Adam Larson: 00:21

Hey, everyone. Adam Larson here, and welcome back to Count Me In. Today, I'm joined by Mike Jones, CEO and managing partner at ReSound, an agency known for helping firms build standout brands. In this episode, Mike shares how he got started working with accounting firms and the insights he's gained from building the Remarkabrand Index, a tool that measures how firms differentiate themselves in the marketplace. We dig into why brand differentiation is so important, how it impacts things like firm value, client loyalty and pricing, and the biggest branding mistakes he sees across the industry.

Adam Larson: 00:53

Mike also offers practical advice for firms looking to stand out and explains how branding comes into play during mergers and acquisitions, and when private equity gets involved. So if you want fresh ideas on branding and real strategies to help your firm tell its story, this episodes for you. Let's get started.

Adam Larson: 01:16

Well, Mike, I'm very excited to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for coming on. And I figured we could start off just talking a little bit about your background and kind of what inspired you to help, especially accounting firms.

Mike Jones: 01:26

Yeah, really. The my my story with accounting firms as a marketing agency owner really began in, like, twenty sixteen, seventeen. We actually got our first accounting firm client, and we helped them rebrand. And that kind of introduced me to the industry in a more formal way of, like, oh, there's there's accounting firms, which I knew, but just how do they think? How do they work?

Mike Jones: 01:48

I got really involved in a couple associations, particularly the association for accounting marketing. And as me and my team just got more involved in the industry, started picking up more clients. Really just started noticing that, like, while brands mattered to accounting firms, there was just kind of a a lack of understanding of, like, the value that brand can bring to the table for an accounting firm or for an advisory firm or something like that. And just a trepidation, right, to to take the risk to say, hey. We're going to really improve our brand in the marketplace.

Mike Jones: 02:22

And not just not just, like, the look and feel, but also just, you know, what do we say? Who do we say that we are? What's our position? How do we bring our culture more to bear? I think a lot of accounting firms are very culture based.

Mike Jones: 02:35

They really think about their culture a lot, but they don't always think about how do we how do we tell that story to potential clients? How do we tell that to the market? And so we kind of went all in and said, hey, let's really help this industry as much as we can. And that led us really to start doing a lot of data gathering and start putting out what is now our Remark brand index and say, hey, how can we really showcase where this industry is at from a brand perspective? Let's set the bar and establish that for firms and then maybe encourage them to raise their bar and see where they can go.

Mike Jones: 03:12

And and it's been really fun. I think the last three years that we've been running this index year over year, we've seen improvements from lots of firms. Firms are really, I think, starting to see that they need to invest in their brands in some way, shape or form. That doesn't always mean a rebrand, but really improving the identity of who they are, telling their story better, being clear about their position, about why they do what they do, the value that it delivers. And I think there's a lot of other things in play too.

Mike Jones: 03:40

Private equity has gotten really involved in the industry. I think they're forcing a little bit of some identity crisis for some firms, both on the acquisition side getting acquired by private equity, then also for firms that wanna remain independent, and they really wanna leverage that independence as a key differentiator in the market and have how do we tell that story better for those firms? So that's kinda the the back history in a nutshell. There's lots more details there, but that gives you kind of the two minute version.

Adam Larson: 04:10

Yeah, for sure. And I definitely want to dig into that index a little bit more. But this concept of brand differentiation, why is it so important to differ? I mean, obviously, there's some obviously like, why is it so important to differentiate from other brands? Because you want people to figure out who you are.

Adam Larson: 04:24

But I think it goes more than that.

Mike Jones: 04:26

Yeah. Way more than that. I was actually just having this conversation this morning with a group of accounting firms. But like, I think there's there's three real big ones that are easy for a lot of people to grasp, and that is differentiating your firm, particularly through your brand, right, through the identity of your firm, that story that you're telling, who you help, how you deliver value. One actually produces greater value for your firm.

