Today, our guest is Jake Kessenich. Jake is a COO, Chief Operating Officer, which you all know already, and partner at Incurio, which is a new name for the company. We’ll probably talk about that as well. Jake, welcome to The Unique CPA. 

Yeah, thanks Randy for having me. Good to be here. 

Yeah, it’s fun. You and I met last December for the first time at QuickBooks Connect. And then we reconnected at Scaling New Heights just recently. And I don’t think there was anything in between that was there that I missed.

Nope. I figured you only invited me on because you felt bad that I was sitting outside the exhibitor hall waiting for it to open up. 

That’s right! I forgot about that. You were sitting out there like, Jake, what are you doing here? I’m waiting to go in the exhibit hall. Well, it opens tomorrow. 

Yep, lesson learned.

Alright. That’s good. As long as you’re learning along the way, we’re all good. We’re going to talk about a few things today. We’re going to talk about, you went through a rebrand. We’ll probably go on that. And we’re really wanting to talk about, you’re looking to, and you’re just getting prepared to, develop a niche service, a niche industry you’re looking to service. But before we do that, why don’t you give us a little, background on you, the firm, your journey in this profession. 

Yeah, definitely. So going back to college, it kind of will play in full circle at the end here, but I had some odd jobs in college. I was a video production assistant. I was a funeral director and did some valet in Newport Beach. So that was all over the place in college. And then, my junior, senior year, I decided I needed to get my act together and applied for a internship at a local tax office. Got into doing taxes and ended up being a staff accountant there. 

I quickly realized that taxes was not my thing and wasn’t the best at that. So I shifted gears a little bit and went and was working for a outsourced accounting and CFO firm, and just really fell in love with the industry a lot at that role. Did get more into systems and technology and account tech software and all of that stuff, and then ended up going back to the tax firm that I was at, and asked if they’d be open to basically building out a CAS department or a CAS practice within the tax firm. Ended up building that CAS practice up from just about scratch. They did some bookkeeping, mainly just year end write up work and bookkeeping work to get the tax return done, but not a whole lot of what we now call CAS, or we probably don’t need to get into that conversation. 

I was going to ask, maybe, because I still not sure I completely understand what CAS is, but.

I think the way I think about it is more of an internal thing. We don’t market it like that externally, but just taking the bookkeeping a step further and getting monthly financials and some component of some advisory built into that, and just give small business owners more insights to their books and their financials and not just getting them ready for a tax return, essentially is how I think about it. 

So, how would you, and this was not the path we were going to go down, but I like surprises. How would you, in my mind it’s, okay, is that just like being an outsourced CFO? How is outsourced CFO different than CAS? I’m assuming there’s a lot more, I don’t know, do you have a, differentiation between the two? 

No, I think just broader, like, the term “advisory” can mean so many different things to so many different people. So I don’t like going in with any type of absolutes, but for me, it was like bookkeeping plus, like essentially is how we’re thinking about it. And so that’s how we are. And like, we don’t have like an outsourced CFO component. Like we do some light CFO work, but we’re mainly still a tax office. So a lot of our advisory is around tax planning and tax strategy with some light like cashflow and budgeting built into that. 

Got it. Alright. So continue then?

Yeah, started with the building out the CAS practice and early on I was the staff doing all the work, ended up bringing on some staff to help out with that work. And I was managing them. And now we’re at a place where we have a really stellar team with managers and staff, that take care of all of our clients way better than I ever could. Just kept bringing more people into the mix and built out the practice from scratch there.

So this was the firm you were originally at. Is that the firm that now just rebranded to the name you have today? 

One of the partners went off and started her practice, and that’s the one that I came back to. But she was the partner or one of the partners at the original firm. 

Okay. And then this, as this evolved, then, you entered the CAS practice. I think you and I discussed before, and you mentioned your tax heavy or tax business that’s doing CAS to help with that. Are you dealing with any 1040 clients as well or just straight 1040, or is it all businesses that you’re dealing with? 

