be unstoppable without sacrificing your soul.
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the disruptors
with liz farr
like many of today’s younger accountants, adam lean didn’t want to be relegated to the back office recording history and focused on compliance but wanted to have an impact by helping businesses grow. “i didn’t want to just be that person that just recorded the fact that the titanic was sinking. i wanted to help the titanic not sink.” younger people “want to make waves,” lean says. “they want to make more money without having to sacrifice their soul.”
more podcasts and videos: geraldine carter: charging more is better for your clients | vimal bava: when working smarter, not harder, is the only option | dawn brolin says grow your firm by shrinking it | jason blumer & julie shipp: move leaders out of client service | james graham: drop the billable hour and you’ll bill more | karen reyburn: fix your marketing and fix your business | giles pearson: fix the staffing crisis by swapping experience for education | jina etienne: practice fearless inclusion | bill penczak: stop forcing smart people to do stupid work | sandra wiley: staffing problem? check your culture | scott scarano: first, grow people. then firm growth can follow |
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lean, the ceo and co-founder of the cfo project, had an epiphany.
instead of being “at the whim of my clients or government deadlines, or bookkeeping deadline,” lean discovered that by helping business owners understand their numbers, he could do something bigger and better. most business owners don’t understand their numbers, but as lean says “that’s a skill that if harnessed in the right way, you can be unstoppable.”
however, lean says most are stuck in what he calls “the accountant’s trap, where you’re forced to work long hours for high demanding clients for little pay, and you can’t really escape.” clients view accounting as a commodity, which makes raising fees difficult. to escape this trap, accountants need to “provide something that other accountants are not providing” by offering “guidance on how to have a successful business because that’s what they want.”
while reporting the right numbers is important, lean reminds us, “that’s not necessarily what the ceo or the business owner really values.” business owners want to make more money, and they value insights on how to grow their business, which are all things that accountants can do but mostly are not. “imagine if you are doing those things, then you’ll have way more fun, you’ll have more impact, and you’ll be valued a lot more.”
lean believes that accountants who can position themselves as the ones who can give insights to business owners would “single-handedly shift the accounting profession in the minds of people you work with.”
8 more takeaways
- reframe what you’re selling. be hyper-focused on what the client wants. they won’t buy hours, but they will buy guidance.
- sell your services like a product so clients know exactly what they’re getting every month, but deliver them like a service, which makes them more valuable.
- before you try to sell, establish a relationship with the business owner. find out their pain points and what they want so you can sell your services as a solution to their problems. now you’re selling them their dream.
- if you are the business, your business has no value when you want to sell it. instead, create systems to get leads, systems to convert those leads, and systems to provide services in a scalable way that allow you to step out of the business.
- everyone has an agenda. if you can be the person that helps people around you accomplish their agenda, you will be paid handsomely.
- communication is the most valuable skill for accountants to improve. we understand the debits and credits, but accounting is intimidating to most people. be the person who can explain accounting in a way that makes sense.
- stop thinking that just because you’re an expert in tax or bookkeeping that you can’t help business owners. if you can help business owners generate consistent, positive cash flow, you are in the best place to help a business grow.
imposter syndrome can be a good thing. it means you know there’s a lot you don’t know. use that as inspiration to learn the things you don’t know.
about adam lean
adam lean is a former accountant turned two-time entrepreneur who built, scaled, and sold two businesses. while helping other business owners, he realized his passion was teaching and providing tools to help them make more money and have peace of mind. he currently runs the cfo project, a training company that trains financial professionals on how to offer an outsourced cfo and business advisory service.
transcript
(transcripts are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
liz farr
welcome to accounting disrupter conversations. i’m your host, liz farr from 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间. my guest today is adam lean, ceo and co founder of the cfo project. how are you today, adam?
adam lean
i’m doing well. how are you doing, liz?
liz farr
i’m doing great. well, i’m really pleased to have you on here because i know you have some great ideas for helping the profession.
adam lean
oh, well, i’m thank you so much for the invite. i’m excited to be here today.
liz farr
all right, well, let’s let’s jump in. now, accounting talent has been scarce for years, and covid made it worse. what are some ideas you have on how to make things better? or better for the accounting profession as a whole?
adam lean
that’s a very good question. i think just in my observation, we’re dealing with accountants and i used to be an accountant myself. i think the the thing that that a lot of the younger generation can’t really get their head around is just being relegated to being somebody that records the past the distance focused on compliance or transactional things sort of somebody’s stuck in their little corner of the office and, and they do the same things day in and day out, at least for me, i wanted to help the business grow, i wanted to have an impact. i didn’t want to just be that person that just, you know, recorded the fact that that titanic was sinking like i wanted to help the titanic not sink. and, and i think that may be something that i think would appeal to a lot of accountants or future accountants, or anybody that’s in accounting, maybe working for somebody else, or, or somebody that has their own firm that is just doing compliance or training or bookkeeping or tax work. or a man, i don’t want to do this much longer. i want to have an impact on my clients, i want to be able to not be at the whim of my clients or government deadlines, or bookkeeping deadlines. i want to have a, i just want to do something bigger and better with the experience and the talent that i have and understand because it’s not understanding numbers, isn’t talent, not that many people, especially business owners have that at all. and that’s a talent, that’s a skill that if harnessed in the right way, oh, you can you can be unstoppable.
liz farr
yeah, i think that that would make it much more exciting for people also. you know, in my experience, there were so many times when there were opportunities to help a business that we just kind of dropped because we were just focused on grinding out the work just over and over and over. so so how would that help with that? would that help bring more people in retain them?
