Almost every slide designer has heard the phrase, “But we can get this done in [insert country here] for a fraction of the price.

Slide designers aren’t alone in feeling this pressure. So in the interests of hearing how another industry deals with this, today we talk to business coach Geraldine Carter to find out what Certified Public Accountants are doing about it.

Episode transcript:

Matt Krause
Alper today we have a guest on the podcast, Geraldine Carter. And Geraldine is a business coach for CPAs. And listeners, no, you’re not crazy. And yes, you are in the right place. This is the White Rabbit podcast. And yes, it is about presentations. The reason that we’ve asked Geraldine to join us today is that CPAs, otherwise known as Certified Public Accountants, CPAs, and presentation designers face a very similar issue, which is that, especially in recent years, they’ve been thrown into a global labor pool.

Matt Krause
And now they find themselves, often this change has been very abrupt, they find themselves competing with people halfway around the world.

Matt Krause
It used to be enough to be the presentation designer for your town, but now you have to be, or get to be, depending on your perspective, the presentation designer for the whole world.

Matt Krause
And the tools to do that, those tools have been around for a while, like Zoom and email and stuff. But in recent years, the client expectations have changed a lot too. The clients used to expect that you could just hop in your car and do a face to face meeting no problem.

Matt Krause
But now more often than not, that expectation is gone. And for many clients now, it’s perfectly natural to never be in the same room as the person that you are working with. So we presentation designers have been thrown into this lifestyle, as have CPAs.

Matt Krause
And perhaps we presentation designers can learn a little bit more about dealing with this strange new world by listening to someone from another industry describing how they do it. That’s why we brought Geraldine on the show today.

Matt Krause
And before we move on to the main topic for today, I just wanted to mention Geraldine, I wanted to compliment you on your voice. It’s great for radio or any kind of audio recording…

Geraldine Carter
Thank you. I double with a stint as the host of All Things Considered.

Matt Krause
I think that in the very first podcast that I heard you on, it was about a year or a half a year or a year ago or so something like that. The interviewer was commenting on this very same thing. You’ve got this great, deep, silky soothing voice that is just made for radio.

Matt Krause
And in fact, if you weren’t a business coach for CPAs, I could totally see you as an announcer for National Public Radio or All Things Considered or some show like that, something like that. And one of the things…

Geraldine Carter
It’ll be my it’ll be my next career.

Matt Krause
One of the things that just so don’t forget to do this later. Can you tell our listeners, Geraldine, how can they get in touch with you? Where can they find you?

Geraldine Carter
Sure. So the best place is simply to go to my website. It’s geraldinecarter.com. And I can also be found lurking on LinkedIn. I’m the only Geraldine Carter.

Matt Krause
Okay. And so Geraldine onto the main topic for today. This change having to be the CPA, or in our case, presentation designer, for the whole world now, not just for your town, having to compete with people halfway around the world, not just in your own backyard. Could you unpack that a little bit for us? And just tell us a little bit about what that has meant for the CPA business? And how CPAs are responded?

Geraldine Carter
Sure. So it’s a big question. And I think it might help if I provided a little bit of context for your listeners who probably don’t stay abreast of the CPA world.

Geraldine Carter
And that is that when COVID happened, there was a ton of legislation in the United States that got pushed through to help the everyday taxpayer and business owner.

Geraldine Carter
So not only just like other businesses were accountants and CPAs push to go up online where they had previously oftentimes still been geographically locally based. But they were also contending with a an an enormous pile of new legislation that they needed to bone up on in a hurry.

Geraldine Carter
And they became overworked because they had all of a sudden all their clients who were really needing them and they were dealing with making a gigantic shift onto the internet.

Geraldine Carter
So now that has passed, the legislation piece has mostly made its way through, but there’s still the vestige of overwork and having to move on to and having moved on to technology. And now, who is our competition, right? So it’s a whole new landscape for them.

Geraldine Carter
Now that they are on the internet, that they, I don’t want to speak in too broad brush, brush, brush stroke, but in general, they are seeing the opportunity in a new way. Because previously, they were more tethered to their zip code, because you wanted to work with a CPA who was inside your state who knew the state tax regulations and could handle your federal taxes plus your whatever state taxes. So there was that advantage.

Geraldine Carter
But now they’re seeing that they they do not need necessarily to be tethered to their zip code, so they can work with clients all around the country that they’re in.

Geraldine Carter
And that there are lots of resources to be able to work with people overseas. So one of the things that they face is trying to figure out: How do I offshore this?

