Speaker 1: 0:05

Welcome back everyone and welcome to Accounts 2.0. I'm Steve Perpich and with me is our president, Ted Williamson. How are we doing today, Ted?

Speaker 2: 0:13

I'm great, thank you. How are you, Steve?

Speaker 1: 0:16

Excellent, excellent. So today we're going through step seven, and step seven might be two parts. There's a lot to it, but we're going to dive right in. This is about networking and marketing, kind of the engine that drives revenue, and the byline is it's an art and a science and it's work. So I'll dive right in. Today we're going to be emphasizing two aspects, both the online and then the real-time aspects of marketing. It starts off because, hey, people are watching a podcast. They're online right now from various channels. You can be on YouTube, you can be listening to us on Apple or on Spotify or on Buzzsprout.

Speaker 1: 1:05

But everything comes down to your online presence, for starters and the focal point of that, and a lot of people think they're not necessary sometimes and they just want to rely on social media platforms. But a professional website is key and I'm going to let you know why. Number one is on a website that you own is your owned media, and that's important. If you're relying on social media platforms only for your business identity, like you're purely using LinkedIn pages or Facebook that is called rented space Like you're actually putting your material on their platform, but then you're not opening yourself up to all the algorithms that their changes can get at, and the big ones today are Google and Bing. So when you have a professional website and it's properly indexed and we'll get what that means in a second that is the center of your identity online.

Speaker 1: 2:02

Now it's critical to still deal with social media platforms and have a presence there, of course, but they become channels. The difference is picture the social media platform like as your telephone. Well, you don't just have your telephone sitting out in a parking lot. In conventional business, the telephone is an extension of the actual business location. The website's your location. The social media platforms are like your telephone.

Speaker 1: 2:26

So that little analogy there hey, I'm in an older generation, so I was around since the internet started, so I still look at those conventional examples. Now, another thing about your website is you can wing it on your own, but there's so many great tools out there to build websites. There's platforms that actually have websites integrated into them. You can wing it on your own, but there's so many great tools out there to build websites. There's platforms that actually have websites integrated into them you can use. Google itself can give you a space for almost like a free website, things like Wix, squarespace, all these things. These are great platforms and they do a lot of the heavy lifting for setting it up, for SEO, which is the next thing.

Speaker 1: 3:08

But one thing you got to realize and it's good to use these professional platforms because if you're just using, like say, wordpress on your own, one of the things you always have to consider in the United States is ADA compliance and in Canada Ontario especially it's AODA compliance and worldwide it's called WCAG compliance and what those things are is accessibility standards for website access. If you're using professional sites and professional tools, the designers of those tools take a lot of that into consideration. If you just throw together a WordPress site and start throwing every third-party product in there, it's not guaranteed that you're going to be compliant and you run the risk of a little bit of a litigation problem, especially in the United States. So just make sure that you're using a professional platform.

Speaker 2: 3:59

Well, I mean, you could use WordPress, like, don't be afraid to use WordPress if you're working with a marketer, because WordPress has a lot of features. And I don't want people to think that we're saying don't use WordPress. No, it's not about not using WordPress yet.

Speaker 1: 4:16

It's the third-party components, wordpress on its own and WordPressorg, which actually is the center for standards for the WordPress themes. They are generally compliant. But just with caution, when you're adding third-party components like calendar controls and various other things, make sure that they're from reputable firms and that have like. If it's like over 500,000 implementations, you're pretty safe to integrate those. If something only has like 100 implementations, I would be a little suspect on it.

Speaker 2: 4:48

So you're getting a little bit techie here, steve. What is an implementation? I'm just imagining people listening to us, right, and then what's WCAG? What's implementations. So maybe we should.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Well, actually no. These are things that we should talk about, ted. These are things that people need to be aware of, to the point where, if you're choosing a professional to do your website, they should be meeting these standards. You should have a professional website. If you're going to wing it on your own, then you run the risk of not being WCAG, not being ADA compliant or not being AODA compliant. What I'm saying is make sure that it's not just a free, cheap website that you just cobbled together on your own. Don't get your cousin to do it. Have it professionally looked at.

