Episode 158 | How To Get Free Leads: Proven Strategies That Work! With Scott Scarano

About This Episode

If you are looking for ways to attract new clients without a large marketing budget, this episode is worth your time. Scott Scarano grew his accounting practice from just under $100,000 in revenue to close to $2 million over roughly a decade by investing time rather than money into lead generation.
Scott is the owner of a Padgett franchise firm in Raleigh, North Carolina, with about 10 employees. He is also the creator of the Accounting High podcast, and he has stepped back from the day-to-day operations of his firm so he can focus on that and other creative projects.

In this conversation, Scott and Michelle walk through the three main channels that fueled his firm’s growth: Google Business Profile, the Xero advisor directory, and content creation. None of them required ad spend. All of them required showing up consistently and paying attention to what was actually working.

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Listen to the podcast here

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Key Takeaways

• How setting up and optimizing a Google Business Profile, including professional photos and a deliberate strategy for gathering client reviews, drove a significant share of Scott’s early lead flow
• Why Scott got into the Xero advisor directory early, when there were fewer competitors listed, and how that generated leads from clients across the country who were looking for accountants willing to work with Xero
• How to ask for reviews in a way that actually works: catch people at the moment they give you a compliment, have the link ready, and ask them to pay it forward so the next client can find you
• Why identifying your ideal client persona and the specific problems you solve is the foundation for content-driven lead generation, and why skipping that step makes it harder to attract the right people
• How to tell when a lead channel is not working and when to shift your attention elsewhere, based on what clients tell you about how they found you

This Episode Is Best For Firm Owners Who Are Struggling With

• Wanting to generate more leads but not having a budget for paid advertising
• Having a Google Business Profile that is not optimized and not generating inbound interest
• Being listed in advisor directories but not standing out or getting inquiries
• Creating content but not seeing it translate into leads or qualified conversations
• Knowing they should niche down but feeling pulled in too many directions to commit

Featured Strategy: Show Up Where Clients Are Already Looking

The core of Scott’s approach is meeting potential clients where they are already looking rather than trying to pull them to you. In the early years of his firm, that meant getting his Google Business Profile set up correctly, getting professional photos taken of his team, and asking satisfied clients to leave reviews in the moment they expressed a compliment.

When the Xero advisor directory was newer and less crowded, Scott invested the same attention there that he had given to Google. Because Xero populated results based on client addresses, his firm started appearing in searches from clients across the country who were using Xero and could not find an accountant willing to work with it. At the height of that channel, the firm was receiving around 15 to 20 leads a week.

Scott is clear that nothing is ever truly free. Every channel he describes required a real investment of time and consistent effort. What made the difference was paying close attention to where leads were actually coming from, stopping what was not working, and doubling down on what was.

About Scott Scarano

Scott Scarano is the owner of a Padgett franchise accounting firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. He took over the practice in 2010 and grew it from just under $100,000 in revenue to approximately $550,000 in five years, then to $1 million in roughly another year and a half. He is currently approaching $2 million in revenue, with a team of about 10 employees. Scott has stepped back from the day-to-day operations of the firm to focus on the Accounting High podcast and other creative projects. He lives in Raleigh with his wife Juana and their three children, Julia, Frankie, and Arya.

Ready to Convert the Leads You Are Already Getting?

Generating leads is a marketing problem. Converting them is a sales problem. If you are attracting inquiries but struggling to turn them into clients at the fees you want to charge, the next step is building a sales process that works consistently.

Learn more about The Abundant Accountant’s 8-Week Sales Mastery Training & Coaching Program and how it helps Accounting, Bookkeeping, Tax, and Advisory Firm Owners stop competing on price and start closing better-fit clients at higher fees.

Visit TheAbundantCall.com to book your call.

Resources Mentioned

• TheAbundantCall.com
• Scott Scarano on LinkedIn
• Accounting High
• Abundant Accountant on Apple Podcasts

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Episode 158 | How To Get Free Leads: Proven Strategies That Work! With Scott Scarano

Welcome to the show. We have a very special guest. Our special guest did the school thing, got all the credentials, has a real accounting firm, but also started a podcast called Accounting High to really push through any adversity in the space of the accounting and tax world. He’s also an OK rapper. Our special guest lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, and also dedicates himself to his wife and his three amazing kiddos, Julia, Frankie, and Aria.

