Hey there, happy Friday!
I spent the week at Intuit in San Francisco and wrote this while flying home!
Table of Contents
I highly recommend this virtual conference. David does a great job finding amazing speakers and we’re a sponsor for it as well!
The Mental Load
Most business owners are completely overloaded.
Phones. Slack messages. Twenty tabs open.
Kids. Team issues. Customers. Fire drills.
The last thing they need is me calling them to ask about $1 transactions, throwing accounting jargon at them, or drowning them in details.
We’re adding noise to an already noisy week.
But what if you just gave owners what they actually need?
Clarity.
Focus.
Simplified data they can use to make decisions.
Focus is harder than ever these days.
Most owners I know have limited capacity for every part of their business. They need to spend their brain space on the highest-impact stuff.
So when you strip out the noise and give them exactly what they need to make a decision?
You’re giving them their focus back.
What clients actually want
They don’t care about details - the weeds.
They want answers and relevant data.
Answers to things like:
“Are we doing okay?”
“What needs my attention?”
“What changed since last month?”
“Do I need to make a decision today?”
“What should I worry about and what can I ignore?”
That’s it.
We confuse showing our work with showing value.
But sometimes the details and questions about the work take away from the actual narrative you’re trying to form for clients.
How we make things harder
When we give too much, we take away time and focus.
We tell the whole story when we should be focusing on the meaningful parts.
We overwhelm people by:
dumping reports on them
asking about immaterial transactions (“please send me that .50 receipt”)
using internal language they don’t speak
sending five-paragraph emails when two sentences would work
giving updates without telling them why it matters
listing problems without telling them what to do next
This is something I’ve started considering more and more. I’ve seen how teams will ask tons of questions during month end and then simply toss a PDF or excel file with financials at the client. This feels backwards. I’d rather spend our communication time on providing value.
At Celerity, we’ve been trying to shift this mindset a bit. Take care of the work, so we can focus on providing actual value to our clients.
What reducing cognitive load actually looks like
Okay, so now that we know that less can be more for a client, let’s focus on ways to bring this into your firm.
Dashboards - Summarizing data for your client so they can focus on exactly what they need to see each day, week, or month can be incredibly powerful. This is very high level to start and you can always dive in if there are anomalies or if they have questions. It sure beats sending a standard financial packet
Simplification - This is where sub-accounts are key. Simplifying their books so that they can start out of the weeds is really important. If you have a 4 page P&L, you have a problem. Simplify the financial reporting and your clients will thank you.
Say less - We love our acronyms and we’re all so technical but using accounting jargon only confuses clients. If someone asks me a question via email I am sending them cliff notes, not the entire GAAP write up.
Batching - It’s fun to shoot off 20 emails with questions but every single email a client looks at takes up a sliver of mental space. If you batch those questions and send all at once, it’s an easy lift that will save them time and capacity.
Immateriality - Seriously stop wasting time for busy owners with questions & issues related to smaller things.
And lastly, just ask them! They’ll let you know how often they want to hear from you, see the data, etc. It’s a good opportunity for an expectations conversation.
The technical piece of accounting will become more and more reliant on AI data sources in the future.
I feel like the role of accountant is shifting.
The future accountant will be a translator.
A filter.
Someone who can explain what matters & why, without adding more noise.
So maybe ask yourself… are you creating noise with your clients?
Tech of the Week
ChatGPT - But in reverse!
This is something I’ve been doing a lot lately. It’s asking ChatGPT to prompt me for questions to give it even better context to help out + or help me articulate my own thoughts.
For example: “Fernando (yes, I call mine Fernando), ask me 10 questions that will help me onboard a Netsuite client quickly and accurately while providing amazing communication”
It will then ask me stuff like: “What’s your current process for onboarding, what apps do they use, What industry is the client in, etc.”
This is super powerful because it’s not just using the generic data it’s finding online, it’s prompting you to differentiate & add your genius into the mix.
Some other reverse prompts I’ve tried lately:
“Prompt me to help me figure out who to hire next”
“Ask me questions to help me understand how my firm is different.”
“Ask me what you need to know to build a clean, simple dashboard based on this client’s financials.”
“Ask me 10 questions to help me pull out good topics for social media.”
I find this is best when you have a certain level of expertise/understanding that maybe isn’t out there and readily available online. I use ChatGPT to pull out my own creativity.
Question for you
What’s one thing you keep promising yourself you’ll fix “when things slow down”?
(and what if “slowing down” never comes?)
Poll
What topcs resonate with you the most?
Have a fantastic weekend & upcoming holiday! I’m going to be up in Hayward, Wisconsin all weekend with family.
Tailor