CFO Chronicles: The Secrets Behind Success

The Strategies Wall Street Won’t Share with You – Insights from Luigi Rosabianca & Matthew Meehan

• James Donovan • Season 2 • Episode 25

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Unlock the secrets to thriving in the financial services industry as we bring you an engaging discussion with Luigi Rosabianca and Matthew Meehan from Shield Advisory Group. With their journey from the high stakes of Wall Street to founding a firm dedicated to supporting small and medium-sized businesses, Luigi and Matt reveal the strategies that have fueled their success. Tune in to discover how their unique partnership has enabled them to provide vital guidance, especially during the turbulent times of the COVID-19 pandemic. Hear about their innovative collaborations with CPAs and accounting firms across the U.S., where they offer resources like the ERC tax credit, creating a positive impact for countless small business owners.

Learn how to future-proof your business with proven techniques to maximize growth and diversification. Luigi and Matt stress the importance of a multi-channel marketing strategy to avoid the pitfalls of over-reliance on a single platform. They also share insights into balancing branding efforts with direct consumer interactions. Gain valuable knowledge on cross-selling and upselling services within the accounting sector to enhance client relationships and revenue streams. Conclude your listening journey with powerful strategies to position yourself as a trusted advisor, attracting high-paying clients and unlocking your business's full potential.

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success the go-to podcast for fractional CFOs and accounting firm owners who want to attract more high-paying clients and increase their revenue. Hosted by James Donovan from Nine Two Media, this podcast dives into marketing strategies specifically designed for lead generation and client acquisition. In each episode, you'll hear from industry leaders sharing their success stories and expert tactics to help you sign more lucrative clients and grow your business. Tune in and discover actionable insights to transform your marketing efforts and boost your bottom line to your bottom line.

Speaker 2:

Today, I'm joined by Luigi Rosa Bianca and Matt Meehan from Shield Advisors. Guys, I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. This is our first time having a duo as guests. I'm really looking forward to getting into hearing a little bit more about the services you guys offer your clients, the level of expertise you bring to the table and how you grow the accounts in the clients that you're working with. So, without further ado, matt Luigi, welcome to the show.

Speaker 3:

Hey, what's up, buddy? Thank you for having us here. We really appreciate it.

Speaker 4:

Thank you, James.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Thank you, james. Awesome Guys. For those who maybe aren't as familiar with what you guys do over at Shield Advisors, do you mind giving a quick background on either yourselves and or the business, no problem, man.

Speaker 3:

So, essentially, I spent about 17 years on Wall Street. I owned an investment bank Circa 2015,. My partners bought me out and I got into the private lending space right. Everything was going great. We were lending money to clients, helping clients get into more traditional financing, right. And then COVID hit. All my money was out in the street. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do. There was no money coming in. People's businesses were shut down. They weren't allowed to open up. People are freaking out. My clients are calling me telling me they're not going to pay me.

Speaker 3:

Government's coming out with all these programs at this point in time. You have PPP at first, Then you have EIDL and a slew of others later on. So at that time I actually I realized one thing. A light bulb kind of went off. It was our clients need more than just a check. They need strategic guidance, right. Anybody can write them a check and walk away, but when shit hits the fan like it did in COVID, at the end of the day they need somebody that they can call, get the right information and rely on them.

Speaker 3:

A lot of our clients today actually thought their bankers were those people, but, truth be told, the bankers didn't know what was going on. The first people to get in line were PPP the large corporations that actually had the resources and the team power right To get in because they're doing big business with the banks and small and medium-sized businesses were pretty much left behind. That's when me and Luigi started Shield Advisory Group right. So not only do we get you financing, but we put you in a better position than when you left us, and our Rolodex becomes yours because we make introductions and we build relationship capital that you can actually leverage as one of our clients.

Speaker 2:

That's so good, that's such a strong offer. How, how did you and Luigi get paired up with one another?

Speaker 3:

Oh, this is all you, though.

Speaker 4:

So Matt and I are native New Yorkers. Matt's from Staten Island, but he tells everyone he's from New York. But we'll let him get away with that because we love him. So Matt and I met physically on Wall Street. He was a Wall Street banker, I was not. He was a fancy guy with a three-piece suit. And Matt and I met socially.

Speaker 4:

This was back in the day, prior to the current reality.