adam lean
i think i think you hit the nail on the head, i think it would, it would, it would create a more exciting work day or career. if you think about it, because you are helping, you’re able to get your hands involved and get your get involved in the operations of the business. and because you’re having an impact, you’re going to be valued more. i mean, if you think about right now, most accountants on the on the on the on the list of things that the ceo or the business owner has to think about accounting is kind of at the bottom, it’s one of those things that they just have to have this accounting department because you just have to you die, you have to report the right numbers to the government. and so, you know, into the various, various organizations, and you have to have the right numbers. but that’s not necessarily what the ceo or the business owner really values. they value having a better business. they value making more money, they value, getting insights from their leadership team on, on how to grow their business, they want financials, insights, they want strategic insights. these are all things that the accounting department can do. they’re just not doing it in many cases. and imagine if you are doing those things, then you’ll have way more fun, you’ll have more impact and you’ll be valued a lot more. and that’s exactly what we preach to the cfo project that you need to be thought of as somebody that your clients, whether it’s you’re the ceo of your company, or a business or somebody that your client really wants to talk to. and if they really want to talk to you, that means you’re providing something that they really care about which is knowledge advice, guidance on how to have a successful business. if you could do that you’ll be more valued, you’ll have a more impact on your clients life. and they’ll just be a lot more fun.
liz farr
that’s right. that’s right. i think i think having making it more fun really is a big key to making it the profession, something that people want to pursue and want, to stay in. yeah, they really do it.
adam lean
and it’s not for all accountants, there’s a lot of accountants out there that love doing exactly what they’re doing. they love the fact that they come in every day. and they know, they’re doing the same thing they’ve done for 30 years, and they’re gonna do it all over again, and they love that. that just wasn’t me. and there’s also not a lot of other accountants that i talked to. i mean, i went to, i graduated from auburn with a degree in accounting, most of the people i graduated with are not the people i’m talking about these people would love to just have routine. but there’s a lot of people that i’ve talked to over the years, that are what i call like an entrepreneurial accountant, somebody that really wants to make ways and have an impact, and do things and make more money and, and and be more be valued. and if that’s you, that’s exactly who i’m talking about. and that’s not everybody, but i think it’s a lot of people, i think it’s a lot of people. and i think it’s exactly this people you’re talking about that are leaving the profession, because it’s they don’t want the routine. they don’t want to just do compliance or transactional work. they want to make waves, they want to make more money, they want to do it all without having to sacrifice their soul. they’re six months out of the year and sacrifice their weekends and nice.
liz farr
yeah, yeah. and especially since the after the pandemic, it’s no longer just a three or four month busy season, but it’s more like a 12 month busy season.
adam lean
yeah. yeah, i agree. it’s, we call, we call it the accountants trap, where you’re forced to work long hours for high demanding clients that little pay, and you can’t really escape. because the only way to the only way to escape to make more money is to take on more clients or more hours, well, you can’t do that, just like you said, you’re constantly busy. you can’t take on more clients, because you don’t have any more time and you can put more time in, you’re already working 6070 hours a week in many cases. so the only way to make more money is to raise your raise your fees. and then if you’re first of all, if you’re an employee, the only way is to ask for more money and who’s going to give you more money unless you provide more value. and second, if you’re if you’re a independent accountant or independent bookkeeper, and you work for clients, the only way to ask that to make more money is to raise your fields well, why would they? why would a business owner pay an accountant you know, more than the average accounting profession commands, if they view you as a commodity. i mean, it’s like it’s like, if they’re if you’re driving on the road, and there’s two gas stations next to each other one guy says should 75 cents more than the other guy says, most people’s gonna go to the cheaper gas that she because they view that fuel that gas is a commodity. same with you is only as you’re viewed as a commodity in the eyes of your boss or your client, they’re not going to pay you more. so what you’ve got to do to escape this trap is not view yourself as a commodity, which means you got to provide something that other you got to stand out, differentiate yourself provide something that other accountants are not providing to your client, and which is namely guidance on how to have a successful business because that’s what they want. that’s like we talked about earlier. that’s what they care about, help them get what they care about. and you’ll escape that accountants trap all day long.
liz farr
yeah, and you know, and what you touched on is, you know, the commodification of our profession. yeah. and a lot of what has driven that is the traditional business model, where we’re selling our hours instead of the value that we provide. but, you know, i’ve been seeing a few more firms step away from that old fashion business model and into something new, and i’m seeing a lot more firms dipping their toes, at least into providing fractional cfo services or client advisory services, which happens to be what your firm does. and so, what are some of the changes that you see in the firms that you work with? and do they operate differently, are they happier? what? what are you seeing?
