Episode Transcript

Please note this transcript was generated by AI and contains errors including missing and misspelled words.

Meryl: Let's just dive in. So do you wanna give just a little bit of an overview of the different projects that you're working on these days?

Blake: OK, number one is the longest running project, which is the Cloud Accounting podcast. My weekly podcast, news podcast news and analysis at the intersection of accounting and technology. And I've been doing that with my co-host David Leary, for going on five years, I think, or so the idea was hatched seven years ago.

We finally did it after two years of talking about it and we are approaching or have just crossed really our millionth download.

Meryl: Well done.

Blake: So it started off as a side project and about a year ago we went full-time with it. Just meaning that we both quit our day jobs. And that's one thing that we do together.

The other big thing is Earmark. Earmark is an app where you get CPE for listening to podcasts including the Cloud Accounting podcast. CPAs, CMAs Chartered Accountants. It works in the UK, it works in Australia, New Zealand as I understand it, and Canada as well. And we are NASPA certified, so you can get your continuing education with that app.

Earmark Media is the company that we, where we produce podcasts, so we're helping other people create content now and shows include federal tax updates and oh my fraud and a few others as well.

Meryl: And then I think I've also interacted with you in some kind of community advocate role at Relay. Is that something else on your list?

Blake: Yes. There, there is more. I am the community advocate, accounting, community advocate at Relay. And , in that. role I host a show that they produce and I do webinars, I do events with Relay. We use Relay at the Cloud Accounting podcast, and I use it for all my businesses. So it's a natural fit.

Meryl: It does sound like a lot. How do you manage all of those different projects?

Blake: I have a great team and that helps. I don't edit the podcast myself anymore. I have an editor and EARMARK has an operations manager who oversees the CPE content creation. Just like I. Any good accounting firm, you get people who help you and can, do the repeatable processes and stuff like that.

So every time I start a project, I think, how can I make this a process I can hand off to somebody else and then I can do a bunch of different things because, maybe I'm only doing five or 10% of it, really but I'm guiding it.

Meryl: What's interesting, there's multiple different business models there too, because there's the media brand, the Cloud Accounting pod podcast. You've got a software business with earmark C P E, and then you've got an agency business model with the creating content. Have you got a favorite

Blake: The app is where financially that is ultimately, I think what could be the biggest thing and have the biggest impact as well, just on, on accountants. So that's the one I'm really focused on growing. The podcast is great, but we are a niche podcast, right? We are at the intersection of accounting and technology, mainly for small firm owners.

There's only so many people in the world who are interested in that particular topic, right? But, c p e, that's a big thing. There's 660,000 US CPAs and they all need 40 hours of continuing education every year. And if we can make that easier, if we can make that much more painless, then we're gonna help people save a lot of time.

That's, yeah, that's where I wanna focus my energy.

Meryl: Alright, so I wanna back it up a little bit. Prior to all of this content creation, I recall that you were an early adopter of zero in the us. And you had a bookkeeping firm, you scaled that over a number of years to a dozen or more staff and then sold that business. And then when I was looking at your LinkedIn profile, it went from running a bookkeeping business to hang on product marketer and then market head of marketing for a couple of technology companies selling software.

So how did you make that

Blake: When you change jobs every two years, you can do a lot. I'm not good at sticking around. So basically what happened is I had, yeah, I had my own cloud-based bookkeeping firm. I was basically just, to be frank, copying what I saw happening in Australia, New Zealand with zero I got lucky.

I was in the right place at the right time and stumbled across zero. Did the certification and got listed and then I realized I was like one of two bookkeepers in the US listed on the Zero website, and all of a sudden I started getting lots of leads and if I just was competent and I helped them, my business grew.

So I started doing that as a freelancer and then, Eventually grew a team. And basically when I had reached, like a dozen people, I had this sort of like crisis I think that every business owner has. When you get to a certain size, there's like this breaking point where you're saying, wow, the business is working, but also if one person leaves right now it's over and my life is ruined for months cuz I've spent all this time training these people and the opportunity came along to sell the business and I said, all right, I'm out.

