hugely different because AI isn't just trying to return a list of blue links that meet certain technical specs, like they say certain keywords the correct number of times or they have the most recent blogs. Blogging is still important. Um, but it's now trying to synthesize and answer and narrow the field by matching based on specific data like your niches, your services, whether or not you have the same interests as them, whether or not you serve the right area. And one thing that I want to say here is that people aren't always searching with those specific terms, but your information can still be critical. So, for example, we've used a fly fishing example before. Um, if you like fly fishing and someone who loves fly fishing is searching for a new accountant, they might not say in their search query, I really want an accountant who shares my hobby of fly fishing.

But if you have perhaps a photo of yourself fly fishing mentioned in your bio that that's a big hobby of yours and then the internet knows the algorithm understands from previous conversations with this person that they are an avid fly fisherman, it is going to be more likely to recommend you based on that as well. So this information can actually play a role kind of subconsciously or under the surface as well as right at the top level where like you definitely need to say if you specialize in pediatricians or you specialize in restaurants or retail stores. Those things are critical but the kind of subconscious under the surface information can also play a big role in getting you recommended. And that's why I say the internet doesn't know what we don't tell it.

And you also never know what little fact might be the thing that gets you your next client. So, don't be afraid to put things out there and develop a real story.

Lee Reams II

And I think this should get everyone's attention. Again, you may be great. We know you're great. You know you're great. Your clients may love you. You have decades of experience. But if your online website is basically a business card, it says tax preparation, bookkeeping, payroll, accounting, advisory, AI doesn't have much to work with when developing a story about you to recommend you. Right? Those are categories. They're not positioning. They do not explain why you um are the best for somebody's needs, right? They do not explain the problems that you solve. They do not explain why a prospect should choose you instead of another firm. And that is uh the real question, you know, where when should your firm be recommended instead of another and why, right?

So, if your website does not answer that clearly, you have a visibility problem. So, if the biggest takeaway from today's podcast is that concept, then I think you're going to start understanding and have a much better um ability to get away from the generic firm problem. So, let's talk about generic firms, Rebekah, and go through some of this of kind of, you know, again, I maybe we're kind. I think most tax accounting websites are awful. Um they are the exact same site. it it you know even in my clients who have some of our old legacy sites that are just you know sound the same versus we do custom everything for everybody now we do custom blogging we do custom narratives we do custom storytelling it is so different it's night and day just from looking at it and connecting with the prospect and more importantly connecting with the AI chatbots but explain kind of the the average accounting firm and what's happening why why this is such a big problem yeah so the average accounting site is not necessarily terrible.

Um, I also tend to fall in the same boat as Julie that I don't love a lot of them, but let's just say for the sake of argument that most of them are just very generic. They're not necessarily horrible, but they say things like, "We offer personalized tax and accounting." Well, what does that actually mean? Um, you it's it's a lot of kind of buzzwords, generic nice words that make people feel sort of good, but they don't really know why they feel good about it because it's not really telling them any information. Um, we help individuals and businesses reach their financial goals. That's another one we see a lot. Or we pride ourselves on quality, integrity, and service. Again, not a bad thing. That's good. You want your tax professional to be to provide highquality services and to have integrity.

But if you're not providing any sorts of examples of how you do these things, it all just sounds like buzzwords. There's nothing wrong with these statements, but they don't create a recommendation signal, nor do they tell a prospect or an AI what you really do. Telling people what industries you understand. The life events you specialize in. Retirement, college planning, the birth of a child, all of these things are major life events that certain professionals are better skilled at than others. So, this is, you know, these are all things people need to know. These are real things that happen every single day. what business problems you solve, what geographic markets you serve. That's huge, right? Some people still really want a local professional. And AI systems, more importantly, love recommending local professionals.

I have this discussion a lot with our clients. Even if you want to serve nationwide, you still need to be sending local signals because that is where you're actually going to get recommended unless you happen to have some extreme niche that no one else has, which is extremely unlikely. Um, also what kind of client experience you deliver. We've talked a lot about the client experience layer on the podcast lately and I think that's really important to kind of put on your website what people can expect. Um, you know, even a page that is entitled what you can expect would be a great way to really drive home that point and let people know what your workflow looks like, what they can expect if they choose to work with your firm.

These are all things that are very important. So, when a prospect asks, for example, who's a good accountant for my construction company, a generic website, even if you're great, is not going to tell the AI system anything. You need to have information on there about how you solve specific problems for construction companies. A page about job costing and how you would deal with that. all of these different things, depreciation of equipment, these are all important topics, but if you're not writing about it, the internet has no idea that that's what you specialize in and that you are in fact the best option for that searcher. Yeah.

Lee Reams II

And it applies to any vertical or any industry you're you're thinking about. So like a dentist, you know, who helps dentists with tax planning? A your generic business tax services page is not a signal to ChatGPT that I work with dental firms, right? But a page perhaps that says tax planning for dental practices is like a red alarm. Hey, you know, and this is supported by articles, reviews, FAQs, examples of how you help dentists with tax planning. That is a much stronger reason for the AI agent to connect that prospect with your firm. And that's the difference between having just a website and a clear digital footprint. Um, so the firms that win an AI search will not always be the biggest firms. They will be though the clearest firms and they'll have the best story.

