Influential Conversations for Accountants Webinar Part 3

welcome everybody to influential conversations for accountants podcast weinar part three we record this live this eight-part series live in webinar with a live audience and we also publish to YouTube and we publish into the podcast and the purpose of this webinar series is one to have a conversation about how accountants can be more influential in the marketplace and of course as a both a preamble and a companion to our conference coming up in October which we&#39;ll discuss briefly this webinar is for accounting professionals CPAs enroll agents bookkeepers QuickBooks Pro advisors small business accounting advisers Etc that are looking to improve their firm communication strategy to have more influential conversations with their clients looking to develop their team through richer and more meaningful conversations and also looking to improve their personal communication skills so they can bring less anxiet uh to and from work uh in and their personal life so that&#39;s the purpose of this uh podcast series it&#39;s eight Monon the episodes you&#39;re are listening to episode number number three out of eight episode number four will go Live May 10th second Friday every month until we have our conference in October each episode will be 30 to 60 Minutes long with myself Hector Garcia My Brother Carlos and our special guest like we have today which will discuss who he is briefly you can watch live in zoom and the series 100% free to encourage you to joining us in October in Hollywood Florida for our conference titled by the same name influential conversations for accountants that being said let&#39;s get started today&#39;s guest is a person I&#39;ve admired for a very very long time his name is Blair ANS he&#39;s an author and advisor to creative entrepreneurs he works with advertising firms marketing firms and uh his ethos comes from his very first book called The win without pitching Manifesto which I have here in my hand buy this book in Amazon for 20 to $30 in hard cover you can also get it in Kindle and you can also get it in audiobook format depending on what you prefer it&#39;s got 4.8 uh Stars over 2,000 reviews and it&#39;s absolutely amazing we&#39;ll talk about it briefly we&#39;ll talk about some of the thinking that has evolved from this book his other books and stuff that&#39;s coming up in uh Blair&#39;s world so there&#39;s also another book uh which is actually more of like a system I think calling it a book would actually not be the right thing it&#39;s a system it&#39;s a it&#39;s in a flip um&#39;s it called um a binder format and it&#39;s really meant for you to use as a transformational tool it&#39;s called pricing creativity which is a play in two things one is creativity is one of the most intangible difficult things to price so so how to price that and also getting created with pricing I&#39;m not sure if if it was meant like that but that&#39;s how I understood it which I think is brilliant and also uh Blair&#39;s blog called The Thinking section of of the win without pitching website you want to check that out that&#39;s in the slides and lastly the podcast the two Bobs podcast subtitled conversations in the art of creative entrepreneurship with David C Baker another brilliant person in the industry wrote I believe the latest two books one is called the business of expertise which I absolutely love um and the other one is called The Secret tradecraft of elite advisers also an amazing read so Blair did I Mis categorize any of your introduction there no that was a lot of info Hector and you got it all exactly right thank you for that I&#39;m really happy to join you today absolutely so before we get started Blair win without pitching Manifesto is uh an immensely uh successful book and I don&#39;t know if we I don&#39;t know if have millions of sales I doubt it because it&#39;s very Niche book but it&#39;s very successful because almost every person that reads this book writes to you talks about it um our friend our mutual friend Chris do who was in our conference last year um was so Smitten by the book that he actually did an entire uh 12-part Series in clubhouse during the club during the pandemic and I believe is this is that has been one of the most significant piece pieces of of of of thought leadership that Chris do has done in combination with you so first I&#39;d like to tell us why is win without pitching Manifesto so successful what in the world is the pitch and um and give us a little insight into your world yeah thanks um why is it successful so so far it&#39;s um within the next few months it will hit 100,000 copies which is which is it&#39;s pretty good for book it&#39;s kind of it&#39;s it&#39;s gone beyond the niche it was written for that&#39;s you know one of the reasons why I&#39;m here speaking to accountant accountants not for the first time um why is it successful uh so the the the pitch so everybody knows what a sales pitch is right and um you go into a meeting with a prospective client I venture to Guess that you go into pitch mode where you are transmitting and not receiving that is uh that problem is even um it&#39;s orders of magnitude greater I mean if you could measure it objectively in Creative firms because in a creative firm like and what I mean by that is an advertising agency or a design firm and these are the firms that I grew up in professionally in these firms you are conditioned to actually give the product away for free give your solve your pro solve the problem solve the creative problem as proof of your ability to solve the problem so the cost of sale in a creative firm is very high and this idea of pitching for free we won&#39;t get into the history of where it came from and and why it continues to uh Prevail um but I think when I came along in 2010 and published the manifesto nobody really believe nobody in this market of ad agencies in particular and also some design firms nobody really believed that you could actually secure a new account win the business without having to solve the problem as proof of your ability to solve the problem the manifesto is really a yes you can book it&#39;s it&#39;s written to be an inspirational book um it&#39;s got 12 chapters each of them a proclamation that we&#39;ll get into I&#39;m sure and it was really there&#39;s very little here&#39;s how to in the book I mean there&#39;s there&#39;s a bit of it but I was really I really wrote that book I was trying to incite a revolution um and I think I was somewhat successful well I&#39;m happy I&#39;m happy with the impact it&#39;s had on it on the business because a lot has changed in the four is it 14 years I&#39;m horrible at math um a lot has changed in the 14 years or so since that book has come out what hasn&#39;t changed is annual sales keep increasing every year so it started out slowly and it just keeps steadily building so year 14 or year 13 of sales eclipsed every other previous year and it&#39;s just a curve that just keeps going upward so it&#39;s saying that there&#39;s a there&#39;s still a need for this thinking in the marketplace this book is like fine wine it gets better over time so um you&#39;re saying there&#39;s not a lot of how to which is what most people look for like how do I solve this problem how do I change my practice how do I um you know behave differently what words do I say you know how do I how do I respond to to to to the client&#39;s um complaints or scope creep or whatever like a lot of us are looking for the how to but the book fundamentally looks into what should your strategy be like how should you think of yourself in terms of creating standards of work so these standards of work that you impose on yourself and what I mean by yourself I just don&#39;t mean yourself IND individual but yourself your firm right you&#39;re going to have standards of work and these standards of work are essentially going to present themselves on the quality of the work and then the quality of the work eventually will speak for itself so instead of you having to sell yourself and do all this extra work around selling yourself like pitching right the quality of your work speaks volumes about what you do and then you start attracting customers you start pulling customers towards you instead of you trying to push your idea onto them so that&#39;s how I that&#39;s how I see it I&#39;ll briefly go through this 12 proclamations and if you&#39;re an accounting professional you&#39;re watching and and listening to this this is actually written in such a way that it&#39;s not industry specific like you actually go through these 12 proclamations and you think about your practice your business or yourself if you&#39;re an individual and you think huh what if I had those proclamations what if I said that out loud and what if I acted as if every single one of these things were the absolute truth about how I should manage my business so I&#39;ll pick Blair&#39;s brain about maybe two or three of them but these are the proclamations we will specialize we will replace conversation we will replace presentations with conversations we will diagnose before we prescribe have H had tip to the medical industry there we will rethink what it means to sell we will do with words what we used to do with paper we will be selective we will build expertise rapidly we will solve problems before we are paid we will address issues of money early we will refuse to work at a loss we will charge more we will hold our heads up high these are the 12 proclamations 12 things that you need to say and if you do say them and you believe them and you act upon them them your business could be transformed so Blair maybe break down two or three of those for us well the foundational one is the first one the first proclamation of we will specialize and when I wrote that book in 2010 there was still kind of a dir of specialism going on in the creative firms in Creative industry there&#39;s a reason for that but it&#39;s not it&#39;s it&#39;s um it&#39;s not specific to the creative industry but creativity is effectively the ability to see it&#39;s not the ability to write or draw um at least based on the definition that I&#39;m using that that was um written by a scholar on creativity um so if you think of this it&#39;s the ability to bring a novel perspective to a problem then if that&#39;s your superpower thinking about a problem differently then you will be drawn to problems that you have not previously solved so your personal superpower and your personal interest aligns to this need for VAR iy you&#39;re always drawn to a problem you haven&#39;t previously solved and it conflicts with your business&#39;s need for you to focus or because everybody understands that you know broad expertise is an oxymoron and if you want to get deeper if you want to deepen your knowledge on something you want to become more expert on something the most practical way to do it and effectively the only real way to do it unless you&#39;re like a genius polymath um the only way to do it is to narrow your focus you narrow the set of problems that you are staring at every day that you&#39;re solving and you start to see the patterns you go deeper and deeper into that so it starts with specialization so if you take and I don&#39;t profess to know the accounting profession well but I do for the last few years I&#39;ve thought I should buy an accounting firm because we we I work with accountants um in our business I&#39;m in Canada we work worldwide most the majority of our business is in the US so we American accountants and Canadian accountants and worked with multiple accountants and I&#39;m just struck by how um poorly positioned they are and how how they how they price drives me crazy how they price but we can come back to that um so if you&#39;re a generalist if you&#39;re just a you hang out your shingle and you say CPA um you&#39;ve got an accounting problem we can solve it for you A lot of it might just be tax returns so it might be a lot more specialized than that then just think of the number of competitors that you have you have all kinds of different competitors and it&#39;s not until you narrow your focus and you start to specialize in something it might be accounting for small business owners and we need to come back to this because it&#39;s a bit of a big topic and there is a danger in specializing too early too early in your career but at some point um it makes to narrow narrow your focus and I would say I just finished writing a piece on this it is hasn&#39;t been published yet and I haven&#39;t decided whether I&#39;m going to publish it or not but one it&#39;s I&#39;m basically saying to my market creative people but I also identify accountants financial planners and Engineers I say design is now too expensive accounting is now too expensive if you define What You Do by your discipline if you say I am an accountant I am a designer then you are in competition with offshore labor and Ai and you&#39;re in a race to the bottom what you do is going to zero AI can already do most tax returns it&#39;s inase to the bottom but if you take that discipline you have this accounting discipline this accounting skill certification so that&#39;s a discipline and you apply it to a more narrow set of problems prob either narrow the problem set or narrow the market the the organizations people or organizations for whom you solve those problems or a combination of both now you can start to use AI you can even start to use offshore labor you can use these tools that are commodifying your discipline to your advantage and you can start to create real value and and charge a lot more money so that&#39;s kind of a modern update on this idea of we will specialize if you are if you define What You Do by your discipline I am an accountant rather than I&#39;m somebody who solves these types of problems and I happen to be an accountant and they&#39;re accountant accounting components that we will take care of then um then you&#39;re in trouble and I think you know you you and I can have a conversation about this Hector and people can Poe questions or comment on that uh if anybody wants to push back on it but that&#39;s kind of a modern update on the first proclamation of we will specialize and if you don&#39;t gain an advantage change the power dynamics in the buy sell relationship by vastly reducing the number of direct competitors through specialization if you don&#39;t do that then all of the 11 subsequent proclamations they&#39;re a lot harder to do that&#39;s a that&#39;s a great point and I want to give you some insight into and I know you heard from every industry reply back but Blair you don&#39;t understand our industry is different like everybody has the same answer so I&#39;m I&#39;m going to put the you don&#39;t understand our industry is different hat for a second just to tell you what our challenge is okay our challenge is our entire industry has chosen not to be specialist so customers are accustomed to the CPAs that