How to Thrive in the New AI Order: Survival for Tax & Accounting Firms

ANNOUNCER

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 CountingWorks PRO. Let's get started.

LEE REAMS II

Hi and welcome back to another episode of the Growth Minded Accountant. I am your host Lee Reams II, the founder and CEO of CountingWorks and our sister company TaxBuzz. Com. And today we're diving into a topic that every tax and accounting pro needs to hear.

It's how to thrive in the new AI order. And what we're going to talk about today is both from a communications and branding point of view - including visibility and authority building and also understanding kind of the new expectations from a user experience and even a service experience that your clients are going to expect in the in the AI age. So, a couple things I want to go over. First, search has changed.

It's no longer just about ranking on Google. It's about being recommended by AI. So, Perplexity, ChatGPT, obviously AI, Google search, right? And if your firm is not adapting to this shift, you risk becoming invisible.

So, user experiences and client expectations have changed. So, today we're going to jump into a lot of issues. We're going to talk about macroeconomics. We're going to talk about trends.

We're going to talk about how you can pivot your current firm and adapt to the new AI order. As usual, my co-host Rebekah Barton, our chief visibility officer, is here to talk about this topic and give a lot of insight on the AI visibility side. So, Rebekah, if you can say hello.

REBEKAH BARTON

Yes. Hey, everyone. I'm looking forward to this one.

LEE REAMS II

Yeah. And we're going to go over why some firms are starting to struggle and what you can do to make sure your firm doesn't just survive, but you thrive in this new era. So I'm going to start with some macroeconomic issues. You know is it you know and why is this perhaps creating some winners and some losers.

Okay. So macroeconomic headwinds are hitting some hard. So if you're dealing with businesses that deal with tariffs, importing, or exporting for example, you're obviously experiencing some sort of decline. There's a lot of different industries that are also kind of ebbing and flowing.

So this is tied to a widespread broader economic slowdown and uncertainty, right? No business likes uncertainty. Consumers don't like uncertainty. The good news so far is the consumer stays strong, right?

But the question is why are some of the big four cutting jobs? They're restructuring adjusting operations in response to this. Could it be that AI is backfilling some of these more remenial tasks? I don't know.

But there is definitely a change in sentiment. A was it a 2025 Avalara accountants confidence report flipped the switch. It went from a hopeful 19% to a negative 39% between January and April, right? That's a big issue, you know, like what is it that is making accountants do that?

I would say that was the beginning of the Trump tariffs and a lot of things have changed since then, right? So, there's still uncertainty, but who knows, right? Over half of accounting professionals anticipate their firm's headcounts will shrink by at least 20% over the next 5 years, and 75% believe they'll still need the same or more staff to meet client demand. So, what does that mean?

This points squarely at macrolevel stressors affecting demand driven by inflation, rate hikes, geopolitical friction, reduced client spending and structural pressures such as automation and guess what and AI. So what does that mean for our industry? We're going to see some winners and losers. And I'm starting to experience and Rebekah, I'll just ask you.

We're seeing and you talk to our clients often. To go through kind of our vision of what the world needs to be for a tax and accounting firm and how to survive in the AI age. We started our big migration or change or whatever you want to call it about the authority building, the trust building, the visibility side and and using AI tools to personalize this like never before and to scale content creation like never before. But you're getting push back at times when you know accountants are set in their ways and like I'm not going to use AI.

I'm not going to do this. I'm not going to do that. But now 6 months later, nine months later, 12 months later after those discussions, they're like, oh, you know, my business is starting to suffer. So kind of what is the sentiment you're hearing when you're talking to our clients?

And then I'm going to kind of go into what we're seeing and how you can adapt.

REBEKAH BARTON

Yeah. So I think there is a reticence still among the tax and accounting world to kind of fully adopt AI. But that said definitely in the past half a year and nine months we have seen more and more people getting excited about what we're doing getting excited about how I AI can actually help them how it can save them time how it can assist them with their branding how it can make everything more cohesive for them around the web. I think people are starting to realize that it's here to stay.

I think you know even half a year ago I was getting people who thought this was kind of a blip. They didn't think it was going to really last particularly within the finance space in any capacity. And here we are and it's only getting bigger. It's only becoming more and more a part of people's day-to-day lives both at work and at home.