Speaker 2: 5:36

So the actually it's, it's the nephew, is what we say. So it's your nephews. That are the ones who it's. Usually when you, when you, when you, when we talk to people, especially accountants, they always have a nephew that is going to do their website, their social media, all that stuff. Have you ever noticed that in the accounting industry as well, there's always a nephew that's doing the bookkeeping, or or a brother-in-law or something like that, right, so? And they're doing their taxes and everything. So don't.

Speaker 1: 6:05

No, unless they are Well, I wouldn't recommend it yeah.

Speaker 2: 6:10

So I mean, if you don't want to be replaced by a nephew, don't replace a professional to do your marketing with a nephew, right?

Speaker 1: 6:18

Now getting back, ted, to some of the saccharisms. I'm using the blog that goes along with our podcast here, the. So some of the saccharisms I'm using the blog that goes along with our podcast here. The links are all there. They're actually in the blog too. So people are interested in what is WCAG, what is ADA, what is AODA? Click on the link. It actually tells you about it. They're not as scary as it seems as long as you have professional implementation. Some of the platforms that are out there actually are A20 Connect. The websites, funnelsnels and output from that are compliant by default. You use our tool, you're compliant. And there are other tools out there, like generated from HubSpot and some of the other big platforms that have website extensions to their CRMs. They're all compliant as well.

Speaker 2: 7:02

So, talking about A20 Connect, just to let you know, if you do have a WordPress site, you can actually host that within the A20 Connect, exactly, but that won't inherently make you ADA compliant, or anything because you're still built on the WordPress platform that you created?

Speaker 1: 7:20

yes, but once you come into our family we'll have a look-see at it and we'll mention if we notice anything that's right out of line there. It's not that hard and we do that because we are a community and we like to be very involved with the people we do business with, so that's not a problem Now. So the next step so you get the website and it's professionally set up. It looks it's running great. The website and it's professionally set up. It looks, you know, it's running great. Um, really, the next step and you've heard this before seo, seo optimization, search engine optimization. What that means is there's a sets of properties and sets of um that can be called tags or meta tags. Sorry, this is jargon, but what it is. It's like an index words that you need to put and register with your site. Usually, a website that's set up will have a section or an administrative setup to do that, if you don't have a professional helping you. And this is the stuff that tells the search engine what you're all about. You're all about and if it's done properly, you will actually and you're in the right niche. You will actually appear in search engines ahead of your competition, because it's just better structured.

Speaker 1: 8:32

Now for search engine optimization. There's a whole art form of the right keywords and the right ways of expressing it. There are tools that can help you that. Google actually has platforms to help you with that to find the right keywords. Again, you should have a specialist. You should have someone to talk to. You can go research it. But one of the formulas for success as a new age accountant is you know, use the right resources to get the job done. Don't try to take on the world yourself, because if you're going to spend all your time worrying about your WordPress site and your SEO configuration, you're not really focusing on your core competency.

Speaker 2: 9:11

So I just wanted to mention I mean, I know we try not to sell ourselves and stuff like that on this, but one thing that we do in A20, Connect and Accountants 2.0 is we try to find tools that will help you. So we have, so we know, like SEO, for example, we're not necessarily going to go in and do all your meta tags and all of that, unless you hire us to do that. But if you want to do your own marketing, you can use our tool. You can do your own marketing and we actually have a feature there that can actually get you on different business listings and stuff like that to help with your SEO, uh, for example. So then the other thing that's really important for your SEO is organic, uh, and and linking right. So we want to make you want to make sure you have some sort of blog, you want to, and then you have some linking to your socials.

Speaker 1: 10:01

Well, I'll be getting to that. The content marketing yeah, socials, well, I'll be getting to that, I'll be getting to that.

Speaker 2: 10:05

The content marketing yeah, I just wanted to say how that affects SEO, right, like it's important that all of those things are in there, so, and all of that can be done with our platform too. But again, I'm not trying to sell, I'm just saying that there's all these things you need to kind of, you need to think about when you're thinking about the SEO and growing online Well, and growing online Well again.