Uh so let's start jumping into uh we like checklists and we're giving you checklists. Let's get practical here. Um instead of a bunch of random tactics, we're going to try to organize these into three pillars. Rebekah, you're going to be able to jump on this. Pillar one, identity and positioning. So important. Uh most firms do not tell a story. Uh pillar two, data and context clues. And then pillar three is trust and local signals. So, uh, Rebekah, if you can just run on this. This is not, uh, and maybe we could give a little homework or like people can audit their own firm, but let's jump into it and kind of explain these three pillars as well as you can.

Rebekah Winters Barton

Yeah, I love giving homework, so get a pen and paper. Well, that's why I said we don't want to be here all day, so let's not go each one of these pillars. Try to keep it brief. But pillar one here is going to be identity and positioning. So, this is answering questions like who you are, who do you serve, and why should AI understand you, and what should AI understand about you? So this is the foundation of everything else before you worry about technical stuff. I call it the nerd stuff, but the schema, the FAQs, the rankings, the metadata, that's where people like me come in, right? We understand all of that. The first thing you need to do is answer these basic questions. Who do we serve?

What problems do we solve? Where do we serve clients? And why are we different? The first thing you should do here is audit your homepage. We've suggested this before, but it's such an important thing to do, and it's really not hard. So go to your homepage and answer those questions. If you can answer those clearly with your current copy, you're in good shape. You're probably telling a story. You probably have a narrative. If you can't, if the only thing you can say about who you serve as individuals and businesses, you need to tighten that up significantly because that is not actually an answer to the question. We need to know specifically who you serve, right? Sounds like a politician's answer. It does. We don't want that.

We want very specific niche answers so that you can get referred to the right people. Saying things like your trusted partner in success or helping you navigate your financial future sounds great, but when an AI system reads it, it has no idea whether you do corporate tax strategy, 1040s, bookkeeping, advisory. It can't answer any meaningful questions. So, you really want to think of your homepage as kind of the front door to your firm's identity. And the top of the page, the hero section we call that, should answer those three questions. Who do you serve? What problem do you solve? And where do you serve them within 10 seconds, 5 seconds? It should be the first thing people see. Um, so a weak homepage message would be something like personalized accounting solutions.

Whereas a stronger version would be proactive tax planning and advisory for dental practices in Austin. And hopefully you can hear the difference there in the specificity and in answering those three kind of key pillars. Um, instead of just as another example, instead of saying, you know, we provide tax and accounting services, saying something like tax planning, bookkeeping, and advisory for construction companies that need better job costing and cash flow visibility would answer those questions very quickly. Checklist item number one here is going to be your homepage clarity.

Lee Reams II

Now, before you go, Rebekah, real quick, I want to add something. Um, we are talking in niches right now. We're talking in target audiences, but you can um start defining your little funnel with other thing. It could be tax planning, but I work with high netw worth people. I work with dual income people. I work with you can qualify them and you can use language that again you're not trying to get everybody any, you know, a generalist is having a hard time attracting people anymore because no one sees, you know, the the actual connection and the AI weaves right through that. So, when we talk about these examples, I don't want you to get carried away. We're not saying you have to drop every other client and pick a niche like a traditional niche.

There's other ways to do this, but go ahead and go back uh continue on. Sorry.

Rebekah Winters Barton

No, I'm really glad you said that because that's very important and we have a lot of clients like that who we work with. So, there are definitely ways to position yourself that aren't niche industry specific. Um, they just make for really good examples on the podcast and they're quick to kind of get through. So, we use them a lot, but that is not a that's not the only position that you can have. Um, so yeah. So, the first checklist item here is going to be to just ask yourself these questions on your homepage. Can a prospect understand what we do in under 10 seconds? Can they tell who we're best for? Can they tell where we serve clients, where we're located, and can they tell what problem we solve?

If you answer no to any of those, your homepage needs a little bit of work. So, your homework for this is to look at the hero section of your homepage. That's the first headline, your H1 we call it, and just those first few lines of text underneath of that could apply, if it could apply to almost any accounting firm in the United States, rewrite it. Make it more specific. Name a client type, whatever your client type is. Name the service or services and name the outcome you provide. And then your market as well is important here. Typically, your local market is going to be very important within those AI systems. Checklist item two, your firm's story. This is the second part of your identity. It matters more than a lot of people realize.

AI search is not just technical. It is technical, but it's also looking for your narrative on top of that. It wants to recommend a firm that makes sense for people. So, it needs to know things like, are you a once a year tax prep firm or do you offer year-round advisory services? Are you a specialist? Do you have a niche industry? Are you relationship driven? Are you tech forward? Are you fully virtual? Um, do you still offer walk-in appointments? You know, all of these things really matter not not only to the internet, but in so far as the client experience goes. And when when prospects find you, they want to know the answers to these questions. Most firms bury this information by accident. They're not trying to do it, but their about us page kind of sounds like every other about us page on the internet.

We're committed to professionalism and quality and responsiveness. That's all great, but it doesn't really say anything. responsiveness, for example, saying something like, "We aim to respond to all client emails within 24 hours." That's an actionable thing that you can put on your website. Um, so information like that can be clarified. It's not that what you have is bad necessarily. It just needs to be more specific and be more clarity driven. So this all matters because AI systems are really trying to connect signals. If your website says you're proactive, but all of your content is just very basic tax prep and deadline reminders, that's a mismatch. You're not telling the same story in your blog and your social content as you are on your website. Everything needs to line up.