So there's definitely sort of an integration that's happening a natural integration where people are starting to recognize that they need to utilize AI tools in order to be competitive. And not only that, but in order to really grow in this day and age, you're you're not going to be able to achieve the goals you have for your business without utilizing AI in some capacity. And I think that's starting to become ingrained in people's minds.

LEE REAMS II

Yeah. And what's happening right now is smaller and middle-market accounting firms are starting to face competition from kind of new players. So, it's not just the big accounting firms anymore. There's private equity rollups that are happening that they're investing in all this AI technology automation better user experiences, better position packages and and pricing schemes for their clients, right?

And that is a big deal, right? The good news is on the flip side, midsize and boutique firms can and do compete by offering what we talk about all the time, specialized services, perhaps a niche, being more agile. You have pricing advantages, right? You have lower overhead.

There's there's a lot of ways to compete and to be honest with you, you have availability, the same powerful AI tools as these do. So, what I'm seeing right now, they're starting to become clear winners. Typically, those are firms that are embracing tech, AI, workflows or niche specialties. And then I'm seeing what I call the strugglers, those in traditional cost-sensitive sectors or those behind on this transformation.

Meaning I'm still charging hourly. I'm still just doing commodity tax returns. It's going to be more and more difficult to retain clients, to find new clients, and even push your pricing higher within those categories. So, I consider these structural shifts beyond just what's happening in the economy.

And there, you know, what's happening is automation and AI are increasingly displacing certain roles. Okay. Depends on who you want to listen to. I don't personally believe this is Armageddon for the industry.

I see more demand all new opportunities, new startups, new businesses for the industry to support. But what you are going to see is a lot of automation of what I'm going to call the menial tasks and bookkeeping, collecting documents, scanning and and being able to route documents very easily. So a lot of entry-level work could vanish in you know in the not just now but like in the next 5 years. Okay.

So that's issue one. And issue two is there's a huge talent shortage right. We have fewer accountants coming in fewer people going to sit for the CPA exam. We know there's a lot of different shifts on ownership of firms perhaps the education requirements.

So maybe there will be some movement there. But a lot of firms are are responding by, and I've heard this from even our own accounting firm, they're trimming clients or refusing new work to balance capacity, meaning they're actually at capacity. They're now pushing clients away. And it's kind of like we're only going to work with people who aren't are pain-in-the-ass type of people.

So, it's interesting. So, there's a couple different things here. There's macroeconomic stress, so broad decline in demand, job cuts, shifting sentiment that is happening. Where it all ends up, you know, I believe it's going to be great and fine, but I'm just telling you that's what's happening.

The winners, tech adopters, AI-friendly niche specialties, the losers, traditional sectors, underinvested or low tech, right? That is changing. So what is the structural shift? AI automation and workflows.

You have the talent shortages. You have aging workforce. How many boomers are getting ready to retire? We see it all the time in our own client base, people that we've worked with for 20, 30 years, retiring and then obviously you're going to have regulatory challenges.

So, you know, what is the bottom line when we have both macro issues and select winners versus losers. And I think this is going to create widespread pressure across the industry. So, we've heard recently like some firms again like Rebekah was talking who they're like, I'm losing clients. I'm not I'm, you know, I'm struggling all of a sudden.

And then we go to another client who's adapted everything we're talking about and doing the user experience with AI and and helping save time and hours and and scraping data and preparing data and doing all kinds of fun things with technology. They're killing it. So the question is you know what do I do? Let's talk about kind of things.

So the tax prep industry it remains profitable right? Everyone the big thing now is advisory demand is rising. Okay. There was a report from Thomson Reuters.

It said 75% of firms say tax return preparation for businesses and individuals remains remains their most profitable line. Yet, you're seeing this huge shift in client expectations. Threequarters of respondents to that report said their clients strongly desire more tax and business advisory in addition to basic tax services. Okay, so there is the opportunity, right?

So efficiency through tech adoption is going to be a key priority and we're going to now talk about kind of how this works and then we're going to go into how to use AI for the visibility trust side, authority building side and then how to use it for workflow automation. Okay, so what you're trying to do with technology and maybe I shouldn't use the word AI because it just scares people but basically in the way we're doing it. So we built our tool, MAX. We trained it on top of some underlying ChatGPT models or Gemini models and we basically have it so it's really really accurate.

Okay. And what are we doing with that technology is we're now able to create custom written content that is human curated tech reviewed that we can now have it scale for thousands and thousands of clients. So meaning if they were focusing on restaurant firms - or, not firms, restaurants, we can create content and campaigns that proactively push out on the behalf of the CPA firm for example personalized to their firm. So it has, you know, their personality, their bios, their style, their memories, you know, it's localized.

