How to connect clients with their accounting—as learned from a scrappy blind dog

Comparing my clients, your clients, and our clients to blind dogs should in no way be taken as a slight on your work, blindness, or dogs!  If you knew how much I loved dogs—and Gatsby Parker in particular—and how much he truly changed the way I see the world and my work in it, you would know that any comparison is for me the highest expression of care and respect.

Our dog Gatsby Parker wasn’t always blind. He became that way over time due to glaucoma, which started long before we knew him. He had already developed a lot of one-of-a-kind ways of operating in the world, some because he was blind and some because he was a husky/cattle dog mix. He was a smartypants fancy weirdo who loved tomato sauce and strangers.

They say that one of the ways you should be more careful around blind dogs is when they are sleeping. Somewhere along the way, it occurred to me one of the reasons that might be was that every time I woke Gatsby up, I was waking him back into a world of blindness. I don’t know what level of sight he was experiencing in his dreams, but I feel very confident that his ability to orient and navigate was a lot more seamless while snoozing.

Creating a clear vision

How does this tie in to accounting? I have no doubt that our clients think about money often, and they think about their ability to run their businesses well. I bet they even think about the intersection of the two through accounting … sort of.

Whatever the particulars, I’d wager they feel as if they mostly understand the shape and size of their data and money, even with all of its problems and promises. They may not like what they know or know what to do about it, but chances are good that they at least have a sense that they can see the situation. At minimum, they think they can see enough to identify the places where their vision might not be as clear.

Then we chime in.

We come armed with reports and jargon and deadlines—and a lot of it has a kind of unspoken urgency around it that never really seems to vary much. Sure, we fill in what they knew they were missing, but we also bring the hard realization that there is a lot they did not even realize they were missing.

In short, we wake them from their dream where they see things clearly, into the knowledge that they have some blindness about their business. They suddenly find themselves in an arena where they are dependent on others to understand what the heck is happening to something they’ve poured their everything into. Rather than a scrappy business owner trucking along with a sled, they are suddenly bumping into walls or just frankly too nervous to move at all. This can be true no matter what their financial situation is, and no matter how happy or unhappy they are with the state of their business or with us. We “wake them” into a world based on completely different terrain without a bit of snow in sight. 

What can we do about this?

All about boot-up time

After Gatsby lost his sight, it became clear pretty quickly that if he had been asleep for a while, he would need about 15 minutes for what we called “booting up his GPS.” It was watching him navigate the transition between these two states of being that made me realize what I’d been overlooking about working with my clients.

Everyone needs a bit of boot-up time, including us, so we would do well to have interactions with our clients that help ease them over from their world to ours, no matter how many times they’ve been here before. 

Defining and recommending boot-up time is easy; it’s simply a chance to get your bearings. What matters more is “how” you can help boot-up time along when it comes to your clients. Here are six ideas:

1. Start financial reviews with the metrics they know and understand well, preferably expressed in a format that is easy to digest and client friendly.
2. Consider that your clients might appreciate a day or two with the reporting before they engage with you.
3. Providing recorded walk-throughs on regular financial reports means they can be reviewed on their own terms, and clients can digest them at their own pace.
4. Get rid of some of the barriers between their accounting realities and their money dreams by supplying simple and relevant accounting metrics they get used to seeing—and even use day to day. Dashboards or daily/weekly emails are great for this kind of thing.
5. Lose the accounting jargon when it comes to report titling, notes, and even visible account names.
6. Anchor metrics and money to something tangible. Purchasing goals or other personalized business milestones can make accounting move alive because it points at something very real for the client.

Whatever the method, the common theme is incorporating or referencing something that clients  see clearly. And it doesn’t take much. When it comes to the non-urgent aspects of accounting, especially how we report on that accounting, allowing a bit of time or attention for the client GPS boot up makes everything else easier.

Better yet, embracing the boot-up allows us to relate to what clients are experiencing, rather than just interpreting their actions as a lack of interest or display of stubbornness. When we give ourselves room to allow for the everyday experiences of our clients, we might just find that once they are booted up, there are things the Gatsby Parkers of the world see much better than we do.