do everything they&#39;re accustomed to hey can you do my personal tax return yes can you do my escort or my my business yes can you do my brother&#39;s uh little company yes can you do my church&#39;s return yes can you do my grand grandfather&#39;s state tax return Yes the challenge that we&#39;ve had is that we&#39;ve created an environment where we is our brand accountant CPAs uh bookkeepers we want our client to trust us for everything related to money accounting and tax because we felt that that was the way to have the most amount of opportunities and the most amount of business and the only way to grow our business really was to say yes to as many people um that have a checkbook as possible now you&#39;re proposing to us something that many thought leaders in our Industries in conferences in podcast is proposing to us which is pick a specialty specialize and the riches are in the niches etc etc however for a lot of us is difficult to figure out how to exactly how to get started with that exactly with a firm that already manages and does multiple things with already a lifestyle where we draw satisfaction from the fun of solving a brand new problem that we never seen before in the Horizon we see two potential problems one is we don&#39;t know how to go from broad to narrow in our existing firms and two we&#39;re worried about getting bored there two so those two things are happening at the same time even if we intellectually understand that there&#39;s more profitability in the end and we all do and and accountants we understand profitability more than anyone else even when we when we accept that we have trouble getting the Kickstart because of those two issues so you mind addressing them yeah none at all so um it&#39;s not a requirement to specialize you&#39;re just so if you&#39;re not specialized you you have a you have a sales and marketing problem right you have a new client problem if you don&#39;t have a new client problem then there&#39;s no problem to solve right you&#39;re fine and one thing about accounting is I imagine it&#39;s like Financial Planning in that it&#39;s a it&#39;s a you&#39;re in it&#39;s a relationship business once you are in the relationship those a lot of those relationships go on for a very long time so the bigger threat to those relationships is actually the cost of your services going down through offshore labor and AI but in terms of attracting new clients if you don&#39;t have a problem then you don&#39;t have to specialize it&#39;s not the go goal is not to specialize as narrow as possible it&#39;s to be positioned as as broadly as practical so how tight do you need to get to be differentiated so that you can build your practice if the people who are listening to and watching this if they&#39;ve already built a substantial practice um and their focus isn&#39;t on growing the practice through the acquisition of new clients then they don&#39;t really have to worry about it at least at least in the short term they do have to keep an eye on the cost of their services some of the key Services going to zero that&#39;s that&#39;s the looming threat um boredom yeah creative people have the same same issue with boredom I&#39;ll so and it&#39;s also not specializing is not about saying no to everything it&#39;s really about the work that you pursue and that you&#39;re trying to attract in a relationship oriented business let&#39;s say I&#39;ll give you an example so I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere in remote Mountain Village in Canada like it&#39;s not even a town it&#39;s a village less than a thousand people the woman who cuts my hair here um she used to live in the big city of 10,000 people an hour away and when I talk her about what I do and we talked about specialization she told me the story of when she launched her um hair stylist practice she advertised herself as specializing in curly hair and she said she was immediately swamped she just filled all of her capacity immediately because I&#39;ve never seen a hair stylist claim to specialize in a certain type of hair um and my wife has curly hair and she goes to her Etc but what happens is the initial influx of business she&#39;s differentiated herself in the market uh allows her to build the practice early but then all of the referrals happen all of these relatives and Friends who don&#39;t have curly hair look at the value proposition and go well if you can cut curly hair you can cut straight hair so at some point when she was at capacity which was pretty quick she dropped the claim of specialization and I have another example of that in the financial services space and these are both kind of relationship oriented businesses that strike me as similar to accounting firms so if you&#39;re just La if you&#39;re young in your business or early in the business or you do have a u a a growth problem a lack of grow grow through a lack of new clients try putting out there accounting firm and then in smaller type specializing in X now if you&#39;re doing marketing now you know now you have a distinct marketing message um so that&#39;s how I would have you think about it I also think about Google searches like if what are the probability let&#39;s say you&#39;re in La what are the probabilities that somebody goes to Google and types CPA in LA right and they&#39;ll find you if you actually understand a little bit about SEO and the way you gain the whole search engine world it would probably cost you half a million dollars over a lifetime of work to get to the point where somebody searches CPA and la and you show up where if if somebody and and by the way on top of that let&#39;s say you show up and and a bunch of other people show up all these top five are also competing with price because people are calling all five to quote the price because there&#39;s many of them but if they search CPA in La for Japanese expats slash double taxation issues right they&#39;re only gonna find the one person that decided to specialize on that to make their entire website about that to write blog articles about that social media is called the the job exp CP ba or whatever like they build an entire brand around that and yes you will have a lot less clients but it&#39;s possible and and and extremely realistic that the less clients you get could pay more than the broad clients that you&#39;re taking because um a Japanese expat with double taxation problems talking to the one person that specializes on that is more willing to pay $10,000 to just get it done right by the expert then gamble with somebody else and I think uh what some of the some of the things that people do with nonsp specializers is they make a mental calculation in their head that goes if I go with a non-specialist then I have to make up the risk I&#39;m taking with price but when I go with the specialist I&#39;ll pay more for taking less risk so the specialist der risks the transaction and that&#39;s the part the part that doesn&#39;t get discussed enough and this is one of these squishy mental calculations that customers make that they might not necessarily say out loud but it does happen through their decision making so there&#39;s an inherit price premium that you will be searching by being the one and only that people were able to find as the expert about that yeah and you you shouldn&#39;t even try to strive for one and only I think if you if it&#39;s a market of one then you&#39;re probably too tight um but you red vastly reduce the number of direct competitors you think you used the word price premium a couple of times you think about the definition of the word premium it&#39;s got It&#39;s got two definitions one is an amount above an ordinary or a standard price that&#39;s a premium and another definition is it&#39;s the it&#39;s the it&#39;s the uh amount you pay monthly on your insurance policy right they&#39;re the same thing so just think about this you pay a price premium as a form of insurance so almost 20 years ago when I needed to find a crossb accountant who dealt with Canadian and US Taxation and I searched Google there was really only one person who came up and we still used that person so that you know to to illustrate your point yeah price premium pay people pay more for the insurance the likely because I could hire a generalist to do this stuff that hasn&#39;t done it before most of them wouldn&#39;t take it but imagine imagine the the expert who said uh I&#39;ve never done that before but yeah I&#39;ll I&#39;ll do it many years ago when I moved to this small village we had one doctor his name was Doc Olsen Believe It or Not old doc Olsen and uh I went to him I had a kidney stone and I said I also need a vasectomy and uh can you refer me to a urologist and he said yeah I will refer you and he said you know I used to do these I could probably do it then he said no I probably shouldn&#39;t then he said no I could probably do it just IM the confidence that he did not instill in me even though he was season head it wasn&#39;t the thing that he did every time my wife just came back from a dental specialist a consultation and for a procedure that is probably going to be a little bit painful and the guy said I do 500 of these a year okay you&#39;re the person from you do this procedure 500 times a year I will pay and then she did the the math on the price and how much money this gu this is a dentist making well over a million dollars a year so that&#39;s price premium she pays the premium because she wants the person who&#39;s going to get it done right and he builds a fancy new house as a result and we can accept the premise that doing 500 of those specific things it&#39;s probably more boring than doing a whole bunch of new different cases but also not boring spending that money though yeah exactly that&#39;s the point I want to make but but but also uh what&#39;s not boring is getting getting better at it every single time to you being the one that other professionals could look after to kind of like Mentor them and help them and you become a leader a thought leader in the profession being recognized as Best in Class in that in in that area and also when you&#39;re Best in Class in something and something Innovative is happening in that world and they need a consultant or face or a partner they&#39;re gonna say you know what we&#39;re building this new machine that does that procedure in half the time and who best to partner with that the one person that has done it 500 times so you you also want to think about your Evolution as a professional you know like do you want to retire or die doing the same thing you&#39;re doing now no but the best way to evolve is to stand out and and the best way to stand out is to be best in class and the only way to be best in class is to build I should have it here on I believe is uh number seven build expertise rapidly and you kind of have to do the same thing over and over like the 10,000 hour rule right I forgot that was malcol glasswell that you you have to do something 10,000 hours to become an expert at it yeah and this fear of boredom we need to speak about it because it is grossly overstated it&#39;s been proven repeatedly across numerous studies human beings are horrible predictors of what they will and will not like so you think of so this here&#39;s the metaphor that I use you&#39;re standing in a room full of doors and I did this with Chris doe on one of his podcasts and being a being a generalist you want to walk through every door every door represents a different problem with with a different type of client and I&#39;m standing behind you and I&#39;m saying no you need to pick one door walk through it and never look back and you think on the other side of one door is you will die from boredom because you think if you can only spend the rest of your professional your career in that one room it&#39;s just say solving the same problem over and over again it&#39;s going to bore the hell out of you but that&#39;s not what&#39;s on the other side of that door what&#39;s on the other side of that door is more doors you just can&#39;t see them from where you are so this guy who does 500 procedures a year I&#39;ll bet you in some ways they&#39;re all similar and then there are these outliers that really push him and deepen are the source of him deepening his expertise and I&#39;ll bet the problems are fascinating and he runs up against the edge of his skill set into this Zone into kind of the Zone known as The Flow State where I&#39;m challenged but I feel competent I&#39;m feel like I&#39;m at the height of my abilities that&#39;s the that that flow State that&#39;s what we all kind of seek in everything that we do and yeah if you&#39;re doing the same thing over and over again repetitive tasks you don&#39;t get to that flow state if you&#39;re always doing something new you haven&#39;t done before you&#39;re seriously stressing yourself you don&#39;t get to that flow State you do get to it you do get to it as an expert who&#39;s kind of pushing the boundaries of your expertise getting deeper and deeper Carlos has joined us yeah Carlos join Carlos actually in uh in Europe so he says I&#39;m going to sneak in he probably forgot to unmute when he logged in absolutely Blair and I will we&#39;ll end this conversation with there&#39;s a story I want to tell you very very very quick I&#39;ve told this before people may have heard me discussing this before um my friend came to my house the other day and he opened the sliding door and he heard all sorts of squeaks and he said oh man you gotta call my my my sliding door guy he&#39;s great now when he said that I I heard handyman I I mean I didn&#39;t hear sliding door guy like I it wouldn&#39;t occur to me that there isn&#39;t a thing as a slid IND door guy so I called you know I I called Juan and I said hey man I have an issue with Mauricio told me to call you I have an issue with my sliding door can you fix it he&#39;s like all right most of the problems can be can be fixed for $175 I have a lot of the parts with me once I get there I&#39;ll let you know if it&#39;ll be more are you okay with that he was addressing the issue with money early on almost like listen I don&#39;t even want to talk to you if you don&#39;t think 175 bucks work and I was like okay fine uh and then so he comes in he looks at the sliding door and he said yeah I&#39;ll get it done for you um here here&#39;s my zel pay me 10075 bucks or whatever and I just had to pay him right there and then I just kind of trusted him really so he went in there he took the the door out replaced the wheels put the put the door back in sliding door was like it was just so satisfying to finally get my sliding door back with squeaks and the I goes try it and I go amazing and and and in that moment I said this is the best handyman I ever seen in my entire life the guy comes with equipment he&#39;s ready um he told me the price up front he fixed it in like literally I&#39;m not lying to you nine minutes and I said hey man I&#39;m definitely goingon to use you I need