AI Search, the 2026 Tax Reset, and the End of Generic Tax & Accounting Firms

Lee Reams II

Best practices for running your firm in the digital age. This podcast is brought to you by CountingWorks PRO. Let's get started. Welcome back to the Growth Minded Accountant Podcast. Today, believe it or not, is our last episode of 2025, and it might be one of the most important conversations we've had going into 2026 because there have been two tectonic shifts that are colliding at the same time. AI-powered search is changing how people find tax and accounting professionals, or more importantly, how they don't. and the largest tax reset in over a decade. It takes effect now, and all these, uh, tax laws, all these questions, all these advisory opportunities for your clients are piling on. So, if your firm is generic, AI won't surface you. And if your firm is reactive, the tax changes will overwhelm you. So, this is not fear-based, uh, messaging. It's about fit for the new rules of discovery and demand. And that's what we're going to talk about today. So, as usual, Rebekah, welcome to our last episode. How are you doing? If you could say hello. I am doing well. I'm excited. I'm always excited to get started, but I think this is a really good one. Yeah. And I'm going to do a little bit of a kind of some background, and then we'll give you some stats because when we say you disappear, we're going to give you some of the reasons why we're saying that and I think it'll start making sense. You actually don't disappear. Uh, you'll still show up, but there's a big change in how 10 blue links compare to an AI answer and how it's put together. So basically, you know, you're only going to get three to five brands that are talked about. And in the old days of Google, you could still be in the game at 20, 30, whatever. So AI search is about to wipe out a massive portion of generic tax and accounting websites. And when we talk about generic, this is when I've been saying cookie-cutter is dead for, you know what, 6 months now. So you combine this with all these tax law changes and the firms without a story. And what we mean there is: does your brand say anything? Are you just saying the same thing as every other tax and accounting firm? Um, if you are still just blending in, you are truly a commodity. You are no longer an authority. And more importantly, if you can't back this up with client trust, you're not just losing rankings; you're losing relevance. So, what happens is discovery has moved, as I said, from 10 blue links to ChatGPT, uh, Google's AI tools, and most firms will not be retrieved in these conversations. Not because they're necessarily bad, but they're really indistinguishable. So, we're going to talk about how to make yourself stand out, how to use narrative to own the new conversation. So, we don't want AI um to to be thought of as punishing you. It's just basically sorting firms differently. So, generic firms fade into the background. Uh, clear firms with clarity rise to the top. So, Rebekah, let's talk about this in a little way. And let's start with the core issue. Search is no longer just about websites. It's about identity. And explain what that means in some, like, you know, give a couple of examples of, you know, what a generic site might say and then perhaps like what a uh a a narrativeled site would say and let's just start explaining this to the beginning, and then we're going to go in and kind of explain why you'll start disappearing in the conversations.

Rebekah Winters Barton

Absolutely. So, I say it all the time: identity matters. The personality of your firm matters. This is key. Now, we are for all of the reasons you just explained. So, if your website simply says, "Hey, we do taxes, we do bookkeeping, we offer payroll services," you're giving your clients a menu, not a reason to choose you. You're not saying how you're different from any other firm on the block or any other firm in your city. So, it's important to figure out who your niche audience is and where you excel. So, you already mentioned dual-income households facing higher marginal rates. That's a great, honed-in talking point that you can cover on your homepage. You can cover your service pages. Uh, another example would be business owners losing QBI deductions. What do I do now? Pose it as a question. That's a question people are asking. It's also a question they're searching for. If you're directly answering that question, you're going to rank much better than your competitors who aren't. Another thing here to remember is that people who focus on niche industries are typically recommended more within AI because AI can really understand who it is that you're going to help. So just recently, we've worked with someone who specializes in wellness spas. We've worked with someone who specializes in doctors. We've worked with someone who specializes in farming. So it runs the gamut. Think about your area. Think about what the big industries are and look at your existing client list to see where you might already have a foothold. Yeah. So AI systems, they rely on categorization, right? So if your firm doesn't clearly define who it serves and what it's known for, the system cannot confidently surface to you. Okay? So it's going to look for someone who does say they work with wellness spas, right? Uh, if your site looks like a template, and I'm speaking to not my CL customers, obviously, but everyone else, AI treats you like one. And I think that's a big deal. So AI search doesn't just show 10 firms. It looks at and compiles one answer and cites a few sources. Uh so that alone removes visibility for the majority of firms, even good ones. So when we say uh you're going to disappear from the internet, you're no longer going to be included in these conversations. So it's not necessarily like a punishment, it's math. So what does that mean for you? You're going to get fewer citations. People aren't uh scrolling because they're not looking for links, right? And that means obviously they're also seeing zero clicks. And real quick, what is a zeroclick experience in chatbt now versus even what Google is doing. So a zeroclick experience basically means that people are simply going to go with what's recommended to them. So within AI systems, I think one of the biggest things to remember here is that AI, and we talked about this a little bit last week, but we can go more in depth. AI is truly developing relationships, so to speak, with their searchers in a way that Google never did. So, Google relied on a variety of ranking factors that mostly had to do with web authority. Uh, how long your URL had existed, what keywords were on your website, how frequently you were posting blog content. And while these things are not unimportant now, they are important in a very different way. AI doesn't care about the frequency of keywords on your website. They care about your overall narrative. And so by putting your story out there and clearly defining who you serve, what you do, and where you are, you are making it easier for AI to say, "Hey, this is the expert for this particular user. You're going to be the first person recommended. It's going to show up in their chat and that person is going to be likely to go with you because AI has developed trust with its users in a way that Google really never did."

