Cookie-Cutter Is Dead: Why Accounting Firms Are Becoming Invisible in the AI Search Era

Welcome to the Growth Minded Accountant podcast where our experts will share best practices on running your firm in the digital age. This podcast is brought to you by Counting Works Pro. Let's get started. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Growth Minded Accountant podcast. My name is Lee Rees. I am the founder and CEO of County Works and our sister company Tax. So today we're doing a little bit of a different format. it's not a podcast style. We're actually doing this in a a webinar style that is designed to provide CPAs for sure CPE credit. So if you're using one of our partners and we're presenting this to you, you will be able to get CPE credit. Today's topic is something we have talked about for several years now on this podcast. Rebecca Barton, by the way, is joining me. She's the chief visibility officer of County Works. Rebecca, if you could say hello. Yeah. Hey everybody. This is going to be a fun one to dive into. Yeah. So, we've been talking about cookie cutter is dead, and we've tried to kind of push the angle a little bit.

but this isn't a webinar about websites. It's about visibility in a world where AI is becoming the front door to discovery. So, our our subhead here, why generic firms are becoming invisible in the AI search era is really important. So, the way we look at this is I can look at, most firms, when they come to us at County Works Pro for a makeover, it feels like they market like it's still 2015, right? but the issue here is obviously client behavior has changed, dramatically in the last specifically accelerated in the last few years. So, I can look at, let's say, 20 accounting firms, I can look at their homepage, in in a few seconds and barely remember one of them after another, right? They just all blend in. It's kind of generic after generic and what that does is it signals I provide commodity services. So today we are going to talk about positioning how to be memorable and more importantly how to build trust. So let's get going. We'll do a little bit of a kind of the the opening truth as I call it.

and we even said here being good is no longer enough. You have to be recognizable. And Rebecca, kind of, explain that in in a little more detail of what we mean by that. Yeah. So, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, technical excellence was what mattered, right? It was having a website that had all of the right components to it, that had the right number of keywords, that had the correct you were mentioning certain keywords a specific number of times on each page. Your website was designed for what the internet wanted. Then things have changed a lot. So today AI compresses sameness we say here and what we basically mean by that is that any competent firm generically will sound identical. There's no differentiation there's no way for a client to understand hey this firm is going to do X for me that the firm down the street is not going to do. So over the next decade, as things continue to shift and AI continues to to gain market share and to shift how we search, the firms that are going to win are not going to be the best at what they do.

They'll be the ones that are the most visible online by using a lot of the tactics that we're going to get into today. Yeah. And I mean, the reality here, Rebecca, is most firms sound interchangeable online, right? they, even if they're phenomenal in real life, they're the best expert in health care or the best expert for actors or producers. usually if you go to their website, you would have no idea that they are, that's their specialty or their niche. And what we're going to try to do is kind of talk through today why that is holding you back. That's, not only just your revenue, but really your growth prospects and how much your clients are actually going to trust you. So, let's get into one, I guess, introducing ourselves a little bit more. Normally we have our video on for this presentation. Since we're offering CPE credit, we are doing more of a slide version. So I apologize if you like seeing us. I actually prefer this sometimes, right? But again, my name is Lee Ree. I'm the founder and CEO of countyworkspro.com, taxpos.com.

I've been in this vertical for many decades now, and I've seen the transformation from what I'll call the traditional print way of doing things. we kind of focused on client-f facing newsletters and presentation products for folders and envelopes and things like that to now a AIdriven world. So, super excited for the opportunities that are ahead and Rebecca, our chief visibility officer, brings a a different perspective on the writing side, how to position yourself, how to create a narrative that really connects with clients. So, this is going to be a fun conversation. let's get into it now. So what you will leave with a clear path from invisible to inevitable. So what do we mean Rebecca? Give the five strategic shifts we're talking about here. Yes. So the first thing is why AI is compressing every generic firm into the same result. And that's what we just kind of talked about. General copy is going to make you completely indistinguishable from your competitors if you're not differentiating yourself with your story, with your narrative, with your positioning.

The second thing here is how you can escape commodity positioning before clients default to price. People naturally default to price. They want to know how much they're going to pay. And a lot of times they will choose based on price. It's your job as a professional to differentiate yourself enough that they understand the value of your services and price becomes secondary. The third thing here that we're going to talk about is the narrative formula behind firms that clients remember. This is one of my favorite parts and something that is really a lot of fun because it gives you a chance to think about who you want to be as a firm owner and the type of personality you want your firm to have and who you actually want to serve and work with as your client base. The fourth thing we're going to get into is building a website that functions more as a trust system than a simple brochure. Anybody can have a web page, right? Anybody can have a beautiful web page, but not what every what everyone does not have is a website that builds trust and authority from the moment people visit that site.

We talk a lot on here about first impressions. So, we're going to talk about how to make that website a valuable first impression to anyone who happens upon it. And then fifth, we're going to talk about the future firm model, which is where the authority we're going to already get into, the ecosystem you have behind the scenes, your tech stack, and your AI visibility all come together to really help you not only survive the next 10 years, but stand out. Yeah, Rebecca, you mentioned something I think is really important. Even if a site is beautiful, without a narrative, without a position statement, without it connecting with a visitor or even a client, you're basically just looking like everyone else, right? so what we're going to talk about today is strategic. We're not doing what I'll call tactical fluff. We're trying to help you understand the shift that's happening before your competitors fully catch up. And I believe that the firms that are adapting today and utilizing what we're talking about will have advantages over the next three to five years.

So this is much bigger than traditional like search engine optimization and kind of these old ways of doing things. It is completely changing and it changes how trust is built online. So let's talk about act one. The ground beneath the industry just shifted. So Rebecca, let let's kind of talk talk about this and what you're seeing specifically to the shift actually depends on the age group of your demographic or your client. So certain clients, boomers are still mostly working in a certain way, but the millennials, any of the younger audiences that you may be looking for, new businesses, cryptos, AI startups, they really are using some of these AI tools first. So the traditional way of finding people, discovering you, trusting you, visibility is completely changed. So give a little insight of how it's changed, what's changed, and how quickly it has changed. It has changed so fast. I often joke that, I've relearned my job about three times in the past two years as AI has has kind of come onto the scene and really changed everything.