help with this help with this he&#39;s like I only fix SL IND doors and I was like wait you make a living just fixing slid IND doors hey like yeah okay tell me a little bit about amazing that&#39;s amazing he tells me I tell him tell me a little bit about that and the guy shows me his calendar and he had 17 more sliding doors to fix that day so in the day in the day because he get he was already like wrapping up and and and leaving like that&#39;s all he does he&#39;s a slide Indo guy and that&#39;s it and I gotta tell you every time my friend comes over and they&#39;re checking out my house I go the first thing I want you to try that sliding door like I I show off this slid IND door and I&#39;m so proud and I have I have referred Juan the slid IND door guy to every single person that I know and I&#39;ve never referred any of my other uh handyman that I ever had because that to me was just so amazing and that&#39;s how you stand out like we gotta be the sliding door guy of our industry and and and charge 175 five bucks for nine minutes worth of work and next now that&#39;s a bit in direct contrast of the whole relationship concept of course one wasn&#39;t to build a relationship with me he has a relationship with sliding doors he has a relationship with his craft he has a relationship with probably every single day he wakes up he goes I&#39;m gonna do it under eight minutes I&#39;m gonna do it under seven minutes so I&#39;m sure he figured out a way to keep himself excited about doing the same thing but doing it so damn well that customers are just impressed by what he does I so the entire audience being accountant has already done the math on uh 17 * 175 what I really like about what he did is once he diagnosed it yeah okay he didn&#39;t even tell you what the problem is I can fix he&#39;s already told you most most of these things cost $175 you say okay he diagnoses it it&#39;s the same problem that comes up almost probably 90% of the time and he&#39;s got all the different wheels in the van he says I can fix it it&#39;s 175 bucks you pay him he&#39;s done in 10 minutes so he&#39;s eliminated the conversation where after 10 minutes he says hey it&#39;s a 175 bucks and you say what it only took you 10 minutes good for him for getting the money up front that&#39;s fantastic right and I as a value pricing guy of course I didn&#39;t challenge the whole pricing premise but I could totally see myself 10 years ago without understanding value pricing and completely Going Bonkers about you know paying 175 bucks for the for the 10 minutes the point is that oh he really and you really think if you look at the work all he did was remove the door clean clean the guide and replace the wheels this is like what five5 to $10 worth of materials the value was knowing how to do it knowing how to do it quickly saying it with confidence having a fixed price and being recommended by someone else that says you gotta call my sliding door guy that is the brand I mean it maybe that happened by accident but that is the brand the brand is I I will get your sliding door fixed and you will be blown away and he he he never Ed it that way that that way it happened through the water of mouth yeah that&#39;s incredible what a I&#39;m going to use that story if I may I&#39;ll attribute it to you no problem and so we&#39;ll move on um uh from that and I wanted to ask you Blair so we write uh a a Manifesto for us for your firm for you individually you use the will use your book as inspiration maybe we&#39;ll bastardize all 12 of them and and just kind of reward it maybe we&#39;ll grab two or three that we like once the the the manifesto is written and we have convinced oursel and we have convinced our team is there a public version of this like how do how do we let now let the world know that we work under these standards and these minimums and like how do we externalize this yeah so it it in my world it starts with a point of view you have to articulate a a point of you or a perspective so you do we can we can describe your um your focus as your discipline for a certain market so what do you do and who do you do it for and then you look at who else has the same discipline in Market accounting for anybody who needs accounting um there are a lot of competitors and so the first way to set yourself apart is through um narrowing that Focus either the discipline or the market more correctly like focus on a specific set of problems for a specific uh client type and then the second level of differentiate so now you eliminated now instead of a thousand direct competitors maybe you have 20 direct competitors in your in your geographical Market um now how do you further differentiate yourself from those 20 well it&#39;s through your perspective your point of view your overarching belief on how this discipline for Market should be done so once you arrive at a perspective and I&#39;m fortunate I I tripped over one it&#39;s right there in the name of the business in the book this idea that you can win business without having tock pitch for free so that&#39;s the perspective then write a Manifesto on it and the manifesto doesn&#39;t have to be a 24,000 word book um it can be a 450-word blog post and then once you write the manifesto you nail it to the church door the way Martin Luther nailed the 96 thesis of the Protestant uh Reformation um so what does that mean that means put it on your website somewhere prominently and link to it and reference it from time to time um and I think that&#39;s enough for most people and for some for some people some firms maybe the manifesto is there&#39;s maybe there&#39;s enough there to write a book maybe it&#39;s just a blog post maybe it&#39;s a YouTube video whatever it is just get it out into the public and the other work that you&#39;re doing if you&#39;re if you&#39;re creating any thought leadership if you&#39;re putting any information out there in the world for uh uh uh to draw people to you then link back to that Manifesto and what you&#39;re trying to do here with that perspective and the articulation of that perspective in the manifesto is you&#39;re trying to um attract clients who are ideologically aligned so in my primary target market of creative firms if you don&#39;t think free pitching is a problem then you&#39;re you&#39;re not going to be drawn to us um if you think free pitching is a problem and nothing can be done about it or you for whatever reason you can&#39;t change your ways you&#39;re not going to be drawn to it so your perspective should be somewhat polarizing it&#39;s not fair to say it should be like really polarizing po the need for polarization I&#39;m fond of saying is a function of competition density so if you&#39;re undifferentiated and you&#39;ve got all kinds of direct competitors and there aren&#39;t enough customers and it&#39;s a bloodbath fighting for those potential clients then you need to be somewhat polarizing in your perspective and I off the top of my head I can&#39;t think of what a what a perspective um for an accountant would be I know my financial advisor I don&#39;t know that he would articulate this but I think of his point his ideology is uh paying any tax is Criminal he&#39;s offended if I or any of his clients taxes and he&#39;s not advocating uh that we do anything illegal he&#39;s just into all kinds of elaborate structures to get your tax bill to zero so I would say that&#39;s kind of his Ideology Now I would just ask the listener do you have a point of view that you think sets you apart from most other accountants who also do what you do serving the market that you serve you&#39;re muted Hector I want to share with something with you briefly briefly Blair um I think it wasn&#39;t a direct inspiration but I believe you had a lot of influence on this couple years ago I got tired of answering the question I need a CPA how much you charge like I just felt it was just a lot of waste of time for both sides so what I did is I wrote an open I said open letter to new clients I published it on LinkedIn I have it on my site when anybody asks me the questions I say I&#39;m going to say hey read the open letter first then we&#39;ll talk on the open letter I I I I say why not CPA accounting services are the same the fact that only do a few of them and not all of them the fact that you have to pay a diagnosis fee upfront just to have the initial conversation and for us to know for them to know for us to know what we can do for them the fact that we have a specific Niche which is QuickBooks related inventory e-commerce and Manufacturing uh workflows that&#39;s the speciality specialization that I have the type of work that we typically do the type of work that we that we normally don&#39;t do and addressing the concept of why I&#39;m not going to give them an hourly rate so I I think you had a lot of influence on that and and and that completely transformed and changed how I felt about having that conversation of front instead of having to sell on the idea that hey you you got to pay me for a diagnostic and then they go why do I have to pay for Diagnostic if nobody else does I go just read the open letter and then get back to me and I believe that one the level of confidence that you exude by doing that uh it&#39;s really valuable number two it gives the client homework I&#39;ve done my homework I spent the past 25 years becoming the best at what I do do some homework client and figure out if you want to work with me so I want to thank you and and and Ron Baker and many of the people that I&#39;ve followed over the years to for me the confidence to doing something like that and and the reason why I&#39;m saying that is because maybe it doesn&#39;t look like 12 bullet points in your website that says these are my proclamations maybe it just simply just looks like this hey Mr customer you want to work with us this is what we do this is how we do it this is a process this is the entry fee and this is likely what you&#39;ll get out of out of just the initial conversation even if we don&#39;t work together and make people go through the exercise of learning that first I don&#39;t have a book so I can&#39;t be like you Blair where you say I really won&#39;t talk to you if you haven&#39;t read my book yet okay and I get that position because your book is who you are it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s your thinking and and and it&#39;s it&#39;s it&#39;s much easier to have a conversation about what you can do for them after they&#39;ve gone through the the basic elements of your book because the conversation is much more advanced conversation just like I don&#39;t take any more clients I haven&#39;t seen one of my YouTube videos why because it would be such a waste of time for me to like sell myself and who I am and what I&#39;m good at okay before having somebody already see it firsthand by watching my video so the the the point is the manifesto doesn&#39;t look exactly like the way you have it laid out in the book it&#39;s just basically setting the rules of engagement I love it I absolutely love it it does all the heavy lifting and for your open letter my book and that book in particular um there&#39;s just a market difference between somebody who reaches out to you who has been exposed to your thinking your point of view and somebody who has not right so I can imagine that you get inquiries from people hey email me your rates I&#39;m looking for an accountant and you probably go oh not another one of these and you send them back and say read this and if uh if you want to talk after that let me know and it&#39;s this separator it does a lot of the heavy work your philosophy your specialism all of these things and it&#39;s the same with me every once in a while we get some haven&#39;t had it in a while because that book&#39;s been out for 14 years and I have other books and podcasts for seven years Etc um but every once in a while I get like somebody who&#39;s like Hey we&#39;re we&#39;re we&#39;re looking for a a consultant you&#39;re one of three um can you respond to this RFP something silly like that and it&#39;s clear that they just I&#39;m just a name on a list and um they they don&#39;t actually know anything about us that&#39;s awesome yeah absolutely right we we&#39;re aligned there question 12 proclamations and win without pitching again amazing framework for building a specialized practice is there a 13th Proclamation it&#39;s been 14 year it&#39;s been what 14 years you said is there is there something like if you could go back and add a 13th item would you add one yeah I don&#39;t think I would first of all I don&#39;t know which I would keep it at 12 I don&#39;t which one I would take away I&#39;m it&#39;s I really like the question but I um I&#39;m surprised at how much I still like that book 14 years later uh one of the things we&#39;ve already spoken to this there there isn&#39;t a lot of here&#39;s how too so the books that I&#39;m writing now pricing creativity is really the here&#39;s how to followup for the the money proclamations 8 through 12 really 8 through 11 really um where we talk about it&#39;s it&#39;s really about money getting paid uh Loosely about pricing um so that&#39;s a that&#39;s a here&#39;s how to and as you say it&#39;s kind of a working book it&#39;s a it&#39;s a manual meant to it&#39;s in that form because I want you to have it on your shelf and I want you to pull it off from time to time and reference it and the book that I&#39;m uh I finished now and is out in September and I I won&#39;t say the name of it yet um but it is really the here&#39;s how to follow up to the manifesto it&#39;s written in the same tone of voice um but it&#39;s quite detailed it gives away our entire model for selling um so what you do when how you hold yourself what tools you use and includes some guidance on pricing as well so I is there 13 Proclamation no but it would be the 13th Proclamation is everything I&#39;ve done that comes after that book I guess here&#39;s how to yeah so couple things I want to add um in the conversation we have prior to hit and record uh you told me the same thing I won&#39;t tell you the name of the book but the general theme was that that we the professionals we are two we are two avatars we are the expert the technical expert at the particular thing that we have trained all of our lives for and then there&#39;s the our branding selves the salesperson inside of us that is um promoting that craft and some firms have that completely separated they got the sales people and The Branding people and they have the the production people and the experts but I believe that in accounting so much of us are both the ones selling the firm selling the services and then doing them so I believe that much you can give away that that&#39;s the theme of the book is the separation between you know our expert self and our salesperson self yeah where the first two books were written for the creative individual and the creative firm they have found much much broader audiences and this