Mike Jones: 04:47

And I you know, I'm just talking to base a lot of people who are who are very focused on numbers and rightfully so. And when you can say, like, hey. This is actually an investment in your firm that's going to have actual return. Right? So the the value of your firm itself, it's estimated that about 20% on average, 20% of your intellectual property value of your business is your brand.

Mike Jones: 05:11

So if you're investing in intellectual property, which I would hope that you are at some level, why would you not be investing in your brand? Because it actually delivers value to your business should you choose to do an acquisition. When you have two firms coming together in a merger, one of them has to win from a brand perspective. If yours is the more valuable, differentiated, clear brand, you're gonna be able to command a little bit more value at the table, either directly, the actual cash value, or indirectly through how you can, how you get to control that experience moving forward. There's some other big ones, price.

Mike Jones: 05:47

Brand differentiation allows you to have a lot more flexibility of not being stuck in cost based pricing, but really being value based priced and having a lot more opportunity to increase prices, command higher prices without people asking a whole lot of questions, right? We've seen that over and over with clients that we work with where when they're really clear about the expertise they deliver, particularly when they have industry expertise on top of a service level expertise. They win more deals, they win higher price point deals, greater margin, and a lot fewer questions. Those deals happen a lot faster. And then there's also this thing of loyalty.

Mike Jones: 06:28

And I think a lot of firms, when we think of loyalty, we think of like, oh, our best clients who make all these referrals for us. And I you know, that's great. Like, that's what we should be all be aiming at is building a brand that has a great client experience to such a degree that our clients want to actually make referrals for us. But at another level, like one tier down from that, your clients should want to continue to do business with you and do business across service lines. And brand, when you tell that story really well of like how you deliver value, how you're different than everyone else in your, you know, in your industry, how you can deliver a specific value to certain types of clients, you actually get an opportunity to earn not just that one time or that one service, you get an opportunity to earn all the possible business that you could give them.

Mike Jones: 07:22

We've actually seen firms where like when they're doing mergers and acquisitions and they're thinking cross service lines, so they're like, okay, traditional accounting firm, we do tax, we do some audit, maybe we're starting to do some advisory. And they're thinking like, oh, maybe we should add a cyber group, right? Maybe we should add wealth management. Those opportunities become much easier to cross into and start offering to all of your clients when you're really clear about the total value that your brand brings. You can see this reflected in, like, consumer product brands.

Mike Jones: 07:53

This is an easy example that we can all think about and know of. It's like how many SKUs does Nike have? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Is Nike the best at everything that they put out in the market?

Mike Jones: 08:07

Are they the best basketball shorts? No. They're not. Arguably, probably not. Right?

Mike Jones: 08:12

And yet customers buy all of these cross products. Right? And it's because they're not buying the product first and foremost. They're buying the brand. They're buying a relationship of trust that they already have, and they're extending it beyond the one product line that they've already bought.

Mike Jones: 08:31

And, you know, another good example from Nike of this is when they entered the golf market, they had zero products in golf prior to that. Within ten years span, they were the highest grossing golf product company in the world. And that's that's brand to me. I'm like, how do you do that any other way than just have an amazing brand? And when you put that logo on a pair of golf clubs, people are like, great, I'll take it.

Mike Jones: 08:58

Now they figured some things out, you know, the whole like, hey, we're gonna, you know, sponsor an athlete like Tiger Woods, right, or Michael Jordan in basketball, like that model has really worked well for them. That's accelerated that brand trust that they try to gain in new markets. But when you take those kinds of examples and yeah, they're consumer product goods and we could say, hey, there's there's aspects of that that don't translate into accounting and advisory firms. Absolutely, right? But when you think about the strength of brand that Nike has, that absolutely translates to any company in any industry.

