Marie Torossian, CPA, Author at Think Outside the Tax Box

AUTHOR SPOTLIGHT

Marie Torossian, CPA

Marie Torossian is the Founder of The Profit Lab and Marie Torossian CPA. She is a 10X Certified Elite Coach, Speaker & Mentor, Certified Public Accountant and Chartered Global Management Accountant, Auditor, CFO, and Author of "The Complete Guide to Business Growth" and "A Business Owner's Guide to Operational Accounting" and contributor to The Woodard Report, Show and Podcast Host of “The Profit Lab” and “Coffee Time with Marie Torossian CPA, TV show Co-Host on Thriving Women’s Network.

Marie has over 30 years of business experience. She has helped dozens of clients as a Financial Auditor, Controller, Chief Financial Officer, and business coach. She's been nominated by the Florida Institute of CPAs for the Emerging Women Leader's Award in 2022 and 2023 and by Ignition for Top 50 Women in Accounting in 2023. Her firm won 2022 The Best of Small Business Awards, Best Accounting Firm!

As the creator of the VALUEATION-MT® methodology, she helps business owners understand their finances, injecting systems, policies and procedures, business valuation, and building a successful growth roadmap. The result of this methodology is to understand their business finances, make informed decisions, increase their business value, and live the life they want!

As a coach, she helps her clients identify and solve the challenges holding them from personal, professional, or financial growth. She teaches them to build a solid platform for growth, sustain progress, navigate new opportunities, hold them accountable to their goals, and celebrate milestones!

Ms. Torossian's mission statement is "To live in God's grace, help those in need and make a difference in everyone's life." She describes herself as a leader, motivator, and mentor. She prides herself on her high ethical standards, discipline, and passion for helping her clients succeed. She enjoys the beautiful Florida waters with her husband and children during her free time.

Ms. Torossian loves to give back to her community. She serves as a Board Member of the FICPA North Dade/South Broward Chapter, a Member at FICPA Women’s Leadership, Chair for the Florida Justice Center, Treasurer to St. Mary Armenian Church, and Accountant Advisor to Run by ADP.

Follow her hashtags #the10Xcoachamrie, #your10xcpa, and #notyourtypicalcpa on all social media channels.

READ MORE BY Marie Torossian, CPA

YouTube Content Strategy for CPAs: Educating and Engaging Audiences through Video Content

Video content continues to be a strategic and powerful tool for engaging audiences and establishing a brand’s authority. According to VideoScribe research, 65% of people prefer visual learning. For Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), leveraging YouTube offers a rare opportunity to educate clients and prospects and entertain and connect. CPAs, accountants, and bookkeepers can address common questions, provide valuable insights, and foster trust by creating educational and informative video content that converts. Herein, I will discuss why YouTube, as a marketing tool, benefits accountants and how you can make various compelling video content to increase your reach and visibility. Let’s get to it!

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X (Twitter) Strategies for Accountants: Establishing Thought Leadership and Engaging with the Community

Professionals across various fields use X (Twitter) as an essential tool to establish thought leadership, engage with their communities, and grow their influence. For accountants, X offers a unique opportunity to share industry insights, participate in relevant conversations, connect with influencers, and demonstrate expertise. Let’s explore how you, the accountant, can leverage X to your advantage, offering practical strategies and real-world examples.

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Unlocking the Potential of Local SEO for Accountants: Dominating the Local Market

In today’s digital age, where the competition among businesses is fiercer than ever, accountants are increasingly turning to local search engine optimization (SEO) to stand out in their communities. With many consumers relying on the internet to find local services, including accounting firms, harnessing the power of local SEO has become imperative for those looking to dominate their local market.
In this article, I will explain the importance of local SEO for accountants and the difference between on-page and off-page SEO strategies to maximize visibility and attract clients within a targeted region.