After that, like I got it's such a, it's such a winding road, but like I, I took a job at a large accounting firm because I thought like they would teach me how to do it. Cause I never, I'm not, I was not trained as an accountant in college, I was a music major, got into it afterward and I thought if I go to a big accounting firm, I'll learn how it's really done.

And that's where I discovered that they don't know what they're doing either, right? Nobody in the world of cloud-based accounting services, in public accounting, like they're all just making it up. So I did that for a year and I just could not handle the big firm mentality like, I stuff that I started when I like got there was still in the planning stages when I left, after a year.

It was gonna take just like the timeline was just too long for me. I was not patient. And so I got lured into a product marketing position at a startup in LA called Flow Cast. And yeah, that's that's how I made that leap.

Meryl: And so how did they know that you had that marketing skillset? Had you been creating content or doing some kind of marketing while you were at that

Blake: When you run a small accounting firm you have to do everything. So marketing just fell to me and I had to learn how to do digital marketing, make a website, and build an inbound lead funnel and do email campaigns and all that. So it was something I'd always been doing and I had a blog.

And product marketing is something I'd never heard of before, but basically it's just as they explained it to me, Hey, you're a cpa, accounting, and you're also good at talking to people, come for work, work for us. We'll put you in front of our customers and you'll talk about accounting and our software and do fun stuff like case studies.

And so for me it was, it was a natural fit. I, like I said, I was a music major. So I like performing in front of people. I like talking. And so yeah, that it's, it was almost like the job was made for me in a way. And and so that's where I got to learn all the. Not just the content creation side of things, but also the demand generation side of marketing and software companies, which is very numbers based and that's where all the tech comes into play and they use the CRMs and the marketing automation and all that fun stuff.

So it's really amazing. I got really into that because it's also accounting, like a lot of that is data and science, it's information systems and it's just, instead of tracking dollars, you're tracking people or leads or contacts or page views and stuff like that.

So I love the analytical side of that.

Meryl: I think that's a great move from accounting software companies to actually hire an accountant or a cpa because we understand the market. We understand. I can imagine when you were talking to customers and you could say, oh yeah, hey, we used to do this in my firm. This is, and they realize they're talking to someone that really understands them and it's talking in a way that makes sense and.

Really understand those pain points, I think. I think that's clever. So were there any things that you had to do to really upskill quickly in marketing and how did you go about that? Were you reading, were you doing courses? Was it on the job learning? H how did you go from accountant to marketer in a short space of time?

Blake: Google. Basically Google. Google is learning how to use Google is the number one scan. Ill that has propelled my career. Instead of going and asking somebody, the first thing I do is type A search. And and more people should do that. And there's so much great information about marketing online because there's all these professional.

Marketing people, marketing to marketers. It's like meta marketing, and they do really good marketing because they're selling marketing software. So HubSpot's a great example, right? You could just read every blog post on HubSpot's website and learn everything you need to know about inbound marketing.

So that's my answer is just don't take a class, just Google stuff, right? And now it's gonna be just like ask chat g p t. That's the new answer.

Meryl: Yeah, absolutely. I think just in time learning. So instead of going out, I think it's interesting cuz some people would feel like, oh, I need to go out. I wanna move into marketing. I'm gonna go and do a degree. In marketing and spent three years learning all about it and the theory. So then I feel confident when I go and apply for marketing jobs.

And I much prefer your approach, which is, no, let's dive in. I'm gonna learn on the job and when I need to know something, I'm gonna go and figure it out when I need to know

Blake: I've never been a fan of traditional education cuz it's just so slow. Like why does everybody have to go at the same speed in a class? And usually it's the, they aim toward the bottom of the class because they don't wanna lose people. Don't hold yourself back. I.

I've always, yeah, I've always been that way. So I like learning from books like, or I used to learning from books. Now it's learn from the internet. Learn from chat, G P T, learn from YouTube. YouTube's an amazing resource. There's all sorts of stuff on there. I. About everything practically now.