It's very localized, meaning using the towns or the states or the niche that they're working in. Okay? And what this does is it takes a a big shift in staff from doing what I'll call administrative tasks like trying to create content on your own is monumental, right, to higher value advisory work. So instead of worrying about writing all the content or creating the content and accuracy, they're able now just to focus on the client work.

So what you're seeing is smarter firms are using tech to scale. They're enhancing data security, which is a huge deal. We still have clients, believe it or not, that don't even understand the risk they put in on the security side. You know, so you need to start stepping up.

Clients care about security. It's their personal data. They want to work with people that know them, know their firms. So, you're seeing a lot of firms that are differentiating their services and they're competing with larger firms.

And what's happening is that people are now able to do more advice-giving. So, I'm going to then go to the advisory services. So rapid growth and emerging challenges. A staggering 80% of accounting firms report increasing demand for services such as what?

Financial planning, business strategy, technology consultants, all cornerstones of this client advisory services. So, Rebekah, as a content person, if you have clients that are now, you know, more into this more holistic approach, whether you call it a virtual CFO, but you're now able to help a client do much more than just complete a tax return or reconciled books, how would you now start creating content strategies around that and start communicating it? Because if they don't know you're doing this, people aren't going to buy additional services and you're not going to attract new clients.

REBEKAH BARTON

Exactly. So that's where AI can really come in handy. It can not only help you create these different multi-channel we call it. So if you're using blogs and email campaigns and social media to reach people, we call that a multichannel approach.

And with AI, you can create these really cohesive multichannel approaches. MAX is great at it where it's going to spit out content plans for you, pieces of content for you that are geared towards your niche. They're geared towards your area. And when you do it this way and everything is optimized, everything is localized, that's how you get visibility within these AI systems.

They love recommending local firms. They love recommending niche firms. That's a huge thing that AI is looking for. And we've said this before, but I'm going to say it again because I think it's very important.

AI is giving smaller and mid-sized firms a chance that they never had on Google. It does not care whether you're Forbes. It cares that you're putting out super hyper relevant content and that's what it's looking for. So with these content clusters, these MAX Playbooks that Lee is talking about, it's making it really easy for you to establish yourself within generative search.

We actually have a name for it now, GEO, as opposed to SEO. So it's Generative Engine Optimization. Really important, something I'm obviously heavily focused on in my line of work, but we want to make sure that our clients are ranking within those generative systems and that's a huge part of what playbooks are doing specifically.

LEE REAMS II

Yeah. And when in regards to advisory services and I just talked about, you know, what people are looking for, we have created playbooks that are basically managed by Max. And what I mean by a playbook is think of it as an advertising campaign. So we create a series of blog posts, social media posts, perhaps some outbound emails.

We can add the content to your current newsletter, but we start talking about the value add your you know, hey, these are some new services. Why a firm should look at us for virtual CFO? And what this does over time is it starts feeding the AI engines. And Perplexity, by the way, I've done a bunch of research.

They're kind of like Google the old days where they are looking for Forbes. They are looking for the IRS u but ChatGPT levels the playing field so there's kind of some nuances there so there's definitely things to think about but basically what I'm saying is you need to start communicating this value to your clients and that's a level in the client relationship layer that a lot of people are missing right so more statistics I just want to keep backing it up some social proof here the future ready accountant report Wolters Kluwer did this 83% of firms already offer four advisory services. Okay. And 20% more plan to expand into advisory.

But this is the kicker, right? High growth firms are nearly 50% more likely to focus on advisory as their growth lever. Okay. This is something that goes counter to some of the stats that I had talked about in the headcount side.

But there's some forecasts that say financial accounting advisory services are booming right now and expected to grow from 1 point or I think it's a 101 I think 1 point what is it 100 billion to I think 165 billion by 2034 that's huge huge growth okay so let's start talking about this how do you now scale up so many firms are struggling to scale the advisory services across their client And a lot of this is about the client data and where is it all located. So we CountingWorks are basically building out our platform to do a bunch of things with client data.

So we have our Client Hub, we have MAX as the brain, Client Hub as the data and then are we able now to scrape this data from input forms from you know interviewing your client from your client conversations from some other ways of gaining data about your client. So we can scrape financial statements, we can scrape tax returns. We now have all this data inside a system that can proactively be looking at that data and start recommending services for clients, strategies, tax planning strategies perhaps.

