Some of the most ruthless, profit-driven business people in the world are probably people you don’t think of as business owners: Drug dealers. The UN estimates that the global drug trade exceeds 1% of the entire global GDP. That’s a lot of money, and a lot drugs. Given the success that industry, are there perhaps some lessons to be learned? I would think so.
1. Know your sales cycle. It amazes that many business owners either don’t know their sales cycle, or don’t think they can employ one. In the drug trade, there is a well defined sales cycle. There may be different levels of users, but most of them can generally be lumped into one of three categories: low quantity recreational users, medium users, and very heavy users. Drug dealers understand this concept, and inherently know when their customers are going to be in need of more product. If Joe Blow goes through two grams of cocaine in a week, guess what? His dealer is probably calling him every 5 to 7 days.
What is YOUR sales cycle? Think about how long a quantity of your product or service lasts. Yes, I said service. If you are in the HVAC business, then you can take advantage of seasonal cycles to create a base of non-emergency service business. AC maintenance in the spring, furnace system checks in the fall. It’s that easy. All consumables have an obvious sales cycle, and printer companies have known this for years. HP, Dell, Epson, etc., practically give away printers. Why? Because they make their money on ink and toner!
I work in a field that, on the surface, doesn’t seem to have a sales cycle capable of generating repeat business. If somebody has a problem with the IRS, and we fix it, let’s be honest: They don’t WANT to be our customer again. That doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t have an ongoing business relationship. We have branched out into different financial services that our clients can use, such as estate planning, payroll service, ongoing quarterly and annual tax return preparation — all of which are things on pretty well defined sales cycles.
If your product or service is something that is a one off, like ours is, then you have to expand your thinking and look for cross-sell opportunities. That is a whole other subject beyond the scope of this post that I’ll cover in the future, but think about it from a critical standpoint. If your business is something apparently mundane, like a rock shop or a second-hand clothing store, what can you do to spice it up? Well, how about a Rock of the Month Club for all your local customers? Or perhaps do monthly promotions on specific types of garments? This month is handbags, next month is pants, month after that is blouses, then jackets. In short, turn your mundane store into a continuity program.
2. Your product IS your business. A pot grower that grows weed with tiny nuggets, or doesn’t flush chemical fertilizers before harvest, is going to have a crappy product that customers won’t want to smoke. Xtasy tablets cut with way to much heroin are going to be a poor seller. Cars whose transmissions fail at 20,000 miles repeatedly due to a planetary gear defect won’t last the first model year. An airline with the worst on-time landing record in the industry is going to suffer horribly in ticket sales. An awesome band that suddenly gets a really horrible new lead singer isn’t going to sell out any concerts. In my line of work, a tax resolution firm that constantly rips off customers that haven’t even signed a service contract or given authorization to run that credit card is going to be the subject of numerous consumer complaints and a civil lawsuit by the Texas Attorney General (this just recently happened).
3. Customer service will make you rich. Drug dealers often gain new customers by giving away free product. It’s a loss leader, because they know that one good customer will make them a ton of money in the long haul.
4. It’s OK to fire your customers. Some customers cost you more money than you make from them. Some customers, despite your profits from them, aren’t worth the headache. Do you think a drug lord keeps supplying a dealer that is perpetually weeks and weeks late with payment on prior shipments and skims off the top? No. That guy probably ends up as alligator food.
5. You grow your business by focusing on what matters most (aka, the Pareto Principle or 80/20 rule). There is a reason that the drug trade in large cities is primarily conducted by large, organized groups, such as gangs or organized crime syndicates. These organizations employ two incredibly important factors that most businesses would envy:
1). Tremendous employee loyalty, derived from extensive screening processes on hiring, and extreme consequences for leaving.
2). Numerous points of sale out where the customers are, making it convenient for the customer to purchase.
3). Employees are often given significant reign to act on behalf of the organization or the customer.
What can you do to garner employee loyalty? How can you endear your employees to you and your business to such an extent that they will bend over backwards to get their job done, make customers satisfied, and act in the best interest of the business? Perhaps more importantly, have you EMPOWERED your employees to take action that will keep problems to a minimum, and allow YOU to focus on growing the business?