Mike Jones: 09:33

And I would argue for accounting firms, your brand is one of your best tools in your toolbox for creating really loyal customers who are gonna stick with you a long time and who are going to grow with you in terms of the services and the different lines that you're gonna offer them over time. So as your firm grows and you add more service lines, you have great opportunities to have those clients grow with you if you have a really strong brand. If you don't have a strong brand, what they'll end up doing is they'll silo you, they'll position you as a service provider of one type of service. So whatever I bought the first time from you is all I know about you. Your brand was so specific to a service line that I can't wrap my head around how you offer something else.

Mike Jones: 10:20

Right? And that's where, like, thinking about your brand is beyond a service. Right? More in line of we have a particular audience that we serve, maybe it's industry niche, or we have a particular way of doing business, or we have certain types of clients we are best suited for. And that's part of our brand, right?

Mike Jones: 10:38

Maybe it's like, hey, saying, hey, we're the accounting firm for small businesses between a million and 5,000,000. Right? Okay. Maybe you could have a few different industries in there, but there's, like, particular challenges that businesses have between those two numbers, and we're really good at solving those. If that's part of your brand, you're gonna have a a really great opportunity to build really long term relationships with those types of clients.

Mike Jones: 11:00

So there's lots more you could talk about. Just the value of, like, saying you're different and looking different, sounding different, making a choice easier for a client. You know, one of the fascinating aspects of the human brain is that it's actually wired to conserve calories, and decision making costs Us calories. Okay. So the longer a decision make the longer it takes to make a decision, the more our brains start to actually look for shortcuts.

Mike Jones: 11:30

How can I get out of this decision making cycle faster? And if you don't have any difference of choice, right, all these choices look the same to me. One of the easiest shortcuts that our brains look for is price. Mhmm. And that's why, like I mean, just think about last time you were in a cereal aisle and you didn't have a plan, didn't have a preference.

Mike Jones: 11:53

And you go in and you're like, oh my goodness. There's like a million choices. I don't know what to pick. Right? What do you gravitate towards?

Mike Jones: 12:00

Most people gravitate towards that little red or yellow tag on the on the, you know, display that shows me that I'm I'm getting a deal. Right? I could pick from all of these, but I'm gonna go pick the one that's cheapest. Right? And start looking for, like, a price per ounce.

Mike Jones: 12:15

So if you wanna be in cost, lowest cost, that's the way you're gonna differentiate, great. But I don't think I know too many firms that wanna do that. And so if you really wanna not have cost be the issue, you need to differentiate through other things. Yeah. You need to look at how your brand can really allow the client to make a decision faster.

Adam Larson: 12:35

Yeah, I think your explanation has been really insightful and you've definitely learned a lot by building this index. So talking about the index, what exactly does it measure and why build an index in the first place? Those are the two things I wanted to ask you.

Mike Jones: 12:48

So the measurement is differentiation. So it's not a total like, I think some people have thought, oh, it's a total score of my entire brand experience. And I would argue, no, it's probably not that. Because there's things that I'd wanna see that I can't know unless we have a conversation. For someone to say, oh, you know, I wanna put a value on my brand or I wanna put like a ranking on my entire identity as an organization.

Mike Jones: 13:16

Well, things like values start to come into that conversation. What's the personality, the behavior, traits? What are some of those, like, kind of less tangible aspects of brand? But one thing that we can definitely measure from the outside for almost any brand is what does it look like? What does it sound like?

Mike Jones: 13:37

And then there's some digital metrics that tell us whether they're getting exposure, right, reach. And so that's what we've tried to do is collect data on accounting firms. We have almost 1,400 sorry, almost 1,500 accounting firms. And we're now in our third year. We'll have our new index.

Mike Jones: 13:54

We've we've collected over 40 data points on each one, everything from logo, colors, fonts, taglines, website experience, some more, like, data driven pieces of of information, like page speed scores for how fast the websites are, which is an amalgamation of, like, what the experience is like. Some some search engine optimization scoring around domain authority, which is actually a third party score from a a firm called Maz that we use, as well as off-site links. So who's linking back to you? How much authority do they have? Which is an amalgamation of like, hey.

