This transcript was generated from the episode audio and may contain minor errors.
[Music]
Hey everyone, what's up? Welcome to Side Hustle School. This is your host, Chris Guillebeau. Thanks for tuning in today. Today we're gonna hear from a CPA in the Midwest who wants to focus on retaining clients.
He wants to keep his clients around. This is such an important topic. Probably, I don't know, eight out of 10 questions I get from existing business owners are about how to find new customers. They wanna make more sales. They wanna go out into the world, bring more people into the fold and so on.
But the problem is, if there is a hole in your bucket, in other words, if you do not retain customers well, if you can get clients but then they leave, well, it's all for nothing. And so I really respect people who have their eyes on sustainability. I think it's a very smart move. So what can we do for our caller, Jim? Again, he's a CPA who wants to focus on retaining clients.
We're gonna hear his question and my detailed answer in just 30 seconds. [Music]
Hi, this is Jim Buttonfield from Kansas City, Missouri. I'm a CPA and I've built a small but loyal group of clients over the past two years since leaving my job as a cost accountant for a big company. I love working for myself and would like to have a few more consistent clients. But rather than focus on growth, I wanna make sure I keep the clients I have.
Most of them are small business owners and they keep me pretty busy. Most retention advice I've seen includes recommendations like send them cookies during the holidays. I have no objection to cookies, but I tend to think the valuable work I do for them is a lot more, well, valuable. So aside from bribing my clients to stick around, do you have any other advice? Jim, what's up, man?
You are a small business saint. Way to go, I love the thinking on focusing on your customers. In fact, just by thinking that way and asking these questions, I think you're on the right path. So let's break it down a bit. I actually think the small touches like sending cookies during the holidays can matter.
Like I think they're not the big thing of course, but I do think they can matter a bit. What is essential are small touches throughout the year and not just cookies, but small touches to let your clients know you're working on their behalf. Especially if they're paying you on retainer or monthly fee. That's my relationship with my CPA. I pay her a monthly cost basically, and she just does a fantastic job.
Among other things, she has let me know proactively when there's a tax change I can benefit from, or if there's a negative change, or something that would affect me adversely. She's already done a lot of research to see if her clients, including me, but probably some other folks as well, can do anything to offset that impact. And finally, she's just available. Before I worked with the CPA, I had a relationship with somebody else, another CPA who I didn't like very much at all, because he was kind of the opposite of all those things. I only heard from him basically when it was time for tax season.
And the funny thing is even the cookies he sent at the end of the year were bad. They were bad cookies. So I didn't have a great relationship with him. I didn't feel like he was really looking out for my interests. And then when I would see the cookies arrive, every December, they actually made me angry.
So basically what Jim or any other service professional wants to do, you wanna do what Kelsey, that's my current CPA, she's amazing, shout out to Kelsey. You wanna do what she does instead of what my previous guy did. So you always wanna ask, how can you add value to your client relationships? It's a pretty simple, basic, yet critical question. And I think if you go through life asking yourself that question, just like Jim is doing, you're gonna be far ahead of so many service providers.
So Jim, I wish you every success. I hope you have all the clients you need, and I hope you do very well for yourself. Any listeners who are service providers, I wish you the same success. Whatever you're up to this holiday season, I hope you're taking care of yourself. Maybe setting some goals for next year or just trying to make it through the season.
Hey, I get it. I've got a short daily episode for you every day, less than 10 minutes long. You can listen wherever you get your podcasts. That's it for now. My name's Chris Guillebeau.
This is "Side Hustle School." [Music]
From the Onward Project.