Lee Reams II

Yeah. And we we say you're deleted, but it doesn't mean you're obviously your website's still there, your brand's still there, but it's no longer being retrieved by these tools as a recommended professional, for example, or as an expert in a specific topic. And you got to realize how narrative works. So, it's basically data for these tools. Um, you know, don't think of it as fluff. Okay? Narrative is basically structured data for the machine. So, what does that mean? Um, are you getting repeated expertise signals? And actually, let's get into that a little more detail. When we say expertise signals, what is an expertise signal? Is that a case study? Is that a blog you wrote? Is it a social post? Is it a review about a specific service or niche? Rebekah, I think this is a really, really important part of the conversation because one of the biggest misconceptions I see with our clients is that writing and copy is all just fluff. um they think it's just there for fun or it's there to look nice. They don't understand that this is what the machine learning models are going off of these days and it's critically important if you want to rank and you want to excel in the world of AI to have these different touch points that define your narrative. So Lee, what you just mentioned, every single one of those things is important and does define your expertise. It's across the board and it's even more things than that. um YouTube videos, Reddit posts, um blogs on your own website, blogs on sites like tax buzz where you're cross-osting or posting alternate articles. All of this matters and it all comes together to form your brand identity. You know, even you commenting on another Instagram post or Facebook post as your brand can play a role in where you rank and in whether or not AI considers you an expert. Engaging in conversations across the web is what's going to help differentiate you from people who just have a website. And even if that website copy is good, having a brand that is on multiple places around the internet and has kind of in my world, we think of it as having a web footprint that exceeds far beyond your own domain. That's a very important part of all of this. AI is going to look multiple places. So the more you are cohesively branding yourself on multiple touch points, the better off you're going to be. Yeah. And you gave a perfect example. So we allow guest. So people that are tax buzz uh members, I guess, subscribers, they have the ability to guest post on Tax Post.

Taxbuzz is a very high niche uh you know ranked site. So it has really high um as far as the variable goes. If you get content on there and Google and or these ChatGPT tools see it, they look at it and give it more relevance. So we have a client who wrote about taxability of social security, something super simple, they're getting thousands and thousands of visitors every month to that article, but it more importantly that is a signal that this person is an expert in that particular I don't know if they focus on retirement planning or you know wealth transitions or whatever there's but that is a huge benefit. So when it comes to this narrative, let's talk about this. So narrative you need categorization. Then you amplify that with visibility. Then you have authority and authority is built by what? Reviews. Uh perhaps the types of subjects that you talk about repeatedly showing yourself as an author being quoted or interviewed by others. And what does this all bring? It brings more revenue. So I think we've kind of run around branding and narrative now for months and months and months. I'm hoping all of our listeners are like, "Okay, we're tired about this." So, now let's talk about the what I call the tax reset, the once in a decade advisory moment. So, uh this is an incremental change. Obviously, it's a big reset and it affects every income level. So, it's not just high-end people that are affected by these tax changes. So, you know, you have major provisions expiring or changing. You got individual rate structure changes. You got standard deduction roll backs. You got state exemptions.