third book um is written for that broader audience so it would include accountants it&#39;s anybody who sees them themselves as an expert adviser or practitioner first and a salesperson second so if your second job is selling if you have to sell to be able to do what you love to do your core profession um then this book is for you because most people who who whose second job is sales uh generally don&#39;t like it don&#39;t think they&#39;re very good at it and so this book is written for those people and and you&#39;re alluding to um this idea of expert you versus salesperson you there&#39;s a post there wrote you can find it on winwith pitching. comom I think it&#39;s called the dichotomy of the expert salesperson and David Baker and I did a pod two Bob&#39;s podcast recording on it by the same title where I say you know there&#39;s this here are all the attributes of expert you here&#39;s how you show up in the sale you&#39;re kind of you&#39;re disciplined you&#39;re um you&#39;re uh empathetic you&#39;re you&#39;re listening you&#39;re listening to the client you&#39;re all of these great you just list all of the qualities of an expert ERT you just think of your your relationship with your doctor or or your lawyer how they behave you have those same attributes in the engagement Now list the attributes of salesperson you do you show up the same way and really the list and I I list attributes of both versions of you in this uh blog post I just referenced they&#39;re almost mirror opposites so like why is that why have some of you have been trained that way but mostly you&#39;ve in ined that this is how you should sell because this is how you yourself have been sold and the big message in the book is lose salesperson you lose them all together we we have a model that allows expert you to show up the way expert youu should show up and sell the way a way in a way that&#39;s intuitive to experts where you don&#39;t have to step out of expert U and become salesperson you where you go into convince mode you try to talk people into things you&#39;re like trying to prove yourself Etc you can drop all of that you have to know what to do instead but that&#39;s what that book&#39;s about it&#39;s really about that it&#39;s really for the expert who has to sell doesn&#39;t really like it or doesn&#39;t think they&#39;re good at it or is struggling with it um and we I think the goal of the book is to free them of this idea that you have to be this other version of you you don&#39;t I love that and I promise promise my audience that as soon as that book comes out well first of all I&#39;ll I&#39;ll buy it and read it and then try to get Blair back on to to do a deep dive on that and maybe figure out is there a is there an accounting firm spe specialized adaptation to the teachings of that book so we&#39;ll have that discussion later on so uh with the time that we have left I wanted to discuss pric and creativity Book for a second just some of the lessons that we&#39;ve learned from it so you say that this is the the how to um or your first iteration of a how to for creative professionals on how to price and there&#39;s there&#39;s two concepts I want to discuss I want to discuss a holistic concept let&#39;s call it the mindset concept and let&#39;s talk about and then the other concept is the mechanics so the holistic concept that you have is that the power of the sale is a function of desire and you have this formula which is pal equals DB divided by D and then I I&#39;ll I&#39;ll have you quickly Define that and then maybe give us one technique for pricing or crafting options and setting up the uh low offer and the high offer sure so P equals DB over D I wish I had a win without pitching coffee cup here because we printed on the back of the coffee cup it stands for your power in the sale P for power is a function of your desirability DB being greater than your desire so uh your desirability how badly the client wants or needs to work with you or an engagement with you versus your uh desire for the client how badly you need it otherwise stated whoever wants it the most has the least power in the Buell relationship I I got a phone call from a or a FaceTime from a friend two days ago she was lying on the carpet just had this gut punch from this deal that did not happen she was just like she was like she just kept saying gut punch and she was just lying down FaceTiming me from the floor and uh it&#39;s just a deal that didn&#39;t happen it was a big deal but the what was the problem she was so emotionally invested in the outcome and when it didn&#39;t happen she was just absolutely devastated now do you think you can behave like expert you in that moment no you go into salesperson youu you go into convince mode you you you become a version of yourself that you don&#39;t actually like because you want it so bad so we just have to pay attention to the power dynamics and are we behaving ask ourselves are we behaving like a needy vendor or are we behaving like kind of this this vaunted expert um and you don&#39;t want to overplay that idea but let&#39;s not show up as needy vendors who go into convince mode and there&#39;s a second part You&#39; asked me Hector SEC second part is when crafting pricing options we talked about giving people three choices uh usually usually people have a very tough time coming up with the low and the high option once the low and the high are set I think the middle pretty easy to build I think some people start by building the middle option and then figuring out what the low and the high is do you have any quick three minute version of like how do we think about the low the high and the middle when it comes to crafting a price price op set the high set the high first so you&#39;re in a conversation with a client about here&#39;s what my needs are what is it going to look like you say well it could be as high as X and then stop and it X should be a number that scares even you and a little bit of silence is good and when the client goes there&#39;s no way then you can say okay like that that&#39;s on the high end that&#39;s a really you can get into comprehensive example why it&#39;s so High um you you can say we have pack you if you&#39;re packaging up your services you can say packages start at y like low end of the spectrum and then what I so I don&#39;t think this applies in an accounting profession like in a creative in a creative firm you would ask the client uh was there a budget you were hoping that I could hit is there a number that you wanted me to try to work with so let&#39;s say I anchor at $100,000 and the client chokes um and I let&#39;s say they walk $100,000 there&#39;s no way I&#39;d pay 100 for that well if we could deliver these outcomes what would you pay let&#39;s say they say well maybe maybe at the most 50 okay 50 so uh I I can work with that now on the low end was there a number that you were you said you didn&#39;t have a budget but was there a number you you were hoping to hit yeah I was hoping to spend 10,000 or less okay so now we have a range between 10 and 50 I&#39;ll go away and I&#39;ll come back with some solutions and um they&#39;ll be priced in that range of 50 on the high end and 10 on the low end so generally you can either use the client&#39;s stated budget as a lowend and say well here&#39;s what we can do for this or you can set the low end of the range with your kind of standard-based package and that&#39;s probably more applicable for this audience yeah and I think the the way I would I would quickly apply it is uh sometimes we think of our services as just one solution like the only solution is to prepare a tax return so we already have a predetermined amount of uh time resources whatever that it takes our from to do it so we have a a Target pricing range ourselves for that but if if you you can get a little bit more creative and go well you maybe I&#39;m not doing your taxx return maybe I&#39;m just talking about the tax return that you can do on your own maybe I&#39;m giving you a lesson on how taxes work maybe I&#39;m just laying out a strategy maybe I&#39;m doing the tax return and adding a guarantee that if you get audited it will include the auditing so so the the reality is I think most of the time we are we are so mired and and and and focused on the services that we have provided before that that when we think of pricing we&#39;re like okay this is not very elastic how would we take a client&#39;s price range and back into it and I think what you&#39;re trying to tell us is hey if you back if you first understand and present the enormity of the problem and then you and the client acknowledges what the problem is and then they give you that what is worth to them to make that problem go away then you&#39;ll come back into whether or not you could provide a solution that can help them get there within that price range is that kind of what you&#39;re telling us yeah and I think in your profession I think you should probably have you should have packaged uh package Services the prices can change depending on the size of the client or other variables that are other variables that might be a surate for the value to be created here but you would have a basic package this is the cheapest we can do and let&#39;s just use tax returns I just do the return and it&#39;s X and the middle package is you could so how how can you add value X Plus consultation you have questions like I I have questions for my accountant or my wife and business partner does and we call the accountant and like we get the questions answered and then a bill bill shows up and it&#39;s like what oh we always pay it but it&#39;s annoying as hell we never know like they don&#39;t articulate to us like at no point have they ever articulated this is how the relationship works we just get these bills in the mail There&#39;s an opportunity to actually for them to extract more money from us to pay a for like a larger sum of money upfront or even monthly or just some ongoing consult ation where we don&#39;t feel guilty about calling and they don&#39;t feel guilty about sending the invoice and then the anchor option is you think of the anchor option the most expensive one would be customized something quite elaborate customized to that client situation so think of it as um um basic enhanced and then customized that&#39;s a good way to think of three options for the accounting profession that&#39;s a perfect way to end it Blair Thank you so much we&#39;re on top of the hour it&#39;s a pleasure and an honor to have you I&#39;m going to speak speak in behalf of the entire profession and yes I have given myself the title and the authority to do that so in behalf of the entire profession we love what you got to say we would love to learn more about uh what you um what you could provide for us and then we&#39;ll see you next time so I know you gotta log off thank you very much Blair I appreciate it thanks Hector bye bye okay so Blair stepping out I just want to do a couple of things here so one um I was hoping that maybe we could talk a little bit about a couple of episodes from his podcast um so I&#39;ll just mention them really quick one is called just stop talking this one just came out and honestly I think is one of the best podcast episodes I have ever heard go listen to it and it talks about why we talk so much why we over sell why we feel the need to fill the void or blank space where you just allowing the customer to think about the solutions it&#39;s called just stop talking check it out the tups podcast he&#39;s got another awesome episode called um something about proon I call a strategic pro bono which is in what situations proon makes sense and how can pro bono be a net good thing that your uh that your uh uh firm does and a whole bunch of episodes on scope creep and having conversations about scope creep um uh Blair is absolutely fantastic he coined a a concept called the inefficiency principle which basically means that you can either be Innovative or efficient but the two things are pinned against each other right being efficient is not being Innovative that that means doing it the only way you know how to do it and try to do it as quick as possible and being Innovative means experiment do it different look for a different solution think outside the box stop and think and as accountants we focus way too much on efficiency way too little in in in Innovation and until we understand that these two things are pained against each other and we are comfortable with being Innovative even at the Peril of being inefficient then we&#39;re GNA evolve and then we&#39;re gonna go to we&#39;re going to evolve ourselves into the next level so if you&#39;re not already signed up to come to our conference in in in Hollywood Florida it&#39;s called the reframe conference called influential conversations for accountants I take a little bit from Blair I take a little bit from Ron Baker from all the people that I admire that have learned over the years and we built a conference around this about how how to have better more effective conversations with our clients employees uh co-workers software companies whatever uh the original date that we had set was the third week of October we&#39;re going through some date changes the dates might change to October 16th to 19th it&#39;s not official yet but you will get an email if you already signed up for the conference for That official uh change the conference ticket is $18 $1,800 there are four coupon codes one expires April the other one may uh June and July because we had this date change we had to redo the coupon codes so uh you can sign up for this conference for now if you&#39;re available either October 16th to 19th or October 24th to 26 the original dates uh sign up for the conference and we&#39;ll let you know very very soon what those states are www. reframe it will be the best conference you&#39;ll ever go you&#39;ll ever go to www. reframe