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The Role of Webinars in Accountants’ Marketing and Sales Efforts

In modern business, accountants face a dual challenge: They must maintain a firm grasp of financial intricacies and regulatory frameworks and navigate the increasingly competitive marketing and sales landscape. As traditional methods evolve, entrepreneurial accountants must leverage innovative marketing tools to bolster their outreach and attract clientele. Webinars have emerged as a powerful medium among these marketing tools, offering a dynamic platform for education, engagement, and lead generation. Herein, I will explore the fundamental role of webinars in accountants’ marketing and sales efforts, shedding light on their benefits, strategies, and best practices.

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Segmenting Your Prospects: A Targeted Approach to Business Development

In the accounting field, where client relationships and personalized service are paramount, understanding and segmenting your client base must be a priority. As the accounting landscape evolves and clients diversify, a tailored approach to client segmentation becomes indispensable. Clients are no longer interested in a one-size-fits-all approach to sales and marketing. Therefore, as an accountant and a firm owner, you must adopt a targeted approach tailored to different customer segments’ unique needs and characteristics. In this article, I will delve into the importance of client segmentation within accounting firms and provide insights into implementing this strategy so you can drive growth and enhance your client satisfaction.

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Pinterest for Accountants: Curating Inspiring Financial Resources and Building Brand Awareness

As we continue our series of articles on various social media platforms, we will focus on Pinterest. As discussed, social media is an indispensable tool for professionals across multiple industries. Accountants, often perceived as traditional and reserved, can harness the power of these platforms to extend their reach, engage with clients, and establish a solid online presence. Pinterest is known for its easy visuals and use, offering unique opportunities for us accountants to curate boards with valuable financial resources. By strategically using Pinterest, we can attract and engage our target audience, drive website traffic, and build brand awareness.

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Networking Events for CPAs: Making the Most of Conferences and Seminars

Networking is vital to any profession and is no different for us Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). Attending conferences and seminars can be a game-changer, offering opportunities to learn, connect, and grow your professional network. These events are not just about business but also about personal and professional growth. However, to truly benefit from these events, it’s essential to have a strategy in place.

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Mastering Email Marketing for Accountants: Strategies for Effective Client Communication

I knew little about email marketing when I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2018. I used emails to communicate regularly with team members, vendors, board members, etc. Little did I know that having an email list of prospects and effective campaigns are a way to grow revenues.

We are in a time when digital communication, specifically email marketing, has been and continues to be one of the most potent tools for business owners, especially accountants, seeking to enhance client relationships and drive business growth. Many perceive that our accounting industry is traditional; however, we’ve finally included marketing in our world and established new avenues for engagement. Here, I will shed light on the crucial role of email marketing in the accounting sector and provide actionable strategies for effective client communication.

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Leveraging Video Marketing: Accountants Captivate Clients through Visual Storytelling

Digital marketing is always changing, and as accountants, we must find innovative ways to connect with our prospects and clients. Enter video marketing—a dynamic tool revolutionizing how financial professionals communicate complex concepts, build trust, and cultivate lasting client relationships. In this article, I will expand on the key benefits of video content, its transformative power for accountants, practical implementation tips, and strategies for measuring impact.

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Leveraging LinkedIn for Accountants: Building a Strong Professional Network

Networking has transcended physical boundaries into a digital world in the last five years. Of all the social media platforms, LinkedIn stands out as ideal for professionals across industries to connect, engage, and build meaningful relationships. For accountants, leveraging LinkedIn effectively can be a game-changer in expanding their professional network, attracting clients, and establishing thought leadership. In this article, I will discuss how accountants can harness LinkedIn’s power to enhance their visibility, credibility, and business success. Some features are only available in Business or premium membership. Still, I am providing you with all the resources LinkedIn offers. Let’s get started.

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Instagram Marketing for CPAs: Showcasing Expertise and Behind-the-Scenes Insights

We’ve been expanding our conversation on how a solid online presence is crucial for professionals in every field, including Certified Public Accountants (CPAs). So far, we covered Linkedin and X (previously Twitter). In this article, we will delve into Instagram, a platform traditionally dominated by lifestyle, fashion, and food influencers; it now offers a unique opportunity for accountants and CPAs to connect with potential clients, showcase their expertise, and provide an insider’s view into their work processes. We will explore creative ways you can leverage Instagram to enhance your professional brand and connect with your audience through engaging visual content and storytelling. Unlike LinkedIn and X, you can post on Instagram (IG for short) in three main ways.

