Big Bird Effect

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhardt. Well, welcome to another episode. It is you and I, Steve, today.

It is. Lynda's on vacation.

Should we sing Just the Two of Us?

Yeah, yeah, just the two of us. I love it. Hello, everybody.

Hello everyone. Well, today Steve and I were talking about a piece that I read. It's kind of the Big Bird effect where you're taking a viewpoint from the way that the character embodied Big Bird on Sesame Street. They couldn't see inside this costume. They had a viewpoint that they ended up kind of finessing where way back, back in the day, they had like a camera so they could see what they looked like as the bird. And it gave them an opportunity to view themselves from the standpoint of, who am I? How do I present myself? And, and what does that look like? And then they were able to really finesse that character. And it resonated with me because— Mm-hmm. We come to the table as business owners with all of these tools and equip ourselves. But what do we not hear or see that our clients are asking us? Or what, from their viewpoint, what is it that we're doing to service them? And I thought you had some good points, Steve, from your even just the conversation we were just having on it.

Well, you know, I think that like one of the things I like to do And this just came to my mind. I'm blessed in that I'm on the faculty at the Colorado Bar Association. And before I teach a class, and let me back up a little bit there, their requirements are really strict because of the way that continuing legal education credits work for attorneys that attend these classes. So we have to do a PowerPoint and we have to do a notebook and we have to do these things that are not really current anymore. Create excitement because, you know, after all, we're talking about accounting and things like that. So what I do, because I have to use those tools, is I go ahead and prerecord it and watch myself. Or, you know, kind of like when you're in high school and you're in the debate club and you have to prepare for that, you stand in front of the mirror and you're all nervous. And, you know, when I'm in Zoom meetings, am I looking at the camera or am I looking at Sarah or what am I doing? You know?

Yeah.

So when you take all of those tools and those thoughts in your mind, and you rehearse what you look like and you polish that, then when you're talking to your clients, that's creating more confidence with them. And how we dress, you know, I'm really— I'm really, you know, we're blessed nowadays after the pandemic. We don't have to be in suits and ties and dresses anymore when we talk to our attorney clients. So that's all gone. It has created this level of more ease in our conversations. More friendliness, more trust, I think, than, you know, that tight suit and tie look that goes on. And then our language. And you touched on that when we were talking before the podcast recording about our language. Are we using— and maybe you can expound on that a little bit. Are, you know, are we using our accounting speak? And the clients are like afraid, you know, to really ask us, what in the heck are you talking about? They're like, yeah, that sounds good, just do it. And then later on they're like, well, why did you do that? Well, because you wanted a KPI. Well, what's a KPI? Well, we talked about that.

It's intimidating, right? As a solo business owner or somebody's new starting out or even established, like the competition of feeling like somebody else has got it together and you're supposed to know this stuff.

You're supposed to know it exactly.

Crazy. Yeah. So are you telling me my Snoopy hat and all this stuff doesn't work? No, I'm kidding.

Oh, no, I think it creates an ease. It makes it easier. Yeah, but it shows that we're real people.

Yeah, yeah.

I had my dog here a while ago in our last meeting. My dog was, my dog was kissing me and you were like, everybody was like, aww, attorneys like that to their people.

Yeah, we're all in their offices. Profession, right? Any profession. Um, but I, I agree with, so it is hard to, you know, it's not called layman's, or I don't want to like I hate the term dumbing it down. It is hard to get out of the acronyms and the language of what we do and take it from the viewpoint of a business owner who has their own language and their own set of things that they're doing. And we're not required to know all of that. But how do we talk to you about, for example, the KPI moment? Yeah. Well, maybe the question was posed, well, how much do I have in my accounts receivable? How many clients owe me money? Okay, well, that's just a simple question. Yeah, I could answer that.

Right.

But maybe behind the question is how many clients owe me money because cash flow is tight and I really just need to know where I'm at. So who to go knocking to. So maybe it is, this is the data that you're looking for. Was there something specific you wanted help with that are you looking to collect? Because I do see that you have rent and payroll coming up. What else can I do to assist you? There might be more behind it. And that's where I was in reading this piece and it reminded me I had heard it before, but it's been a kind of gap of years. The viewpoint of—

Mm-hmm.