Before we welcome our special guest, if you are a smart, hardworking tax bookkeeping or accounting firm owner, and you think the way to get new leads or retain your current clients is to keep your fees low, do free work, or simply work more hours, it’s just not true. We both know that ends up in burnout, resentment, and being underpaid and undervalued. The firm owners I work with charge premium fees and ethically double or even triple their fees with their current clients using a much newer and far simpler method that we’ve created here at The Abundant Accountant.

That allows firm owners to not only charge higher fees but get paid upfront, never have accounts receivable, and giving them total financial security with more disposable cash in the bank and having the freedom they’ve always wanted in their firm. If you’re ready to make the change and start creating the firm of your dreams, head on over to TheAbundantCall.com and book your call with me and my team. Now, let’s welcome Scott Scarano to the show.

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Welcome, Scott, to the show.

What’s up? How’s it going, Michelle? Thanks for having me back.

I’m excited to have you back and talk about how you got some free leads and the difference between what you thought marketing was in your firm and what you think sales was and how you deciphered the two. Just share how you got free leads.

Nothing is ever free. Let’s be careful about that.

Scott Scarano On Accounting High And Entrepreneurship

I know. You either pay for it or you invest your time. We’re going to talk about how you invested your time, probably mostly. Before we get started, for those that don’t know you, can you share real quick, 30 seconds. I’ve already done your intro, but I always think it’s best to hear it just directly from you. Who you are and also the firm you had and have and created, even though you’re not full-time in it anymore. Also, let me know a little bit about your podcast that you have.

I’m Scotty OKR Scarano or just Scott, depending on my mood or whatever you want to call me. This is my second time on the show, so I’m very privileged to be here for a second. If you want to hear more about that, my journey, you can check out that first one. I’ve been the owner of my practice for about ten years now. I live in Raleigh, North Carolina. I’ve got three kids and ten employees, and I also have a podcast show that we call Accounting High.

We do a lot of fun stuff. I just recently also became an OK rapper. That’s my acronym there, OKR. Get a lot of things I do, but most of it is focused on fun for the accounting profession. We do fun stuff at Accounting High. We have a tournament going on that the abundant accountant might be participating in. Stay tuned for that. The Accounting High stuff is really what fuels me up. We got a podcast and all the podcast players and a YouTube channel.

Scott’s Journey To Growing His Accounting Firm

Cool. Why don’t we dive a little bit into your firm because that’s going to relate to most of the accounting tax and bookkeeping firm owners reading and sharing how you grew your firm. Maybe you can share the growth trajectory as well from where you started to what the firm’s doing now. How you were able to exit and not be full-time in it and work on all of these other elements that inspire you every single day. You still have a pulse on the firm. We’ll talk about how you grew it from the lead generation standpoint.

For sure. Maybe we can be clear on some of the numbers, too, because that also helps guide the conversation.

Let’s start with the numbers where you started the firm, which was, I think, at $0 to where you own it now.

I’m almost at 2 million. When I got started, I started in about 2010, and it wasn’t at zeros it was at about 90,000 when I started at the firm. Just under a hundred thousand, and we grew it to about 550,000 in five years. That was just me experimenting, being the one who was just let loose to grow the firm, grow the practice on my own. It was just me and the owner, and he was absentee at the time. I grew it, and then I bought it from him around that time, 2015.

From there, we grew to a million pretty quickly. It didn’t take us that long. Maybe about a year and a half from 550,000 to a million. We got stuck at 1.2 million, and I’m out of the practice now. I’m letting it run on its own while I do this Accounting High stuff. That’s the long and the short of it as far as the numbers go. I’m making a lot of money. It’s very profitable, and it doesn’t require me, but it took a lot of work to get there.