So, no longer does it matter that you have a website or even that you have social media or even that you have Google reviews. All of those things are still important, but what has become increasingly important is the narrative behind them and building a cohesive story that these AI systems, a lot of times we refer to it as geogenerative engine optimization or AIO, artificial intelligence optimization. These systems want to see your story. They are intelligent. They understand the story you're telling and they understand their users in a way that Google traditional Google search traditional Bing never did. So it's critical now to sort of build your brand across the web on different platforms, not just your website, not just your social, but to have all of these things connected so that the internet understands who you are. While the audience has changed, like Lee was mentioning, millennials want something different than what, boomers might want or even what Gen X wants. And then Gen Z has their own sort of way of doing things.

One thing here that's really critical is that none of that's going to matter if none of those generations find you. And so what we're really going to get into today is the shift in how things have changed from an algorithmic standpoint and how that translates into your audience actually being able to find you online. Yeah. And I think before we get into that, Rebecca, I'll just mention kind of the evolution. So the old old days, it was about technical expertise that mattered most, right? that's what created referrals. That's what created then reviews, right? And that was kind of what fed the SEO algorithms, Google, and how many people would choose you. So, your main way of getting clients was either a referral, they then found a review perhaps of you, they read it, they saw like-minded people, they said this is a good person. And today AI is now interpreting these authority signals and these trust signals and then basically communicating them to the prospect. So, it's completely got, rid of the middleman in the referral space.

it is becoming the modern-day referral. So every era changes who wins visibility and many firms that we still see I still see large vendors in our space that are website vendors for example still selling the exact same processes strategies that were I'd say 5 years old now 10 years old and people still buying in it just doesn't work the same way anymore so let's get into this a little bit here and let's talk about how AI is compressing sameness so I think that you got to understand AI doesn't reward necess necessarily repetition. It actually collapses repetition. So, you know, think of it. 10 firms use the same identical language. AI sees them as kind of substitutes, right? I could use this one. I could choose this one or I could choose this brand. There's no differentiation between the two and AI systems actually are looking for more details, right? So, the the market used to reward what I'll call ranking. increasingly though, it rewards being the clearest answer. So if your positioning could belong to anyone, AI assumes it belongs to no one.

And Rebecca, if you want to add to that kind of how what you're seeing already. Yeah. So what we see a lot of is that saying things like, we provide expert tax and accounting services may sound okay and may very well be true, but anyone can say it. Most firms that are still functioning and have a large client base or have a dedicated client base are skilled at what they do. So saying something like that doesn't really set you apart or help you in the AI search world because what AI is looking for, like you just mentioned, Lee, is that they want someone that stands out. These systems want to deliver the best possible result to their client based on what they know about that user. So, if that user, for example, is a restaurant owner in the Back Bay of Boston to use our favorite Oh, Rebecca, you had to go there. Go ahead. I had to go there. it's going to be more likely to recommend you as a tax professional if your website says that you serve Boston boutique restaurant owners. So, that sort of thing is very critical.

Establishing your audience, positioning yourself. So instead of 10 firms, we kind of have this example here. Before AI, 10 firms might compete on 10 different keywords. Now 10 firms are competing to be the one single answer that is recommended. So that's where niching down and really establishing yourself as an expert in a specific space, not the general tax and accounting space is going to help you shine. or more importantly just showing your personality and AI will kind of connect the dots because the the person using an AI tool for search for example and it's not really search but let's say they're asking hey I'm looking for a virtual CFO advisor for my restaurant in the back bay and the reason we laugh is I've used that example in probably 12 podcasts so we seem to keep going back to it but anyways what it's going to do is it knows the personality of that person kind of the intent what they're looking for and it's going to try to match up what it considers a personality match if that makes sense.

So, it's really important. We're seeing this more and more. So, again, it's not just niche. It could be a service specialty. It could be a niche like we're talking about. It could be a local. It could be just your personality. You like fly fishing. And this restaurant owner is an avid fly fisher. I mean, it's just connecting the dots. And that's the power of AI. So, when I go into the next one is it's search results to AI answers. So, we're trying to explain how user behavior changes. So, clients are spending less time comparing and more time trusting the answer engine. And this is true. I've heard it from my dentist when I just went to the dentist. how people are using chat GBT to, get medical advice and how often it is incorrect or guiding people the wrong way, but they're still trusting it, right? So, traditional SEO still matters, but I think clarity and authority matter more. and I think Rebecca kind of talked about the old way versus the AI way and kind of the difference between asking Google versus asking chat GBT or perplexity directly, right?

There's a different output and a different experience. Absolutely. So, the old way, and we do have some examples here, but I'll just kind of narrate it. You used to have the 10 blue links that showed up on the first page of Google. We all know them. you would see the metadata, the little title, the little description, and most people would click on the first one or two results that they saw, assuming that they were the best because they were ranking first. The number of reviews you had helped hugely here, the number of five-star reviews specifically, and the number of keywords you want. And some of that back 10, 15 years ago had to do with how many times you mentioned those specific keywords on your website. It was a different world. You had time to evaluate before you decided. You could open three or four of the links and compare their sites. Today with AI, which is gaining market share on a daily basis, AI picks the best answer for you and it doesn't always provide a list. Sometimes it will say this is the best firm for you based on what I know about you.

So often only the most clear firm for that person's needs is named. I will give my Star Wars example again, Lee, kind of like your dentist example. I keep going back to this, but I'm a big Star Wars fan and my chat GPT knows this. I was searching for restaurants to try, new restaurants that we hadn't tried yet in our area. And it was so funny because I mentioned nothing about Star Wars in my search. I just asked for a list of restaurants. The very first one was a pizza place themed to Star Wars because it knew this about me. So your your users now, your potential clients, their AI systems are going to know things about them that they don't even put in their search query or their prompt. And Lee, it goes back to what you were saying about fly fishing. If your about me mentions, "Hey, I love fly fishing in Montana and the internet knows that the AI knows that this user also loves fly fishing," you are going to much more likely match with them than another tax professional who doesn't have anything personal or any kind of personality on their website.

