The Growth Minded Accountant

Lee Reams II from CountingWorks PRO
  • 5.0 (6)
  • Marketing
  • Updated Semiweekly

Hosted by Lee Reams II and CountingWorks PRO, "The Growth Minded Accountant" is your go-to podcast for independent tax and accounting pros ready to level up. We’re here to show you how AI, digital marketing, and cutting-edge tools — the kind that only the big guys had access to — can help you save time, win new clients, and keep your practice thriving. From leveraging AI agents to boosting ROI on every client interaction, we cover it all. Tune in to stay sharp, learn strategies that work, and make sure you’re always one step ahead. The playing field just got a lot more level — let’s go!

  1. 13h ago

    Everyone’s Afraid of AI Agents. Here’s What They Actually Do.

    What AI Agents Really Look Like Inside a Tax & Accounting Firm AI agents are suddenly everywhere. So are the predictions about what happens next. Some envision autonomous systems replacing huge portions of human work. Others imagine AI wandering through businesses making decisions nobody authorized. The reality inside a tax and accounting firm is much more practical. In this episode of The Growth-Minded Accountant, Lee Reams and Rebekah Barton break down what an AI agent actually is, how firms can control what it sees and does, and where professional judgment still belongs. The most important distinction may be the simplest: Capability is not permission. An AI system may be capable of drafting an email, analyzing a tax notice, reviewing client information, identifying an advisory opportunity, or preparing work for a professional. That does not mean it should automatically have permission to send the email, make the tax decision, access every client record, or execute the recommendation. That is where architecture, permissions, security, and the human in the loop matter. The model Lee and Rebekah discuss is not autonomous professional judgment. It is autonomous preparation. The machine prepares. The professional decides. And when that distinction is understood, AI agents become much less about replacing accountants and much more about giving professionals a level of context, preparation, and client intelligence that was previously impossible.

    Everyone’s Afraid of AI Agents. Here’s What They Actually Do.

  2. Sep 9

    Stop Scaling Accountants. Start Scaling the Firm.

    How Tax & Accounting Firms Can Grow Without Adding Complexity at the Same Rate as Revenue For decades, the basic growth formula for a tax and accounting firm was fairly predictable: Win more clients. Hire more people. Add more software. Try to make everyone more efficient. It works, until it doesn't. As firms grow, something unexpected often happens. The most experienced people in the organization become the bottleneck. More client work creates more questions, more reviews, more exceptions, more supervision, and more decisions that eventually work their way back to a partner. Revenue grows. But so does partner drag. In this episode of The Growth-Minded Accountant, Lee Reams and Rebekah Barton explore a different way to think about scaling a tax and accounting firm. The question isn't simply: How do we make our accountants more productive? It's: How do we design the firm so growth doesn't require complexity, headcount, and partner involvement to grow at the same rate? AI is part of the answer, but this isn't simply an episode about AI. It's about building a better operating model: allowing technology to prepare work, capturing institutional knowledge, using client intelligence to identify opportunities proactively, standardizing repeatable processes, and reserving your most valuable human talent for the decisions where professional judgment actually matters. The principle is simple: AI prepares. Humans decide. And the goal isn't to remove people from the firm. It's to stop making your best people the operating system of the firm.

    Stop Scaling Accountants. Start Scaling the Firm.

  3. Sep 2

    Does Social Media Actually Grow a Tax & Accounting Firm?

    Why Social Media Is Becoming Part of Your Firm’s Trust, Referral, Search and AI Footprint Most tax and accounting professionals aren't trying to become influencers. They're busy serving clients. Many already generate business through referrals. And spending five hours a week creating Instagram posts or learning the latest TikTok trend probably isn't high on the priority list. So the skepticism is fair: Does social media actually help grow a tax and accounting firm? In this episode of The Growth-Minded Accountant, Rebekah Barton, Chief Visibility Officer at CountingWorks PRO, is joined by Alex Lue, VIP Account Manager, to look at social media from a much more practical perspective. Social media isn't about chasing followers or becoming internet famous. It's about creating visibility, familiarity, trust and authority before someone needs your services. And that role is expanding. Prospective clients may see a LinkedIn post, watch a YouTube video, hear about your firm through a referral, check your reviews, visit your website and increasingly ask ChatGPT, Gemini or another AI system about you before ever reaching out. That means your social presence is becoming another part of the evidence people, search engines and AI systems use to understand: Who are you? What do you know? Who do you serve? And should I trust you? Rebekah and Alex break down how tax and accounting firms can approach social media without turning marketing into another full-time job. The goal isn't to be everywhere. It's to become known before you're needed.

    Does Social Media Actually Grow a Tax & Accounting Firm?