Speaker 1: 10:28

Another plug for our platform is it's actually very easy because we do have administrative controls. That it makes it very easy to put in your keywords and your SEO drivers and that's one of the wonderful things about it. But you touched on the backlinks and various other stuff. That's the content marketing aspect, because when you add your material, like your blogs and various things, when you put links to other credible sources, that has helped your organic standing. So it's not only the keywords you use, it's how you're referring to people and creating fresh content. And that is why a blog is very important, because a well-setup site but that never changes, just becomes a floating dead piece of property. That's like creating a beautiful shop on a little street and you never open it and you never change what's in the window, and then people just get tired of looking at it. So that's how the algorithms work in the search engines. If there's fresh content that is linked to viable other healthy sites, you will have organic success in the search engines when compared to somebody who does not do that at all. And then on top of that and this is where we kind of get into the social media and this is where we kind of get into the social media.

Speaker 1: 11:48

Social media extensions of your site are critical because it drives traffic back to your site and your own stuff. So one exception LinkedIn has a wonderful, I guess, creator function, where you can write articles on LinkedIn and from a professional standpoint that's great. But you should have that equivalent article back on your own personal blog as well, so that you have search advantages outside of that. Now if you make all your posts public on LinkedIn, like outside of even LinkedIn users, yes, it'll get indexed by the search engines, but again you're depending on LinkedIn for that aspect. Engines, but again you're depending on LinkedIn for that aspect, and they can unless you're a paid member of LinkedIn, they actually can throttle that access. So you really should have your blog material on your site, even if you're doing it on social media.

Speaker 1: 12:37

So when you make your social media posts, always put a link back to your site. Whether it's a sales funnel or a latest article or like this podcast, there'll be a link from our site back to your site. Whether it's a sales funnel or a latest article or like this podcast, there'll be a link from our site back to this podcast, on whatever source, and that basically creates a very healthy, ever-changing, dynamic presence which really, really helps you save on paid campaigns and advertising costs. And then the gold of online presence is testimonials. If someone's writing about you, whether they're adding a lovely endorsement on Google, on Facebook, or if your website has its own comment area or you collaborate and have someone write an article about you, or it's a client who just independently wants to praise the relationship, that's gold. That creates a lot of great traffic and, again, it doesn't have to be a big paid campaign. This really creates a lot of activity you can simplify a lot of those things.

Speaker 2: 13:43

I'm not going to get into our platform exactly. There's a lot of platforms that do it, but you can actually simplify that review process to get people to give you reviews on Google or Facebook. So it's important. A lot of these things seem like a lot of like, like steve's touching on a bunch of stuff and it's. It's especially like as an accountant.

Speaker 2: 14:02

But remember, um, we, we, we were in the accounting industry too, right, so we understand this. Um, you don't want to know, or don't? You don't care to know about all of this technical stuff, right? All of this marketing and uh and sales related technologies and stuff like that. You know, like most, most people, uh, go into business just to do their business, just like we say the same thing in accounting. Most people don't go into business to do accounting and taxes and bookkeeping, and you know things like that. They, they go in to do what they do best, and it's no different in marketing. Think of you as that client and us as the accountant here In this scenario.

Speaker 2: 14:44

Basically, in marketing and stuff like that, it's a lot, there's a lot involved with it, and we know that you don't really care to know all of it, and that's fine.

Speaker 2: 14:56

So, like, like, like. There's a lot of tools out there to help you with that and like, and so that's why we've crafted our our tool, that specifically for accountants and bookkeepers, because we know, you know how hard it is and we and we know that there needs to be some automation and stuff like that. So when it comes like the reviews there's, you can, as soon as you sign up somebody, you can create an automation that says hey, please give me a review, and if you're good, you know it's going to be a good review, right, like, and if not, then hopefully they, hopefully you're able to stop them before they give the review. I mean, you still give them the opportunity to and that you can correct whatever issue there might be. So it's not just that you want to get as many reviews as possible, you want to make sure that they're good reviews and you want to make sure that there's a lot of them. So automating, that is super.