You got QBI. You have salt cap. you have uh tips, overtime, you name it, you have stuff going on right now. So, clients don't necessarily understand what's coming. I think this next tax season is going to be an eye openener for those that are just doing compliance. If you have been doing advisory and you've been creating and attracting clients that understand that, um I think you're going to really have some huge opportunities. So, you know, a a client asks, you know, should I convert to Roth before rate change? One firm says, "Let's talk during tax season." Another firm already published a clear Roth conversion explainer, right? And guess what happens? AI will recommend the second firm. The client trusts the second firm. The advisory engagement follows. You as a compliance only completely miss the boat here. So, uh, complexity always favors firms that explain consequences, not just calculate outcomes. That's where this whole advisory narrative comes from. So, clients are searching already whether they're calling you or not. I mean, think about it. Most accounting firms and tax pros are so busy that clients actually in some respects are like, "Oh, do I even want to send this question in? When will they respond?" We see responsiveness or lack of it as the number one reason for a one-star review. So, it is much easier for me to just go to Chad GBT and hope that it's correct. So, you know, what are the the clients searching? You know, should I accelerate income before 2026, right? Is my entity still optimal with these new tax laws?

Do I have an estate exposure problem? there'll be all kinds of questions and AI will start recommending firms that already teach these answers and I think this is a big deal. So, you know, I look at it where there's a great division happening right now. Um, and the firms that get it that actually are putting their personality and what so what do we mean by personality and narrative, Rebekah? I know we've talked about this, but uh you know, how do you show that if you're shy or you want you you'd like your privacy? Um, but maybe it's what you do in the community. Maybe it's some of the experiences that you have, life experience, maybe it's certain types of clients you work with. How do you explain that or how do you like start developing it from being just the generic firm to someone who has a narrative driven firm, right? So, there are a lot of ways to do this. For some people, like you mentioned, it's easy. They want to put their personality out there. They want to have family photos on their website. They do a full branding session and it's very them ccentric. But if you are a firm or a practitioner who does not want your face on your website necessarily. We run into this a lot or you're someone who's simply very private about your private life, there are a lot of ways that that you can still have a narrative driven firm and a narrative driven website. One way is to focus on your clients and who you help. I would say that's probably the best way. Those are the people who need to find you. So, if you are able to focus on exactly who it is you serve and what it is that you do for them, that's a great way to have a narrative- driven firm without putting yourself in the middle of everything. Uh, for example, if you have actionable ways that you help people, I've saved this person $10,000, three years running, do a case study about them. Get a quote, put it on your website. Their face doesn't need to be there either, but you have that social proof by having the quote or the review or the story posted on your site. You can also develop content surrounding the actual niches or types of people you serve. That's a great way to have a narrative- driven firm. Um, another thing you can do, like you kind of mentioned, Lee, is talk about your community involvement. Again, some people aren't wildly comfortable with that, but if you are highly localized, which is another great thing for AI, linking to websites of charities you support or local organizations you're involved with, that can be a good way to one, start building a linking structure, and two, really connect with people in your local area who are looking for someone close by who they can have do their taxes, someone they can really talk to, someone they can communicate with on a regular basis. So there are a lot of different kind of approaches you can take to reach that same result of having a narrative driven website and it doesn't look the same for everyone. Some sites are more funny, some sites are very factual, some sites are very client focused. So there's a lot of pathways to reach the same ultimate goal. And I think that's important for people to remember. There isn't it's not a one-sizefits-all approach as far as getting to that narrative site or that narrative outcome. Well, that's the whole point. You want to stand out. You want to do the purple cow. Uh you want to be the Ryan Sirant. I just wrote a blog article for the uh Growth Minded accountant blog. And it was all about how Ryan Sernhand, if you do not know who he is, is a a real estate a realtor professional based in New York City, but now expanding everywhere. Just got a huge investment from a VC firm to scale. But he has created an entire brand and ecosystem about ultra luxury real estate kind of on his own style.

