Accounting Influencers Podcast

Why Accounting Professionals Need a Personal Brand

Jan 28, 2024

Marketing expert Jo Edwards, with 35 years of experience in personal branding for accountants, shares the importance of building a strong personal brand aligned with your interests. She discusses the power of microniche expertise, measuring brand progress, and using tools like content creation and public speaking. Jo emphasizes the benefits of personal branding, including commanding premium fees, generating referrals, fast-tracking your career, and achieving influence in your firm.

31:03

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Episode guests

Jo Edwards

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Episode notes

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Recognition, reputation, and respect are the three key elements of personal branding, helping accountants get attention, high fees, and referrals.

Being authentic and aligning the personal brand with genuine interests is crucial for long-term maintenance and success.

Measure the progress of your personal brand through conversions like audience seeking you out, invitations to speak, and referrals for new business.

Deep dives

Building a Personal Brand for Accountants

Accountants need to build a personal brand to stand out in a competitive market and highlight their expertise. A personal brand helps clients find accountants who share their values and can provide trusted advice. It is important to be authentic and align the personal brand with one's interests and lifestyle. Building a personal brand requires effort and time, but the benefits include attracting quality clients, commanding premium fees, and enjoying career opportunities.

Introduction

3min

The Importance of Personal Branding for Accounting Professionals

20min

Building a Network and Personal Brand for Accounting Professionals

3min

Developing Networking Skills and Stepping Out of Your Comfort Zone

2min

The Importance of Personal Branding for Accounting Professionals

3min

Marketing expert Jo Edwards brings 35 years of experience to the topic of personal branding for accountants and CPAs in creating industry rockstars in accounting.

Jo shares why building a strong personal brand is critical for standing out and attracting high-quality clients in a competitive marketplace.

Rob and Jo discuss how to build an authentic brand aligned with your interests, the power of microniche expertise, and how to measure your brand's progress.

Jo emphasizes being intentional about developing your brand and using tools like content creation and public speaking to raise your profile. She offers advice for overcoming introversion and making time for branding activities.

Jo argues that amplifying your personal brand is essential for commanding premium fees, generating referrals, fast-tracking your career, and achieving influence in your firm.

Key Takeaways:

The "three R's" of personal branding are recognition, reputation, and respect. A strong brand helps you get "paid" through attention, high fees, and referrals.
Authenticity is crucial - crafting a brand that's not true to you is hard to maintain long-term. Align your brand with your genuine interests.
Consider micro-niche expertise, becoming known as the go-to expert in a very specialized area aligned with your interests.
Measure progress by conversions - when target audiences seek you out, invite you to speak, and refer new business to you.
Use tools like content creation, public speaking, and networking, but play to your strengths and act within your comfort zone. Seek help from mentors.

"Any accountancy firm that isn't winning more than 80 percent of their new work from referrals is doing something wrong."

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The Accounting Influencers Podcast drops every Monday to accounting professionals, finance specialists, software vendors, tech providers and influencers across 150 countries in the accountancy, CPA and bookkeeping space. To participate in our international virtual speed networking events for the accounting community, book your place at the next gathering: https://accountinginfluencers.com/events. Great to build your personal brand and make valuable industry connections in return for a small donation to charity.

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Thanks to our sponsors:

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If you'd like to sponsor the show and elevate your brand with our audience, reach out to show host Rob Brown on LinkedIn and his team will reach out to fix up a chat to explore.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/therobbrown

You can also check out all shows on the Accounting Influencers YouTube Channel

https://bit.ly/AI-youtube