Speaker 1: 15:46

Absolutely. And even if you do get a bad review, it's how you remediate it. If you quickly respond and kind of show that dialogue, going back, many times they'll retract the negative review or they'll repraise. You say, hey, thanks for dealing with this, and away you go. It shows that you're a responsive professional that's dealing with that. And Ted, you're right, marketing is especially in a vocation on its own and we can't expect the new age accountant to to be a master of all things, and that's why we have the step seven is to but you do need to have an awareness, especially if you're a smaller operator, to be aware of all the, the components that make up a powerful marketing campaign, both online and offline, components that make up a powerful marketing campaign, both online and offline, so that when you are looking at tools or engaging in a professional that's proposing these types of services, we're trying, we want to help you kind of, just ask those right questions, and that's why I encourage, Whether it's us or not.

Speaker 2: 16:47

whether it's us or not.

Speaker 1: 16:48

Right, but I want well, I would like it to be us, because I want to answer the questions and discussions, not only because I've been there and it is actually one of my specialties, but I want you to engage with us in our community. If you go to our community and start posing these questions based on our steps to new age accounting, I'm happy to engage and happy to you know, maybe help to steer you in the right direction and answer any questions you might have along that line. So, when we start from testimonials, which is kind of an interaction thing, the next level of online marketing. That's a little overlooked because people think, oh, I don't want to spam people, but email marketing is surprisingly effective. Besides engagement within communities, which is one of the best ways of building a market for yourself and your niche, email marketing is the second highest level of getting sales online and there's two ways of doing that, of getting sales online. And there's two ways of doing that.

Speaker 1: 17:59

If someone interacts with you and fills out a form and accepts the fact that you can email them because you don't want to be classified as a spammer, because you'll be blacklisted, and blacklisted means your emails will start bouncing and won't get to anybody. You can send them material. And if you send them value material in those emails like you know, some ideas and stuff people will either subscribe or they just, you know, they'll kind of look at it. It's in their head. You don't flood them, maybe once every week or two. And again there's automated platforms that does that nurturing of an email campaign if you set them all up in advance, but just an outreach, and then your established customers reach out to them by email once a month. And if you're frequently engaged with your customers, depending on the service and niche, you can go as high as weekly. But any more than that and again they're just going to hit the block button and it'll just go into the junk drawer.

Speaker 1: 18:57

But email marketing with a value message is a great way of staying in someone's head, especially if it's some professional related, like I'm on engineering email sites, I'm on marketing sites and accounting stuff and I've registered with them and I get several emails a day. But again, just glance at the subject line. If it interests me, I'll open it, have a look. If not, yeah just you know, archive it or delete it. But it's just like walking by the newsstand. You know, some things make you interested and some things are just you know better to pass along. So that's one of the levels of acting.

Speaker 1: 19:35

Now next one, sorry, the levels of action. Next one is professional networking. So if you're engaging in the communities or you're engaging online, I like to use LinkedIn as my level of higher level professional if I'm going for management. But Facebook is great, too, for entrepreneurs and people that are just interested because of its quickness. But professional networking and collaborating with people online in similar niches that can either complement your service or not, having that conversation online like what they're doing, make a comment, share that, repost that that drives traffic back I'm gonna say beyond, go beyond that.

Speaker 2: 20:17

I'm gonna say go beyond that, connect with that person oh yeah co-market right. No, work together, especially if you're talking to the same people, uh, and you're both adding value. You can create a webinar just just between the two of you that can drive traffic to both of you and add so much value to your target market.