Hopefully, that kind of helps break down the difference here. you're now winning based on narrative and personality as opposed to volume of keywords. Yeah. And it leads into kind of the theme that I believe is in the future of the commoditization of certain types of processes whether that be in compliance or other areas standing out differentiating yourself making your relationships matter. That's where I would be investing all my time and money right now and that's why it's so important. And then if you want to do a simple test, just go to chatbt and ask questions about your firm and see how it answers. And then fill in those gaps. You're going to want to say, "Wait a second, I'm really good at this." Put that content in your website. Put that in your narrative of your brand. Right? That will then over time feed the answers and that data and that knowledge to chatbt for example, so that your firm is being spoken about the way you want it to be spoken about. So I think that's really important.

So, let's talk about the commodity trap. And I was we're interviewing right now. I'm interviewing a lot of tax technical editors and we're just talking about compressing the hour and the the business of charging by the hour and with AI tools and if AI tools are are compressing the time if we're just talking about compliance, let's talk tax prep compliance. If it used to take five hours and you were billing $2,000 for return and now it takes you an hour and a half because you have so much optimization, you have so much AI as labor. what's going to happen? You're going to you're going to see a race to the bottom, right? So that's issue one. Issue two is if buyers can't tell the difference between you and another firm, price became becomes the shortcut. Okay? So you need to understand just competing on proximity or pricing hurts long-term margins. So you may be in some ways commoditizing yourself. So we've seen firms with amazing services still struggle because the market clearly, couldn't explain why they were different.

And and Rebecca, we did like a 5-second test. So we're going to get into this a little bit more, but it's very quick when someone vi visits a website. What are they looking at right away when when they go to your site? Super fast. They're going to look immediately at what that we call it the hero section, but what that very top section of your website says in the very first sentence they see. That's obviously the first thing that grabs people's eye. And then they're going to scroll down a little and they're going to look for who you serve, who you are, what you do, and they're going to want clear answers to those questions. And people do form impressions very quickly, Lee, like you were saying with the 5-second test. Yeah. So, we're going to get into it. The good news, we got a lot more detail here. So, if clients can't tell the difference, they default to price. and I think that is kind of clear. So, most firms don't lose because they're bad, right? They lose because they're forgettable.

and I think it's really important that sameness quietly erodess your pricing power. And it's something I think a takeaway here that's really important. It's kind of a theme across this. So, let's get into the the cookie cutter side of things here. and Rebecca, you'll love this. So, 10 firms, one description. How many I mean, I'm going to say 10 firms. I'm going to say 50,000 firms. I cannot tell you how many websites look exactly the same over and over again. And it's almost like they want to copy because it's easier or maybe it's less risky. But, explain why if everyone sounds exactly the same in the AI world, you're all lost. You're lost in the conversation. It's those that are stepping out. It's that purple cow analogy in marketing and branding. It's that purple cow that when you look out at the world of sameness and there's a thousand cows out in a pasture, you notice the purple cow. And this is the same principles here apply to tax and accounting firms when it comes to comes to branding.

Exactly. And as you look through just these these descriptions that we have listed here on this slide, they're basically all synonyms for each other except maybe for the top one. but the bottom four, your trusted local CPA firm, quality tax and accounting services, experienced accountants, reliable tax preparation and bookkeeping. None of these really differentiate. They all just are noise basically. And people see so much advertising every day that Lee, I think your purple cow example is great. Obviously, that's kind of an an old adage within marketing and branding. there's a book about it and different things like that, but you do want to stand out in a good way. So, the first one here has potential. Trusted accountants serving businesses since 1998. With a little tweaking, it tells who they serve, businesses, and it tells the year they were established, which does draw the eye a bit more. So, you could workshop that to make it a little bit more purple cowish. But the other four are all effectively saying the exact same thing over and over, and none of them are going to stick with you.

I just read them and I've already kind of forgotten them. So, it's really important to differentiate yourself right off the bat and hook people. Hook the right kind of audience with the very first line on your website, right? And I would just say here's the simple test. if you look at your own site, you compare these. which one of these would you remember tomorrow? None of them. but if you did go to that purple cow accountant site and you wake up tomorrow and you had looked at 10 other accounts, I think you would remember that. And I'll give another analogy for this. and I'm it's plumbing. I know I I did dentist and now I'm doing plumbing. There is a new plumbing company that's local here in my area in Orange County. And they have like a almost like a platinum colored van and it's shiny and it really stands out. I have never seen this brand before. I never would recognize one plumber from another plumber. what? I've seen four of those trucks now in the last month. So, they have taken a way to stand out to become memorable.

That's just with a pl, I still can't tell you the name of that plumber yet, but I do recognize the brand and if I ever went back to research it, I bet I could figure out who that brand was. And it kind of follows what we're talking about here today. So, let's talk about kind of what clients actually remember. So, people remember emotional recognition before they remember credentials. I know that's a shocker specifically to those pros out there that have, seven designations and commas after their name. And I think you have to understand, the best marketing often feels like the client saying, "Hey, that's exactly what I'm dealing with." So, we're getting now to talking to them, their pain points, and then painting a better financial outcome. That's how you're going to start being remembered. not just a service list. Because I think it's a given, don't you think, Rebecca, that most accounting firms or tax firms are offering similar services. You might have niches and verticals like QPS stock, for example.

But the reality is, if you're just trying to gain clients by a list of services, you're going to be losing 100%. And most clients, frankly, like you were just saying, Lee, they don't care about the list. They care about how you can help them. So, this is where positioning really comes into play and not using I statements. Saying things like, "Well, we can do this, we can do this," isn't really going to hook people. What's going to hook them is saying things like, you are experiencing this, here's how we're going to fix it. so talking directly to the client and kind of acknowledging their pain points rather than just listing services at them is going to be significantly more effective. Very well said. So if we are if you are taking a continuing education this is a knowledge check number one pretty simple which creates stronger differentiation. We have an A, B, C and D. go ahead and review these. See what you think is the strongest answer. Again this is just for making sure that you are awake and watching this presentation.

We'll give you a few more seconds to make your choices. if you are not using a online version that has a survey that popped up, just write this down and at the end if you log into the continuing education tool you'll just select which one you thought. So our answer here is C. If April keeps surprising you, your decisions are happening too late. definitely a differentiation between the other four. And I think this is starting to kind of reinforce what we've been talking about. So let's go ahead and move on for the rest of the presentation. all right. So, let's talk about homepages that disappear versus homepages that are recognized. And we've already kind of hit on this a little bit. but the reality is here generic statements describe the firm. If you can do recognition statements, they describe the client. And why is that so important, Rebecca? It's very very important because you don't want to just be that firm that's talking about yourself and not recognized by that client's needs. so effectively, if you're saying a generic statement like your local trusted CPA firm, that could apply to literally 50,000 firms anywhere in the United States of America, you're not helping yourself to reach that client where they are.