More people creating courses every day and now there's, professionals, like our fellow professionals are out there creating courses that you can go take on, think if, or whatever platform they're using. Yeah if anything's in, in for a rough ride, I think in the next like couple decades it's colleges and universities like they are so screwed.

Meryl: Hundred percent agree. I think that you've got things like the Ivy League and the top universities in Australia, and they've got a brand and recognition, and I think they'll still stay prestigious. But then you've got the mass production of the online courses, so it's those ones in the middle that are, they don't have a fantastic reputation, they're still expensive.

Why would you pay all that money to go to a mid-level or low-level college or

Blake: And I think it's less expensive for you than it is for us, right? College here costs people come out of school with, 50 to a hundred thousand dollars in debt. And what do they get for it? So that's why when I was a music major I went to one of those elite colleges and I spent my family spent a lot of money on it.

I was fortunate not to have debt, but like when I graduated, I didn't have the skills. And so I had to just, I had to obtain them. I had to learn how to do something that people were gonna pay me for other than music. Because I, I decided I didn't want to be a musician. And like accounting and bookkeeping was one of those things you can learn.

You can just if you just read the instruction manual for, QuickBooks or, that's what it was at the time, right? It was the actual physical, like fat book on the desk that I read. If you just like, you can just teach yourself how to do it. There's free certifications and you can have a really valuable skill that way.

It's a, it's outrageous what it costs here. It's like for what you get. And I went to one of the, like even the school that I went to Northwestern University for the amount of money students pay, yeah. You get the network and stuff. But come on. Most, most, I would say most students are not getting their money's worth.

Meryl: Imagine if you took that money and helped your kid start a business. That's a lot of capital to start a business or go on some kind of travel experience.

Blake: on a house. You know even that, right? I think that's the one thing we have on you is isn't housing in Australia incredibly over?

Meryl: Outrageous. Yeah. Don't get me started on that.

Blake: We'll stay off the hot button topics. I.

Meryl: So you branched out in, into building your marketing skillset, and then eventually you decided to start the Cloud Accounting podcast with David. But you said it took you a, you'd been talking about it for a while but it took you a year or two before you actually took the leap. What sparked the idea, and then why did it take a bit of time for you to

Blake: So David and I met and he came up to me and he was like, Hey, we should do a podcast. Or we were just talking, we had, we were having drinks and it was his idea. And I was like yeah. And then I started one, two years later and I forgot about that conversation.

I had, he planted the seed of the idea and then I started one without him. And then he was like my third guest or something like that. And then he is Blake, remember like we talked about this. You should just have me as your co-host regularly. So that's how it, that's how that started.

And it was great. We just had the chemistry. It was fun. He's the kind of person I wanna talk to him every week, even if we didn't have a podcast. And I think that's really important. If you're gonna do something like that's a regular thing that takes up a. Significant portion of your week is, it's gotta be fun.

It's gotta be something you would do even if it doesn't get a lot of people listening to it. So yeah, it was It was just like a side project, like a passion project, something I wanted to try and I wanted to learn how to do the audio editing. Like I love learning software and technology and I just having a background in music, I like doing that, so I felt like I could do it.

Now it's a lot easier, right? Like in just a few years now, we have this audio editing software where you just edit a transcript and you can edit the audio. It's nuts. But back then it was doing, waveforms and, it was harder. Took me like half a day to edit a podcast episode.

Meryl: And so in those early stages, you were mana or you and David together were managing that whole process. So you were taking care of the audio, editing, writing show notes. W did you have any contractors helping with any of it, or was that something you and David managed The whole

Blake: It was just us and we divvied up. I did all the editing, post-production, recording, all the techy stuff, and then he did all of the business development. So once we had enough listeners, he's the one who went out and started getting the sponsors. But I don't think we had any sponsors, like for year one we did, like a whole year before we had enough people listening to even contemplate that.

It was just something we did for fun cuz we had day jobs.