welcome everybody to influential conversations for accountants podcast weinar part three we record this live this eight-part series live in webinar with a live audience and we also publish to YouTube and we publish into the podcast and the purpose of this webinar series is one to have a conversation about how accountants can be more influential in the marketplace and of course as a both a preamble and a companion to our conference coming up in October which we&amp;#39;ll discuss briefly this webinar is for accounting professionals CPAs enroll agents bookkeepers QuickBooks Pro advisors small business accounting advisers Etc that are looking to improve their firm communication strategy to have more influential conversations with their clients looking to develop their team through richer and more meaningful conversations and also looking to improve their personal communication skills so they can bring less anxiet uh to and from work uh in and their personal life so that&amp;#39;s the purpose of this uh podcast series it&amp;#39;s eight Monon the episodes you&amp;#39;re are listening to episode number number three out of eight episode number four will go Live May 10th second Friday every month until we have our conference in October each episode will be 30 to 60 Minutes long with myself Hector Garcia My Brother Carlos and our special guest like we have today which will discuss who he is briefly you can watch live in zoom and the series 100% free to encourage you to joining us in October in Hollywood Florida for our conference titled by the same name influential conversations for accountants that being said let&amp;#39;s get started today&amp;#39;s guest is a person I&amp;#39;ve admired for a very very long time his name is Blair ANS he&amp;#39;s an author and advisor to creative entrepreneurs he works with advertising firms marketing firms and uh his ethos comes from his very first book called The win without pitching Manifesto which I have here in my hand buy this book in Amazon for 20 to $30 in hard cover you can also get it in Kindle and you can also get it in audiobook format depending on what you prefer it&amp;#39;s got 4.8 uh Stars over 2,000 reviews and it&amp;#39;s absolutely amazing we&amp;#39;ll talk about it briefly we&amp;#39;ll talk about some of the thinking that has evolved from this book his other books and stuff that&amp;#39;s coming up in uh Blair&amp;#39;s world so there&amp;#39;s also another book uh which is actually more of like a system I think calling it a book would actually not be the right thing it&amp;#39;s a system it&amp;#39;s a it&amp;#39;s in a flip um&amp;#39;s it called um a binder format and it&amp;#39;s really meant for you to use as a transformational tool it&amp;#39;s called pricing creativity which is a play in two things one is creativity is one of the most intangible difficult things to price so so how to price that and also getting created with pricing I&amp;#39;m not sure if if it was meant like that but that&amp;#39;s how I understood it which I think is brilliant and also uh Blair&amp;#39;s blog called The Thinking section of of the win without pitching website you want to check that out that&amp;#39;s in the slides and lastly the podcast the two Bobs podcast subtitled conversations in the art of creative entrepreneurship with David C Baker another brilliant person in the industry wrote I believe the latest two books one is called the business of expertise which I absolutely love um and the other one is called The Secret tradecraft of elite advisers also an amazing read so Blair did I Mis categorize any of your introduction there no that was a lot of info Hector and you got it all exactly right thank you for that I&amp;#39;m really happy to join you today absolutely so before we get started Blair win without pitching Manifesto is uh an immensely uh successful book and I don&amp;#39;t know if we I don&amp;#39;t know if have millions of sales I doubt it because it&amp;#39;s very Niche book but it&amp;#39;s very successful because almost every person that reads this book writes to you talks about it um our friend our mutual friend Chris do who was in our conference last year um was so Smitten by the book that he actually did an entire uh 12-part Series in clubhouse during the club during the pandemic and I believe is this is that has been one of the most significant piece pieces of of of of thought leadership that Chris do has done in combination with you so first I&amp;#39;d like to tell us why is win without pitching Manifesto so successful what in the world is the pitch and um and give us a little insight into your world yeah thanks um why is it successful so so far it&amp;#39;s um within the next few months it will hit 100,000 copies which is which is it&amp;#39;s pretty good for book it&amp;#39;s kind of it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s gone beyond the niche it was written for that&amp;#39;s you know one of the reasons why I&amp;#39;m here speaking to accountant accountants not for the first time um why is it successful uh so the the the pitch so everybody knows what a sales pitch is right and um you go into a meeting with a prospective client I venture to Guess that you go into pitch mode where you are transmitting and not receiving that is uh that problem is even um it&amp;#39;s orders of magnitude greater I mean if you could measure it objectively in Creative firms because in a creative firm like and what I mean by that is an advertising agency or a design firm and these are the firms that I grew up in professionally in these firms you are conditioned to actually give the product away for free give your solve your pro solve the problem solve the creative problem as proof of your ability to solve the problem so the cost of sale in a creative firm is very high and this idea of pitching for free we won&amp;#39;t get into the history of where it came from and and why it continues to uh Prevail um but I think when I came along in 2010 and published the manifesto nobody really believe nobody in this market of ad agencies in particular and also some design firms nobody really believed that you could actually secure a new account win the business without having to solve the problem as proof of your ability to solve the problem the manifesto is really a yes you can book it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s written to be an inspirational book um it&amp;#39;s got 12 chapters each of them a proclamation that we&amp;#39;ll get into I&amp;#39;m sure and it was really there&amp;#39;s very little here&amp;#39;s how to in the book I mean there&amp;#39;s there&amp;#39;s a bit of it but I was really I really wrote that book I was trying to incite a revolution um and I think I was somewhat successful well I&amp;#39;m happy I&amp;#39;m happy with the impact it&amp;#39;s had on it on the business because a lot has changed in the four is it 14 years I&amp;#39;m horrible at math um a lot has changed in the 14 years or so since that book has come out what hasn&amp;#39;t changed is annual sales keep increasing every year so it started out slowly and it just keeps steadily building so year 14 or year 13 of sales eclipsed every other previous year and it&amp;#39;s just a curve that just keeps going upward so it&amp;#39;s saying that there&amp;#39;s a there&amp;#39;s still a need for this thinking in the marketplace this book is like fine wine it gets better over time so um you&amp;#39;re saying there&amp;#39;s not a lot of how to which is what most people look for like how do I solve this problem how do I change my practice how do I um you know behave differently what words do I say you know how do I how do I respond to to to to the client&amp;#39;s um complaints or scope creep or whatever like a lot of us are looking for the how to but the book fundamentally looks into what should your strategy be like how should you think of yourself in terms of creating standards of work so these standards of work that you impose on yourself and what I mean by yourself I just don&amp;#39;t mean yourself IND individual but yourself your firm right you&amp;#39;re going to have standards of work and these standards of work are essentially going to present themselves on the quality of the work and then the quality of the work eventually will speak for itself so instead of you having to sell yourself and do all this extra work around selling yourself like pitching right the quality of your work speaks volumes about what you do and then you start attracting customers you start pulling customers towards you instead of you trying to push your idea onto them so that&amp;#39;s how I that&amp;#39;s how I see it I&amp;#39;ll briefly go through this 12 proclamations and if you&amp;#39;re an accounting professional you&amp;#39;re watching and and listening to this this is actually written in such a way that it&amp;#39;s not industry specific like you actually go through these 12 proclamations and you think about your practice your business or yourself if you&amp;#39;re an individual and you think huh what if I had those proclamations what if I said that out loud and what if I acted as if every single one of these things were the absolute truth about how I should manage my business so I&amp;#39;ll pick Blair&amp;#39;s brain about maybe two or three of them but these are the proclamations we will specialize we will replace conversation we will replace presentations with conversations we will diagnose before we prescribe have H had tip to the medical industry there we will rethink what it means to sell we will do with words what we used to do with paper we will be selective we will build expertise rapidly we will solve problems before we are paid we will address issues of money early we will refuse to work at a loss we will charge more we will hold our heads up high these are the 12 proclamations 12 things that you need to say and if you do say them and you believe them and you act upon them them your business could be transformed so Blair maybe break down two or three of those for us well the foundational one is the first one the first proclamation of we will specialize and when I wrote that book in 2010 there was still kind of a dir of specialism going on in the creative firms in Creative industry there&amp;#39;s a reason for that but it&amp;#39;s not it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s um it&amp;#39;s not specific to the creative industry but creativity is effectively the ability to see it&amp;#39;s not the ability to write or draw um at least based on the definition that I&amp;#39;m using that that was um written by a scholar on creativity um so if you think of this it&amp;#39;s the ability to bring a novel perspective to a problem then if that&amp;#39;s your superpower thinking about a problem differently then you will be drawn to problems that you have not previously solved so your personal superpower and your personal interest aligns to this need for VAR iy you&amp;#39;re always drawn to a problem you haven&amp;#39;t previously solved and it conflicts with your business&amp;#39;s need for you to focus or because everybody understands that you know broad expertise is an oxymoron and if you want to get deeper if you want to deepen your knowledge on something you want to become more expert on something the most practical way to do it and effectively the only real way to do it unless you&amp;#39;re like a genius polymath um the only way to do it is to narrow your focus you narrow the set of problems that you are staring at every day that you&amp;#39;re solving and you start to see the patterns you go deeper and deeper into that so it starts with specialization so if you take and I don&amp;#39;t profess to know the accounting profession well but I do for the last few years I&amp;#39;ve thought I should buy an accounting firm because we we I work with accountants um in our business I&amp;#39;m in Canada we work worldwide most the majority of our business is in the US so we American accountants and Canadian accountants and worked with multiple accountants and I&amp;#39;m just struck by how um poorly positioned they are and how how they how they price drives me crazy how they price but we can come back to that um so if you&amp;#39;re a generalist if you&amp;#39;re just a you hang out your shingle and you say CPA um you&amp;#39;ve got an accounting problem we can solve it for you A lot of it might just be tax returns so it might be a lot more specialized than that then just think of the number of competitors that you have you have all kinds of different competitors and it&amp;#39;s not until you narrow your focus and you start to specialize in something it might be accounting for small business owners and we need to come back to this because it&amp;#39;s a bit of a big topic and there is a danger in specializing too early too early in your career but at some point um it makes to narrow narrow your focus and I would say I just finished writing a piece on this it is hasn&amp;#39;t been published yet and I haven&amp;#39;t decided whether I&amp;#39;m going to publish it or not but one it&amp;#39;s I&amp;#39;m basically saying to my market creative people but I also identify accountants financial planners and Engineers I say design is now too expensive accounting is now too expensive if you define What You Do by your discipline if you say I am an accountant I am a designer then you are in competition with offshore labor and Ai and you&amp;#39;re in a race to the bottom what you do is going to zero AI can already do most tax returns it&amp;#39;s inase to the bottom but if you take that discipline you have this accounting discipline this accounting skill certification so that&amp;#39;s a discipline and you apply it to a more narrow set of problems prob either narrow the problem set or narrow the market the the organizations people or organizations for whom you solve those problems or a combination of both now you can start to use AI you can even start to use offshore labor you can use these tools that are commodifying your discipline to your advantage and you can start to create real value and and charge a lot more money so that&amp;#39;s kind of a modern update on this idea of we will specialize if you are if you define What You Do by your discipline I am an accountant rather than I&amp;#39;m somebody who solves these types of problems and I happen to be an accountant and they&amp;#39;re accountant accounting components that we will take care of then um then you&amp;#39;re in trouble and I think you know you you and I can have a conversation about this Hector and people can Poe questions or comment on that uh if anybody wants to push back on it but that&amp;#39;s kind of a modern update on the first proclamation of we will specialize and if you don&amp;#39;t gain an advantage change the power dynamics in the buy sell relationship by vastly reducing the number of direct competitors through specialization if you don&amp;#39;t do that then all of the 11 subsequent proclamations they&amp;#39;re a lot harder to do that&amp;#39;s a that&amp;#39;s a great point and I want to give you some insight into and I know you heard from every industry reply back but Blair you don&amp;#39;t understand our industry is different like everybody has the same answer so I&amp;#39;m I&amp;#39;m going to put the you don&amp;#39;t understand our industry is different hat for a second just to tell you what our challenge is okay our challenge is our entire industry has chosen not to be specialist so customers are accustomed to the CPAs that do everything they&amp;#39;re accustomed to hey can you do my personal tax return yes can you do my escort or my my business yes can you do my brother&amp;#39;s uh little company yes can you do my church&amp;#39;s return yes can you do my grand grandfather&amp;#39;s state tax return Yes the challenge that we&amp;#39;ve had is that we&amp;#39;ve created an environment where we is our brand accountant CPAs uh bookkeepers we want our client to trust us for everything related to money accounting and tax because we felt that that was the way to have the most amount of opportunities and