Mike Jones: 14:31

Do you have reach with your brand online? And are those credible sources that are that are, you know, talking about you or publishing about you? There's a few other data points. We started collecting a lot of data over the last two years on social media. So particularly LinkedIn, because I think that's where a lot of accounting firms are focused.

Mike Jones: 14:49

And the data backs that up. When we look at, you know, just follower counts, even looking at like things like follower count per employee. So really trying to take the size out of the equation a little bit. Size does matter, but it also doesn't matter for great brands. I think there are fantastic brands out there.

Mike Jones: 15:09

You don't have to be, you know, one of the big four to have a fantastic brand. Now, granted, I will get let you in on a little secret. The the big four are the top four in our index, And some of that comes down to their reach is so great. Yeah. And because that's still a part of our scoring.

Mike Jones: 15:26

But our score is really trying to it is trying to point out how you're different. Right? So between reach and identity. So, like, how different are your colors? How different are the fonts that you use in your collateral?

Mike Jones: 15:38

How different is your your social media following? And some even words used in your tagline. So we do some analysis around that. And that's really what we're trying to do is put out there a score that maybe is helpful for firms to know, like, how different are we? Are we are we able to kind of cut through and create a sense of personality and difference from our competition in the marketplace.

Mike Jones: 16:02

And then on top of that, like as we study that data and we look at the top ranked firms in the data, what are they doing that we can learn from that maybe can be extrapolated down for other firms that wanna wanna maybe improve that that different score? So that could be things like you know, one of the things we found was top firms don't use acronyms anywhere near as much as lower ranked firms. They invest in SEO and search engine optimization. We've even started collecting data. We don't this won't be public for another couple months, but we started collecting data this year on what technology stacks from a marketing perspective do all these firms use and particularly interested in in the top firms, the top 20% of our index.

Adam Larson: 16:50

Mhmm.

Mike Jones: 16:51

What are they using? So we have some really interesting data still come coming out this year. Yeah. That's that was kind of the the preface of it. And some of it was just, hey.

Mike Jones: 17:00

Let's start measuring and put a measurement on these things, and then now firms can benchmark themselves.

Adam Larson: 17:05

Mhmm.

Mike Jones: 17:06

And not only benchmark themselves across the industry, but we can benchmark ourselves to a number from last year to this year to the next year. Are we seeing improvement?

Adam Larson: 17:15

Yeah. And I could see the possibility of somebody looking at the index and noticing that, hey, that firms across town. Wait, we have similar colors. We have similar this.

Mike Jones: 17:24

Yep.

Adam Larson: 17:24

How can I differentiate myself from my competition in my local area? And it could be a way to kind of help build yourself up and and learn about yourself in a way.

Mike Jones: 17:32

Yeah. And we actually interesting enough, we use this data with a lot of our clients, too.

Adam Larson: 17:38

Okay. So

Mike Jones: 17:39

when they asked us to do competitive research, the first thing we do is go pull all their competitors from the index. We'll do some additional data gathering because there's things that you can't measure as easily.

Adam Larson: 17:50

Yeah.

Mike Jones: 17:50

Some more qualified analysis. You know, one of them that we have yet to solve yet, I'm excited. I'm hopeful that I think maybe next year we'll be able to solve, which is, you know, how does each firm kind of talk about the industries and the services that they offer and how different is that from other firms. And so, you know, even just like looking at like saturation of industries and that kind of thing, I think would be some really interesting data for a lot of firms to look at. We do that more on a qualified basis.

Adam Larson: 18:20

Yeah.

Mike Jones: 18:21

But hopefully we can start to track that on a more quantifiable basis. That would be really cool.

Adam Larson: 18:27

That would be really cool. So you've been learning a lot and you've been sharing a lot. Are there some maybe you could share some maybe common branding mistakes that you've seen, especially with all the data you've been gathering.

Mike Jones: 18:38

Yeah. I alluded to one already. Acronyms. Yep. This is a really big one.