Speaker 1: 20:36

Oh, absolutely, absolutely so. And that just drives us to that engaging with online communities. So that helps you create content for that online community. These collaborative conversations, the sharing of ideas, really gets people aware and trusting you. Because here we are, you're watching our podcast right now, everyone out there, or you're listening to us. We're real. If you leave comments and you go into our community, we're going to interact with you. That's how we do our business and we actually enjoy it. It's not because we just have to do it for success. We like it because we learn stuff every day when we interact with individuals. So that's, uh, the online stuff. Part two, that's coming up. Uh, we're going to be talking more face-to-face marketing activities, because you can't just stay behind the computer and at your desk. There are times you have to get up and walk out in public and get involved with what's going on in your region, community or beyond. Ted, do you have any parting comments for the online part of the term? I have a few things.

Speaker 2: 21:45

I wanted to kind of let you, because you're more the expert on this stuff than me. Like, I know marketing, I've been educated in marketing, but Steve is more digital than me, which is great. I'm getting better Um and uh and I'm not bad, right, but uh, but he's more of an expert than than I am in that. Um, so it's so. It was great to let you go with that, but, um, a lot of people think that marketing, networking and everything surrounding that is all or nothing in one area, or not. So, traditionally, traditional accountants, they network, they work with Chamber of Commerce We'll get into that in the next episode. Other ones they only do online presence and some of them are just pay-per-click campaigns or just organic, where they're trying to build a following with their social media. It needs to be a one or the other or the other. I think it can be all things and I think that you're more powerful when you do all things. So organic is awesome. There's this one coach that we're that I've been talking to and I think we're going to bring him into our network where he actually does a organic marketing education and he does very. He does it very, very successfully and so. So one might think well then, what do we need? Yeah, facebook. Well, the idea is that, first of all, you still have to track all those people, those leads, you still have to have one place to communicate to all of them and you still need an online presence outside of that, because you need to look like a professional. You can't just be some somebody talking to somebody on a in a Facebook. That is great and it can help you grow, and that's wonderful and I think that's a huge value, but you need to do all things. And the other thing is networking with other people. Um, so you might be an online only networking, uh, or an online only company and servicing a niche, cause remember, we need, we need to niche and target market, but that target market still might have places that they go to, so you might still want to network with them, whether it be online or or going to trade shows or something like that networking with those people.

Speaker 2: 24:01

So it's important to do all three, I think, um, or at least two. I don't think you should ever just just fall on one where it's organic or digital or networking. Um, so we're talking about two organic kind of is in, is in the middle of all of it. That's why I know we're not really going going too crazy there, um. So I want to give you a quick story about um, why it's important to target market and why it's important to pay attention to where your target market is. And so every so often, as you know, I'm not perfect. I like to bring you know a story of my failures into place here, and so one is we actually contracted with a LinkedIn campaign company I'm not going to name names and we were targeting contractors, um, and in, you know, dumping, I think. How much did we spend? Like 15 grand or something, something crazy, or 10 grand, I don't remember what it was.

Speaker 2: 25:00

It was a lot of money and then all the investment, you know time, investment, everything on top of it. It was a lot and that whole time we were working with this company and we should have known better. First of all, it was because I was a contractor. I should have known where I would have been. So there's here's one part where I didn't do, I didn't think about it completely. So you do need, you do need to work with a professional. Since then, I've learned, just to let you know, because I was in, was in accounting brain, then not in marketing brain, um, now in marketing brain. So, um, that is one thing. And then, in contracting with this company, they should have known this is their, their specialty, right, this is what they do that. But they, I think they just were like, hey, they're gonna pay us to do this and we're not gonna have that much, that much work. I know, I know that they wanted a better, you know, like reviews and things like that, but they just didn't get it Cause we didn't get any sales or anything from that.

Speaker 2: 25:57

So know your target market. If you're dealing with professionals, go on to LinkedIn If you're. If you're dealing with contractors, facebook, google, you know all those things right. There's different. Know your niche, know where they're going to be. So, regardless if it's online, if it's organic, if it's networking, know where they're going to be and invest into that area.