adam lean
yeah, that’s a good question. there’s a couple of things. one is, the firms that we work with, are focused in this is what we teach in the program, you’ve got to focus on what your client wants, delivering a product or service that your client wants. and if you could do that, you’ll be able to command way more money. now that we know they need tax and accounting and bookkeeping and accounting services, they need that. but if you could combine what they need with what they want, which is guidance, you know, advisory services, then you’ll be able to charge a lot more. well, here’s the thing, you mentioned that a lot of accounting firms are the the standard business model is to charge by the hour, it’s a very difficult proposition to make to a potential client to say, i’m going to provide cfo services. and i’m gonna bill you by the hour and you know, $300. now, first of all, they have no idea what a cfo is, they don’t think they need one, even if they have a large, fairly large business, they don’t think they need one. and they don’t understand what goes into us, you can’t charge by the hour. so we’ve got to, we’ve got to be hyper focused on what the client wants, which will make our job selling, selling this cfo or accounting services for that, for that matter. it’ll make our jobs so much easier if we could reframe how we sell. so to answer your question, the accounting firms that have abandoned the old model, the ones that we work with a lot, are the ones that are shifting to having a shifting to productizing their services, so that it’s easier to sell, which means of course, it’s easier for somebody to buy. and if you have a lot more people buying your your firm is unstoppable. and that was sort of a 50,000 foot view of what i’m talking about, i have an iphone, here, i have apple created the iphone once. and then they manufacture it millions of times, it’s a product, they are indeed it wants, and they manufacture it over and over and over again. so they get the benefit of of scalability. the firms that, that we work with it for them, what we advocate for is to, to provide a scalable service to your to your clients. so instead of charging for accounting services by the hour, you said instead create a package that is thought of as a product, people know when they buy an iphone, what they’re getting, specifically. so you need to sell something that is viewed like a product, this is exactly what i’m gonna get every single month. and this is the one fee that i’m going to be charged either monthly or annually or quarterly, or whatnot, one fee. so here’s exactly what you’re getting in a box, here’s the fee for it, and ask them what they want to buy. that’s so much easier than saying, well, i can do accounting services or advisory services. and i don’t know how many hours it’s going to take, we’ll see when we get into it. that’s complicated. so we need to sell what we do as a like, like a product, we need to productize it. but unlike a product, the beauty of what we can provide a service, it’s more valuable. so we could charge way more for it. so we’re selling it like a product delivering it like a service, which means we’re able to charge way more for the service because it’s more valuable. so just to put it in a very specific language. you meet a business owner, and you learn you build a relationship with them in you establish and build a relationship with a business owner, let’s say you meet somebody at, let’s say, a chamber of commerce meeting, you find out that you’re sitting at the same table with them, you found out that they own a roofing business, and they’ve been around for about 10 years. so now you know that they’re a business owner, they own a roofing business. our job is now to sell some sort of advisory service and maybe couple it with your tax service or maybe bookkeeping service or whatnot. we can’t just come out and sell to that business owner. we just met them. right? so we’ve got to build a relationship with them and get to know what makes them tick. what what what are the pain points they’re experiencing in their business? in our program, we teach all the ways to do that. but then and you do that over a series of meetings, but the goal is to be in to sell intentionally. so you gotta be intentional about every single thing you say and do with that prospect. they’re like a fish you have on your line you want to reel them in slowly. if you if you relive in too fast, you’re gonna scare them away. but but when it comes time to selling to actually proposing your accounting or advisory services, you now know what that business owner really wants when their business. and then you sell that your your advisory service or accounting service, to make it clear that what you do is going to help them accomplish what they want. now, as you can see, you’re tying the two services together, instead of trying to convince them to buy a cfo service, they have no idea what it is, or an accounting product accounting service, they don’t know why you’re different. everybody else, you’re now saying, look, you want to be able to have a, you know, expand your roofing business to, to, you know, $8 million, over the next five years, be able to send your kid to college, put a down payment on a house and buy land for a new office warehouse for your for your business. these are all things are going to take money, and my job is to help you get there. so here, i’m gonna help you get to where you want. and this is exactly how i’ll do it, i’m going to provide a service that i call a cfo or advisory service is going to include these four things. and if you would like to add on my tax service, that way, it’s all under one umbrella. now all of a sudden, you’re selling their dream, instead of a generic commoditized accounting service, or a cfo advisory service that they’re clueless about, they have no idea what what that is.
liz farr
well, that sounds that sounds really valuable. and something that that i’m curious about is that you talk about productizing, the service, but yet it is also individually tailored for each and every client. so i think that’s a really fascinating combination. now, how do you how do you kind of work off that dynamic, standard and custom?
adam lean
instead of, instead of asking the client to tell us what they need, because think about a lot of fractional cfos? right now they they say what do you need, i can help you do that. and they delivered on a project basis. with most business owners don’t know what they need, they just know that they need help. they’re overwhelmed, they’re scared, they’re insecure of their ability to run a business, or somebody who’s a roofing business is probably an expert in roofing and construction, not an expert in all these other things. numbers, financials accounting are just not. but if we can go to them and say, i will do these five things for you. with it, and those five things may vary and will vary based on what you learned about the client, i will do these things for you. essentially, what you’re asking them, would you find that valuable? if i can help you do that? and of course, they’re gonna say yes, but once they say yes, say this is how i would deliver it, i will, i will have i will, i will conduct these, we call it the one clear path, but these six steps with you every single month, where they’ll culminate in a monthly meeting where we’ll meet once a month for an hour. and i’m going to show you exactly what’s going on what’s going right and what’s going wrong in your business. and i’m going to give you a specific action plan. on the next steps you need to take over the next 30 days to stay on track to hit those targets. so there’s goals that we talked about you wanting this year, and then the next five years. my job is to help you get exactly what you want from your business. and of course, that depends what they want is depends on the client. how do they view their? how do they view success. some people view it as i want to be able to take four months off so i can do missionary work. some people say i want to be able to travel, some people say i want to be able to to employ more people in my hometown or pass to have a business to pass down to my kids. whatever it is, we need to find that out, and then make it look like we’re tailoring a service to them. but what we’re really doing is providing the same, the same system, same six steps to every single client that we work with that way on our end, it’s scalable, we can deliver it in a scalable way. but on their end, they’re buying a very specific package where they know exactly what they’re going to get. we even go even go as far as saying if we don’t help you do these do these things, then i’d fire myself. because that’s the only reasons you should hire me. you put it in that context, all of a sudden you’re not seen as this accountant who, who does accounting things because most business owners don’t even know what accountants do. or a cfo which most people don’t understand what a cfo does, all of a sudden instead of being seen with somebody that does that we’re seeing as somebody that can guide them. but having a successful business that is invaluable. and that is just going to make a client. how are you?