I think that’s a vision that a lot of firm owners that I have calls with when they come to The Abundant Accountant they want to sell for a high multiple in the future. They want to create a retirement, create that residual income work part-time, and have the firm run itself. I feel that you’ve been able to create that in your life and do the things that you’re really loving and passionate about. I’m curious. When you said you were stuck at 1.2 million, how did you get it to 2 million? What did you see as the path to increasing that extra 800,000 in revenue?

I did a whole episode on this. I got out of the way and let my team take over and set up the right systems that would work without me. What happened was I hit a ceiling, and every time I tried to change something, something else broke because everything required me. That was how I got past that was getting out of the way. That was mainly what we talked about because it was important lessons learned like along the way and how you may not be as important as you think to a lot of these processes and a lot of the systems in the firm. We may think we’re the only ones that can do that, but that was me getting in my own way.

You can listen to that in the other episode that we did. Just Google Scott’s name on our website or do the search, and it’ll pop up. I cannot remember what episode number it is off the top of my head.

It was on December 23, I think, when this came out.

How Scott Generated Free Leads For His Firm

Check December of 2023 on TheAbundantAccountant.com. Let’s talk about before you stepped away and how you were able to get free leads. I know nothing’s free, but these are things you didn’t physically have to come out of pocket for money-wise and how you were able to grow the client list and the client base with the quality leads that you were looking for. I get this all the time.

I see people on our application they say, “What’s the biggest challenge with your sales process in your firm?” The answer is, “I need more leads.” I’m like, “That’s not a sales problem, but that’s a marketing problem.” I know you had some unique ways to work on the marketing aspect because if we’re talking about leads, that’s marketing. What did you do before you stepped out of the day-to-day and got out of your own way?

I’m a cheap accountant. I don’t like to spend money on stuff. I figured I could do it myself. That’s what I did to get business. I never thought I needed to spend money on marketing, and I never really did. It was always just figuring out what we needed to do and rolling my sleeves up and doing it because I’d rather spend the time than spend the money. That’s how I always used to be. I don’t recommend that. I don’t think that’s the best way of doing it, but it’s the truth.

That’s how I got all the free leads because I would rather put in the work and spend the extra time figuring things out, too. Early on, the best way to get leads is by word of mouth. That’s how we got most of our leads. I never saw a difference between sales and marketing. We can talk about that too, but I always thought it was all the same thing. I used to think that, and that’s why I put so much time into the marketing because I didn’t want to spend money on marketing. I just did it.

We got a lot of referrals, and that’s how the business was growing. It was recommended to me by our franchise to go door to door to get more business, too. Like knocking on doors or walking into local businesses and asking them if they have an accountant, that was their tactic. That was their strategies. I didn’t feel like that was the best way. I asked about online and reminded you, this was in 2010, but they said, “Nobody’s looking for accountants online.”

I thought, “This is not right. I’m looking for everything online. I’m always Googling stuff.” I go and I did some research and figured out that all we needed was to put our sign up in Google. What I mean by sign is we had to apply for the PIN and get the geo location so people could search and find us better or easier on Google. This was a new development, especially like 2010, 2011, where you had to get a postcard.

I think you still do. You have to get a postcard, confirm that in the mail, and then put your spot up. When people search, they find you. Not only that, but if you get some reviews, you show up a lot higher. I noticed the people in our local directory, they were showing up a lot higher than us if they had just a couple of reviews. They could have been even further away from where I was searching. I was hyper-obsessed with this.

I had all of our clients leave us reviews, and it was off the hook after that. About a week or two after, I think it was probably a couple of months, maybe just to get in the reviews and getting all that lined up and making sure the pictures look good. This was our sign. This was like, “I wanted this to look really good.” I made sure that the team had really good photos taken. We hired a photographer. They came in and took pictures of the team.

We made sure that showed up on our Google page when people searched it. We made sure that the pictures of the office. We had a new office, it was painted, nice pictures. We also had a photographer come in for that. That was also part of the Google page, and it just looked good. We got a ton of leads. This was like, after all the effort and all the work, it was pretty immediate.