10 lessons to learn about working with clients

Over the 8 years as we watched Gatsby Parker navigate the same world so differently from us and our sighted dog, Ember Jones, a lot changed about how I viewed the client experience—I think for the better! Watching Gatsby navigate our world his way made me realize something about working with clients. The everyday, practical, and mundane experiences for my clients inform what matters to my clients, and these things are often very different from what matters for my work with them.

What does it mean to acknowledge your client’s experience beyond allowing them to acclimate or boot-up?  You can embrace practices that allow them to navigate our world:

Lesson 1: Routine, routine, routine. Boring, yes, but it really helps when others know what to expect when it comes to you and the way you do business. This goes for clients and blind dogs, and frankly it goes for us, too!  There are very few fun or lovely surprises in accounting. Whenever possible, consistency is key.

Lesson 2: Establish some reset or safe spots. It helps to have places to check in that are well established and familiar. Whenever Gatsby got lost in our home, he’d set about finding the carpet by the front door. It was easy to find because it was near his food bowl, which I’m sure smelled a particular way to him no matter how often we cleaned it. The point is, he knew how to start his navigation from there. Have you given your clients similar touchstone resources? Places they can check to get a reset on their understanding of their financial picture? Core ideas they can tether back to when they are investigating more unfamiliar financial terrain or while worrying about their business at 3 am?

Lesson 3: Stop rearranging your proverbial furniture. There is nothing so frustrating to a blind dog as when they run smack into a chair that isn’t supposed to be there, unless it’s confidently leaping on to a couch that has been relocated to the other side of the living room. I don’t think clients appreciate surprise changes any more than blind dogs do. And yes, even if you alert them to the upcoming change, it’s still a surprise. A client’s GPS is already working overtime just to get around in our very different world, so changes aren’t usually hard-coded into that mental map the first, the second, or even the third time.

Lesson 4: When it comes to their experience, prioritize their ease of use. Every time you change your client-facing processes, you are essentially yanking away what they are paying for. Say it with me: peace of mind. Please make sure that when you change things, you do it to increase your client’s ease of use in the long run. Clients facing change see the couch in a different place for a while, or when you’re really intrigued by a particular app's chances of solving all your problems, you aren’t productive. Rearrange in your head, first, or behind the scenes. Make sure it’s what you want, and then protect your clients from as much of the fallout as possible. Keep some familiar outposts intact, including “reset spots.” Change things slowly, or plan to make it a guided, high-touch experience for them from the beginning.

Lesson 5: Stop doing everything for them. I’m talking about impatiently doing something you need rather than taking the time to lead them through stuff—or at least give them a minute to figure something out or come to a conclusion instead of jumping in with the answer or taking over before they even ask. This is how our scope boundaries get strained. If you don’t let them do something or understand something, you can’t complain that they don’t do or understand things. Just like with dogs, blind or not, we teach people what the rules of interacting with us are by the way we interact with them.

Lesson 6: FYI: A bit of excitement can make a GPS go a bit wonky. The GPS might even override the senses they excel at, something I’m sure you can relate to as well. I can’t tell you how many times Gatsby would be unable to find a delectable treat we’d placed right in front of his nose, or how many times he would bump into a wall while hurrying to line up for a ride on the boat. In fact, we could pretty much measure how awesome he thought anything he ate or did was going to be by how long it took him to calm down enough to engage with it. Talk about GPS overload! The point is this: When you share more extreme results, whether they are good or bad, be patient.

Lesson 7: Make sure clients know you’re talking to them about something specific. Sometimes we say things in our client’s general direction, assuming they will pick it up and run with it but the opportunity for crossed signals is high. For example, saying “I saw that the minimum wage is going up” is unlikely to be met with the understanding that the client should be raising pay rates next week. In fact, you mentioning it may lead them to believe that you are going to take care of it!  

Gatsby couldn’t see us looking at him when we said “sit,” like Ember could, so we had to get used to saying “Gatsby, sit,” or touch his head and say “sit.” We think that our clients should always pay attention to us, but the real situation is whether you want to be right or want to be effective. I love the idea of putting at the top of any email “Action Required” or something along those lines. Some clients can’t see what you mean any more than you can taste what they mean, so you’ve got to find the overlap in understanding by communicating directly and specifically.