A viewer viewing you, the viewpoint of the services you're offering, it's not in the, what everyone likes to term into the CAS and all these little things. It's like you said, Steve. It's human being conversations. It's dialogue. It's trust. It's building. And one thing I will offer is I had a great conversation with Jeanne Whitehouse once. We're on the back of a golf cart a year ago at Seaside and for Accounting Salon and talking about advisory. And she says this conversation, It's understanding, getting in and understanding and having— and to your point, it's what you were saying, Steve, is we have to understand their needs, but they may not know how to ask us in the way that we would present it. And a KPI might be, sure, we understand the wording. What does it mean to me though, as an owner?

Well, and you know, you made me think about in your example of They're asking you, how many accounts receivables do I have and how much do they owe? Yeah, maybe if we're listening and we're reading their body language and the inflection in their voice, an appropriate answer would be a question back to them. How much is your— what do you charge? How much is your hourly rate?

Yeah.

And they go, $300 an hour. Okay, so let's divide that into your accounts receivable. You have this many hours. Of accounts receivable out there right now.

I love that.

Are you going to collect it? Are you going to have your paralegal collect it, or are you going to farm it out to an outside professional firm that can help you with that? And you start creating that dialog because you listened to them. And you know what's also so incredibly important? Lesson learned many times when I was younger and doing this is you don't always have to have the answer.

Yeah.

You can answer their question with questions. And as long as you, you know, when you say to them, I don't know the answer to that, that's a great question. I really want to explore it and I'll get back to you by whenever. And then follow through and do it. And they're going to respect you because you listened to them. You didn't, you just like I'm doing right now, I'm keeping the same tone, the same look. I don't know the answer to that. I'll get back to you. I promise I will. And you learn from that experience as well.

I love that you say that.

And it probes, it's probing and answering and finding out why are you asking this question? Because they're scared about their accounts receivable, number one. Number two, they don't want to do it.

Yeah.

You know?

Or they need to make a decision or something's come up or their personal life is going. It's like, I want to refinance or I'm looking, we're expanding in our family life or whatever it is.

How many times have you had— I know we've had it— where a client will say, I'm refinancing my house, I need reports by tomorrow. And it's like, you've had that happen, haven't you?

Actually, when I hear that, when that comes up, I make sure that I, like, keep that one bubbled up at the top because I want to make sure I'm, you know, staying on top of it even more than usual because I need more reports. But But to your point, you're right.

It's— So then you can use examples of, you know, we talked about 3 months ago, we talked about whatever subject. And this really ties into what you need done today. You know, so, and you start putting that together because you're listening.

Because you're listening. Well, and you have really opened my mind, and I appreciate it so much, to ways of collecting data. The way that you scope creep, the way that you do these little things that work for you. Not saying that I've exercised them all because it's hard, but working with tools that can support me, my way of doing something might be slightly different, but it's the same goal or the same intent in mind. And I believe that's really ultimately what's happening here in all of these businesses we serve. That's where you go beyond just the assimilation of data and producing the documents, having— Mm-hmm. Certain procedures that are tight-closing, having certain ways to have more meaningful conversation, and having these professional relationships with clients that we do look at as an extension of family in some form or another, whether we like it or not. You know, we're supporting them, and it helps support us in our endeavors of accounting and what we're interested in learning.

And, and— Well, you know, one of the tools that we use in accounting and I run into this when I'm training new people, is teaching them that the effect of their work goes a lot deeper than just posting a journal entry. When, when you post the journal entry, then you've got to go back and see what its effect was on the bank account. You know, did it clear out that accounts receivable? Did it do what you needed it to do behind the scenes? This ties into what we're talking about today with those probing questions with the client. What are they saying? What are we hearing? And what's the underlying piece of that? And that's where you can get creative and really create that confidence with them.

So true. I love it. Well, I mean, I know that we started off one way. I know we talked about a little bit too about our surroundings, like you were saying earlier. So we're talking about how we present ourselves and engage and listen, but it's also like you mentioned earlier, how we dress, our surroundings, it can identify us. So obviously Lynda has a surrounding and a space that she's created for herself that works.

She has a beautiful surrounding. I love hers.

Yeah, it's gorgeous, right? And you're in transition of what you want yours to be. Mine is always in transition at some point in some way. It depends on what office I'm in, where I'm at.

That's what I like about you. You're always in a different place.

And I'm okay with it, but I certainly— certainly need certain tools. But yeah, it does. If you show— like, there's an attorney we work with, he always shows up in a suit and a tie. If I know I'm on that meeting date, I will dress accordingly.

Right.

Just out of respect to— we come as professionals. And sometimes it's an age thing. Sometimes it's it's a mirroring effect, but it's also I'm not changing who I am. I'm just honoring the space that I'm working in. And you would feel that way if somebody walked in an office building and they're walking in with pajamas, right? Well, okay. Did you just happen to walk in the wrong building? Because this is called a professional building.