People just kept saying, “We came to your page because of your Google reviews. You had great reviews, and we want to work with you.” They came to us pretty much already wanting to work with us, and they would go straight to our team page. We had the pictures up, everything looked good, and they were ready to work with the team. They did the research. We do fun stuff on our directory page, too. We have two pictures.

If you hover over it, it shows the fun side of the accountant. It’s like the straight, this regular side, and then you hover over it, and it’s like a fun picture of like their hobbies or anybody on my team. You, one guy, likes hunting, and he’s got like a hunting outfit on when you hover over it. One guy likes Harry Potter and stuff. That comes up on his. It’s just like all different fun stuff, and people loved that. That was really what fueled a lot of our early growth.

The Power Of Google Reviews For Growth

How much time did you invest like asking the clients for reviews on Google? I preach this to my clients all the time. If you’re one of our clients reading, you know. I’m always like spend an hour a week getting clients to leave you reviews because that’s how I built my whole business in the beginning.

I think it’s a mindset shift instead of saying I’m going to spend an intentional hour a week doing this because that’s what happened at first. At first, it was like, let’s ask everybody. Only 1 or 2 people really respond to something like that because everybody’s busy. What I did was I started to realize I need to catch people when they’re really happy. Bottle up that excitement. Anytime we got a compliment for anything, immediately a flip to we already had the link ready.

I would have it saved in my phone or I know because I know the last person I sent it to, and I would grab it and send them the link that automatically takes them to leave a review. I would ask them, “Can you write that in a review? That would be awesome for the next pay-it-forward.” I would always tell the client, “Pay it forward so you can have the next client see this and then we can help them in the same situation you were in. Can you describe that in a review?”

It was very specific on what I wanted them to do. I took them at the right time when they wanted. I don’t want just an empty compliment, and I would rather it be paid forward as the way I put it, and everybody would leave a review. There was only one person. I remember this clearly. She wrote all of these super amazing things about my team and about us. It’s so nice. We asked her to leave a review, and she said, “No, I don’t leave reviews.”

It was like, but she wrote that, and still disappointed me to this day. I wish we could put that on there for her. She doesn’t do reviews. She didn’t like to be out in there. Maybe like a social, public eye thing. Everybody else does it without question. It was a long-term process to get as many reviews as we had. It wasn’t just spend an hour a week doing it, it’s any time you catch somebody at the right moment, grab that energy, and channel it to the right place because if they compliment you, that’s great. It makes you feel good.

How many reviews, guys, did you end up getting in that timeframe? Let’s just say six months to a year where you started to see the leads coming in. “I saw your Google reviews. I heard about you because I saw it on Google.” What was the timeframe that you started to see some traction?

Free Leads: Catch people when they’re happy. Bottle up that excitement and channel it into a review.

We have 54 reviews, and most of them were like years ago, 7 years ago, 11 years ago, 9 years ago. The way Google shows them, they’re all like spread out five years ago, eight years ago. It’s based on what’s most useful for the user. Some of them are from a year ago, two years ago. It’s a pretty big spread. We have one that’s one star. I always would remember that. I tell people don’t leave four stars, but if you’re going to leave anything.

Leave a one and at least say why. This guy was like, it was somebody who was very entitled. They came in, they wanted an appointment, and they didn’t set up an appointment, and we wouldn’t meet with them. They were really pissed off and they left. It was like they were in an anxious state anyway. I like that bottled-up energy. I like that he put that because it shows what we don’t do. Everything that he said we didn’t do.

It didn’t let him just walk in to meet with somebody and everything else. Everything else is just how much we’ve helped people. It’s all about what we did to help them, and it’s all genuine and authentic. This is way before the AI days. People weren’t like just getting things, getting information written for them. They were saying it from the heart. A lot of the stuff is just, you have to click the more button to read the whole thing. It’s a lot of praise.

Alternative Lead Generation Strategies That Worked

A lot of our clients, I teach them like a structure to how to leave a good review. One woman yesterday, she emailed me, and she said, “Michelle, the review I wrote is too long. Can you help me cut it down a little bit?” They have a character Max on there. That’s great. Scotty, what’s the other way that you were able to generate leads and have clients coming to you versus paying for paid advertising?