Yeah, so for a while we had the 1040s and all the business returns and all of that. And then we, as we built up the CAS practice, we started pulling those clients that we were doing the month end or the year end work for, and got them onto monthly accounting services, and realized that our relationship was so much better, and we could better serve them if we did all the monthly stuff and we’ve realized that the tax, the 1040 only work, was taking away from those clients because we were only talking to them once a year. They weren’t seeing the full value and all of that. And so we decided to rehome some of those or all of our 1040 only clients to some colleagues. So we could really focus on just serving small business owners. 

Rehome, huh? I like that. I hadn’t heard that before. 

Yeah. We didn’t really want to do it. We had really good relationships with all these clients, and so we didn’t want to just sell them to somewhere else and all of that. So we were very intentional in how we brought them in. We did a very good transition the first year and made sure that the new tax preparer and the client was comfortable with everything and it wasn’t about getting the money from selling those clients. It was about making sure that they were taken care of. Yeah, it wasn’t like a transactional thing where we were just selling names on a client list to get them out of our hair type of thing. 

Alright, well, that’s cool. That’s, I guess, a form of advisory right there. You know, you’re not just getting rid of them. You’re helping them as they transition to the new relationship. I have a friend, and I’ve probably said this on the show before, but she likes saying that when there’s clients that she just, and for her was more, I just can’t work with these clients anymore. It’s, she invites them to be successful elsewhere, so.

Yeah, it’s all about how you package that up, because I don’t think that there’s bad clients. I think there’s just bad fits, and you can be better served somewhere else that has the model and the infrastructure to better serve some clients. 

Yep. And that’s basically in any type of service or professional you’re dealing with. And I’ve talked about this on the show, I think before, I definitely do presentations on it. I, in the past, had some mental health issues I dealt with post stroke. And I went to see a therapist and it took me three different therapists before I found the one that was a good fit for me. And the same thing could be with us as accountants, that the client fits with us, or we fit with the client, and it doesn’t mean that either of us are bad. It’s just not the perfect fit. So I like that. 

Exactly.

Alright. So then let’s get more into the business. And before we get to the, I think, the meat of our conversation, which we will see, I I’m known to go on tangents, so you never know. You recently went through a rebrand then as well. And so let’s talk about that and why, or just give me the data or the information on the rebrand.

Yeah, so it started shortly after we had pared down the client list of only being with small, working with small business owners. And we found that a lot of potential clients were still coming to us and wanting just tax, 1040 work and all of that. And we’re like, why is this happening? And then we had looked at our website and it was just geared towards that. So if you googled us or found us on Yelp or anything like that, it said we do individual tax preparation services, and so we were like, okay, we should give the website a refresh. It was a friend and client who had done the initial one, and we were like, let’s be more intentional about it. 

So we found a marketing team to go through the, just the website. We said, hey, we just need to update our website. And they went through their interview and discovery process and really quickly realized that it was not just the website that needed to be done. It was the name, the logo, the colors, like everything just needed to speak to a different audience. We hadn’t budgeted for it or planned on it at all. And next thing you know, we’re knee deep talking about tone of voice and ICP and like all these terms I had never heard of, which really got us thinking. So it was like the first step to us really thinking of the firm as a business and not just like a tax practice. I don’t know if that differentiation is clear, but… 

No, I know exactly what you’re saying. It’s, I think too often that we don’t think of ourselves as a business in this profession. We think of ourselves as a, we help other people, which we do. But we’re also in business for ourselves and to be successful and help our employees and ourselves not get crazy. So I think that was great that you fell into that and recognized it. 

Yeah. And part of that is we had some good projections for what we want to do. And we just want to help as many small business owners as we can, and provide our services to as many entrepreneurs and small businesses as possible. And part of that was recognizing that we needed to get our branding away from being geared towards the partner at the time, because people would come to us and only want to work with the partner because her name was on the door and all of that. And so we wanted to really brand it in a way that you’re working with our team and getting our whole suite of services, ’cause we have a very capable and awesome team that can service our clients, and so really rebranding around that. And so everything wasn’t geared towards one individual. And so we could scale a little bit better. 

And I got a question on that, because I, you know, before we started talking, I was looking at the website and, you know, it talks about, well, your business and personal lives aren’t separate. We care about both, which I think is pretty cool. Is there a more of a deeper message behind that, that we’re looking at? 