the most amount of business and the only way to grow our business really was to say yes to as many people um that have a checkbook as possible now you&amp;#39;re proposing to us something that many thought leaders in our Industries in conferences in podcast is proposing to us which is pick a specialty specialize and the riches are in the niches etc etc however for a lot of us is difficult to figure out how to exactly how to get started with that exactly with a firm that already manages and does multiple things with already a lifestyle where we draw satisfaction from the fun of solving a brand new problem that we never seen before in the Horizon we see two potential problems one is we don&amp;#39;t know how to go from broad to narrow in our existing firms and two we&amp;#39;re worried about getting bored there two so those two things are happening at the same time even if we intellectually understand that there&amp;#39;s more profitability in the end and we all do and and accountants we understand profitability more than anyone else even when we when we accept that we have trouble getting the Kickstart because of those two issues so you mind addressing them yeah none at all so um it&amp;#39;s not a requirement to specialize you&amp;#39;re just so if you&amp;#39;re not specialized you you have a you have a sales and marketing problem right you have a new client problem if you don&amp;#39;t have a new client problem then there&amp;#39;s no problem to solve right you&amp;#39;re fine and one thing about accounting is I imagine it&amp;#39;s like Financial Planning in that it&amp;#39;s a it&amp;#39;s a you&amp;#39;re in it&amp;#39;s a relationship business once you are in the relationship those a lot of those relationships go on for a very long time so the bigger threat to those relationships is actually the cost of your services going down through offshore labor and AI but in terms of attracting new clients if you don&amp;#39;t have a problem then you don&amp;#39;t have to specialize it&amp;#39;s not the go goal is not to specialize as narrow as possible it&amp;#39;s to be positioned as as broadly as practical so how tight do you need to get to be differentiated so that you can build your practice if the people who are listening to and watching this if they&amp;#39;ve already built a substantial practice um and their focus isn&amp;#39;t on growing the practice through the acquisition of new clients then they don&amp;#39;t really have to worry about it at least at least in the short term they do have to keep an eye on the cost of their services some of the key Services going to zero that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s the looming threat um boredom yeah creative people have the same same issue with boredom I&amp;#39;ll so and it&amp;#39;s also not specializing is not about saying no to everything it&amp;#39;s really about the work that you pursue and that you&amp;#39;re trying to attract in a relationship oriented business let&amp;#39;s say I&amp;#39;ll give you an example so I live in a small town in the middle of nowhere in remote Mountain Village in Canada like it&amp;#39;s not even a town it&amp;#39;s a village less than a thousand people the woman who cuts my hair here um she used to live in the big city of 10,000 people an hour away and when I talk her about what I do and we talked about specialization she told me the story of when she launched her um hair stylist practice she advertised herself as specializing in curly hair and she said she was immediately swamped she just filled all of her capacity immediately because I&amp;#39;ve never seen a hair stylist claim to specialize in a certain type of hair um and my wife has curly hair and she goes to her Etc but what happens is the initial influx of business she&amp;#39;s differentiated herself in the market uh allows her to build the practice early but then all of the referrals happen all of these relatives and Friends who don&amp;#39;t have curly hair look at the value proposition and go well if you can cut curly hair you can cut straight hair so at some point when she was at capacity which was pretty quick she dropped the claim of specialization and I have another example of that in the financial services space and these are both kind of relationship oriented businesses that strike me as similar to accounting firms so if you&amp;#39;re just La if you&amp;#39;re young in your business or early in the business or you do have a u a a growth problem a lack of grow grow through a lack of new clients try putting out there accounting firm and then in smaller type specializing in X now if you&amp;#39;re doing marketing now you know now you have a distinct marketing message um so that&amp;#39;s how I would have you think about it I also think about Google searches like if what are the probability let&amp;#39;s say you&amp;#39;re in La what are the probabilities that somebody goes to Google and types CPA in LA right and they&amp;#39;ll find you if you actually understand a little bit about SEO and the way you gain the whole search engine world it would probably cost you half a million dollars over a lifetime of work to get to the point where somebody searches CPA and la and you show up where if if somebody and and by the way on top of that let&amp;#39;s say you show up and and a bunch of other people show up all these top five are also competing with price because people are calling all five to quote the price because there&amp;#39;s many of them but if they search CPA in La for Japanese expats slash double taxation issues right they&amp;#39;re only gonna find the one person that decided to specialize on that to make their entire website about that to write blog articles about that social media is called the the job exp CP ba or whatever like they build an entire brand around that and yes you will have a lot less clients but it&amp;#39;s possible and and and extremely realistic that the less clients you get could pay more than the broad clients that you&amp;#39;re taking because um a Japanese expat with double taxation problems talking to the one person that specializes on that is more willing to pay $10,000 to just get it done right by the expert then gamble with somebody else and I think uh what some of the some of the things that people do with nonsp specializers is they make a mental calculation in their head that goes if I go with a non-specialist then I have to make up the risk I&amp;#39;m taking with price but when I go with the specialist I&amp;#39;ll pay more for taking less risk so the specialist der risks the transaction and that&amp;#39;s the part the part that doesn&amp;#39;t get discussed enough and this is one of these squishy mental calculations that customers make that they might not necessarily say out loud but it does happen through their decision making so there&amp;#39;s an inherit price premium that you will be searching by being the one and only that people were able to find as the expert about that yeah and you you shouldn&amp;#39;t even try to strive for one and only I think if you if it&amp;#39;s a market of one then you&amp;#39;re probably too tight um but you red vastly reduce the number of direct competitors you think you used the word price premium a couple of times you think about the definition of the word premium it&amp;#39;s got It&amp;#39;s got two definitions one is an amount above an ordinary or a standard price that&amp;#39;s a premium and another definition is it&amp;#39;s the it&amp;#39;s the it&amp;#39;s the uh amount you pay monthly on your insurance policy right they&amp;#39;re the same thing so just think about this you pay a price premium as a form of insurance so almost 20 years ago when I needed to find a crossb accountant who dealt with Canadian and US Taxation and I searched Google there was really only one person who came up and we still used that person so that you know to to illustrate your point yeah price premium pay people pay more for the insurance the likely because I could hire a generalist to do this stuff that hasn&amp;#39;t done it before most of them wouldn&amp;#39;t take it but imagine imagine the the expert who said uh I&amp;#39;ve never done that before but yeah I&amp;#39;ll I&amp;#39;ll do it many years ago when I moved to this small village we had one doctor his name was Doc Olsen Believe It or Not old doc Olsen and uh I went to him I had a kidney stone and I said I also need a vasectomy and uh can you refer me to a urologist and he said yeah I will refer you and he said you know I used to do these I could probably do it then he said no I probably shouldn&amp;#39;t then he said no I could probably do it just IM the confidence that he did not instill in me even though he was season head it wasn&amp;#39;t the thing that he did every time my wife just came back from a dental specialist a consultation and for a procedure that is probably going to be a little bit painful and the guy said I do 500 of these a year okay you&amp;#39;re the person from you do this procedure 500 times a year I will pay and then she did the the math on the price and how much money this gu this is a dentist making well over a million dollars a year so that&amp;#39;s price premium she pays the premium because she wants the person who&amp;#39;s going to get it done right and he builds a fancy new house as a result and we can accept the premise that doing 500 of those specific things it&amp;#39;s probably more boring than doing a whole bunch of new different cases but also not boring spending that money though yeah exactly that&amp;#39;s the point I want to make but but but also uh what&amp;#39;s not boring is getting getting better at it every single time to you being the one that other professionals could look after to kind of like Mentor them and help them and you become a leader a thought leader in the profession being recognized as Best in Class in that in in that area and also when you&amp;#39;re Best in Class in something and something Innovative is happening in that world and they need a consultant or face or a partner they&amp;#39;re gonna say you know what we&amp;#39;re building this new machine that does that procedure in half the time and who best to partner with that the one person that has done it 500 times so you you also want to think about your Evolution as a professional you know like do you want to retire or die doing the same thing you&amp;#39;re doing now no but the best way to evolve is to stand out and and the best way to stand out is to be best in class and the only way to be best in class is to build I should have it here on I believe is uh number seven build expertise rapidly and you kind of have to do the same thing over and over like the 10,000 hour rule right I forgot that was malcol glasswell that you you have to do something 10,000 hours to become an expert at it yeah and this fear of boredom we need to speak about it because it is grossly overstated it&amp;#39;s been proven repeatedly across numerous studies human beings are horrible predictors of what they will and will not like so you think of so this here&amp;#39;s the metaphor that I use you&amp;#39;re standing in a room full of doors and I did this with Chris doe on one of his podcasts and being a being a generalist you want to walk through every door every door represents a different problem with with a different type of client and I&amp;#39;m standing behind you and I&amp;#39;m saying no you need to pick one door walk through it and never look back and you think on the other side of one door is you will die from boredom because you think if you can only spend the rest of your professional your career in that one room it&amp;#39;s just say solving the same problem over and over again it&amp;#39;s going to bore the hell out of you but that&amp;#39;s not what&amp;#39;s on the other side of that door what&amp;#39;s on the other side of that door is more doors you just can&amp;#39;t see them from where you are so this guy who does 500 procedures a year I&amp;#39;ll bet you in some ways they&amp;#39;re all similar and then there are these outliers that really push him and deepen are the source of him deepening his expertise and I&amp;#39;ll bet the problems are fascinating and he runs up against the edge of his skill set into this Zone into kind of the Zone known as The Flow State where I&amp;#39;m challenged but I feel competent I&amp;#39;m feel like I&amp;#39;m at the height of my abilities that&amp;#39;s the that that flow State that&amp;#39;s what we all kind of seek in everything that we do and yeah if you&amp;#39;re doing the same thing over and over again repetitive tasks you don&amp;#39;t get to that flow state if you&amp;#39;re always doing something new you haven&amp;#39;t done before you&amp;#39;re seriously stressing yourself you don&amp;#39;t get to that flow State you do get to it you do get to it as an expert who&amp;#39;s kind of pushing the boundaries of your expertise getting deeper and deeper Carlos has joined us yeah Carlos join Carlos actually in uh in Europe so he says I&amp;#39;m going to sneak in he probably forgot to unmute when he logged in absolutely Blair and I will we&amp;#39;ll end this conversation with there&amp;#39;s a story I want to tell you very very very quick I&amp;#39;ve told this before people may have heard me discussing this before um my friend came to my house the other day and he opened the sliding door and he heard all sorts of squeaks and he said oh man you gotta call my my my sliding door guy he&amp;#39;s great now when he said that I I heard handyman I I mean I didn&amp;#39;t hear sliding door guy like I it wouldn&amp;#39;t occur to me that there isn&amp;#39;t a thing as a slid IND door guy so I called you know I I called Juan and I said hey man I have an issue with Mauricio told me to call you I have an issue with my sliding door can you fix it he&amp;#39;s like all right most of the problems can be can be fixed for $175 I have a lot of the parts with me once I get there I&amp;#39;ll let you know if it&amp;#39;ll be more are you okay with that he was addressing the issue with money early on almost like listen I don&amp;#39;t even want to talk to you if you don&amp;#39;t think 175 bucks work and I was like okay fine uh and then so he comes in he looks at the sliding door and he said yeah I&amp;#39;ll get it done for you um here here&amp;#39;s my zel pay me 10075 bucks or whatever and I just had to pay him right there and then I just kind of trusted him really so he went in there he took the the door out replaced the wheels put the put the door back in sliding door was like it was just so satisfying to finally get my sliding door back with squeaks and the I goes try it and I go amazing and and and in that moment I said this is the best handyman I ever seen in my entire life the guy comes with equipment he&amp;#39;s ready um he told me the price up front he fixed it in like literally I&amp;#39;m not lying to you nine minutes and I said hey man I&amp;#39;m definitely goingon to use you I need help with this help with this he&amp;#39;s like I