That is how AI systems understand who you really are. It's kind of like meeting a new person, right? If they're sending mixed signals to you, you might not be sure you want to be friends with them. If they're hot one minute, cold the next, they're saying one thing, but they're doing another, it can be very confusing. The same thing goes for the internet. The AI system needs to feel good about what you're putting out there and feel like you are a solid, cohesive, even keel match for whoever they're trying to recommend you to. Checklist three, niche. Before you go, hold on. I got something. Um, so the examples Rebekah just gave you, you know, do you do walk-ins, for example, that is now differentiation. So, uh, generic firm might just not say any of these details, not give the hours, business hours, these are all important things.

The location, where I am located, what are their things to do around my office, whatever. This stuff is all feeding AI to connect that prospect again to feel comfortable enough to recommend you. And what most firms do is they just don't have those those details. Well, yeah, of course, I allow walk-ins, but where does it say it? So, if AI doesn't know it, that's the whole invisible thing. they can't recommend you to as someone that allows walk-ins. So, that's kind of the example, but I think this is a a critical thing that what we're talking about and try to connect with. And that's why I went through that exercise, the idea of just ask AI about your own firm and what you think you stand for and then you'll see the holes right away and you'll go, "Oh, that's the aha moment.

I need to create content so AI starts selling me the way I want to be sold." So, go ahead on. No, I love you, please. I love that. And it actually it actually brought up something else that I wanted to mention. You were talking about saying things in your area to do. So people kind of feel weird sometimes about being like, "Well, I'm located near, you know, X." One way to do this is to say something like, if you do allow walk-ins, for example, um you know, to say something like after you drop off your documents, let's say you're in Aspen, um say, "Hey, around the corner from my office, you can check out St. Ambrose Coffee after you drop off your documents." weave it into the story so that it's not just random search terms or random geographic locations, but you can weave all this in to a tale.

And if you're using local businesses, St. Ambrose is not obviously, but if you're using local businesses, you may be able to easily link out to them, kind of start a backlinking structure with them. That starts to build local credibility for everyone. So, this can kind of snowball into helping not only you, but other local businesses in your area if you're kind of mentioning them in your copy, even if it's just kind of as a a passing statement, right? So, that's all really important. Um, niche signals though is checklist item number three here, but I think that was really good to hit on. So, this is where if you want to be recommended for a specific niche, one mention on an industries we serve page is not going to be enough.

Um, this is huge and this is something we talk about constantly with clients. if you've ever talked to me on the phone. You have heard me ask you, but who do you like working with? And then we build we build content surrounding that. Um, again, AI doesn't know what we don't tell it. So, we actually just did a website that just launched for someone who specializes in child care providers and daycarees. And it was really, really a good site. We had a lot of signals. We had a lot of imagery. We had several pages that discussed specifically childcare taxation and accounting. Really good. So, if you want to to be in that same kind of wheelhouse, you need to focus on things like that. You need to have service pages.

You need to have content clusters. Content clusters. You've heard me talk about them on the blog on the podcast before, but this is where you might go to ChatGPT or whatever your preferred AI assistant is and say, "Hey, I want to rank for childc care tax help in Chicago, and can you help me build some articles that I can post on my blog that will start getting me recommended and help me build authority within that area?" Asking an AI about this is great because it's going to know the types of things that it's looking for to recommend it. So, it can really help you build titles and even structure that it's going to like. Post 10 to 12 articles, one or two a week, and then go on to a different industry if you have more than one.

Or alternatively, hit another angle of that industry. Start creating smaller articles that build off of the bigger articles, linking back and forth. This is how you create a content cluster that matters, and it's how over time you start to build authority within a specific niche. The goal here is to create a web of related signals. So, if you're posting about this on your blog, share those blog posts to your social media page. Start making YouTube videos that also address those same topics. Post to Tik Tok about it. Make an Instagram post. Whatever you do, just make sure you're talking about cohesive topics. And very soon, it really doesn't take all that long. Sometimes within, you know, a few weeks, AI will start seeing that you are a local expert within that industry.

And this goes for anything. It goes for dentists, real estate investors, restaurants, nonprofits, uh, technology professionals with equity compensation. Your niche needs to be showing up everywhere, no matter what that niche happens to be. So, your homework here to choose one client segment you want more of. This doesn't mean that you're only pigeon holing yourself into serving those clients, right? But ask yourself, do we have a dedicated page for that segment? Do we have five helpful articles or an FAQ page dedicated to that segment? Do our reviews mention that work? Do our service pages connect to it? Does our homepage hint at it? Whether through imagery or verbiage, if the answer is no, start building that out. Um, even if it's minor at first, right? Even if you're just making one or two homepage mentions, adding a service page, and maybe posting a few blogs, that can start to build the credibility and then build on that.

So our pillar one recap here is identity and positioning. Your homepage needs to be clear. Your firm story needs to be specific and your niche signals need to be visible across multiple platforms. AI again cannot recommend what it cannot understand. Now we're going to move on to pillar two which is data and context clues. So this is are you giving AI enough useful information basically to understand what your expertise is. So, this is where firms need to understand something important. Um, this is the content and structure of the site, not just your overarching positioning. AI doesn't just need marketing language and jargon. It needs answers and context and important structural bits that really help it to understand who you are, what you do, where you are, who you serve, all of these key pieces of information.

