That being said, it never hurts to take some advice from someone who has been there, done that. At QuickBooks Connect, 5Crowd founder Bram Warshafsky shared his top five tips for building a successful business.

1. Fail forward

Failing happens. It doesn’t have to define who you are or what your business is.

Warshafsky shared a story of taking on a project for a client in the early stages of his business. Although he completed the project, he wound up losing a lot of money on it. It’s a disheartening experience that many entrepreneurs can relate to — when you put your time and effort into something that turns out to be unsustainable.

Meanwhile, the project itself turned out so well that the client asked Warshafsky to take on additional work. Warshafsky turned the offer down, but the experience didn’t end his business. Instead, working with this “founding customer” taught him which types of projects he shouldn’t pursue. This led him toward better ways of marketing his business and skills.

It’s natural to want to be perfect when you try something new. But in entrepreneurship, “good enough” beats perfect — because “good enough” keeps you moving forward. Said Warshafsky: “If you ever find yourself whiteboarding something to death in your office, just get out and take action.” When it comes to making concrete progress, trial and error is more productive than strategic thinking.

Ultimately, the best thing you can do while getting your business off the ground is to embrace those small failures. Warshafsky recalled how he made a thousand small pivots in the early stages of his business. Those pivots didn’t stop him in his tracks; they helped him find the right direction. And in the end, that’s the best way to learn the ins and outs of your industry and identify where you fit in.

2. Listen to the market

In order to build a successful business, you need to fulfill your customers’ needs. But in order to get to that stage, you need to understand what those needs are.

Warshafsky described how when he first started out, he tried a lot of different pitches to explain what his company did. But eventually, he realized that his potential clients didn’t care what he did. They cared about what he could do for them.

As a result, Warshafsky stopped announcing what he did and started asking his clients what their problems were. From there, he could simply showcase how he would solve those problems. “The people who close the most deals do the most listening,” he noted.

By listening to what your customer needs before jumping in with a sales pitch, you can identify what type of selling will resonate with them. There are three different levels of selling:

• Level 1: Solving a technical problem
• Level 2: Solving a business problem
• Level 3: Solving an emotional problem

Not surprisingly, emotional sales are the most powerful. Warshafsky recommends looking at your product or service not just in terms of the benefit it offers, but also how that benefit will benefit your customer. “A good question to ask when you look over your sales material is ‘so what?’ This helps you speak to your customers in a more emotional way.”

Your business wouldn’t exist without your customers. So as you make decisions, remember: It’s not about you. It’s about them.

3. Invest in your team

As an entrepreneur, it’s important to invest time and money in developing your team. Whether that team consists of freelancers, remote staff, or in-house employees, the people who work with your company directly contribute to its success.

In a small business, building a strong company culture is hugely beneficial. Not only does it lead to higher employee retention (saving you time and money on recruitment and training), but it also gives employees a stronger connection to your company’s mission.

Investing in company culture can make some business owners uneasy. After all, it’s difficult to measure the ROI of employee morale — but it’s easy to see the financial impact of ordering T-shirts and hosting events. However, it’s important to remember that these investments will pay off in the long run.

“It’s the kind of ROI that doesn’t manifest clearly, but I promise you it’s there,” Warshafsky explained.

In Warshafsky’s case, his freelancers are spread out all over the world — so he got on a plane and spent time with people in different countries to really understand how they lived and worked. Certainly, not every investment in your team needs to be on this level. But if you’ve already put effort into attracting great talent to your business, you might as well put effort into keeping them there.

4. Know your numbers

Revenue is vanity. Profit is sanity. Cash flow is reality.

When Warshafsky first struck out on his own, he had only ever worked for large companies and didn’t know the first thing about cash flow: “It turns out that’s really important in small businesses.”

Because he didn’t fully understand how the revenue cycle in his company should work, he started hoarding money. He was afraid to launch ideas or reinvest in the business, which can completely stifle growth.

The situation got better once he brought in an expert to build a cash flow model. Being able to see several months’ worth of cash flow projections allowed him to become more comfortable with making decisions and spending money. Furthermore, by looking closely at the data, he could see what type of work was most profitable and could allocate funds appropriately.

In order to set your business up for future growth, you need to understand how it’s performing today. This allows you to reinvest strategically. Warshafsky noted that it’s important to know how you would spend your next dollar — even if you don’t have that dollar yet.

5. It’s all about growth

Warshafsky’s final piece of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs was that growth is everything: “It turns out that when you grow really fast, nothing else matters.” You can make a few mistakes, but as long as you’re still growing, those mistakes won’t be dealbreakers.

In Warshafsky’s opinion, it’s best to use a combination of methods to grow your business. He offered the analogy of using seeds, nets, or spears to obtain food. “They’re all good ways to eat, but often entrepreneurs just focus on one of these.”

When you plant a seed, you can never be sure if it’s going to sprout. For an entrepreneur, planting seeds might involve networking, attending conferences, and using social media. Sure, some of these activities might blossom into business opportunities — but it’s difficult to tell which ones.

Building a net involves doing something to capture the interest of potential buyers. Not everyone will get close to the net, but a few people may just fall in. In the case of a business owner, writing blog posts or publishing white papers are great strategies to attract new leads.

Throwing spears is the most intentional method of pursuing new opportunities. You might ask a colleague to connect you with someone from their network or find other ways to gain a direct introduction to a highly sought-after client. Warshafsky believes that this is one of the biggest benefits of social media: “There’s no excuse anymore — if you want to meet someone, you can meet them. You can buzz anyone’s phone and I think that’s a really cool thing.”

Conclusion

Every entrepreneur will have their own definition of success and their own timeline for achieving it. Regardless of your goals, it’s important to be persistent and embrace new challenges without fear of failure. And above all, remember why you started your own business in the first place. As Warshafsky said, “Growth should be fun — so have fun!”

Want more #QBConnect content? Check out our full coverage of QuickBooks Connect Toronto 2018!

The post How to Succeed as an Entrepreneur: Bram Warshafsky at QuickBooks Connect appeared first on Method.

The popular session was led by Dawne Leaney Davidson and Tiffany Stewart. As co-administrators of the thriving QB-HQ Facebook community, Davidson and Stewart love supporting ProAdvisors, accountants, and bookkeepers using QuickBooks. Their goal that day was to share some lesser-known features of QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA) — and clearly attendees couldn’t wait to hear about them.

Here are their top tips for getting the most out of QBOA.

(Note: This session was tailored for Canadian QBOA users. Some features may not be available in other versions of QBOA.)

Client Overview

The Client Overview tab is an accountant-only view inside a client’s QuickBooks Online (QBO) file. It gives you a summary of the client’s financial situation, including company setup, banking activity, common issues, and connected apps. For new clients, this convenient overview can give you better insight into the pricing you should charge.

Said Davidson: “This is a really great tool if you have a meeting with a client and you’re not sure if you’re going to take them on, and they say, ‘Yeah, our books are really clean!’”

Shared Documents

Davidson and Stewart love this feature, but a quick audience poll revealed that many attendees hadn’t yet tried it. Within QBOA, you can request documents (like bank statements or year-end materials) from your client through a secure portal. After your client uploads the files, you can easily view all of your shared documents in one tab. Hooray for no more back-and-forth emails!

Team Tab

The Team tab in QBOA is your one-stop shop for all things team-related. You can easily add or remove users, as well as manage each user’s access to your firm’s administration and books.

ProAdvisor Tab

Not surprisingly, the ProAdvisor tab in QBOA contains a wealth of useful information. View your ProAdvisor tier and contact information for your Intuit consultant, download your certification badges, and access resources and training modules. You can also stay informed about upcoming product updates, which is key for keeping your clients in the loop — “because some of them will go ‘WHAT JUST HAPPENED?’ otherwise,” advised Davidson.

Work Tab

The Work tab is QBOA’s built-in practice management tool, allowing users to manage all of their tasks in one place. But when Stewart asked the audience if they were using it, responses were mixed. Several attendees said they had tried in the past but found it too frustrating.

Luckily, the tool continues to evolve. Said Stewart: “For [Intuit’s] Rich Preece, this is one of his babies and it has come leaps and bounds since he first introduced it a few years ago.” Users now have new options for creating and managing workflow templates — so it may be time to give the Work tab another chance.

Tax Returns Tab

After a year and a half in beta, the Tax Returns tab in QBOA is now live for general use. Said Stewart to the audience: “Who prepares taxes? You need to get excited about this!” This feature allows Canadian users to e-file T2’s directly to the Canada Revenue Agency. Users can also sign up for a beta that will allow them to e-file T1’s.

Apps Tab

Davidson and Stewart are both huge fans of enhancing the QBO experience through integrated apps. “We have clients with very specific needs and QBO isn’t always a perfect fit — but chances are there is an app that will solve the problem,” explained Davidson. Stewart added that she has 17 apps connected to QBOA: “I might have a problem.” Luckily, the Apps tab in QBOA allows users to easily find and manage apps for clients as well as their own firm.

Accountant Tools

The Accountant Tools drop-down menu gives QBOA users convenient access to a variety of tools and shortcuts. (“This is the fun part!” said Stewart.) Some of Davidson and Stewart’s favorites include Close Books (which is pretty self-explanatory), Reports Tools, and Workpapers.

With Reports Tools, users can set a default date range for all reports and tools, rather than having them open with the client’s default settings. It was clear that this feature will be a game-changer for the audience; Stewart’s demo was met with plenty of applause.

Meanwhile, the Workpapers feature speeds up the year-end adjustment process for Canadian QBOA users. Add notes and attachments for each client, make multiple adjustments in the books, and save all your work in the client file. Then, generate a tax return in just one click.

And there you have it: an insider’s guide to some (not so) hidden gems in QBOA. Test them out for yourself, or head over to QB-HQ to share your own tips with the QuickBooks community!

Want more #QBConnect content? Check out our full coverage of QuickBooks Connect Toronto 2018!

The post Making the Most of QuickBooks Online Accountant: QB-HQ at QuickBooks Connect appeared first on Method.

Even just a decade ago, companies could rely on TV commercials, radio ads, and roadside billboards to reach their target consumers. But consumer behavior has changed.

As entrepreneur Bram Warshafsky pointed out at QuickBooks Connect, many people now watch Netflix instead of TV, listen to Spotify instead of the radio, and walk around looking down at their phones instead of up at the world. The key takeaway for companies: “Good luck advertising to me,” says Warshafsky. Instead, it’s time for modern businesses to focus on reaching consumers in a new way.

That’s where content marketing comes in. Warshafsky explained that the best way to stand out from your competitors is to build a strong brand — and content marketing is the key to brand-building. By creating valuable and relevant content (that isn’t just a sales pitch), you can establish yourself as a trusted resource while building relationships with your target consumers. Not a bad deal.

To help the audience get started on their own content marketing journeys, Warshafsky outlined five key steps.