Early days of, let’s say, the QuickBooks, I noticed they had pro advisor directories, and the QuickBooks directory was like, that was the next frontier. We just mastered Google, and we felt like we did. Now we’re like, “We’re going to show up on the QuickBooks directory.” It wasn’t as easy as Google. It wasn’t like you can just get reviews and start seeing the results. We were buried in there. There were so many people, so many accountants in the QuickBooks directory.

It wasn’t generating any leads for us or any qualified leads, anything good. Around that time, we also found Xero, the other GL. The one that was built for the cloud. This was again around 2012. Those days, 2013, 2014, when not a lot of people were using Xero, but it was a lot different than QuickBooks, and I loved it. I just thought it was slick. It was made for the cloud. It was easy to use. QuickBooks was really clunky in those days, especially the online version.

We started checking out their directory, and there are not a lot of accountants in this directory. We put our sign up there. Again, we put the same amount of effort and work as I did in Google. On the Xero reviews, we started seeing hits quickly, too. We show up there, and now we’re getting clients that are using Xero that don’t want to work with QuickBooks, and their accountant will only work with QuickBooks. They’re coming to us because they’re leaving their accountant because their accountant won’t work with Xero. We found that to be our advantage.

What not a lot of people were paying attention to, that’s what worked for us. It was a tool that clients were using. People were finding us all across the country because we were showing up on the zero directory. They would search for us. If we had a client in that state, then we showed up in that state, too. We didn’t have to necessarily be there. It was just based on the client’s address. We were really strategic about it. We made sure all of our clients had their addresses filled out and their Xero accounts. We showed up in more places. That was the rest of our growth right there.

How many leads did you get from that? Do you recall?

More than hundreds.

On a monthly basis?

At one point, we were getting about fifteen leads a week. At the height of everything, we were at 15 or 20 a week that we could filter through, and we could pick from the ones that we wanted to work with or that were the best fit. This was before we had a client intake that would filter out the worst of the worst. This was like even in the early days where they were just filling out a form, and we were trying to gauge if we wanted to work with them or not through like different interviews and sales stuff that I’ve learned.

I’m sure you’ve taught too, but we created an intake form later in life, later in the firm. That’s helped, too. We found the leads from everywhere. At the time, it was just Xero and Google, and that was fueling everything. Gusto also had a directory. We took the same amount of time and attention and effort to making sure our page looked good there. We showed up where we needed to show up there. It was just all of that time and effort, I don’t think I could have paid somebody to do as good of a job as I did.

I know this was the problem in our last episode. I still to this day believe I don’t think I could have hired somebody to do as good of a job as we did for us there because that effort was coming from me. It was my vision of what it could look like and what we could do. It wasn’t until I built that system that I was able to fully step away from it. I think that’s also important to note, like an asterisk on my last episode. I think it is important for you to spend the time to build something that’ll work for you later.

Current Lead Generation Tactics For The Firm

Totally. Just like you invest in a business financially, you need to invest in projects and time that pay off in perpetuity. I’m curious for the firm since I know you still have a pulse on it, and you checked in. What are they doing for lead generation now that’s working?

This is a big point of conversation. I still meet with them 10 or 15 minutes in the mornings on some days. We talk about this. Like, I ask where our leads are coming from now. Xero isn’t as bountiful as it used to be. I think things have settled. There are more accountants in the directory. We’re not getting flooded within bound leads as much from there. We’re still getting Google. I mean, Google still does bring us a lot of leads because 54 reviews are a lot.

That’s still working for us. Gusto, we still get a ton of leads from there. We get a lot more than we do from Xero. I’m trying to figure out what our next channel. I don’t know what that answer is yet, but I’m close to figuring it out. I think we need to get involved in some more watering holes and some more places that our potential clients are already at. We need to meet them where they’re at, and this is the magic in what you do. You’re doing that in the accounting profession. That’s your niche, and you’re meeting them where they’re at, and you’re adding value, and you’re helping them.