So, a great way to think of this is, are we giving AI enough useful evidence to understand what we know? So, we've kind of moved more into the science and tech of it than the the whimsical um artistic brand positioning. So, most accounting service pages are too thin. And I have people all the time tell me, "Well, no one's going to read that." Well, I don't really care if anyone reads it. My job is to make sure that ChatGpt reads it and knows what you do, right? Well, first of all, let's stop. Uh that's not true. They people obviously read these pages. They're going to read stories that are interesting and more about you than generic content. They 100% just scan through the generic stuff. But if you are infusing your local culture, infusing your background, um the pain points that speak to that audience, they 100% are going to resonate with it.

They're going to connect with it and that's going to make the page much stronger and a much stronger signal to uh ChatGPT and other tools. But keep going. Absolutely. No, that's very very true. But that is the argument that people make is that no one's going to read it. We hear that a lot, but but you're very right. They will. We actually have one coming up. I'm really excited about it. Was the first accounting firm ever founded in Charleston, West Virginia, and they're still in operation and we're having a lot of fun with the content for that one. So, I think it's going to be going to be a really good example once it goes live. They just went through onboarding, so we'll have, you know, a week or two here.

But, but that one's exciting. So, it but accounting firm service pages tend to be very thin and say things like we provide tax planning services with maybe a little bulleted list. Maybe they're 75 words, right? That's not enough. It's not enough for a prospect to understand what you do, and it's certainly not enough for an AI engine to understand what you do. They don't explain who the service is for, when it matters, what problems it solves, what questions prospects have, and all of these things matter. So, a stronger page, let's say for tax planning, would answer questions like, who needs tax planning? Some people don't realize that they need it. They don't know. They think they've been doing their taxes themselves. They don't realize that they could be saving thousands of dollars a year perhaps by just doing some proactive planning.

Explaining that can draw people in and make them realize that they actually do need your help. Um, what is the difference between tax preparation and tax planning? That's a key question to answer and one that we include in many FAQ pages for firms that do both because lots of people again, they don't realize they think that, you know, sending their taxes in every April or March is the extent of it. They don't realize there's a year- round process here that they should be engaging in. Who should what should be reviewed before year end? That's a great question to answer. Again, a lot of people don't think about taxes until tax season is upon them. And by then, it's too late to do these things for that year.

Um, how does entity structure affect taxes? Great question to answer if you happen to work with businesses. That's something that people don't realize. They were probably just told an entity to choose, they chose it, and they've been going along that way ever since. they don't necessarily understand the tax implications of different types of business entities. So, the difference between a service label and a useful page is that a label says what you sell. It's like a menu. A useful page explains why it matters. Um, so that's the big difference here. And AI tools are matching questions to answers. So, if you're not answering the questions that people are asking, you're not going to get recommended. Um, here's your homework for this one. Pick your top three service people.

People are gonna hate you, Rebekah. They're absolutely gonna hate you. But there's some good takeaways here. I I'm try I know it's it's try to make it fun for yourself, right? There's always you can make it We're here to improve your firm growth for sure. We are I I tell my kids you can make a game out of anything. So, try to make it fun for yourself. Um and the payoff will be worth it for sure. But for most firms, tax planning, bookkeeping, and advisory or virtual CFO are probably going to be your top three service pages. For others, it could be something like IRS representation, estate and trust work, and payroll, just depending on where your service volume kind of lies. But for each page, add five real questions your prospects as before buying that service, and answer them clearly.

Then you've created your own little FAQ page. And there's nothing that an AI system loves more than an FAQ page. It loves questions with answers because then it can directly match and it knows exactly who to recommend. So FAQs are huge. And we might get into this next. Yes, checklist item number five. Uh FAQ content and zeroclick optimization. This is really important. Um this is huge in AI search. We've actually added FAQ pages to all of our client websites and we did that a while ago. I think maybe first of the year, even before that. It's been going on for a while. FAQs are underrated because they look basic um and a lot of people don't even think about having them, but they're extremely important because they really give AI the ability to say, "Oh, wait.

This firm actually answers this question right here. Let me just send that page." So, we call it zeroclick optimization because the idea is that the prospect may get an answer before they click because the AI may just send that answer, but the firm that provides the clearest answer can still provide visibility and trust because even if the AI is simply saying, "Hey, I got this answer here." That person is going to remember you and they may even click through. They may write you down. They may save your website for later. Um, so examples here are things like, "What is proactive tax planning? How often should I meet with my accountant? What's included in monthly advisory services? That's a big one. A lot of people hear the term advisory and they really have no idea what that means.

Um, beyond that it's kind of a generic term for helping them beyond taxes and accounting, right? So, answering specifically what advisory services include is huge. Do I need a bookkeeper or a CPA? That can be a great one. A lot of people don't know if they actually need a CPA or if just a general bookkeeper will suffice. When should a business owner switch from annual tax prep to monthly accounting or tax planning? Another big question. What should a dental practice look for in an accountant or any industry that you happen to serve? What should real estate investors know before buying another rental property? And a lot of these are great because you can localize the answers as well. So like let's just say for example, what should real estate investors know before buying another rental property?

If you're in the Indianapolis area, for example, which is my home base, um, you know, you could localize that and say something like, if you're looking to buy in Carmel, you would need to know this information about, you know, local municipal taxes. If you're looking to buy in Broadripple, you would need to know this. If you're looking to buy in Greenwood, you would need to know this. You can really hyper localize based on the real estate markets in different parts of your city. And that can be huge. So, these questions aren't fluff. They map directly to how people search. Now, they're not filler. So, if you see that a service page has 250, 350 words, there is a reason for that. And it's feeding those AI systems in a way that your little generic 75word bullet points never ever will.