Yeah, I think as we’ve gone through making these changes for our business, we realized that we had to think about our personal lives and how this business was going to affect us. And so, in a lot of ways, we are our target client. Business owners are so good at their craft or whatever they’re selling and not, I think, so often, we hear, okay, you got to keep business and personal separate and you got to show up one way at work in a different way at home and all of that when for a small business owner, it’s all intertwined and it’s hard to shut that off and separate those. And we just wanted to speak to that, like we get it. Like your business is not entirely separate from your personal life. It is very much intertwined. 

And then on the website itself, because you said earlier that, hey, when you looked at us before, it was like, okay, what we do is we help 1040 clients. But when I look at this website, I think it might be the third page down before I even see the words accounting or tax. And I haven’t seen tax yet. Is that intentional as well? 

Yeah. I think it’s, tax and accounting are the vehicles that we use and that’s what our specialty is, but we wanted to base everything around the more psychographic component of what a small business owner is feeling. And so like the way our packages are, we have three packages for our monthly services and they’re all around feelings. So like our, our tier one, or what you would call like a bronze package is “Relieve me.” And then the second one is “Help me.” And the third one is “Guide me.” So it’s all around the feelings that you’re wanting to get out of working with a partner. 

And the corner above the “I” in Encurio is a corner, and so it’s like a partner in your corner essentially is kind of the play on that. So we want it to just be someone that small businesses can come to, and we may not have all the answers, but we’re going to help facilitate the conversations and be somebody that can act as a sounding board when you want, or are thinking about decisions in your business. And it’s not just tax and accounting, like that’s our specialty, but we can help in a more holistic or broad manner.

I like it. And then you mentioned whatever the titles you just said. Help me, guide me. Say ‘em again. 

“Relieve me, Help me, Guide me.” 

Got it. You said that. And then there’s obviously different pricing for all those. So you do three tier pricing. Are you directing them at one of those three? Are you trying to get them into the middle or is it not anything like that?

Initially we thought we wanted to play the psychology component and lead people to the middle. But we found that there’s a package for everybody. And just because they’re on like the lowest package doesn’t mean it’s not the right one for them. And so during our discovery process, we don’t try to push like the highest one. Like our whole thing, we’re thinking about the lifetime of the client. And the idea was that it would be perfectly normal for you to start with the relieve me, and once we get everything on rails and I’ll get a lot of clarity around what we’re doing, then you can bump up to the next one and we’ll take off more like back office services off your plate and help with bill pay and invoicing and payroll processing and things like that. And so it’s just the level of support that you’re getting as you go up in the tiers, essentially. 

And then, is that all inclusive? Is tax included in, first, I guess, are they paying monthly? Is that up front? You’re not even having to collect? It’s just automatic payments, I assume you’re doing that? 

Yeah, so everything from the business perspective is all included in that. So, all compliance filings that we can handle, which would be 1099s, we do secretary of state filings, we do sales tax, property tax, all of that stuff, and the income tax return for the business. And then the only thing that’s not included is the individual tax return ’cause those can vary so much, even within different partners in a those can be so different. So we do the individual pricing separately. But yeah, it’s all done through Ignition and we’re collecting that money on the first of every month. 

Alright. So those are all tangents that we did not talk about that we were going to go over today, but those are things that are always so interesting to me to see how people are managing their practice. So what I did tease at the beginning that we wanted to talk about today is, you are not at this time, a niche practice. You don’t have a niche industry for the most part you’re dealing with. You have a niche, probably client, small business, that. But you’re looking at starting to develop a niche and right at the beginning stages of that, so how did this decision come about? 

Yeah, so initially we didn’t have a niche, but we realized quickly that we weren’t suited to serve non-profits and that was the first like dipping our toes into that, we don’t work with non-profits and so that was the only thing that kind of resembled a niche at first and then I was actually troubleshooting some issues for some clients and they all use the same CRM practice management software. And as I was going through that, I noticed that software company had a place on their website for their users to find a marketing team, find an IT professional and find a bookkeeper. So I just reached out to our rep and said, hey, can we get listed on here? So we ended up being listed as one of four accounting firms, for users of this software. And we ended up getting some good leads on that. 