Speaker 4:

Back then there was happy hour and you'd go to a bar to have a drink and the bartenders would say they're busy when times are good because people come to celebrate, but they're also busy when times are bad because people come to commiserate. And you know, we perfected the art of the happy hour deal and the liquid lunch and it's no surprise that today our podcast is called the Liquid Lunch Project as an homage to how we met back in the canyons of Wall Street. Years later we started conversing and we never thought we'd be working together, but I can honestly say it's probably one of the best decisions we both made. Matt and I are polar opposites and I think it works well together, but the underlying nature in both of us is that we're both type A, we're both aggressive, we both will always do the right thing by clients, and we're very, very honest with each other, even though it means honesty to a fault. So I think that's a key to any partnership, whether it's business, marriage, friendship just transparency.

Speaker 2:

That's great, that's really cool. We've been, we've been doing some work together getting in front of other other CPAs accounting firms, tax professionals to help you guys grow your network so that you guys can tap into their network and assist their clients, which will, in turn, help help the CPAs that we're reaching out to. Can you guys speak a little bit about where you come in and the value you're bringing to the table for the other accounting firms across the US and how the ripple effect helps their clients out?

Speaker 3:

Sure, I'll give you a specific example, as I was talking about the government coming out with programs after programs, cpas were getting hit up too and they didn't know what to do. Now, most CPAs work with their clients, they deal with the financials right, but they're not reading every IRS briefing. They're not involved in certain situations. So when the ERC tax credit came out, one of our partners was a CPA as well and we saw how powerful it could be for small business owners, right, and we started promoting it rapidly. Now this isn't an easy task, because if you're a CPA, you're a small business owner yourself. Let's call a spade a spade, right? So we're in the midst of COVID right now. You probably have your staff either working remote or not, coming in or trying to figure out the technology stuff, but people needed money.

Speaker 3:

So what a lot of CPAs wound up doing was sending us their clients to get them the ERC filings right and do the filings for them. And it wasn't because they didn't want to do it, they didn't know how to do it. They knew that once they sent the clients over to us that they were in good hands, and our other partner, being a CPA, helped out a lot because they were able to hop on the phone and you know, basically speak the same lingo to each other. Overall, right. And then we also do very generous referral splits with cpas right, it's not even just the erc tax credit. We have other tax credits like r&d, which is a specialized place where, even though you're a cpa, you just may not understand how the tax code works for that initial credit. So cpas bring us clients all the time, especially on the funding side.

Speaker 2:

That's great. That's great. Luigi, are you able to tell us a little bit about maybe a win that stands out recently with either a referral partner or a direct client you guys are working with, because I know you do a lot of term loans with construction firms and a couple other industries. But is there any wins that stand out as of late where you're like I'm super proud of this one, this one gets me excited marketing strategies, but one of our blind spots it was a huge blind spot One of our blind spots was LinkedIn.

Speaker 4:

We never, never leveraged LinkedIn and thanks to your expertise and your team and Nine2 Media you guys have been wonderful We've been able to leverage LinkedIn and if current indications continue, we'll double down and grow that in Q2 and Q3.

Speaker 4:

Um, right, so I think in business, it's not so much what should you do, it's more the conversation of what shouldn't you do. You kind of have to do everything moderately and then if something works, you know, put fuel to that fire, and if something doesn't work, then pull back, because you know when people tell me, oh, I get all my business from Facebook, that scares the dickens out of me because you're a one trick pony, right? So you kind of have to be diversified because you know, matt and I remember last year when Facebook changed their emailing and the Google changed their emailing algorithm you know everyone's email marketing funnels dried up, right. And the same thing goes for, you know, if you were a huge networker and you were going to these chambers of commerce and go with these in-person meetings, suddenly COVID comes and you're stuck in your basement and you can't go to meetings right. So a little bit of diversity helps in business.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome. Thanks for the kind words as well, but what about some other channels you guys are using, max, I know even before we got started, you guys have a massive email list. You guys are successful in your own right, doing a lot of other things. Linkedin has been a nice piece to all of that now, but what are some other platforms or marketing strategies that have worked really well for you guys that have got you this far?

