My Experience As An Accountant
People ask me: “Why This Industry? Why Help Accountants?”
Well, plain and simply, it’s where my white collar life started.
My professional career started as an accountant in the mid-tier firm, Grant Thornton.
I came across some truly talented professionals and had some wonderful experiences, but plain and simply, accounting wasn’t going to be for me in the long term.
I was in two mind sets about what to do next. I still loved the numbers side of accounting and spent every itching hour of the day glued to Business Insider or the Financial Review and followed every detail of my favorite ASX listed companies.
Would I pursue a career in finance or economics, where my tertiary qualifications would naturally position me? Or would I split from my identity as a finance guy and focus on my passion which originally stemmed from behavioral economics; the behaviors of markets (aka people).
I’m sure by now it’s of no surprise to you.. my accounting career and I went in separate directions.
Call it a mid-life crisis. If you can call it that at only 22years of age (I certainly hope not), but I decided to pursue passion over what some would call ‘a more sensible idea’.
My future career stemmed in the furthest possible route from accounting as possible – Sales & Marketing. This is not to say that I didn’t enjoy being an accountant, but frankly, it wasn’t for me.
Marketing Was For Me
Marketing had been engraved in my DNA from earlier experiences in life.
The family business was retail and the shop was located in a country town; a harsh environment when things aren’t healthy within the local economy. This taught me, you have to be more than a shop front to survive in the information age. Clear value propositions and effective communication was the only way you could survive.
With my new lease on life, I spent some time in some very tough sales oriented environments, some finance related, others far from it.
It was a steep learning curve going from a job that required productive results by spending 87% of my time not speaking to a single soul and knocking out tax returns, to transitioning into an environment where I would soon rely on my people skills and understanding of human behavior to produce results.
Despite the challenge this posed, it was one which I thoroughly enjoyed and felt at home within.
After some time in sales and marketing, my desire and yearn to be involved in business development, and not just my own business development, but that of others, began to weigh heavily on me. I saw an opportunity to help businesses and that’s what I set out to do.
Just like many SMB’s, without the correct guidance, can under utilise their accounting information, I saw way too many businesses in Australia that underutilised their marketing capabilities.
With this in mind, it was time to begin working with businesses in an advisory role again; This time I would be advising on marketing with a particular focus on digital methods.
Content May Be King, But Context Is God
When conducting my business plan and deciding on a niche, the first industry that came to mind was of course accounting, but I knew the accounting industry was not going anywhere too fast and robots were not yet to take over, despite all of the fear being drummed into the industry.
So, I took a detour and began helping a number of dental practices to improve their online marketing. Now I know what you’re thinking. Why dentists?
I thought this article was about why you chose accounting.
Don’t worry, it is, but as they say, content may be king, but context is god.
Allow me to explain.
Dentists are one of the most feared people on the planet, literally! There are even phobias named after them. They may as well have a snake hidden in their armpit for some people.Think about it, people will allow themselves to be knocked the ‘F’ out just to get their teeth attended to by the dentist.
If a dentist isn’t able to sell themselves online, they may as well walk away. That, and there is a so called ‘patient shortage’ so the need to induce demand with my services was more applicable than ever.
What Accountants Fear
Anyway, back to accounting. The reason why now is the right time for me to reintroduce myself to the accounting industry, this time as a marketing expert rather than a taxation expert, is because I have been paying close attention to the direction of the accounting industry and, well, the marketing still stinks.
Many accountants fear the word SALES and don’t like to sell nor be conceived to be selling. However, all accountants know that it is the lifeblood of their business, that is, if they would like to grow.
What many accountants don’t understand is their ability to leverage digital methods to do the selling for them. With digital methods continually advancing the sales process the part that requires a person to sell is becoming shorter and the majority of the convincing can now be done online.
With this in mind, and the welcoming of a number of accounting clients to Chris Evans Digital, we are now opening up ‘officially’ to the accounting industry.
What does this mean for you?
It simply means that there will now be an option in the market to visit for advice on firm growth via new clients.
If this is something you might be interested in then I can’t promise that I am definitely able to help you in your unique circumstances, but I am certainly open to having a chat to see whether I may be able to help. If you would like to get in touch, my LinkedIn profile can be found by clicking here.
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