Ep. 27 | Finding Your Niche
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John Tripolsky:Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Mr. R show here brought to you, edited, produced, and promoted by the MRR Institute. So on this episode specifically, as you can see in the title and the show notes, we are gonna be discussing what it means to find a niche, explore that, and grow and scale that, or I should say scale, not grow because we did a podcast on that way back in the day. But as always, the smartest guy in the room until we bring out a guest, Chris McCarroll. What's happening, buddy?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:When we bring on a guest, I I get demoted. But, John, you're smart in your own. Right? Just not not a tax professional. Maybe that's a good thing.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Welcome back, everyone, to the mister r show. We're so excited to have you with us. Remember, we can get a continuing education credit or CPE through earmark. And it's always nice to have a special guest, so I don't have to talk to John for fifty minutes to an hour. So that's a that's a bonus.
John Tripolsky:That's the best part. That's a whole another CPE in life if anybody can listen to me and Chris talk for an hour.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So Well, and if you're listening to this and you you think, gosh, this isn't very professional. John and I do another podcast that's weekly called teaching tax flow. It's much it's for the taxpayer, not necessarily the tax professional, and we we've known each other for over twenty years. But speaking of knowing people, I'm really excited to have our guest on this month, and we met a I wanna say a few years ago, two, three years ago at Taxposium in San Antonio, Texas. Right?
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. That was a couple years ago. Yeah. We met under some harsh harsh circumstances. That was the whole Microsoft going down and Flint plane flights canceling everywhere kind of deal.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yes. And you you kinda I hate to say it, Craig, but you kinda have a tough history with getting to conferences. Logistics. True. I didn't I did you have issues getting to Orlando, or am I
Greg Seay, CPA:well, oh, so, yeah, I was getting those mixed up. Yeah. San Antonio. I mean, that one was was just kinda naturally rough. The the Orlando one was the one that was absolutely catastrophic.
Greg Seay, CPA:I'm tough getting down there. Had to drive the middle of the night to get to Orlando. Missed half the first day, and then had to do an emergency landing in Memphis on my way back where the mask came down in in my plane. I was like, this was a trip I don't wanna remember.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:That was a rough one. And but then we had all we got to reconnect in Vegas this in 2025, summer twenty twenty five. Had a great time. And, yeah, we're just excited to have you. You know, he's Greg is practitioner based out of Arkansas.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We have gotten to know him well, became friends. He's also in our peer to peer mastermind group. And ironically, we always talk about collaboration over competition. His niche and the the what we're talking about today is is that movement towards niching, but his niches in real estate, which is which is my firm's niche. But we're very very friendly with the you know?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And we, always, you know, exchange ideas and and that sort of thing. So, Greg C, thank you for joining the, mister R podcast mister R show rather. How are you doing, though?
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. I'm I'm I'm doing good. And, you know, here we're recording now in September. You know, starting to feel the anxiety of the extension deadline of things as most other tax professionals are probably doing. I do have a little bit of a, off ramp with it.
Greg Seay, CPA:We have some disaster relief stuff, so I've got till the October to get some, things done. But still, it's always a push. It's always a grind.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right. Well well, can you tell us a little bit about yourself as far as where, you know, where your practice is located? Maybe some some personal facts. Also, how you got into firm ownership.
Greg Seay, CPA:Sure. Yeah. Well, yeah, so some some things with me really, factual based. I mean, I started my firm back in 2016, and that was kinda same time like most people do. I would say most practitioners, at least nowadays, you see them starting off on the side.
Greg Seay, CPA:Hey. I'm just gonna have a few friends and family clients. I look at it, you know, when you come to rating clients, you have I call it your a, your b, and your f clients, and your f clients are your friends and family. I had a lot of f clients in the beginning. Now I've since kinda built out some of these relationships over time as I've as I've kinda specialized in some things.
Greg Seay, CPA:But started it off just kind of on the side and then really back in '20 late twenty twenty one, 2022 was really kinda came to a a fulcrum decision point and needed to say, okay. I've grown enough on my firm on, okay. Does does it look right for me to take the plunge and go full time into it, or do I cut cut it off and stick with my full time job and ultimately landed on firm ownership piece to it? But then at that even at that point, it was just me. I went out on my own solo in there.
Greg Seay, CPA:But I had the itch. You know? My prior life, I worked with a great team. I loved working with people and having folks that are around me that I could work with and talk with day in, day out. When I went solo, I just built a little 10 by 10 home office in my backyard, and so that was just my my hideaway back there.
Greg Seay, CPA:And so I didn't really get to have the chance to be around a lot of folks. You know, I had some of those elderly clients that I go and do house calls for and whatnot, But enjoyed being around people. Wanted to have some staff, so really thought about, alright. What's it look like to purchase a firm at this point? And that was in early twenty twenty three.
Greg Seay, CPA:And by May 2023, I was starting the conversation with purchasing another firm here in Arkansas. And by November 2023, that's when everything kinda consummated. I'd acquired it, and we just had a couple of months to get, you know, technology and stuff turned around before the busy season came. But as far as where I'm located in Arkansas, I'm in the Northwest Arkansas area. I would call it home of Walmart, home of Tyson, JB Hunt.
Greg Seay, CPA:Lot of big Fortune 100 companies in here, probably maybe fortune 50 in some of those. But when it comes to the real estate side, really what I looked at it as when I first started out, I was like most people, generalist. You know, I'll take any client that I can get, any client that I can get just so I can generate some income, get myself, get my feet wet, get my feet underneath me. And then as time went on, I really wanted to lean into the tax planning, tax strategy side to it. When it comes to just the compliance stuff, you hear all of some of those cliches of, like, it's just re we're just putting numbers in boxes if we're just doing tax preparation.
