Reaching More Customers with Confident Answers to Complex Questions

Firms working out of small towns don’t need to have small ambitions. King & King proved just that, trading unanswered questions for confident answers—and a bigger client base to match.

King & King is an accounting firm with about 25 employees working out of its head office in the rural town of Imlay City, Michigan. It’s a full-scale firm with a broad footprint that covers payroll, bookkeeping, mergers, acquisitions, succession planning, estate and trust planning, and more.

Ryan King, CPA CGMA and partner at King & King, has roots that run deep in the accounting world. “My dad's a CPA. He started a firm in the late 70s, so I grew up in an accounting office. I cut my teeth in that,” he explains.

After graduating in 2002, Ryan felt the pull back to his hometown. About 30 miles away from his dad’s office, Ryan decided to open his own. In the early days, his dad was an invaluable source of knowledge for a budding accountant like himself.

“My dad was a wonderful resource for a lot of questions early on,” recalls Ryan. “But if he didn't know the answer, what's next? Where do we find the answer?” He was able to attend a lot of CPA CPE classes, where he found the instructors to be another great source of knowledge. But there were times where he found himself asking the same question again: if they don't know the answer, where can I turn?

Finding the Answers

Because King & King services such a wide range of areas, its staff have an extensive breadth of knowledge across many topics. “We're general practitioners, which means we know a little bit about a lot of things,” explains Ryan, adding that this can make it challenging to tackle technical issues.

“You can Google anything, but you have to be really careful with how you vet that information with different court cases,” he says. “That's the revenue rulings, the court cases, the guts and foundation to a technical issue. We just struggled finding that information.” 

In early 2025, King & King first heard about Blue J through one of their member associations, NATP. Once summer hit and tax season was behind him, Ryan was able to try out the tool. 

“I had a few really detailed cases I had to work through that I felt Blue J gave fantastic information for,” says Ryan, adding that the tool goes beyond just providing a defensible answer, sharing the sources to back it up. “For me, the primary benefit of Blue J is access to accurate information and answers. At the end of the day, people trust us to give quality information and we want to give correct answers.”

Reaching a Wider Audience

Another benefit King & King has experienced since using Blue J is the ability to take on the more technical work they would have previously referred to others.

“A tangible value that I'm seeing is increasing my knowledge base and our firm's reputation or credibility based on the ability to handle some of this fringe work that we wouldn't have been able to in the past,” says Ryan. “What's really helpful is some of these critical areas that I'm not working with very much or a complex situation, I now have substantiation to feel comfortable that we can move in this direction. That's valuable for me.”

Using Blue J has also allowed Ryan to accept more challenging work from attorneys or financial planners. By the time these clients reach out to his firm, they’re looking for solid answers for difficult situations they might not be able to find.

“If you ask me a question about a challenging situation, it makes them look really good if I give them an answer with substantiation,” he explains. And the outcome? These clients keep coming back to King & King, while also producing a ripple effect of referrals. 

“Some of the collaborative work that we're doing with these professionals is giving us opportunities to do compliance and maybe advisory with some of their clients that become our clients.”

Spreading the Love

Ryan has some advice for other smaller firms—especially those without access to research departments—considering a tool like Blue J.

“This is a solution that allows you to act like a big firm when you're not, and be able to  tap into a library on a real time, continuous basis,” says Ryan. 

And the success King & King has seen with Blue J has led to Ryan referring the tool to another practice close to home.

“My dad's office, which my sister and brother-in-law are now running, now has a Blue J subscription because I said, ‘Look guys, this is great. This is fantastic. It gives you credible information,’” he says. “It's going to save you time and allow you to be more confident. The juice is worth the squeeze here.”