Meryl: So let's dive into some of your content creation process. Now. I've. Gone out to LinkedIn and there's a bunch of questions from people there. And I've also got some of my own, so this can be in the con cause I know that you podcast, but I've also seen that you create videos, you write articles, you're active on Twitter, so feel free to answer these questions through the lender, any of the content that you create.

First question is, what is your favorite platform to create content for and

Blake: now it's YouTube, and that's because I think it's new. And I always am, distracted by the next new thing. We were originally just doing audio and then we added video to our podcast. So we record both the audio and the video at the same time. And then we release the episodes on YouTube.

So that's my favorite thing to play with now, and. YouTube has shorts. It's the fastest grim podcasting platform. You always wanna be there wherever the hot thing is. Since we started doing video, our downloads are up like 40%. It made a huge difference. I didn't know it would do that, but it has, and then the beauty of it is we can take the video and we can make short clips that we then put out onto Instagram or onto YouTube shorts or onto.

We don't do much TikTok, but we've done, we could put it out on TikTok all everywhere. And that also really helps, I think ever since we started doing that, plus the YouTube we're way up from what we used to be. I.

Meryl: And do you think that's big as people are finding you on YouTube, so they're searching for something and then coming across the podcast?

Blake: the clips are helping people find us. So they'll see a social media clip on LinkedIn and they'll be like, what is this show? And then maybe they'll subscribe. I actually don't know cause we can't really track it. Very well or I don't know how to, I just know the numbers have gone up. I think that YouTube has helped because we live stream our episodes too.

So now when we record, we are streaming live and we use a platform called Streamy Yard that lets us stream live to YouTube and to LinkedIn and to Twitter and to Facebook, everywhere. I love it for two [00:16:00] reasons. One is that it forces me to be on in a way that I wasn't, if I was just recording and I knew I could edit it later.

And two, which is bigger, is we get a live audience. And it's a very small percentage of our overall audience that tunes in live, but they're the most passionate and they comment and it makes it so much fun. So it's like having an event. It's like a webinar. It's also our podcast. It's also live streamed.

I feel like we're doing everything all at once. Sometimes that's the way to do it too, is like you just, you wanna create as much content from one thing because your time is so limited. This whole live streaming that we turn into a podcast episode is really the way to do that.

And that's what we're trying to do with our media company, right? Is we're helping people do that themselves. Also, like if you wanna ha, if you wanna do a live stream slash podcast slash YouTube channel slash. Social media clips, we can do it. And all you have to dedicate is an hour a week instead of like your whole life, which is what it would have taken in the past.

All this is possible. Like just really recently too, like the tech has just gotten really good for those.

Meryl: Yeah, there's a couple of things I love about that. The, that is one take, so there's no chance to just spend hours and hours on the one episode, retaking things, editing, tweaking. You just gotta show up and do it. And then repurposing as well. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes that's where you get the raw content, the interesting conversations that, it's something I'm thinking about with this podcast.

So we do audio only and I know everyone's saying, no, you gotta do video as well. And so I think we will eventually I record it but don't use it a at the moment cuz I'm just trying to make sure I nail audio first and focus on improving the audio quality of the podcast. But I think video is the place to be.

Blake: We did it the same way, right? We started with audio only and I actually had to convince David to do video because he is ah, I don't wanna have to comb my hair every time, week. And David has this, like wavy, orange hair, right? So it's okay, for him it's probably work. For me, I just have the, you can't see it on the podcast, obviously, but I have the, the military crew cut kind of thing.

And so it's easy for me. It, it makes a difference, like people wanna see you and YouTube's growing. It's, like I said, it's the number one platform for podcast now. You can actually create a playlist that's a podcast playlist, and now YouTube will recommend podcasts to people. And I've noticed a trend of like people having YouTube open in a tab while they're working, like the new talk radio and they're listening to the shows and it's great because when people are listening passively like that, You gotta remember, like when people are listening, they're not really giving you their full attention.