Greg Seay, CPA:Like, what people are really wanting is a peek into the future. What's what's coming on the horizon? What's gonna be by next April 15 or April 15, two years from now, being able to do that? And most of the clients that I had those planning opportunities for were folks that dealt with real estate in there. And so naturally kind of had a some magnetism towards that, I guess you'd say.
Greg Seay, CPA:And also just turns out too with folks with real estate, there's some really massive planning opportunities that you can deal with, whether it's just a one time silver bullet kinda deal with cost segregation, bonus depreciation, which we've been luckily to get back again here recently, or it can be an ongoing thing each year for folks that are really kinda build out your portfolio.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And so when you when did you make the decision to focus? And we say niche, but I I also I actually like the term segment as well. You know, someone could be a community based taxpayer, which I wanna kinda dive into that in a moment because a lot when we talk talk about community based tax tax professional, meaning you you primarily service a certain community, which in a way is a segment. You know, there could be certain environmental things going on just with with the business climate in in a local area might be very focused on some seasonality, or maybe there's an in a certain industry there. When did you move that focus into real estate, and what percent of your clients live in the community that you you're you're you work in?
Greg Seay, CPA:Sure. Yeah. Well, it's that as far as what percentage of clients that that needle has shifted quite a bit since I had acquired this firm. When I was first going out on my own and being solo, probably about half of my clients ended up being something like that. But when I had acquired this firm, I I 10 x ed my client base overnight.
Greg Seay, CPA:Oh, there. And it was more so there are some other factors involved in as far as buying a firm, but when you talk about the segment too, you know, Northwest Arkansas, call it the Northwest Arkansas Metro Area, there's a lot of really good real estate opportunities and a lot of good potential clients too that want
Chris Picciurro, CPA:to
Greg Seay, CPA:get into that, especially when you get into Walmart executives, JB Hunt executives, Tyson executives that they've got very high income, high net wealth, and they wanna get into some passive investing things or maybe even some active investing. You know, there's some of them get a wild hair and wanna do some short term rental type stuff and manage on their own. But that needle went way down whenever I had acquired this firm because where I'm specifically at, at least my office is, it's it's just outside kind of the metro area of Northwest Arkansas. And it's a lot more farmer based, I would say. So I inherited a lot of farmer type clients, and it was a different type of firm too.
Greg Seay, CPA:So there's been a lot of learning experiences through this too as far as niching down. There's there's so many things you can niche down to as well. Like, they were more so of, hey. We work with a lot of the farmer to fight folks that love to bring the shoe boxes, love to just deal with paper. I was the other end of the spectrum, so there's been some significant culture change over time with it too.
Greg Seay, CPA:So I had I had a pretty good chunk of clients that were in that community segment that I liked of real estate that then shifted down. And I also too, just for the sake of transition when I had acquired this firm, took on their name. So I set aside the name of my business at that point just to not introduce a whole bunch of change, just for client attrition type purposes. So kinda had to end up putting that niche on hold for a little bit just for the sake of transition. But as far as timeline now where we've really started to double down or triple down onto we're getting into specialized segment or what kinda community we're wanting to get into, we really pulled the trigger on that probably about four three, four months ago where we've since retransitioned our name, rebranded ourselves back to my Cornerstone CPA.
Greg Seay, CPA:We've changed things with our website and what's our branding look like online. So it's not just our our firm name. That's what we have for our URL. We're very specific with what we do as far as an online presence in there with our our website URL. And so that way, when people are trying to find us online, we're, you know, we're getting very digital with things.
Greg Seay, CPA:When they're searching for us, when they find us, they know exactly what they're looking at. It's not just, hey. I found a general CPA, somebody that can help me. It's, no. I found somebody that specializes in working with real estate types of transactions or types of investing to us.
Greg Seay, CPA:So it's kind of a natural filter there.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I mean, that's right because we talk about that even in our mastermind group a little bit, talked about that at some conferences. Our domain our our URL is realestatecpa.guru. It's so it tells you exactly what we do. What is the URL that I know some a bunch of tax pros aren't gonna go submit Right. Inquiries here, but what are you using?
Greg Seay, CPA:So I took one, you know, when the AICPA came out with the whole .cpa domains recently, I ended up taking a three letter domain. Luckily enough to find it, it's just rei.cpa. Yeah. It's a very short and sweet to the point. And if people that are involved in real estate, they know exactly what that means.
Greg Seay, CPA:People that aren't, they ask the question, what's what's REI stand for? And because it's an opportunity to kind of explain that a little bit.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:It's a great I think John you know, John's our VP of marketing, here on in for the for the I mean, he's got a marketing agency, but he helps us out with our our marketing. And we definitely were looking at that CPA domain name, and we wanted to get RAI, but I know you you must have reserved it quite a bit ago, and that was good to scoop it up.
Greg Seay, CPA:I got it late late last year, actually. So I've been eyeballing it. Just never pulled the trigger on it.
John Tripolsky:So And, Greg, you're you're lucky you got it, and we still like you because that's a good one. You usually, I I take it very personal when people get better domains than me on some things. So
Greg Seay, CPA:I I figured I found a diamond in the rough by snagging that one.
John Tripolsky:That's a great one.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well, let's talk I'm gonna put the REI or the real estate investing on ice for just for a second because you've kinda got two things going on. You know, you're you're building out the segment and this niche that you that you have a passion for, but you also 10 x your your client base. Doesn't mean you 10 x your revenue, but you only stack your client base. Can you give us a feel of what what type of you know, what your but how many people are on your team now as you moved into that transition buying buying that larger firm? And then also, what are some of the things that you did that worked as far as showing value that you have and then your niche versus making sure that that the team feels empowered to work with those those new clients?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Because a lot of times in a client in a firm that is acquired wants to talk only to that firm owner, and they think if they're getting shortchanged if they don't. And that's there's a fine line there.