They're going to keep scrolling. They're going to be very likely to close your tab and just bounce. If however your website says something like if April keeps surprising you your decisions are happening too late that is immediately meeting that person at their pain point. They're going to say oh wow that has happened to me the past 5 years. Maybe this is the tax pro who can actually help me. We say here that it's naming the silent problem that they're feeling. And a lot of times putting a name to that, putting words to what that person is feeling is going to give them kind of an instant sense of relief that they may not even know they needed. So that's a way to start building trust, start building authority with them literally from the first sentence on your website. Yeah, modern positioning is much more about diagnosis. It's it's not necessarily description. So you want your prospect, your client to feel like you are going to solve their whatever that pain point is or you're going to make them more financially successful, right?

So you want to diagnose the problem, not just sit there and talk about services and and commodity kind of same thing, same everywhere. So let's go into the commodity firms compete on price. Narrative firms compete on trust. And I think most of you may already be experiencing this with a competitor in the market. They're like, "Why is this client getting why is this CPA getting so many more clients?" I can do that. And what it is, what happens is narrative firms are easier to refer because people can explain them clearly, right? And when AI systems look at that, they look for these clear identity signals. They don't want to look through 10,000 commodity. I say the same exact thing. and there's a couple vendors in our market. I swear to God, I look at their websites and I think it's the same exact website over and over and over and over again. These firms will not be even mentioned in the AI tools in the future. So, kind of go through here if you could like the different positioning, pricing, website, what this means, and we'll kind of roll through.

This is a little more of a technical thing. Yeah, it's a little bit technical. but basically what we look at when we think about things like this are things like the dimension here would be your positioning. So, a commodity firm is going to be a generic service provider. They're going to say something like quality tax and accounting services. A narrative firm is going to say something like we solve financial problems for e-commerce sellers in Massachusetts. pricing, similar thing. These are all going to be kind of similar, but it's just generic versus specific. So on pricing, a commodity firm is going to compare themselves to the market. they charge $500 for tax preparation for a small business. a narrative firm, they're going to be anchored to outcomes. So basically what that means is that they're putting the value they provide before the price. They solve a problem first and then the price becomes secondary because people are paying on value not on commodity alone. That's where advisory services and things like that come into play which we won't dive too deeply into right now but we've done other podcasts on the importance of pricing yourself for the value you provide not just commodity.

Your website itself should not be a brochure of services. We hit on this a minute ago. just a list is not going to attract anyone. Having a trust system and a filter. So basically telling people precisely what you're going to do for them and how those services will solve problems and meet them where they are with their pain points. That's what's going to build that trust right from the start. People will start trusting you before they've ever talked to you. If your website is set up correctly and you're using the right narrative and you're using the right verbiage, your authority is very similar. On a commodity firm, it's going to be borrowed from credentials. So, people are going to see a big list of things after your name that they might not even understand. They might not know what all of those designations mean, but they're going to assume that what you're doing because there's a big list here. With a narrative firm, however, there's going to be an about me or an about the firm page that's going to really drive home the exact type of expertise that the particular tax professional has.

And that's where real trust comes into play. People aren't just blindly trusting you because you say you have 10 designations. They're trusting you because they understand exactly who you are and that you're passionate about helping them. AI visibility is probably the most technical of all of these. This is where like my team comes into play and we do backend work to kind of make sure that you're ranking within those geo systems and craft a narrative that is going to resonate within those systems. But basically, like we talked about at the very beginning of this podcast, a commodity firm is going to be compressed with its peers. It's going to appear exactly the same and be on the same playing field as every other firm in their city. With a narrative firm, a firm that is clearly establishing their positioning, what pain points they solve, who their audience is, they are going to be the number one clear answer within these AI systems. And that's where you want to be these days. Yeah. And you mentioned filtering.

it's a trust system. And what we mean by filtering too is let's say you are working with small medium-sized businesses but you work with businesses that do a million dollars or up or you work with dual income families you know high income earners maybe you do expats and you filter by putting that content and that positioning in your narrative and that feeds the AI tools to say hey this person is looking for this type of you don't want you don't it actually filters out kind of the the people that you do not want to attract. So I think it's really important to understand this. So I believe there's a couple things. Not only is narrative the new advantage I think it also is how trust scales digitally. And I want you to think about this. If you were properly optimizing your narrative and your brand content you're now feeding an army 24/7 of business development representatives. Okay? So think of it like SDR sales. they're out there. Anytime someone is having a conversation of something that you could add to, if you've properly optimized, you're now that brand that is included in that conversation.

And you'll realize that, if you're doing this correctly, specifically in in in areas like accounting and tax, that you have to be accurate. It's more important than ever that you're now part of those conversations. So, it's kind of like, most referrals happen because somebody could repeat your story clearly, and that's what a narrative does to chat GBT. So, all you're doing is kind of giving it a script. You're telling it, "This is how I want to be recognized. This is how I want to become memorable." So, a firm with a story clients can repeat will always outperform a firm with a longer list of services. And I think we're kind of getting this whole why cookie cutter is dead, right? And more importantly, how trust scales. So, if you can have an army of chat tools talking about you, I think you're going to be much more successful than just relying on your top 10% of clients who are referring you. So, Rebecca, this is let's get into some details here on what the actual narrative formula is.

because I think there's a lot of strategic ideas here. the best positioning sounds like empathy backed by expertise. to kind of give a little more detail here of what this means. Absolutely. And we've hinted around this throughout this podcast so far, but there are four things that we're kind of going to dive into here just a little bit. I won't go too deep into them for the sake of time, but the first thing here is the silent problem. This is what we just talked about. Every client who visits your website or prospective client has a painoint. And a lot of times they may not even be able to vocalize or know precisely what this painoint is, but they feel it every day, especially when they're running a business. that sort of thing. So, if you can name that painoint like we talked about with saying, "Hey, does April creep up on you every year and do you feel like you're making decisions too late?" That's the type of narrative that's going to immediately resonate with business owners who need help.