I think I need to find that for our firm. I found it for my accounting stuff. That’s what Accounting High is. That’s what I’m doing on that side of it. I don’t even have a paid offering for Accounting High. It’s all just free stuff, free entertainment stuff, education that we do. I’m still making my money from my firm. I still need to figure out, “Do we need an industry vertical? Is that overhyped?” We have 105 clients in different industries, and everything’s working. We’re profitable and all that stuff. There’s nothing wrong with the firm.

You just need to figure out what watering hole the majority are hanging out in. Otherwise, they’re going to continue to come from all walks of life because when you’re getting leads from Google, you’re getting leads from Gusto or Xero. It could be any type of business owner coming to you. If you go find them, if I wasn’t hanging out with accounting, bookkeeping, and tax people in different watering holes where they hang out, I would never meet them.

I just don’t know what our ideal client persona is. I think I have an idea, and I know the types of clients that we like to work with, but I just get overwhelmed. We have this client in this industry, and that’s not a good fit, but we love those clients too. Again, as long as what I’m doing is working, then I’m okay. Now I’m like, “We used to get 15, 20 leads a week. Now we’re only getting 5 to 6.”

Finding Your Niche And Ideal Client Persona

As you’ve heard, the riches are in the niches. I know you said you wanted to talk about your third thing, too, which is creating content to be an expert in the niche, which you’ve done on Accounting High. I truly believe that part of the sales process, by the way, Scott, is figuring out and knowing who your ideal client is. They can speak to their challenges and pain points because I’m sure give me two industries that two of your favorite clients are in out of your 105.

It’s going to be professional services. I know we like those the best because they’re like us and that could be anything in professional services. I also wanted to work with comic book stores. That was like another niche that I almost got into because it’s a passion, but also, we have some very successful comic book store owners.

A comic book store owner and a professional service business owner are going to have different challenges, especially someone with retail and brick and mortar and dealing with overhead and e-commerce, and then you have professional services where they don’t have a tangible product

they’re selling. The pain points of what we speak to from the sales side of things is completely different.

Therein lies the problem and the dilemma that I have run into. We also go from psychiatrists and we did a marketing campaign just for psychiatrists because we had a very successful psychiatrist. We just kept running into, “We want to dive into this, but we don’t want to leave this aside because this is a really good client too.”

Everyone’s a good client, Scotty. All 105, they’re awesome.

No, they’re not all awesome. There are like 20% of them are the best, and if we can make more of those, then why not?

80/20 principle.

Of course.

That’s your homework.

This has been my homework for two years.

No one’s hold you accountable for a due date. When are you going to identify out of the top 20% of your clientele and write out 10 to 20 attributes of uniqueness and things that make them unique in that way?

I did this exercise twice, and then I got preoccupied with the fun stuff. I don’t want to push it. That’s the thing. I don’t want to be helped. I’m in this situation of my own doing. We have a lot of different clients, and everybody’s okay. We still have leads that work. I realize it’s going to take me rolling up my sleeves again and doing some stuff.

You don’t feel like doing.

Exactly. I started a new podcast. We have the Cash Flow Show now, and the Cash Flow Show just finished its first track, and it’s talking to general business owners. We do have a growing base of listeners already almost have a hundred listeners an episode, which is a cool vanity metric that doesn’t mean anything because it could still be a bunch of accountants. What I’m trying to do is continue to hone in on who that is as we continue to record.

Maybe get some leads out of that for your firm.

The thing is, it’s two firms doing the show. We have another friend of mine, Nicole Mackenzie, who’s also running the show, and so she has different clients. How do we figure this out as a source of leads?

That sounds like a fun project for you.

It’s been a fun project. I like the idea of writing down the best clients and writing down their attributes, but it goes back to picking and deciding on an industry. I’ve heard some firms say successfully they’ve had a couple of niches. I take that tongue-in-cheek because then it means they don’t have any niches. If you have more than one, then you don’t have any.

I see the boutique firms that are running very profitable, very successful practices. The ones that you described, the ones that Ron Baker describes when he talks about an ultra profitable, successful practice where they focus on one thing and it’s white glove just for them. Maybe they have eight clients, but all their clients are paying $6,000 a month, $5,000 a month. They’re building out entire businesses based on solving this one problem, and they’re finding a lot of success.

