A few months ago I fired my accountant.
I briefly mentioned the incident – I described how we tried to reach him on April 15, Tax Day, to make sure he’d filed an extension.
2 days later, Laura got a message back: “Yes I did file your extension, and of course I went home at 6pm that day which is why I’m only responding now.”
An accountant who goes home at 6pm on April 15? Sounds like some kind of joke. I fired the guy.
Some people wrote to say that didn’t really sound like a good enough reason to fire my accountant. Maybe the guy is so good at managing his time that April 15 isn’t a fire drill and so on. If that’s the only problem, surely I’m being kind of a tyrant?
IF ONLY that were the only problem. The April 15 thing was just the cherry on the sundae.
Let’s see…. 2007 corporate tax returns had been due in October 2008 and as of November 2008 WE were hounding HIM to finish our returns which we still didn’t get back from him until April 2009.
In my opinion our accountant should have been hounding *us* to give him what he needed in August 08, that’s what we small business owners need from our accountants… right?
Then when we do finally get the returns, there’s a bunch of stuff that’s wrong and needs to be re-done. We fire him and pay a different accountant to do an enormous amount of re-construction.
Now we’re dealing with the usual problems you have with the IRS when your tax returns are late.
Where did this accountant come from?
He was a referral from a financial planner.
I had thought the financial planner was pretty smart, but after he sold me a large insurance policy I heard NOTHING from him for a year and a half. Not so much as a Christmas card.
Not the kind of “smart” I was hoping for.
The first time I did hear from him was after a really super bad day in the stock market a few months ago, I can only assume he was scrambling to find some new business somewhere.
There’s nothing wrong with the insurance policy I bought from the guy but I sure am thankful that the policy is being managed by an insurance company and not him.
I fired the financial planner guy too.
Where did the financial planner come from?
He was both an acquaintance from many years ago, and a referral from a close personal friend who didn’t really know anything about financial stuff but who liked the guy.
So let’s understand how I got a bad accountant and a bad financial planner: I originally got referrals from people who were mediocre at best. NON experts. I am not a finance expert by any stretch of the imagination whatsoever; things like accounting and taxes bore me to tears. Thus I have limited ability to judge such people.
But I still found out the hard way that if you run a small business and you do not get expert accounting and tax advice, that is a Very Bad Thing. It costs you lots of money and you have to start over at the beginning and it’s extraordinarily wasteful and frustrating.
We’d gotten burned pretty bad by this so I made sure my new accountant was thoroughly vetted. We went on an accountant-finding expedition and people who have vastly more financial expertise than I can hope to have, assured us she’s an “A” player. Laura thinks she’s great.
The point is this:
If you do not have expertise in something it is extremely hard to identify an expert. You can easily be taken in by someone who talks a great game but really doesn’t know what he’s doing.
It’s true in finance and it’s DOUBLY true in marketing.
You can outsource financial stuff – maybe even most of it. (So long as you don’t ABDICATE responsibility to the pencil pushers – you have to sleep with one eye open. And you never EVER let anyone else sign the checks.)
I do not believe you can outsource marketing. You can only outsource pieces of it.
On Friday one of my close colleagues told me he spent 15 years trying to avoid this reality. Wasn’t interested in marketing, wasn’t his strong suit, didn’t really understand it. Got his but kicked time after time after time until he got the lesson.
He finally accepted this and now he’s not getting his butt kicked anymore.
You CANNOT hire someone else to be the face and voice of your business. Only you can do that.
You can’t hire someone else to understand your customers. Only you can do that.
And if you are going to hire an expert, you need to be an expert to judge their work, or you need to find an expert who can attest to their expertise.
For Google campaign management I personally attest to the expertise of Glenn Livingston’s Rocket Clicks team in Milwaukee. The relationships starts with a 30 minute paid consultation which costs $100. From that consultation you’ll get immediately actionable advice – whether or not they ever do business with you.
In the process of doing this consultation they will also determine whether there is a fit.