Mike Jones: 18:42

I I get it. I understand why firms trend towards acronyms. It's just easy. You know, you've got a you've got a name built out of four, you know, founders or four partners that have been senior in the, and they're probably all gone, right? They're all out of the business.

Mike Jones: 18:57

And it's just easier politically in the firm to just do the acronym. It's probably already happened without you even knowing it or really consciously deciding to do it. Everyone wants to shorten down long names. And so one way to shorten a name is to make an acronym out of multiple words. The problem is acronyms are just, they just don't live in someone's head in an ownable way unless they spell something.

Mike Jones: 19:23

Yeah. So you think of like great acronym names like NASA or GEICO. Those are fantastic because they actually are pronounceable names. They don't necessarily mean anything. You infuse that meaning over time, but they're still a word essentially.

Mike Jones: 19:36

Right? It creates a new word, an invented word. But when you just have three or four random letters smashed together, that's really hard for people to remember and to put meaning, like apply a meaning to that. It can happen, you know? The big four are a good example of that.

Mike Jones: 19:52

You spend a long enough amount of time and enough money with enough reach, you can kind of overcome that.

Adam Larson: 20:00

But

Mike Jones: 20:01

what we're seeing is that acronyms for the most differentiated brands are going away. They're finding new names. I think Apprio is a great example of that going to, you know, a new name that that really is doesn't really mean anything, and that's fine. Inventor names are great, but, you know, something pronounceable, something ownable, something short. So names names are one.

Mike Jones: 20:22

We also see, like, I mean, this won't be a surprise to anyone, but blue is, like, the heaviest used used color across the industry. I mean, it's, like, order of magnitude higher than any other color. So if you are relying on you know, blue is your primary brand color. There's just you're probably gonna have a hard time differentiating through your color. And so we've been looking a lot at, like, what are other colors?

Mike Jones: 20:50

Like, surprisingly, even green is not used as much as I would have thought in an industry that deals so much with finance and money. So there's opportunity there, you know, bright, vibrant colors with energy, orange and red. I think for maybe the wrong reason have been shied away from. I think, you know, when a lot of people think accounting, they think, oh, I want to be compliance driven, risk averse, safe. And I think a lot of people gravitate towards blue when they start thinking about what they're trying to communicate as a firm because that seems like a really safe color.

Mike Jones: 21:24

But the reality is, customer, and specific just your clients in general, all have very different subjective views to color. So to say like you have this overarching, like this color, like, red always means power. I don't know that that's you can make that gross generalization. And especially in kind of the the hyper culturally aware fractured digital world that we live in, where every color can kind of be subsumed in almost any way, I think you have an opportunity to take any color that fits you. You know, it has some level of meaning, but go grab something that's different, that's interesting, and own it.

Mike Jones: 22:04

And then you infuse it with the meaning that you wanna give it over time. You know, a little bit of a stretch there. I don't know that red's always gonna be, like, the safe color. But if you wanna, like, have some energy and and utilize that as part of your differentiation, like, hey. Maybe we have a a more personable, relational aspect to our brand.

Mike Jones: 22:23

Red's a great color for that. Orange is a great color for that. So we're kinda getting the weeds now, but that's the stuff I live and breathe. So yeah.

Adam Larson: 22:31

Yeah, you could tell that's a I've never thought so much about that color could affect so many things, you know, and I kind of chuckle to myself when you're saying red. Not a lot of accounting firms use red, but, you know, reds red could be negative to them because, know, in the in the Excel spreadsheet red a is a negative number. That could be why people shy away from it. You know, I don't know. That's just a theory.

Adam Larson: 22:53

Don't have any No.

Mike Jones: 22:55

It's probably a good one. I like it. And again, like that comes back to like how you use it too. Yes. Like Yes.