Geraldine Carter
One of the differences for my people compared to your people is that when they offshore their work, they need to declare that to their client, they can’t just do it. So they can’t just do it behind the scenes, right, they need to disclose that to their client.

Geraldine Carter
So another piece that is in play here is that there are CPAs who have their own businesses, and they themselves have staff. And then there are CPAs, who work internally inside companies. So we need to just be clear about who we’re talking about, because it’s different, the landscape is different for each person.

Geraldine Carter
So where I think the competition comes in is if you are a CPA and accountant inside a company, and somebody can do your job offshore in the Philippines, in India, and so on for a much cheaper rate. So, now you’re looking at in that situation, you’re more likely to be looking at competition.

Geraldine Carter
If you’re a an accountant, or a CPA with a public facing practice, meaning you have clients who come in off the street or ring your phone. you own the business, that person faces less direct competition from overseas, because their client wants to work with a person in the United States.

Geraldine Carter
So those are their two different populations that I wanted to clarify for your listener because they face different challenges.

Matt Krause
Sure, sure.

Geraldine Carter
So. So you asked about competition. And yes, there’s competition, but what I think my, what I help my clients, what I help my clients look at is the opportunity.

Matt Krause
Okay, what do you mean by that?

Geraldine Carter
Because, yeah, so the opportunity is to get a deeper understanding of what your buyers your clients truly value.

Geraldine Carter
Because the buyer sometimes thinks that they are just buying somebody to perform the tasks. Right?

Geraldine Carter
Design these slides for me make my slides look pretty package the whole thing up, make me a great presentation. And in accounting world, you know, put all these numbers in the boxes, make sure that my numbers are clean, make sure that everything is filed properly, and so on.

Geraldine Carter
So that is one element of what the buyer is buying. But so often, the client is really looking for more than just the tasks to be done. And often what they are looking for at a higher level. Not everybody, not all of your buyers necessarily.

Geraldine Carter
But what some buyers are looking for is more expertise on the subject matter, more guidance, in general, more forward looking guidance, more strategy more, how does this small thing fit into the whole picture?

Geraldine Carter
Because there’s the doing of the work. But then there’s how does this fit into the greater picture of what I’m trying to achieve. And if we can understand what the buyer truly values beyond just the doing of the tasks, then we have a greater understanding of what the value is to the buyer. And what it is that they’re really after.

Geraldine Carter
And we can get it enables us to get out of the doing doing doing and rise above and do the higher value strategic guidance, forward thinking work. So the whole picture makes sense.

Geraldine Carter
So in an accounting space, what that often sounds like, though not always, is let’s just say you have small business owners, you know, folks like you folks like me, who are operating a solo practice with maybe a small handful of staff.

Geraldine Carter
What it looks like is for us as buyers of accounting services, it can look like access to your CPA, right, rather than having somebody who’s so busy toiling and crunching numbers, overloaded with clients and under priced.

Geraldine Carter
You can’t get a hold of them you’re looking for, you know, hey, I want to buy a house. Can we talk about the tax implications and you can’t get a hold of your CPA that’s not very valuable as a client, right? You want a CPA that you can get a hold of who returns your phone calls reasonably promptly?

Geraldine Carter
So access is prized. And you’re looking for oftentimes, cashflow, understanding where cash is how much money you have, how much you’re gonna have, how much you can afford to spend, can you afford it can you afford to invest to grow your business and so on.

Geraldine Carter
So as a buyer, we’re oftentimes looking for more than just the task to be done. And when we can understand when the, when the seller can understand what it is that the buyer really wants at a deeper level than just getting the task done, then it enables the seller to leverage and capture that opportunity, and rise up a layer if you will, and get out of the competition that happens when you’re competing for just doing the job.

Matt Krause
Okay, and so, one thing that I’ve heard when the issue of avoiding downward pricing pressure comes up, one thing that I’ve heard a lot is that people start talking about things like specialization.

Matt Krause
And it occurs to me that like, one thing that you mentioned is that there is a large segment of buyers for accounting services, in the US in this case, who can only use service providers who are also in the US.

Matt Krause
And so a presentation designer who is specializing in the health care market, for example, might be in a similar situation, maybe because of HIPAA rules, they can only use, they can only use service providers who are in the US.

Matt Krause
So in the in the world of of avoiding the downward pricing pressure, it seems that specialization might be a good option.

