Not only does the ideal travel loop allow for optimum weather year-round, but it also enables Chad’s children to experience a non-traditional form of homeschooling. His kids can learn the basics through online courses, while also gaining a more worldly perspective from the family’s digital nomad lifestyle.

Marketing strategy and click-through rates

Leading an accounting firm is about much more than financial services. Chad offers his two cents about the dreaded sales funnel.

Like many firms, Chad’s experienced his fair share of sales calls where the mismatch is clear from the beginning. Often firms are inclined to view these instances as a signal that their funnel needs tweaking. But instead of adjusting LiveCA’s lead generation strategy to weed out the bad fits mid-funnel, Chad prefers to take the initial call, even if it’s an unlikely match.

“We try not to take an algorithmic approach and allow everyone to contact us,” says Chad. “Then we can push them out warmly to the right people. We find that creates a better experience for our reputation.”

Chad and his team don’t mind the extra communication.

LiveCA averages seven to eight leads per day but only takes on a few new customers per month. And while the more traditional approach to inbound inquiries may seem counterintuitive, it may be a strategy that reflects the swinging sales pendulum.

“Email selling is dead,” Stuart declares on the podcast. “You cannot sell a single thing through cold email unless it’s a miracle. Nobody reads it. … You can’t hit ‘delete’ quickly enough, right?”

Both Stuart and Chad believe customers are becoming increasingly savvy to digital marketing tactics and joke about clicking on competitors' ads to increase click-through rates.

“Isn’t that a good real-world use case for bots?” laughs Chad.

While it may seem old-fashioned, especially from such a tech-driven accounting firm, the decision not to automate everything may prove to be advantageous for firms like LiveCA.

In the meantime, Chad’s often feeding others’ funnels, referring leads to fellow accounting firms—a practice that isn’t atypical in such a communal and supportive industry.

The collaborative accountant mindset

According to Chad, accounting professionals are almost always willing to share resources, not just potential leads.

His peers’ willingness to support one another, despite being competitors, is one of the things Chad loves most about his profession. And it may be the inspiration behind some of LiveCA’s projects that aren’t designed with profits at the forefront.

Chad recently wrapped up a new development project: a job board for tech-centered accounting firms.

“It’s been up for less than a month. It’s free, and it’ll be free for a long time,” Chad tells Stuart.

He thinks of the project as an experiment to determine whether or not there’s an appetite for a niche hiring platform. “One of the reasons [we put this together is] to see if people believe in the same sort of things around salary, transparency, and choice.” He hopes the project will further bring the industry together.

Just as LiveCA is trying to do its part for accounting firms in the current competitive job market, Chad appreciates his fellow accounting leaders who are also working on projects that benefit the industry.

The collaborative mindset reminds Chad of the early days of cloud accounting when a certain level of camaraderie united the “techiest” of firms. That communal feel has revived itself in the last 6-12 months.

Stuart shares his guess about why this newfound interest in collaborating with the competition has emerged:

“Accountants have copped it left, right, and center during the pandemic. You’ve been therapists, psychologists, accountants, government distributors of funds, late-night crisis counselors, on top of all your normal work. Most haven’t been paid any more to do so. [The experience] is solidifying the industry—it brings peers together.”

Recommended listening: Knowing your purpose, educating, and building communities with Jason Blumer from Thriveal CPA Network

The past and future of accounting

Looking back on the past 10 years, it’s hard for Chad to fathom how much has changed.

He recalls the early days of LiveCA:

“I remember a really great [early] customer with us in Toronto. He had a year's worth of receipts that he needed to scan, so I ordered a Fujitsu scanner [and sent it] to his house. I flew from Halifax to Toronto and stayed there for three days scanning papers.”

He also recalls the evolution of Karbon. As a longtime client, Chad has watched the company grow and is eager to see the projects on Karbon’s horizon following the recent Series B investment from Tidemark.

Stuart’s equally excited to share what’s on deck for the growing company. He spills a few company secrets to Chad, but is saving most for the big reveal at KarbonX this June in Lake Tahoe.

When Chad Davis and his business partner, Josh Zweig, first founded their tech-focused accounting firm 10 years ago, they didn’t anticipate where it would take them: smack dab in the middle of a cloud accounting revolution, catalyzed by a global pandemic.