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Innovative Marketing Trends in 2024

As the accounting industry progresses, staying up-to-date with the latest marketing trends is crucial for us accountants as we aim to attract and retain clients. The marketing landscape is witnessing a significant transformation through major technological advances and continuous changes in consumer purchase behavior, affecting how we attract clients as accountants and business owners. Therefore, to thrive in this dynamic environment, as accountants, we must embrace these innovative marketing strategies that resonate with modern clients.
In this article, I’ll discuss ten groundbreaking marketing techniques and how you can use them in your firm’s marketing strategy.

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How to Differentiate Yourself as an Accountant

In a highly competitive business landscape, even we accountants face the challenge of setting ourselves apart from our peers. The accounting profession has changed significantly in recent years, with technological advancements, changing regulations, and shifting client expectations. To thrive in this environment, as accountants, we must possess strong technical skills and differentiate ourselves by offering unique value to our clients. The hardest part of establishing our unique value is objectively looking at our accounting journey and pinpointing our most significant achievements.

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Harnessing the Power of Client Testimonials: Boosting Trust and Referrals

When I started my business, referrals and testimonials were not on my mind. Like most entrepreneurs, my crucial motivator was to have freedom of time for my family, to expand my skill set, and to remove the cap on my earnings potential. When I got my first client as a side hustle, my referral source was a board member who knew my skills very well and recommended me to the non-profit he served as treasurer. In December 2018, a prospect asked me for referrals, and I had no idea what to say. There was only a little besides my resume and employer as a reference. Then I thought, hey, I have my non-profit client, and I asked my client whether they would speak with this prospect and answer any questions they had, and they agreed. That’s when I realized the power of referrals and testimonials.

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Facebook Advertising for Accountants: Targeting Your Ideal Clients and Driving Conversions

As our digital existence expands, accountants must leverage every tool to reach potential clients and grow our practice. Facebook advertising is a robust platform that offers precise targeting options, retargeting capabilities, and various ad formats to drive conversions. In this article, I will provide a comprehensive overview of how accountants can use Facebook advertising effectively, covering ad creative, audience targeting, and budget optimization, along with practical examples to illustrate each concept.

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Enhancing Efficiency and Client Satisfaction: The Role of Client Relationship Management Systems for Accountants

As our accounting landscape changes, we remain competitive by more than just number crunching. As accountants, we must cultivate strong client relationships to foster trust, loyalty, and long-term partnerships. We need to track data points that are traceable, comparable, and sharable with the rest of the team members assisting our clients. Client Relationship Management (CRM) systems offer accountants a powerful tool to streamline processes and enhance overall client satisfaction.

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Effective Sales Strategies for CPAs: Converting Prospects into Clients

As a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), you possess the technical knowledge and expertise to assist businesses and individuals with their financial needs. However, in today’s competitive marketplace, more than possessing technical skills is needed to grow your client base. To succeed, CPAs must also master effective sales strategies to convert prospects into paying clients. In this article, I will explore critical techniques I had to learn to enhance my sales efforts and achieve my business goals, and I hope they help you reach yours!

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Content Marketing for Accountants: Creating Valuable and Engaging Content

If you read my article Building a Strong Personal Brand as an Accountant: Strategies for Success you’d have learned about how I started my entrepreneurial journey in 2018, knowing absolutely nothing about marketing. I was one of those CFOs who would need to understand why a company has to spend more money on marketing; however, I did understand that having a robust online presence was necessary for a new digital age. Little did I know that marketing is senior to any other activity in a business.

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Client Retention Strategies for Accountants: Building Long-Term Relationships

Client acquisition is crucial for business growth in the fast-paced accounting world. However, retaining existing clients is equally important, if not more so. Servicing long-term client relationships is a testament to your firm’s reliability and is critical to sustained success. My first client is still with me, now more than seven years. Our relationship has grown and changed over time but has also strengthened.