1. Start By Listening

The first step in creating engaging content is to determine what your audience finds engaging. What are they searching for online? What problems are they trying to solve?

To start off, Warshafsky suggests Googling your main keyword (i.e. the product or service that you sell) along with the word “community.” This will help you identify where your target customers spend time online and what they’re talking about. Browsing online communities like Quora, Reddit, and Yahoo! Answers is another great way to scope out your customers’ pain points.

Finally, don’t forget to listen to what people are telling you about your existing content. If you use Google Analytics for your website, take a look at your exit pages. An exit page is the last page a visitor views before leaving your site entirely. If you notice a trend among all of your website visits, that may be a sign that a particular page isn’t telling people what they want to know.

2. Answer Questions for Your Community

Now that you know what questions your community has, it’s time to start answering them. Again, Warshafsky recommends turning to Google. By searching for your keyword plus “write for us,” you’ll uncover websites that are looking for content on your area of expertise. By publishing guest posts on these sites, you can start to build your brand reputation as well as link back to your own site.

Quora is another great platform for sharing your wisdom. Browse existing questions related to your industry and answer as many of them as you can. Or, if there aren’t any questions that speak to you — “just anonymously ask your own question and then answer it!” suggests Warshafsky. Look at Quora’s analytics to see which of your answers were well-received by the community; this will tell you what to focus on when creating more involved content.

3. Invest in Evergreen Content

You’ll need to invest some time and effort (though not necessarily a ton of money) into creating valuable evergreen content. This is the content that is continually relevant to consumers, rather than being tied to a specific occasion or season.

One of Warshafsky’s favorite types of evergreen content is a short animated explainer video: “You’ll start to find that when you meet with potential customers, they already know about your business.” However, the possibilities for what you can create are endless — videos, blog posts, case studies, ebooks, and more. Put the content on your website and make visitors fill out a form to access it so you can engage with them.

Not sure how to create content around what you do? Warshafsky has the solution. “If your business is kind of boring, consider doing a whiteboard animation. I don’t know why, but everything in this medium is so interesting.”

4. Use Your Blog to Win Long-Tail Keywords

When you create content, it’s important to include keywords that are important to your business. This is what tells search engines to display your content when users search for those keywords. But the more generic and popular a keyword is, the harder it will be for your content to rank in the top search results.

Enter the long-tail keywords. These longer queries are searched for less often, but provide opportunities to create very focused content. As an example, consider the difference between the keywords  “CRM” and “CRM that integrates with QuickBooks Desktop.”

Long-tail keywords are great starting points for blog posts. And while “writing a blog is more of a marathon than a sprint,” says Warshafsky, it can turn into a great long-term sales strategy. Of course, not everyone who visits your blog will have a need for what you sell. But the more visitors you attract, the more of them you can eventually convert.

5. Focus on Content Distribution

The final piece of the puzzle is content distribution — making sure your content reaches the people who want it. There are plenty of tools that can help you give your content the best chance of being found. For instance, you can ensure that Google has the most up-to-date view of your site using Search Console, while HubSpot’s Website Grader can help you identify weaknesses in your site.

Next, focus on getting as many eyes on your content as possible. Warshafsky suggests syndicating your posts on Medium and LinkedIn and linking back to your site to build its authority. Your email signature is also a great place to include a link to your latest piece of content.

Finally, you can use social media to distribute your content — but don’t forget about the “social” aspect. Says Warshafsky, “People complain that social media doesn’t drive sales, but that’s not really the purpose of it. The purpose is to be human.” Rather than shouting your business’s merits from the rooftops, focus on truly engaging with your audience. As you build relationships and reputation, the payoff will naturally follow.

Want more #QBConnect content? Check out our full coverage of QuickBooks Connect Toronto 2018!

The post Growing Your Business Through Content Marketing: Bram Warshafsky at QuickBooks Connect appeared first on Method.

On December 1-2, the Method CRM team had the pleasure of being an API partner at the Toronto hackathon. It was an incredible experience to see the teams work together to solve small business problems in a big way. After two days, a lot of food, minimal sleep, and 22 app pitches, here’s how things went down.

First Place: EstiMate

APIs used: Box, Clarifai, Nexmo, QuickBooks Online

Most people know the struggle of waiting for a service technician to arrive sometime between 11 am and 7 pm. Why can’t the technician provide a more accurate ETA?

But on the technician’s side, scheduling isn’t as simple as looking at a calendar. Their ability to show up on time depends on what they encountered at their last job, and at the job before that. When there’s miscommunication about what is required at one job, it leads to delays for subsequent jobs and lost revenue.

Enter EstiMate, the first place winner at this year’s hackathon. The app helps service businesses scope out work before going onsite so they can schedule and estimate jobs more accurately. Technicians can communicate with customers directly in the app via SMS. When the customer provides a photo or video of their job, the app grabs information about the image, compares it to previous jobs and automatically generates a QuickBooks estimate.

This app is a game-changer for small service businesses: when they have better information ahead of time, they can provide better service and increase their bottom line.

Second Place: Luca

APIs used: QuickBooks Online

Small business owners are experts at running their businesses, but they’re not necessarily financial experts. This means it can be tricky for them to access the financial information they need, right when they need it.

Enter Luca — Alexa’s CPA cousin and the hackathon’s second place winner. The app uses voice recognition technology to allow business owners to ask questions about their finances and receive instant answers. Luca is already programmed to understand common financial queries (like “What is my net income?”), but users can also add their own questions to the app’s database. This financially savvy voice assistant empowers small business owners to save time while staying on top of their accounting data.

Third Place: Strad.io

APIs used: Box, Method CRM, QuickBooks Online

It’s estimated that there will be 70 million contract workers in the United States by 2020. Many small businesses may come to rely largely on independent contractors rather than employees. But how will business owners effectively manage these workers?

The third place winner at the hackathon was Strad.io, an app that gives small businesses a centralized view of their contract workforces. This informational hub allows users to see each worker’s contract, contact information, invoices and activities all in one place. As a result, small business owners can focus on bringing in the help they need, without worrying about increasing their administrative workload.

And here are the rest of the awesome apps from the hackathon:

Appy

Description: An end-to-end solution for appointment booking, management and invoicing.
APIs used: Box, Clarifai, Method CRM, Nexmo, QuickBooks Online

Bill

Description: A chatbot that makes it easier to track and log business expenses.
APIs used: Box, Clarifai, QuickBooks Online

Bridge

Description: An app that extracts and analyzes data from customer support calls to provide actionable insights and priorities.
APIs used: Nexmo

Chunk

Description: An app that allows subscription-based businesses to easily track and manage their customer subscriptions and resource utilization.
APIs used: Nexmo, QuickBooks Online

Grainbox

Description: An agricultural commodity trading platform powered by blockchain that directly connects farmers with end buyers.
APIs used: N/A

hAI!

Description: An app that uses image recognition and data analytics to help small businesses generate and schedule social media posts.
APIs used: Box, Clarifai

Inventory Hero

Description: An inventory management app that tracks product levels and automatically places orders based on past sales trends.
APIs used: Clarifai, Nexmo, QuickBooks Online

Leap

Description: A point-of-sale system and UPC scanner for small neighborhood convenience stores.
APIs used: Box, Clarifai, Nexmo, QuickBooks Online

Nimbus

Description: An app that helps new small business owners anticipate future costs and forecast future sales.
APIs used: N/A

OnTrack

Description: An inventory management app that allows retailers and suppliers to stay up-to-date on product number changes.
APIs used: Clarifai, Method CRM, QuickBooks Online

OpenShare

Description: An online marketplace that allows small businesses to exchange goods and services with their peers.
APIs used: Box, Clarifai, Method CRM, Nexmo, QuickBooks Online

QuickCompare

Description: A QuickBooks Online integration that allows small businesses to compare their financial health against similar-sized businesses and industry averages.
APIs used: QuickBooks Online

ShareSkill

Description: A service-sharing platform with enhanced security and authentication features for service providers and customers.
APIs used: Clarifai

Shipify

Description: An app that enables small e-commerce businesses to increase their global reach by connecting international shoppers with travelers who can bring them their products.
APIs used: Nexmo

SIMS QuickMarket

Description: An online marketplace that connects small businesses with suppliers and enables streamlined order management
APIs used: Clarifai, Nexmo, QuickBooks Online

Small Biz Buddy

Description: An online marketplace where small businesses can offer services and bid on each other’s services.
APIs used: N/A

TieStrap

Description: An integrated financial statistics dashboard that provides insights from all of the online platforms where e-commerce businesses sell their products.
APIs used: QuickBooks Online

TrendIn

Description: An app that uses consumer purchasing data and machine learning to provide small businesses with insights into market trends.
APIs used: Clarifai

TRUST

Description: An app that automatically transcribes and analyzes customer support calls.
APIs used: Method CRM

Congratulations to all of the teams and a big thank you to Intuit for inviting us to participate! We can’t wait to see more amazing small business solutions at the 2019 hackathons.

Want more #QBConnect content? Check out our full coverage of QuickBooks Connect Toronto 2018!

The post Recap: Intuit Small Business Hackathon Toronto appeared first on Method.

The social media landscape has also changed significantly in a short period of time. Back when Wasek started her firm, VM Wasek CPA, LLC, in 2010, no one used Facebook for business marketing — the platform was strictly for personal connections with your “real” family and friends. Today, it’s just one of several social platforms that are heavily used by businesses of all sizes.

While social media marketing might seem intimidating, Wasek believes it is a powerful tool for all modern accountants and bookkeepers: “I have grown my business entirely through online sources.” Her goal for the session was to take the guesswork out of social media by covering her seven tried-and-true strategies for engaging new clients online.

1. Know Your Audience

Knowing your audience is absolutely essential to engaging them through your social media endeavors. You have to know exactly who your ideal customer is because the goal isn’t necessarily to reach a lot of people – it’s to reach the right people.

“Be intentional about the types of clients you choose to work with,” advised Wasek. The clients you’re aiming for are the ones who will value you and pay a premium for the work that you do. Build a profile of your ideal client — Wasek likened it to the exercise of listing your ideal qualities in a mate. Where are they located? What industry are they in? How large is their business? These clues will help you craft the messages you’ll post on social media.

Once you know who your ideal client is, you need to figure out what their biggest needs are. These needs may be related to emotion, time, or money. Identify how your product or service can solve the client’s problem and resolve their frustration. Then, think about how you can build a connection with them by answering these questions:

• What are they searching for online?
• How can you provide value?
• How can you meet their specific needs?

2. Stand Out and Get Noticed

Chances are, you’re not the only one targeting a certain group of clients. This means you need to look at where you fit in the market — and determine what makes your firm stand out from the others. “If you don’t stand out from the competition, all you can compete on is price,” said Wasek.

However, your ideal client is looking for more than just a discount. They want to make a personal connection with you; they want to work with a real person. Social media gives you an outlet to showcase who you are as a person and a company, thereby allowing you to make an authentic emotional connection.