You know, identify, just let's say it's a tax firm, identify your clients that have young children or dependents, okay, is there an opportunity to help them with education savings, right? I think this is kind of where it's going. Sometimes I think the disconnect is understanding that is this: the power of AI. AI can now scrape all this data, put it into context and now be able to in an instant analyze that data and proactively come up with suggestions and solutions for you.

So this is the future of the way I think tax and accounting firms are going to be run. So the firms that are still, you know, the firms that are going to succeed are not the ones still doing the hourly pricing. They're going to embrace non-hourly pricing, right? They're going to bundle their services.

They're going to do deeper specialization. Those are things that I think you're already starting to see the winners and the losers. So, let's talk about a little bit of like the segment. So, the tax services are still highly profitable.

Clients increasingly want advisory add-ons. So there's your upsell. So now you have a client that was only spending and let's just say $5,000 a year with you. Now, you may be at $15,000.

You know, automation is freeing up bandwidth for this strategic work. And when we talk about automation, this could be as simple as just your client onboarding. Set up a proposal for a client. Client gets a personal one-to-one proposal that speaks directly to that restaurant owner.

And if you're using AI tools, you're going to have a proposal that talks in their language. It's going to speak specifically to restaurant owners. And in the proposal, so the first time they're getting ready to work with you, you're starting a conversation. You don't have this template proposal or this I charge hourly black hole.

And you know, I'm going to stop a little bit, but so Rebekah, why would that be important from a user's point of view? You know, if I have someone that's writing a personal proposal, I probably feel a little more comfortable like, wow, they really know me. How would that help me long term with that client?

REBEKAH BARTON

Yeah. So, people want to feel like they have authentic relationships with service providers. Especially when it comes to financial management, when it comes to taxes, accounting, advisory, business consulting, anything kind of in the wheelhouse of the tax and accounting world. People really want to feel like they have an authentic, trustworthy, professional relationship with you.

By setting the stage from day one that you are going to really see them, that you care, that you're going to personalize things, that they're not just a number, you're not only going to be more likely to retain them long term as a lifetime client, but you're going to be more likely to get referrals from them, you're going to be more likely to work with them on a multi-generational level. All of these things that you want to drive long-term growth can all start with something as simple as a personalized AI-driven proposal.

And I think that's something I like to push with our clients is that AI can have a snowball effect. It's not just automating one task. It's proving to people that you're committed to developing this personalized relationship with them. And then that is what's going to drive real growth and real relationships down the road.

LEE REAMS II

Yeah. And with this workflow and kind of this automation thing and this is what I'm talking about the user experience and what's changed. So, ideal world, I send this one-to-one personalized proposal to my restaurant owner. As soon as they, accept and pay, they then get a an instant engagement letter also personalized to them in language that they know.

Now, I'm saying, "Hey, this is how I work with restaurant owners. It details and speaks to their specific needs, nuances, and the type of services." again, now it's reinforcing. They sign the engagement letter. Oh, and now can kick off an intake form built for restaurant owners because we know what restaurant owners needs are.

We know what questions to ask. That is a form of a workflow that when automated will save you a ton of time and more importantly, you're now scraping and bringing in this data that the AI now can analyze to help you do your job better. I mean, I'm going as far as suggesting a client interview questions.

You know it'll drag in your tax return and say the previous tax return and say hey I'm interviewing this client you know what questions should I ask them what kind of strategies should I perhaps look at that is the value of using AI tools to make you smarter human in the loop yes but more efficient okay so advisory side high demand and rapid growth market expanding globally adoption is hampered by what things communicating value being able to scale perhaps the client perception of what that that value is and more importantly how do you get this data together.

So this is kind of the bottom line of this and then now we're going to talk about how to how to deal with the client engagement models and how to make this work. So tax services remain a firm revenue foundation. The focus is shifting towards advisory and clients expect deeper strategic value. Okay.

Advisory serves are your growth engine with firms expanding offerings in financial planning, business strategy, tech consulting, and more. You're seeing more of these family office relationships where a CPA firm for example, an enrolled agent might have a relationship with a family office of services where they can now help their client and be that trusted source to make sure that none of these decisions are being made in a vacuum. Okay. So the problem here is some of the implementation hurdles persists spec specifically about client engagement models.