Greg Seay, CPA:Yep. Very much so. You know, some of my background is is working in nonprofit, specifically at churches. So some of the correlation I see here, especially with small firm owners, how that correlates to what I I've seen historically, like, with churches, personality driven churches where people develop a relationship with the who's the lead pastor there. And that's the same case when it comes to small firm ownership is they wanna attach that relationship to the firm owner on it.
Greg Seay, CPA:And I did deal with that. I I dealt with that. So the first year and a half that I had owned the firm that I had bought, I kept the prior owners with me. So I contracted them working with me. And I really more or less just kinda introduced myself as a new equity owner rather than, hey.
Greg Seay, CPA:Here's the new owner, and the prior owners have are moving on. I just kinda brought myself in and kind of from an PR standpoint, more or less, like, hey. Here's a new partner that's involved. And that gave me a chance to we started redirecting a lot of the relationships over to me so I can get acquainted, get to know folks. But what the kind of joke running joke that I had was, you know, if I see them and meet with them a few times, hopefully, they'll find out I'm not a jerk, they wanna keep working with me Yeah.
Greg Seay, CPA:On there. But I did deal with a lot of those things where people would call in and ask for the prior firm owner, say, hey. Are they there? And I said, no. They're not here today.
Greg Seay, CPA:Can is there something I can help you with? And they would follow-up and say, oh, we'll just we'll call back when he's back, back in on there. And so it's hard to to transition that relationship. Now there's I think there's a couple phases to that, especially whenever you're buying a firm. Like, you do wanna redirect those relationships.
Greg Seay, CPA:Right. But, ultimately, the where you want the phase you wanna get to is how do I redirect the relationship from being the client with the firm owner myself to having the client value the relationship with the service that we provide?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Oh, yeah. That's that's a big pain. And I've never you know, in doing this for many years, I've never heard someone explain it like that, and I I'm I love it. So I might steal that. Because, know, I I cannot speak about let your let your I I screwed up the first ten years of running my practice, and you're and I'm into a '22 coming up on twenty three years, where I ran the practice and or people ran the practice instead of processes running the practice, and people run the processes.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But I I I like that just that mentality that a client needs to do business with a firm due to the value received, not necessarily because Greg is there or Joe is there or Jane is there.
Greg Seay, CPA:That's exactly right. Yep. And it's it's a hard thing it's a hard thing to do. And it's actually one of the questions I had asked at taxposium, this last year too. I think I was asking on one of the panels, about there.
Greg Seay, CPA:I was like, how do we how do you kind of redirect that relationship away from just being a bottleneck at the firm owner level to now your entire team's involved, and it's just a bottleneck from the firm's perspective. Like, how much can our entire staff handle there? And it's a matter really of kinda having your processes and your services really outlined so that the client understands what they're getting and who they're working with. And it's not just a it's not just a relationship piece. It's they understand the service that you're doing and the value that you're providing in that service versus just, you know, the conversation with the firm owner.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You nailed it, and that's the key. You know, when you're thinking about, for instance, let's say you are working with the real estate clients, but you have a client that comes in. Maybe they're maybe they're a tax preparation only client, you know, if that's something you guys offer. You know what mean? We are, you know, as you know, membership based subscription model.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We do have 50 opportunities now to help people with a tax tax prep only. Typically, that's gonna be if we worked with them on a la carte tax plan. But, you know, in some circumstances or it could be just unique situations where there's a but the point is, how do I make sure that they realize my role is tax planning and strategy? I'm not their tax prepared. And like you said, I think clearly defining roles within your organization.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So so when we like, we have a foundational entity package. Like, that package is there for people that own a, an s corp or a partnership return with less up to five partners. That's just what we call it. We call that package. That package is managed by I'm just making a name.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Joe. So by default, hey, mister and missus client. Oh, congrats. You know, welcome to the firm. I we're excited to have you in our foundational package and, you know, Joe, know, Joe is the is the package manager for this package.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Then they don't feel like they're dished off. They and and I think that's, you know, that's important because I think as practitioners, we kinda are like everything from sweeping the floors to doing all these executive decisions and, having that you know? What so what what are some of things that you've has, like what's that one thing that's worked the best? And then what are two, three things that were like, okay. If I ever do it again, if you buy another practice again, you would change.
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. Well, I I think in hindsight, I I think the way the market is right now and and you've mentioned it, and I think in some previous podcasts that you've done just as far as the state of the industry with CPAs retiring and not as much CPA candidates coming out of college. Like, the opportunity to buy a firm may not be as valuable as just growing one on your own organically.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yes.
Greg Seay, CPA:In hindsight, I may I may do things a little have done things a little bit differently. But to to your point as far as, you know, going back to redirecting the relationship away from the firm owner, I think it all starts with your onboarding process on there where, you know, I what I at least regardless of, I would say, when you're still a small firm, you know, my my staff size right now, I've got myself, and I've got four team members that that work with me. I've really, it's one other CPA besides myself. I've got a bookkeeper, an admin assistant, and then a project manager, project and communications manager in there. What I've learned I've I'm still the face of the business right now, and I'm the one that's having that initial interaction when someone want is interested in finding out more about our service on there.
Greg Seay, CPA:But then when it comes to what's the seriousness level of this and getting them onboarded, now it's a matter of, alright. We need to get you introduced to the team. Like, I'm not gonna be the only person that's gonna be providing you service here. I need to get you introduced to the team, kinda build it's a matter of building that rapport right there on the front end. I think if you don't do that in the very beginning, then you're just deepening that relationship with yourself, in there.