Avoid solely sharing sales information or promoting your services on your social media channels. Instead, take the opportunity to tell your story and your employees’ stories in a fun and unique way. Wasek encouraged the audience to think about the aspects of their “normal” lives that they could bring into their businesses: Who are you? What are you passionate about? What are your interests?

Wasek offered some other tips for letting your company’s personality shine through on social media:

• Use headshots instead of logo images. Your logo is an important part of your branding, but no one wants to work with a logo. Let potential clients see the real person behind the company.
• Share behind-the-scenes photos of your team. These are super effective because people love to see the personalities of the professionals they’ll be working with. Hire a photographer and devote a few hours to capturing what life really looks like in your office.

• Share videos. Videos are another highly effective way to connect with your audience because they help clients determine if they would enjoy working with you. You can produce scripted videos for a more polished performance, or share more casual peeks into your everyday office life or big events.

3. Establish Yourself as an Expert

In order to cut through the noise on social media, you need a reason for people to pay attention to you. Take stock of your “superpowers.” Do you have extensive knowledge in certain areas? Do you specialize in a particular niche that no one else covers?

Also consider any special credentials you have, including awards, honors, and accolades. This is where you need to stop being humble and make sure that you publicize your strengths. “If there’s ever an opportunity for an award — I nominate myself,” explained Wasek. You can increase your “trust” factor by highlighting your expertise on your social media profiles.

Producing content is another great way to demonstrate your authority in the industry. This might include blogging, writing guest posts for industry blogs, creating video content for YouTube, producing ebooks — whatever plays to your strengths. You should also make sure that your LinkedIn profile and Find-a-ProAdvisor listing are up-to-date and that they highlight your credentials. Remember, your ideal clients will pay premium prices to work with a trusted expert.

4. Make Connections

What if one social media post led you to find some of your biggest clients? “It can happen — it happened to me,” said Wasek. She went on to tell the audience how her LinkedIn activity led to two referrals that ultimately netted $200,000.

But before you can get the valuable referrals, you need to establish connections. Your goal is to use social media to build relationships with as many people as possible. Look for industry and niche influencers, other trusted advisors (including accountants, bookkeepers, consultants, and attorneys), and prospects who fit your ideal client profile. All the while, you’re aiming to increase your “know”, “like” and “trust” factors.

One of Wasek’s pro tips for making connections on LinkedIn is to ensure that your headline clearly spells out what you do. “This is essentially free advertising if you use the headline effectively,” she noted. She recommends using a simple magic formula: “I help [ideal client] to [achieve a desired outcome in terms of time/money/emotion].”

5. Share Valuable Content

Content really is king. Wasek explained that by sharing valuable, informative content with your ideal clients, you help them move beyond the searching stage and into the engaging, connecting, and trusting stages.

“A lot of times when I talk to prospective clients, they say ‘I feel like I know you’ — and that is powerful because when your prospective client feels like they know you, they’re ready to work with you.”

Of course, it’s not just about putting out any old content — you need a strategy. You already know your audience and what their biggest needs are, so your next step is to come up with content topics that address those needs. These topics will often be based on the questions that clients ask you — for instance, how to do something in QuickBooks. Wasek also recommends looking at what types of things people are searching for on Google or what offerings Intuit is currently promoting.

There are many different platforms where content can be shared, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Publishing, or your personal blog or podcast. But you don’t have to do it all! Instead, focus on your strengths and put effort into creating unique content that resonates with your audience.

6. Build Community

If social media has taught us anything, it’s that people want to be part of a community. “I didn’t realize that until I started a Facebook group,” said Wasek.

Wasek strongly recommends Facebook groups as the best way to connect with like-minded people online. You can join groups for accountants and bookkeepers or for specific industries or apps. You can also establish your own groups to mark yourself as an expert in your field and generate referrals.

Regardless of which groups you’re in, aim to start conversations, build relationships, give value, and learn from others. The more communities you’re involved in, the more you can build your network and grow your social media audience.

7. Craft a Powerful Call-to-Action

At the end of the day, you want your social media strategies to help you turn prospects into clients. This means you need to master the art of the CTA, or call-to-action.

Your CTA is the action you want a prospect to take when they visit your pages; this prompt should be included wherever you share your content. For example, you might ask prospects to learn more about your services, join your mailing list, or book a discovery call. The idea behind a CTA is to keep the conversation going and guide your audience through the next stage of your sales funnel.

Wasek ended her session by encouraging the audience to join her own Facebook group — a real-life call-to-action that reinforced just how powerful these seven social media strategies can be.

Want more #QBConnect content? Check out our full coverage of QuickBooks Connect San Jose 2018!

The post Mastering the Art of Social Media: Veronica Wasek at QuickBooks Connect appeared first on Method.

That’s where Heather Satterley comes in. As the founder of Satterley Training & Consulting, an Advanced Certified ProAdvisor, and a Zapier Certified Expert, Satterley is a master of finding the right app for any business. And at QuickBooks Connect, she was excited to share her tried-and-true methods with attendees.

Of course, there is no “right” app for every business — it’s all about choosing the right app for your client based on their unique needs. To that end, Satterley structured her talk around the imaginary Phineas Designs: a small design firm that is growing rapidly and is struggling to develop an efficient process for predicting cash flow.

Step 1: Needs Analysis

Before you can begin trying to solve your client’s problem, you need to understand it. That means documenting absolutely everything about their current process.

“The more information you have about a situation, the better your outcome will be,” advised Satterley.

Consider each step in the client’s current workflow: Who does it? What tools do they use? How long does it take? Flowchart apps are handy for mapping out this information; Satterley recommends SmartDraw or Visio by Microsoft. Or, if you prefer an old-school approach, grab a stack of sticky notes and visualize the workflow on your wall.

Examining each step in detail helps you identify where the pain points are. In Phineas’s case, exporting data from QuickBooks and pasting it into a cash flow spreadsheet creates a bottleneck, as the process is overly manual and highly error-prone.

If possible, quantify the labor, material and software costs associated with the current process. “This is a really important step that I think a lot of us overlook,” noted Satterley. In doing so, you’ll be able to assess cost savings when you start looking at app solutions.

Once you’ve identified the client’s problem, it’s time to start thinking about their ideal solution. (“This is the fun part!”) Work with your client to determine what their “must-have” features are, as well as their “nice-to-have” features. For Phineas, some must-haves in a cash flow app include automatic updates based on QuickBooks data, support for multiple “what if” scenarios, and the ability to add multiple users.

Remember that this should be a collaborative discussion between you and the client: “You bring your expertise about QuickBooks and accounting to the conversation, and your client brings their pain points.”

Step 2: Research Solutions

Now that you know what you want in an app, it’s time to go out and find it. The Intuit app store is your home base; try browsing apps by category or searching for specific keywords. For instance, since Phineas wants a cash flow app that can support multiple scenarios, you might try searching for “cash flow scenarios” to narrow down your choices. Said Satterley, “This is a trick that a lot of ProAdvisors don’t realize they can use.”

However, don’t feel that you have to limit your search to the app store! Leveraging your professional network is another great way to identify vetted apps. And there’s nothing wrong with a good old-fashioned Google search. In each case, peruse each app’s website and reach out to the vendors to get as much information as possible.

Now, you may be wondering how on earth you’re supposed to keep track of all of these potential apps. Luckily, Satterley has created an app evaluation worksheet that is available for download on her website. This tool allows you to list out your client’s desired features, record which apps contain which features, and score each app based on this data.

It’s important to note that the client is not involved in this research stage. Said Satterley, “This is my consulting work and I charge for this. And you should too.”

Step 3: Evaluation and Testing

At the end of the research process, select the two or three apps with the highest scores to test. These should ideally be the apps that contain all of the client’s must-haves, along with several of their nice-to-haves. Also consider which apps the client can afford, as there is little sense in testing something that’s far outside their price range.

Even if none of the apps seem like a perfect fit yet, do your best to pick the strongest contenders: “Use your discretion, because you’re the expert,” said Satterley. You may also need to ask your client to reconsider the importance of each feature on their list.

At this point, it’s time to test some apps! Whenever possible, set up testing environments using QuickBooks sample companies rather than using a live company. You’ll also want to communicate with the app vendors to ensure that all your questions get answered.

Pay close attention to the ease of implementation and use for each app, as well as the quality of support from the vendor. After all, these factors will heavily influence whether your client actually adopts the app. Include scores for these factors in your app evaluation worksheet along with the apps’ feature scores.

Remember, this isn’t meant to be a generic assessment of each app; it’s a very specific evaluation. “All the time, we’re thinking about Phineas — is this going to be a good fit for him?”

Step 4: Selling the Solution

You’ve done the research and the tests — now it’s time to make a decision. Review your scores and reevaluate your weighting if necessary, then tally up the total score for each app. In Phineas’s case, Float and Cash Flow Frog came out far ahead of DryRun. (“But no offense to DryRun; they’re still a great app!”) At this point, you’ll want to demo the top contenders to your client before making the final call.

Once you’ve picked a winner, it still may take some effort to truly sell the solution. Focus on highlighting the app’s benefits and quantifying the cost savings for your client. And be mindful of the fact that change is rarely easy: in fact, “it’s usually the person doing the existing process who doesn’t want to change,” Satterley noted.

Don’t be discouraged if your client doesn’t end up committing to the app you’ve chosen. In an ideal world, every app you select would turn out to be the miracle cure for the client’s problems. In reality, learning curves are steep, clients’ needs change, and you can’t always test every aspect of an app during a free trial. Nevertheless, each evaluation cycle strengthens your consulting skills.

“Do you get it right every time? Of course not — it’s a learning process. But the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it.”

Want more #QBConnect content? Check out our full coverage of QuickBooks Connect San Jose 2018!

The post Selecting the Right App: Heather Satterley at QuickBooks Connect appeared first on Method.

“I’m hoping you’ll feel a little more empowered when we’re done with today’s session,” Woodard told the audience. As the CEO of Woodard Events, LLC, as well as a renowned author, consultant, business coach, and speaker, it’s safe to say he knows a thing or two about professional development in the accounting industry.

However, the audience wasn’t yet sure whether Woodard had all the answers they were looking for. When he promised to share his methods for getting to (and staying at) zero inbox, the room erupted in laughter — was such a thing even possible?

Overcoming productivity myths

Before getting to the secrets of an empty inbox, Woodard needed to debunk some common misconceptions about productivity.

The first myth is that you can manage time. In reality, no one has any control over time. Instead, productive people focus on managing projects and smaller tasks within those projects.

Woodard gave the example of someone trying to find the time to write a book. Such a large project can seem daunting, so just think of each individual page as a task to complete.

“If you want to write a book, you write a page and you write another page and you write another page — and all of life is that way.”