liz farr
you know, and i like this framework of actually, you know, spelling out for accountants exactly what they do every month. because, you know, something that’s bred into us is we like our checklists. we like our processes. we like to know how to do everything. now, if we’ve figured out that systems and processes help us do the work better, then that really appeals to us.
adam lean
absolutely. you’re exactly right. and plus, the benefit of having a system is that it’s scalable. you can you can, the iphones made once the system’s made once, and you just repeat the scale it just manufactured over and over and over again, you provide the same system, the system that we teach, you provide an outsourced advisory service, and by the way, is outsourced cfo and advisory, we sort of use those terms interchangeably. the systems that we teach take four hours per month per client, to provide them a really robust advisory service. think about it for hours per month. and if you charge $2,500 a month, that’s, that’s essentially 600. i think, $25 an hour effective hourly rate. i mean, most accountants are making the average my calculator the average salary in united states for accountants, $73,000, which means their effective hourly rate is somewhere less than $50, all of a sudden, you’re going from $50 to $625 an hour, which means you’re able to earn way more from your time. and if four hours per month, could have, you know, 20 to 30 clients if you want a mod because you could have delegate it because it’s a system, you could delegate it to parts of the system to people on your team, or you could do it all yourself, or you could just have 10 cfo clients charge $2,500 a month, you’re making 25 grand, and at four hours a month, you’re working four hours per month per client they’re making you’re working 40 hours a month, to make 25 grand a month. that’s 300,000. right? 300,000 a year. measured if i’m half wrong, that’s still double what the average accountant salary is in the united states, and you’re having a way more impact to your clients? absolutely.
liz farr
absolutely. and that that would help them grow, grow their, their, their bottom line, but not necessarily their, their workload. you know, because growth is is often shown and pointed to is, as the success metric, or firms, you know, you want to be 1 million or 2 million gross or 3 million gross, that’s that’s really pointed to is is what you should do. but if you grow without having the infrastructure, then that can cause problems. and what what do you think about growth?
adam lean
i mean, i agree, i agree with you 100%. there’s a lot of accounting firms that are not really businesses, they’re just jobs that people own. and that is a scary proposition. because you’re you can’t take any time off, never get time off because you won’t make any money. and you know, the business just simply won’t run is good without you because you are doing everything that you are. you’re you’re you’re like this hamster wheel on this. you’re like a hamster on this wheel, you’re going and going and going, it’s really never going anywhere. and then when you want to come in, you know, sell your business one day. people who are buying accounting firms they want, they want cash flow systems, that’s what they’re buying. they’re buying systems that will create cash flow, they can’t buy you because your return. so if you are the business, then without you there is no cashflow. so what what is your business going to be valued, it’s not going to be valued that much. imagine if you can instead, create systems in every single part of your business. systems to get leads on a regular basis. systems to convert those leads to high paying clients, accounting clients or advisory clients and systems to provide a service in a scalable way. accounting services, bookkeeping, services, advisory services, and then you hire people to work those systems. right? all three of those systems if they’re running smoothly and you as the as the leader of your firm, all you have to do is just make sure those three systems are working. that’s your job. so just grease the wheels and make sure they’re working. and if all three of those systems are working, you’ll be unstoppable. and you’ll have a very valuable business. because like i mentioned, most people are buying accounting firms or any business in general, they want to buy a machine that makes money. so you got to create a machine, you got to own a machine that creates money, instead of a job that creates money. and that’s, i think that is, again, you’ll be unstoppable. and you’ll make way more money, i think you’ll have a lot better work life balance, because you won’t feel this pressure that, that if you don’t if you’re not in the office, you know, 670 hours a week, then you won’t be able to put food on the table.
liz farr
yeah, you know, i think you’re right about you know, people having a job. yeah, not a firm because my perception in some of the firms i worked in, was it the partners, were really buying themselves a job. not investing in a business. yeah. and i think that’s really sad. yeah.
adam lean
and i think it’s, i don’t think that people who get into this are intentionally doing that, just they just think, well, i’m an expert in accounting. so i’ve been in school for what’s the school for us, but i, you know, i got my cpa, i’m going to be an accountant. it’s much like the dentist who open who went to school to be a dentist, and then all of a sudden, it was a dental practice, they don’t view themselves most of us. i mean, i would think most dentists don’t necessarily view themselves as business owners, the ones that own a practice, they view themselves as dentist who happen to own a business, those, those are people that really do want a job. and until they can systematize their business until they can walk away for, you know, a month out of the year, or two months out of the year, then they really don’t own a system a business is based on systems, they own a job for themselves. and i think accounting, i think it’s the same thing, people, accountants, whether they work for, you know, a large firm, and they decide to hang out there, hang their own shingle and, and open their own independent accounting firm, i think they feel the same thing that i’m gonna count it, i’ll just be the producer. and i may be hired few office assistants to help me or junior accountants to help me. but i’m the accountant. and then they wake up 15 years later, and they realize they are still the accountant and the main producer. and you know, some people like i mentioned earlier in this in this podcast, some people just love that. they want to be the producer, they love the the just the tactical, that the doing the actual books in the in the taxes, they just love that. but for a lot of accountants that our call entrepreneurial accountants, they want something more they want to be able to own a business instead of owning a job. and i think that, that those people, after a few years of owning a job realizes is not for me, and i think those are the people that are leaving the profession. but if you can realize that there’s a better way to stay in the profession, but still own a machine or have more have a better time. in this profession, i think they’ll stay and i think the answer to that is being an entrepreneurial accountant, and being able to sell a service that your clients really want. and growing a business that’s that’s a machine and not a job. yeah.
