CFO Chronicles: The Secrets Behind Success

What Most Accounting Firms Get Wrong About Serving Niche Clients — with Marta Grunberg

• James Donovan • Season 2 • Episode 32

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You don’t need more clients. You need the right ones—and a system that keeps them.

That’s exactly what Marta Grumberg  built with Grumberg Accounting: a hands-free, high-retention accounting service tailored specifically for bars, restaurants, and caterers.

In this episode, Marta joins James to break down how she became the go-to financial partner for food businesses across the U.S.—and how she’s grown through referrals, retention, and relevance.

You’ll learn:

  • How going deep in one industry built long-term loyalty
  • The behind-the-scenes of helping clients survive (and thrive) through COVID
  • Why most firms miss the mark when “niching down”
  • How Marta’s content speaks directly to what her clients feel—not just what they need
  • What’s next for building a modern accounting firm in a specialized space

If you’re building a relationship-first firm with real staying power, this is the niche playbook you didn’t know you needed.

Send us a text

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 Today we're joined by Marta Grunberg from Grunberg Accounting, out of Charlotte.

Speaker 2:

North Carolina. Marta, I'm so excited to have you on the show hear a little bit more about how you're helping bars and restaurants grow their firms. Welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about some of the clients that you're working with right now.

Speaker 3:

Thank you. Thank you for having me. So we have been in the industry for the past 10 years and for the last few years we concentrate only on the food industry. It's bars, catering and restaurants. We provide them with a full cycle bookkeeping. I call it we call it like inside joke hands-free. You know it's a hands-free bookkeeping. You do the minimum, we do the rest without tiring our customers with multiple emails and bugging them when they're busy, and we provide the full cycle and service with analysis and consulting and help with the state communication and sales tax everything they need.

Speaker 2:

You're the takeout food of the restaurant industry or of the accounting industry or the restaurant industry. You're doing it all. They just have to eat. They just have to do the bare minimum.

Speaker 3:

They have to answer my call, my email once in a while.

Speaker 2:

Why the restaurant industry or why the food industry?

Speaker 3:

It's interesting when we started, we covered all the industries, of course, that we are capable and able to do, but within the time we noticed that we had more clients of the food industry and we love them. It might be traveling back to the past, when we owned a restaurant, a small restaurant, many years ago, so maybe the passion stayed with us and the interest stayed with us, but we just love it. We love the food industry, we love their businesses, we love the guys that we work with. So it kind of just worked out its own way and also with the time that we, during the time we were working with them, we also noticed the highlights of the industry, the struggles and all the the features that they need.

Speaker 2:

So it made us to research more and concentrate more on the food industry that's cool and you mentioned just before we we got on here recording that, uh, I believe the business started in boston before you made your way south to North Carolina. Did I hear that properly?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yes, we used to live in Boston many years and started the business, like I mentioned, more than 10 years ago, so we relocated to Charlotte four years ago and carried with us the business and were you able to bring a lot of your clients from Boston. Are you working with people nationwide now, or was there an impact on the business making that move?

Speaker 3:

Yes, we work nationwide and no, we didn't have any, especially it was during COVID and everything kind of. You know we always work remotely but COVID made it very common and very popular. So it's something that I'm very proud about our business that we would get the client stay with us and very loyal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, awesome. What are some of the success stories that stand out for you with some of your clients that you're very proud of?

Speaker 3:

I'm very proud of the customer service we're able to provide our customers because with the food industry and with restaurant owners and managers it's a struggle because they're very busy, they hate the paperwork, it's very hard for them to sit down and work on long tasks. So I'm very proud of the customer service we provide them because it's easy for them to work with them and we have a great relationship, good communication and that's on this level, without success stories give me let me think what was great.

Speaker 3:

I think I think covid now when you mention it. I think covid because during covid, when covid started it. I think COVID because during COVID, when COVID started, it was very scary time for the food industry. The feeling in there was that it's all going to crash and we're all done and people are going to lose their restaurants, their businesses, and they will need to reinvent themselves from the beginning. But if you were fast enough and smart enough and followed the regulations and all the funds that were released, you were able to save your customers and I think I'm very proud that we saved all of them. We had no. I'm trying to think if we had anybody, no one went out of the business because of COVID. For sure, we were on top of the business because of COVID.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome.

Speaker 3:

For sure we were on top of the reports. You had to file the reports. You had to do all the paperwork for the PPP relief and then make sure that you're on top of the schedule to make sure it's all subsidized. So it was a huge project and I'm very proud to say that it all worked out well.

Speaker 2:

That's great. Those are huge wins. Were you able to help your clients out with the Employee Retention Tax Credit? I know you mentioned PPE. Were you able to help get them to take advantage of that program?

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes, we did all of it. Yeah, we did research morning and evening, sometimes three times a day because it was changing so fast, especially with the PPP, but with the tax refund.

Speaker 2:

So yeah, what are some of the big wins from ERC that you're able to help your clients with? Because I would guess, without knowing, there must have been a couple of businesses maybe close to having to close their doors and, through your team and your expertise, getting them access to PPE or access to the ERC. I'm sure it turned their business around.

Speaker 3:

Yes, we had the business. It's interesting. I can't even explain how did it work. We had one of the restaurants. It was fairly new and it was struggling. It was struggling a little bit, you know. They kind of were breaking even, but sometimes less. And then covid came and both of us were talking about it like, oh my god, what a horrible timing. This bunch of partners invested all their money in that and now covid is here. Nobody knows what to do, everything is. It was back in Massachusetts, everything was closing very fast, and so we were able to file for PPP for them, and the second they opened the doors. The success that hit them it was amazing. I don't know. Call it karma, call it money brings money. Whatever it was, and they, they did a good recovery. It's hard to call it recovery because they were fairly new, but they hit success after that.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome Good energy, I guess. Yeah, yeah, good energy, good vibes, that's awesome. Yeah, marta, tell me a little bit about how your firm gets in front of new clients. How do people find out about you as the go-to accounting firm for restaurants and bars?