Greg Seay, CPA:And it's hard to dig yourself out of that because from the get go, they just see you, but they don't see your team. So I think if you miss the bar on getting them introduced on that very front end, bite the bullet, and go ahead and get them introduced as soon as you can because that's that's what's gonna take. It's a it's a behavioral change. Behavior is the hardest thing to change, at least with our clients on it. Like, they're used they're they understand tax laws change all the time, and at least we tell them the tax laws change all the time.
Greg Seay, CPA:They may not understand that. But we change our tech stack all the time. I you know, we got a new portal every year. They're used to change, so why not change it up and get them introduced to some new people on your staff? And so that way, they can start developing those relationships.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well, you just said something that I I wrote down, and I wanna you might not even realize you said this, but it's it's actually very impactful. There's a when I was a lot younger, someone someone told me, having a daughter we have two sons and her daughter. My daughter's 15 now. And they they said, if you want to, basically, your daughter's gonna model in when, in general, when she's looking for a spouse or a significant other, how you treat your wife or your significant other. That's the modeling she's looking for, and that could be very turbulent.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:That could be very harmonious. You could have agree to disagree. You could you know, just whatever that relate that that x what you're showing your children, your relationship with your spouse or your significant other is is what she's gonna gravitate to and look for. And that's why a lot of times family history repeats itself. Not all the time.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But I just always thought about that. And and I'm I took I I'm looking at this as Greg. If I came to you, I met with you and I'm a potential client. This is exactly what you you phrased. My as you mentioned, myself and my four team members that work with me.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right there, I'm thinking, I like this team. Greg's a team player. He trusts his people. So let's take that. I have myself and my four team members that work with me versus I'm Greg.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I own the CPA firm. I've got four employees that work for me. All of a sudden, when I hear that and I'm a potential client, I'm thinking that they're lesser than you on this team. Even and we don't use that employ I I hate the term employees. We use team members.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We always say it's funny even I'll go to, a family know, thank goodness my family doesn't listen to this, but I'll go to a family reunion in the in in, you know, my green how many people are working for you now? I'm like, none. They I work they work with me even though my aunt would never it's just that mentality of we truly work together, and I love that about you. I think that's very admirable.
Greg Seay, CPA:So Yeah. It's true. Yeah. The mindset too. I mean, I think the way you carry yourself out, it it a lot of things bleed over.
Greg Seay, CPA:Your relationships with your team bleeds out into the relationship with your clients and vice versa on that. Yeah. I've seen it personally in in some culture changes that have happened over time with prior ownership. And what's the relationship with the client look like between the firm owner and the client, and that bleeds over into bad relationship with your staff and your team members too.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well, the staff can undermine you. So I mean, it's it could be a whole a whole thing just like if, you know, if there are two parents that are feuding, even if they're not together in a relationship anymore, children understand that, and they will get between you and wedge and get their way. And that's something, I mean, not to get like, I'm proud of my wife and I that we've we've been able to try to set an example. I had a great example with my parents. My wife's parents set a great example for us.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yeah. We all know there is a lot of things we disagree about, but you don't throw people under the you don't throw them under the bus. Don't throw your team members. And and you take those shot as a firm owner, if you're listening and watching, you know you've got to take those shots for your team. When when you're an administrative person accidentally deletes their client portal or something, you've gotta take their
Greg Seay, CPA:Yep. Yeah. I like the I've used the phrase for a while. Nothing is unable to be fixed unless it's an ethical concern. Uh-huh.
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. Anything's fixable unless it's an ethical violation kind of thing.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yeah. And a communication solves all problems. I mean, that's that goes in any relationship. So Right. I I agree.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well, okay. Let's talk about the REI focus. Now that you nabbed rei.cpa, you I'm thinking you're gonna, like, a piece of real estate where you go flip it, but I absolutely love that. Are you when you're getting new leads so, like, I'll get to be transparent, we have another domain called 2025.tax. So if we're not gonna get a lead that's not real estate related, we don't direct them to our real estate CPA dot guru necessarily.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Mhmm. When we are only focused on real estate, I I hate to say this, but or if we have a lead that we don't think is gonna be a good fit no matter what and they're not in real estate, I might direct them real estate CPA dot guru just to deter them. Yeah. Like, how are you what other things are you doing? Well, let me ask this.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:When you have leads coming in, because you have these legacy clients that aren't necessarily real estate focused, how are you processing those leads, and are you only focused on REI clients moving forward or primarily?
Greg Seay, CPA:So, yeah, the you know, there's a few layers to this too. But when it came to the acquisition, you know, 10 x ing your clients overnight, I I went from one set of issues with a small set of clients to a different set of issues with a large set of clients. And fortunately, when I when I had the large set of clients, it allowed me to make some really easy decisions on who's not a good fit for me to work with on there. There was a lot of fat that I could trim off with it. And it's nothing personal there.
Greg Seay, CPA:It's just a matter of what's the vision that I have for this type of firm that I'm wanting to build into it. So I'm I'm fortunate enough right now where I've still got plenty of clients that can keep me keep things going operationally, but I can be extremely picky with who do I wanna work with. And so with this rebranding that we did just a few months ago, we've gone to be exclusively the only folks that we're bringing on are the real estate types of folks in that. And it's it's it's nice because, you know, not only with having the the REICPA domain, like, a that's natural filter in and of itself, but even the questionnaire as far as having the client fill out an application saying that they wanna become a client, there are very specific real estate types of questions that are in there that if they are not a real estate type of client, they're just they're just gonna say this isn't for me on there. And that saved me time because time has been the most valuable thing for me to be able to try to conserve is that now I'm not dealing with, you know, John and Jill off the street that say, hey.