I'm sorry, but it just won't. You're never going to get recommended with Well, that and that's the whole point of this podcast is we're trying to teach you how to tell that story, how to give context, and how to get recommended. Because the good news is for most tax and accounting firms, your competitors are the most generic, you know, marketers they've ever they don't believe in marketing. They don't think it works. They don't get it. And this is the obviously the opportunity. One thing I wanted to add before we get into uh schema and structure on actually how you put this together. It's more of a technical thing. This does sound overwhelming and this is a a great area for AI to kind of do things on autopilot.

So what we do for our clients is we have what we call playbooks and we can create a playbook that is basically a timed publishing tool and it we can tell it okay we're going to write 12 articles for contractors in Indianapolis okay and when in every other two weeks we're going to add FAQs that will talk to some of these issues and answer some of these questions and we basically just kind of seed the playbook hit play literally start and it will start sequencing and that could include articles now in your newsletter. It could be doing social posts. It could be publishing these blog articles automatically. We already trained it on the tax code. We know that things that are going in are accurate. We give it guidelines.

We give it context. And then we set these up and you could do let's say you had five different content pillars that you wanted. You could have five different playbooks. This automatically runs. It automatically works. You're just getting you're just fun, you know, taking the inbound calls. And that's what's so important of how AI has kind of enabled firms to be able to tell these stories when they couldn't before because there just wasn't enough time. But Rebekah, let's kind of keep this going. Um, talk about schema real quickly kind of what's important here.

Rebekah Winters Barton

Absolutely.

Rebekah Winters Barton

So, this is the technical structure and schema, which is basically where firm owners might tune out, but you shouldn't because it's really important. Um, the schema tree is one of the first things that AI is going to look at. And if you don't know what a schema tree is, I will break it down very easily. Basically, this means that you have things like clear page titles, strong metad descriptions, logical headings, um your pages load quickly, you have working pages, your internal links aren't broken. Um now, some broken links are normal. I do want to say that because it is it is okay to have some broken links, especially in like old blog posts, things like that. The internet understands. We're looking mostly at fresh content. You want to make sure all of your static links on like service pages and fresh blog content links are up to date and working.

You want to make sure you have secure pages, updated content, a sitemap, author bios for educational content is very important. That's also going to to connect to other things that person has done, whether it's LinkedIn or news articles or podcasts. All of those things will play a role. And then structured data. This is the schema. This is a very important way to help search engines understand the content on a page. It basically clarifies essential information like who your organization is, local business information, your address, the services you offer, FAQs are often included, and then articles, reviews when they're structured correctly can be included in this. It's basically like a little overview or synopsis of your firm that AI uses to understand who you are before it ever starts scanning the actual content of your website.

But if it doesn't match the content of the website, you're going to have a problem. Yeah,

Lee Reams II

I was going to say think of schema just as your visit to the old library and everything is in an aisle and it's, you know, up here A12 and then you can go find the book and supposedly it is where it is. But all you're doing if you have schema is you're telling all these AI engines where your information is, where to find the answers to all these questions. So I think this is really important. I have mentioned before about doing an experiment of just asking um ChatGPT for example or Gemini you know uh look for something that your ideal client profile sits under right so you know we're we're we've been talking a lot about construction so what is a good CPA for my construction company in Indianapolis um you know or who helps dental practice with tax planning near me and find out what they say start paying attention does your firm first of all is it being recommended if not or what competitors are showing up, what are they doing?

How are they being described? Right? What content seems to be influencing the answer? Do they have a bunch of strong reviews? Was someone talking about them on Reddit, for example? So, what you're going to see is you're going to find gaps and you're you're also going to be able to say, okay, you know, what are the patterns here that are working? How can I now outflank my competitors? Right? So, do they have do your competitors have clear niche pages? Maybe they have stronger reviews, more reviews. Maybe they're more relevant. Maybe they just have a brand story. Um, maybe they have more sophisticated service pages. Maybe their team bios are much stronger. You know, that's the third most uh visited page on your website. And people at times they won't even put a team.

It's like, wait a second, that is generic, generic, generic. You don't even show the people behind the humans behind the firm. Um, and so this isn't necessarily a perfect science because every single market is different. And what you'll realize is your competitors in Indianapolis or the what people are looking for may be completely different than a firm searching in San Francisco. Okay? But I think this is a very practical visibility test. It will help you stop guessing and it'll really help you kind of build out um a game plan and how to and how to tackle this. So Rebekah, let's go now into what we call pillar three, which is trust and local signals. So, are you giving AI prospects enough proof that what you say you do, the the financial outcomes that you're promising, there's actually, you know, is there a case study about that?

Are other clients saying the same thing? Are they mentioning your location? Right? And this is very important because in our vertical trust is everything, right? If if now uh knowledge has become commoditized because of AI, they're hiring you for your judgment. they are trusting you to make the right decisions for it. They want they don't want that unknown. They don't want to make a mistake. Okay. So, what you want to do is to make sure that these AI tools are trying to identify credible recommendations, right? So, proof matters. So, when we go into a checklist, let's start with reviews. Rebekah, why is this so important? Um, and sometimes they think, you know, uh, you know, I have a it's a star rating system. It's not. It's the words and the context, the language humans are using.

I often say that if you look at your reviews, you can create almost any marketing campaign directly of what your clients are actually saying versus some, you know, snazzy ad copy. But kind of explain that if you can.