And that's actually a good thing in some ways, because it means that you can make mistakes. You can b blabber on like me, and hopefully, I haven't lost half the audience because yeah they're listening for the full hour, right? There's no pressure here. And I think we just have to remember that.

As long as you don't say something really horrible, it's like you're not gonna offend, you're not gonna, if you say a bunch of ums, you're not gonna offend people. Nobody cares, right? Like the worst thing is that nobody listens.

Meryl: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So we've got a question here from Matt from Visin about what apps you use for the production process and which bits are outsourced or not. So I think you've covered that a little bit with you in the beginning, handling everything. But it'll be interesting to hear about what does your production process look like now?

What apps do you use? How does the process work to create the end products that you just

Blake: love sharing this because it's all real shiny new stuff that has really only existed in the last few years. Like our entire business, the earmark media business, where we produce shows, what we do would not be possible like a year ago or two years ago. It would be too difficult. So we record using we used to use Riverside.

We use Zencaster as well, which we're using now to record our but currently because we are now streaming, we use Streamy Yard. So streamy yard.com allows you to stream to multiple social media platforms simultaneously and to different accounts simultaneously so we can stream to Facebook and LinkedIn and YouTube and Twitter.

And I think that's it. That's all we do. We can have guests, we can play video clips, we can share our screen. I can change live, I can change how we are displayed on the screen, like side by side or if it's different layouts basically. And then we can pull in comments from our live viewers across social channels into a single feed for us to watch.

And then we can put those comments up on the screen. So this is really important for engagement with your audience is now they're not just passively watching, they're actually commenting. And then if they say something that catches our attention, it goes up on the screen for everybody to see. And this is just not, this is not revolutionary.

This is something that like video game streamers have been doing now for years and have millions and millions of people, watching and we're just doing this in the accounting. So we record on Streamy Yard. We stream on Streamy Yard, and we also record the files locally. Streamy Yard creates high quality audio video files.

We then import that into Descript, that's our editing platform. And descript edits audio and video simultaneously. So there's no extra work involved as long as you set it up right. And it allows you to edit a transcript so it, it creates a transcript from the audio and then you can. Delete a sentence and it deletes that from the audio and the video.

So you're actually editing text and you're editing audio video, which allows anyone with a little bit of training. It's not perfect to do editing which has totally leveled the playing field in that respect. And those are our two main tools. We then, Also create social media clips using descript.

They have templates that you can apply. You basically copy paste a paragraph into a template and you've got your video clip that you can then export. We publish those using social pilot, that's our social media platform. Mainly because it's very affordable to have lots and lots of accounts.

Some social platforms, they charge you a lot of money if you wanna have 20 accounts connected because they think you're an agency or something like that. We are in a sense, but we don't have a ton of clients. I think that might be everything I.

Meryl: Let's talk about something similar, but your article. Writing process. So I think it's, it sounds like you're mainly focused on audio and video, but I do, I've read the odd blog post from you too. A And are you still writing it? And what does your process look like there? Do you have a bunch of ideas somewhere?

How do you then, do you sit down and write it in one go? Is it a process? Yeah. I'd love to hear about your writing process as well.

Blake: Like I said before, I'm all about getting. The most you can out of the least effort. I strive to be as lazy as possible, and I have to be because I moved to Arizona where the weather's great. It. Eight to 10 months out of the year, and I get outside and I get active and I don't wanna be in my office working all the time.

I strive to be in there six hours a day at most. I have to be really efficient. The way I create content is, it mainly happens on the podcast. That's where I try ideas, I talk through things with David. We, if I have a thought I write it down and we talk about it on the show and then, If that conversation is interesting or goes well that's like my sounding board, then it becomes, it could become a LinkedIn post and I've already got a transcript.

Sometimes I can just actually hand that to a writer. I've got a writer who ghost writes for me now, and I can say, Hey, here's the idea. We talked about it for about five minutes on the show. Can you make this into a post for me, an article? And that might be for something that's like an accounting publication, and he'll do the draft and then I'll give it a.