Greg Seay, CPA:Are you looking are you taking on new clients? I'd just direct them there, and they kinda self filter themselves out on it.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We are and, no, in that same with us, we have created on the real estate side a certain avatar. So there's some deviation, but ultimately, we're looking for people that are in real estate and not only in real estate, but continuing the real estate activity of if do they want to build their portfolio? Are they are they selling are they doing things that they need us? Are they making moves? And I and I like that because, you know, a lot of times when people want to go niche down or they want to get into a segment, they feel like, I don't wanna say burden, but almost pinned and tied by the current clients.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And I always say, well, just run up, draw a line in the sand, and moving forward, you're focusing on this. And for those legacy clients, guess what? You got something that's not on the menu anymore. Enjoy it. Eat it.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But you a new person can't come to the restaurant and demand, like, I demand the salmon platter. We don't have it anymore. Sorry. They bought it. You know?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. Well, it's well, it goes back to the some of the principles there of, you know, if you're starting out and you're wanting to niche, but you still have a revenue need more or less. Like, if you're saying no to a lot of folks, then you may not be, you know, financially taken care of. I know that's Right. You know, CPAs, accountants, I think, are naturally inclined towards that fear of not having enough revenue to be able to cover things.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right.
Greg Seay, CPA:But it goes back to that old saying of if I'm saying yes to this, that means I'm saying no to something else. Yeah. So if I'm saying yes to a bad client, that means I'm saying no to potentially good client on there.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right? You've gotta say no to say yes. That's what we say all, you know, all the time. So you so let's talk about building out this this real estate niche. We'll talk about the client side, but I know that you're making efforts in to build out what we call your COIs.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Like, I you know, we we talked about that at taxposium as far as how do you, you know, date your clients. Now you might not wanna, quote, unquote, date your clients that aren't real estate investors. You wanna date your clients that are real estate investors because they're gonna send you more real estate investors. But how do you how do you nurture your centers of influence? Are you out who are your centers of influence that are referring you the best clients other than maybe your current client, the real estate clients?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And how are you connecting with them? How are you keeping in in top of mind with them?
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. Well, a couple things come top of mind. One was just kind of the physical networking piece. You know? For life my first few years when I had started my firm, I had I joined one of those, I would say, large national networking organizations, BNI.
Greg Seay, CPA:And so you get Oh, throw them under
Chris Picciurro, CPA:the bus. We don't care.
Greg Seay, CPA:I mean, I I did get a handful of few good referrals. But when you're in a room of business owners, you're gonna be getting probably more business owner type referrals, not necessarily real estate ones on there. And so I did I will admit, I got referral after referral, but it was a lot of those not a right fit. Not a right fit. Not a right fit.
Greg Seay, CPA:And so again going back to that where's my time being allocated to you, my time is being spent telling people no or getting to know people and then figuring out no it's not a good fit. And so it's a lot of lost time in that. So what I've since done is is moved out of the BNI networking and gotten into some local community real estate groups instead. So we've got a there's a group here called REI NWA, which they do things really well. I like the way they set them up where you kinda hit three different markets with them.
Greg Seay, CPA:They every once a month, they have a a developer builder type of meeting that they do. Once a month, they'll do an all membership meeting. And then once a month, they'll do a what they call a rookie nook. People that are just brand new and getting into investing, they do that. So you kinda got three different markets that you're working through just with one networking organization.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right.
Greg Seay, CPA:And then you got even some more specialized things that I've been a part of where it's commercial real estate meetups on there. So historically, I kind of really leaned just into the residential side, but now I've moved more so into the commercial side of things too as, you know, I've gained clients that have been dealing with that and getting more acquainted with it. And then you have some private groups, you know, especially with some of these large organizations where you get an organization like Walmart. They've got tons and tons of employees. They have their own clubs that they do.
Greg Seay, CPA:And so you have Walmart real estate investing club that you can get involved in in there. And then probably the last thing as far as finding some circles of influence, this this really comes down to, like, knowing your audience. Right? When it comes to real estate investors, a lot of them relate to Robert Kiyosaki, you know, the rich dad, poor dad on there. You you're making posts that are relatable to them mentioning that book, the principles that are involved in there.
Greg Seay, CPA:They kinda naturally mag magnetize themselves to you. It's like, hey. Oh, he's he reads the same kind of material that I do on that. And so there's some rapport that's naturally built in that. And then I've gotten a lot of referrals just from things like that.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yeah. I you know, you nailed it. I I was did the same thing, quite a bit because I actually love real estate, and I I just going to these meetups and some of these groups, You just don't know, you don't even have to talk about being a CPA. You just show up and be a member. You know, eventually, they'll probably once no one knows what what you do, they might ask you to be the monthly presenter.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:All of a sudden
Greg Seay, CPA:That happened with me. Me.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Okay. Yeah. Tell us about that.
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. The the the first meeting when so the the I think it was, like, noon that day. The first meeting I was gonna go to, I joined the group. I showed up, told them my name. The the president of the organization's like, oh, I've been meaning to call you.
Greg Seay, CPA:Like, saw that you're a CPA. Like, we really need somebody in here. We've not we've not ever had a CPA in our group. Like, it's always just been investors, brokers, people trying to sell deals to one another. They're like, we've never had a CPA involved.
Greg Seay, CPA:So after I had kind of presented myself and introduced myself, literally that evening, it's like swarm. Everybody in the group comes to us like, hey. I like that you are real estate focused on it. Like, I live and breathe this stuff, and it's nice to know somebody who's specializing in that in there. And turns out too at the end of the meeting, it turns out, alright, a month from now, now I'm the next speaker for the next month's meeting.
Greg Seay, CPA:Love it.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So what did you speak on? Did you do, like, top top high re REI tax strategy?