Warning: They are strongly biased towards only taking businesses who already have a successful PPC campaign and want to make it better and/or have it managed with care by a 3rd party.
You can register for this consultation at http://www.LivingstonPPC.com. They deliver 30 minutes of laser-focused advice and ideas. You will be able to immediately improve your AdWords campaigns as a result of this consultation.
If there is a possible match between you and them then together you can determine that.
One last story before I go:
After this fiasco, not only did I have an accounting and bookkeeping problem, I had a tax mess. So I went on a hunt for a tax specialist.
I cast a wide net and interviewed CPA’s, tax attorneys and financial people.
I called numerous friends who’ve been in business for 20+ years and asked who they knew.
I called their accountants and attorneys and asked who they knew.
I clicked on ads. Searched the Internet. Responded to radio ads.
ALL the companies I found through advertising appeared to just be paper mills. When I would talk to them on the phone they would tell me things that sounded wildly optimistic. I would find myself talking to a salesman, not an accountant or attorney. NOT a good sign.
Also, some of people who appeared to be the most qualified were barely returning my phone calls. Again, not uncommon. Genuine experts are hard to hire.
Finally I found a financial advisor in one of my coaching groups who’d been through a huge tax nightmare himself, way worse than anything I was dealing with, and I interviewed the guy who helped him solve it.
He was neither too optimistic nor too pessimistic and I could tell within 5 minutes that he knew how to massage the system. *He had the smell of battle on him.*
THAT, my friend, is what you look for. The smell of battle. You interview the guy who is going to be picking up the sword and swinging it. Not his armor-bearer or shield-bearer or cup-bearer. You employ the fact that you yourself are an expert in something and you think about how you would hire an expert who does what you do and then you *translate* to the other field of expertise.
You want someone who knows how to clean up a mess even if they do something that makes it worse. (Which is bound to happen sometimes, even with experts.) You want someone who is committed to seeing it through to the end.
That’s what I did and things are going great so far.
Likewise, if you’re looking for AdWords expertise talk to someone who’s in the heat of the battle every day:
I cannot guarantee you that they will take you as a client; odds are they won’t. They are quite selective and are actually hard to hire. (As true experts should be.)
But they give extreme value in their 30 minute consultation, they’ll deliver you a customized PPC blueprint a few days later, and if they take you on as a client, they will stick with you and together you’ll achieve results.
Perry Marshall
P.S.: Sleep with one eye open.
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About the Author
Perry Marshall has launched two revolutions in sales and marketing. In Pay-Per-Click advertising, he pioneered best practices and wrote the world's best selling book on Google advertising. And he's driven the 80/20 Principle deeper than any other author, creating a new movement in business.
He is referenced across the Internet and by Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, INC and Forbes Magazine.
20 Comments on “it's ALWAYS tricky to hire a real expert”
The old saying says it all:
“To be seen as an expert, know when you need one”
cheers
Jim Bradshaw
Sydney Australia
Perry,
Never know what you’re gonna write about next, but I have an Outlook folder dedicated to your emails, because you write thought-provoking stuff, and you write well.
Congrats, and keep it coming.
The more I read your emails, the more in alignment
with me you seem to be. I will be putting you to work the next time I can afford a course. I have run 10 campaigns, made a few sales, it appears my landing pages are weak, or my keywords are not good converting keywords. I am close, I always get good google scores, good CTR, but not good conversions. That’s what I need help with. I just don’t know which course of yours is best for me as I am pretty new to you Perry. If you have any suggestions, please share them with me.
Michael,
The single best resource for conversion I can recommend is http://www.perrymarshall.com/adwords/conversion-seminar/
Another good one is Mark Widawer’s http://www.landingpagemachine.com
Also the Mastermind Club http://www.perrymarshall.com/mastermind comes with a good package of bonuses.
Perry
Perry,
Great article on finding qualified experts.
Like you, I have had a terrible time finding a qualified accountant. I have experienced much disappointment and frustration with my current accountant.
Could you please e-mail me with your recommended accounting/tax/small business person. I live in the western suburbs of Chicago.