liz farr
yeah. and you know, and i was thinking back to some of the firm owners i’ve worked with, and there was one in particular, an older gentleman who just loved doing tax returns, he loved it. and he would actually do a lot of the work across the desk from the client, you know, they’d bring in their stuff and he do most of the keying in before they come in, and then they’d come in and sit across the desk from him in his office, and then he he’d fill in the holes with whatever they wanted, you know, just kind of on the fly. oh, what was your business miles last year? oh, that much. okay, we’ll put that in there. you know, things like that, you know, and it was, he loved it. but today’s younger people are not like that, you know, if you want to do that you can go work at h&r block,
adam lean
right? i mean, how painful would it be for your client to sit there and have to go through all that? it’s, i mean, it’s, it’s like it’s like me go, i couldn’t care less about cars, really, you know. and so when i want to get something that when something’s wrong in my car, i just take the mechanic and just let them deal with it. imagine them having to them me having to sit there while he’s under my car, saying well look at this. i think this is wrong. i mean, it’s just dreadfully boring and most business owners especially today, they’ve got to focus on in their business, they gotta focus on revenue producing activities. and anytime you distract from that, it’s just is that they don’t value that. so you need to help them and you need to align your services with what they want again, and they know they need accounting, they just want you to do it behind the scenes, you just do the accounting, but you come to me and tell me what i can do to have a better business, then i’ll pay attention. and i think that’s, that’s where things are trending. we know that for a fact. and, i mean, it’s just, i wouldn’t when i was an accountant, and i’ve, i thought it was just boring. what they had me to do, and i worked for, i’ve worked for a pretty large business, it looked pretty large company, i was sitting in a box, and i felt like i was sitting in this glass box, i could see all this other stuff that i wanted to do. but i had, i was relegated to sitting in the box recording the past. and i wanted to help and i actually raised my hand and volunteered to help and they let me. and that’s where i got way more excitement of from that satisfaction from that job. well, so i started a business on the sides, because i had all this pent up energy, i wanted to do something. so i started a business on the side, and that business another do an accounting and that business grew, it grew to a seven figure business. so i left my day job as an accountant. and i started helping all these other people. and i realized that those people were asking for my help, not because i was good at my other businesses because i, i could explain numbers in a way that made sense. they did, i took for granted the fact that i understood numbers, but also took for granted the fact that i can make them make sense. and these people, these business owners crave that they all had accountants. they all had accountants to get those accountants we’re not solving the one thing that they really cared about, which is helping them understand their numbers and telling them what to do to have a better business. so they flocked to me. that’s why when i got the idea of starting my first my cfo firm, because i needed it. and within a within almost 18 months, i was at capacity, i couldn’t take on any more cfo clients. so i sold my eyes, as at this point sold my business that i had started just about eight years ago. and when i did my cfo, firm, full time, and i was just different than most accountants and if you can, and it was different because i was selling something people wanted not something that people needed. and i think that made all the difference.
liz farr
now, i know you touched on in your, in this last segment about the skills that you need that business owners really want and that’s understanding their numbers. so, so accountants who can explain the numbers and explain how the tax laws and how accounting rules work. that’s one of the really crucial skills for success in today’s world. so what are some of the other skills that accountants need to be successful?
adam lean
yeah, and let me clarify, we need to explain things in layman’s terms to our clients, they don’t really care about understanding the tax law. they just want to understand their business. and explain what does this even mean? like, like, i don’t even suggest you show your claim income statement and balance sheet. because those are accounting reports. just put it in just in words, say this is what’s working, and this is what’s not. and here’s what i think you should do about it. that’s it. they love that. so just to clarify, they don’t want you to pour over go over explain any any in depth, accounting rules or tax stuff, they don’t care. but if you can explain the numbers in a way that makes sense to them, they’ll love you for it. but tastes you’re just i just wanted to clarify that but right. but if you could explain the other stuff as well, you’ll be unstoppable as well. but you i digress it what was your question again?
liz farr
what are what are some of the what are some of the other skills that accountants need to be successful today?
adam lean
oh, okay. i love that question. i think that you i think, i think this sort actually goes along with what i was just saying, you have to be able to communicate well, you have to be able to communicate well to your clients, of course, but also to your co workers and to your bosses. and because everybody you have to realize that everybody that you interact with has an agenda. everybody your boss has an agenda. your boss’s boss has an agenda. they want to grow their business or your client has an agenda. they just they want to be able to have us to feel like they’re a good, good business owner. so if you can be the person that helps people around you accomplish your their agenda, you will get paid handsomely. for that. and i think this is this is a skill that i think a lot of accountants lack is being able to realize that, that accounting is just a, a specific skill that’s needed. but it’s, but if you can use that skill, to help advance the agenda of all the people around you, they will all of a sudden view go view you from somebody that just is recording the past is just in the accounting department, to somebody that can really help this business grow. in a case in point, my first my first job was i was an accountant. and it was at a i was a, the accountant for three amusement parks, i worked for six flags, and i was accounted for three of their parks. and i loved where i worked. but i hated that. i thought my job was boring. because i got done by 11 o’clock, what apparently the previous person was in my role for 30 years that took her all week to do. and so i had all this time and energy. and so and i let my bosses know, well, one day that somebody in hr came to me and said, we’re putting on a we’re putting on a conference for the people that work in the park, the managers, the supervisors that work in the park, people that supervised like the retail stands on the boost test. they don’t only think about numbers, can you put on a presentation to help them? i was like, absolutely. and and we met and, and i explained, i communicated how the accounting department helps them do their jobs better. like there’s a metric in the in the in the amusement park world that is used a lot called per cap per capita meaning how much does this popcorn stand make per person that attends the park. so if there’s 10,000 people in the park and the in the park and the park for say make $10,000 then per capita, i made $1 per person. i explained that was the first thing i explained. and everybody in the room it was like 100 people there. they were like what i’ve been here for years, had no idea what that meant. all i all they were told is you got to hit $1.10 per cap. and people were like, okay, no idea what it means. but okay. communicating, if you could communicate to the constituents that you are working with your stock and your business and your and your job will go way up, your stock with your clients will go way up. i think hands down, i can’t think of a better skill that accountants need to work on than communication. we got to stop talking to people that are not accountants like accountants get right. they don’t understand accounting. we do. but right. they are intimidated by a lot of people from the outside are intimidated by accountants, because it is confusing, you have to understand accounting is confusing to most people, we are a rare breed. and i think it’s a good thing. we understand the numbers, we understand the language of business. most people in business don’t, they don’t know the difference between a debit and a credit. they don’t know the difference between an asset and a liability. they don’t know that they’re looking at even even managers, senior level managers of fortune 500 companies are given the responsibility of our p&l. they’re looking at it and they don’t fully understand it, but they’ll never admit it to people. you could be that person that can explain it in a way that makes sense. they will love you for it. because accounting is a useful, obviously, it’s a useful tool. and if we can make it if we can communicate better, they’ll value the accounting profession, even more. business owners will value more, your boss’s companies will value us more. instead of being thought of as the person that just the department that just records the past. let’s put them in a dark corner somewhere. instead, they can be we can be viewed as it as somebody that can guide our constituents. again, we’ll the the amount of money that we can make is there’s no limit to it.