Speaker 2: 26:19

Don't just take somebody's word for it, because that's kind of what I did and I got burnt. So that's one thing, and I don't fault the company as much, except the processes to make sure that we were. So that's one thing, and I don't. I don't fault the company as much, except but the pro. The process is to make sure that we were, that they were the right fit and that we were targeting the right people. So that's where you need to make sure you're working with a professional and that you're thinking like the people you want to talk to, don't just think on your own. So that is one thing. We actually have a tool now that actually has LinkedIn outreach. So if your target market does fall in there, boom, we got you hooked up. Don't worry about that. So I have notes. So everybody knows I bring notes to these meetings. Right, I didn't touch on mine yet because I kind of let Steve go and it sounds like Steve, you wanted to say something.

Speaker 1: 27:04

Well, you were mentioning. Why would people need a platform when you can just go to each social media platform? They all have the tools and reporting, the consolidation of the communications in a tool like A20 Connect or even HubSpot or these other CRM tools. It's needed to coordinate the results of what's going on in Google search, what's going on in Facebook, what's going on LinkedIn and Instagram in one spot, not only for reporting, but, as you were saying, you can't just do one thing and you need to have a comprehensive plan, and these tools help you create your media calendars and really our unified interface to make it all happen from one control area. Because if you try to manage all the social media platforms separately, so it's not yourself, it's going to be a media person they're going to miss gaps and they won't be as responsive. So again, I was just talking in support of your statement about you can't just do one thing. You got to kind of pay attention to all of it. That's why these comprehensive tools are really helpful.

Speaker 2: 28:14

Yeah, because you need a control center in order to deal with all of that. Right? So you need a control center. You need a place where you can see everything and you can get data reports. As you know the accounting industry, we're all about looking at the data, what's happening, so we can make decisions. Well, it's the same thing in marketing. They're very, very similar. It's just that there's a lot of different tools. Generally, in the accounting industry or accounting, bookkeeping, things like that they're really intrinsic. A lot of people don't want to talk and have to do this networking and stuff and that's why we're here, because it's the perfect target market for us and we understand it completely because we've been there. So that's why we're in it Now.

Speaker 2: 28:58

So you need to know what your strengths are in marketing. You're usually pretty extroverted, right? You like to talk, some people like to get attention. So, because it's not that we're trying to get attention, um, I was kind of apprehensive than doing a podcast. Uh, I, I wanted to do it because I wanted, I wanted to be involved in something like that, but, um, so I'm like an introverted extrovert, I think. I still think I'm somewhat of an extrovert, but but, um, I like my alone time a little bit quiet time yeah, okay.

Speaker 1: 29:28

So how about another anecdote? I really actually it was great that you shared that LinkedIn tool story, but what's the next thing on your list of notes?

Speaker 2: 29:37

Okay, I don't know about an anecdote, I would just want to say so, watch who you're engaging with, especially when it comes to email marketing. You were talking about email marketing Because there's a lot of them out there. When there's a lot of them out there that are like I can get you 30 leads a month, or I can get you whatever, and what they're going to do is spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, and then you're going to get a bad name, um, or you're, or if they're using your, your domain, that we're getting into a lot of technical stuff, but then you could actually be blacklisted, right, so you could be, your domain could be taken down, or or, uh, completely ignored by, like google and search engines and stuff, right. So, so you don't want to ruin your name, um, in working with the wrong people, uh, also, a lot of times they'll just do one thing and they will.

Speaker 2: 30:27

It'll work for a little bit and then, but then you might you're all of a sudden your reviews start going down, or something like that, or you start getting a you know a bad name. So you just some of them are good, just be careful with it. So cold outreach is tough, especially in accounting. Like, why would you want to, I don't know like why would you want to look like you're a spammer and trying to be a professional at the same time? It's kind of Well Ted.

Speaker 1: 30:56

I would never recommend going to a cold list. When an email campaign is built by legitimate email addresses that you attract through either a live event or through somebody signing up and showing interest and or engaging with you and you can get their email on social media, I would never recommend buying a list. But if you're going to do a cold outreach there's really no such thing. It's warm. A lukewarm outreach would be done through research. So say you're targeting a specific firm you want to form a relationship with. If you research the C-level individual there and you send them an in-mail on LinkedIn and or you have their email address to send it directly there, that could open up the activity of correspondence. But you're absolutely right, getting a list is certainly not recommended and your results are going to be. I think it might do more harm than good.