Loyalty and commitment are two of my core values. I’m always looking to provide value to my prospects and clients to attract and retain them long-term. However, some clients do not fit those values, and I have decided to forgo working with them.

I believe that attracting and retaining the right clients starts with your mission, vision, and core values. However, it is also essential to have effective client retention strategies to ensure clients remain loyal and satisfied for the long haul.

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Building a Strong Personal Brand as an Accountant: Strategies for Success

What is a personal brand?

If you asked me that question in 2018, I would not know how to answer it.

As I embarked on my journey to entrepreneurship, I took on any accounting-related project that came my way. I had yet to learn about the meaning of a personal brand. Fast forward to 2020, I launched my CPA firm just before the COVID shutdown. While established CPA firms could sustain or pivot to new services, I still had to figure out how to get clients, build my online presence, and establish trust to create my brand.

I learned on my journey that in today’s competitive landscape, a personal brand has become more critical than ever. Professional success is directly related to one’s brand, especially in service-based industries such as accounting. Surveys show that more business owners and young entrepreneurs are looking for accountants they can rely on for not only their technical skills and qualifications but also for a personal connection. Therefore, creating a solid personal brand distinguishes accountants from the rest of the crowd, enhances their credibility, fosters loyalty, and opens doors for new opportunities.

I will share my experience, dive into the significance of a personal brand for accountants, and provide actionable strategies to help you build a solid personal brand that resonates with your target audience.

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CURRENT EDITION

Summertime Marketing in Your Tax & Accounting Firm

Tax season is prosperous, summer is dry until extension season. Do you find yourself in that cycle? Clients are “easy” to get during tax season when taxes are top of mind. Then the direct deposits go dry by June, and you are looking for what’s next. Stop the search, you don’t have to add another service. You need better marketing to highlight the service that you offer and specialize in. This will allow you to have a predictable client pipeline. You can do tax preparation, planning, and or representation all year long.

Observations on the House-Passed OBBB

This article focuses on the OBBB from the House offering a variety of observations to help understand the range of changes, relevance to compliance and planning, process considerations and some unexpected provisions. While the final OBBB will not include all of the House provisions or will modify some of them, there are lessons to learn to understand the tax legislation process and results now and in the future.

Client Retention as a Prospecting Strategy: Turning Current Clients into Referral Sources

In the competitive accounting world, where trust and reliability are paramount, client retention is not just a success metric—it’s a vital strategy for sustainable growth. For Certified Public Accountants (CPAs), accountants, and bookkeepers, maintaining a solid relationship with existing clients can unlock new business opportunities, turning satisfied clients into powerful referral sources.

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  • Get Automatic, No Questions Asked Penalty Relief

    The IRS loves to issue penalties to taxpayers. In fiscal year 2019, the IRS imposed a whopping $40.5 billion in civil penalties.1 If a taxpayer wants to contest an IRS penalty, it usually takes a really good explanation plus a lot of time and effort. However, there is a little-known IRS policy that allows a taxpayer to get penalty relief with no explanations required. Taxpayers who file returns late can quickly rack up huge penalty bills.

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    Will Changes to Qualified Improvement Property Get Me a Refund?

    Question: I’m familiar with Qualified Improvement Property (QIP) and the technical correction made in 2020. What is everyone doing for returns when, if corrected, the client could benefit? Is it something you can amend the 2018 tax return for if you took a 179 expense instead of a bonus?

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    When a 1031 Exchange Should Be Used for Tax Savings

    If you made money on your real estate investment, congratulations! You’re now in the same club that more than 90 percent of the world’s millionaires do to create wealth. Now it’s time for tax on that profit. A large tax bill generally means you made a large profit. But avoiding the tax can be like having your cake and eating it too. A 1031 Exchange is an incredibly powerful tool for you to defer the tax when used in the right circumstances. Many real estate investors and landlords look to the 1031 Like-Kind Exchange (LKE) as an excellent method of selling investment real estate without paying tax at the time of sale. This gives you more use of the cash you get at the sale and more time to use it.

