Karen Reyburn wants accountants to stop thinking “about marketing as this one-off thing where you tick little boxes,” but instead about the ways you can use your marketing to connect to the human experience. Her company, The Profitable Firm, or PF for short, has been helping accountants with their marketing since 2012.
In Reyburn’s view, marketing is closely connected to the business. “If you have a marketing problem, you have a business problem. If you have a business problem, there’s often a marketing solution that can help with it.”
This book springs out of a PF coaching group called The Accelerator, where participants were guided through a process of creating a structured approach to content marketing that made their marketing better. Reyburn and PF take a collaborative approach to marketing. “We don’t do marketing for people,” she explained. “We do marketing with them.”
Glen Harper, CPA, says businesses should be willing to reinvent themselves and that diverse perspectives can be a valuable asset. The owner of Harper & Company CPAs should know: He’s had to embrace both philosophies to become successful.
In a recent episode of Transformation Talks, Harper tells host Donny Shimamoto, CPA, CITP, CGMA, who is also the founder and managing director of Intraprise TechKnowlogies LLC and the founder of the Center for Accounting Transformation, that a good advisor can help you see your business from a different perspective and identify opportunities that you may have missed. He said after some self-reflection, he needed what his successful clients already had–a CEO.
While firms and accountants continue to lament staffing challenges and research continues into finding workable solutions for firms and finance teams of all sizes, one idea that is beginning to gain more traction has less to do with education versus experience and more to do with marketing.
David Bergstein, CPA, CITP, CGMA, discussed the future of the profession, specifically the ongoing discourse surrounding the perceived necessity of a fifth year in accounting education.
Bergstein challenged the conventional wisdom surrounding the 150-hour requirement for CPA eligibility, suggesting that the industry’s primary challenge lay not in the academic threshold but in the misperception of accounting as a lackluster career. “We’re beating a horse that’s almost dead,” he remarked, questioning the emphasis on extending education rather than redefining the profession’s image.
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