Give it a look and fix it up and then there it goes. Now with chat, GPT, like the process has gotten even faster. I can actually feed it a transcript of something I've talked about and it can write a whole post for me. And it can not only it can not only do a pretty decent like LinkedIn article, it can do the LinkedIn post to promote it.

You can do a Twitter thread. In terms of content creation, it's a game changer. That's how I like to operate. If I have a, a forcing function of a webinar or a weekly podcast episode, that's where I can get my ideas out. I can't sit down and just type and write because I just as I have the blank page I get it takes me forever, right?

It's four hours to write a page. I can't do that.

Meryl: It's so interesting hearing you, you talk about that. I did a writing course a couple of years ago called Chip 30 for 30, and they have this concept of data-driven writing. So te similar to what you're talking about with David. You'll test out an idea, so something comes into your head. You'll talk it through on the podcast and test it, then maybe post it on LinkedIn and get, and use all of that to get feedback about the idea.

And that was their concept as well. Don't go and write a 3000 word essay on something. Test the smallest version of that idea by doing a tweet or a short LinkedIn post. Test it, see how it goes. And then gradually turn that into something bigger if it lands.

Blake: something I need to do more actually. And you did it in preparation for this episode and I think that's really smart. Where you. Surveyed your followers and said, Hey, what questions should I ask Blake about content marketing? And I don't do that enough. Actually. I need I'm not interactive enough on social media.

I tend to default into this, here I created some stuff. I'm pushing it out to you. But then I see people who are really engaging with their audience and they have way more success, I would say. That's the way to go.

Meryl: It's interesting you say that so something I try and do is reply to comments on my posts, but I'm telling myself I actually, cuz it's hard enough for me to just get the content out there. But I'm, something I'm working on is trying to engage with other people's content. So not just reply to people that are commenting on mine, but how can I actually think about what other people are saying and then respond in an insightful way.

So I don't mean just saying, Hey, nice post. Sharing a conflicting opinion or building on what they've said. But all of these things take time. That's the problem.

Blake: Yeah. And that's why you have to be like, you have to do a little bit every day, I feel is the trick, right? And set that in your schedule. So for me, a lot of times it'll be maybe not first thing in the morning. Because of the time zones for me, a lot of, actually no, that usually tends to work is by 9:00 AM my time, half the country has already been on social media for half the day, and so there's a ton of stuff out there to, to comment on and to read.

And so I tend to do, yeah, that's when I tend to do it is maybe not first thing in the morning, but like mid-morning and just, it's just like a regular thing. Some might people, some call it an addiction, but I prefer to call it a scheduled session, daily session of social media.

Meryl: It's important if it's just mindlessly scrolling. I think that could be considered. Maybe it's an addiction for some people, but if you actually try to engage in. Comment then. That's work Blake.

Blake: yeah. Okay. Yeah, that, that's good. I can justify my screen time then. Yeah. I think the key is don't have those apps on your phone. Unless you're really good at typing on your phone or dictating, don't have them on your phone because you're gonna see something when you scroll and you can't really interact with it.

Meryl: Absolutely. I've deleted both LinkedIn and Twitter off my phone, which are the two platforms I use. Facebook's been gone for years, but that was really helpful because that, that is just wasted time. But if you are actually on your computer sitting down, then you're gonna achieve

Blake: And what's great now is you can use these like g p T enabled plugins like Jasper or Grammarly, and when you see something you wanna comment on, you can just type some bullet points and now it'll comment, a full post for you. And that's a big time saver too, potentially. I'm still learning how to use it.

I wouldn't say that I'm 10 times more efficient yet with it, but I could see it with practice. I'll get there.

Meryl: I haven't used chat two b t for commenting. I've used it to help me summarize things. I really like it to take similar, what you said, a long for form transcription, and then pull out the key points, summarize it, rewrite that I've used it like that and I've also used it for writing articles where I have all the ideas.