Speaker 3:

You know, email has definitely been the number one driver in our business. But, as Luigi said, you know, google and Yahoo and the email gods always change the algorithm on you, right, and rightly so. Right, they're a business. They don't want you. Email is probably the most cost-effective way to market. Okay, no-transcript. So we were pressed with a decision on what are we gonna do. So we decided not just to add on one new marketing channel, we decided to go heavy on all different marketing channels. So we also have a I don don't know a hundred and something thousand subscriber newsletter that goes out once a week to people. On top of that, we launched a YouTube channel, we just started running some Facebook ads and we're just generating a more omnipresent everywhere.

Speaker 2:

Awesome, that's. That's so important. Just like you mentioned, luigi, that if you just have facebook, you're only as good as up until your ad account inevitably gets shut down, or whether that's on facebook or it's on google. But if you have multiple channels, you have your eggs across a couple different baskets. You don't have it's not as much stress going into the situation when that does happen.

Speaker 4:

So that's awesome, matt and I always joke because our podcast. We have two podcasts our newsletter, the Weekly. It's a heavy lift. It requires a lot of resources, it's a lot of energy, it's time consuming, but I can't tell you how many times both us and our advisors will mention hey, by the way, that guy listened to that podcast and he reached out, or he read something in the weekly and they reached out to us and scheduled an appointment, or they listened to the to, they saw something on the YouTube channel and submitted an inquiry.

Speaker 4:

So you never know where that lead's going to come from. So it's it's difficult for us to quantify and say, oh, this is successful, that's not successful. I think it's more of a holistic approach where everything combined works. Because, don't forget I always like to use the analogy, especially during this time of year you don't pay an exorbitant amount of money for Super Bowl ads because you're going to sell a product. You pay that for branding, right? So a little bit of what you do is direct-to-consumer interaction, but a little bit is also branding and sending that message out.

Speaker 2:

Who are you guys going for in the Super Bowl?

Speaker 4:

Who's playing? I'm kidding, I'm not a big football. I probably follow more Canadian football, in your honor, than I do American football.

Speaker 2:

That's a hot take. I don't think I'll offend too many people by saying the Canadian Football League is not that great Hopefully not. I'd like to see KC win a third in a row. I think that'd be pretty impressive.

Speaker 3:

I don't know the way things are going. You might be part of the NFL soon.

Speaker 4:

Hey look, we've got. We've got, we've got Canadian teams in the NHL. Right, we've got baseball teams. So I think it's, I think it's only natural.

Speaker 2:

Tell me guys a little bit about how how you go ahead and grow accounts that come under. You know the come into the business because you guys offer a number of different services. You help your clients out in so many different ways. I think a lot of business owners accounting firms they struggle with when, when do I start charging a client more instead of just they take on more work and they're not increasing their pay. You guys do a great job at your cross sells, upsells, downsells if someone's potentially leaving. Can you talk a little bit about what your strategy looks like there and any insight you have for those listening?

Speaker 4:

Well, for your accounting firm clients, you may want to look at it in a couple of different ways. Right, the tax return and the bookkeeping side, like the reconciliations, the monthly bookkeeping, the coordinating with their POS and credit card systems. It's sort of like a necessary evil, right? So there's an administrative task that needs to be done and they need to charge for that. But the market dictates what the cost can be for that. At the end of the day, it's an administrative task, so you can't charge an exorbitant amount.

Speaker 4:

I think the sexy part of the sell for the accounting firm comes with the tax planning strategies. Maybe the client has some real estate, so you do a cost segregation, matt mentioned earlier. They may be doing something innovative in their business practice, so you implement the research and development tax credit. Maybe you have a lot of W-2 employees, so you implement the WOTC strategy. So I think for the small business owner, if you really want to leverage that client and increase revenue, you have to. You have to give value. You have to give value to that client. And how do you give value? Well, you have to pay taxes, right? So I'm going to minimize your taxes. Well, if you get to minimize my taxes, well, I'll surely pay for that, right. But how much can you possibly charge for a tax return, right? How much can you possibly charge for a monthly reconciliation? It's still administrative, but when you're adding value by giving a professional service, yeah, then then the numbers get sexy, I think.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, then the numbers get sexy, I think Interesting. That's cool, Matt. What piece of insight do you have to add on to that?

Speaker 3:

Raise your prices every year, every year. Increase it by 10%, every single year. People will be used to it. It's really simple, will be used to it.