  4. Aug 26

    Why the Future of Accounting Firm Marketing Is a Living Website, Not More Content

    For years, tax and accounting firm websites followed a familiar pattern. Design the website. Launch it. Add some service pages. Maybe publish a monthly article or newsletter. Then leave it largely untouched until the next redesign. Templates made websites more affordable, but they also created another problem: thousands of firms began looking and sounding remarkably similar. The same service descriptions. The same stock photography. The same tax articles. The same promises about being a “trusted advisor.” Now AI has introduced a third possibility. Instead of publishing the same content occasionally, firms can publish enormous amounts of it almost instantly. That sounds like progress. It can also become AI slop at scale. The opportunity with AI isn't simply to produce more content. It's to build a website that continuously understands what the firm knows, who it serves, what it wants to grow, what its clients are asking, what is changing in the market and where new opportunities are emerging. In this episode of The Growth-Minded Accountant, Lee Reams II and Rebekah Barton explore why the traditional accounting firm website needs to evolve from a static digital brochure into a living growth system. The shift is from: Static website → Living growth system Content calendar → Opportunity engine Generic information → Demonstrated expertise More content → More relevant content Because when everyone can publish unlimited information, the competitive advantage isn't the ability to create content. It's having something worth saying.

    Why the Future of Accounting Firm Marketing Is a Living Website, Not More Content

  5. Aug 20

    The New Tax & Accounting Marketing Funnel Has No Funnel

    How AI Is Compressing Awareness, Consideration and Decision Into One Conversation For decades, marketing followed a fairly predictable funnel. A prospective client discovered a problem. Searched Google. Read a few articles. Visited several websites. Downloaded a guide. Received a few nurture emails. Checked reviews. Compared firms. Eventually, they scheduled a consultation. AI is beginning to compress that entire journey. Today, a business owner can ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or another AI assistant: “I own a construction company doing $4 million a year. My accountant handles my taxes but doesn't do much proactive planning. Am I missing opportunities? What should a proactive advisor do differently? What should that cost? And which firms near me work with businesses like mine?” One conversation can move that prospect through awareness, education, solution research, consideration, comparison and due diligence. The funnel hasn't disappeared psychologically. It's being compressed technologically. And that creates an important new reality for tax and accounting firms: The prospect can now self-nurture. In this episode of The Growth Minded Accountant, Lee Reams II and Rebekah Barton explore how AI is changing the traditional buyer journey, why website traffic may become a less complete measure of marketing success, and why firms increasingly need to think about whether they are understandable, provable and ready when a high-intent prospect appears. The bigger shift is simple: The funnel didn't die. Our control over it did. And the firms that adapt should focus on three things: Be Present. Be Provable. Be Ready.

    The New Tax & Accounting Marketing Funnel Has No Funnel

  6. Aug 13

    The New ROI of Reviews: Why Your Reputation Is Becoming Your Search Strategy

    For years, reviews played a fairly predictable role in growing a tax or accounting firm. A prospect found your firm. Visited your website. Checked your reviews. And then decided whether to call. AI is beginning to rewrite that sequence. Today, prospects can ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or another AI assistant a much more valuable question: “Which accounting firm should I hire—and why?” That means discovery and due diligence are starting to happen inside the same conversation. Your reviews are no longer just something prospects read after they discover your firm. They are becoming part of the digital evidence that can help search engines, AI systems, and prospective clients understand who you serve, what you are good at, how clients experience working with you, and whether your firm deserves to be recommended. In this episode of The Growth Minded Accountant, Lee Reams II and Rebekah Barton explore the new ROI of reviews—and why reputation is becoming an increasingly important part of your search strategy. They explain why ten detailed, authentic client stories may communicate far more about a firm than ten generic five-star reviews; why review generation should become an ongoing “reputation heartbeat” instead of an occasional campaign; and why firms may need to rethink traditional marketing measurements built around clicks, traffic, and rankings. The bigger shift is simple: Stop optimizing only to get the click. Start building a firm that is easy to understand, easy to trust, and easy to recommend. Because your clients may already know how good your firm is. The market—and increasingly AI—only knows the evidence it can see. See How Recommendable Your Firm Is If your ideal client asked AI today to recommend the perfect accounting firm for them, would your firm make the shortlist? Find out. Get your free Recommendability Report: https://recommendability.countingworks.app See where your firm is strong, where your digital evidence may be creating gaps, and what you can improve to become easier for humans—and AI—to understand, trust, and recommend.

    The New ROI of Reviews: Why Your Reputation Is Becoming Your Search Strategy

  7. Jul 22

    How Should Tax and Accounting Firms Measure AI Success?