Matt Krause
But let’s say that, for example, I have never practiced with this before, I don’t know anything about the subject of specialization.

Matt Krause
You know, for years, I’ve just been the presentation designer in this town. And anybody who needs a slide made they call me. And now all of a sudden there are these people in Pakistan and India, who are doing the same work for a fraction of the price. Can I avoid that by specializing and how would I begin moving in that direction?

Geraldine Carter
Yeah. So for your slide, folks, the, my answer is likely probably, there’s an excellent chance, and to draw the parallel in the accounting space, focusing, becoming more specialized, narrowing your niche, whatever you’d like to call it is enormously valuable.

Geraldine Carter
Because you deepen your expertise. So niching basically helps with sales, marketing and delivery, right. So on the delivery side, you understand your marketplace much better. You provide more expertise more readily, with less effort from you, because you’re an expert. When you provide more expertise more readily. When you when you provide more expertise, you create more value for your clients more valuable.

Geraldine Carter
When you create more value, your prices have more room to go up. When your prices have more room to go up, you have room in your business to have fewer clients in order to meet your revenue needs.

Geraldine Carter
You have fewer clients, and you save that time you plow that time back into deepening your expertise, which enables you to provide more value, and it becomes an upward spiral.

Geraldine Carter
On the marketing side, you understand, you understand your people super well and their problems. So you can speak really closely to their problems and makes your marketing stickier. And when you understand their problems really well, and you bring in a prospect for a discovery call, you know them inside and out and your person thinks, oh my gosh, you are exactly the person for me, you know exactly what I want. So your delivery gets easier, your marketing gets easier, your sales get easier when you go inside your niche.

Matt Krause
In a moment, I’m going to throw it over to Alper so that I don’t hog all the questions, but I have I have one more follow up question on this subject, Geraldine. And that is that I have been a generalist slide designer for all of my life. I’ve been this way for decades. And now I’m feeling this pressure to specialize and I’m kind of scared of it. So what are some of the first steps that people take when they’re just trying to expand their comfort zone in this specialization world?

Geraldine Carter
Yeah. So I love advocating for one step at a time, right? It’s like stepping stones across a creek, just one step at a time. If you try and step too far, you’re gonna fall into the drink.

Geraldine Carter
So a great place to look is inside your existing roster. Who are the clients you enjoy working with already? And who are the clients who you dread working with?

Geraldine Carter
And identify the ones you enjoy working with. Look for the commonalities and start with those commonalities. Start to talk to understand those clients you enjoy working with, look at the clients you enjoy working with. Understand their commonalities, and start talking to them about what they value most in working with you so that you can understand through their eyes what that sounds like.

Geraldine Carter
And use that in your marketing language to attract more clients like that, and slowly shed clients who you dread and in discovery if they if you have red flags and you bristle, listen to those signals and don’t take them on so that you can go in the direction of working with more clients who you like. And you just keep looking for the patterns and aim to recreate the patterns over time.

Matt Krause
Good advice. Good advice. So Alper, do you have any questions for Geraldine?

Alper Rozanes
I have a couple of questions. But before that, I’d like to point out how I loved to see the tremendous similarities between someone designing slides or providing CPA services and the need to actually upgrade their game, because it’s not just about designing slides anymore.

Alper Rozanes
I mean, everybody does that, even AI does that, you just feed it with information, and you’ll get slides. But the real value that an aspiring designer can bring onto the table is actually to guide the client.

Alper Rozanes
Because I mean, I also started with listening to the client, just hearing what they want and implementing them. But over time, it had to evolve because the client is not always the best point of contact to determine the desired outcome and the best path in that direction.

Alper Rozanes
So with time, the value that you bring onto the table has maybe less to do with the physical act of doing the work and more to do with bringing years of expertise and that perspective onto the table. So yeah, I liked those similarities between the two industries.

Alper Rozanes
By the way, Alper, as you were talking, I was watching Geraldine nod in vehement agreement, it appears, with what you were just saying. So anyway, sorry to interrupt. Go ahead, Alper.

Alper Rozanes
No, no. What I was just what I’m curious about is something I’m going to try to find more similarities. For example, having a wider client base geographically, especially does it necessitate, let’s say more sophisticated client management tools? Or practices? Or can it be just business as usual for your local clients? Or anyone joining from anywhere in the world?

Geraldine Carter
Let me see if I have your question, Does having a wider client base necessitate more sophisticated client management tools? It that it?