liz farr
yeah. and what you just described your your experience at the amusement park is how you explain to the organization, how their work is related to the profitability of the company. and how that relates to the overall goals for the company. and so you’re connecting the dots between what they do, and what the company is trying to accomplish.
adam lean
right? that’s right. again, if accounting departments are thought of as this just entity that has to record the past, but if they can now be thought of as this organization that could give insights to all the managers, or to the business owner themselves, i mean, you’re, you would single handedly shift the accounting profession in the minds of people you work with, or your business. and that’s what, sorry, that’s what i was saying earlier, you can, instead of selling a tax service, or bookkeeping service, or cfo service, sell what your clients want. and if you could get them as a client, then you’ll be able to sell them all your services, accounting, tax, bookkeeping, cfo services, and there’s a there’s a marketing professor, he coined a term a harvard marketing professor, coined the term people buy, people don’t buy a quarter inch drill, they buy a quarter inch hole, right, you go to home depot, or lowe’s or whatnot. people that are buying drills, they’re not buying the machine just to go home and put it on their wall, though they’re buying that machine because they want what that machine does, which is a drilled hole, you’ve got to sell to your clients what they want, which is a better business or being able to spend more time with my kids or being able to send my kid to college or put a down payment on a house or grow my business or get out of debt, whatever it is, that’s their whole, that’s what they’re buying. you can’t go to them and say, well, i have a better, cheaper, faster drill, i have a better, cheaper, faster tax practice, or tax service have a better, faster, cheaper advisory service, they don’t care, you’ve got to sell what they want, then you can give them all of your accounting or tax or advisory services that you want. and that’s how you make more money and escape that account this trap i was talking about. yeah,
liz farr
and and you know, one thing you might point we might point out is that not every single business owner is going to want this kind of service, but that’s a good thing. because we can’t help everyone there.
adam lean
in my experience, if i was able to communicate to a business owner, what exactly we do, what exactly i do as an advisor, cfo or advisor, every single person i’ve talked to wanted it. but the hard part is communicating it because you can’t build a facebook ad, you can’t meet somebody at a chamber of commerce meeting, you can’t put an ad on the radio, you can’t put a newspaper that i offer xyz services, nobody’s gonna care. but when you build a relationship with somebody, and over time, they know that you that you help business owners have a better business, and then you know that they are struggling with you know, these three things in their business. and then you simply offer the help. they’re gonna say, who’s gonna say no to that? i mean, imagine if accountant right now. you know, let’s say, may after tax after the main tax season is over with an accountant calls up their client says, hey, i was looking over your numbers. and i’ve spotted these spotted a few red flags, and i spotted some opportunities i see for growth for you to have a better business. can we hop on a call? i didn’t. who’s gonna say no to that? i didn’t use the term cfo. i didn’t use the term tax accountant. i didn’t say will you buy anything? i simply offered help. and the carrot that dangled was the same thing that the client was having a better business? who’s going to say no to that not one business owner would say no to that. but it requires a few things requires that you actually know how to spot those red flags opportunities for growth, and you have a relationship but yeah,
liz farr
right. and i think it’s explaining the value of what you can offer. yep. in terms that they understand and that are relevant to them.
adam lean
exactly. and that’s a skill. that’s a skill that can be learned, which is part of why we exist. so we teach. i will say though, that accountants, we’re not salespeople, we’re just not. but you do not have to sell that service. in that example i just gave there is no zero selling involved to get good to get that client to say yes to getting on a call zero selling involved. it’s like going to somebody in the desert, trying to sell water. you don’t have to sell anything. and so that low that that helps accountants, we don’t have to sell the service because people want it, we just have to communicate that what we’re selling, or what we’re providing is water. most business, most accountants are, are confusing what they’re providing to their, to their customer that they’re not going to they’re not going to buy your water because they don’t know what your what it is. if you could say that you’re in the desert, i have water, you want it? yes. it’s as simple as that.
liz farr
that’s right. that’s right. now, now a lot of accountants, they know what they need to do to change. but there’s a lot of habits that they’ve built in over years. so what are some things that accountants should stop doing immediately?