And then again how do I communicate this? So let's get into this breaking out of what I'll call the compliance mindset. This is going to be hard and you the traditional method equals trans transactional, right? Most firms are still structured around annual tax prep and hourly billing.

This makes advisory feel like an extra not an integrated service. Okay, this is also creates a scaling problem. Advisory services need ongoing conversations. They need proactive planning and customized strategy.

So without new delivery models you know retainers, subscription pricing, bundled packages, it's hard to roll this out across the entire client base. More importantly, client behavior. Okay. Many clients are conditioned to think of their accountant as a once-a-year compliance partner.

I can't tell you how much time we spend writing content and creating content that go against that narrative. Really showing life events happen year-round. And even you we just did a a campaign called tax concierge for I'll call middle- to upper-middle-class clients to show them and the tax accountants how they can benefit from advisory. This is more tax planning type of relationships, but you're talking $10,000, $20,000 a year in tax savings on a dual income family each making 75,000.

That's a lot of money, right? So what you need to do is you need to change your expectations in your client's mind. I'm your year-round advisor. It takes both marketing and operational restructuring.

Rebekah, let's talk about what have we done that's been successful with some clients in establishing that year-round relationship and moving toward package pricing versus kind of I just do tax returns. I see you once and then I'm on vacation.

REBEKAH BARTON

Huge trend shifting this way. I see it with lots of our clients, particularly brand new clients who are being onboarded. Almost all of them offer like subscription-based services in some capacity or another. We're seeing a lot of, you know, quarterly review.

We're seeing a lot of, in some cases, even monthly sitdowns with business owners at kind of high-level packages. We're seeing a lot of virtual meetings. We're seeing monthly reports being delivered throughout the year to business owners. We're seeing even in personal situations with high net worth like dual income types of situations.

We're seeing quarterly reports being delivered. Where do you stand? Where do your investments stand? Where does this stand?

What are we doing for tax planning? So, I think people are starting to realize as a whole, both on the consumer side and within the tax and accounting industry, that this package-based subscription pricing is more valuable to everyone. It's helping tax professionals earn more money. They're no longer a commodity.

They're not kind of this once-a-year person where you just drop some documents by the office and leave. And it's also helping the consumer base understand that there is value in this. They're seeing that they're saving money. They're seeing that, you know, maybe they're paying more, but they're saving even more than that in their annual tax bill.

So, I think the longer people see that there is true value in advisory services and kind of these subscription level services, the more popular they're going to become as people begin to recommend them, as they start to see the benefit in their own lives. I also think there's an exclusivity to it that does not exist within the commoditization of tax and accounting services, and people love that. They want to feel like they're getting something special, something that not everyone has access to. And that's a really good way for tax professionals to position themselves that, hey, look, we're providing something more.

We are offering you something that not everyone in the world has access to, but you do.

LEE REAMS II

Perfect. Yeah. And leading firms are using playbooks. They're doing the tiered packaging.

I'm not going to use AI anymore. I'm going to call it tech-enabled. So tech enable portals like our Client Hub to create consistent engagement that moves away from an hourly into outcomes. I think that's really important and like even we have in development right now.

We haven't released it. It's a couple of months away - I'm teasing it. U but we have a new kind of tech-enabled tool that will then summarize when you're delivering a final tax return for example or even a financial statement. It will summarize it in client-speak, not accountant-speak.

So, like a narrative form, kind of highlight what the tax return is all about, maybe some opportunities, and then get the client to read this before they then go look at a PDF of a tax return and go, I don't know, does this look right? Is this not right? And then approve it or not, and then it kicks off at Form 8879 with QBI, right? So, it's really important to start utilizing these tools.

All right. So, the hidden bottleneck is the data. Okay, so you might have a tax software product here. You might have a spreadsheet here.

You might have a client portal here. You might even have some manual notes. Who knows, right? But this fragmentation is making it hard to analyze client data quickly or spot opportunities for tax planning.

This is where automation and tech-enabled tools come in. So, if we can now make your Client Hub the brains for all this data, so intake forms feed into the Client Hub. Tax returns, financial statements feed into the Client Hub. Any interviews, maybe you have a transcript from a client interview, it feeds into your Client Hub.

All that data now is walled within that client and now the AI can start analyzing it. You know, that the tech-enabled tools are are chasing documents. You're now spending time advising and being proactive with your advice. Okay, so this is really important that security is a big issue here.