Greg Seay, CPA:We did. So I kinda co co led a speaking engagement. So another lady that I was involved in with BNI, she's an attorney that focuses on real estate as well. We co led, you know, pros and cons, s corporations, what's it mean to be an LLC? Well, it's the difference between tax purposes of LLC versus legal purposes of LLC.
Greg Seay, CPA:There's a lot of questions that came out of that that presentation.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Oh, yeah. It it's not I mean, that's, like, that's like printing pay printing the dollars when you're in there. Yeah. If you if you ever if you're if you're a CPA, enrolled agent, tax professional, if you ever wanna feel like the prettiest girl in school, show up at a real estate meetup or whatever. I mean, you could you could be honestly, it could be any any industry you have interest in.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Like, let's say you I don't know. Let's say you you're you love the dairy business and you show up at their trade association and just talk talk milk or something. Yeah. Who knows?
Greg Seay, CPA:You can go with Jason Stats route, and I I specialize in beekeeping.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right?
John Tripolsky:I think.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You could be don't bother with that bee. But that and that's that's the thing is you're gonna you're gonna be that go to person, and you're gonna they're gonna understand your tone, your message, and they're gonna it's just yeah. I really enjoy. And the other thing if you're, you know, as you're listening as tax professionals are listening, presenting to to non tax industry groups is so much easier than presenting to peers because quite frankly, you might slip and say, you know, bonus depreciation is at 80%, and it was really a 100. You're not maliciously saying anything bad, but you don't have 20 people trying to fact check you on tax law.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Exactly. Yeah.
Greg Seay, CPA:So that yeah. Pressure is really off in those those industry type meetings versus peer tax professionals. And
Chris Picciurro, CPA:you nailed another thing. Once you that you know, it's funny. I was talking to a couple other tax pros, and I and I'm like, or sign I'm sure you feel the same way. Once you get into a conversation with a potential client about real estate and you use some buzzwords
John Tripolsky:Mhmm.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Like, yeah. You know, how's that cash on cash, you know, doing? Or, you know, the positive of, you know, the cost segregation study is you're gonna get an you're gonna get a larger tax refund that'll that'll reduce kinda reclaim some of your down payment or your cash on cash returns better or you know? Oh, yeah. And and even though, like, as you're speaking to them or I I mean, one of my little hacks is, like, if I see a rental property, how long do you have that rental property?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Okay. Did you, yeah, did you buy a turnkey? Did you burr it? Did you do that? Like, an accountant just said burr meth, and you're like they're like, holy moly.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You know what that is? And, and it's just like, wow.
John Tripolsky:And, Chris, to back that up. Right? Like, I've I've been to a number of these conferences with you, and it is exactly that. Like, you'll be saying things that just come off natural, you know, to you and and everybody in your practice, but then it's funny sitting there watching it. They do, like, perk up, and then I think, you know, it might take, like, one or two things, and then they go, you just get it.
John Tripolsky:Like, you understand us. That's funny because they're you know, they always refer to it as us. Like, you understand this whole group of people more than they expected. Right. Right.
John Tripolsky:It's awesome to see that. Mhmm.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well and it's cool, Greg, for you because you go in with the hat of you do, you know, of real estate investing and and, just kinda understanding, getting behind the getting behind the hood or under the hood rather. So John runs how much of a car guy I am. Right? Behind the hood. Yeah.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But at least John knows with depreciation recapture. Recapture is. That's another story from our other podcast. I don't I can't even say under the hood properly. But It's all good.
John Tripolsky:You know, I collect my trophies over here when I when I impress Chris, and, you know, there's a couple of them.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:That's it. I'm impressed. So you and I love that you're telling people, I'm sorry, exactly what you do with your domain, and you're asking questions that is automatically kinda weeding them out. And they you don't know how many people may have looked at the questionnaire and said, yeah. This I'm I'm probably not where where where this firm is at as far as I mean, they're not a bad client.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:They're just not a good fit for you guys. You know, they don't That's right. Your your formula.
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. And there and there's no, you know, there's nothing personal with it. It's just professional fit. Mhmm.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:More or less. Okay. And, you know, you talk about that language, you know, just talking that real estate doing the real estate language. I wanna touch kinda last last segment here about onboarding. You know, you mentioned that as far as I think that I lived too many years when I first started the practice.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You and John were in diapers probably. About, like because John wore diapers till he was about 25, but that's that's another episode. But
John Tripolsky:I don't even wanna know what people are thinking when you said that one.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Oh, no. That's it. Go. After John, you should say well, you know, John, I'll be in diapers before you are.
John Tripolsky:Yeah. You'll be back in them sooner
Greg Seay, CPA:than me.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yeah. I'm getting close. Anyway, the onboarding, you know, having a process is so important because as CPAs, tax professionals, EAs, we're like, feels good to land that client. Like, that's my habit. That's but then the work really starts.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Then, oh my gosh. How do we get this person into our system? Because you've gotta set the tone. This is how we do business. We're in the and if we're doing business the way we know how to, we can help you more, not give me you know, what are some of the the best practices from from onboarding perspective that you use?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:What are some of the things that you've failed forward and learned on?
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. Well and kind of to preface it too is, like, you talk about these first impressions of things. I think, really, as a firm owner, you've got you get you get two first impressions. Okay. One's your very first impression on when you get first when does the first client initially learn about you or talk with you?
Greg Seay, CPA:Then your I would say, now the next first impression is getting that client associated and impressed by your staff and the service that you provide in there. So it comes down to the first impression with your onboarding because it's, like you said, it sets the tone for the rest of things. If it's haphazard of, hey. We're just gonna do a quick call. I'm gonna ask you some questions.
Greg Seay, CPA:And then, alright. Now I'm gonna send you a list of some information. And alright. Now I've got that. Now I've got more questions.
