Accountant's Flight Plan: Buy, Build, or Sell Your Firm, with Brannon Poe
Buying or selling an accounting firm is complex. For Brannon Poe, Founder of Poe Group Advisors, a podcast about topics related to these kinds of major transactions has been a great way to build trust and help clients navigate complexities. Recently on Podcasting in Professional Services, I had a conversation with Brannon about his experience running his show, Accountant’s Flight Plan; how it has evolved, how it contributes to the business, and more. Listen here, or wherever you listen to podcasts:
An Early Introduction to Podcasting
Apple released its standalone podcasting application in 2012. It came pre-installed on iOS beginning October 2014. It was during this exciting new time that Brannon Poe was introduced to podcasting.
“I had a meeting with a gentleman named Ric Payne, who, if you've been in the profession for a very long time, you might remember Ric,” said Brannon. “[Ric] had a program called Results Accounting Systems, which was a coaching program for firm owners that was born in Australia. I just got connected with Ric and went out to Reno, Nevada to his place and met with him. And he says, ‘Are you doing a podcast?’ I said, no. He goes, ‘Oh, you've got to start doing a podcast.’”
From there, Ric helped Brannon record his first episode on a phone line in 2013. Having fun with it, they ended up recording their outline for the podcast but then wound up having an engaging conversation afterward, while the tape was still rolling (so to speak).
“It became very conversational,” said Brannon. “We were like, okay, that's the end of the podcast and we just had a conversation. We just started talking and that was the best part. That was the best part. So we ended up clipping that and publishing it.”
“It was probably a long time before I did another one,” said Brannon. “And then I found Buzzsprout and I started to get more serious about launching it and I realized I enjoy doing this. Then, I started getting positive feedback from my audience and I decided to do one per quarter for a while. I just gradually increased the number of episodes and increased my kind of seriousness around podcasting.”
Accountant’s Flight Plan: The Book That Became a Podcast
“The first book I wrote was called Accountant's Flight Plan, Best Practices for Today's Firms,” said Brannon. “We liked the name of the book and we thought, Hey, we’ll just go with it.” This is a common theme across business podcasts.
Thanks to Brannon’s knowledge of the industry and curious personality, Accountant’s Flight Plan takes a more casual, unstructured approach to the conversations with guests.
“The whole format is pretty simple, but it's conversational and that suits my temperament and suits my talents, I suppose. It's very natural for me to have follow-on questions for people and we try to make our podcasts about the guests and it's fun. It's, you know, you get good guests and you ask them good questions and it works.
Selecting guests for the Accountant's Flight Plan podcast is also organic. “I get my guests from very random sparks of inspiration,” said Brannon. But now, the team is thinking about new ways to add value to their engaged podcast audience. “Lately we've been saying we should have more former clients on our podcast because our audience seems to really like to hear the buyer's journey or the seller's journey.”
Even with this approach, there is a pipeline of content yet to be published. “So right now we have a little bit of a backlog to come on our show. And now people are starting to reach out to us very often and we're finding that we're going to have to start creating some sort of filter or some kind of scorecard system to decide who to interview and who not to pass on.”
A Conscious Decision to Commit to the Show
After taking some time away from podcasting, Accountant’s Flight Plan returned in 2018 with a monthly publishing frequency. “I made a conscious decision to do it once a month,” said Brannon. “Then I started getting invited on other people's podcasts. And that's when I realized I've got something here. People would tell my team members, ‘Oh, I listened to the podcast and I love what so and so had to say.’”
Not only did the publishing frequency pick up, but Brannon started to bring in fresh perspectives from outside the accounting industry. “I joined [Entrepreneur’s Organization] around 2018…and I met a lot of really interesting thought leaders outside of my industry that I thought, man, we need to bring some of this into the accounting industry. We need to bring ideas from outside of the industry.”
This influx of guests included lawyers, a president of the Public Speakers Association, and other professionals with valuable perspectives. “My audience just responded very, very well,” said Brannon. “We had some data from what people were downloading, how much they were listening, and I realized, we have a very good podcast following and whatever we're doing, we just need to keep doing it.”
The Business Impact of the Podcast
Selling complex professional services requires a great deal of trust. Podcasting helps build that trust through dialogue. The experience offers listeners an assortment of perspectives with one constant: the host. Listeners are along for the ride and become familiar with their voice and personality.
“We're selling high-level consulting services, which are high-value services. And for our audience, having the ability to listen to us or watch us on a video in a long-form type of content helps them get to know your personality, get to understand you a little bit better, gain some trust. And had I known that it would accomplish that quite well, I would have invested in it earlier.”
But podcasting isn’t a short-term fix to lead generation or winning new deals this quarter. It takes time for a podcast to have a business impact. “You're not going to see a whole lot of results really fast,” said Brannon. “You're going to have to let it play out.”
The podcast didn’t only have an impact on Poe Group Advisors. It helped Brannon sharpen his speaking skills and gave him more confidence to be the sage on the stage. “I used to really avoid public speaking,” said Brannon. “And so [the podcast has] given me a lot of confidence in speaking in a more public way.”
“Last year, I was on the Xero roadshow and spoke live in three different cities on a pretty big stage. So I feel like it's given me a lot of speaking practice. And that confidence is not just reserved for work, right? That confidence spills over into everything.”
Growth & Promotion of Accountant’s Flight Plan
The team at Poe Group Advisors has built a system to promote the Accountant’s Flight Plan podcast. They’ve invested in channels like YouTube, LinkedIn, email, and TikTok. On their website, they also repurpose episode content on their blog.
But one tactic caught my attention.
“We're actually doing a postcard mailer to get people on a single episode just to get exposure to our podcast,” said Brannon. “We've never done that before. That's new.”
Scanning a QR code is performed on a mobile device, which takes users to podcast media they can consume right away. Perhaps you catch a commuter who grabs the mail on their way home, and queues up an episode to listen to on their next drive.
The jury is still out on whether that postcard mailer moved the needle on podcast consumption for Brannon, but one thing is sure: listeners are acquired one at a time. Constant experimentation is key.
Take the Next Step on Your Podcasting Journey
Like Brannon, you can launch and grow a successful business podcast for your firm. There is a blue ocean of opportunity for professional services firms to use this format to accelerate their networks, humanize their brand, and create endless content. Here are a few resources to help you take the next step:
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