Rebekah Winters Barton

Absolutely. So, most firms think that reviews are only about the star rating. And that does matter, right? Like if you have only one and two star reviews, that's not not a good thing. We want to work on fixing that probably before we do almost anything else. But if you have mostly four and five star reviews, that is really really important. Um, not only the stars, but what people are saying. So a review that says something like great firm is good. It's nice. The AI is going to like it. Generic, generic, generic, very generic. Extremely generic. Um, you want to talk about basic, that would be the definition. Um, but a review that says something like, "They help my dental practice clean up our books and become proactive with tax planning, much more useful." or they help me understand the tax impact of my stock options.

Also much more useful. Um, so now it's kind of reinforcing the review is reinforcing what the firm wants to be known for. Uh, it gives humans proof, people get social proof when they read your reviews, and it gives AI important semantic clues that line up with the branding and positioning that we've already talked about on this podcast, that cohesive wording. So, it basically connects services with industries and outcomes. Um, it's also important that people don't review anonymously. It can really help if like you have if you specialize in construction companies in Indianapolis and you have reviews from 20 construction companies in Indianapolis. That's great. Um, anonymized reviews can be troublesome because people don't necessarily know who left them. The AI system doesn't know if it's some kind of a scam, you paid your friends, you left them yourself.

It's just having verified reviews from actual businesses or individuals is is important as well. Now, you can't tell clients exactly what to write. So, that's an important thing to note here. But you can ask better review questions or give better guidance. For example, instead of just saying, "Can you leave us a review?" Say something like, "What problem did we help you solve?" or "What would you tell another business owner in your situation about how our firm helped you?" or "What changed for you after working with us?" Those kinds of questions tend to create more specific reviews because people are actually answering something. They're not just saying, "Nice working with them. Click post. Done." Um, so kind of the more guidance you're able to give and the more specificity you ask for, the more specificity you're likely to receive in return.

Your homework here is easy. Look at your last 10 reviews or five reviews, however many you have. Do they mention any services? Did they mention any industries? Did they mention any outcomes? Basically, did they mention anything beyond just good working with them? If not, it's time to kind of revamp how you're asking for reviews and the types of questions you're asking. Checklist eight here is local authority. This one we'll kind of try to speed through. I know we're running long today. Um, but this is something a lot of people are very familiar with already from the old SEO days. Local authority and geography still really matter. A lot of accounting firms are able to serve virtually now. That's great. We always mention that when we do website copy, but you don't want to erase your local relevance and authority because that's what AI systems really love and that's where they love to recommend people.

So, your website should explain where your firm is located, what cities or regions you serve, even if you work virtually. It should state if you work virtually. State whether you have clients statewide or in multiple states. Uh whether you have community involvement. We actually just had that same West Virginia firm um from the other day. They help a children's therapy center. They help the Bob Berdette Center. So, we're getting some great local linking going on on that website. And that's the kind of thing I love to see. So, instead of just saying we serve clients nationwide, you might say we're based in Orange County, California. We work virtually with business owners throughout California and across the nation. Boom. Gives both local context and virtual context in a single sentence.

Your Google business profile is important here as well. You want to make sure all of that information is accurate and complete. Services should be listed. Website should be connected. Categories should be logical. Your address should be correct. Any photos and reviews should, as we've said, support that same brand story that you've already told on your website and across your social media. Your homework here is a quick one. Audit your Google business profile. Make sure your hours are accurate, your address is accurate, your phone number is accurate, your services are correct and listed, your categories are right, and if your reviews actually reinforce your positioning. So, that's a pretty easy one to get through. Checklist item nine here is what I would call your proof inventory. Uh, so it's kind of where you gather the evidence that supports your positioning from around the web.

So, it can include things like your team bios, your credentials, how many years of experience you have, the industries you serve, case studies, reviews, published articles, podcast appearances, webinars you've done, any associations you're part of, perhaps awards you've won, or community involvement, continuing education is important to mention, or any specialized certifications you have that might especially play a role within your niche industry. Um, we actually have had some people who specialize in construction, ironically, since that's been our big example today, but who are actually part of construction associations in their states as accountants just to kind of add that extra layer of credibility to their niche. The key isn't just having these things. Having them is great. Making sure they're visible is important. Don't scatter it.

Don't hide it. Um, if the founder, for example, has deep expertise in real estate taxation, but it's not in their bio. Again, the internet doesn't know what we don't tell it. Make sure that kind of information is front and center and ideally mentioned in more than one place. Uh maybe the firm serves 40 restaurants but you don't have a restaurant service page. Again, big problem. You definitely want to mention that. And maybe even mention if some of your local restaurants you work with are okay with it. Mention them. Link out to them. We've helped X. Especially if it's a well-known restaurant locally, uh mention that restaurant. Link out and maybe get a get a quote for the service page. That can be great on a little block all by itself.

So, your homework here is to actually make your proof inventory. List your top niches, list your strongest services, list your credentials, list your best client outcomes, your strongest reviews, and any articles, podcasts, webinars you've appeared on, and then ask yourself, does our website show these? If not, there's your content road map right there. Um, as far as showcasing things like articles, webinars, podcasts, you can have like a resources page or our appearances page and just kind of put all of that together. It's a great way to provide social proof and proof of your expertise very easily for both prospects and AI to find. Pillar three recap here is trust and local signals. Reviews need to be specific. Local presence needs to be complete and consistent. And all of your proof, your proof inventory needs to be visible across your website and in other places.