Free Leads: We need to meet potential clients where they’re at. That’s the magic in what we do.

When I talk about attributes, I also want you to list out at least 10 to 20 problems that those business owners have.

I like that. Hold me accountable for this. Maybe I will do it.

All the listeners are going to hold you accountable.

Dope.

We’ll have to do another podcast with Scott on how when he honed in his niche, his revenue got unstuck, and the leads just started to flow in again at fifteen leads a week because that’s what happens when you can start to speak to your person. Just like I speak to the accountants, to the tax firm owners, to the bookkeeping firm owners, to the person who’s sick of slaving away for someone at a 9 to 5 job and has this like little firm on the side and thinks they need more leads, but they have sales problems.

They just don’t know they have sale problems until they meet me. They’re like, “I cannot sell, I cannot convert, I keep doing things for so cheap. I was just pricing my services lower than my competition. I thought that would be a good solution.” When you can speak to all these problems, just like I just did for a little bit, they automatically will reach out to you. That’s where the fun begins on the sales of the conversion side, but really understanding and identifying the challenges, the pain points, and the problems.

It’s hard to think about. We have a list of almost 40 problems that most firm owners have. That’s how deep our list is. I can literally share every single problem of being underpaid and overwhelmed and hating tax season every year and being up against a deadline and having to get paperwork late from their clients and how come they don’t follow my rules. “I’m a nice guy. I feel like I should just do this. They’ll pay me later. Accounts receivable? I didn’t think that would ever become a thing in my firm.” You could probably write a whole rap on the 40 problems that firm owners have.

99 problems.

Yeah, I could give you 99.

I’ve written that one in my head a little bit, but we’ll we’ll stay tuned for that. Maybe the next time I come on. I’ve already been starting to write some verses to that one. 99 Problems has got to turn into an accountant rap.

Yeah, 99 problems, when you got Michelle sales, isn’t one.

The sales pitch ain’t one.

There you go.

I’ve got 99 problems, but the sales ain’t one. A sales pitch ain’t one. I got to run. Pitched in with the original.

Using Content Marketing To Attract Clients

We can talk about that later, but let’s talk about the third way that you’ve seen for yourself on how to generate leads without spending a bunch of money on marketing.

It’s time again. I think it’s a podcast. Start with something to generate longer-form content and start answering these questions. You also start with making that list. I just recorded an episode with another Weinstein in our space. In Weinstein, she said when she started, she wrote a list of about 30 to 40 problems that she solved. That was her episode. That was the episode that she started recording for her podcast, and that turned into the short form content, and that turned into what the things that she left off in the watering holes. When she went to those places that her ideal clients and she doesn’t have an industry vertical.

She goes to professional services. That’s her swath. That’s her vertical. That’s who she speaks to, but she has an ideal client persona. She’s very specific on who that client is. She speaks to them and she solves their problems. That’s why she can get $6,000 a month from clients because she knows their pains, and she knows where they are, and she’s helping them. It starts with creating that content and solving those problems and started with her making that Excel spreadsheet of all the problems that she solves.

Sound like something you’re about to do?

It might be. I’ve already had two Weinsteins tell me to do it.

Same thing. I need to reach out to Shannon.

Yeah, she’s dope. I was going to do an episode on my show with both of you on at the same time. That was my whole life. We’ll do Weinstein squared. We’ll clear your name from Harvey. We’ll get him out of the picture.

That’d be awesome. Let me speak to him.

Yeah. I think that’s the new frontier. I also think that’s what I’m doing already. That’s important for people to note some things that are already working and the things that you need to pay more attention to. When it comes to marketing or when it comes to ways to generate leads, you don’t know what’s going to work. Try everything, but then immediately the stuff that does work, pay more attention to that. Like what I did, I tried QuickBooks, and I spent a lot of time on that, and it didn’t work, and it could have felt like a failure.

How did you know it didn’t work, and how did you track your KPIs?

We weren’t getting any leads. It doesn’t work when you’re not getting good leads or you’re not getting any leads.