The second myth is that efficiency is the hallmark of productivity. Sure, someone who completes 80 tasks in a day will appear extremely productive. But what if those 80 tasks were unimportant or unnecessary?

Woodard explained that the true measurements of productivity are outputs, effectiveness, and mental clarity. Mental clarity is a big one for him: getting tasks out of his head by accomplishing them or depositing them elsewhere for future reference. He referenced David Allen’s Getting Things Done: “You should never think a thought twice unless you enjoy having that thought.”

The third productivity myth is that you can multitask. “You can only think about one thing at a time — that’s the truth,” said Woodard. Attempting to focus on two tasks at once inevitably leads to distraction and poor performance on one of them.

To drive the point home, Woodard asked the audience if they had ever attempted to interact with a teenager who’s on their phone: “You would think they just lost all of their mental capacity.”

Overcoming productivity roadblocks

Even when you know the truth about what productivity is (and isn’t), that doesn’t mean it’s easy to achieve it.

“In my experience, the psychological roadblocks are the biggest impediments to productivity — even more than process,” said Woodard. In other words, your mind is literally making it harder for you to get stuff done.

Negative thinking is one of the biggest barriers to working productively. Indeed, Woodard offered a laundry list of negative emotions that can hinder progress: fear, uncertainty, and doubt; worry, dread, and fretting about the future; anxiety, strife, and self-consciousness about the present; guilt, regret, and remorse about the past.

It’s enough to make you wonder how anyone gets out of bed in the morning. Luckily, Woodard reassured the audience that there are antidotes to all of these woes: things like planning, acceptance, forgiveness, and confidence.

And then there’s the procrastination beast. Procrastination causes you to prioritize the tasks that are easiest, most fun, or most predictable — meaning that by the time the post-lunch slump rolls around, you’ve run out simple tasks and can’t fathom tackling your most challenging tasks.

One of the best ways to overcome procrastination is to perform micro-tasks that can jumpstart the desire to do the larger task. It’s important to recognize that the desire to do something rarely proceeds doing it — “but if you continually act in a way and desire never follows, change occupations,” quipped Woodard.

Putting productivity in motion

Productivity begins with prioritizing your tasks appropriately. But first, make sure the tasks on your list deserve to be there.

Woodard told a story about being asked to come up with a mission statement and being reluctant to do so. But then he realized he was missing the intention of the exercise: “The point wasn’t to have a mission statement. The point was to have a mission.” If everything on your task list ties into your overall vision, mission, and purpose, it’s far easier to find focus.

Woodard is a proponent for using the Eisenhower Matrix to set daily task-based goals. The idea is that each of your tasks falls into one of four quadrants in the matrix, and you need to incorporate each quadrant into each day.

1. Tasks to manage: those that are both important and urgent.
2. Tasks to focus on: those that are important, but not urgent. “The world of effectiveness lives in this quadrant,” explained Woodard.
3. Tasks to avoid: those that are urgent, but not important.
4. Tasks to limit: those that are neither urgent nor important.

You should also aim to complete your most challenging or dreaded tasks during the time when you are most focused and alert.

The elusive zero inbox

Finally, Woodard was ready to share his four-step plan for conquering your inbox, once and for all.

The first step is to adopt some kind of note solution — whether that’s Evernote, OneNote, or simple Word document. This note solution will become an extension of your brain; the place where you deposit important details so they aren’t cluttering up your mental space.

The second step is to go into your inbox and clear out all emails older than 60 days. Seriously, just delete them or move them into a folder. Realistically, said Woodard, if you have an email that’s older than 60 days, “there is nothing actionable in it that’s still actionable — or, if there is something actionable, someone else has pinged you about it since then.”

The third step is to go through your remaining messages and apply David Allen’s “four D’s”: delete it, delegate it, do it, or defer it (by adding it to your note solution). The point is to get every single email out of your inbox — and by extension, out of your brain. “This is fantastic airplane stuff,” Woodard suggested.

The fourth and final step turned out to be a bonus: experience clarity of mind. “I sleep well because I don’t have anything in my inbox,” said Woodard.

To close, Woodard reminded the audience that while zero inbox is not a myth, zero task list is. The point of life isn’t to have nothing to do — because how dull would that be? Instead, focus on organizing, prioritizing and executing your tasks wisely.

After all, nothing induces a good night’s sleep quite like a highly productive day.

Want more #QBConnect content? Check out our full coverage of QuickBooks Connect San Jose 2018!

The post The Art of Extreme Productivity: Joe Woodard at QuickBooks Connect appeared first on Method.

Last week, Method’s Rodrigo Fernandez sat down with renowned author, consultant, business coach, and speaker Joe Woodard for an interview. As the CEO of Woodard Events, LLC, Woodard leads a team whose vision is to transform small business by educating and empowering small business advisors in the accounting industry. He’s also a long-time Method partner with ample experience in leveraging technology to revolutionize small business operations.

During the conversation, Woodard shared his view on the role of the “transformative advisor”: the financial professional who proactively coaches their clients on how to improve, and whose success is measured by how those clients change their behavior to increase their wealth.

Woodard also provided great insight into how advisors can use emerging technologies (such as Method) to achieve these outcomes for their clients.

“This is where Woodard Consulting was one of the pioneers in working with Method. We would go in at an operational level, very intensive level, and we would enhance [clients’] workflows. […] And we would find then that companies could scale.”

To hear more from Joe Woodard, check out the video and transcript of the interview below.

Video Transcript

Rodrigo Fernandez (RF): Hey everyone, Rodrigo here with Method and I’m sitting down with Joe Woodard, CEO of Woodard Consulting and the creator of Scaling New Heights, a staple in the accounting industry. Joe, thank you so much for joining me.

Joe Woodard (JW): It’s great to be here with you.

RF: So I’m new to the industry and I’ve been doing a lot of research. And I stumbled upon a concept that I think you coined, which is the “transformative advisor” role. Talk to me a little about what that means.

JW: Yeah, well, we themed our conference “The Transformative Advisor” and we were frankly surprised nobody else was using that term. We thought it was just gonna be out there and we just happened to call our show that theme. And when I saw that after Googling it that no one was using the term, then I knew we had an opportunity to go to sort of coining the phrase.

But we had a problem out there — you know, why aren’t more people referring to advisors as transformative? You see everywhere “trusted advisor” — but see, I don’t like the word “trusted advisor.” It’s not that it’s a bad term; it’s just not a specific term. You have passive trust and you have active trust. Passive trust is trusting say, an accountant not to reveal my private information, or trusting my accountant to file my tax return on time, trusting my accountant to reconcile my bank accounts accurately.

RF: It’s very transactional.

JW: It’s very transactional, that’s exactly right. And there could also be an element of trusted that’s transformational, but we don’t know which type you were referring to. And I’ve used the term “trusted advisor” for years with accountants and I will challenge them to become one. And the response I get back, either in their body language or their verbal languages: “I’m already that, tell me what to do next.” And what they really mean is, “I’m a passive trusted advisor.”

So this term doesn’t allow for you to be passive. To be transformative, you must be proactive. You must be a coach, you must be monitoring what your clients are doing and you must be informing the client on what they need to do better. That’s the critical difference.

RF: So as I’m reading it, what I really liked was the concept of how you measure the success of a transformative advisor. And you say that it’s by the behavior of the customer; if by what the transformative advisor suggests, the customer then gains wealth.

JW: That’s correct. So you hone in on a couple of points there. One point is how you measure the success of the transformative advisor. The measurements of success of an accounting firm are all about me. What is my realized bill rate, if you’re still using time sheets out there? You know, what is my effective bill rate, if you’re measuring it based off of payroll? How have efficiencies increased my profit margin? What kind of tax products am I using and what’s the cost to revenue ratio of my tax software investment?

And I’m not saying not to do those, though — it’s important to have those kinds of measurements. But they’re all about “me, me, me, me; my behavior, my behavior, my behavior.” I’m saying add to those measurements: the client’s behavior.

So if I’m a transformative advisor, the only measurement of transformation is, “how did my client change their behavior to increase their wealth, to increase their efficiencies?” Be measuring their cost to benefit ratios on different investments they’re making, measure their risk ratio to benefit, measure their financial benchmarking as compared to others in their industry. Create alerts around their cash flow — AR terms. If they’re in inventory, inventory terms. Anything that will be wealth-generating: if you monitor it, coach to it, and have a change of behavior on the part of the client — that’s key.

RF: Excellent. Now what type of mindset do you do you need to make that transition? You mentioned that some professionals already call themselves transformative. But yet as you approach them, they’re missing a couple of things. What are they really missing? What type of mindset do they need for that?

JW: So first there must be an identity shift. And this isn’t always a popular message, but it’s one that I’m going to be consistent about all the way through the rest of my career. Don’t call yourself a bookkeeper. Don’t call yourself a tax preparer. Don’t call yourself, in some cases, even “comma CPA.” Because all of those things are noble professions and they’re noble designations — I mean, I wish I had myself a CPA, it’s sort of on my bucket list to go get those initials.

But the moment that we begin to brand ourselves around a specific service within the accounting profession, we’ve limited the client’s perception of what we can bring in terms of value. And unfortunately “CPA,” though a trusted designation, is also a determined designation. They predetermined your role and it’s very hard to break out of that role.

So instead it starts with identity; that’s the mind shift. Call yourself what you’re going to do. it could be business coach, if you want to get fancy about it. Could be fractional CFO or outsourced CFO, though some non-CPAs shy away from that term. It could be outsourced director of business development. There’s so many broader but yet specific terms you could use.

And then still provide bookkeeping and tax, still provide assurance services if you wish to do so — business valuation and all those other things that CPAs do. But you’re doing those as a means to the end. And the end is to coach the client into increases in wealth.

RF: Now Joe, when you say increases in, wealth does that mean financial wealth?

JW: It does mean financial wealth. So obviously the first thing we should do is get profits up, getting all the way down to net income up. So analyze GNA, because it’s the fastest levers we can pull to create a financial ROI for the investment they’re making in us.

But don’t stop there. And as accounting professionals, it’s going to be very tempting to stop there. Increasing the top of the line revenues is still a financial impact and we can do that through helping our clients to market better, to brand better, to provide better pricing around their services.

They probably are not large enough to have their own pricing officer like a chief revenue officer in-house, so provide that outsourced role. And just like we challenge as thought leaders, accountants to value price and to price commensurate with the wealth we’re generating, get them to do the same thing with their customers. And then through brand differentiation, they can break through all the price anchors that take place in whatever their field is and they can start to increase wealth that way.

But there are other softer ways. You can increase a client’s wealth if you just change their culture. Enhance their peace of mind. In some cases, you can even make their domestic life better. I love telling a story about a guy named Joe who’s a CPA, or he works for a CPA firm, and he is a tax preparer, he’s a QuickBooks consultant. And he saved one of his client’s marriages by changing the way that they value their inventory.