And I was like, oh, this whole niche thing is easy. You just find the software and then the leads can start flowing in. And that is what happened. We got a lot of leads from it. But then that software company ended up being acquired and went a whole different direction with the software and their like accountant community and all of that. So we were back at square one again. But that got my wheels turning about, maybe there is something about the niche. We hear it so often in the industry at all the conferences and everything is like, everything will just be unlocked if you just get a niche. And so we’ve been thinking about it. And so we got intentional about this a few weeks ago and just started brainstorming some potential industries or things like that, that we wanted to explore. 

Like I said, we’re not marketing experts. And so we didn’t go through a super formal process, but we did some basic market research. We were looking at things like size of the industries and purchasing power of businesses within those industries and things like that, and narrowed it down to, you know, five to six. And then my partner actually threw out there, she used to be a funeral director. Should we like, should we look at the death care services industry? And I thought that was super interesting. So we, uh, we kind of looked into that one. And like I said, we don’t have any clients in this niche now, but we, they checked a lot of boxes. And I think the biggest one for us is we wanted value alignment of businesses in the industry that we chose, ’cause we don’t do very much transactional work. Like we build very deep relationships with our clients and we end up digging into their industry, software and all of that. So we wanted to find someone or an industry where we could be the experts on their CRM or their project management or whatever they’re using to run their business and bridge that gap to the accounting side of things.

But yeah, we ended up landing on the death care industry and. One of our values, it’s my favorite value that we have is “embrace the community.” And I think the death care industry, you know, funeral homes, mortuaries and things like that are so embedded inherently in community. And so it made, it just got us excited to try it out. And so that’s where we landed a few weeks ago. 

A few weeks ago. This is awesome. So in that few weeks, what are the steps you’ve taken so far to start to get to a point where you can market to this niche, or get the first client in? 

Yeah. We didn’t really know exactly what to do. We just started brainstorming ideas. And the big thing was, we wanted to see what the community was even like in the death care services industry. More specifically, funeral homes and mortuaries, like what are their pain points and what are they going through on a daily basis? And just started doing Google searches and social media searches and finding out what podcasts are they listening to, what YouTube channels are they following, what types of questions are they asking about as it pertains to taxes and accounting as they’re running their small businesses? And I think we just found that a lot of them, they’re running into the same issues that all of our clients now are facing. And it’s just all the same things with cashflow and capacity and hiring and training and HR stuff, and just all the normal stuff that a small business owner struggles with or the obstacles that they face. 

We decided the first thing probably needed to be getting a landing page together that spoke to them. So our marketing team’s in the process of crafting a landing page that’ll be on our website that we can share with them. Guide potential clients to as we start doing outreach within these networks that we’re trying to build right now. 

Is there, it looked like there’s any special technologies or resources that you’re going to need as you, you know, build out this niche?

I think the big thing is going to be, there’s a handful of the equivalent of our practice management systems that they use to run their firm or their companies. And so we’re in there doing demos with them, trying to build relationships with those software companies so we can be the experts and talk intelligently when we do talk to clients in this industry. And that’s one thing we found is not having a niche, we’ve done that anyway. A client comes to us and they’re like, okay, we’re using Shopify or we’re using whatever it is, and now our team is like super involved in all, like all over the place with all these different industry software and all that. And so I think if we can hone that into just a handful of three or four software that every funeral home is using, we can go way deeper in those relationships and be the experts in those, as well as the accounting software and, and really bridge that gap.

You’re using our theme of our conference a few times here, Bridging the Gap. Alright, nice, thank you! And then from a marketing standpoint, has that plan started? I mean, are you looking like, can I get a guest spot on a podcast that serves the industry, or starting to put webinars together or writing blogs? Has that plan started to evolve yet? 

Yeah, so the initial things we’re doing is we’re publishing a blog a week right now. And so we’re going through our archives of blogs and seeing how we can rewrite those to be specific to the death care services industry. We started identifying some podcasts that funeral home owners are listening to and seeing, and I’m just listening to those and seeing what kind of conversations are happening there. And ultimately, yeah, the plan is to guest on those podcasts, and show up to their trade shows, and be part of their community as much as possible. 