only fix SL IND doors and I was like wait you make a living just fixing slid IND doors hey like yeah okay tell me a little bit about amazing that&amp;#39;s amazing he tells me I tell him tell me a little bit about that and the guy shows me his calendar and he had 17 more sliding doors to fix that day so in the day in the day because he get he was already like wrapping up and and and leaving like that&amp;#39;s all he does he&amp;#39;s a slide Indo guy and that&amp;#39;s it and I gotta tell you every time my friend comes over and they&amp;#39;re checking out my house I go the first thing I want you to try that sliding door like I I show off this slid IND door and I&amp;#39;m so proud and I have I have referred Juan the slid IND door guy to every single person that I know and I&amp;#39;ve never referred any of my other uh handyman that I ever had because that to me was just so amazing and that&amp;#39;s how you stand out like we gotta be the sliding door guy of our industry and and and charge 175 five bucks for nine minutes worth of work and next now that&amp;#39;s a bit in direct contrast of the whole relationship concept of course one wasn&amp;#39;t to build a relationship with me he has a relationship with sliding doors he has a relationship with his craft he has a relationship with probably every single day he wakes up he goes I&amp;#39;m gonna do it under eight minutes I&amp;#39;m gonna do it under seven minutes so I&amp;#39;m sure he figured out a way to keep himself excited about doing the same thing but doing it so damn well that customers are just impressed by what he does I so the entire audience being accountant has already done the math on uh 17 * 175 what I really like about what he did is once he diagnosed it yeah okay he didn&amp;#39;t even tell you what the problem is I can fix he&amp;#39;s already told you most most of these things cost $175 you say okay he diagnoses it it&amp;#39;s the same problem that comes up almost probably 90% of the time and he&amp;#39;s got all the different wheels in the van he says I can fix it it&amp;#39;s 175 bucks you pay him he&amp;#39;s done in 10 minutes so he&amp;#39;s eliminated the conversation where after 10 minutes he says hey it&amp;#39;s a 175 bucks and you say what it only took you 10 minutes good for him for getting the money up front that&amp;#39;s fantastic right and I as a value pricing guy of course I didn&amp;#39;t challenge the whole pricing premise but I could totally see myself 10 years ago without understanding value pricing and completely Going Bonkers about you know paying 175 bucks for the for the 10 minutes the point is that oh he really and you really think if you look at the work all he did was remove the door clean clean the guide and replace the wheels this is like what five5 to $10 worth of materials the value was knowing how to do it knowing how to do it quickly saying it with confidence having a fixed price and being recommended by someone else that says you gotta call my sliding door guy that is the brand I mean it maybe that happened by accident but that is the brand the brand is I I will get your sliding door fixed and you will be blown away and he he he never Ed it that way that that way it happened through the water of mouth yeah that&amp;#39;s incredible what a I&amp;#39;m going to use that story if I may I&amp;#39;ll attribute it to you no problem and so we&amp;#39;ll move on um uh from that and I wanted to ask you Blair so we write uh a a Manifesto for us for your firm for you individually you use the will use your book as inspiration maybe we&amp;#39;ll bastardize all 12 of them and and just kind of reward it maybe we&amp;#39;ll grab two or three that we like once the the the manifesto is written and we have convinced oursel and we have convinced our team is there a public version of this like how do how do we let now let the world know that we work under these standards and these minimums and like how do we externalize this yeah so it it in my world it starts with a point of view you have to articulate a a point of you or a perspective so you do we can we can describe your um your focus as your discipline for a certain market so what do you do and who do you do it for and then you look at who else has the same discipline in Market accounting for anybody who needs accounting um there are a lot of competitors and so the first way to set yourself apart is through um narrowing that Focus either the discipline or the market more correctly like focus on a specific set of problems for a specific uh client type and then the second level of differentiate so now you eliminated now instead of a thousand direct competitors maybe you have 20 direct competitors in your in your geographical Market um now how do you further differentiate yourself from those 20 well it&amp;#39;s through your perspective your point of view your overarching belief on how this discipline for Market should be done so once you arrive at a perspective and I&amp;#39;m fortunate I I tripped over one it&amp;#39;s right there in the name of the business in the book this idea that you can win business without having tock pitch for free so that&amp;#39;s the perspective then write a Manifesto on it and the manifesto doesn&amp;#39;t have to be a 24,000 word book um it can be a 450-word blog post and then once you write the manifesto you nail it to the church door the way Martin Luther nailed the 96 thesis of the Protestant uh Reformation um so what does that mean that means put it on your website somewhere prominently and link to it and reference it from time to time um and I think that&amp;#39;s enough for most people and for some for some people some firms maybe the manifesto is there&amp;#39;s maybe there&amp;#39;s enough there to write a book maybe it&amp;#39;s just a blog post maybe it&amp;#39;s a YouTube video whatever it is just get it out into the public and the other work that you&amp;#39;re doing if you&amp;#39;re if you&amp;#39;re creating any thought leadership if you&amp;#39;re putting any information out there in the world for uh uh uh to draw people to you then link back to that Manifesto and what you&amp;#39;re trying to do here with that perspective and the articulation of that perspective in the manifesto is you&amp;#39;re trying to um attract clients who are ideologically aligned so in my primary target market of creative firms if you don&amp;#39;t think free pitching is a problem then you&amp;#39;re you&amp;#39;re not going to be drawn to us um if you think free pitching is a problem and nothing can be done about it or you for whatever reason you can&amp;#39;t change your ways you&amp;#39;re not going to be drawn to it so your perspective should be somewhat polarizing it&amp;#39;s not fair to say it should be like really polarizing po the need for polarization I&amp;#39;m fond of saying is a function of competition density so if you&amp;#39;re undifferentiated and you&amp;#39;ve got all kinds of direct competitors and there aren&amp;#39;t enough customers and it&amp;#39;s a bloodbath fighting for those potential clients then you need to be somewhat polarizing in your perspective and I off the top of my head I can&amp;#39;t think of what a what a perspective um for an accountant would be I know my financial advisor I don&amp;#39;t know that he would articulate this but I think of his point his ideology is uh paying any tax is Criminal he&amp;#39;s offended if I or any of his clients taxes and he&amp;#39;s not advocating uh that we do anything illegal he&amp;#39;s just into all kinds of elaborate structures to get your tax bill to zero so I would say that&amp;#39;s kind of his Ideology Now I would just ask the listener do you have a point of view that you think sets you apart from most other accountants who also do what you do serving the market that you serve you&amp;#39;re muted Hector I want to share with something with you briefly briefly Blair um I think it wasn&amp;#39;t a direct inspiration but I believe you had a lot of influence on this couple years ago I got tired of answering the question I need a CPA how much you charge like I just felt it was just a lot of waste of time for both sides so what I did is I wrote an open I said open letter to new clients I published it on LinkedIn I have it on my site when anybody asks me the questions I say I&amp;#39;m going to say hey read the open letter first then we&amp;#39;ll talk on the open letter I I I I say why not CPA accounting services are the same the fact that only do a few of them and not all of them the fact that you have to pay a diagnosis fee upfront just to have the initial conversation and for us to know for them to know for us to know what we can do for them the fact that we have a specific Niche which is QuickBooks related inventory e-commerce and Manufacturing uh workflows that&amp;#39;s the speciality specialization that I have the type of work that we typically do the type of work that we that we normally don&amp;#39;t do and addressing the concept of why I&amp;#39;m not going to give them an hourly rate so I I think you had a lot of influence on that and and and that completely transformed and changed how I felt about having that conversation of front instead of having to sell on the idea that hey you you got to pay me for a diagnostic and then they go why do I have to pay for Diagnostic if nobody else does I go just read the open letter and then get back to me and I believe that one the level of confidence that you exude by doing that uh it&amp;#39;s really valuable number two it gives the client homework I&amp;#39;ve done my homework I spent the past 25 years becoming the best at what I do do some homework client and figure out if you want to work with me so I want to thank you and and and Ron Baker and many of the people that I&amp;#39;ve followed over the years to for me the confidence to doing something like that and and the reason why I&amp;#39;m saying that is because maybe it doesn&amp;#39;t look like 12 bullet points in your website that says these are my proclamations maybe it just simply just looks like this hey Mr customer you want to work with us this is what we do this is how we do it this is a process this is the entry fee and this is likely what you&amp;#39;ll get out of out of just the initial conversation even if we don&amp;#39;t work together and make people go through the exercise of learning that first I don&amp;#39;t have a book so I can&amp;#39;t be like you Blair where you say I really won&amp;#39;t talk to you if you haven&amp;#39;t read my book yet okay and I get that position because your book is who you are it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s your thinking and and and it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s much easier to have a conversation about what you can do for them after they&amp;#39;ve gone through the the basic elements of your book because the conversation is much more advanced conversation just like I don&amp;#39;t take any more clients I haven&amp;#39;t seen one of my YouTube videos why because it would be such a waste of time for me to like sell myself and who I am and what I&amp;#39;m good at okay before having somebody already see it firsthand by watching my video so the the the point is the manifesto doesn&amp;#39;t look exactly like the way you have it laid out in the book it&amp;#39;s just basically setting the rules of engagement I love it I absolutely love it it does all the heavy lifting and for your open letter my book and that book in particular um there&amp;#39;s just a market difference between somebody who reaches out to you who has been exposed to your thinking your point of view and somebody who has not right so I can imagine that you get inquiries from people hey email me your rates I&amp;#39;m looking for an accountant and you probably go oh not another one of these and you send them back and say read this and if uh if you want to talk after that let me know and it&amp;#39;s this separator it does a lot of the heavy work your philosophy your specialism all of these things and it&amp;#39;s the same with me every once in a while we get some haven&amp;#39;t had it in a while because that book&amp;#39;s been out for 14 years and I have other books and podcasts for seven years Etc um but every once in a while I get like somebody who&amp;#39;s like Hey we&amp;#39;re we&amp;#39;re we&amp;#39;re looking for a a consultant you&amp;#39;re one of three um can you respond to this RFP something silly like that and it&amp;#39;s clear that they just I&amp;#39;m just a name on a list and um they they don&amp;#39;t actually know anything about us that&amp;#39;s awesome yeah absolutely right we we&amp;#39;re aligned there question 12 proclamations and win without pitching again amazing framework for building a specialized practice is there a 13th Proclamation it&amp;#39;s been 14 year it&amp;#39;s been what 14 years you said is there is there something like if you could go back and add a 13th item would you add one yeah I don&amp;#39;t think I would first of all I don&amp;#39;t know which I would keep it at 12 I don&amp;#39;t which one I would take away I&amp;#39;m it&amp;#39;s I really like the question but I um I&amp;#39;m surprised at how much I still like that book 14 years later uh one of the things we&amp;#39;ve already spoken to this there there isn&amp;#39;t a lot of here&amp;#39;s how too so the books that I&amp;#39;m writing now pricing creativity is really the here&amp;#39;s how to followup for the the money proclamations 8 through 12 really 8 through 11 really um where we talk about it&amp;#39;s it&amp;#39;s really about money getting paid uh Loosely about pricing um so that&amp;#39;s a that&amp;#39;s a here&amp;#39;s how to and as you say it&amp;#39;s kind of a working book it&amp;#39;s a it&amp;#39;s a manual meant to it&amp;#39;s in that form because I want you to have it on your shelf and I want you to pull it off from time to time and reference it and the book that I&amp;#39;m uh I finished now and is out in September and I I won&amp;#39;t say the name of it yet um but it is really the here&amp;#39;s how to follow up to the manifesto it&amp;#39;s written in the same tone of voice um but it&amp;#39;s quite detailed it gives away our entire model for selling um so what you do when how you hold yourself what tools you use and includes some guidance on pricing as well so I is there 13 Proclamation no but it would be the 13th Proclamation is everything I&amp;#39;ve done that comes after that book I guess here&amp;#39;s how to yeah so couple things I want to add um in the conversation we have prior to hit and record uh you told me the same thing I won&amp;#39;t tell you the name of the book but the general theme was that that we the professionals we are two we are two avatars we are the expert the technical expert at the particular thing that we have trained all of our lives for and then there&amp;#39;s the our branding selves the salesperson inside of us that is um promoting that craft and some firms have that completely separated they got the sales