Because the wife who didn’t want to work had gotten commandeered into the company to take all this costing, all these cost models they had to create for a particular supplier. And she was doing all this work in Excel and Joe said “no, if you’ll just change this to this in QuickBooks” — and I won’t get into all the specifics — “QuickBooks will give you those reports internally.” And the guy came back about a year later or so and said, “You saved my marriage. You didn’t just save my company about 30 hours a week; you saved my marriage.”

And so then that comes into all this pricing challenge because we don’t have crystal balls, right? So how would Joe possibly have known all the impact of that? But Joe could determine “save the company 30 hours per week.” And that efficiency, though maybe it may take a while for it to hit the bottom line, especially if that employee is now back home and it’s not really increased well for the customer, there was the soft benefit of domestic harmonization, work-life harmonization and overall scalability for the company as they increase their distributions.

We need to be looking at the long range with our clients. And this is where, as you know, Woodard Consulting was one of the pioneers in working with Method. We would go in at an operational level, very intensive level, and we would enhance their workflows. And then we would take their custom process, their proprietary process, and we would run it through Method for collaboration and in some cases, many cases, automation, and even field deployments and productions. And we would find then that companies could scale.

Our premium example, flagship example, is a company that’s scaled from a 30 million dollar company to a 40 million dollar company without any increase in cost of production. So we generated $10,000 in clear wealth generation, but we did it as operational advisors. We didn’t do it as financial advisors.

RF: So let’s talk about the intersection of technology and the transformative advisor. And there’s this concept that technology, of course, improves operational efficiencies, which of course creates wealth. What are some other ways that emerging technology can increase that?

JW: So I was talking in my Method example about the sort of front lines, the field services, the production, and the management of the company’s operations. But that back office is the first place to start because it’s the accountant’s warm spot. We know how to run a back office. We are more familiar with the technologies involved in that. It’s many of the ones that are on the show floor here at QuickBooks Connect and also at my show, Scaling New Heights.

So we know them. And when the client doesn’t want to outsource their bookkeeping to us, first step is to automate their bookkeeping in-house and create those efficiencies. And through doing that, we create more accurate, real-time, and manageable financial data, and that gives us the building blocks for our coaching, all right.

So start there — it’s your comfort zone. But then niche. And by niching, you can become a specialist in a particular vertical solution, whether it’s an ERP solution, inventory controls, your point of sale, medical billing. To find that technology that you can specialize in and then layer that operational technology consulting to it.

Make sure that what you’re putting in on the front end talks to the back end, whether you’re outsourcing the bookkeeping and it’s your back end, or if it’s their back end. Because you want to try to get to, say, 80% automation of bookkeeping process, and you won’t get there if the front end doesn’t tie to the back

Now I’m gonna go back to Method for a minute, because even though I am a big proponent of niche, anytime you’re doing the bookkeeping, tax or accounting work, niche is always by industry. But what our consulting created [was] a niche that wasn’t by industry. We were come-all takers when it came to embracing a small to medium-sized business client. We’d take anybody. Our niche was around Method.

So you can create an entire practice niche around the deployment of a particular solution. And in Method’s case, its benefit was it wasn’t vertical. We could deploy it at any business at any time. We always had a bit of a learning curve if we were new to the model, but we were doing it so specific to that client, so proprietary to that client, that we could just immerse ourselves in there, become business process workflows experts and then build into Method. So specialization could take place at a vertical level by industry or by product, when you have a product as wide-reaching as Method.

RF: So as many people know, [with] Method our go-to-market strategy is the CRM portion. But Method beyond the CRM is a no-code platform where you can build pretty much any business workflow and extend the CRM. And by that, also extend your accounting software. In our case, we’re built exclusively for QuickBooks. Share with me some of your experience with our no-code platform.

JW: Yeah, well, I’ve had a lot of experiences with it. And our favorite kind of client was a client on some sort of proprietary or legacy code system. And we would come in, not programmers. To this day, I don’t know how to write one line of code; I can do some SQL strings. I don’t know how to write one line of code; I couldn’t do an API code if my life depended on it — I always outsource the API.

But I would go into a client that was using, say, Linux or, you know, some old DOS-based program that they had somebody build for them in the 1980s or 90s. And we would completely rebuild that program in Method, without me having to write one line of code.

Now these guys back in the 80s and 90s paid six figures back then to have people do Linux coding because they were building custom software. So they already had a talk about a positive price anchor; they had a price point in their mind that was six figures twenty years ago. So we would come in saying, “Well, you know, times have changed; it’s gonna be a little bit more expensive to rewrite a program now, but these are the benefits in us doing it.”

And we didn’t call it a no-code program; in a configuration platform versus the code, because the code will never go legacy. And so we would sell it based on that. We would charge, say, 50 to 75 percent more than they paid back in the 1990s and we would do it in 20 percent of the time. It’s a fantastic model.

RF: That’s amazing, that’s amazing. So, talking about Method and its role in this journey of the ProAdvisor and the accountant into the mentality of a transformative advisor, what do you advise them as a way of leveraging Method as a core piece of that journey?

JW: Alright, so I’m gonna answer your question by telling you a story. The very first time I ever encountered Method, I went up to your booth at a show, at another person’s show, and I asked, “what do you guys do?” And it was Paul Jackson working the booth, the CEO and founder of Method, because there were like five guys in Method at the time. And Paul looked back at me and said, not in a coy way, but just an accurate way: “whatever you want it to do.”

Alright, so I’ll answer your question now by saying, Method will do whatever you want it to do. And I mean almost without limitation. So what I would say to any accountant without fully understanding Method, without being certified on Method, without having gone all the way down the rabbit hole on what Method can do — because it’s vast what it can do — I would say this. Anytime your client — if I’m speaking to an accounting professional — anytime your client can’t accomplish what they want to accomplish with something off-the-shelf, deploy Method.

And you will find that’s almost always the case. So Method could serve as a process gap-filler between other solutions, including integration because it has an API. It can serve as a process gap-filler without integration. It can serve as a highly proprietary custom solution for micro-verticals that don’t have a good QuickBooks-integrated solution, and those are plentiful right?

And remember: as the accountant, you don’t have to do what Woodard Consulting did. You don’t have to go in and completely revamp a Linux system for a six-figure engagement because that may not be your model. What you have to do is identify the need. Keep in your mind that almost without exception — I’m not being hyperbolic — if they have a need for software and it doesn’t exist as a micro process or a macro process, just go to Method’s website and start chatting with them. Because it’s 99.9% that Method can solve the problem. And do so at a very low developmental curve as compared to custom software.

RF: Excellent. Joe, thank you. Let’s talk about Woodard Consulting. You seem to be all over the place. There’s a lot of things going on on your end. I’m loving the TV show and all of the different webinars and resources. What’s next on your roadmap? What’s at your heel right now?

JW: Well, we’re gonna lean into the things we already have in our portfolio. So you mentioned the tech makeover reality show. And you can go watch that at www.woodard.com. Check it out: it’s cable television-level reality TV show, but it’s really a video case study of us transforming small businesses with technology. So I would encourage anybody watching this interview to go to www.woodard.com and check that out.

We’re gonna lean into webinars with even more strength and you’re gonna see a revamp of that. We’ve got our podcast. And we’re gonna make Scaling New Heights always bigger and better, bigger and better. The only new thing we’ve launched and the only new thing we will launch over 12 months is an online version of Scaling New Heights, in a virtual platform, state-of-the-art video game kind of interface where you walk around and go to a virtual exhibit hall and a virtual lobby. You have three tracks of training to choose from. You have world-renowned keynote presenters.

So we’re giving everybody a taste of what they would get at Scaling New Heights on-site, for those that want an incremental Scaling experience and for those that can’t make the premise show. And there’s even a free option if you just want to come and listen to the keynotes.

RF: Excellent. And they can register now?

JW: Yes, so registration is open at www.scalingnewheights.com.

RF: Amazing. So Joe, thank you so much for your time. You are an incredible Method partner and we really value you. Thank you.

JW: Well, it’s been great to be here, thank you.

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Want more #QBConnect content? Check out our full coverage of QuickBooks Connect San Jose 2018!

The post The Role of the Transformative Advisor: An Interview With Joe Woodard [Video] appeared first on Method.

“They’re making money, but they’re not managing money — and we are in the managing money business,” says Mariette Martinez, speaking to accounting professionals at QuickBooks Connect. As an accountant, tax pro and small business strategist, Martinez is visibly passionate about helping self-employed individuals achieve their business goals through better financial management.

She also immediately dispels the stereotype that the self-employed market can’t or won’t pay for accounting services: “If they see the value that you’re bringing, they will pay for it. The self-employed have been my solo market for the last five years.”

Understanding the gig economy

Other accounting professionals would be wise to follow Martinez’s lead. Nearly 40% of the U.S. workforce now participates in the gig economy, which includes freelancers, independent contractors, contingent workers, and even on-demand workers like Uber and Lyft drivers. And that percentage is only expected to grow, making this the perfect time for accountants to learn how to serve this market.

When assessing a self-employed client’s needs, Martinez advises her colleagues to keep an open mind and avoid jumping in with cookie-cutter solutions. While some entrepreneurs may be content to keep their side hustle on the side, others may be looking to grow and scale. These individual goals need to be taken into consideration.

“The purpose of truly listening to and connecting with the self-employed is not to respond back with perfect answers — but to give you, their trusted advisor, the opportunity to explore and discover the best possible solutions together.”

Assessing the needs of the self-employed

Of course, those who are self-employed tend to share some common pain points. These include cash flow issues, tax struggles, mixing business and personal finances, messy or non-existent mileage tracking, and the dreaded “shoebox dilemma” — a disorganized collection of records and receipts that may or may not live in an actual shoebox.

Beyond these obvious struggles, there are plenty of other details to pay attention to during that initial conversation. Everything from the client’s sales process and customer payment methods to their financial reporting and tax compliance will be relevant to how you proceed as their financial advisor.

QuickBooks Self-Employed: a simple solution

Once you truly understand your client’s struggles and goals, Martinez recommends presenting simple, scalable solutions that will deliver value and save them time. She points out that for the self-employed, “their time is literally their money — so when you start talking about saving, they love that.”

Delivering the right solutions for each client requires a deep understanding of the available options. In other words: just because an individual is self-employed, it doesn’t mean you should default to QuickBooks Self-Employed. Instead, Martinez implores her fellow accounting professionals to do their research about the different versions of QuickBooks: “We need to make our colleagues accountable for becoming technically aware of what’s out there.”

That being said, QuickBooks Self-Employed is a great option for many self-employed clients. Martinez highlights three features in particular that make life easier for those working in the gig economy:

• Real-time, automated bank and credit card feeds.
• Easy categorization of business and personal expenses. Martinez is a stickler for this point when it comes to working with the self-employed: “You want to be kind about it, but you also want to be firm about it.”
• The ability to prepare for tax time early.