Clients are more sensitive than ever about their data privacy. So if you're weak or have inconsistent workflows, that undermines trust. So if you're the person who emails someone their tax return versus using one secure hub, I think that is a big red flag. Okay.

And a lot of this data. So what I consider the best-in-class response is high growth firms are centralizing this client data into their CRM and having these these platforms talk to each other. It is a great way to standardize intake processes. So your advisory insights are built into the workflow.

Okay. And even proactively involved in the workflow. So I'm going to pivot a little bit now and talk about value communication. Rebekah, you can get excited about this.

So, how do I prove the ROI of advisory? How do I get the clients? There's like a perception gap. You know, clients often don't see advisory worth paying for because they can't immediately connect a strategy like, you know, doing QSBS stock for example or even quarterly planning to a bottom line impact.

So, how do we now measure these outcomes? How do we track and showcase the client savings? That's the beauty of tech-enabled tools. We can now give them reports.

We can give them dashboards. So there's a lot of ways that you can do this. And then we've been talking about personalized proposals. So think about it.

The proposal clearly outlines the scope and value of what the service is going to be. Case studies, benchmarks, storytelling showing how other business owners leverage advisory to grow or exit u successfully. Explain Rebekah how you now can create content with the AI tools that then starts communicating kind of this perception or filling the gap making people you know it's like a a political campaign you say things the same talking points over and over again at some point it starts resonating how do we do this on the delivery of this value communication

REBEKAH BARTON

so you're going to kind of want to think of MAX as the mortar that's holding this building together so to speak so basically What you're going to want to do is use all of this data that is floating around in your system and it can all be within one system. Let's just use counting works pro as an example. So you've got all of these reports. You've got last year's tax plan.

You've got, you know, emails from them. You've got information. You've got data you've uploaded. You've got client documents.

You can use MAX to sort of bring all of that together to create this personalized content that's going to show that person with numbers exactly how you're going to help them, exactly how much money you're going to save them. So, that's one way you can do it. But I do want to pivot to the social proof end of things because I think it's really important. And I think if we're talking about marketing specifically, getting it out there that you are offering these higher level advisory services, that's a place where a lot of my clients get stuck when I talk to them.

They don't know how to tell people that they're doing this. Video is great. If you can get existing clients who you're helping in this way to create little short 20 to 30 second video snippets telling people why this works, that's going to do wonders for you. When it comes time to grow your firm, when it comes time to take on more advisory clients, people love to see people they relate to talk about something.

AI is a great tool for this. You can use our system, any system you choose, to help you create scripts, to help you create concepts for how exactly you can create this cohesive sort of marketing plan that brings everything together, that uses client data, that uses existing testimonials. So, you're no longer working within a piecemeal system like you were talking about, Lee, with one thing here and one thing here and one thing here.

Instead of juggling all these different balls and all these different systems, you can have everything under one place and then you can use the AI engine to assist you in creating really any type of content you're interested in to drive things forward and to show people exactly why they should be considering your advisory services or whatever service it is that you're trying to offer.

LEE REAMS II

Yeah. And let's then I'm going to give you the road map now. So, we've given you all the background. We've given you all the stats.

We've given you the real-life things that are happening right now for those that have not adapted versus those that have. So if you're sitting in the bucket of like I don't know what to do. I want to go from compliance to advisory first. I don't know how to do this.

The new AI order is making things so I have to right. Clients are demanding it. Other firms, tech-enabled firms are delivering it. So step one, you need to reframe your firm's identity.

So you need to shift the narrative. Position the firm not just as a tax preparer but as a growth partner. At CountingWorks, that's what we do for clients. It's almost like an agency level narrative creation.

We interview you, we talk to you, we understand who you like to work with, what makes you special and then we help develop narratives around this. It is much easier to do now with AI and does not cost $20,000, $30,000, or $40,000 in a rebrand. Okay. So what do I mean?

You revise website copy. You start doing proposals that are one-to-one speaking in this language. Tools like MAX and other AI tools do this. Okay.

You create onboarding experiences and materials to highlight tax savings, wealth preservation and business strategy. Okay. You get the whole team aligned on how this is going to work and the value outcomes, not just filing deadlines. Okay.

So that's step one. Then you go into redesign the client engagement models. So move away from what I'll call the hourly rates and go into tier packages. So that could be an A, B and C, compliance only, growth advisory, strategic partner.