Right.

Anyways. Yeah, so as an example, but well, I don't know how much we want to kind of converse on this topic. I just thought it would be a fun little kind of you and I moment.

Well, you know, I like that we're doing this today. And one other thought that I wanted to interject in there, and we talked about it before we started recording, was you were talking about the Big Bird effect, and I said it reminded me of the weather forecaster on the local news, and they have to have a green screen there with the map on it. And so they're not really seeing the green screen, but they have to portray a message of confidence that it looks like they are doing what they're doing. And, you know, when they put their arm up and they point to the, you know, the storm coming from the northwestern part of the state, that they're really pointing at the right place.

Mm-hmm.

And that's the key. When we're talking to our legal clients, you know, are we listening? Are we probing? Are we finding out? Are we in even the same space, the right place? Are we communicating on the same level so that when they hang up with us, they're not like, oh man, they didn't get it, and we don't do the same thing and we get nowhere. Or, you know, that we spend all this time working on a project because we misunderstood what they really wanted from us. And they go, I forgot to mention this. And so for probing and asking, and trying to be in their shoes and seeing them for the way that they are and listening to ourselves in how we're asking and getting that information. I think it makes a huge difference on projects. And the same with scope creep.

Yeah.

You know, right up front, and this is where I really get pained by new bookkeepers to this industry and to this niche in particular, that they'll just take on a client because they need to pay their bills and, you know, they haven't done all the probing and then they get stuck with lots of scope creep and misunderstandings. So it's all in, it's all in just taking that breath, really listening to the client, figuring out where they are, what they want, and how we can reduce that pain and get them what they need. So I'm gonna study this Big Bird effect, cuz this really, this got me really interested today.

Yeah. And I'll find the actual article. I'm just looking at the one piece where I, I knew there was a section of it in here, but I'm not finding the exact thing. But I like what you said in the, We've all done it. We've all started an endeavor, taken it on, and we're out of our element, in our depth. And, and so that's where you, you know, need to reach out to others. You need some support. Admit that you're wrong, or admit that you need to, like you said, do a little bit more diligence, look into it, whatever it is that you have to do. But I, um, I know that you're not alone in that feeling. Like, that is— that will You'll have stages as a business owner in this being in that.

Sure.

There are some, I think the biggest thing that we've talked about is giving our space and time to ourselves to educate ourselves or further that. That's where you're going to allow yourself to excel a little bit more. And there is still the sticking point over the word of bookkeeper. In the industry. It doesn't actually fit, just like there's a lot of things about CPA and like, what does that look like because of the nuances and the structure of it? And what does it mean coming out of an educated space with that and testing for it and being able to do it?

So— Well, let's take that. Every single person that is watching this podcast today that is in the legal niche, I want to challenge you to start using the verbiage of I am a professional legal bookkeeper or I am a professional bookkeeper serving the legal industry. Because when people ask you and you just say, I'm a bookkeeper, that's a message that we've just sent out to them. But when you're talking with a potential attorney, you say, I'm a professional bookkeeper that serves the legal industry. And all of a sudden you've created this different persona about yourself. More professional, more organized, more you know what you're doing. Even if you don't, back to what I said a while ago, I'll get you an answer for that question. They know they can trust you.

Yeah. Well, you bring up something that I thought was interesting is I think it was Michael Lee posted something very recent about fractional CFO and how these just bookkeeping firms are offering it. What does it mean? What is like, I forget exactly the way that this was written, but it made me pause and think we're accounting professionals. We, this is what we do.

Yeah.

You have to, I guess, in your service offerings, define what it is. We custom tailor our service offerings.

Right. Of course.

I'm not an off-the-shelf kind of AP, AR, you know, What does your business need and what can we offer you to support you? You've decided, like you said, we have to hire people. Okay, you've decided to make that hire. I hire somebody that does marketing. I don't know what I need. What do I look like to the outside world? And then you'd help me define and assimilate to that. If I wanted the off-the-shelf thing, those big box store moments, they have a purpose in life. They're just not for me, you know, endeavoring this service. So—

Well, and the clients that we're serving in this niche are very educated. They've spent a lot of money to go to school, or they've been in law, practicing law for quite a long time in many different arenas. You know, imagine what they Imagine the persona that they have to think about for themselves before they go and do a case before the appellate court. They have to be so organized and on it and listen and probe and figure out, you know, the solution to these things. And it's very key. Don't we have— we have a guest coming up that's going to help with some of this.