Better yet, accountants can collaborate with their QuickBooks Self-Employed clients through QuickBooks Online Accountant. This makes it easier to hold clients accountable to their financial plan.

Delivering the right solutions to the right clients

Just as the gig economy is incredibly diverse, so too are the service offerings that accountants can provide. Martinez suggests three simple and scalable business models.

In the “Soft Touch” model, you provide quarterly bookkeeping as well as tax prep services. This model helps accountants empower their self-employed clients to take control of their own finances.

In the “Trusted Advisor” model, you meet with clients monthly and provide year-round bookkeeping and tax prep services. In this scenario, your clients are constantly held accountable and can get ahead of the game.

In the “One-to-Many” model, you position yourself as an expert on the self-employed market by providing a high volume of one service or digital product. “This is my absolute favorite model,” says Martinez. She offers plenty of ideas for reaching your target audience, including webinars, workshops, templates, blogs, podcasts, and videos.

Building lasting partnerships

Many self-employed individuals avoid working with financial advisors because they don’t think the advisors will be on their side. Martinez wants to dispel that notion: “I want to be your accountability partner. I want you to look forward to having a meeting with me at the end of the year.”

She encourages other accountants to identify which subsets of the gig economy they are most passionate about. For instance, as a mother herself, Martinez loves working with stay-at-home moms and other women.

But no matter which groups you focus on, the key is to get excited about what your clients do. In doing so, accounting professionals will be well-positioned to not only help their clients’ businesses flourish, but to find satisfaction in their own work as well.

Want more #QBConnect content? Check out our full coverage of QuickBooks Connect San Jose 2018!

The post Working With the Gig Economy: Mariette Martinez at QuickBooks Connect appeared first on Method.

The theme of the (admittedly fireless) fireside chat was “The Technology Empowered Accountant: Building a Profitable Technology Stack.” Hosted by Method’s Rodrigo Fernandez, the discussion tackled the question on everyone’s minds: in this age of intelligent accounting software and countless add-on apps, how can accounting professionals leverage this technology to benefit themselves and their clients?

Luckily, Brad Celmainis, Robin Hall, Laura Redmond, and Heather Satterley are all passionate advocates for the use of technology in accounting.

“You can basically focus on other parts of your business that are more profitable, like advising and consulting, rather than actually doing those mundane, repetitive tasks,” said Satterley. And who doesn’t love the sound of that?

To hear what our guests had to say on this topic, check out the video and transcript of the fireside chat below.

Video Transcript

Rodrigo Fernandez: All right, hi everyone! Welcome to today’s fireside chat, coming to you live from QuickBooks Connect San Jose and streaming right on the Method Facebook page.

I’m your host, Rodrigo Fernandez, and I’m the director of marketing at Method Integration, the makers of Method CRM. We built Method CRM exclusively for all versions of QuickBooks — that means QuickBooks Online and QuickBooks Desktop. And you know Method is the highest rated CRM by QuickBooks users and ProAdvisors, which is awesome.

Now beyond the CRM, Method is also a no-code platform. As a matter of fact, we built the CRM on this incredible no-code platform and that has allowed ProAdvisors and small business users to build personalized workflows and personalized apps to meet the unique demands that you know their businesses need. So for a free trial, please visit our website, www.method.me/. We have a special deal for you.

We have a red-hot topic to discuss with some world-class guests — this awesome panel that I have here. But before I introduce them, I want to let you know that during this fireside chat, we will be taking questions. So, as we’re discussing our topic and these wonderful people are sharing insights, type in your questions on the right-hand side where you have the comments section and our wonderful social butterfly Alvina from the Method team will relay it back to my earpiece in this very intricate setup — first of its class, so if we make a mistake, please forgive us

All right, so with great pleasure, let me introduce these wonderful folks in no particular order.

Brad Celmainis — He’s a QuickBooks Online Platinum ProAdvisor, an Intuit certified ProAdvisor and founder of Brad Celmainis Accounting Solutions. Brad manages a Calgary accounting and finance network, the largest Calgary-centric accounting and finance group on LinkedIn. He is co-organizer of the most popular small business meetup group in Calgary, the Calgary Business Professional Group, as well as an active member of the Calgary Chamber of Commerce and an avid supporter of Small Business Week. And he also loves to ride in a scooter

Brad Celmainis: That had to come up, yeah.

Rodrigo Fernandez: Next we have Robin Hall. Robin is the driving force of VARC Solutions, an Intuit advisory board member and one of the original Intuit solution providers. She’s a sought-after instructor and speaker for venues such as Scaling New Heights, of course QuickBooks Connect, the Intuit solution provider conference, CNN radio and RadioFreeQuickBooks. In addition to being an award-winning Intuit solution provider, Robin has also been named one of the most powerful women in accounting

Brad Celmainis: Should I be nervous?

Robin Hall: You should.

Rodrigo Fernandez: Next we have Laura Redmond. Laura is the founder of Redmond Accounting Inc, a cloud accounting firm in the Silicon Valley that was awarded Intuit’s top 20 Firm of the Future. She is also a top ten ProAdvisor for leading QuickBooks Online practice and she’s a co-founder of Cloud Consultancy and the co-creator of Aero Workflow app. Now, Aero is an amazing QuickBooks app that gives accounting firms the tools they need to take the firm’s knowledge capital and put it to work by integrating their processes and procedures with tasks, making firms much more efficient, scalable and profitable. So, welcome Laura.

Laura Redmond: And we first built that on the Method platform.

Rodrigo Fernandez: Amazing! Beyond CRM, beautiful.

And last but not least, we have Heather Satterley. Heather is the founder of Satterly Training and Consulting LLC, a Rhode Island-based consulting firm focused on helping accounting professionals learn and master the QuickBooks ecosystem. And I may say she is also the Zapier queen. She’s an advanced certified ProAdvisor and a member of the exclusive Intuit trainer/writer network. Heather is also a co-host of the “QB ‘Appy Hour with Liz and Heather,” which is an amazing monthly webinar series. If you’re not watching that series, you are missing out

Heather Satterley: And you can register at www.qbappyhour.com.

Rodrigo Fernandez: www.qbappyhour.com — after you watch this webinar! Finally, Heather was also named a top QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor in 2017 and a top 100 ProAdvisor from 2014 to 2018 by Insightful Accountant. So, welcome.

So, welcome everyone. First question: so chief marketing technologist Scott Brinker said that he believes two things are true, referring to the rapid changes in marketing technology. But I think it applies everywhere. The first one is that technology is changing very rapidly and those changes seem to be accelerating, so there’s no slowdown of technology changes.

The second one is that change in an organization, how it thinks and how it behaves according to these changes, is still very hard and slow. Do you think the same idea applies to the accounting industry, and how can accountants and ProAdvisors embrace this reality? Who would like to go first?

Laura Redmond: I’ll start by saying absolutely, it applies to us all of us. We have to stay really up-to-date on the new technology and then we also have to — one of my partners often quotes her Austrian ski instructor who says “keep zee knees bent,” right? So you have to kind of stay ready to change, ready to turn fast, right?

At the same time — as you watch the landscape, it does move fast, but there are many things also where we’re at the forefront. So it’s not that something that you put into play is going to go away two days later. You want to stay up-to-date on the newest things, but a lot of the things you put in play, you can use that for many years to come

Heather Satterley: Absolutely. And I would add to that, that as you implement apps and you start to change your firm, that those apps also evolve. So new features are added all the time and the technology that you’re using today will have more functionality tomorrow. And so also creating a relationship with those app partners and the vendors, and helping them to educate you about those new features is a really great way to stay on top of the changes in the entire industry, really.

Laura Redmond: Yeah, you can just be deliberate about making those choices instead of on the far back end, where your clients keep asking you about it and you’re the person that says “I don’t know, I’ve never seen that.” So get out in front of it.

Brad Celmainis: You brought up a good point, Laura. You mentioned sticking with what you already know — sometimes that could be the best option. I find having loyalty with an app partner is really important. So we see things changing all the time, but that doesn’t mean we have to go running after it.

I think we talked about the “shiny toy syndrome” — there are so many changes. I mean, we see it here at Quickbooks Connect at the App Showdown, all these new tools coming out. So just jumping at everything isn’t necessary. There’s this rapid acceleration of new apps, but it doesn’t mean you have to jump out and be the first one to use it. But some people will.

There’s a balancing act because, you know, we have relationships that go back several years with some of these partners and someone might come out and offer something different. But doesn’t mean you’re just going to go out and leave, because you’re working with something that works really well. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is kind of the way I look at it

Robin Hall: And I agree with that. I think for us, when we add in some apps or we look at different apps, I really try and bring them in and try and use them internally first to make sure that I know all the ins and outs — you know, because every one of these app developers is going to tell us they’re the best thing since sliced bread.

So if I use it, or I know someone else is using it, if I know Laura’s using a tool, I know that’s tried-and-true. I know that she’s gone through and done that vetting. So knowing what other ProAdvisors are using — some of these other apps — is really important to me.

I know I can go to [Laura] and go, “Okay, I see [the app] can do all this, but give me the real lowdown — tell me the good, the bad, and the ugly and what I need to be able to watch out for so I can know where maybe some of the pitfalls are.” Because they’re all going to have a pitfall or another. But if I know where they are, then I can plan and I can train around those. So I think it’s important to really have our network to support those apps, so that we’re we’re leaning on each other to know the good and the bad on them.

Rodrigo Fernandez: Excellent. So in terms of the app ecosystem and your practice: specialist or jack-of-all-trades, right? As an accounting professional and business consultant, what is a better approach when building your technology stack and why?

Robin Hall: I’ll start because I’ve got the mic. So you know, I actually go back and forth on this a lot because, you know, we’re told “find a niche, find a niche, find your niche.” And for a long time I was like, “QuickBooks is my niche.” And so if you’re writing a check or you’re paying bills or doing different things — whether you’re an engineering firm or, you know, just another services firm, they’re doing those core functionalities the same.

I do think apps bring a different light on that — because then they are specializing on that, so it’s taking that niche industry a little bit further, so I’m still kind of teetering back and forth. And so it depends on what day that you’re going to ask me, what answer I’m going to have on that. But for the most part, I’m still kind of a generalist on there. But more and more, as I’m seeing some of these apps, I think that that can be taking a turn.

Brad Celmainis: I tried to be a jack-of-all-trades once and it didn’t work for me. I was just all over the map. I was trying to do too many things at once and I couldn’t be good at anything, not great at anything. I was just average at things. And someone who’s a friend of a dear friend of my network, who’s a marketing specialist, said, “you’ve got to find your niche.”

And when people ask me that now, my niche is really the type of client I take on. I was telling somebody last night that I know when I have a connection with an entrepreneur, that I want to do business with them. And if I don’t have a connection, I don’t take that on.

And the reason I think I feel it as a niche is that there’s a certain type of person I could work with. If I see somebody and right away, you’re talking apps and they get all nervous and weary and they start making excuses, in the back of my mind I’m going, “I don’t think I want to work with this person.” So I like people to be receptive to the change.