There's a lot of different ways, but start coming up with perhaps some subscription pricing. Use tech-enabled tools to help you with proposals when you're customizing them. You're going to find out A, what does the market bear? B, you can specialize the selling points around that particular client's needs.

So, meaning a client who's doing $5 million in revenue as a small business owner with 25 employees has completely different expectations than someone doing $500,000. So, you can't have package A fit for that client. So, there's a lot of different ways to use tech-enabled tools to deal with that. But it is a no-brainer.

You can offer quarterly, you can do annual stuff, you can do retainers, you can do all kinds of things, you could do monthly, you can do unlimited check-ins, you can do no, you only get so many check-ins. So, there's a lot of different ways to do this, but you need to step back and look at your client engagement model from the proposal through onboarding. Okay? It's going to change how firms perceive you.

You're an always on partner instead of a once-a-year cost center. Okay? That's really important when you're talking to clients, Rebekah. Where do you start when you start creating this new narrative?

And I know you might have to have to jump off and I can finish this up. But like how do you do that with your interview process to get people properly focused on communicating their value?

REBEKAH BARTON

So, the first thing we do is establish who they are. When people get on the phone with us, a lot of the time they don't even really know where they stand. They might have a vague idea. So the first thing we do is really hone in on who they are, what values they want people to perceive when they look at their firm.

Do they want to see them as like a fun, modern firm? Do they want to see them as super trustworthy as someone who works with executives? So every firm has a different personality. So we nail that down first.

Then from there, we really dive into, okay, what do you want to do? What do you want to offer? What are your goals? And then we work with them to kind of help them understand how our system can assist, what they need to be doing.

Every firm is unique. So, some firms really need to be doing, you know, YouTube videos. Some firms are better off because their demographic is older, not really using this type of technology. They're better off with newsletters.

They're better off with creating custom email content. So, we really nail down what is going to help that particular firm meet the clients they want to target where those people are at. And I think that's what's really important to note about AI and something we don't always talk about is that it is able to help you reach your people where they are. I think there's this misconception that AI can only be used to reach people who are, you know, age 40 and younger.

That older people, you're not going to be able to create content they want. And that's just not true. It's there to help you no matter who you are, no matter who your firm is targeting, no matter what service it is that you're trying to offer. And I think that's something that tax and accounting professionals need to hear is that AI is there to make your life easier no matter what your life looks like.

You don't have to be hyper-tech-savvy to take advantage of the benefits of being a tech-enabled firm. And that's something that we tell people a lot in onboarding is that like you can do this. Doesn't matter if you're super comfortable with tech terms with jargon. This is easy.

This is here for you. It's something you can use and something you definitely should be using. So, with that, I will go ahead and jump today, but I'll be back next week and Lee, I'll let you finish this one up.

LEE REAMS II

Thank you, Rebekah, for your time. I will only go on for another 10 minutes probably, so you're good. All right. Thank you.

All right. So, I'm going to go into step three here. And basically, it's build a unified data system. We've talked about it already, but you want to centralize client info.

So the more data we can put into one hub, the more likely your tech- enabled system can now proactively scan that data, organize that data, proactively provide insights to that data, flag advisory opportunities, right? And then secondarily, you want to automate intake. So you want to have smart intake forms that feed directly into your system and now you're ready to interview your client and start delivering the services. So the firm gains back their time more importantly right and the advisory services are triggered by data not guesswork and that's the value of u these tech-enabled systems really makes a difference.

Step four standardize your advisory services. So, what are the service lines? We have in our new MAX proposal tool, we do a couple different things. One, you can load your current pricing.

So, this is how I currently offer things. And it will then use that data to help you create proposals. And then it will actually go in and say, "Hey, based on this data, the market rates, you're either under-market or above-market or perhaps it even articulates some add-on services. So, this is what you normally do with this client, but hey, these are some upsell opportunities.

But by defining this, you're going to be much more successful. And then you can also start articulating it through things like I do quarterly tax planning, business entity optimization, exit strategy planning, cash flow forecasting. Okay? So, if you define all of these lines, then people start understanding what they're getting inside these services.

Okay? You want to be able to have repeatable services. This makes it scalable. So having a tech-enabled proposal tool.

Having the ability to record transcripts of an interview and then utilize that data to do planning to even help you strategically offer some things that maybe you didn't think about. I think those are all ways for you to really be successful here. So advisory becomes a core product with repeatable scalable systems rather than an ad hoc, you know, okay, hey, we have a new client and we're just kind of making it happen as we go. No, we have a system in place.