adam lean
i think the first thing is to stop thinking that you can’t be somebody that can help a business owner grow. i think a lot of accountants think well, i’m an expert in taxes, or i’m an expert in bookkeeping or accounting. and what do i know about being a cfo? i can’t, i mean, you can’t be the cfo for coca cola. you need years of experience, and you need a lot of training to do that. it’s not me. and so i’m not going to sell a cfo service. well, here’s the problem. 99% of all businesses in the united states, i mean, i would venture the world 99% or small, consider small businesses, not publicly traded companies. and half according to the us bureau of labor statistics, half of all businesses fail before they reach their fifth birthday. so 99% of all businesses in the country, half are failing by their fifth birthday and 80% are failing by their 10th birthday. i would venture most of them had accountants. so the success of a business is not living or dying or having an account of the success is having cash flow generating cash flow. if a business was able to generate consistent positive cash flow, you’d be able to stay in business. well, who better in the in the business owners lives will be able to help them have a better generate consistent positive cash flow, know how to do that, you’ll be the accountant, you are in the best possible spot to be able to help a client grow. so it’s not like a client, a business owner is choosing between you and the cfo for amazon or cfo for general motors, right? they’re not they the person who owns a $5 million construction company can’t afford the cfo for general motors. but they can afford they need somebody to help them. and if you somebody that knows they need help, can help them and you could communicate in a language that they can understand, they will hire you and you will be able to help them. so as to the number one thing i think accountants need to stop doing is thinking you can’t do this. you can do it. in fact, clients are craving for your help, they want your help. because like i said earlier, most accountants are the the recorder of the titanic, they’re recording the fact that the titanic sinking and they will have done a great job, you would have done a perfect job as an accountant. and you can rest easy at night as an accountant, but the titanic still sank. because you really want to help your clients, you’ve got to be the person that can show the captain. look, this is what i think you should be doing right now. and it’s not easy. but your client will love you for it. they will love you for it and you’ll have job security, you’ll be able to command way more money, the average member in our program is charging $2,500 in law for their cfo. you can get rid of all your tax clients if you want and just have 10 cfo clients for 40 hours a week and make you know 25 grand a month. it’s as simple as that.
liz farr
this sounds sounds very tempting. it should be tempting to a lot of lot of people.
adam lean
it’ll be tempting to the entrepreneurial accountants out there. yes,
liz farr
yes. another one too. not not for everybody. because you know, there there are some who really do like going into work and keying in that tax return or working in that spreadsheet tweaking those formulas. you know, they do like
adam lean
that, and those people are needed. absolutely. yeah, it’s not it’s not me.
liz farr
no, no, no, no, it was not me either. yeah. so now, now we mentioned that, that accountants kind of know some of the things that they need to do differently. they know that they need to change, but what are the things that are keeping them from changing?
adam lean
that’s a good question. i think imposter syndrome is one of these these these are people that think, well, i just can’t do it. i’m not good enough. i don’t have the the prerequisite expertise or experience. i think imposter syndrome is a funny thing, because i think people that don’t have impostor syndrome are dangerous. so i think if you have impostor syndrome, i think that’s a good thing. and there’s a have you heard of dunning kruger? okay, so, so back in the 80s, these these two psychologists, or last names were dunning and kruger, they came up with this theory, that the more somebody knows about a topic, the more they know, they don’t know about the topic. and so their confidence goes down. but the opposite is true. the less somebody knows about a topic, the more they think they know. and so their confidence goes sky high, and they don’t expense imposter syndrome. well, those are the people that are dangerous. those are the people in for example, doctors, like one of the articles i read about this doctors in grad school or at a doctor school, medical school, and that’s it of will their competence level be so high, because they are beginning their journey in the medical profession. but doctors who have been in a very specialized in a very specific field. for years, their confidence level is low, because they know there’s a lot that don’t know about their profession, yet. they know way more than that first year medical student, but the medical student thinks they know everything about everything. and it’s why during covid, all these people thought they had access to their google and thought that they knew more than doctors about various vaccines or whatnot. it’s why there’s 22 year old life coaches selling products on youtube right now, or facebook it. so the fact that you have impostor syndrome is a good thing. that means that you know that there’s a lot that you don’t know, but you probably know more than you think, you know, you especially know more than the average business owner knows about how to have generate consistent positive cash flow. because if you think about every activity of a business, every single activity impacts cash flow in some way. cash flow number, and who is the king or queen of numbers? all of us? that’s right. that’s fact. so let’s leverage that let’s, let’s let’s let’s take that impostor syndrome and turn it to be something good view. and instead of viewing it as something that you that hinders you viewed as something that you welcome that you that you realize that i have impostor syndrome for a reason, doesn’t mean that you’re probably an expert. it can start it right now. i mean, that’s why programs like ours exists. you need you need training and experience in this. but it also doesn’t mean, though, that you need to be the level of the cfo for coca cola in order to do this.
liz farr
that’s right. that’s right. and i think that that’s that’s a really good point that, that sometimes what stops us is just the fear that we don’t know it all. and that that’s because we as accountants, were used to being the ones with the answers. yep. but becoming an advisor means that you have to ask questions that you don’t know the answer to. yeah.