They need organization. They need to be making decisions before tax season comes around again. So answering and solving those pain points immediately is a really great way to hook people and kind of get them to move on to the next issue, which is the hidden cost. So you're going to want to quantify kind of the generic decisions that are quietly costing people. So, this could be things like not taking advantage of all of the deductions that are available to them or not knowing their audience even and maybe they are struggling to even have cash flow because they're not structuring things correctly or maybe they have the wrong entity and they don't know what to do about it or they don't even realize that they have the wrong entity. So, these are the types of things that you can address as a professional and show them that, hey, I'm going to help you save physical money and help you run a better business by resolving these issues for you that you might not even know exist because no one's ever done a proper pass through of your finances.

Three, you're going to build a better future for them. So, this could be done with imagery, it could be done with narrative. Maybe on your, tax planning page, you have a lovely photo of people living at a lakehouse or people enjoying their retirement, traveling the world, that sort of thing. You're going to want to paint a picture that's very vivid for what their life could be like, what their business ownership could be like with the proactive guidance that your firm is going to provide. So, you're not just offering a commodity, you're offering them a better life, and that's what everyone really wants. So, if you position yourself that way, you're already winning over many, many other firms that are still just saying, "Hey, we're going to prepare your taxes." And then the fourth thing here is really the social proof, the trust, positioning your firm as someone who has already walked other clients through this. So, this can be done through case studies, it can be done through video testimonials that your past clients have provided, it can be done through reviews.

really however you feel is going to best connect with your chosen demographic. But you need to have some sort of social proof, some sort of trust where they can see that other people are already satisfied with your services. And it needs to be other people who are like them, other business owners, other, if you work with doctors, other doctors. If you work with e-commerce owners, other people who own e-commerce shops, that's very important to helping people feel comfortable and feel confident with choosing you. Perfect. This is an important slide, so just definitely circle back to it afterwards. So, we're going to get into something fun here a little bit and give an idea of what a rewrite looks like. So, we're going to start with a bookkeeping use case. I have I think three total of these. and I think it's really important that decision clarity is more compelling than quote unquote bookkeeping. Okay? So clients buy certainty. they buy clarity more than deliverables. Okay. And they just don't want owners just don't want answer.

They want reports. So kind of explain real quick this example. what a traditional what we see all the time. We offer monthly bookkeeping versus something that is a little more moving. Yeah. So I think this is this is pretty clear just upon reading it that the after most owners can't answer one question. Is the business actually making money this month? We build the answer month after month is significantly more enticing than we offer monthly bookkeeping for small businesses. in the second one, you're actually addressing all of these things that we just talked about. The pain point is people don't know if they're actually making money. They're feeling overwhelmed. They're feeling muddled. And you're also solving the pain point within that same that same sentence. You're saying we build the answer month after month. You're providing them with reassurance. You're providing them with expertise. You're letting them know that you are going to be there for them on an ongoing basis. So, I think this is really a clear way to see the difference between what a generic before term would be and the after sentence that really deals with everything we've just gone through in the prior slide.

Awesome. Let's get into another one. We're going to tax prep. we've used this theme already which was kind of the April without surprises but again to explain the generic versus a good after kind of why this is so important and I think almost every business owner remembers an unexpected text bill emotionally right and that is why it's going to connect with them when they when they experience experience your narrative or your branding positioning exactly and this one is particularly generic We just have individual and business tax preparation. Well, this isn't generic, Rebecca. We see this every day. We do. We do. And it's it's, you're not really telling anyone anything with that. that's that's what they need. They know they need tax preparation. So, you're not providing really any detail about why you're the right choice with a sentence like that. So altering that to say something like, for the business owner who is tired of April surprises, you've immediately hooked them because they are tired of April surprises.

Rebuild a year round plan so the number is known long before the return is filed. You are telling them immediately that you're going to help them feel prepared. You're going to help them feel confident. They're not going to have to run scared anymore when April runs around. and they're not going to be scrambling to come up with money because it's already going to be set aside because they're going to have a plan they can trust thanks to your firm's services. Well, more importantly, you've you've reframed the relationship from a transaction compliance to strategic and just with language. That is why this is so powerful and that's why it works so well. so, let's do one more. I think we did an advisory one. go ahead and jump on this again. It's kind of the same concept. I think we're I think we're communicating it well. Yes. So, basically again the same thing, but this is just for advisory services. Saying we provide business advisory services is great. That's something that people know they need, but it's not really telling them exactly what you're going to do for them.

It's not building that confidence or that immediate trust. Saying something like most owners make their biggest decisions alone, that's going to resonate. People feel very alone as business owners sometimes. They feel like they're wearing a lot of hats. they feel like they don't have anyone they can turn to to help them make these kind of big financial decisions and they're flying a little bit blind and that's very scary. So if you're immediately letting people know that you're going to be in their corner and Lee this goes back to what you were saying about reframing the relationship you are going to be a trusted adviser they can come to and make these big choices with confidence. We sit on the other side of the desk so the next move is never made in isolation. That's the type of statement that's going to immediately make business owners think this is who I want to work with. They're going to be there for me. They're going to care about my outcomes and they're going to help me when I don't know what to do.

Yeah. I mean, most owners don't want more data, right? They they want confidence in their decisions. And I think this language actually makes what you do feel human rather than like corporate kind of corporate services. So, I think we've done a good job of showing this. Let's kind of move through to the next level. And clients don't remember service list. They remember recognition. So recognition builds trust fa faster than credentials alone. We've been mentioning this. you want to be memorable. It directly affects your referrals. It it it reinforces your again your core thesis of what you're all about. And I think this is really important too when it comes to feeding the AI engine. So, I'm going to now kind of walk into some more that I'm going to call more niche related examples and we'll go into the contractor's firm. So, you want to start talking to specific verticals and and we just did a a revamp for a restaurant CPA. So, a a virtual CFO advisory platform or CPA that worked in restaurants.