Alright. So you currently have this three tier pricing that we talked about already. Is that going to have to change or is there any like specific offers that you’re seeing you need to put together just specifically for this industry?

Yeah. This is something we were working on before we decided to do a niche, but just taking some of the concepts that we already have and then coupling that with some books that I’m reading. One of them, $100M Offers by Alex Hormozi, and just crafting what he calls a “Grand Slam Offer” to really deliver maximum value to clients and really lay out all the things that we’re doing as an accounting partner and advisor. And I think a lot of times, we’ve noticed this in our firm, and I’m sure this is not unique to us, but we don’t convey everything that we’re doing for our clients. It’s not really doing anything different or servicing our clients any differently, but really bringing that to the surface: Here’s everything that we’re doing, and here’s what your experience could look like with working with us. And so I think one of the things I really took away from that book is the time between signing a client, to them receiving their first win is a super crucial time from the client perspective. And so really trying to identify, yes, we can save you taxes. We can make sure your taxes are filed well, but what are you going to get the moment you sign with us, and trying to craft what that offer looks like. And so putting together more of an optimum or premium experience, from the moment they sign that engagement letter and deliver the maximum value at that point. 

Alright. Any other thoughts on this journey you’re recently embarking on before we switch gears? 

I think the things that are top of mind right now are some of these concepts from $100M Offers that has really got my mind thinking in a different way. And, coming back from Scaling and hearing Ron Baker talk about the subscription model, like coupling, like some of those concepts, I think we are going to have to rethink our three tier model and all of that. And I don’t know, going in that journey of the subscription model is a big undertaking and one I’m still trying to wrap my head around. So I’m just trying to approach it with an open mind. But those are the main things I’m. And that’s what we’re brainstorming on right now. 

So a friend of mine, Dawn Brolin, who I think you know, she talks about, and she did this a year ago, actually it was just over a year ago, she changed her pricing model and she calls it the “relationship pricing” because it’s all about building those relationships with the client and being there for them. You can always talk to her if you’d like. She’s got some good ideas. 

Yeah, definitely. 

Alright. So I’m really intrigued. So you probably have heard me talk about niche and, and, and if not, I talk about it a lot. It’s a passion of mine. I was a generalist forever and started Tri-Merit and became this niche product offering. The tax credit says that, man, it is just so, such a fun way to run a business, a practice, or build a practice because you can just dig so deep into it, the marketing aspects of it, the knowledge sharing aspects of it just gets so much stronger because you become an expert in that industry and, and people realize it and then they just come to you. I just really love to see it. 

So my long winded response here is you and I need to take a look at this in about a year and, and follow this journey and see what’s happened, what you learned, any veers you had to take, any, you know, misstarts, any surprise wins you weren’t expecting. I think that’d be a lot of fun to watch the journey. What do you think? 

Yeah, definitely. I appreciate the accountability partner that makes sure I’m on track here. And now I’m going to have to report back to someone. So I love it. Let’s do it. 

Alright. We will put that on the calendar. Alright. So two last questions then: we just talked about all this business stuff, but let’s talk about you and what your outside of work passions are. What do you enjoy doing when you’re not helping these clients in the, coming up, these clients in the, death industry is what you call it, right? 

Yep. Death care services.

Death care services. So when you’re not doing that, what’s your outside of work passions? 

Yeah, one thing, I’m super into my music, so I have music on almost 100 percent of the time, so I love listening to music. And other than that, I do a lot of camping, and river and lake trips, and things like that. And then I also volunteer with my fraternity and help out on their housing corporation, so do some volunteer work with them.

Alright. That’s awesome. And if anybody else wants to follow along with this journey and what you’re doing and what the company’s doing, how can they find out more about you or Encurio?

Yeah, so, always reach out on our website, IncurioHQ. com, or you can email me at jake at IncurioHQ. com, and those are probably the best ways to get a hold of me.

Alright, awesome Jake. This was a lot of fun, I’m really excited to watch this journey progress, and good luck with everything. I’m sure there’ll be some bumps, but I’m sure there’ll be a lot of very satisfying days as you build a niche practice. 

Yeah, definitely. Thanks for having me on here, Randy.