adam lean
yeah. i mean, honestly, that is a lot of being an advisor is just asking the right questions. like, you don’t have to turn expert in your clients business. they’re the expert, you’re the experts in numbers. for example, i had a client that owned a large colonoscopy screening, medical practice. he was a doctor. he’s been published in the new england journal of medicine. and he had like 15, doctors working for him. and i was the cfo. guess how much i knew about colonoscopy. nothing. guess how much i know about the medical world. nothing. and yet i was able to help him improve his business. regardless of you selling colonoscopy screenings, or widgets, or you no calculators, it doesn’t matter. he still was selling a product or service that he needed to generate consistent positive cash flow. i came in, i partnered with him. he was the expert in his business. i was an expert in mine. and i was able to help them every single month figure out the next steps that he needed to do in order to have a more profitable business. here’s an example very specific example. there was one time i met with him and i prepare for this meeting. of course i could do with every meeting. and i was going through his numbers. and there, he offers colon. if anybody’s had a colonoscopy, you know it, there’s a whole, there’s a whole it’s a whole, what’s the word i’m looking for? there’s a lot involved. you have to have an anesthesiologist, you have to have nurses on hand, you have to, you know, the whole medical the team to get you prep, there’s a lot of moving pieces involved in in a colonoscopy. well, most of his clients came from family practitioner doctors who would tell their patients, i need you to go see a colonoscopy, her family practitioners usually generalist, they say you need to go see a colonoscopy specialist, somebody that does go and ask these. so they would refer to my client. well, they were when they the practice, general practitioners office would make an appointment at my client’s office that my clients office team would earmark, you know, 30 minutes, let’s say for that appointment, they would book a room for 30 minutes, they wouldn’t book anesthesiologist for 30 minutes, they would book three nurses for 30 minutes. okay, that’s a lot of time and salaries and women. six are zooming four out of 10. four out of 10 of those appointments didn’t even show up. because who wants to do who wants to go through a colonoscopy? nobody, four out of 10. now he knew there was a lot of show of rights, he did not realize six only, only 60% of the people showed up. i told him if we can get that number from 60 to 65%, you would add $400,000 to cash flow. cash flow. he was like, easy, easy. yes. because all that time that 40% that nobody showed up all those that room, the anesthesiologist, the nurses, all these highly paid people gone to waste. because you can’t book that room. you can’t you know, they didn’t show up and didn’t show up. you can’t resell it. so i said five percentage points, let’s get you five percentage points, you’ll get $4,000 added to cash flow. and he, without somebody like me would have never stumbled upon that. now, i said, now ask the right questions. how can we do that? how can we get five for five percentage points? i can’t remember the exact number of patients he needed more? how many more? what can we do? so we had a meeting with his office manager and his marketing person, and me and him. and for the next three months, an hour a month, for three months, we figured out a plan to do that to get five percentage more points, more people to show up. and there was a whole marketing a whole plan involved in getting them to show up. and and they were able to improve that number. but that’s just a very specific example of how you can communicate to a client where you have no idea how their business works, or have no idea about the field that their business is in. i didn’t in order to help my client improve get $4,000 in cash flow. i didn’t have to know a thing about how to do colonoscopies, i just had to know understand numbers. yeah.
liz farr
and you had to be willing to look at how a how your clients business operated. and understand what the drivers were rolling. and
adam lean
go ahead, sorry.
liz farr
and the drivers for that are, you know the number of patients that you see?
adam lean
that’s right. cash flow is just a number that’s being driven by a whole bunch of things. you got to figure out what those drivers are, and drill down and find what drives the drivers and keep drilling until you’ve hit and that’s right, peter.
liz farr
that’s right. that’s right. now, now i want you to put on your crystal ball, get out your crystal ball and start thinking about the future. now now client accounting and client advisory services, fractional cfo services, which is what you do. that’s really big now. yeah. and and and that’s going to be big for a long time. but what is going to be the next big thing in accounting in accounting?
adam lean
that’s a good question that i first of all, i don’t know. but what i think is going to happen is that technology, like things like ai and all that is going to rapidly replace through transactional compliance tasks that a lot of accounts are doing today. which would leave accountants with a lot more time on their hands where they can focus on helping their clients have, you know, have a better business, which which is basically advisory services. and i think that that is a good thing. i mean, i, you know, my business partner, jeff, he got his cpa in the, in the 70s. and he said before he before the really prior to the 80s, most accountants were viewed as somebody that can provide guidance to their clients, right in the 80s. and 90s 2000s, is just accountants have been slowly but surely changed or morphed into somebody that just has to help the business stay compliant. so there’s all these things out there. and the the advisory part of that has just gone away. right, that’s really but but what didn’t go away is the client’s desire for that. so if we could just get back to that, and then let let ai come up with the best tax strategy, let ai come up, or whatever the technology is, at a time in, you know, five or 10 years from now, let that come up with putting the right numbers in the right boxes, and making sure the business stays compliant. and we, as professionals get back to helping businesses grow. i mean, that’s really at the end of the day is what the ceo, the leadership team, the board, the business owner, all those people want anyway. so let’s just give it to
liz farr
ya, so. so sounds like in your opinion, it’s not just something that will be beyond what you’re teaching your people to do now. but it’s leveraging the technology to help them do that better. right, and to serve more clients at a deeper level. yeah,
adam lean
it all goes back to selling you’ve got to sell something or provide something that people want. and as long as there are people that own business, it’s humans that own businesses, humans relate to other humans, and they all want, right. they all want help, what they’re up could go to barnes and noble right now, you can go to amazon, right now. and there are probably 1000s, if not millions of books, on business, humans, then all businesses don’t need more knowledge, plenty of knowledge out there. they need a human that can connect with them and guide them and communicate with them in a way that helps them. that’s what they want. even if robots take over the world. as long as a human owns a business, they want another human guiding them, that understands numbers.
liz farr
alright, think you’re absolutely on to something there. and i think that that’s the perfect way to wrap up our conversation for today. oh, good. now, i want to thank you so much, adam, for taking the time to talk to me. now, if listeners want to connect with you, where is the best place to find you?
adam lean
our websites, the cfo, project.com th e cfo. project.com. and we actually have a free training we do every thursday on how to start a cfo service. so if you want to take the free training, just go to the cfo project.com and at the very top it says free trial like that.