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    Is Trader Tax Status Worth It?

    As we navigate a world with COVID-19, large swings in the stock market have become the norm. Many buy and hold-style investors are more actively managing their portfolios to take advantage of these swings. The IRS has a special trader status for taxpayers who frequently engage in trading. This status includes a special accounting method, not available to the average investor, that can come with substantial tax savings. The status allows an investor to make special deductions and opens the door to a wide range of tax reduction strategies unavailable to the casual investor. However, with potential savings also come risks that could end up costing the taxpayer/trader more than the average investor. Weighing the pros and cons of this status is crucial in minimizing tax liability. The big question for tax planning is this — does obtaining trader tax status result in less tax?

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    How to Do a Backdoor Roth IRA (Safely) and Avoid the IRA Aggregation Rule and Step Transaction Doctrine

    The basic concept of the “backdoor Roth IRA contribution” is relatively straightforward. Contributing directly to a Roth IRA is restricted for higher-income individuals; once a married couple has an AGI in excess of $193,000 (or $131,000 for an individual), the maximum contribution limit to a Roth IRA reduces to zero. However, anyone with earned income can contribute to an IRA, regardless of how high their income is; at worst, higher income levels may limit the deductibility of that IRA contribution (for those who are an active participant in an employer retirement plan), but not the ability to make the IRA contribution. In addition, under the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 (TIPRA), there have been no income limits on Roth conversions of traditional IRAs since 2010. As a result, anyone who has funds in a traditional IRA, whether originally deductible or not, is eligible to do a Roth conversion. In other words, while income limits remain on Roth contributions, there are no income limits for a Roth conversion.

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    When a 1031 Exchange May Not Actually Save On Tax

    The 1031 Like-Kind Exchange (LKE) provides a great potential benefit to taxpayers who want to sell rental properties to purchase others in the United States. IRC § 1031 allows you to defer a taxable gain that would normally be taxed at the time of sale of a rental property. However, there are situations when a 1031 exchange may not be the best option for the taxpayer, and it could potentially dilute the tax savings when compared to a traditional sale or other gain minimization strategies. To take advantage of the tax deferral benefits of a 1031 exchange, you’ll need to follow a specific set of guidelines. Here, we will dive into the circumstances that you should review to determine if a 1031 exchange will be the best option in mitigating the taxes you owe.

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    Defer and Eliminate Capital Gains With Opportunity Zones

    The Tax Cuts & Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) created Opportunity Zones (OZ). Taxpayers who invest in Qualified Opportunity Zones can reduce capital gains tax and pay zero tax on the investment’s future appreciation. For this reason, Opportunity Zones have a significant edge over traditional capital gain deferral strategies like the 1031 Exchange. With more than 8,500 economic zones throughout the United States, investors and business owners have plenty of choices. Additionally, the investment gives them a chance to do some good in an economically depressed area, make some tax-free money, and achieve some permanent capital gain savings even after you’ve already sold your asset. What’s not to love? There are a number of intricate rules concerning OZ investment tax breaks so if you want to begin or expand your business or real estate holdings using these tax breaks, read on to learn more.

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    How To Report Officer’s Compensation For A Late S Election

    Question: If I am making a late S election for a client, how do I handle the fact that the officer received no officer’s compensation throughout the year? One of the biggest areas of audit for an S corporation return Form 1120S is officer’s compensation. The IRS collects and examines data from all returns filed and develops a computerized standard of insufficient compensation. Since this area can result in deficiencies for payroll taxes (Social Security and Medicare) for every dollar of distribution reclassified to wage, tax advisors would be wise to avoid risk factors that might raise the risk of audit on officer’s compensation. By avoiding what resembles unreasonably low compensation, we can help business owners by limiting the number of Forms 1120S without officer’s compensation. However, when making a late S election, what is the rule when officer’s truly have taken no compensation? You might be surprised to learn it isn’t filing a Form 1099. Read on to find out how to reduce the risk of audit, while accurately reporting your first Form 1120S.

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