This is how it starts. Starts with a proposal, goes to engagement, goes to intake forms. The intake data now is you know, so now we're asking for data, tax returns, whatever. We're now able to analyze that data and then it walks through a workflow to the actual return delivery or the financial statement delivery and review and approval process.

So it makes it a big deal. Step six is scale through marketing and referrals. So now this is where all the tools and now with AI search becoming so important, this is where you can utilize a tech-enabled platform to really help you. So a content funnel, you need to be publishing blogs for this audience.

You want to target this locally via niche, maybe to specifically to your target audience. So instead of the old days of one blog article or 10 blog articles a month and a newsletter that speaks to everybody, you're doing something specific for restaurants, specific for dental firms, specific for dual income. You're choosing to use tools and platforms that now push data to these tools. For example, County Works has a way that we now push data from your local information.

So, kind of like the old directory listings, we'll we'll push it directly to ChatGPT for our VIP clients, right? So, what does that do? That tells ChatGPT, this firm is based in Newport Beach and they specialize in X. Here's some of their reviews.

Here's some of their data. This is now going to be utilized by the AI search tools and referencing you. So, the more you're talked about, the more your information is being used in answers to people's questions through AI tools, the more likely you're going to get more clients. Okay.

Referrals. If you're offering these type of services, clients are much more likely to recognize and share their stories and the value you added with peers. So, if they have versus, hey, I spent $2,500 for my tax return versus my accountant saved me $60,000 by utilizing these strategies, that is amplifying your messaging. Okay?

So, it's a big deal. Niche focus. Double down on your profitable verticals, whether that be real estate investors, gig workers, you know, small- to mid-sized, business owners. You want to build your reputation as the go-to advisory expert in a niche.

And again, it could be a type of service or it could be a vertical or a demographic you're going after. So growth compounds as advisory becomes both a client retention strategy and a market differentiator. So really really important. So I'm going to summarize all of this.

This has been a it's a lot and I want to communicate why this is so important. So the AI order is you need to create systems for both the user experience at scale and more importantly how do you amplify the value the client relationship layer is more important than ever you're competing against AI apps now you're competing against these PE rollups you're competing against Intuit at this point right so how do you deal with that how do you compete as a small to mediumsiz tax accounting firm so obviously step one is moving from compliance to advisory. It doesn't mean you're abandoning tax prep.

It's about layering advisory into the client journey with the right models, systems, and messaging. So, step one, we're just going to review. Reframe your identity outcomes, not filings. Step two, engagement models, tiered subscription.

Step three, start unifying data and create automation and AI insights from that data. And there's a lot of systems that are evolving. We still have a huge road map and where we're going, but this is the future. You got to start thinking about this as you start looking at how to scale, standardize services, make it scalable, repeatable.

Communicate the ROI, the value. So whether you have client dashboards, you have case studies, you're creating content, you're getting reviews, you need to amplify all of that messaging to your audience. And then step six is market and niche. So advisory as your growth engine.

The niche players that we're working with are killing it right now. They are much more successful than kind of the people that are doing it the same way as I did it last year. So the reality here, the bottom line is AI has already changed the visibility game. It's changing the user experience game right now.

You're no longer just competing for page one rankings. Okay? You're competing to be recommended by AI, not just their friends and family. And if you don't have a plan or some sort of tech- enabled solution to do that, you're going to fall behind.

So I hope this has been helpful. CountingWorks, we're already implementing this playbook. Everything I've been talking about today, these are strategies that we're doing that we're seeing that are working. We're helping our clients get optimized in AI search.

We're helping them with narrative driven design and storytelling and we're helping them with their client engagements. So if you're interested in speaking more to us, visit our website at accountingworkspro. Com. We want you to stand out.

We're here. We believe in the industry. We want you to to do to do well. So, my last takeaway is now is the time to pivot.

So, hopefully this has resonated. There's a lot here. If you have any questions, definitely reach out to me on LinkedIn. I'm glad to kind of address anything that we talked about today.

But the now is the time. So hopefully this works. Again, thank you for being a listener to the Growth Minded Accountant podcast. That is it for this week.

We're going to work on a bunch of different things here in the future, some more interesting topics. Maybe focus a little bit shorter on a couple in the future here. So thank you again and we'll talk to you later. Bye.

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