Thanks.
Paul
I use Deepa Ramachandran at http://www.acumencpa.com
I have owned 2 companies before (both failures). I learned the hard way also about what tasks should be outsourced and what not.
Never mix business and relation and never be emotional about your business. Make the decisions that make sense and outsource right kind of thing to right people.
I am doing that with my online marketing. Only outsourcing basic tasks. Also I am out sourcing multiple small tasks to different people so no one take take the knowledge and run away with a business.
Thanks for sharing your less than perfect business issues with us. I too am having Accountant Nightmares.
The reason I’m writing is more about Rocket Clicks. I worked with them for about 6 months, and they are fantastic.
I thought you did a bit of a disservice not mentioning the caveat until the end of the article. A lot of people probably didn’t make it to the end.
They basically fired me! They loved working with me, because i have a good knowledge of PPC and our Quality scores were off the charts. But they only work with clients that spend over about $1500 a month. Which usually means hiring their SEO and web design teams also.
I don’t know why you would be mentioning them, when they are getting rid of clients, not looking for more small guys.
I do about $1.5 million a year in sales, and have a $3k to $5k google budget, and i was too small. Just in case your readers need some numbers.
John,
Sorry Rocket clicks cancelled your account. They found that with the high level of service they offer they just can’t take smaller accounts. Don’t take it personally. No they’re not looking for small guys but they do consults for small guys and they look for bigger guys that they can do a great job for.
Perry
Perry,
Not only is this great advice on how to find a real expert it’s great advice on how to BE a real expert. You need to deliver results, follow up, go to battle for people and show it in your conversations with them and you have to be able to clean up any mess that you yourself created! (I’ve learned this one the hard way…)
This article created a great mental image for me of the type of expert I am working on being for my own clients.
I also found it interesting how you described how you searched for another expert. All the ways you searched are the ways each one of us in the service business needs to be able to be found and noticed by our prospects.
Again Perry, it’s great taking advice from a man who is obviously walking the path…(I’ll stop blowing smoke now!)
So true.
I’ve been on the other side of that equation too.
I built a very nice, fast loading, search engine friendly website for a local company and rapidly got it a high ranking in google.
Then the partner of the CEO – who is also apparently a web designer – removed it and replaced it with a flash site complete with music and a slideshow on the homepage that takes 30secs to load! It’s terrible.
Oh well. I tried….
Perry,
Masterful copy.
Good work.
The longer I am on you list, the more I like you.
Kee it up.
Likewise experts are hard to find. Wannabees, Yes.
In the past year I have paid over $1500.00 to 3 different business entities?? to right code and /or my code to develop my website template in as much as possible HTML & CSS.
What I have found are most who respond are ones who go buy a template someone else has written and add my name to it and when I get specific as to what I would like to see all three tell me that is a developer project not a designers.
All this when I responded to them with an Adobe InDesign sketch, .png images, a color scheme, and a partial coding to provide an outline.
At 70 I am having trouble fully grasping computer code to build a simple website with out all the additional programs such as Dreamweaver, Frontpage, PHP, JaveScript, PERL, ColdFusion, and the list goes on and on.
I have my product ready to roll-out. Currently I feel that via the web is the best method of marketing. I do not have endless deep pockets I want to roll-out and the add features and products as the money comes in.
In my lifetime I have built and sold 2 Janitorial Services, 4 Commercial Printing Businesses. I to heve fired 2 attorneys, 3 accountants, and dropped 4 “Fiancial Advisors” ond/or Stockbrokers when I found out that they were only interested in what they could sell me TODAY. Be dammed about any thing in the future.
I still need a HTML & CSS Coder to build, correct, and validate a template for my website. I am not sure they exist. If so they are probably in affiliate marketing by marketing someone elses affiliate site or eBook.
Hey Perry,
It’s good to know that I’m not alone in the accountant issue.