Speaker 2:

It's really simple. There's definitely a lot of people I've spoken with who there's that constant fear of you know people are going to leave. Though I bring up my price, people are going to leave. But what's the I mean the magic rule of thumb? You may lose a couple people, but X amount are still. They're going to be happy to pay more. And now you have less clients you're working with and you're making more money.

Speaker 3:

Right, listen, if let me put it like this If you're charging me $1,000 a month and you go to $1,100, it's not going to change anything. If you double it and go to $2,000, yeah, we're going to have a conversation, right? Also, what phase are you at at your practice? Right, that's what these, what do your CPAs need to be asking themselves? Am I doing this for another five to 10 years or am I looking to sell in the next five years? You're looking to sell in the next five years. Maybe you want to keep the prices there so you have consistent revenue. You don't have to worry about the clients leaving, and then it's a selling tactic for when you're selling your business you can raise prices.

Speaker 4:

Moving forward to the client, matt, you know what I'm going to agree with you in part and disagree with you in part. I think all service providers should increase their price, except for LinkedIn marketers. They should not increase their price, never those guys should never do it. Yeah, it doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 2:

Oh, you guys, you guys are good there. Hey, this isn't about about. This isn't about us right now.

Speaker 1:

This is about this about you guys and the insight you're sharing.

Speaker 2:

Um, okay, last question for you guys what, what piece of advice would you give to either aspiring entrepreneurs or just anyone who's in business now? You guys are extremely successful. What's maybe some of the best advice you've either got or that you would give to someone else?

Speaker 4:

When you're talking to the client. Shut off the TV, shut off the phone, turn off your phone, close the door, close the window, focus on the client and listen to what the client needs. The client is going to give you the path. He's going to tell you or she's going to tell you what their pain point is. So once you listen to them and sometimes it's difficult on the phone because you lack the intonation, you lack the body language you don't see if they're pushing back or pulling forward. So on the telephone it may not be that clear, so that zoom helps, but you hear the, the, the, the pitch of their voice. The intonation may change. So once you know what they need, then you find the solution to their pain point.

Speaker 2:

That's so good.

Speaker 3:

Matt Mine's simple Again just don't quit. Keep going Right. Too many people just quit way too soon. Right, anything good, any don't quit. Keep going Right. Too many people just quit way too soon. Right Anything good. Any business right, any profession. You got to give yourself at least two to three years Right To start really making money and learn what you're doing. Right. Year one you're not going to understand fully what you're doing. By year two. Into year three you should be really decent about what you do right. But plan, understand it's not going to be all sunshine and rainbows. It's going to be a lot of lumps. You're going to get knocked down a lot. Just get back up and keep going and don't be afraid to take risk and chances right on things, because you never know what could work out that's so good.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much, guys for coming on sharing, sharing so much insight, sharing so much knowledge. Where, where could people get in touch if they want to continue the conversation, especially accounting firms? I encourage you guys to reach out, get in touch with matt and luigi, but what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Speaker 3:

yeah, we're on. We're on all the socials matthew mehan and luigi rosa bianca and you can go to our website, shieldadvisorygroupcom.

Speaker 2:

Okay, perfect, we'll have that in the show notes so that people can pick up and continue the conversation with you guys. Thanks again for coming on. This has been great.

Speaker 2:

All right, James Thank you Thanks for tuning into this episode of CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. I hope you found value in today's conversation. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, make sure to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss any future episodes. If you enjoyed today's discussion, please rate and review the show. It helps others discover the insights we share here. Second, if you're ready to take your business to the next level and attract the high-end clients you deserve, head over to accountingleadsnowcom or click the link in the show notes to book your strategy. Call. It's time to position yourself as the advisor your clients need. And don't forget you can connect with me on LinkedIn to stay up to date on what's happening in the world of accounting and financial growth. We've got more exciting topics coming up, so stay tuned for the next episode of CFO Chronicles. Until then, keep pushing forward. Your growth is just one strategic move away.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for listening to CFO Chronicles the secrets behind success. We hope today's episode provided valuable strategies to help you attract more high-paying clients. Be sure to subscribe, follow and share with fellow professionals. Connect with us on LinkedIn and leave a review or comment to join the conversation. Your feedback helps us bring you the best insights in finance and marketing. Until next time, keep striving for success and unlocking your business's potential.