Mike Jones: 23:00

Maybe if you have red, don't put a bunch of red numbers on your website, right? Use a different color when communicating numbers, knowing that. But there's a way to use red. I mean, are firms that use it, and some higher ranked firms in our index too. So I wouldn't say there's a color that's like, oh, no one's using it.

Mike Jones: 23:19

And therefore you have an opportunity. Probably on the spectrum of color, like purple's a big one that there's So in terms of fewer firms using it, purples and pinks, that kind of color, somewhere in there. Yellow is a little bit less used. I know Ian Y uses it. Some of that also has to do with just functionality.

Mike Jones: 23:37

Yellow is a harder color to see. And so how you apply it gets a lot trickier. Yeah, those are just a couple. I think our last report from last year, we had, I think, 16 different insights that we pulled, and I'm sure we could have pulled even more and published. And we're working right now on our 2025 edition of the index.

Mike Jones: 24:00

We've we've got all the data. We're sifting through it right now and and doing some analysis, and and we'll have our new report here in about a month on May 12. So that'll be just access that on your website? They can. If they go to remarkabrand.com, that's the best and easiest way to go find that report.

Mike Jones: 24:16

It'll be really clear right there. And you can even sign up now if people wanna go check it out and get on the the prerelease list. And then you can also get access to last year's report when you sign up. So so I encourage everybody to check

Adam Larson: 24:30

a link in the show notes to check out that to check out that report. I wanted to circle back to something you mentioned. You talked a little bit about mergers and acquisitions, and, you know, that's a that's a big that's happening a lot now with the way the markets are going. A lot of companies are getting swooped up. You know, can we talk a little bit about what that impact is on a brand's identity and what you should consider when you're going in that if you're going down that road?

Mike Jones: 24:52

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. A lot of people concerned about that in various ways, right? I think one is if you're the acquiring firm. So I want to take that kind of perspective for a moment first.

Mike Jones: 25:07

Your brand is the one that's gonna win, right? Like you're acquiring them, they're gonna roll up most likely into your brand. And so there's like questions around like how closely aligned are they already? So I'd be evaluating things like, you know, what are their core values compared to yours? Where are their differences in how they live those out behaviorally?

Mike Jones: 25:29

So it's one thing to say, oh, our core value is excellence, and their core value is excellence. But what does that mean, and what does that really look like on a day to day basis for those two firms? Because when you merge them in, they're now need to live by your set of values and your personality and your style and your behavioral systems of your firm. And if they are so drastically different that there's gonna be a lot of friction in that process, you're gonna see a ton of turnover. It's it's estimated, like, on average in other industries, when you do an acquisition or a merger, 80% of the staff will turn out in three years from the acquired firm.

Adam Larson: 26:09

Wow.

Mike Jones: 26:10

And so, like, if you don't have a plan beforehand, even as you're in conversations with another firm about acquiring them or merging them in, about really how different are we. And doesn't that doesn't mean don't acquire them. It doesn't mean, like, don't merge them. The numbers might all make sense. It might be the right play, but know what the work is gonna look like on the back end so that you can realize as much of the talent as possible.

Mike Jones: 26:35

I mean, the expectation is probably never that you're gonna keep a 100% of everybody.

Adam Larson: 26:39

Of course.

Mike Jones: 26:40

That just never happens and probably for good reasons. But maybe shoot for 80%, right? Or at the very least know like, hey, to go in and tell the acquired firm, things are gonna be different. You know, We're not polar opposites from you, but there's some differences in how we do things. Let's talk about that so you have the best and easiest transition possible.

Mike Jones: 27:04

We'd love for you to continue to work here and be a part of what we're doing. So let's make that as easy as possible. It's gonna be different though. There's gonna be some change. And when we get into the weeds of what those things look like from a behavioral cultural standpoint, which really is an expression of your brand, right?

Mike Jones: 27:20

I know. I think sometimes we think brand is just, oh, that's just the stuff that goes on the website. It's the stuff that, you know, the logo on the building. And I argue like brand starts with your culture. It starts with what you believe, the vision that you have of where you're going, the purpose that you have as an organization, and then how you communicate that and build that over time.