Making it easy for your customers to purchase your product or service is critical to success in business. If your product is not carried by the stores that your target market gravitates to for purchasing that product, it’s not going to do well. If you sell via direct selling, is it easy or hard to buy your product? What can you do to make it easier? An example from a network marketing company I was involved in the launch of back in 2005: The product was outstanding, the customer service from headquarters was outstanding. What was the problem? You had to sign up as a distributor in order to buy the product online. What they should have done was allow people to buy the product, and then put that customer into direct contact with the nearest distributor in their ZIP code. The company is still going, but this one major flaw in their product launch kept them stifled for a year. It was so bad that many of us with large downlines (I had over 2,000 people in my downline) LEFT the company and took most of our downline with us.
If you’re reading this, there’s a decent chance that you are an online vendor or affiliate marketer. With that mind, think about this: Does your web site flow and layout make it difficult to do business with you? Is your checkout system more than one page? Is your order button easy to find? From a pure traffic standpoint, do you have enough inbound entry points out in the world (e.g., inbound links)?
You grow your business by focusing on the things that really matter. In short, this comes down to marketing and watching the money, and making that money work for you. You don’t grow your business by also being the guy that takes out the trash and mops the floor. You don’t grow your business by being the one person that does everything: You are inherently limited to the size you can grow.
Let’s take a deeper look at that from the perspective of a one-man drug operation. Let’s say we have a guy with a decent chemistry background, but with no real connections outside of the fact that he spends a lot of his free time at night clubs and raves. He sees the drug deals going on at the raves, and decides to enter the game himself. For under $2,000, our new friend can set himself up a nice little meth or Xtasy lab in his kitchen, and have enough raw material to make enough drugs over the course of a long weekend to net a street value of about $10,000.
Now, Mr. Indepedent Drug Dealer has to go to raves and somehow start selling his product. Perhaps he goes to places he’s been before, and opens a casual conversation with people he’s seen buying or using. Knowing that his product is his business, he hands out a small number of 100 mg doses throughout the evening, with the reminder, “There’s more where that came from.”
Over the course of a few months, our new entrepreneur is likely to build a small customer base that will actually net him a decent income, say $30k to $50k per year. But, in all reality, that’s about his income ceiling doing everything himself. Running manufacturing while also trying to stay low key to prevent running afoul of either law enforcement or larger operations limits him tremendously.
Compare this to a local drug lord. I’m talking big time, head honcho. This guy has foot soldiers throughout the city, hitting up every club, every night. Dealers on street corners, in places where customers KNOW they can come get product. Not only that, but he has multiple product lines: Cocaine, heroin, meth, pot, you name it. Not only that, but he doesn’t rely on single sources of manufacturing. Mr. Kingpin has a network of growers he buys weed from, runs several meth houses, imports cocaine from LA *and* Miami. This guy isn’t running a mom and pop drug shop — this guy is Fortune 500. See the difference?
Mr. Kingpin is in a position to deal with rival gangs. He’s in a position to demand higher product quality from his suppliers. He’s well insulated from law enforcement, because he’s not actually out dealing. His lieutenants and foot soldiers are empowered to make things right for a customer, up to a certain amount of product. These employees are also empowered to improve collections by whatever means neccessary, much to the misfortune of the customer that owes too much money.
Yes, it’s a pretty extreme example, but think about how you can ethically and legally apply the same principles to your own business. You don’t need to be a ruthless murderer selling crack to fourth graders to understand the basic principles of business that are carried to an extreme by our drug cartels and organized crime families. Business is business, regardless of your product or service.
Do you need help with your business systems, operational efficiency, marketing, or tax issues? If so, then give me a call. My direct number is (970) 930-1040 and I’d be more than happy to discuss any operational or strategic challenges you are facing in your business.
To your success,
Jassen Bowman, EA
A small subset of the small business community has been trying to make the dream of a totally portable, digital office a reality for years. Most people are already able to assemble pieces of the overall puzzle, but most don’t realize the full extent to which it is possible.
Since a significant part of my lifestyle design objective is to continue to do the jobs that I do now, but do them from anywhere, I required a rather robust set of solutions in order to pull off the virtual office. My desire was to be able to perform sales, marketing, and all client functions without much interaction with the “home office. In other words, I did not want to burden a member of our office staff with having to open my mail, sort it, scan it, and email it to me. Also, it was important that my clients experience an invisible transition not only to the virtual office, but also that they don’t even notice when I bounce from place to place geographically.
The solution I have set up is by no means ideal. In fact, I sense there is a business opportunity for a company to offer the majority of these services from one place, rather than having to utilize multiple different services to achieve the end result. Also, it should be noted that the nature of my business REQUIRES that I have access to fax and mail — yours may not have such a requirement.