But I don’t have this massive app stack. I know what’s out there and I pay attention. If I have a specific need for a specific industry for a specific client, then I investigate it. And what you said, Robin, about having Laura and Heather out there as our proving ground. Because you guys are trying new things, you’ve tried new things, and we have so many people in our communities on social media that you can rely on — people to sort of fill in the blanks for you, as you said. And they know where the skeletons are.

You don’t necessarily see it out in the open, but you have these candid conversations and you can get the straight dope on what these things do. That’s kind of how I learn. And a big thing, as you mentioned — you want to know how it works. So if you can’t use it with your own business, it’s hard to really know the app. I’m not a manufacturer, so if there’s a big manufacturing app out there, I need a client to try it on.

So I’m definitely more of a specialist and I stick to a little tighter app stack, and then vary it as needed based on the client.

Robin Hall: I love what you said about not necessarily having a niche industry, but a niche client. So that’s actually a different take on that and I love that. With the personality you can work through some of those industry differences, but you always can’t work through the personality differences, so I love that.

Brad Celmainis: Where I was really different than a lot — I am a Canadian CPA, but I don’t do public well. I don’t do anything traditional: no compliance work, no tax work, I barely dabble in bookkeeping. I was in industry, so I learned lots of different businesses when I was in industry and I get to apply that now.

And having these apps makes it so much fun because I can work with businesses in a different way — with 20 years of experience in industry combined with these really cool tools. And I can solve these really cool problems for them and you get this energy from your client when they’re smiling and laughing and saying, “This is great, I finally see my business the way it’s meant to be.”

And those are the clients I look for, and that’s my niche — people that will appreciate it. If you’re making excuses, I know right away that’s a red flag — and why take the client on in the first place?

Laura Redmond: There are hundreds and hundreds of apps in the app store — so www.apps.com is the domain name that’s owned by Intuit, it’ll correct itself to www.apps.intuit.com. But that app store means that it has been vetted by Intuit, it’s a secure app, it’s passed all of their rigorous checklist items they try to hack and break your app. So if you make it onto the app store you can feel good as a business, as a small business or as an accounting firm that is advising your small business, to use this app. It’s a safe place to shop for it.

Now having said that, there are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds—  I can’t possibly know them all. There are a few that we use because they work for us providing accounting services firms. So I run an accounting service; I also have, you know, Aero app and Method consulting separately — but speaking as the owner of an accounting firm, we use a bill pay app, we use a credit card expense management app, we use Method CRM. Method has been central to us as a firm since the beginning. And so we have a few that we work on now.

When I teach QuickBooks around the country and talk to other business owners and accountants, they want other things — I may not know it well, but I can safely tell them to go to the app store and do a search there in the directory. And then you can read reviews, you can try a free trial of it. So the app store has got a lot of options for a lot of people — but you don’t have to know every one of them. Don’t be scared of the app store!

And let me also say that you can do all that, but it’s an amazing opportunity for people. I mean, if you’re looking for new business and you’re, you know, running a service business and accounting service business especially, you can narrow in if you want to become an inventory expert or something — because the rest of us don’t want to touch inventory. So we’ll send you our business!

But also let me say this: I hear a lot of people say “Oh, you have to get an extra app for that? I have to hook it up?” Well, that’s not hard, first of all — they’ve made that very easy. And “I have to pay extra for that?” Let me just encourage you to look for the savings you’re going to find, usually in reduced labor by automating things with an app. So jump into it, hook it up!

Heather Satterley: Absolutely. And as we were talking about niche — you see that in lots of different areas, especially as our industry is changing. So sure, you can niche by industry for your clients, or type of client, or even tech stack, right? So we see a lot of firms that, as Laura said, are finding the right tools for them and then they’re able to scale that across, you know, all of their clients. So that’s one way to go.

Another way to go is what Laura and I have done, where we niche in a particular process or a particular technology that we’ve just learned really well. And we’re able to use our expertise to help others to leverage the same technology. So you see all different models of niching in our industry and all different ways that you can, you know, build tech stacks.

Rodrigo Fernandez: So in building a profitable accounting firm, a profitable consulting firm, a profitable customer — because the end goal of what you do as consultants is to ensure that your customers build wealth — what are some of those key apps that you’ve found that that have helped you build or have allowed you to become profitable internally and for your customers?

Heather Satterley: Well, for me it won’t be any surprise that one of my main technologies is Zapier, which is an automation technology that allows me to create custom automations both for myself and for my clients.

And what I really like about that technology is that there’s over 1,200 apps that are on the Zapier platform. I’ve done a poll of the students that are in my Zapier workshop session, and about 60% of the apps that they use overall, of all the students that I’ve had, are on that Zapier platform.

So it’s really nice because you can spend a little bit of time setting up an automation that’s going to give back to you for months and years to come. Really, so you can basically focus on other parts of your business that are more profitable, like advising and consulting, rather than actually doing those mundane, repetitive tasks.

Laura Redmond: Yeah, and just another plug for Zapier — and she really is the queen of it, I’m in her course right now. And I knew how to use Zapier, but it was like a blank sheet of paper, you know. I was like, “I just need some ideas of what to zap around the universe.”

So it is a really great tool — because for example, Method has the tightest two-way sync to QuickBooks, awesome, that’s there — but what if you wanted to zap things between other apps that don’t have the integration built yet? So that’s a really cool one.

I’ll call out QuickBooks Online, of course — awesome, awesome, best tool for measuring profitability, recording money in and money out and then looking at whether you’re making money or not. And then I’ll call out Bill.com and Expensify. I want to call those out as just major game-changers for us on automating that accounting workflow.

And then just again, Method has been central to us since the beginning. We use it for the CRM and our firm. I use it just as much, maybe more, on my own firm to build out custom unique sales onboarding processes. You know, not just a process on a flowchart, but I mean like interactive — so that your client can do something and you’re recording it because it’s back into your sales system.

And then we’ll use it on clients — like, you know, when you go to create invoices for a customer, for a business — there’s no approval on the invoice, right, you just create an invoice. What if your customer, the business, wants to approve invoices? So you can easily build that in Method, because all of the invoices are sitting there in Method. You just build a little approval screen there — oh, it’s easy, just build a little screen there! But I mean, honestly, I love to build and I can’t code, so I need Method. I’m born for Method.

Brad Celmainis: That’s awesome. I’ll plug Zapier a bit too. I’m a total newb — I get one thing to zap and I get all excited. And I hear Heather talk about, was it a 45 or something step process?

Heather Satterley: I had a 48-step zap.

Brad Celmainis: I think I have a really cool 3-step zap and I keep it turned off just so it doesn’t zap by accident on me. I’m still testing, so it’s really cool. The upside is amazing and I love the potential of it.

With me, I’m a solopreneur in Calgary. I’m like any other business owner; my first couple of years were pretty grim as a small business owner. I felt a lot of pain on the cash management front because there wasn’t a lot of cash coming in. It wasn’t hard to manage when you don’t have much! But I hit kind of a state where I was trying to grow my business and I was a typical entrepreneur. Everyone says, “Oh, you’re a CPA, you must know how to do bookkeeping and accounting.” Well, of course I do, but doesn’t mean I want to.

And I was in a paper-based system, I was printing out, you know, making binders for myself, going, “what am I even doing?” It was like this old school way doing things, so I just stopped altogether. And papers started piling up and I was starting to get a little nervous because I’m really good at cash management, but it was all in my head all of a sudden — I didn’t really know where I was. So Receipt Bank changed the way that I do my business. It got me together, got me organized, got me paperless. It saves all my stuff — I literally don’t have to store anything anywhere. I ripped my paper up. I’m not one of these people that says, “I’m gonna take a picture of it and then I’m gonna keep it” — I just get rid of it.

So the passion that I put into learning it and my own business is now a business opportunity. And I’m a Receipt Bank partner and I have a lot of clients on it. And I just sell them on the love of the tool. It’s a very simple tool, it doesn’t cost a lot of money. And we talked about cost earlier — the cost is not what you’ve got to focus on; it’s the return on that cost. What’s the result worth, the value, that return on investment? And I’ve really been able to demonstrate because Receipt Bank and the other tools like HubDoc and Auto Entry, there’s a really big ROI there.

But people get hung up on that $20 a month and it’s like, “Really, $20 a month? That is really a problem?” So it’s easy for me to sell the value of it. People are jumping at it. So that’s one tool that I use extensively for my own business and it’s a revenue stream. And Receipt Bank is a great partner.

Obviously I’ve dealt with Method as well and you guys do have the best QuickBooks compatible, optimized CRM out there. And a CRM really helped me personally — I was getting out of control. You know, you become a victim of your own success, and I literally lost a client once because I literally lost them. I didn’t know where their phone number was. I knew they had called and I was like, “how did they reach me again?” I couldn’t remember. And I found it a while later. Fortunately for me, I apologized like two weeks later and she was okay with it. She said, “Well, thank you for the honest answer, I get it.” I did say “I’m gonna use my CRM from now on.”

Robin Hall: So one of the ones that we use is Bill & Pay. I’m not gonna mention that I use the ones that you guys use as well — no sense to rehash that as the fourth one down here. Bill & Pay, we use.

One of the ones that changed my business was using TSheets. So I used to only track my billable time. I’m like, “I get paid the same regardless of whether it’s billable time or not.” And so just tracking my time, all of my time, really kind of changed my focus and made me look at really what I’m looking at and doing. How much admin time am I doing? How much time am I spending on my business? Because sometimes we forget that we’re too much in the trenches and we lose sight of that. We need to work on our business, so as accounting professionals we need to make sure that we’re staying relevant in doing that. So TSheets is one.

It also helps me with knowing, while I’m here at the conference, what my employees are doing, what they’re working on. And then when I’m in the office, if they’re working on a client and I have a question with them with that, then while they’re clocked in I can go and talk to them on that client — they’re not having to switch gears.

Another one that I’ve really started working with lately is Avalara. And so there’s so many changes in the sales tax laws right now and a lot of new laws went into effect in June. So if you thought you knew your stuff in May, you don’t know anything now. So, you know, that’s another one that’s gonna change the landscape for accountants with all the new indexes or e-commerce rules. So if you have clients in other states, then it’s something that we’re all gonna have to relearn. And so we have something at our fingertips right now that will help us with that. So I think we need to look at the changing laws around and make sure that the software isn’t just popping up today, but that they have been around and are tracking those things and are helping us as well.

Rodrigo Fernandez: Excellent, excellent. Now, it’s established — a ton of apps out there in the QuickBooks ecosystem, which is amazing. When you’re shopping around for an app, what do you look for from app developers as you’re putting together your technology stack? You know, what are those things that give you confidence from an app developer that this app is worth bringing in? Because as you know, your technology stack could be fragile too. I mean, an app could make or break your complete system. So what do you look for in app developers?