Mike Jones: 27:40

And that should obviously flow out into your marketing, but it really starts inside with your culture. And so that's a big one, I think, for a lot of firms is just how do we align our cultures and then be truthful about it. Like, I think there's a lot of acquisitions and mergers where the acquiring firm is like, Oh no, it'll be great. It'll be easy. You guys are the same as us.

Mike Jones: 28:04

It's like, yeah, maybe superficially, maybe at a certain level you are, but when you get in the weeds, nope, it's different. And honestly, you're probably gonna have a much better transition period if you're just honest about what the transition's gonna look like as much as you can, as much as you can know. People are accepting of change as long as it's communicated well Mhmm. You know, for the most part. So the change management is a big is a big portion of that.

Mike Jones: 28:33

You know, lots of questions around, like, you know, you do a merger, less of, like, a true acquisition, but you're doing kind of like, we're gonna merge these two firms together, stock exchange rate or whatever shareholder exchange of of value. There's no cash on the table. Then you get into questions like which brand wins, which brand kinda becomes the brand moving forward. And I see a lot of firms struggling with that. Some of them will just, like, put the two names together.

Mike Jones: 28:57

And there's just big challenges I have with that. One is like, I get it, I understand it. There's equity in both brands. You don't wanna lose that. But the reality is within three to five years, only one of those is gonna be left.

Mike Jones: 29:08

Like this happens in every industry over and over and over again. You mash two brands together, one name ends up winning because at the end of the day, it's the law of simplicity that wins out. Clients, customers, your prospects, they can't remember two names as well as they can remember one. And so probably whichever name you were inclined to put first is the actual name you should just do. Now there's a communication plan that's required.

Mike Jones: 29:36

Maybe that does take a little bit of time to phase that in. But this whole, like, oh, we're just gonna, like, split it down the middle and keep both brands alive somehow, I think is a it's very inefficient. You're just delaying the inevitable, which is that one of you is gonna win out. And it has to because it needs to be simple. There's a whole another scenario that I've been talking a lot about lately and thinking about and working with some clients on, and that is for independent firms that don't wanna be acquired by private equity and maybe want to leverage that independence as a value against private equity.

Mike Jones: 30:12

They might still be doing mergers and acquisitions. So all those things I just said story on play, but I think there's this other layer now in the accounting industry, specifically with just so much private equity getting dumped into the industry and being so active that there's actually an opportunity for a lot of independent firms to create some really winning strategies. There's a lot of concern on the client side of firms being acquired by private equity or being acquired by big firms who are owned by private equity. Because they look at it and they go, man, I'm gonna lose all the relationship. I'm gonna lose all this great client experience that you've been able to develop and deliver for me.

Mike Jones: 30:50

It's gonna become transactional. That's the fear. And I think if you are still independent and you can deliver a nontransactional relationship driven client experience, you've got some really cool opportunity in the next five years to probably leverage that in your brand and in your marketing in such a way to really make the case that you shouldn't stick with the big firm that you're at now, client. You need to come over and work with us because we can really take care of you and we can really develop a long term relationship for you. Something that they probably want and want delivered.

Mike Jones: 31:23

The other challenge too is private equity firms, a lot of them are doing roll ups. So they're gonna roll up tons of firms in the next five years. And all those firms are gonna have different niches that they're in. And so the main brand, the platform brand that they're rolling everybody up into is gonna lack specificity. It's just going to be like, yeah, we do these things.

Mike Jones: 31:49

We do these accounting services. What's the value to the end client? How does it help them in their particular situation? Is there any like, oh, you've got deep expertise in my industry. You really understand businesses just like mine because you've done it over and over and over again.

Mike Jones: 32:05

And the people on my account really understand this industry really well. And nine times out of 10, I think the answer is no, they don't. And then I think another kind of key challenge for private equity backed firms is going to be recruitment. Yeah. And that actually just came up on a call I had today with a bunch of accounting firms of I think that's a great opportunity actually for independently owned firms to really say, hey.

