The accounting world is changing. Entry-level positions are being outsourced and automated, pushing firms toward advisory services. Results from traditional marketing methods are fading, and great accounting talent is harder than ever to find and keep at your firm. What’s the connection between becoming an excellent client advisor, communicating your firm’s unique value to the world, and keeping your people motivated and fulfilled?
The answer: communication strategy that elevates an ordinary message to the extraordinary. That’s what we do here at Speaking of Numbers, the podcast where we empower accounting executives and advisors to go beyond the numbers to become confident, memorable communicators and thought leaders. When you do, you become the trusted expert in your field, the obvious choice for your clients, and a hero to yourself and your team.
About the host: Jeff Bartsch spent over 20 years in Hollywood shaping content for clients including ABC, NBC, Disney, Apple, Netflix, and many others. As it turns out, being a professional storyteller in Hollywood was just one version of a deeper understanding of communication that Jeff has spent his entire life learning and teaching to others.
Accounting may have been around forever, but it’s facing changes and pressures like never before. In this episode, Jeff details the challenges facing advisors, marketing leaders, and people leaders in the accounting industry – while setting the stage for the ideas that he’s used with his own clients to increase revenue, multiply human-centered thought leadership marketing content, and increase team members’ value to the company AND personal fulfillment.
Story feels very familiar, because it is. We're surrounded by it every day of our life. But very few people know that story exists both on the tactical level and the strategic level.
When we understand and unlock the power of strategic story, it changes absolutely everything about how we relate with absolutely anyone. Our communication becomes very good for us, and very good for the people we serve... which means it becomes VERY good for business.
Every moment of every day, our brains are sorting through an insane number of inputs, trying to make sense of the world. As we do, we end up connecting all sorts of meaning to everything we experience, from the most basic object – or number – to the most complex idea. When we discover those connections and even create connections of our own, we have an incredibly powerful tool for creating emotional bonds between us and the people we serve.
And when people feel positive emotions towards you and your business, that's when they pay attention, conversations continue, and people say yes to what you're offering them, when you know the answer to this question: What is The Thing Under the Thing?
What if I told you there was a moral, ethical, and scientifically proven way to change the brains of people you’re talking to such that they end up liking you, trusting you, and doing business with you? Imagine potential clients saying “yes, I want to work with YOU instead of anyone else”, existing clients and team members saying “I believe that YOU actually understand me, let’s keep working together.” Happy clients, happy advisors, happy team, happy business.
But when most people hear about this scientifically proven way to change people’s brains that makes people say “yes”, they usually think one of two things: “Oh, that won’t work for business” or “That might work for some people, but I could never do that.”
Well, check out this episode, because I’ve been practicing these skills in one form or another for over 40 years at this point, my advisor clients are doing it for themselves, and I’m about to show YOU how to do it too.
In a perfect world, we would all explain what we want, people would agree without raising a fuss, AND everyone would go home happy.
BUT as it turns out, life isn’t that simple, and neither are people.
THEREFORE an amazing communication tool raises its hand and says, “Ooh ooh! I can help with that!” It’s a 3-letter acronym with ideas that are simple to learn, trickier to implement well, but incredibly clear and persuasive when you do.
Hint: I just used it.
Look up the definition of “thought leadership,” and you won’t get a single answer. That’s because nobody can agree on exactly what it is. But what if I told you that if you interact with clients or team members, you already are a thought leader, for better or worse?
When we change the way we look at thought leadership, we find a whole new world of ways to become the trusted expert in our field, the obvious choice for our clients, and a hero to ourselves and our team.
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