And we started using language that spoke directly to what restaurant owners went through. the idea of end of project chaos, that's for contractors. So, kind of explain now how you can use this and we we accounting works, we put this language into everything you do. So, when we say we're creating a narrative for you, we bring that narrative into your proposals, into your engagement letters, in all of your conversations with clients. We have created models that know your client inside and out. They know your firm inside and out. And we know that if you're communicating with this particular client, you want to talk in this type of language. So explain why this is so important. This is important because it goes back to everything we've been talking about. You need to know your audience and you need to speak directly to them. So saying something like, "We work with contractors and construction businesses," while it may be true and it does sort of position you, it's nowhere near the positioning that saying something like, "When the job is finished, but the books aren't, we step in." That is naming a specific problem that every contractor has experienced after a job.

A specific moment where they probably can envision themselves sitting down at their desk and just feeling overwhelmed by the fact that now they have to do the finances. And you're basically becoming a firm that can't be confused with anyone else. you are establishing yourself as the firm that's going to handle the books for construction contractors as soon as they are done with something and they don't want to have to deal with the aftermath of it financially that you're going to handle that. You're also speaking directly to them. So that's a big difference here too that we kind of already hit on, but you can really see it clearly here saying we work with contractors and construction businesses as very third person saying when the job is finished but the books aren't, we step in. that is creating a narrative and allowing that user, that potential client to put themselves into the story and say, "Oh, yeah. I've been here." All right. And we we'll continue through. Of course, we had to go Dennis again, but I think the idea here is that broad, claims are no longer enough, right?

You need to speak directly to, you want to, fast growing practices often outgrow their systems before they realize it, right? That is what we're trying to tell them. And I think when a a dental firm or a dentist owner reads this, they think that is me. And that's what we've been saying is kind of a theme here. We want your prospect when they see your narrative, when they see your copy, when they see their imagery, you want them to feel like they can put themselves in that story, even reading their your reviews, right? You want it to be recognizable to them. I think it's really important. And this is the difference between an invisible firm and a recognized firm. So Rebecca, kind of jump into here. This is kind of a clear way to look at it and this is what's a lot of companies are doing or a lot of practices are doing. Yeah, absolutely. So these two firms that we're looking at here may be very similar in terms of their skill set, in terms of how many people they have on staff, could even be in terms of their client base.

However, their futures look very different based upon what they're doing on their websites and how they're positioning themselves online. So we'll just take a quick look here. An invisible firm is going to look like every other firm. They're going to use that generic language that we've been talking about. They're not going to speak directly to their target demographic. They're not going to solve pain points on their website, even though they might be able to solve those pain points in practice. This is not saying that these firms are not capable. It's saying that they don't appear as capable online. A recognizable firm is going to own that clear narrative spot. They're going to have a niche and they're going to own it and they're going to own it very well. They're going to address the painoint immediately. They're going to solve problems immediately. Their homepage is going to draw in the right people and it's going to communicate their value very, very quickly. An invisible firm is going to win on price negotiation.

They're going to be cheaper than everyone else. they're going to probably have a lot of turnover because they're probably going to have a lot of clients who show up for tax prep one year and go somewhere cheaper the next year. A recognizable firm is not going to have that problem because their clients are going to stay because of trust and clarity in the services and also because of the relationship that they've built with them from the very start. Same thing kind of goes with forgotten between engagements. An invisible firm is not going to be remembered year after year because they're just providing a commodity service. That's all they've positioned themselves to do. A recognizable firm is going to be remembered. they're going to be referred not only by AI systems, but by clients themselves to people within their network. And that's how you start to build a really strong niche. So, it's great because not only are you more likely to retain clients if you're recognized because you've developed these relationships with them, but you're also more likely to get great referrals because of that trust you've instilled.

again, very similar type of concept. An invisible firm is going to be compressed by AI search. It's not going to be referred by systems like chat, GPT, Perplexity, Gemini. A recognizable firm is going to be named as the one and only answer and AI for those clients that meet its needs. So that's very important because that again is a referral in and of itself. We've done a whole podcast on how your your next referral might not come from a person. It might come from an AI engine. That's literally this. You are going to be much more likely to be that referral if your firm has a clear niche, if you've positioned yourself well. And then finally for an invisible firm every year as AI gains market share their margin is going to erode whereas a recognizable firm's margin is going to expand as their authority their trust their clarity all expands as well. All right moving on our for those again doing CPE we have another knowledge check. What is the real problem with generic positioning? We have four options here.

It makes the website too short. It makes the firm harder to distinguish. It removes the need for reviews. It improves price confidence. we'll give you a few seconds here. Select the strongest answer here. Again, this is just a an attendance check. And the answer to us is B. It makes the firm harder to distinguish. all right. So, let's continue on. again, write this down if you're just using logging in as a separate system versus if you have a a survey that's on your screen right now. all right. So let's go to website as a trust system. So I think this is really important. Your website is no longer just a digital brochure. We've been mentioning mentioning that it is a filtering mechanism. Okay. So prospects, people that visit are going to subconsciously evaluate trust signals immediately. What do they see on your site? We've mentioned this. What is the imagery? What is that hero copy line? does it speak to them? And then you got to understand that every every page either increases confidence or increases uncertainty.

Okay? So modern websites think about it you know to almost compare it to airport security maybe right fast filtering and qualification. You want someone to get through your site and almost self-qualify that they're ready to go. They've read reviews from other clients. They've seen your case studies. They know that you have experience in their niche or their vertical that whatever service they're looking for. Perhaps it's geography. They want to work with someone who is in Newport Beach that supports the local sports teams and parks or law enforcement, whatever. That is how you start building trust. And there's a ways that your website can build upon this. And we have what we call the five layers of trust that clients instantly believe. So, Rebecca, kind of explain how this works and why it's so powerful. Yeah, so this is again kind of going back to some of the things we've been talking about, but in a different way. So, there are basically five layers like Lee mentioned behind firms that kind of instill instant trust or instant authority with people who visit their website.

The first is going to be recognition. So, that is naming that silent problem that they are likely carrying that they might not even be able to name themselves, but the second you name it, they know that it's what they're experiencing. Second is going to be resonance. It's going to be speaking like a guide or someone who's advising them, someone who gets it, not just speaking as a generic vendor like a an H&R block or something like that. You you want to speak as someone with authority who cares, who is going to advise them based on their personal situation, not on generic taxes. Your reputation, this is going to precede you in some cases if they've already seen your reviews, that type of thing. that having that social proof and that visible authority on your website is also critical. You can have reviews present on your website. You can have, like we mentioned, video testimonials are great. Video is king on the internet right now. So, not only from a search standpoint, but from a user standpoint.