Alper Rozanes
Yeah, like you have clients based in the US, you have clients based outside the US in different parts of the world, just curious. So requires something different.

Geraldine Carter
So I would say if it requires something different, I would say to not straddle the fence. So if it does, then pick the thing that you need to go with in order to manage having clients in multiple locations.

Geraldine Carter
But part of having a business that runs with nice margins is keeping things really simple. And there’s an element of discipline of ruthless simplicity, that, I think enables that, when implemented, enables the business owner, in my case, CPAs, to have a much simpler business.

Geraldine Carter
And the temptation, there can be a temptation to go wide and broad and worldwide. And we have clients all around the world, or we have clients in all 50 states or 25 countries. And that may be all well and good if you want that to be your business model. But sometimes that can be business model scope creep, and it perpetuates downstream complications.

Geraldine Carter
And if you have downstream complications or a complicated business, because you’ve tried to go too wide and too broad, and then you need different kinds of technology and a scattered tech stack in order to cudgel it together, it’s worth asking, if that’s really an efficient choice.

Geraldine Carter
So I would come at it more from a standpoint of what do I want my business to be? What are the characteristics of a business that I’m happy with? That I think is enough, right? Because sometimes as business owners, we can just chase a never ending amount of enoughness. It’s never enough.

Geraldine Carter
To decide how much is enough, and what do you need in your pipeline and in your business, in order for it to be enough, and so often, there’s enough business around you that you can fill your pipeline and your business with what is nearby, if you will, not geographically necessarily, but close to you, and you can Yeah, and you can keep your business simpler, and when it’s simpler, it’s more profitable.

Geraldine Carter
So I would just avoid the temptation to try and go too wide. If you find that it’s resulting in you having to purchase new software, extra tools and all the rest, because it’s going to it might drive your profit down. So it’s just something to keep an eye on. I mean, if you need the technology and it’s profitable, and you can make a case for it financially, Have at it, but it’s it’s sometimes it can be a red herring that’s worth being cautious about simply adopting.

Alper Rozanes
I really liked that I really like that approach. Thank you. Matt, I have one more question. But before that, I would like to give the floor to you.

Matt Krause
Sure. Oh, no, go ahead. Go ahead.

Alper Rozanes
Well, again, about the sovereignty international clients is this is just my personal curious about cultural barriers, like, have you faced any challenges related to, let’s say, cultural misunderstandings, or different business practices as you worked with geographically diverse client base?

Alper Rozanes
That’s kind of the situation I find myself in geographically. And practically, that’s why I’m curious how other people are dealing with that.

Geraldine Carter
Yeah. So two answers to this question. One of them is that I’m a sort of 50/50 mutt. My mom’s French, I spent a lot of time over there, my family, a lot of my family’s there. And I also spent 10 years living outside the United States. So I love all kinds of different cultures.

Geraldine Carter
And I find myself very curious about people who live in different cultures and have different day to day experience, different day to day experiences, and lives, I welcome that.

Geraldine Carter
And in my own business, most of my clients are American and Canadian. So culturally, they are more similar than they are different. And given the nature of who I am, my personality and so on, I tend to attract a certain kind of people.

Geraldine Carter
So what I don’t find is that I’m working with all kinds of different people across all kinds of cultures, I would say that my my own client base happens to be, I don’t want to say homogenous, but they tend to be a lot of, they tend to be a lot alike. But if I did have cultural differences, if I did have folks from different cultures, I would welcome it. Because I think that makes for a richer experience.

Alper Rozanes
It does.

Alper Rozanes
It can sometimes only sometimes can be a little challenging, especially if you have three meetings on the same day from three different cultures, for example, you have to put a lot of hats, you have to adjust the opening conversation. Five minutes is acceptable, here, for example, in Turkey it’s more, with the US clients that I have it’s less so that could be the only challenge if you have multiple meetings during the day. But like you said, it’s also a very enriching experience.

Matt Krause
I would love to sit here and listen to Geraldine talk all day long. I think it’s fascinating, but we do have to wrap it up. So so Alper, do you have any questions before we wrap it up for the day?

Alper Rozanes
No, I can leave it to you.

Matt Krause
So I just wanted to thank you very much for joining us on the podcast today, Geraldine.

Alper Rozanes
Thank you, Geraldine.

Geraldine Carter
Thanks to both of you. It’s been great to be with you.

Matt Krause
Yeah. And so I just wanted to say goodbye to both of you. And once again, thank you very much, Geraldine.