But I go through and rewrite this subheading write the opening paragraph for this section and kind of just quickly improved my writing. But I haven't actually used it for any

Blake: I know. Yeah. And then there's a. Something distasteful about that actually. I'm like, do I really want to admit that I'm doing that?

Meryl: But it's your ideas. I think that's what's important. It still needs to be your ideas. So if they're your bullet points, it's okay. But if you said post the whole thing in what would you comment to this?

Blake: And that's the thing too is, you can do that. You could actually take a social post like somebody wrote and put it into chat G B T and say what's a good comment for this post?

And then we're,

Meryl: an insightful

Blake: yeah, what's an insightful reply that will make me sound really smart, but also compliment the poster, original poster.

But that's where. That's where social media that's the, apocalyptic hellscape of social media that we will live in when AI takes over and nobody's being authentic anymore. I don't know, maybe that already exists, right? There's already people who have people who just manage their social media for them and you know it, and you can tell, right?

So I feel like we'll be able to tell in the future too.

Meryl: I think that's where video will stand out. Eventually that AI can probably do that, but it's not good enough yet. And so I think written content is more likely to be taken over, but video it's a little bit harder. And so maybe that's where I'm planning to focus in the future.

Blake: Yeah I think video is like I said, it's, ever since I started doing video engagement is way up, right? More people watch, more people listen. And I have more fun too because we're social animals, right? We like to see each other and video gets us closer than, texts on a page.

Meryl: All right, so next question is from Samuel Burmeister. I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, Samuel. He's asking about social media platforms and which platform you've had the most ROI on.

Blake: R roi. See, that's the problem is I don't even know how I measure the ROI of this stuff. I've tried, when I worked for software companies, we've tried measuring ROI and you can to some extent on certain activities, but a lot of it is just impossible. Or maybe I'm not very good at it.

Meryl: I'll reframe the question. Where have you had the most engagement?

Blake: has been great, but LinkedIn for a long time I think was this ugly stepchild of social media where it was just people being fake and looking for jobs. And that was how it was known since Twitter became this dumpster fire. LinkedIn has really stepped up their game and they added video.

And I don't know, I feel like LinkedIn's a great place to have debates about the future of the accounting profession and I love that debate. And so for me, LinkedIn has been awesome because people who are actually involved in that rulemaking process, people at the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy and people at the American Institute of CPAs are on and we're actually making a difference.

We have stimulated and participated in the conversation here and really helped, I think, helped push the discussion forward on how do we modernize the CPA license. That's where like I've actually seen, I mean I've had chairs of boards of state, boards of accountancy come up to me at events and say I love what you're saying about like, Where we need to be going as a profession.

And I am like, where did you, where Have you heard any of this? Like I saw it on LinkedIn, and I listened to your podcast.

Meryl: I could take that. Conversation in a whole other direction. But I'm gonna stick to the question, the, these listener questions cuz we've got only a little bit of time left. But I think that is a, I would like to discuss that with you at some point in the future around the future of the profession and just where, what c p a, what chartered accountants could do around changing the way that people are qualified and ENT entry paths.

In Intuit, but I'm not gonna go there right now. Samuel also asks how much traffic is within the industry versus outside. So what I think he's getting at there, he owns a bookkeeping business, is cause your, Ima, your content is mostly related to accountants. That's your audience. Whereas his content is probably to do with generating clients.

Blake: So for me, my audience, if I'm looking at this from a business perspective, my social media, my content creation, it's all geared toward accountants and bookkeepers because that is who will, consume my products and services. But if you're an accountant, then you know, you probably don't want just a bunch of other accountants listening to you unless you're, Selling to them.

But most of the time you're not you're looking for small business owners to buy your products and services. And so for me, basically everybody who listens to our show, Is in the profession. I'd say most are practitioners, but then we also have folks in the technology sector that serve accountants who listen.

But that's great too because they're potential advertisers on our show and we sell advertising space. But I think what the answer is like that we're getting to here is, or. The takeaway is that you really wanna think about who is the audience for what you're creating. If you wanna have roi, then you've gotta have the people listening who are, interested in what you have to offer.