CRM System
Most businesses require some sort of CRM system to organize their client information, perform sales functions, etc. Since no solution existed for my particular industry that would suit the needs of both the sales department and the tax resolution departments of our company, I programmed my own, with generous assistance from James Orr. This system, TaxCRM, not only replaced ACT! and Timeslips within the company, but also offers massive functionality and reporting custom to our industry. Designing my own system also allows me to add features at will, and integrate it with whatever other services I choose to use.
The Google Factor
Google offers a large suite of services to small businesses that I make judicious use of. Our entire company is on Gmail, allowing rapid communication via Google Talk, and a powerful web-based email service in Gmail. Google Calendar allows us to share calendars amongst staff, and will soon be integrated with TaxCRM.
In addition to these services for the entire company, I also utilize Google Voice as my sole incoming phone number. I set GVoice to ring both my cell and desk phones simultaneously, and is the only number I give out. I don’t even know what my new AT&T mobile number is, to be honest. I do all my SMS text messaging via GVoice, and all my voicemails appear there, and also in my Gmail inbox. As you will see, my GMail inbox is my central inbound communication “portal”.
Fax
The vast majority of my clients still utilize fax communications. Many don’t even have email. In addition, the IRS communicates heavily via fax, and zero through email. Because of this, I needed my own email-to-fax service. I settled on using RingCentral, and pay $10/month for incoming and outgoing fax service. The service has been reliable and easy to use so far, no complaints from me. All my incoming faxes come in as a PDF to my GMail inbox, and I can send outgoing faxes (with attachments!) by sending a simple email.
Postal Mail
The IRS sends all it’s notices via mail, and so it is imperative that I receive these. It took significant research to find this company, but Virtual Post Mail has a slick system. I have a mailing address in the Los Angeles area at which I receive all my IRS mail (and whomever I give this specific address to). They scan the envelope, and I view the image online. If it’s something I want opened, such as from the IRS for a client, I tell them to open the mail and scan the inside pages, and can then retrieve that a few hours later as a PDF. This service runs me $20 to $30 per month, depending on usage. Postal mail to email services are few and far between, with Earth Class Mail being the most popular, but also the most expensive. I have had no problems so far with Virtual Post Mail, after two months of usage.
Sending postal mail is also something I have to do occasionally. For this, I found a company called Postful that does this. Companies that offer outbound mailing services are numerous, and Postful does not have the lowest rates, by any means. However, they offer several features that make them awesome:
- An API so I can send mail directly from TaxCRM
- The ability to send one-off color postcards from uploaded images
- An email-to-postal-mail feature that allows me to send a letter on company letterhead directly from Gmail
This combination of features is what made me settle on Postful. The cost for sending a postcard is 55 cents, letters start at $1. This is a pay-as-you-go service, so I just put money on account to have credits when I need them. It’s a service I won’t use much, but it is an incredible convenience for sending letters from the road. I will continue to use Click2Mail for sending direct mail campaigns, due to cost, but Postful is great for what I need for client services in particular.
Mobile Communication
Getting some sort of smart phone is something I knew I would need. My search basically came down to getting a Droid (I was with T-Mobile already) or an iPhone. Their were pros and cons to both units, and I ended up getting the iPhone for a variety of reasons. The iPhone 4 came out literally a month after I bought my iPhone 3, so I felt like a stooge for not waiting, but whatever — it works for what I need. Several apps make life easier for mobile productivity. For example, the WordPress app allows me to to post to this blog from anywhere. Twitter, Facebook, and Hootsuite apps make social media marketing possible from the road. The Google App allows me to use all my Google services, and iPhone Mail syncs live with Gmail. The Kindle app lets me keep my library anywhere, anytime, and an awesome app called JotNot allows me to use the iPhone camera as a document scanner, which is important for my work. Other apps are allowing me to brush up on my Japanese, use online banking, and even interact with TaxCRM remotely. All in all, I can’t complain too much about the iPhone.
Skype
Skype was something I hadn’t played with at all until a couple weekends ago. My original plan for being able to make outbound calls was to literally take my desktop VOIP phone with me wherever I went. However, I have to admit to liking Skype, and have plans for making further use of it. There is even a Skype app for iPhone, which has interesting consequences.
So there’s the current run down. I funnel ALL incoming communications — email, text messages, voicemail messages, faxes, and even snail mail — into my GMail inbox. By subscribing to and using all these services, my life is greatly simplified in many ways, and I can work more efficiently in general, even when I’m in the office. But of even greater benefit is the fact that I’m in no way, shape, or form tethered to the office. I’m not the only one, either. We actually have several full time staff members that work full time from home. None of them need fax or snail mail like I do, but the other pieces of this system allow them to work remotely.
