Case Study: Martin D. Eisenstein, CPA, JD

[00:00:00] Trow Trowbridge: How did we first meet?

[00:00:01] Martin Eisenstein: We first met through social media. . I believe that you had sent me a message on Facebook or the contact could have been different, but I checked you out.

[00:00:12] I saw some things in your background in terms of your background as a coach. We had worked with some people together and we decided to get together and share notes about the coaches that we had worked with.

[00:00:25] Trow Trowbridge: What motivated you to talk to me was to compare notes with your experience with other coaches?

[00:00:35] Martin Eisenstein: Correct. But you had a background in financial services. You were doing coaching. I thought it would be valuable to see what your viewpoint was about some of these ideas versus mine.

[00:00:46] Trow Trowbridge: How do you work with clients now, versus prior? What’s changed since we started working together?

[00:00:53] Martin Eisenstein: The biggest difference is that I had approached a client in terms of what my offer was, what my [00:01:00] services were, with the desire to find some communication with them that would allow them to have the agreement to the acceptance to listen to my pitch.

[00:01:12] And I thought that if my pitch was compelling about how good I was or what I did, that I would win the client, win the relationship.

[00:01:21] And frankly, a lot of the coaches I had gone to, the goal was for them to teach me the holy grail of how to achieve that, how to get them to listen to me and buy from me.

[00:01:33] Trow Trowbridge: I helped you flip that, right? You flipped it the other way around. Listen to them.

[00:01:38] Martin Eisenstein: Yeah, listen to them because it’s not a question of what I do.

[00:01:42] It’s really a question of what they want, and it’s a question of what’s important to them.

[00:01:48] You taught me not only to listen to what they want, but what of those wants are really important.

[00:01:57] And frankly, [00:02:00] unless you’re addressing those issues, you don’t mean anything to the client.

[00:02:04] You’re not gonna get anywhere with the client in terms of building a relationship. You have no value to them.

[00:02:08] Trow Trowbridge: And don’t you think that accountants are in that prime position to help clients knit it all together?

[00:02:18] Martin Eisenstein: Yes, absolutely. We are privileged to get insight into their financial life in a way that a therapist gets insight into somebody’s personal life.

[00:02:30] And no other business person is as trusted. No other business person is as respected.

[00:02:37] What’s the point of trying to advance yourself as an accountant by learning how to market and sell to people in a way that causes them to lose that trust and respect?

[00:02:52] But yet, that’s what many coaches teach.

[00:02:54] Trow Trowbridge: Wow. That’s powerful. So what would you say to other accountants that are considering this program that are struggling with too much compliance work, not making enough money and don’t have time to live their life?

[00:03:08] Martin Eisenstein: There’s two things that we have to do as an accountant before we have a relationship with a client.

[00:03:11] First, we have to hope for and work towards the client wanting to work with us.

[00:03:16] But we also can’t forget that we have to want to work with that client.

[00:03:21] And the accountant makes the mistake very often of thinking that there’s some work that they do that the client wants, which even though they don’t like to provide, and even though it’s not profitable, it’s the only thing that they know how to do. And as a result, they think it’s the only thing that people want and they end up doing something that they don’t want to do.

[00:03:49] It’s disastrous for building a business. It ends up with many hours spent at the desk not earning enough money for people who don’t [00:04:00] really appreciate them, in a life that’s not fulfilling.

[00:04:03] If we ignore what we want in the same way that we ignore what the client wants? It’s like a double disaster.

[00:04:11] Trow Trowbridge: Would you say that you had an epiphany about the way forward for your career?

[00:04:19] Martin Eisenstein: Absolutely. Absolutely. So the first epiphany I had was that it wasn’t just whether the client wanted to work with me, it was whether I wanted to work with a client.

[00:04:29] It wasn’t just whether the client wanted that service for me, it was whether I wanted to render that service.

[00:04:35] But the heart of it is you don’t get to any of that until you determine what the client wants. And if I’m sitting there telling the client what I do and explaining why I’m great, I’m completely missing the point of what’s important to the client.

[00:04:51] And if I’m not addressing what’s important to the client, we’re getting nowhere.