I laugh. I think the best way to say this, let's and we could have done the entire podcast in this section. Why should I trust this firm? That's what you're trying to answer. If you can do that, um, and back it up, I think you're going to be on your way. So, let's talk a little bit about what not to do. Um, I think firms can be somewhat distracted. Um, and you know, there's a couple here deals here. Number one, do not just add the phrase AI search to your website. that does nothing that is uh that is not going to move the needle. Uh do not publish generic content just to publish content. I see uh specifically in our competitors they have the same thin content posted across thousands of websites.

Um if your article could appear on any you know tax and accounting website in America it's probably not helping you differentiate at all. Right? I think number three is do not hide your best expertise. Um, I see that often. Uh, that should be part of your story. That should be front and center. It make it visible. Do not make prospects dig for it. Okay. Number four, do not rely just on your homepage. Okay. That's the whole idea. The homepage is a starting point for many people, but a lot of times it's not. People will come in through your service page. They'll come through a blog article. Maybe they hit an FAQ that was referenced in the recommendation engines. That is really, really important. So, you can't just think homepage, homepage.

You got to think of all these clusters, all these um strategies that will pull people in to different starting points on your website. And you also have to realize that they may land on a blog article. So, maybe an article or a question or call to action is, hey, do you have questions about this? Reach out. Or maybe you have an AI tool that you an agent that you build on that page, right? Um do not assume your offline reputation automatically translates online. And that's one of the biggest mistakes I see. Uh you might have great clients right now. You may have great referrals uh word of mouth. You may have great uh expertise. But online, if you're not sharing all this information, um it's not going to have context to reference it.

And that is what gets dangerous in kind of the new AI search environment. So the market may know you, but a AI may not. And as recommendations are becoming a bigger source of referrals than normal referral uh pipelines, that is going to be something that definitely affects your future. So, let's roll through uh what we're calling, I guess, a an action plan of some sort. Um, and Rebekah, if you could go through, I think we called it a five-point action plan. Um, we have talked all over it, so we don't have to go into huge detail here. We just want to kind of strengthen this again and reinforce it real quick. Yes. Let's let's quickly do this for you. So number one here is going to be clarify your homepage message.

Make sure someone can understand your firm in 10 seconds or less. Again, you're going to answer those key questions. Who do you serve? What do you help them do? Where do you serve them? And are you credible? Number two, strengthen your top three service pages. Don't rewrite everything at once. Pick the three most important qu services. Ask real questions. Add real examples. Add outcomes. and make the page valuable to both AI and to human users. Number three, build one niche content cluster. Just pick one client segment you want more of. Uh maybe you already have a niche, build it out further. If you don't, choose one that you like, someone that you enjoy working with. Maybe you already have, you know, five or 10 clients in that space and create a service page for them.

Add three to five articles or FAQ questions. Connect related pages. Use re reviews and social proof where appropriate. That's what I was just kind of talking about with getting maybe a quote and linking out to a restaurant owner you work with, things like that. Depth is going to be random volume every single time. Consistency is still important, but quality over quantity sometimes wins in these. Yeah. Before you go, Rebekah on this. And then once you've built this cluster, go ask Chad GPT or Gemini the questions that a prospector would be asking about that particular content cluster you just created. Now, did you deliver the right answers or the right recommendations? Is your story being told? Is your expertise being noticed? And if not, then maybe number four, improve your reviews is where you need to start looking because one of the thinnest areas or the quickest areas, I guess, to move the needle is getting reviews after every successful engagement.

It is so important. Your reputation really matters and people will look to see what others are saying about them. Right? Again, we've already told you how to seed it. If you ask clients to help, you know, describe some problems we solved. If you seed it in the re the review request, um I think you'll see a lot better content. Um and then, uh I talked about this already, which is number five is run AI visibility tests monthly. So, you can go see where you're showing up. So, I gave you the example on that one particular cluster, but you should be asking again, who is your ideal client profile? go look as if you were that profile and see where you guys are stacking up. Where are the gaps?

Are they describing competitors? Where do we need to improve things? And that's where you remove what I'm going to call guessing to actual learning. That's the beauty of the internet. You do something, you think this is going to work one way, you look at it and like oo we missed this. Iterate. And more importantly, AI will tell you where your gaps are. So that's why Rebekah was talking about this. So this leads us into I think one of the biggest issues or opportunities is advisory firms. So um you know firms we believe there's kind of two buckets right now. You have the compliance once a year, you have the year round advisory and it's becoming a bigger and bigger gap. What you're also seeing is advisory opportunities that are built into compliance work.

Um whether that just be social security advisory work, something basic, college planning advisory work. Um, there's a bunch of different ways. We've talked about this in other podcasts, but you know, uh, you cannot say you are proactive if your website only talks about tax preparation, for example. If you're not explaining the value of advisory, why would anyone hire you for that, right? If you cannot say you specialize in business growth, if your service page is generic, that is the whole issue. So now let's kind of align this why this all works together to reinforce that messaging. Yeah. So it really matters for a lot of reasons, but essentially you're wanting to go from ranking to relevance here. So we're moving from search engine optimization to relevance optimization.

We call it geo generative engine op. We can call it relevance optimization. Whatever we call it, the fact remains that things have changed. So traditional SEO asks, can we get traffic? AI relevance asks, can we be understood in the right context? Where traditional SEO asked, are we ranking for this keyword? AI relevance says, can we be recommended for a specific problem, client type, or location? Traditional SEO would say, can we create content? AI relevance says, does our content prove our expertise and value? Traditional SEO said, hey, can we get reviews? AI relevance asks, do our reviews reinforce our positioning? Traditional SEO would say, "Can people find us?" And AI relevance asks, "Do people and AI systems understand why we are the right fit for specific types of people?" That's the shift.