If you’re trying three things, how did you measure where the lead was coming from?

I always asked, but it was all coming from me, so I knew everything I was doing because it wasn’t like a disjointed effort. It wasn’t like I told this person to do this and I forgot what I told them to do. We came back later, and we found out, “Something’s working, but we don’t know what.” Every time somebody found us, the most important thing was how did they find us. “This person found us this way. Let’s pay more attention to that.”

I didn’t ignore referrals. I told people that were sending referrals to leave a review. That people that were telling their friends, I said, “It’s great to tell your friends, I love that, but now tell 5,000 other people. Tell everybody on Google, and that’s going to be much more impactful for us.” That was always turning the feeling that you gave them and spinning.

That solves the first question of getting more reviews, but that’s why we saw reviews were helping because immediately people told us, “I love your Google reviews.” Before I could even tell them, some people were excited to tell me how they found us. I was also finding that too was people are thrilled to find a fun accountant or somebody that does fun stuff because most accountants are pretty boring. I don’t know if you’ve noticed that.

Most of them, myself included in the beginning, were pretty boring. We’re busy. We’re doing work. We got stuff to do, we got returns to do, we got extensions to file, we got everything. We’ve got to handle this employee. We don’t have time to be fun or be creative or do any of other things. I found pretty early that that’s what works, that’s what differentiates you in the market. It’s not your skills as an accountant that people are attracted to.

Marketing Success Through Patience, Perseverance, And Perspective

No, it’s you. It’s the client experience, I like to say too. Scott, thank you so much for being here on another awesome episode here at the show. Is there anything else that you want to share that maybe you didn’t talk about that’s at the tip of your tongue as it relates to generating leads without spending a dime, just your time? There you go, I rhymed.

I was going to let you keep going, too. I think the most important thing is to identify what you want out of all of it. If you’re going to spend a lot of time doing something, don’t resent it later. If you create this lead funnel and then you don’t like working with those clients, you’re going to resent all the work you did.

You’re going to resent all the clients, and you’re going to have this problem on your hands. Try to avoid future potential problems by making sure that anything that you’re experimenting with and doing is going to lead to stuff that fills you up. That’s also what’s been holding me back too. My advice I do say be quick to try things out and be very quick to scrap things that you don’t think are working because you don’t want to waste your efforts.

A lot of the things I did, I did see quick results. The things I’m doing now are stuff that’s intended to take a long time. Creating content. Writing down all those lists of problems you can solve and finding the ideal client persona that takes months and months to start generating leads. Once you do, it snowballs. Patience is another thing, too. This next new frontier of marketing is going to be a lot of patience and perseverance and perspective.

Patience, perseverance, and perspective. Love it. Thank you so much for joining us again. Cannot wait to have you back and wishing you the best in writing your list. I cannot wait to talk about that on our next episode.

Thanks, Michelle.

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Thank you all so much for joining Scotty and I here on another amazing episode of the show. I love what he shared for generating leads and doing it just by investing time and not money. No matter what, you’re always going to be putting in something. You’re either going to use your time, which has value, or we’re going to spend dollars. Make sure to go get your reviews and start creating some content, but really, some low-hanging fruit is getting into those directories.

My request of each of you is if you liked our show, leave a review on Apple Podcast. Share what you love that Scotty shared that’s going to help you generate some leads for your firm. If you don’t know how to leave one on Apple Podcasts, because I know it can be complicated, you can also leave us a Google review at The Abundant Accountant if you search that on Google and leave a review. Let’s pay it forward to another accounting tax or bookkeeping firm owner that might need to hear this message and hear our show. Thank you all so much for being amazing supporters, and I’ll see you all in the next episode.

Important Links

• Scott Scarano on LinkedIn
• Scott Scarano on X
• TheAbundantCall.com
• Accounting High
• Why Getting Out Of Your Own Way Is The Way To Thrive With Scott Scarano – Past Episode
• Nicole Mackenzie on LinkedIn
• Abundant Accountant on Apple Podcast
• Cash Flow Show on Apple Podcast

About Scott Scarano