If working remotely is part of your lifestyle design, then look into some of these tools for yourself.
Sincerely,
Jassen Bowman, EA
P.S. Don’t forget, if you need tax help, I’m just a phone call away. You can reach me directly (at my Google Voice number, of course), by calling (970) 930-1040. Initial consultations are always free.
The vast majority of small businesses could use the services of an accountant. The number of ways in which it is possible to introduce errors into your business through accounting practices is staggering. Your accounting includes issues related to payroll, monitoring profitability, inventory control, avoiding penalties and interest on taxes, and much, much more. It is wise to select a competent professional in this field to help you navigate the minefield of accounting pitfalls. Selecting such a professional can be difficult, especially since not all accountants are created equal. Here are some questions to ask to help ensure that you are selecting the best accountant you can for your business.
1. Are they recommended by a trusted colleague?
One way to start the search for an accountant is to ask people that you already trust for suggestions. Your banker, insurance agent, attorney, and financial planner most likely know and work with accountants on a regular basis. Also inquire to the companies that you do business with, such as you barber, florist, butcher, and plumber. Chances are, these sorts of business owners use an accountant for some business functions, since these tend to be the types of business owners that are excellent at what they do, but not so great with dealing with the complexities of taxes and accounting.
2. Ask around your Chamber of Commerce.
If you are familiar with your local Chamber, they can be an excellent resource. You can ask at Chamber events for referrals to accountants, and you are likely to meet many such service providers at Chamber functions, trade events, and leads groups. Also, many Chambers have an internal complaint system and can let you know whether or not complaints have been issued locally against an accountant or firm.
3. Do they have any complaints with the Better Business Bureau?
When many individuals decide to take action and make a complaint against a firm, they often think first of the BBB. Check with your local division, or look them up online, and make sure that the company you are considering hiring has a good record with the BBB. If they have a Gold Star award from the BBB, then you’re on the right track to working with a company that is reputable and stands by their word. The BBB’s new letter grading system can also help you in selecting a good firm.
4. Have they ever been investigated by your state Attorney General’s office or state board of accountancy?
This is another place to do your own due diligence. Complaints with the state AG or Board of Accountancy is an automatic red flag and should be highly considered before selecting a firm.
5. What services do they provide, and what services do you NEED?
Think about exactly what you’re looking for in a service provider. Do you need full service accounting, outsourcing all functions to another person or firm? Or do you just need year-end tax preparation? Knowing the answer to what services you need will help you pick the best person to do what you need, and will affect your budget for getting it done. For example, if you just need tax preparation, then you might be better off with an experienced tax preparer instead of a CPA firm that mostly does auditing and general accounting. If you only need payroll services, then you might want to hire a payroll company rather than a bookkeeper that does payroll on the side. If you need the books updated weekly or monthly, most communities have competent, independent full charge bookkeepers that you can hire.
If you’re looking for somebody to come set up your books and show you how to use your accounting software, you may want to consider a general CPA or a competent bookkeeper. If you do all your own books using Peachtree, Quickbooks, MS Money, or another popular commercial software package, it can be very helpful to have somebody to call should something go wrong. The large commercial accounting software publishers all provide some sort of certified expert rating system for individuals that are experts on using their software. You may want to look for and consult with such a certified expert on your particular accounting software. For example, Intuit offers its Quickbooks Certified ProAdvisor program to consultants. Finding one of these certified individuals can really help you a lot if you’re doing the books yourself.
If your only interest is in tax compliance, look for a CPA that specializes in taxation, or an Enrolled Agent (EA). An EA is an individual licensed directly by the U.S. Treasury to handle tax matters, and this individual can represent you before the IRS just like a CPA or an attorney. By nature of the credential, EAs are dedicated tax professionals and are generally more competent in areas of tax issues than a general CPA, unlicensed tax preparer, or bookkeeper.
Selecting the type of professional you need is a serious consideration in this process, and depends largely on what you plan on doing yourself, and what you expect to need help with.
6. Are they licensed in some way?
Credentials are not always the most important thing to consider, but they do reflect at least a minimum level of professional competency, in theory. If they are a CPA, they’ve passed a rigorous four part examination and have at least a bachelor’s degree in accounting and two years of professional experience, at a minimum. If they are an Enrolled Agent, they have passed a very rigorous three part exam covering individuals, businesses, and practices and ethics that is administered directly by the Internal Revenue Service.