And I think a lot of times we don't really think about that.

Meryl: That's, to me, that's spot on and that's a mistake that I made with the first podcast I had, which is. The BES podcast, it was very unclear who was our audience. Sometimes we were talking about e-commerce accounting. Sometimes it was our backstory. Sometimes I was talking with other accountants and there was no cohesiveness.

Who's the audience. It was different every time, and that's something that we've now taken that podcast in a clear direction with the Binges brand. Our audience is e-commerce brands doing seven or eight figures, and so now we only create content about that. So now that I also wanna create accounting content.

Then it's a different podcast, but it took quite a few years to figure that out. And I think that's actually a really common mistake is not being clear about who your audience is. A and as accountants, I think there can still be advantages of creating content for accountants. I think Nicole Mackenzie, on one of the earlier episodes she was talking about.

Her LinkedIn creation, so she writes a lot on LinkedIn and a lot of it is aimed at accountants and that's really helped her hire people for her firm. So there is a place for that but that's not gonna get your clients. At the same time, you're probably not gonna achieve those two objectives.

Blake: too, right? And actually that's the biggest challenge most firm owners face is hiring staff. If you're trying to grow a firm, right? It's like attracting and retaining talent. And so a lot of times a podcast. About your firm or about what you do could be geared toward them and serve a purpose.

But you just have to be really clear about what that purpose is and who that audience is. And really, honestly, everything I've ever done in marketing, the suc, the success or failure has probably come down to how clear is the value of what we're delivering for the audience that we're trying to reach.

And if we don't know the audience, we can't make something that they're gonna want. What the example who wrote Winnie the Poo? And I'm thinking of this cause my son's eight we just read them. The author wrote them for his child. That's why they're so good. He didn't write, just write them for any kid.

Like he had somebody in mind a specific age. Specific state of development. And that's why those books are so great. I.

Meryl: Alright, I think we've got time for one last question and this is from Paul Miller and he says, where to start? What are the quick wins to give me confidence in getting started with creating content?

Blake: Quick wins. That's the problem with content creation is there are no quick wins most of the time. And 80% of everything you do in content marketing will result in nothing. At least in my experience, like most of what I make fails. Most of what I do is not a hit. And I think 20% honestly would be good.

If 20% of what we did. I think the, I guess the way to get quicker wins. You're not gonna just do one thing and have it be a hit, you're gonna have to do five to 10 things. So the important thing is to be measuring those things so that when you do get a win, you can just keep doing it right and do more of it.

And so the example is when I started my firm, I had a blog and I wrote a bunch of blog posts, and then one of them really took off, and that was zero versus QuickBooks because in the US market, that's what people were asking, right? This new thing versus this established thing. And so I wrote, Eight different articles all on that topic.

And those eight, maybe it became a dozen blog posts, ended up driving, 80, 90% of the traffic to our website month after month, year after year, until other people figured it out and then copied it. And by then it didn't matter anymore. Figure out what you wanna get out of it and then start tracking it and then see what works.

Meryl: Blake, thanks so much. It's been fantastic talking content with you. One of my favorite topics. If the audience wants to get in touch or find out more about what you do, where's the best place to go?

Blake: The best place to go is to my website, Blake oliver.com. You can connect with me on social media. I'm at Blake t Oliver on Twitter. I'm on LinkedIn. Also, check out earmark cpe.com if you have a CPE requirement and that you can download the app and you can find my podcast and many other fine podcasts available for free continuing education.

And if you really like the app, you can subscribe for a hundred bucks a month. A hundred bucks, not a month, a hundred bucks a year. It's even better deal than that. It's a hundred bucks a year. Yeah. And if back in the day, I would've said, Merril, can we please edit that? And I'll retake that and we'll do it again.

And I have learned at this point, nobody cares. Nobody cares. If you misspeak on a podcast, you just fix it and you move on. So that's what we'll do.

Meryl: Amazing. We'll drop all of those links into the show notes.

Blake: Thanks Meryl.