Greg Seay, CPA:Alright. And it's just a constant follow-up, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. They're gonna be like, do they know what they're asking for kind of thing? And so it's just a matter of, I would say, at least in the real estate side of things, it's I wanna get as much information about their portfolio as I can and kinda pick their brain as far as what's the what's their vision of things. So when we're talking about meeting with somebody for the advisory side or tax planning piece, Like, you gotta know further down the road what are you planning with thing.
Greg Seay, CPA:So at least when it comes to best practices that I've learned, what I've really liked, especially, I we're starting to see some more firms kinda stick with technology now versus kinda jumping ship year to year. You know, the technology is getting better for these practice management systems where they really can be somewhat all in one in there, whether it's to secure communication, your billing, your document sharing, chat availability, document requests, organizers, all that can be built into one. There's several practice management firms out there that do that. It's nice to be able to send a client to one place instead of saying, alright. During your onboarding, I'm gonna get you a login for this.
Greg Seay, CPA:So I'm gonna get you a login for this. Make sure you remember all your passwords. Having a a single platform for them to get into, I've what I've seen has been very appreciative on the client side of, hey. It's really nice for me to just have one place I need to go, and you got a mobile app more more or less associated with it. At But least having your core set of questions that, alright.
Greg Seay, CPA:Here's the bare minimum that I know that I need for every single onboarding client on there. Getting that out there. And then at least the way I handle it is, you know, I think it's probably a buzzword in our industry, discovery. You know, you have a discovery session or discovery meeting. It's like, okay.
Greg Seay, CPA:This may be a little bit more open ended. I'm gonna kinda prod you with some questions based on what you've provided me already, and that's gonna kinda open the door on what's the next step look like in there. But when it comes to what have I failed over before, I when I talked about follow-up, follow-up, follow-up, I've done that plenty of times as I've grown on there, Especially if I get somebody out maybe I'm super excited about to have as a client and I wanna take lead on that relationship, I get ahead of myself on there, and I maybe skip some steps. But it's it's a matter of having the process of here's step one, step two, three, sticking with the process. Because when you deviate from it, now it kind of leads to your your staff, your team.
Greg Seay, CPA:Like, they see you deviating from the process. They may deviate from the process.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yeah. The process has to work right because if you shortcut every time I shortcut something in my practice, I muck it up. And that includes my own I've I've I've kinda shortcut the filing of some of my own entity returns, some of my real estate holding LLCs, and it's like or and, you know, this it's been a few years, but I've had a a friend of Hey, man. Where's my LLC from XLL or where's my k one? Like, dude, I did that.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I didn't put it through our process. Our administrative team didn't load the k one in the person's portal, and I screwed it up because I deviated. You know, you mentioned something really interesting because when you say you get that first impression, I I've always felt like you have one time to show your value to a client, which is the quote. Of course, that's different than your first impression. What I like about your first impression now, especially in the REI space, is it's typically they're gonna be looking at your website.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I mean, they might meet you, but they're gonna look at the website and say, you know, there's nothing I mean, little practice hack if you're and if you're just getting started in your practice, just my advice would be probably not use a Gmail, Hotmail, or AOL email address. That just When I see someone, it could be a plumber. Like, at least have the what you, you know, have Joe@Joe'sPlumbing.com. Something. Yeah.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Not Joe Plummer at Gmail because it just makes me feel it's it's
Greg Seay, CPA:Building 25 Dollars to get the the domain.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right. It delete it alleviates the you know, the value is gone. And so when people go to your website and also, you know, have some type of landing page or at least say it's under construction but if people have, you know, you're when I look at your landing page, your website, it's very clean and then I did took, you know, you have that area where it says become a client. The questions are very I mean, I'm reading through all the questions, and I can see exactly what you're looking for because I'm in this space. But as a real estate investor, they're very disarming.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You know, when I well, it I don't feel yeah. They're just disarming. Prodded.
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. Yeah. Yes.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yeah. So I I really and, you know, it's and I what I like that you're asking is you're you know, we've talked about building this niche out. Is you're asking the the the prospective client what they think they need. That doesn't mean that's what they really need, but you're basically taking their temperature and saying, do you need our monthly payroll, accounting and payroll? Do you just want tax advisory?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:What do you think you need? And and I mean, how many times have we gone to the doctor and, oh, you know, for a check? Oh, man. My, you know, my my elbow's kinda sore, but and then in well, also, you know, something's going on with this with my ear or something. You know, something in passing, and then they realize you've got a you got your ear is a bigger problem than your elbow.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I'm just making that up. But and and I think that's point.
Greg Seay, CPA:Like, when it comes to value, once being able to meet and service somebody's wants always provides more value than somebody's needs on there. Because there's there's they feel they feel the pain with it. It's like, I'm wanting help with this versus I just need help with it. Like, it's a pain point. You know, I need to get this done.
Greg Seay, CPA:It's more commoditized, more or less. I gotta do this every year. But what I'm really looking for is some help with this. And when you can meet that want, there's inherent value inside of that.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right. Right. I mean, it's I think you're doing a great job. So onboarding now do you set up, like, an onboarding meeting with the client and, you know, at this point, they're a client, and are you, you know, are you accepting people with maybe some back work? And how do you kind of manage those workflows?
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. There's there's just a couple of folks. I can count on one hand the folks that I've got with back work needed. But, again, it kinda goes down to there there's some forethought into taking on somebody with back work. It's like if there's a history there of not being great at the compliance side or even the planning side to it, are they gonna continue to be poor in that respect?
Greg Seay, CPA:And so if you find somebody that's you know, they are up to date, they're on top of things, they kinda understand what you're trying to provide for them with it, the relationship just is that much better, more or less. I've got lots of clients that, you know, they they wanna just be the ones that they can just say, hey. I wanna hand it off to you, and you do a 100% control. Well, it can't fully be that. I can't, you know, I can't be your adult.