people and The Branding people and they have the the production people and the experts but I believe that in accounting so much of us are both the ones selling the firm selling the services and then doing them so I believe that much you can give away that that&amp;#39;s the theme of the book is the separation between you know our expert self and our salesperson self yeah where the first two books were written for the creative individual and the creative firm they have found much much broader audiences and this third book um is written for that broader audience so it would include accountants it&amp;#39;s anybody who sees them themselves as an expert adviser or practitioner first and a salesperson second so if your second job is selling if you have to sell to be able to do what you love to do your core profession um then this book is for you because most people who who whose second job is sales uh generally don&amp;#39;t like it don&amp;#39;t think they&amp;#39;re very good at it and so this book is written for those people and and you&amp;#39;re alluding to um this idea of expert you versus salesperson you there&amp;#39;s a post there wrote you can find it on winwith pitching. comom I think it&amp;#39;s called the dichotomy of the expert salesperson and David Baker and I did a pod two Bob&amp;#39;s podcast recording on it by the same title where I say you know there&amp;#39;s this here are all the attributes of expert you here&amp;#39;s how you show up in the sale you&amp;#39;re kind of you&amp;#39;re disciplined you&amp;#39;re um you&amp;#39;re uh empathetic you&amp;#39;re you&amp;#39;re listening you&amp;#39;re listening to the client you&amp;#39;re all of these great you just list all of the qualities of an expert ERT you just think of your your relationship with your doctor or or your lawyer how they behave you have those same attributes in the engagement Now list the attributes of salesperson you do you show up the same way and really the list and I I list attributes of both versions of you in this uh blog post I just referenced they&amp;#39;re almost mirror opposites so like why is that why have some of you have been trained that way but mostly you&amp;#39;ve in ined that this is how you should sell because this is how you yourself have been sold and the big message in the book is lose salesperson you lose them all together we we have a model that allows expert you to show up the way expert youu should show up and sell the way a way in a way that&amp;#39;s intuitive to experts where you don&amp;#39;t have to step out of expert U and become salesperson you where you go into convince mode you try to talk people into things you&amp;#39;re like trying to prove yourself Etc you can drop all of that you have to know what to do instead but that&amp;#39;s what that book&amp;#39;s about it&amp;#39;s really about that it&amp;#39;s really for the expert who has to sell doesn&amp;#39;t really like it or doesn&amp;#39;t think they&amp;#39;re good at it or is struggling with it um and we I think the goal of the book is to free them of this idea that you have to be this other version of you you don&amp;#39;t I love that and I promise promise my audience that as soon as that book comes out well first of all I&amp;#39;ll I&amp;#39;ll buy it and read it and then try to get Blair back on to to do a deep dive on that and maybe figure out is there a is there an accounting firm spe specialized adaptation to the teachings of that book so we&amp;#39;ll have that discussion later on so uh with the time that we have left I wanted to discuss pric and creativity Book for a second just some of the lessons that we&amp;#39;ve learned from it so you say that this is the the how to um or your first iteration of a how to for creative professionals on how to price and there&amp;#39;s there&amp;#39;s two concepts I want to discuss I want to discuss a holistic concept let&amp;#39;s call it the mindset concept and let&amp;#39;s talk about and then the other concept is the mechanics so the holistic concept that you have is that the power of the sale is a function of desire and you have this formula which is pal equals DB divided by D and then I I&amp;#39;ll I&amp;#39;ll have you quickly Define that and then maybe give us one technique for pricing or crafting options and setting up the uh low offer and the high offer sure so P equals DB over D I wish I had a win without pitching coffee cup here because we printed on the back of the coffee cup it stands for your power in the sale P for power is a function of your desirability DB being greater than your desire so uh your desirability how badly the client wants or needs to work with you or an engagement with you versus your uh desire for the client how badly you need it otherwise stated whoever wants it the most has the least power in the Buell relationship I I got a phone call from a or a FaceTime from a friend two days ago she was lying on the carpet just had this gut punch from this deal that did not happen she was just like she was like she just kept saying gut punch and she was just lying down FaceTiming me from the floor and uh it&amp;#39;s just a deal that didn&amp;#39;t happen it was a big deal but the what was the problem she was so emotionally invested in the outcome and when it didn&amp;#39;t happen she was just absolutely devastated now do you think you can behave like expert you in that moment no you go into salesperson youu you go into convince mode you you you become a version of yourself that you don&amp;#39;t actually like because you want it so bad so we just have to pay attention to the power dynamics and are we behaving ask ourselves are we behaving like a needy vendor or are we behaving like kind of this this vaunted expert um and you don&amp;#39;t want to overplay that idea but let&amp;#39;s not show up as needy vendors who go into convince mode and there&amp;#39;s a second part You&amp;#39; asked me Hector SEC second part is when crafting pricing options we talked about giving people three choices uh usually usually people have a very tough time coming up with the low and the high option once the low and the high are set I think the middle pretty easy to build I think some people start by building the middle option and then figuring out what the low and the high is do you have any quick three minute version of like how do we think about the low the high and the middle when it comes to crafting a price price op set the high set the high first so you&amp;#39;re in a conversation with a client about here&amp;#39;s what my needs are what is it going to look like you say well it could be as high as X and then stop and it X should be a number that scares even you and a little bit of silence is good and when the client goes there&amp;#39;s no way then you can say okay like that that&amp;#39;s on the high end that&amp;#39;s a really you can get into comprehensive example why it&amp;#39;s so High um you you can say we have pack you if you&amp;#39;re packaging up your services you can say packages start at y like low end of the spectrum and then what I so I don&amp;#39;t think this applies in an accounting profession like in a creative in a creative firm you would ask the client uh was there a budget you were hoping that I could hit is there a number that you wanted me to try to work with so let&amp;#39;s say I anchor at $100,000 and the client chokes um and I let&amp;#39;s say they walk $100,000 there&amp;#39;s no way I&amp;#39;d pay 100 for that well if we could deliver these outcomes what would you pay let&amp;#39;s say they say well maybe maybe at the most 50 okay 50 so uh I I can work with that now on the low end was there a number that you were you said you didn&amp;#39;t have a budget but was there a number you you were hoping to hit yeah I was hoping to spend 10,000 or less okay so now we have a range between 10 and 50 I&amp;#39;ll go away and I&amp;#39;ll come back with some solutions and um they&amp;#39;ll be priced in that range of 50 on the high end and 10 on the low end so generally you can either use the client&amp;#39;s stated budget as a lowend and say well here&amp;#39;s what we can do for this or you can set the low end of the range with your kind of standard-based package and that&amp;#39;s probably more applicable for this audience yeah and I think the the way I would I would quickly apply it is uh sometimes we think of our services as just one solution like the only solution is to prepare a tax return so we already have a predetermined amount of uh time resources whatever that it takes our from to do it so we have a a Target pricing range ourselves for that but if if you you can get a little bit more creative and go well you maybe I&amp;#39;m not doing your taxx return maybe I&amp;#39;m just talking about the tax return that you can do on your own maybe I&amp;#39;m giving you a lesson on how taxes work maybe I&amp;#39;m just laying out a strategy maybe I&amp;#39;m doing the tax return and adding a guarantee that if you get audited it will include the auditing so so the the reality is I think most of the time we are we are so mired and and and and focused on the services that we have provided before that that when we think of pricing we&amp;#39;re like okay this is not very elastic how would we take a client&amp;#39;s price range and back into it and I think what you&amp;#39;re trying to tell us is hey if you back if you first understand and present the enormity of the problem and then you and the client acknowledges what the problem is and then they give you that what is worth to them to make that problem go away then you&amp;#39;ll come back into whether or not you could provide a solution that can help them get there within that price range is that kind of what you&amp;#39;re telling us yeah and I think in your profession I think you should probably have you should have packaged uh package Services the prices can change depending on the size of the client or other variables that are other variables that might be a surate for the value to be created here but you would have a basic package this is the cheapest we can do and let&amp;#39;s just use tax returns I just do the return and it&amp;#39;s X and the middle package is you could so how how can you add value X Plus consultation you have questions like I I have questions for my accountant or my wife and business partner does and we call the accountant and like we get the questions answered and then a bill bill shows up and it&amp;#39;s like what oh we always pay it but it&amp;#39;s annoying as hell we never know like they don&amp;#39;t articulate to us like at no point have they ever articulated this is how the relationship works we just get these bills in the mail There&amp;#39;s an opportunity to actually for them to extract more money from us to pay a for like a larger sum of money upfront or even monthly or just some ongoing consult ation where we don&amp;#39;t feel guilty about calling and they don&amp;#39;t feel guilty about sending the invoice and then the anchor option is you think of the anchor option the most expensive one would be customized something quite elaborate customized to that client situation so think of it as um um basic enhanced and then customized that&amp;#39;s a good way to think of three options for the accounting profession that&amp;#39;s a perfect way to end it Blair Thank you so much we&amp;#39;re on top of the hour it&amp;#39;s a pleasure and an honor to have you I&amp;#39;m going to speak speak in behalf of the entire profession and yes I have given myself the title and the authority to do that so in behalf of the entire profession we love what you got to say we would love to learn more about uh what you um what you could provide for us and then we&amp;#39;ll see you next time so I know you gotta log off thank you very much Blair I appreciate it thanks Hector bye bye okay so Blair stepping out I just want to do a couple of things here so one um I was hoping that maybe we could talk a little bit about a couple of episodes from his podcast um so I&amp;#39;ll just mention them really quick one is called just stop talking this one just came out and honestly I think is one of the best podcast episodes I have ever heard go listen to it and it talks about why we talk so much why we over sell why we feel the need to fill the void or blank space where you just allowing the customer to think about the solutions it&amp;#39;s called just stop talking check it out the tups podcast he&amp;#39;s got another awesome episode called um something about proon I call a strategic pro bono which is in what situations proon makes sense and how can pro bono be a net good thing that your uh that your uh uh firm does and a whole bunch of episodes on scope creep and having conversations about scope creep um uh Blair is absolutely fantastic he coined a a concept called the inefficiency principle which basically means that you can either be Innovative or efficient but the two things are pinned against each other right being efficient is not being Innovative that that means doing it the only way you know how to do it and try to do it as quick as possible and being Innovative means experiment do it different look for a different solution think outside the box stop and think and as accountants we focus way too much on efficiency way too little in in in Innovation and until we understand that these two things are pained against each other and we are comfortable with being Innovative even at the Peril of being inefficient then we&amp;#39;re GNA evolve and then we&amp;#39;re gonna go to we&amp;#39;re going to evolve ourselves into the next level so if you&amp;#39;re not already signed up to come to our conference in in in Hollywood Florida it&amp;#39;s called the reframe conference called influential conversations for accountants I take a little bit from Blair I take a little bit from Ron Baker from all the people that I admire that have learned over the years and we built a conference around this about how how to have better more effective conversations with our clients employees uh co-workers software companies whatever uh the original date that we had set was the third week of October we&amp;#39;re going through some date changes the dates might change to October 16th to 19th it&amp;#39;s not official yet but you will get an email if you already signed up for the conference for That official uh change the conference ticket is $18 $1,800 there are four coupon codes one expires April the other one may uh June and July because we had this date change we had to redo the coupon codes so uh you can sign up for this conference for now if you&amp;#39;re available either October 16th to 19th or October 24th to 26 the original dates uh sign up for the conference and we&amp;#39;ll let you know very very soon what those states are www. reframe it will be the best conference you&amp;#39;ll ever go you&amp;#39;ll ever go to www. reframe

Transcript for:Influential Conversations for Accountants Webinar Part 3

Transcript for:
Influential Conversations for Accountants Webinar Part 3