And he's gone from being a just a realtor broker at a firm to running his own as one of the fastest growing firms in the country. And it is all narrative. It's all branding. They are experts at using social media. But they basically took a, you know, a stale, hey, all the, you know, stodgy realtors doing it the one way and they've added like a youth movement to it, some school, uh, like Hollywood, a little bit of Hollywood in it. They've added it in may almost like a bunch of influencers selling real estate, but guess what? That is working for them. That is their narrative. I'm not saying that's right for you, but you don't want to be the generic firm anymore because you really are going to be sitting there. Think about it. You have a template website. So, meaning you say the same exact thing that every other competitor in your market does. It's like you copy them and say, "Oh, this is my messaging." That means there's broad messaging. That means there's no clear audience. You're a generalist, right? You're going to attract all kinds of people or no one at all because if I'm looking for a dental CPA and has experience with dentists, I'm going to find somebody a either through a referral or through ChatGPT that does that. And then if you don't have a narrative, how do you stand out? like how do you stop building rapport with someone that's going to make me want to hire you? We just had a client who they said, "Oh, I'm getting a ton of leads, but I'm not converting them." And you know how they led on their website, and this is against all of our messaging and and our guidance is they lead it with a a basically a signup form. There's no story ahead of it of why I should hire you. A even what problem you solve or b what is some proof of why you're the right person. and it goes straight to give me your information and then I'll decide we'll talk. Um there's no narrative here. Uh I don't know who my audience the person's going after because it's right away just give me your information and then we'll set up an appointment. Right? So that has got to be really difficult to succeed and then you ask well why am I not converting those leads because you haven't qualified them and you can use the content and language on your site to do that and more importantly you start becoming invisible in AI search. So, I'm going to go back to when we say if if AI is only sourcing or referencing three to five firms and in the old days they referenced, you know, hundreds of firms. That's what we mean the percentage of firms that are being talked about um are the ones that are going to get all the business, right? So, you can see how you all of a sudden are just disappearing. You're out of the conversations. You're not getting as many referrals. Um you're competing now on price.

You're reactive work only. You're dealing with clients that are making you run circles, right? The narrative driven firm. You have a clear story, clear audience, clear authority, content that teaches both humans and machines, visible and AI discovery, wins advisory work, right? Better clients, higher fees, more importantly, sustainable growth. There's a lot of I've been on um this has been hard for me. I've been on LinkedIn, Reddit a lot, on Twitter a lot. Actually, I'm in conversations now every day. And I will say it has helped me a lot kind of seeing what's working and what's not working. And there's a couple influencer like you know one of the things that happens and specifically you've have a lot of experience is you have been pricing based on hourly rates forever right and you've built your firm based on referrals and you're referring the same type of clients are being referred to you and their expectations for pricing or even the type of services you offer. So, if you've been in business for 30 years, you're actually getting disrupted right now. Who's comes in someone with only 5 to 10 years in experience and you're saying, "Well, how is that possible?" You're having a much harder time because you haven't been raising your rates. You haven't been changing the way you price things. You haven't been changing your narrative at all because you don't have a narrative. You're a commodity. And what happens is this isn't marketing. This is coming down to survival economics, which is kind of a Walmart experience for tax and accounting firms. And that's what we're trying to explain to you guys what has changed. So for sure these conversations are occurring now in AI and we know that all these tax law changes have occurred. So how can I now win? So I'm going to give you a couple examples. So uh let's say uh you know one well-positioned advisory client often replaces five to 10 low margin tax return clients. Yeah, it's pretty easy. Do the math. If you're doing CFO advisory, you know, the average is around $2,000 a month.