We paid an accounting firm to do our books for nearly two years. In April of the second year, I found out that they hadn’t been actually doing our books (at least not accurately). I had done my own taxes in year 1 for the previous year, so it took that long to discover the errors and simple lack of actually doing the things we were paying them to do. She missed filing an extension for us despite saying she would do it, and used the words “my bad” to apologize. I REALLY worked to be cordial and nice through the process, but when we’d tried for 3 months (after the missed extension filing) to get our books corrected and our taxes filed, the accountant sent me back an email highlighting several points in ALL CAPS. I told her how truly unprofessional I thought she was in terms I’ve never used with anyone else. I’m a bit ashamed of it, but I just lost my ability to understand where she was coming from.
I will spare you the details as I wrote up a 5 page history of the situation in case I ever need it for the IRS or court or otherwise.
Now, I have another accountant who isn’t the sales guy, who *appears* to be the “in the trenches” guy, but I’m beginning to wonder, since it’s the 10th of August and I’m having to hound him (four emails sent already over the past 3 weeks) about what he needs from me still (since I know September is going to be busy for me, I’m attempting to be (GASP!) proactive).
This process is really annoying, but it’s definitely part of the process.
Thanks for sharing your journey. Hope it’s not caused you to lose your faith in people. I know it shook mine for a bit. Sorry to hear you’ve experienced an equal amount of frustration.
Jonathan
Perry:
I like this statement: “I do not believe you can outsource marketing. You can only outsource pieces of it.” It’s also interesting about “the smell of battle.” It would be nice to have a definition of “expert”, “specialist”, or whatever they call themselves these days.
Randy
When it comes to accountants and financial planners, I have always been fortunate. They all came from referrals either from bosses or colleagues so in 11 years of business I have only had to change accountants once and that was in year two.
There is another caution in dealing with these groups, and that is most of them are literally sole proprietorships.
So I asked my accountant what Plan B was as he was turning 63. His reply was, “I have four children. Two of them are becoming accountants and the other two have married accountants. So someone is going to be taking over this business.” Since then one of the sons decided to become an electrician rather than an accountant (what a re-volting development) but the other one is still there and is becoming a quick study.
My financial planner had a massive heart attack and ended up with a quintuple bypass about 7 years ago. But just before that he had re-aligned his business to run on autopilot and found that it had grown while he was recovering. Since then he has built the business up to where he has qualified people running it and he can now go on 4 week walking tours of Portugal knowing everything is in good hands.
So the conclusion: you and your support network need contingency plans just in case life happens.
hi Perry
This makes a lot of sense to me. I like the idea of hiring someone with the smell of battle and not the cup-bearer.
so…my next thought. is about differentiating ourselves from the many cup bearers out there.
last week i lost a deal to a company who may well just be that.
We got the clients attention but he said just that one thing that rang true… with them and when they latched onto it he worked it!
as always, worthy of thought.
cheers
paul.
You mentioned others that said you appeared to be harsh in dealing with your accountant. I thought the same thing. The best are not available whenever you want to talk to them. And if he is really good then going home on time is a plus.
Nobody can just call Perry anytime but he is mad when he can’t talk to his accountant anytime on the busiest day of the tax year.
BUT…it is hard to know the big picture. We base so many decisions on snippets of info it is amazing that anything good comes out of it.
I am looking for an accountant/tax/small biz person myself. To much to do myself and understand. Got to outsource to grow.
I like the concept Dan Kennedy has. But it does put off a lot of people.
Hi Perry,
You are absolutely right. Accountants are the ones, who are the eyes for ire business. If they can’t plan and do things in timely manner they are no good for us or them.
It is sad that they lost a big client from their business, but must have learnt a lesson from you.
I’m just waiting for your mini-course, “9 Great Lies of Sales & Marketing”.
All the best
Jey
http://www.JeyKumara.com
My mother owns a small family restaurant that seats 80 people. She found out too, the hard way, that doing business with family members was not the best way to do business.
Interestingly, the person who helped her get out of her accounting and tax mess was a relative who is retired from accounting.
Paul
Eat Well. Live Well.
PurpleGreenPops.com