    Time Saved Is Only the Starting Point Artificial intelligence can draft an email in seconds, summarize a meeting, organize client information and reduce the time required to complete routine work. But does that mean the firm’s AI investment is succeeding? Not necessarily. The AI conversation in tax and accounting is increasingly divided between two competing visions. Silicon Valley sees the opportunity to rebuild firms around AI-native systems and autonomous agents. Professionals working inside real firms see clients, deadlines, compliance obligations, established workflows and decades of processes that cannot simply be removed overnight. The future will likely exist somewhere between those two extremes. In this episode of The Growth Minded Accountant, Lee Reams explains why AI success should not be measured by software demonstrations, licenses purchased or minutes theoretically saved. The more important question is whether professionals trust the technology enough to use it and whether that adoption makes the firm more capable. Lee breaks down four practical measures tax and accounting firms can use to evaluate AI ROI:  Adoption and professional trust  Usable capacity and consistency  Client intelligence and action  Business and human outcomes The episode also explores the difference between traditional workflows that track where work stands and AI workflows that help firms understand what the work requires. Lee explains why professional caution is often rational, why adoption must be included in the ROI calculation and why a powerful AI system that employees avoid may create less value than a simpler system they use every day. Ultimately, AI should not remove professional judgment. It should reduce the preparation, administrative work and fragmented information that keep professionals from exercising that judgment. The goal is not AI for the sake of AI. The goal is a more intelligent, proactive and scalable firm. See where your firm is ready — and where growth may be leaking.

    How Should Tax and Accounting Firms Measure AI Success?

  8. Jul 15

    AI Has Become the Gatekeeper Between Your Referrals and Your Next Client

    For decades, referrals were the most dependable growth engine in tax and accounting. A client told a friend, “You should call my CPA.” An attorney made an introduction. A financial advisor recommended someone they trusted. And in many cases, that recommendation led directly to a phone call. That is no longer how the process works. The referral may still begin with a person, but before the prospect contacts your firm, they validate the recommendation. They search your name, visit your website, read your reviews, and increasingly ask ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google AI questions such as: Does this firm really understand my situation? Do they specialize in my industry?Are they the best fit? Who else should I consider? AI is now standing between the referral and the phone call. In this episode of The Growth Minded Accountant, Lee Reams and Rebekah Barton explain how the referral pipeline has evolved through three distinct generations: Referral 1.0: The word-of-mouth era, when trust in the person making the recommendation was often enough. Referral 2.0: The Google era, when prospects began validating firms through websites, reviews, local search results, and online reputation. Referral 3.0: The AI recommendation era, where AI does not merely help prospects find firms. It interprets the available evidence, compares options, and helps prospects decide which firm appears to be the best match. That distinction matters. A firm may have decades of experience, strong client relationships, and deep knowledge. But if that expertise is not visible through its website, content, reviews, FAQs, videos, and other digital evidence, AI may not understand when or why the firm should be recommended. Lee and Rebekah also introduce the idea of invisible referral leakage: referrals that firms never know they received because the prospect researched the firm, found insufficient evidence of relevant expertise, and chose someone else before making contact. The phone never rings. The lead never enters the CRM. The firm never knows the opportunity existed. The solution is not to chase every new marketing trend or become an online influencer. It is to make the expertise your firm already possesses easier to find, understand, and trust. The referral still begins with a person. But AI has become the gatekeeper.  Ready to See Whether AI Understands Your Firm? Open ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity, or Google AI and ask the same questions your ideal clients might ask. Does your firm appear? Does AI understand what you specialize in? Does it find enough evidence to validate your experience? Which competitors are being recommended instead? That is exactly why CountingWorks PRO created the Free Digital Blueprint Assessment. We evaluate your firm’s digital authority, reputation, content footprint, positioning, and visibility across today’s AI-driven referral landscape. Then we provide a customized roadmap showing where your firm is strong, where it may be invisible, and what you can do to improve. Because today, it is not enough to earn the referral. You also have to get past the gatekeeper. Start your Free Digital Blueprint Assessment: CountingWorksPRO.com/start

    AI Has Become the Gatekeeper Between Your Referrals and Your Next Client
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
6 Ratings

About

Hosted by Lee Reams II and CountingWorks PRO, "The Growth Minded Accountant" is your go-to podcast for independent tax and accounting pros ready to level up. We’re here to show you how AI, digital marketing, and cutting-edge tools — the kind that only the big guys had access to — can help you save time, win new clients, and keep your practice thriving. From leveraging AI agents to boosting ROI on every client interaction, we cover it all. Tune in to stay sharp, learn strategies that work, and make sure you’re always one step ahead. The playing field just got a lot more level — let’s go!

Information

  • Creator
    Lee Reams II from CountingWorks PRO
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    133
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 CountingWorks, Inc.
  • Show Website
    The Growth Minded Accountant