Speaker 2: 31:54

Yeah, like. So cold outreach I guess could be a thing like you're talking about, like with doing in-mail and stuff like that, because they're your target market, they want to hear from you. So it's different, or you could perceive that they want to hear from you.

Speaker 1: 32:08

You don't 100% know I call that researched outreach. It's not cold outreach. Cold outreach is they're just okay it's a CEO fire them something Like well, that's cold. But if you actually say in your email about them and why you're interested in them.

Speaker 2: 32:24

my level of success on those responses is practically 100%, but that's because it's a value proposition and you're well, it's a value proposition and you're being personal right and and you're actually legitimately engaging with them, right, so it's totally different yeah, that's uh, yeah so.

Speaker 2: 32:43

So another thing, um is let's talk about communities. So not only being in a community as being good, so like going like, for example, or or groups. You know if you're, let's say, a Facebook group, so if you go into a Facebook group, then you're there in your target market. Engaging with them is super, super important. Being present, that that works really well. Being within a community like ours or or other ones you know, similar ones, can can help you network with other people who maybe are in different niches, and you guys can kind of throw leads back and forth. There's all kinds of things to do. Again, that kind of goes into networking, but then there's also doing your own community. So creating your own community is also a very awesome thing. So you are create, you are making yourself an expert.

Speaker 2: 33:34

If you're say I'm again landscapers, If you say I service landscapers and accounting and tax, I understand them completely and I'm going to create a community of landscapers that I'm going to talk to them about their business protocols. They actually don't want to talk about accounting and tax. They find it to not be all that exciting, right? They want to talk about their business. Accounting and tax can be in the conversation because obviously you are an accountant and they're in your community and they are interested in it. They're just not. That's just not going to hold their interest. But what they want to know is they want to know about their landscape and company beyond. How do they manage their company, what are the tools that help them, those kinds of things.

Speaker 2: 34:20

If you bring all of that into place in a community, you're going to have people that are engaged, people that see you on an ongoing basis and they actually trust you. So communities are actually a really really, really really good organic type of thing. So you are in our community and that's great. You don't need to buy from us to be in our community. We're happy that you're there at a free level, engaging, adding to the content, the story and the value for everybody. But we understand that some of the people in our community they see us, they know us, they trust us and they're going to look at us, knowing that we specifically have been accountants, have been there and have designed a service and a product specifically for you. So they're going to trust us, they're going to engage more with us and they're going to buy more.

Speaker 2: 35:27

Some people I'm not saying you have to, but some of you will, and that's just the nature of it. Now, we're always honest and open and so, yeah, the community will help us, but we want it to help the industry in general, and we think that if you do a community, you should do the same thing. If you actually niche and you care about those landscapers, you should have a community where they can work together, they can improve their businesses and at some point they might buy from you or they might not, and it's not a big deal, it's not about that. But in the end, you know, dollars make the world go around and they also make your company grow. So that's good. Those are my only notes. The only things I want to talk about is actually a pretty long first half of a podcast.

Speaker 1: 36:14

Well, no, no, I think it was very valuable insight that you've added there, ted, for sure, and that's why we do this.

Speaker 1: 36:22

If we're just reading off points or dictating the best things, then that's know. That's not what we're all about. We want people to have the sense of the conversation from our communities. So and this is the type of thing that is always either expressed in either our podcast or as a response in text to any of your comments so like and follow us at Accountants 2.0 on Facebook, youtube, linkedin and I believe we're on Instagram as well. That's right.

Speaker 1: 36:57

And you're going to see more of us on Instagram because as the weather gets nicer, we're going to get out there and we're near Detroit, so we're going to be walking about and that might be some of the content coming up very soon. So again, everyone, have a great day and thank you for participating in Accounts 2.0 podcast. Thank you, Thank you.