Having those video testimonials of past clients is great. And having case studies is great because it puts some numbers and some additional information behind that reputation to prove that like, hey, we are not just saying we're doing this. we are actually saving people $10,000 a year or whatever the case may be for your firm. Number four here is relevance. your outcomes are going to speak to a real client moment, which kind of goes back to what we just talked about with reputation and also to the things that your clients are currently experiencing. So, you're going to want to address problems that they currently are dealing with, which again is kind of naming those pain points, those problems. And then reach here is five. So that's going to be AI discoverable, schema, narrative rich content, which is what's going to help you get recommended in today's search world. Yeah. And I think one of the important things here is you're trying to stack these signals because one upon another upon another helps build it and makes it even stronger.

And this is how the trust is really built. So your website is no longer a brochure. It is a trust system. And then anytime you go inconsistent, it creates friction. So, you want to I always say you want to take friction out of the buying process. It's the same thing with building trust. clients judge your professionalism within seconds. And you know, it was interesting. I was I I do assessments. We're going to talk about assessments, but I I look at firms and branding and their narratives. And there was a firm that we looked at up in the the Bay Area of California that was pretty sophisticated. They even did wealth management. They had a lot of different things, but their website was as cookie cutter as it gets. And, it was interesting to me. You're like trying to provide what I call family office, like premium level services, but you're selling a, you know, I don't know, Toyota Corolla kind of thing. it's like your audience is looking for the Mercedes, the Riven, and then you're doing something completely different.

I think that is really important to understand that, you're not a brochure. This is a trust signal. you're trying to make not only the prospect feel this, but more important importantly the AI ecosystem. So, and let's let's actually get into what authority is all about and how it works. So, I know you love little graphs and charts, Rebecca, so this one's for you. How does this build upon it? And and I know we're getting short on time, so I I want to kind of run through this not too quickly, but definitely cover it. Sure. So, yeah, I do. I'm a very visual learner, so things like this are great for me. but modern authority isn't a single channel. And I got into this earlier, so we won't dive too heavily in here, but this is what I was kind of talking about with you building a brand, building a narrative across the web. we call it a web footprint in my industry. We want you to have a full web footprint to build authority, not just a website, not just reviews, not just press, not just a blog, but all of those things come together to really tell the internet, hey, this firm is trustworthy.

They have a lot of authority. They have a lot of expertise. and they have a cohesive narrative across multiple channels. I think that's a pretty succinct way of kind of summing this up and you can see it here in the little graph. All of these things coming out from your firm are going to build upon one another to build that authority that you want within those AI systems and even within even traditional search. But the entire package matters here, not just one thing. Well, because if it's a chatbt would refer to the reviews. It would refer on their website in their bio. They say they work with construction firms and then here are three reviews from fellow contractors and glowing blah blah blah. And then in the content they wrote a blog article about, five ways contractors can increase their cash flow. That's how it all starts working together. And it's really important to understand not just from the old traditional blue link Google, someone will Google you, they go to your website, maybe they go then to Yelp and read some reviews or maybe there's a an article you wrote that was in the local trade magazine.

that is how it all starts to work together. Now think of that ecosystem inside AI. So let's talk about the three main things. I I want people to understand this. AI doesn't just read your website. It triangulates everything about your reputation into one narrative that it is telling about you. And kind of explain this if you can. So basically there are three signals here that are going to help AI refer you or name you as the answer to a particular prompt or query. The first is specificity. So that is where you're going to have that clear niche. You're going to resolve a painoint right off the bat and you're going to provide an outcome which in most cases is going to be, we help you solve this. We provide you with a tax plan. We're going to save you x amount of money. All of these different sorts of outcomes can can apply to different pain points. Two is consistency. This is what I've been harping on this whole podcast and I will probably continue harping on for subsequent podcast. But you want that narrative reinforced across every possible touch point.

your email campaigns, your social media post, your blog, your about us page, any posts that you write, any interviews you do, anywhere you're posting, you want a consistent narrative because that is what's going to help these systems understand what you do. Like you just said, Lee, the systems often say, "Hey, here it says that this firm does this." If you say that in multiple places, it's going to really reinforce that that is your niche, that that is who you serve, and that you have a ton of expertise in that area. Three, this is where everything kind of culminates and comes together. All of these external signals, the press you have, the reviews you have, the content you've been publishing across your blog and your social media, they confirm your story. They confirm who you say you are to the search algorithms. And all of these three things come together very quickly in mere seconds on AI for it to understand that you are the correct answer. You are the right solution for that prompt or that query that it's trying to resolve.

All right. And now let's talk about what the future firm looks like. so it's not just a strategic shift from service provider to recognize authority. it is that narrative and these ecosystems start aligning to gain you leverage over time. So the visibility itself becomes your asset and we broke this down into authority, narrative, ecosystem, AI visibility. It all works together in the modern firm marketing. we've gone through kind of the different details about this, but you really want to create that story that that earns your recognition before that first call. And what you'll see is when they actually reach out to contact you, it's more of like selecting what service or what they're going to do with you versus going through the whole dog and pony show of a sales cycle. And I think that's really important. So, if you've dialed in your narrative, if you've dialed in your communication and all these different funnels, you're going to see that it's much easier to convert people to a client.

So, we like having another real quick case study. The whole idea here from local CPA to the contractor's firm it's what you need to find out here is that better fit clients usually produce better profitability as well and smoother engagement. So if you are working with a certain vertical you're going to see it easier for you to actually do your job you're and if you're using AI system they also are going to know they're going to have all the intelligence that you've been providing right and combining that on a consistent basis and even if you've created skills and a tool like Max you're going to be able to do this in a scalable way. So, I think it's really important to understand that positioning will help you unlock value that may have already been there. And what you've done is now I just gone from that local CPA to that contractor's firm and it's going to make you much easier as far as a positioning point, to be cited also at AI engines, but more importantly for people to convert to you.

