We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Amy Northard a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Amy, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.

Communication seems to be really tough for the accounting industry. Many of us are introverts who like to put our heads down and knock out to-do lists while putting off the things that take up a lot of energy. This tends to result in taking weeks to respond to clients, if at all, and using high-level accounting terms that are hard for non-accountants to wrap their heads around.

Every week I take about 15 prospective client calls and terrible communication comes up as the reason they’re looking for a new accountant probably 75% of the time. Since I’ve heard this complaint over and over for the last decade, it’s been really ingrained in me that we as a firm need to focus on that aspect of our service to really stand out.

I hear from clients constantly how appreciative they are of hearing back with an answer to their question within a day or two and I know we’re on the right track. They send referrals our way constantly because it’s hard to find this these days.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I got into accounting back in high school because the economy wasn’t great and my dad suggested it as a good, stable career. Not exactly the start to a career one would be passionate about, right? Thankfully I’ve always been entrepreneurial and mixing that with the accounting side of things really got me excited about my career path.

Again, on dad’s suggestion, I got my CPA license after college and then panicked a little that I was going to be sitting in a cubicle for the rest of my life, missing out on a quarter of the year because of tax season. I started looking for other non-tax jobs but nothing was the right fit. It was then that I decided I would take a non-accounting part-time job and start building my own CPA firm that worked with exciting clients and focused on a work-life balance.

I began working with a lot of photographers which led to wedding planners and just expanded from there to almost anyone who considers themselves creative in some way. I love following them on social media and getting to cheer them on while also seeing the financial side of their efforts.

About 5 years into entrepreneurship my husband joined me full time as the person who handles all things tech – website, software, systems, etc. It was about that time where we decided to start expanding our team to hire more full-time employees and stop using contractors so we could start pairing up clients with team members instead of me being the primary point of contact for hundreds of clients.

We now employ about 15 employees and constantly growing. We work with clients on bookkeeping, tax preparation, tax planning, income and expense projections, converting to an S-corp structure, and much more. Instead of meeting just once a year during tax season with an accountant, our clients are paired up with an accountant and work with them on quarterly tax estimates, annual tax planning and email support year-round.

This helps relieve the stress of always wondering how much tax will be owed and gets clients prepared for annual taxes.

Can you talk to us about your experience with selling businesses?

I sold a piece of my business recently. As a lower-cost option for business owners who need basic financial assistance but aren’t in a place to hire an accountant one-on-one, we have an online course we point them to. This course was created about 7 or 8 years ago and besides some tax thresholds being updated, it hadn’t been touched since it was initially created. I started to go through the process of having a copywriter update the content to flow better and update anything that was outdated and then refilmed everything last summer. As part of this refresh, we decided to give it a new name which is now Know Your Worth.

During this refresh process someone reached out asking to buy the old domain for the course and as we got further into the process, we learned he really wanted the trademark rights to the course name for a project he was working on.

We were initially just going to have everything redirect to the new course and trash the old name, but we were able to sell off this asset and make some money off of it.

This got my wheels turning for my clients, especially ones thinking about closing their business. Always consider trying to sell off all or part of the assets of your business. For us it was probably a good bit of luck things worked out this way, but it can also be an intentional sale using a third party to manage the process.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I definitely don’t have a large social media presence in comparison to many, but it’s been my creative outlet and a way for me to share what it’s like being a business owner, accountant, mom and wife all at the same time. It’s also given me a way to share free information with followers that they can put into action and feel more confident in their business financials.

It’s been a while since I’ve done it, but I used to have annual calculator photo shoots where I’d literally hire a photographer to come shoot my vast aray of calculators so I’d have original photos for social media. I had found my “thing” and a small way to stick out in follower’s heads.

Besides posting content, social media allows me and my team members to see what’s going on in clients’ lives like getting married, having babies, moving and launching new products or services. Knowing those things helps us with tax planning if they’re a client and helps us to know the right questions to ask during tax planning. It also helps us create a connection by cheering them on, posting “Congratulations” when something exciting happens. They truly feel like friends that you’re excited for, which is very different from the typical accountant/client relationship.

As far as advice goes, show your face. Have people be able to see that you’re a real human running the business and you do things besides sit at your computer all day like a robot. Use it to be social and connect with people. Don’t just post to get a sale or an email signup.

Contact Info:

• Website: amynorthardcpa.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/amynorthard
• Facebook: facebook.com/amynorthardcpa
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amynorthardcpa/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdKIg0j9WD-doFk9SUu1Snw

Image Credits
Sami Renee Photography Harms House Photography Bethanne Arthur Photography