Mike Jones: 32:31

We can create an experience for you as someone on staff. And if you're on partner track, you've got a great opportunity to to have some good financial wins are gonna be a lot harder to find if you're going to a really big firm that's private equity backed. And, yeah, it'll be interesting. Really interesting to kinda see where this industry goes over the next five years. It keeps keeps me excited, keeps me thinking.

Mike Jones: 32:56

Lots of opportunity for everybody to kind of keep keep trying things, innovating, changing. There's nothing static, which is great. So I like it, at least. Not a

Adam Larson: 33:07

good Yeah, for sure. It'll be interesting to see if you can add, like, something to the index about, like, you know, impact on new the new generation coming in and how much reach they can get to those that new generation. Because, you know, obviously when you're in the accounting industry, you know, you hear about the big four. Those are names that we all know, But you won't know number, you know, seven twenty seven on your list because it's probably some mom and pop shop or some name with like three names or whatever. And so it's it's it's it's educating the next generation that there's more than just those big four.

Mike Jones: 33:37

Yeah. And I think that's where a lot of firms have a ton of opportunity to invest in channels from a marketing and recruitment standpoint that maybe they've been afraid of.

Adam Larson: 33:48

Yeah.

Mike Jones: 33:49

You know, it's it's one of the reasons why I think podcasts are booming so much within the accounting industry. And then beyond that, I think YouTube's another big channel that's up and coming, and I'm seeing some smaller firms really getting a ton of leverage out of YouTube, both from from a marketing, you know, a client acquisition standpoint and from a recruitment standpoint. When you think about younger generations and like where they gravitate towards finding information, learning about things, where their kind of social networks lie in a digital first world, you know, it's not even places like LinkedIn anymore, as much as I love LinkedIn and I tell my clients like invest there. But if you're looking at like, you know, the youngest generations that you're gonna be starting to recruit, they don't have LinkedIn profiles yet. You have to teach them how to do that.

Mike Jones: 34:36

They're gonna be, you know, they're gonna be on TikTok. They're gonna be on other platforms. Even interestingly enough, like even Reddit is probably a place I think a lot of firms need to start thinking about.

Adam Larson: 34:49

Yeah. Interesting.

Mike Jones: 34:52

If you look at even just like Google rankings, they've been, like, marching up the rankings for lots of questions that people ask. And then as we get into this AI driven world where AI is gonna drive a lot of discovery. Right? You know, hey. I'm I'm looking for a job, chat GPT.

Mike Jones: 35:08

What are, like, the best accounting firms for me to go talk to that are in my city? Like, that's an interesting question, right? If you're not prepared for being in those results and how to get there, I think firms are gonna have a hard time. You know, I think it was estimated that like the the fastest growing search engines in the world are now AI tools, like ChatGPT and Claude and Copilot. So and, know, right now they're still piggybacking off of, you know, Google search and other things like that, but they're building their own indexes as well.

Mike Jones: 35:43

And so I think pretty quickly we're gonna see a lot of things shift into, you know, like, you know, it's like Apple integrates AI into Siri. You know, how many people are going to be searching with Siri moving forward? And it won't run through a traditional search engine. It'll run through some AI index. So it's going to be really it's an interesting, fun, fun world we live in right now.

Adam Larson: 36:07

It really is. And Mike, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's been really interesting talking through this, and it's not something that we always talk about is finance and accounting professionals, but it's something that we need to be aware of and be mindful of, whether you're within an organization who is just an accounting firm and you're trying to brand that or you're in a larger corporation that does a lot of other things. We need to be aware of how our firm's identity is out there into the world and so we can get new clients and all those things. So I really appreciate you sharing your insights today.

Mike Jones: 36:36

Thank you, Adam. Thanks for having me. This was fantastic. Really

Announcer: 36:47

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