So, Rebecca, I'm going to set you up here on the website that says no. kind of explain this if you could. the more generic the message, the harder it is for AI to site you, right? And you're almost pushing back to AI and you're not feeding the the monster, so to speak. Yeah. So, this might seem counterintuitive, and I have had some clients give me strange looks until I explain why they should help people self-identify on their homepage. But basically, a pain point that I hear often from clients is that they're getting too many calls from people they don't want to work with. So that's wasting time, right? It's wasting effort. It's wasting not only the client's time, but the firm's time. So the best way to avoid this is to literally identify who you work with on your homepage and say no. Say no to people who don't fit the qualifications that you're looking for. So for example, you could be a boutique advisory firm that only works with, let's say, retail business owners who make $10 million a year or more.

If you list something to the effect of, and it doesn't have to sound mean, right? There are ways to do this that just help people self-qualify. So, we actually recently did a site where it says, "We work best with," and then it lists several parameters. By doing that, we are helping people who don't meet those parameters ultimately say to themselves, "This might not be the firm for me," or, "This might not be the firm for me yet until I've grown a bit more." That kind of thing. It's going to cut down significantly on those tire kicker inquiries that we kind of mentioned here. And the consultation close rate is likely to increase because you're going to be fewer doing fewer consultations with more people who actually match your target demographic. And your engagement size is going to probably go up. Even though it does seem counterintuitive to tell people, no, you're not the right client for me. In the end, what's going to happen is you're going to get more clients who fit what you're looking for, and you're going to have a better firm because of it, and you're probably going to grow faster because the people who you're spending time with are the people who are actually going to close with you.

Yeah, I think your example, that person's just targeting Walmart, but it's good. Yeah. Only only retail over 100 million. No, I'm joking. But you know, it's really important. And then how does this now bit go into kind of feeding the AI visibility side of things? Yeah, so this is this is a great example here on this case study. So attacks firm specializing in real estate investors, which is actually a really common niche that we see. So they're going to build their narrative around a single client moment. This is a great way to niche yourself down, hyper niche yourself down, but ultimately experience growth. So the first 1031 exchange is kind of the example we give here. and within just a few months, and it could literally be faster than that depending on how fast you put out content. AI can rank you very quickly for a particular niche if you're putting out a great volume of content surrounding it. But AI assistants will pick up very quickly on firms that are putting out a lot of content surrounding a particular moment in the client life cycle or surrounding a particular moment within a business owner's life.

Right? So, the first 1031 exchange is a great example here. So in this particular case, they're up six mentions a week in AI. They're getting 27 new inbound consults from doing this. And their average engagement value has also increased by nearly 20%. All of these are great things. And the best part about this is that this is not hard to do. AI, your own AI assistant can actually help you put together content clusters that pertain to whatever moment it is, whatever client moment you want to target and you want to focus on. So this is something we work with clients on a lot. my marketing assistant spends a lot of time helping people kind of build these content clusters across various platforms so that they can start ranking for particular client moments. So this is huge and it's something that we've seen firsthand really work for our clients depending upon what niche they're in. So it's something really important and it's something that's not hard to accomplish honestly. This is kind of obvious, but we've been going through this.

The idea of the generic or future firm, and the reality is one model slowly blends in. The other one's going to compound authority over time. And we're just going to go into the future firm. you want to be that trusted guide. You want to be named in that answer. You want to have fit and confidence, right? And that's the whole idea of filtering. you're looking for real yearround relationships, advisory- like relationships versus compliance transactional and more importantly you're going to be become more and more visible. You're going to become the firm that people start going to. You're going to be that brand that people start choosing and more importantly the brand that AI starts recommending. But really important. So that's kind of the choice. Do you want to continue in the compliance commodity that cookie cutter or do you want to start looking future firm? And we've given you tons of different feedback on how to do that. Which leads us to our last knowledge qu knowledge check. Knowledge quack knowledge check.

Which model becomes more valuable in the AI search era? again, generic compliance positioning, commodity messaging, clear authority and differentiation or long technical explanations. I will give you a few seconds to look at this and then of course select the strongest answer which we believe is C. Clear authority and differentiation. Please write that down and we'll go ahead and wrap this thing up. So, we're going to talk now about what we do for our clients. and we do what's called a a future firm assessment and think of it as a review of your brand and position it of what it can look like. And I have put together and and kind of our staff on how we do this. We have a a short assessment. The more details you provide, the better the data for us. to think of this as like an agency level review of your firm and a before and after. And what we have found, first of all, the people that have done this have been blown away by kind of the the future version of themselves. and what we'll do is we'll go through and diagnose your entire firm.

We're going to show you how to become a modern firm, not just from a narrative standpoint, but also like a client onboarding, how to make the client experience better. make it so that you're you have your narrative, you're building authority. We help you on how you you should create AI visibility and more importantly how to build these trust systems. So part of this webinar hopefully we have kind of given you a general idea of what you need to do. I think a lot of people get overwhelmed. Don't worry about it. We've taken everything we've talked about. We have a formula, a process that we can upgrade your firm. We can make you look like incredible very quickly. So, if you are interested, what we'll do is we'll give you a short strategic mirror and not a a 40page resort, but I'll give you a narrative snapshot. We'll give you an authority map. We'll give you an AI visibility read and we'll start putting this together so that you could actually integrate this into your own practice. So, if you are interested in being good and understand that it's no longer enough, you have to be recognizable.

I think this assessment is for you. So, we are providing these for free. if you want to see what your future firm could actually look like, you can scan the QR code that I have here or you can go to a free assessment link that we have in our description and it's also on countyworks.com. It's very and it takes just seconds. it takes seconds to go through the assessment. We receive that. Our team then will go in and again analyze your inputs. We'll look at your existing website. We'll give you a report that has real strategic value, real takeaways, and not only that, we're going to build a super high-end agency level narrative for you and a position new website so you can see what your new future self can look like. So, we hope you will take advantage of this. This leads us to the last question. If you would like a free future assessment from our team, the answer is a. This is an easy one. please reach out to us, go to our assessment, fill it out, answer a here and we'll go ahead and put this together.

So again, that wraps up this edition kind of a special Growth Minded Accountant webinar version. I know we've talked about a lot of things, but there has been some incredible kind of takeaways here and I think the reality is I think this is where the profession is quietly heading. I think the relationship layer is the most important thing. building trust, having a clear narrative who you work for, who you want to do, what are those outcomes, I think it is super strong for you. So again, I hope you've enjoyed this webinar and we look forward for you to attend the future ones in the future. Again, thank you very much.