The individual preparing your tax returns, doing your books, or processing your payroll doesn’t necessarily need credentials in order to do the tax and do it right, so experience is a critical piece of the puzzle you’ll want to inquire about.
Do keep in mind that if you’re audited by the IRS, only CPAs, EAs, or attorneys can represent you, unless you wish to represent yourself, which is not recommended.
7. How much experience do they have?
How many years have they been doing what they do? What type of companies do they generally work with, such as which industries and what size companies? Inquire as to how many of each of your type of entity they work with each year. If they’re experienced working with your type of legal entity, within your industry, or your size of company, they might be a good fit.
8. How do they charge, and how much?
Don’t be afraid to ask about the money. Some firms will charge by the hour, or on a piece rate for the type of work being done. Bookkeepers will usually charge an hourly rate, while tax preparers often charge a flat rate per form and schedule. If your tax return is pretty complex, expect to pay more, which could be a base rate plus an hourly rate for doing accounting work to generate the numbers needed for various line items on the return. If you’ll be seeking software assistance, find out what they will charge for this, usually at an hourly rate. It can’t hurt to know whether you’ll be over your head in terms of what you can reasonably afford for the services you are seeking.
A word of caution: Price should not be the ultimate determining factor when decided who to use and what services to do yourself. If you’re genuinely over your head when it comes to certain tasks, don’t be afraid to spend the money. There’s an old saying that goes like this, “Do what you do best, hire out the rest.” Accounting can be one of the most frustrating aspects of owning a business, and trying to do it all yourself can take time away from what you should be doing, which is running your business to the best of your ability to generate a profit.
9. Are you comfortable with the individual?
Even if you hire a large firm to do your accounting, there is still going to be an individual person that will be doing the work and with whom you will work with almost exclusively. You need to sit down with this person and make sure that you are comfortable working with them. If anything makes you uncomfortable in any way, you need to find somebody else. Think about it: This person is going to have access to an incredible amount of private financial information, so it has to be somebody you feel comfortable trusting.
10. Don’t be afraid to make a change.
Even after selecting somebody to work with, don’t be afraid to find somebody else if things aren’t working out. Your accounting is too important to the success of your business to leave it in the hands of an incompetent person or somebody you don’t completely trust. Problems with your current accountant could range from having just plain bad interpersonal chemistry to gross incompetence on their part, or perhaps you have the wrong specialist to meet your needs. Regardless, don’t hesitate to take your business elsewhere, since your accounting, bookkeeping, and taxes are simply that important to the life of your business.
Using the ten steps outlined in this article will give you a great start towards finding the accountant that is right for you. Identify the type of professional that can best provide the services you need, ask around for referrals, then check them out and interview them personally. This process will ensure that you get the best accountant for your business needs.
Until next time,
Jassen Bowman
Jassen: Great. This whole time for the past hour and a half you’ve been talking about marketing into specific niches, other industry to offer your CPA services to them because almost all businesses need accounting help. So what are some tips that you might have for – I guess identifying and how to go about expanding into other niches? How would a CPA do that to grow their business?
James Orr: Well, I really see it being two primary ways and one way is a couple of subways. So the two primary ways is either geographical expansion where you are offering your service maybe in your local market at first and then you decide – it occurs to you at some point, “Well, what if I offered my service in the next city over?” So you could be, “I’ve got an accounting service that we offer to clients in Fort Collins and I also offer to people in Loveland or people in Denver, people in Colorado Springs,” or you could go out of state and keep expanding that way. That’s what I called geographical expansion. You are almost pretending that you have a virtual business in all these different areas. You could either create new websites for that or you can create new content where you focus on catering to people in those communities with your service.
Jassen: Okay.
James Orr: The next way, the other major way are niches. We talk a lot about niches tonight and focusing on specific ones but I break that down in three sub-categories. The one that people tend to be able to do easiest is they tend generalized when they begin. So they offer accounting services to everybody. Anyone in the world is their client or potential client.
The easiest way to start increasing the number of niches you serve is start narrowing down your niche from there. You can’t get too specific. Well, you probably could but it’ll be really hard for you to get too specific with your niche because you really could go after very specific sub-niches. Instead of just real estate investors you could go after multi-unit property real estate investors or single family home real estate investors.
The more specific you get, the easier it becomes to really target and laser focus in on those guys. So if you wanted to focus on single family home real estate investors you can buy a mailing list of single family home real estate investors and if you’ve got a really good widget for them like a special report that deals specifically with the challenge that you know they have from your point of view, your accounting, that CPA type of stuff then you can really do a great mailing to them where they can request the information for free. Then you’ve got a much smaller list of people that have raised their hands and you can cater to that niche. So getting specific you get all those benefits we talked before about focusing on very specific niches. That’s one way to do it.