Greg Seay, CPA:I can't be a a guardian for you in some respects on this. It's it's a relationship. Like, I go back to the therapy kind of things. It was like, I can't care more about your tax situation than you care about your tax situation. Oh, yeah.
Greg Seay, CPA:I think we fall into that more often too where we care about it way more than our clients, and that keeps us up at night and gives us anxiety and ulcers and all that stuff. But it's just a matter of, alright. Can I how can I kind of vet these clients on the front end to see, are they gonna be ones that is gonna be good to work with? Like or are they gonna be a thorn in the side and just kind of a repeat offender with things?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And where are you it's kinda where you wrap this up as looking forward. If you had to say a year from right now, what would you like your revenue percentage to be REI clients versus non REI clients and client percentage? You know, because I mean, you could have 10% of your clients make up 50% of your revenue because do you have you thought just in roundabout kind of where you're heading because obviously, you've you've paused on new clients if they're not an REI, but, again, you've you've got four team members that you're responsible for their livelihood. You know? And you you can't just I mean, you could, but you you got to also maintain those relationships to to have a cash flow there to make sure that that their their financial needs are met.
Greg Seay, CPA:Well, I'll say, with where I'm at right now, like, I've I've spent this last year and a half to two years being the opposite of growth mode of things. I've been really contracting with things because when I 10x clients, there was a need for me to contract because, I mean, I think I'm not alone in this where, you know, somebody is a brand new firm owner, or they've got a whole bunch of clients. They get into busy season, and they are an absentee absentee father, absentee husband, just an absentee person altogether. Like, they live and breathe at work. And I dealt with that these last two years whenever I had so many clients that I was dealing with.
Greg Seay, CPA:And so I'm still kind of in that contraction mode, but it's a matter of alright. Now when I do get to growing again, I think you talked about scaling versus growing on it. I look at it as I wanna have healthy growth over growth on there on. And so it's now it's a matter of kind of learning some of your capacity things. Like, do I I need to take I need to give myself some time to decompress and not just be so busy where it's a year round tax season.
Greg Seay, CPA:But then to kinda to your point as far as what's the what do those percentages look like? I don't think I ever gonna get us into a point where, you know, there's a lot of eighty twenty rules where 20 percents your clients are 80% of your revenue. I think it's gonna be pretty well, I would say, kinda peanut butter spread, more or less. Oh, I like peanut butter.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right. What are my weaknesses?
Greg Seay, CPA:Because I'm I'm starting to get into that subscription model thing too where at a bare minimum, there's a membership piece where just, you know, there's a fee for access to us. And so getting to something like that can really lower, lessen the number of clients that's needed, allows me to provide more value to those clients, and it just makes me makes me better at what I do because I'm not so spread thin, whether that's you know, if you're not niching down, you've gotta be a generalist and know a gigantic book of tax code versus just, you know, a small section of it that you gotta be involved with in there. So I I think it'd be a kind of a fairly well spread on there. Maybe something like sixty forty as far as individual clients. Know, a lot of these investors deal with things in their own personal portfolios.
Greg Seay, CPA:They may not get into the point of having s corps or partnerships in there, but you may have 40% of them that do have operating companies where they're they're managing real estate and run that through an s corporation, things like that.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well, I I wanna but I know John's got we're we're unfortunately out of time here, but I wanna say some another comment. We're we're I know on your tax advisory services on your website. Again, it's rei.pa. Couple of things. I mean, what you're doing is might seem subtle, but you're nailing it.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right? You've you've I love clearly identifying the prices of your packages. We're a very big advocate of get the price discussion out as quickly as possible. The other thing as I'm looking, you know, as I reviewed your website and again, I got a little I got a little cheat code because we're in the same mastermind group. We've known each other pretty well over the last couple of years.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You're you're using acronyms. So instead of you use the term doors. Anyone that works in real estate knows that's how people speak about. They don't talk about, I've got two rental properties. If they've had a duplex, that's two doors.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So I like that you use the term doors. Just little subtle things. Like you said, that terminology makes those prospective clients say, okay. This guy and his team understand me.
Greg Seay, CPA:Yeah. It makes a bit yeah. Just them a little bit more comfortable of addressing you or make making a touch point with you.
John Tripolsky:Yeah. And, Greg, you just won Chris over when you said peanut butter. Let's be honest. That that was
Chris Picciurro, CPA:the that was the one.
John Tripolsky:Yeah. But we will we will let you off the hook with this one here. I just wanna wrap with one one comment here as well. There's so many similarities listening to you guys talk between y'all's world and medical professionals. Right?
John Tripolsky:Like, you're talking about niching down. You don't have somebody who operates on shoulders also talking to you about brain surgery, and then you're talking about clients, patients. Like, there's so many similarities between the two of those. I I don't even think you guys, you know, maybe even realize all those, you know, your approach and everything as well too. So we'll dive into that.
John Tripolsky:I definitely had another episode or, you know, some short form content. We'd love to pop out there with you as well. But if anybody has any questions on this, I'll go ahead and put Greg's contact just directly in the show notes as well too. So you have no reason not to reach out to him or reach out to, Chris. You don't wanna ask me anything.
John Tripolsky:I don't have any answers. Let's be honest. I'm just really good at directing people somewhere else. I'm like the like the modern day Rolodex or Yellow Pages. So, Greg, thanks for joining us, man.
John Tripolsky:We really appreciate it.
Greg Seay, CPA:Appreciate you having me on. Yeah. This was great. Loved it. Thanks for having me.
John Tripolsky:Absolutely. In February, listen to this again. Check out the show notes. There's some resource links in there, and we will see you back here again next time on the MRR Show brought to you by the MRR Institute.
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