It's not technical. It is technical, but it's not just technical. It's a strategic shift that starts with your positioning, starts with your brand story, starts with clarifying what your position is, and then it requires your expertise, and it rewards your expertise. It favors firms that are explaining themselves well online. That's kind of the crux of all of this. If you've hung with us this long, that's really the takeaway from this entire podcast. The better you explain yourself, your positioning, your firm, your expertise on the internet, the better off you're going to be in the AI search era, right?

Lee Reams II

And let's just wrap this up in a clear way. Number one issue is clarity. Can your firm be understood? We've gone through that uh quite a bit. Number two is be specific. Is it clear who you serve and what problems you solve? Number three then goes into authority, right? Do you have content? Do you have credentials? Do you have reviews and proof that support your story? Okay. Number four then is the structure. Is your information organized? And this is where a lot of people DIYers go south because they don't even know what schema is. They don't even know how to write this correctly. This is kind of like doing your own taxes, right? Number five is consistency. Does your website, your content, your reviews, your Google profile, your online present, does it all come together to say the same consistent story?

And if any of those five are weak, your firm is going to be harder to recommend by AI and humans. So if those are solid, your firm becomes easier to understand, easier to trust, and more importantly, easier to recommend. And that is our goal here. So today we focused on external AI relevance, right? These are signals that we're telling AI about your firm. Can we be understood from the outside? Can prospects understand our value? Uh can these AI engines and tools connect my firm to those questions that people are asking? Uh but there is another side of the conversation and that's where we're going to go uh actually in a future podcast and that's internal AI relevance. Um, and that's where things really get interesting because the next evolution I believe is not just can AI help prospects find my firm.

It is, you know, can AI help my firm understand my own clients better. This is the value of what AI can do in scraping data, conversations, and putting and analyzing all of it to recognize perhaps that opportunity for tax planning to recognize someone who had, you know, a birth and perhaps they should be setting up Trump accounts and fiduciary accounts in 529, you know, to be able to recognize advisory opportunities and service them to you every day. And you go to a dashboard and say, "Hey, you know, what clients am I underserving right now?" That could even be an agent. That could be a skill. And what it's doing is it's finding patterns in the conversations you're having with clients, perhaps transcripts from one of your uh your interviews, the documents they're uploading, the workflows, the deadlines, whatever it is.

And can we move from being reactive to being a predictive firm? And that is what I believe is the importance of kind of what the future firm will look like. I think AI sitting on top of your software is not the same thing as AI native connected systems, right? Um, you know, a lot of times I hear, well, I use such and such portal and they added an AI tool. That's not the same of what we're talking about. It may help you summarize, it may help you research, but it's not connecting the dots inside your CIM CRM. So for example, an AI native firm platform should help you understand your clients, your workflows, where you are, um, communication, uh, service opportunities and and firm intelligence in a way that's completely different than what's out there today.

So I believe that's where the profession is headed. We're going to continue this conversation um, in a future episode and really talk about this predictive firm and kind of, you know, where things are going. So we're finally done with this. This was a long form podcast that we really got into the meat of what you can actually do. Uh anyone who does even 10% of what we talked about today will already start uh moving the needle. So the takeaway again, AI cannot recommend what it cannot understand. Um if your firm looks generic online, it does not matter how good you are offline. Okay? your website, your reviews, your content, service pages, as Rebekah was telling you, industry pages, a firm story, a narrative, right? It makes it clear who you serve, what you solve, where you serve clients, and why you should be trusted.

That is going to change the game for you. So, it's about becoming easier to understand. And when it your firm is easier to understand, it becomes easier to trust. And trust is going to be the future. So, Rebekah, is there anything? We talked so much. Did we miss anything in today's episode? Um, or you think we nailed all this? I think we nailed it. I think if you guys hear me say anything else, you're probably never going to want to listen to me again today, honestly. So, we'll wrap it up. There we go. So, if this is all like overwhelming to you, we are doing and we started this a month ago, six weeks ago maybe. Um, I cannot tell you how many new clients we have onboarded because we're doing these future ready firm assessments.

So, if you go to countyworkspro.com, you'll see click here, get my blueprint. Uh, we'll put the link in the description here as well. But, we're actually analyzing your firm. We're telling you where are you generic, where are the opportunities. We will even dial in a sample narrative for you and what your future firm can look like. We will identify all of this, the gaps, the competition, the local side. U, and we're doing this for free. My team has been doing this. It's been so successful. We've had so many aha moments. I had a client reach out to me from uh LinkedIn post uh last week's podcast between now and then already signed up already super excited. We already have dialed in their narrative and they're going to be live in a week or so.

So super exciting. If it's something is interest you go to counterworkspro.com again find the blueprint your future ready firm assessment and we'll go ahead just ask answer a couple questions and my team will put this together. So again thanks for being a listener of the growthminded accountant. This was I, as I told you, a real homework driven uh uh discussion. We think there's a lot of value here. Hopefully, this is starting to resonate. You're starting to get how to take advantage of these opportunities here in the modern AIH. So, again, thanks for being a listener of the Growth Mind Accountant podcast. Until have a happy fourth, a beautiful happy 250 to America this weekend. Stay safe and we'll see you next