So, one client, $24,000 a year. I get 10 240. I get 40. It's a million-doll business off of 40 clients. You got to be kidding me, right? So, the ROI of creating this narrative and authority isn't just more leads, it's better margins, higher fees, and more importantly, less friction. So, I have five steps here that I think you can win with. And Rebekah, if you can kind of go through those, I think this is right in your wheelhouse. So, go ahead and then I'll take it from I'll keep the conversation going. Absolutely. So, the first thing you want to do is rewrite your narrative so AI can properly categorize you. That's what we've been talking about for several weeks now. It's something that hopefully we've driven the point home of how important this is to tell your story, to have that narrative driven website, who you serve, what problems you solve, and really why you're there, why you exist, why you started your firm in the first place. Second thing you can do, build authority around 2026 tax questions. This is huge. AI answers questions. That's what it does. People come to it with long-tail questions like, "Hey, how um are standard deductions going to change in 2026? I need help." If you publish a blog post or an FAQ question with that as the headline and you answer it, you are very very likely to be recommended in AI. It loves it when people explicitly answer questions on their websites. So that's huge. You can do some research, find out common questions, then answer them. The third thing, retire the generic website. We know they're not working. They haven't been ranking for a long time. even within Google, the more authority you have, the more custom content you publish, the better off you're going to be. So, that's just kind of a no-brainer at this point. Do something different with your site. Update it, add new copy, make some changes, update your imagery. Uh, stock images, I know they can be tempting, but any kind of personalized imagery you can get is going to help you as well. The fourth thing, shift from prep to positioning, tax prep, it's a dime a dozen. Even AI has partnered with Turboax now chatgpt and into it have a deal. So if you're doing compliance only you're going to struggle. Um Lee I think you're very very right there. So positioning yourself as an adviser as a partner as someone who can really provide value to your clients. That's critical and that's something you can do with your narrative with your blog posts with news articles you're publishing with your social posts. There are so many different platforms you can use to position yourself really well and give yourself an edge, especially in your local market. And then the fifth thing here is to use AI as a multiplier, not a shortcut. If you go back in our in our podcast, we did the the use AI to 10X yourself series a few months ago. And that's kind of what this is going back to. It's not meant to be a shortcut. It's not meant to be something where you are reducing the value you provide your clients because you're pawning it off on AI.

This is a way actually to allow you to do more work to do better work without hiring staff without overextending yourself. So let AI help you treat it as the assistant that it is and use it to build a better website, build better content and ultimately build a better firm. Yeah. And I have uh so I think part of the problem is the media narrative on AI and just this fear factor of AI that is holding an industry like tax and accounting back. Um and I think that's very unfortunate. So you know you have the salt Sam Alman and Elon Musk and their obviously egos and their battle that they're having and Elon telling us that you know there will just be no need to work and blah blah blah. I I have not personally experienced all of that in just our own. We've invested obviously heavily in Max. We are deep in AI. I see what it can do and what it cannot do. And I also see what it really opens as far as opportunities for the tax and accounting industry, the profession. And this isn't just a few years. I I'm starting to push the horizon out more and more because with any big technology, it doesn't just roll as fast as these, you know, leaders, they're trying to raise money. They're trying to add valuations. They're trying to build, you know, uh energy sources. So, they need to pitch this as much as they can. Will some point in the 2030 years from now might that vision start showing? Maybe. But that's a long time for any cycle, right? So the cycle in front of us today is a huge opportunity for tax and accounting pros to take advantage of what AI could do. So we have given you kind of the groundwork, the road map, the playbook, whatever you want to call it, of how you can now make changes right now between now and the start of this tax season. Relook at your website. Do I have a narrative? Do I answer those questions? um am I using AI to help me with this narrative to create clarity to be able to create content at scale that's very personalized right and then more importantly can I do all this without adding people that's the value of AI okay think of it as a labor source um and with it you can create very narrative clear messaging okay so that's how firms can grow by uh scaling their thinking okay so same staff let's attract better clients or Let's upsell our good clients to better higher fee services, right? What does that mean? That means less chaos. So hopefully that is starting to resonate. You know, AI is sorting firms. That's the the whole premise of today's discussion is that is happening and fewer firms are being spoken about.