Speaker 3:

so in the beginning it was very minimum of advertisement and most of it it was referrals and recommendations, because the food industry struggled very much to find not just a service, to find a partner, somebody to be there for you and with you. People were just telling their friends they all hang out together in the industry and they were telling their friends and then we kind of were full and happy with what we had. And now recently I decided so I own an MBA and I went to school for all those interesting things and I was like, why don't I try my I'll go back and try my marketing skills and I decided to go there. On social media LinkedIn, instagram, what else? Yeah, most of it's social media. We do some traditional advertisement now also, but less of that. You know the flyers and the traditional.

Speaker 2:

Okay, cool. And when you mentioned social media, or is it a lot more organic posting that you're doing, content creation, or are you more on the paid advertisements side of things?

Speaker 2:

no, I started with the content creation and organic and we'll see what it brings okay, and there's a lot of firm firm owners who probably feel, you know, content creation isn't as much for the accounting firm, that's for the influencers who are on tiktok. What's how, I guess? How do you go about creating content from from the owner of an accounting firm to attract new clients?

Speaker 3:

Because I'm very oriented on the food industry and I know my market segment. I talk to the bars and restaurant owners and managers. It's not about accounting, it's about having a good partner with you. You can find millions of people that do accounting and very smart, very following the rules on top of their things. They don't understand the industry. They don't understand the why, they don't understand the people that they work with. They don't understand the small things that make change and make difference. So I target people from the food industry and I talk about what's important for them yeah, it's not just boring accounting.

Speaker 3:

I'm thinking, trying to think out of the box.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, of course you're being the doctor that pushes on the bruise. You're actually speaking to the problems that they're they're going through exactly, yeah yeah, cool, what? What are your take or what's your take on paid advertisement? So you're you're doing a lot of organic stuff. It sounds like right now it sounds like it's working. Um, is paid advertisement something that you, you want to explore, or you're kind of sticking with the organic stuff right now I will definitely explore it at some point.

Speaker 3:

Um, maybe not right now. We were just discussing it and I don't know we'll we see.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, interesting. What's something, what's a lesson or like a situation you've had to overcome now as a business owner for the last handful of years. That was really difficult at the time, but now that you're on the other side of it, it's really shaped who you and your business are.

Speaker 3:

I think it's hard to make a change and I've made it twice. It's very hard to decide to start a business and start it. It's very slow, it's very demanding. It's very hard to find your niche and find who you are and what do you want to do and how to differentiate yourself from the rest of the market. And at some point I also had a break from the business and explored some corporate life and the second time was to go back and reinvent myself again. It's difficult but it's worth it, because the level of how much you can push yourself and explore yourself and get to know yourself better is just. I can't explain with enough words how much you learn about yourself during this journey. It's never boring, it's always interactive. I work with my husband, so double double it. Most of the families won't survive that um, so it's very challenging, but on the other hand it's very interesting and it's very dynamic so good.

Speaker 2:

We've had a couple guests on and we speak to a lot of firms who they they work with their spouse. A lot of people, um have said you know that that can be a very challenging thing to do. A lot of people say it's great. How, how do you find the balance, um with your spouse for all right, this is work and this is. This is not work, or or does it blend a?

Speaker 3:

Well, it's our second round, because we own the restaurant when we were very young, before we got married, and we got married during all this building business. So I guess we got all the lessons then. But no, we're separate. So he works on his clients, I work on my clients. We discuss some mutual things like marketing strategies or financial strategies and goals, but we're definitely separated because we have different, very different energy and dynamics and way of working. But generally we discuss the business goals and the organization environment and the structure, because we have a very special structure in our organization. It's different from what usually people do, because usually people want to manage their business and they have workers and employees that they manage. So in our case we keep the communication. It's like the other side around we keep the communication on our hands and then we delegate everything around. So we make it work, I guess.

Speaker 2:

That's cool. Yeah, that's awesome, somehow it works. Somehow it works, no.

Speaker 3:

I'm kidding, it works well. Yeah, no, that's great, it works well.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, that's great. What's next for Grunberg Accounting?

Speaker 3:

Next is developing the food industry and getting bigger, helping more, onboarding more food industry clients, helping them with technology, with software, integrating, working on procedures maybe hire a bigger team in the future I don't know, we have a small team right now, but probably somehow like that and and building strong communication and strong networking community around the food industry account and businesses, because usually those that serve the food industry accounting businesses, because usually those that serve the food industry they serve other industries too and it's hard sometimes for the food industry or for the owners and managers.

Speaker 2:

Last question for you, marta what's one piece of advice you'd give to other business owners?

Speaker 3:

Don't be afraid to change and evolve. I think that's what keeps many people push them back, hold them back, because change is hard for everybody. Some do change and some people don't. So usually, in most cases, those that don't afraid to change and adjust and they develop a world progress, I think I think that that's the biggest lesson that I learned over the past 10 years not to be afraid to explore new areas and change and adjust that's so powerful.

Speaker 2:

How can everyone continue the conversation with you after listening to this podcast? Where can they get in touch with you?

Speaker 3:

So on our website it's grunbergeaccountingcom. Over the social media we're on Instagram, facebook, linkedin. Look for us. Grunberg Accounting.

Speaker 2:

Perfect. Well, I hope people reach out. Continue the conversation with you, marta. Thank you so much for sharing your unique insight and a little bit more about your story. Really appreciate you coming on and taking this time.

Speaker 3:

Thank you for having me. Thank you, it was great.

Speaker 2:

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 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, 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.