The other way to do it is to expand out. Most people don’t do this but instead of just offering accounting services you could offer accounting and business planning services. You can niche up instead of niching down into a specific industry you can say, “I’m going to expand and expand my services and maybe what I want to offer.” So maybe you offer a planning service where you do financial planning or retirement planning and you also do accounting, different ways to expand up and deal with that.
Then the other side is go with closely related niches like you Jassen, you probably could do some accounting type services or bookkeeping services but you also have the enrolled agent side so you’re specifically doing IRS, debt reduction and debt negotiation type stuff and so that’s a very closely related niche that you’ve expanded out to. Does that make sense?
Jassen: Yes.
James Orr: Okay. So those are really the two major ways and then the second way you had some kind of sub things which is niche down get into some really fine details. You can niche up and take on a bigger perspective or you could like side niches where you have closely related topics to do.
Jassen: Alright. Well this has been really informative. I hope that everybody on the line got a lot out of this. Definitely we went through a lot of marketing information here. I’m sure that people have additional questions on their mind out of this so if folks wanted to get in touch with you James, how could they reach you to kind to pick your brain on some more of these stuff?
James Orr: Well, I’m going to practice what I preach here and tell them you can go right to my blog at learntoberich.com and on the right hand side is a link that says downloads. Guess what? You’re going to find all widgets there. You’re going to find lots of special reports and audio downloads and great resources for you to access regardless of what industry you’re in. We cater to a lot of different industries. You’re welcome to go there and download the resources and you will then be automatically signed up to receive our newsletter and some information from us. So we would love for you to do that and get some more information. The website again is learntoberich.com and it’s all spelled out all the words spelled correctly and everything.
Jassen: Alright. Well, I really appreciate you joining us tonight and for sharing all these information with our listeners. Is there anything else you want to add before we close out?
James Orr: I think that’s it. I really appreciate it you have me on and I hope that everyone got a lot of great information and is going to actually act on it and implement some of the ideas to really increase their business.
Jassen: And that is the key right there, isn’t that is? Taking action on what you learn not just sitting on it.
James Orr: It absolutely is. That is the big difference.
Jassen: Alright. Well, thanks a lot, James. I’ll look forward to speaking with you again soon and you have yourself a wonderful night.
James Orr: I appreciate it. Thanks, Jassen I’ll talk to you soon.
Jassen: Alright take care.
James Orr: Bye-bye.
Jassen: Bye-bye.
Jassen: That’s a great way to go. It’s part of that whole [inaudible][01:19:40] clichés which is one of those thinking out of the box things.
James Orr: Absolutely.
Jassen: Okay. Now we’ve already talked about a little bit about meet-up. You mentioned that in an earlier segment but could go on to some more detail about using meet-up to meet new people and grow your CPA clientele?
James Orr: Yes I definitely can. There are basically three ways that I can think of to use meet-up and they sort of overlap in some ways. The first one is you can use it find niches that you are interested in serving as a CPA or accountant. Then you can join those meet-up groups, become involve in the group. Share information, be helpful, and learn about their challenges. Learn about their problems, see if you can help. Offer them access to your network and try to get access to their network and just overall become part of that community. So that’s number one is focus on specific niches your interested in.
The number two one is you can actually create your own meet-up group and cater to those niches. Seven or eight years ago I forget what it was now, there was not a local real estate investor group in Fort Collins nor in Colorado where we are and so I ended having to form a local real estate investor group. I started holding meetings and then I started networking with everybody. It turned out really great so I recommend people start groups if there isn’t one in niches that you want to cater to. Then grow your contact base from there. People will flock to you. People interested in that will want to join your group and provided you’re giving them good value and good information and great opportunities there, they’re going to want to keep coming back. They’re going to see you as an expert and be more likely to do business with you in the future. So you can definitely grow your own meet-up groups if you need to do it that way.
The last one is you can go outside of your local market and contact group owners outside of your area who you may want to cater to. One of the great things about being a CPA business is you really can do it remotely, right?
Jassen: Yes.
James Orr: So if you wanted to go and start saying, “I’m going to really focus in on this one niche.” You could go find other meet-up groups outside of your local area and cater to them and give them access to your special reports or your lead generation tools and then let them offer them to their group as a free resource that they can download as long as they get their contact information. Then you can start marketing to them over time to.