Okay. And then this big tax reset is exposing firms that are not proactively advising clients. There are firms that are absolutely killing it, charging high fees right now. So for Growth Minded tax and accounting firms, this isn't necessarily a threat, right? This is an opening. So I want you to be legible, legible. I want you to be specific. And more importantly, I want you to be human. Um cookie cutter is dead. I'm telling you, we are seeing it in our own ecosystem of clients. And even our own clients, you know, let's talk about this before we finish this up. Rebekah, not everyone listens to us. We're giving them free branding. Like we're doing agency level stuff that you would have cost 10 $20,000 three or four years ago. We're doing this within our our $300 a month product. It's insane, right? We still have clients that won't follow the advice. They want to do the old thing. Talk about the difference you're seeing in the amount of client growth, fee growth between the firms that are using narrative advisory and identity winning versus I'm going to follow. I don't I'm too scared. I don't want this too risky for me. I don't want to do it. I'm close to retirement. I just want to deal with my client base. What does that do to them, though? It's a massive difference. Um, so I think we've had a lot of sites going out lately where I've gotten great great data from the people. I've had great conversations. They've been a lot of fun. We've really had a good time with it and really given these firms some personality and injected that into things. We've had some great images added over with the design team. So I think there are people who are getting it and those firms are noticing very quickly that they're ranking within AI. We do testing on our end. A lot of them are savvy enough they're doing testing on their end. They're seeing themselves get recommended within GPT and other AI systems. And it's really exciting to watch this growth and to watch ChatGpt and Gemini and these different sources recommending them to people locally and even to us when we do searches, you know, and we're based all over the country. So, we're seeing that growth and we're seeing it in real time and it is really, really fun for us to then go to the clients and be like, "Hey, look at this screen cap. Like, look what where we saw you recommended today." So, it's a lot of fun. Firms that are stuck in the old ways, that's not happening. Um, you know, they're still ranking within mapping systems and things like that. J

ust the blue links that we always talk about if they're ranking at all. But they're certainly not differentiated. And a lot of them do double down on, you know, I've been a generalist for 40 years and that's what I do. And they're just very unwilling to um to hone in on anything or to really inject any personality into the site. And we are seeing them kind of falter. Um we're seeing them struggle to get new clients. We're seeing them struggle even if they are getting leads. We're seeing them struggle to convert those leads because people don't really understand where their expertise lies or what it is that they do differently. And I think another thing that we're we will see as these people start to retire is that their firms are not as sellable because they haven't differentiated themselves and buyers or potential buyers aren't going to really know what they're getting or what kind of client lists they're inheriting from firms that just kind of have a mishmash of people from all different walks of life. Maybe they're very complianceheavy. So, there's a lot to all of this moving forward and a lot of reasons to consider making some changes to your site now so that you're kind of ahead of the curve when things really start to shift come next year. Yeah, I think this multiplier effect on just your multiple when you go to sell for a digitally enhanced firm uh is night and day. And I think that in itself if you're closer to retirement is enough to just kind of sit back and say, "Hey, wait a second. If I started if if I start creating upsells for my current clients into advisory and I do get those 10 clients and added 250 revenue. Um I think that multiple is worth it if it's 1.3 times an extra 250. I just made myself a boatload of money by making just a simple change. So uh I think this is all wonderful advice. Again this is stuff that's happening and is working. One thing I wanted to add, the beauty of this uh method, I guess, and narrative is when you do look to see what ChatGPT is saying about you, you're going to see your holes and you're going to see maybe some rogue one-star reviewer said something bad about you. You can now counter that um with new messaging or new content. Perhaps Chat GPT isn't using the talking points you think they should be saying, and you're going to go, "Whoa, why aren't they saying this about me? I do that." And you know why? because you have a hole in your content. And what's great about it is in this is this is the great feedback loop, right? So you can ask these questions. You can see where you're sitting, how well you're doing, what I need to to fill, backfill, and then immediately, you know, within a few weeks, all of a sudden now it's you're being portrayed the way you think you should be portrayed. I think that's a big deal. So that is a wrap on 2025. Um, this has been a fun year for the Growth Minded accountant.

Uh, we've grown a lot. If you have not joined our group on Reddit, I started uh a Reddit group called the Growth Minded Accountant. You can't spell it out on Reddit. They don't allow it's one character short, so they wouldn't allow me to get the whole thing. Uh but I am posting daily there. There's conversations. It's a new community at this point, so we're just starting. We already have over a thousand visitors uh within our first few weeks. So, I think it's awesome. We're getting some good velocity there. But please check us out on Reddit. Uh it is all about Growth Minded things. So it's going to be teaching you about AI. It's going to be teaching you about advisory. It's going to be teaching you about ROI. It's going to be shorter form content that's easier to jump in. And then it will also have a lot of other opinions and points of view that other users will start adding. So please follow us on the Reddit channel if you can.

Again, thank you for being a listener of the Growth Minded Account Podcast. We will see you next time in 2026. Have a safe and happy holiday season and we'll talk to you next year!