Robin Hall: So as new apps are popping up every day, I want to make sure that they’re gonna be here tomorrow. So you know, that’s why talking to other people that have used it, talking to my friends in this community — I trust their judgment if they’ve used it, they’ve done a little bit.

And have [the app developers] been around? Do they know what the word SDK is or what that means? Are they out there on that app store? And really just talking to them and seeing where their idea came from and what they’re trying to solve, so that I know what path that they’re going down.

So I am cautious with some of the new ones that are popping up because I want to make sure that the ones that are here today are here tomorrow. And, you know, because they’re all looking for funding as well, to make sure — because they’re in development mode and until they sell enough, they’ve gotta cross over that line. So I don’t want to put a bunch of clients on something that’s then gonna be gone soon.

Brad Celmainis: You bring up a great point about the app partners in general. They’re on the app store, but it’s really hard for us as a ProAdvisor to gauge really how large that company is, how well capitalized, how much staff, what’s their service like. There’s so many variables.

I’ve found apps that seem to be bigger than they really are. You find out it’s like two or three people and they’re still working out of their garage or their basement and they just kick ass. Can I say that? Sorry, back up a bit!

But it’s true — like, some of them really seem bigger than they are. Then you find out; it’s like,
“wow, that’s awesome.” And then others, like TSheets, have, you know, a campus and they’re amazing. They have so much staff. And you’ve got to sort of evaluate just a bit.

But to me what’s really important is when I reach out to an app partner, they get back to me quickly in a reasonable amount of time. You know, I say, “I’m a ProAdvisor, I’m interested in your app, I might have a client that could use this app.” And then I see how they deal with it from that point on. I like having a good relationship with my app partners. I like to find out, you know, who I need to deal with.

And I gauge the quality of an app just on how I’m treated. And to that, app developers need to understand that. I was once accused of being greedy by an app partner because I wanted to know what their ProAdvisor discount was. They said, “Well, you can pay the same as everyone else; what’s the problem with that?” And I said, “No, but you don’t understand — it’s not like I’m trying to make money out of this.”

I don’t necessarily want to pay for something just to experiment with it. So having, you know, a low or no-cost app is a really great way for us to stress-test it, throw some real-world data at it, maybe try it out on one of our clients on a trial basis. That’s what we’re looking for. And if for some reason it doesn’t work for us, why carry a subscription? So that’s the sort of thing that’s important to me.

Then obviously if there is a program with a discount involved, it gives us the opportunity to maybe build some margin into our services and it’s a win-win, because the app partner gets a new client as well through the process. But also, you know, the ProAdvisors — we’re hard-working people, we have so many choices out there, we spend a lot of our day in non-billable environments. It’s nice to know that maybe all that hard work, there’s some return in that.

So app partners that are receptive to us as private businesses, those are the ones I latch onto. And I’ve mentioned relationships earlier. Relationships are everything to me and I’ll continue using an app partner because they’ve shown faith in me. So when the shiny new toy comes along, I won’t run for the “I need that one” sort of thing.

Laura Redmond: I’ll just add to all of that. When I’m looking for an app, I’m usually looking for some movement of data. It’s going to serve a purpose somewhere in the workflow. And I don’t want to necessarily have a huge and efficient workflow.

So if I’m going to put it into the process, I want it to do something that I’m not solving, to replace some manual work or something like that. So I’m really looking at the feature, what it’s bringing to the table, and how efficiently it’s going to be integrated into the rest of the apps or to a particular app there. So I’m really looking for the functionality on it above all.

Heather Satterley: Absolutely. And to kind of expand on what you said — you know, when I work with a client I do a lot of consulting to help clients find the right app. And it’s really important to look at all the technology that they’re using. And so, you know, some apps I’ll look at their other integrations — so what other applications do they integrate with as well?

And I think that’s really important when you’re thinking about adopting new technology, to do that evaluation for your firm or for your client — what are they doing now? What do their processes look like and how can you enhance it, right? You don’t want to create more work and so that’s super duper important.

Rodrigo Fernandez: Excellent. So I think we’re going to open the session for a couple of questions. Alvina, any questions on your end?

Okay, so one question that we have out there is, “How important is the trial period for you and what’s your ideal time of a trial?

Heather Satterley: So it really depends — for me, anyway — it depends on the technology. So if it’s a, as I call it, “a plug-and-play” app that’s really extracting data out of QuickBooks to, you know, create a dashboard or do reports, it might be okay for [the trial period] to be a little bit shorter.

If it’s an app that’s really a fundamental part of my client’s business or my process, I definitely need a longer trial period — so at least 30 days, sometimes 60 or 90 days. Because if you are adopting a new technology in a very integral part of your business, you need to make absolutely sure that it’s got staying power, right? So it depends. That’s my answer.

Laura Redmond: Yeah, I’ll say that for me, the trial period — it’s really like, “how much can I put other work aside and really focus on it?” I definitely need the trial period because I go to conferences and I talk to a lot of people at the booth. And you can ask them “What kind of data do you push back and forth?” You can ask in detail, “Do you push the custom fields? Do you, do you…”, you know, all sorts of questions. And you still have to go home and try it. So definitely a trial.

I would say though, within the first 24 hours I probably can get a really good grasp on entering some data and pushing it and seeing. But if you want to pull it into your workflow, I’d say 30 days is good. And most of the apps on the app store are gonna do the free trial.

So when I haven’t finished trying it out and 30 days is over, that’s because I got too busy and was working on other stuff. But definitely trying it out is the best way to find out if this is going to solve the pain point you’re looking for.

Brad Celmainis: Couldn’t agree more. 30 days, it’s kind of that minimum. I think 15 days isn’t always enough to really get your head around a specific situation. But I love it when an app partner will say “Okay, your 30 days is up” and you’re like, “I’m not done yet, can I still play around?” And they say “no problem, take it for another 30.” And that’s important sometimes.

I have one client that is just so hard to get locked down to get trained and everything. And I’ve had to extend so many times and it’s over several months now. In fact, we haven’t even started going live yet. So I need another trial before I can almost get it going, but they’re ok with it. You just explain the situation and they work with you. So I need somebody who’s flexible. If it’s just, the day ends and they’re like “Too bad, pull out your credit card,” well…

Laura Redmond: Let me just throw in here. There’s that concept of “trying it out, trial.” Absolutely you need to do that to know how the integration works and the feature set works. And then there’s “free trial.” If it’s 30 days up, I will lay down the money and pay if I didn’t get around to using it during the 30 days. I mean, already at that point I have a pretty good idea that it’s potentially going to solve some problems. I don’t have any problem with paying for the value these apps are offering.

Brad Celmainis: Yeah, I agree.

Robin Hall: So I’m going to add one more thing to that. Not only is it essential to have a trial so our customers can try it. But I think if it’s a product that we’re going to use ongoing and it’s good — that we have a demo account. Not for resale, not necessarily for our use, because I don’t want to demo out our information. But if we have a demo account on there that we can show them and not have to download it, put it on their information and then let them play with it. Sometimes just a demo account is a little bit better so that we can play with the ins and outs of it and then the customer can see that.

Laura Redmond: Only a few apps offer those free trials and they are awesome. Because by the time you try to set up your own private environment to give a demonstration, you’ve done so much work already. And then they might just say no.

Robin Hall: But if it’s one that we’re going to be intricate with and we’re going to put it into our practice — and it sounds like we all kind of work the same, that we find those core ones that work for us — having those demo accounts is key to that so that you’re not reinventing the wheel over and over.

Rodrigo Fernandez: So the trial is important. How important to you are partner programs and what is your ideal partner program for an app?

Robin Hall: So that’s something that I’m exploring right now, being a reseller. I have ProAdvisors underneath me and we have a partner program where we’re helping them find those things. And moving from being just a ProAdvisor to a consultant, and doing consulting of sales with software and with apps and stuff — so having a partner program and investing that time, and setting up the demo, and setting the accounts, and learning the ins and outs, and then saying I’m an extension of your sales force — it should be a compensated portion on there, so having either a discount or a commission back on that.

One of the things I’ve learned early on is as consultants, we sell our time. I haven’t found anywhere that I can buy more hours in the day, so we have to, you know — if we want to raise our income level up, we can either raise our fees up or we can, with the things that we’re already doing, selling the products, earn some money back on that.

So we’re not selling them products or technology just for the sake of selling it. We’re selling them what they need to put into their company. And so getting compensated for that and having a partner program is, I think, very key to that. So that they’re showing a commitment to us just like we’re showing a commitment to them.

Brad Celmainis: I don’t even know how to add to that, because that’s exactly what a partner program should be. We’re partners, we’re strategic partners, we’re business partners. And, you know, I like to think when I’m talking with an app partner — they’re important to my client, they’re important to my business. And I like to know that it’s a reciprocal arrangement, that both sides feel it’s important, so that app partners really show that faith in you as a business owner and there is an incentive to resell or build it in somehow.

That’s important because our time is valuable. So if there’s a very thin partner program with an app, all things equal, I’m gonna go with the app that has the better program and better support. Even if maybe the tool’s not as good, I still feel I’m going to be better supported, hence my clients will be better supported. So it makes you feel good that you’re dealing with a credible company because they’re taking that time to show the value that you bring to the equation and they quantify it in their program.

Laura Redmond: Yeah, I’ll just shout out some of the best features that are just coming to mind off the cuff for partner programs I’ve been involved in. A lot of them will have their own training on the app. How awesome. You can roll out an app and everyone can get trained by that app. And those are usually cloud-based, do-it-yourself, do it on your own time — not so much a live training. But when you bring on new staff, you can have them take that app’s training.

So when we hire new staff, they go through QuickBooks Online certification training, then they hop onto Bill.com and take Bill.com’s training. Then they can get Method certified, you can get Expensify certified. So then I start to know that my staff are experts at this. And they get a badge and it’s a bright and shiny logo you can put on your card, and then you can use that for marketing, right? Your website can show that you’re experts at this.

And the partner programs also will sometimes offer a place on their website where other people go and then they find you from that, right? Referral programs — some of them have wholesale billing opportunities. So partner programs have a lot of options for sharing with us. Because, you know, as the app user, especially supporting multiple clients, we’re going to be the influencers for that app through social media and through our client base.

Heather Satterley: And really it all comes down to the availability of resources, right? So, you know, support resources, resources for training, resources for our clients. And I feel like that’s what really makes a great partner program. Absolutely.

Rodrigo Fernandez: Well, I really want to thank you guys for coming. Love this kind of conversation.

So you guys out there: continue to stay tuned. We have minute-to-minute coverage of this conference, of QuickBooks Connect, so you can visit our blog. And if you have any more questions, you know our guests are on social media — I am sure you know where they are already. So please reach out to them and reach out to us if you have any other questions.

Thank you so much and we look forward to seeing you on our blog. Take care!

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