Lesson 8: Accept that seeing isn’t the only way to navigate! When we first got Gatsby and realized he was going blind, the vet told us that it wasn’t as big of a deal for dogs as it might seem, but we could not wrap our human minds around this. Yet, as we lived with Gatsby, we could see it was absolutely true. To truly guide clients, you’ve got to zero in on what your clients might be relying on aside from the accounting; in other words, what are they doing instead of seeing? The places you sometimes want or need to take your clients may not be exactly friendly to the way they think about business or money. Frankly, being a trusted guide through the unfamiliar is our job, but your own client-facing processes and approach? Those should be not just hospitable to, but intentionally made friendly for the blind, whatever kind of blind your clients might be! That means you have to notice.

For a long time, I could not figure out how Gatsby knew when to step up on a curb. Even when Ember wasn’t around, he would step confidently up with no fear. Then I noticed that every once in a while, he would do the high-stepping as if a curb was coming when there was no curb there. This tended to happen when we would cross the lowered, concrete places on a street created to direct rain across it. A lightbulb went on. He was feeling the gutters at the edge of curbs. That’s how he knew they were right there.

Chances are your clients can sense things about their business that we can’t immediately see inside their numbers. Learning how your clients’ world works is made much easier when you decide to niche not just by industry, but also how your clients tend to operate or “see” the world as business owners. I promise: Your clients know some things about their business that you don’t.

Lesson 9: On that note, don’t be married to the idea that they need to be rescued. And stop feeling sorry for them and all their deficiencies or ignorance. It demeans everyone involved, including your practice. Clients are often limited in their ability to get a certain kind of input. Big deal. So are you! It’s just a difference. Realize you can’t smell or probably hear squat. And you barely notice what’s under your feet at all. Instead, set about working together to build a map for the business that uses all those types of knowledge.

It’s this sentiment that brings me to my last item and our other dog, Ember Jones. As much as Gatsby gave me insights into client experience, it was Ember who has shown me how to be a better guide for clients. Ember is a rescued Blue Heeler cattle dog. They are called Heelers because part of what they do is nip the heels of whatever they are herding. In other words, she was literally born to be bossy. Gatsby’s life experience would not have been nearly as unfettered if she hadn’t leaned into her herding ways. She was constantly watching, walking alongside Gatsby, pushing sideways so he’d go around trash cans on the curb, or turning him when, in his excitement,  he headed the wrong way. She couldn’t help but see what we could not.

Lesson 10: Hire for what can’t be taught. I could have researched and embraced all the blind dog advice in the world—and certainly some things I read were of help, although the resources were much less than you’d think. But nothing could have reflected the particular experience that was Gatsby’s. And nothing could have stood in for Ember’s ability to see like a dog, communicate to a dog, and a literal girl boss.

Your team matters

I am not suggesting you hire a bunch of bossy types like Ember to herd your clients. The lesson here is to lean into bridging the gap between you and your clients, mainly by hiring and nurturing people who are able to stand in that gap and have a particular talent for the guidance clients need. Sometimes it’s a perspective gained through work experience. Maybe they grew up with family in the industry you serve, or maybe it’s a gift of empathy or a personality that is particularly disarming. Having people and perspectives within your team that relate to, and work with, the way your clients “see” the world? That’s gold. 

Better yet, the secret is that just as much as having Ember made Gatsby’s life better, the reverse was also true. It was amazing to see Ember using her natural skills and doing a version of what she was made for—and it was clear she adored having a job where she could. In other words, it’s not just clients and the firm that benefit from hiring and/or using existing staff creatively; it’s the employees that benefit, too.

Your key to better client experience might be in looking around at what’s already going on and what you’ve already got, or what your client’s got,  that’s working! It’s about embracing a non-traditional approach or a non-traditional hire. Whatever the method, this is not just a path toward client retention; it’s also going to make getting their attention that much easier.

Let’s not forget: Seeing and allowing your team’s talents to shine is an excellent way to ensure you keep them around.