Yes, we have. I don't— we don't have a date, but I did ask her to come on. Theater Public Speaking. It was something that I took, Lynda took.

And Steve needs to take.

And it's how we engage, how we present, how we accepting the way that we speak. How do we formulate that? Where do our pause moments come in? To your point, how do we How do we support somebody in a calm way? How do we, you know, become like this ambassador to them and support them and empathize? But yet we have our boundaries. You're not going to walk all over. And that is not an easy thing to do at the beginning. Sometimes it's not an easy thing to do when you're in the middle and you're reformulating your business, or as you are right now, sometimes you're on growth trajectory. You may have the seniority to be able to see what needs to be corrected, but empowering our team members to be able to do that.

Exactly. Exactly.

It's huge.

You know, it's getting them to have— teaching them the safety and having the confidence that they can take over the— let's say we're presenting financial reports to the law firm, that this is your meeting, Susie. You know, you're in charge of it. You know, and when somebody— and this happens with attorneys, as you well know, there might be one that's just so wound up depending on, you know, maybe they just finished a case, maybe something's going on in life, who knows. But it's okay to say to them, hey, hey, let's take a break. Let's breathe. You're safe here. I'm helping you, you know, and we're going to move on with this. But you kind of can bring it down because you're in charge of it, but you're tuning into them and you're teaching them that it's safe. To let go of whatever and let's talk about this now. And that, you know, we can in this industry, we're so blessed in this industry being legal accounting. We are so blessed that we can charge more rates and have more confidence in the rates that we're charging because we're working with those types of people that we really can have safe dialogues with and professional dialogues with. And no offense to the example I'm going to use here in just a second, but— if I took on, you know, Joe's lawn service company, he's an independent one or two person shop. It's a whole different kind of business than it is working with attorneys.

Yeah.

And so they really— we really have so much opportunity to capitalize on that and to have these great relationships. I can tell you all of the attorneys that we work with, I love them all as family. I really do. You've got to have that heart thing going with them to a degree because they know that you're going to listen to them and you're going to get what they need. And even if you just check in, I had one that sent me an email this morning, a PI firm that we have who hasn't had a settlement in a while. Just the other day I was thinking about him. Boom, there was an email this morning. I'm going to call him today and say, I was just thinking about you. you know, and his math is all wrong on the settlement agreement. But then I can, I can jump into that and say, hey, we got to fix this math instead of just, you know, challenging right out of the starting gate.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very supportive. I like how you worded that. I also feel like what profession you're in, the tenure and the time and the fact that you've invested in yourself, it's that whole adage of like, you know, sure, it took me 5 minutes to fix it, but it was, you know, 20 years, you're spending the— you're paying me for the 20 years of experience to be able to do that.

Exactly, exactly.

Kind of simple. I mean, there's a better way to say it, but in context of what it is, um, it's not just to charge to charge. There's value in that knowledge and that expertise. And, um, I feel like that's kind of true of, of a lot of things. It's not just this profession, but many professions. But in the legal space, there's so many things that we have to make sure we're keeping our eyes out for, and compliance complexity these, um, things come up. Math gets done wrong on a spreadsheet, to your point. So these are all like such great pieces, and I just still think, no matter what, that piece— and it happened to us this week for me, even the conflict that was happening, and it wasn't like a negative, like, adversarial kind, it wasn't like explosive, it was just this conflict that was happening in text dialogue— and I was like, okay, from that person's point of view, what am I asking for? What do I need as that owner to run my business? And it really helped reframe how to have the meeting, how to support them and not make it so contentious. And that does come with a lot of maturity too. And so in the tenure of being able to service this industry. Mm-hmm. In that way, not maturity of age, but just in that way.

We have so many more opportunities in this industry for success than in many other industries because we have great tools to work with. We have great clients to work with. There's plenty of work for all of us. You know, if you're going to choose this niche and just think that you're going to balance checking accounts and give them a report at the month end, you're in the wrong business. But we have such great opportunities because we're working with really smart clients, and I love that challenge.

I do love— I'm with you. I stand with you in that for sure. Well, this was a great impromptu, you and I.

It was. I love it.

We didn't roast Lynda in her absence. We love you. We miss you.

I know. Where are you, Lynda? You know, so if you'd like to subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel, you can search for us in the Accountants Law Pod or following the links in the show notes. If you have questions or topic requests or guest suggestions, you can email us at info@accountantslawpod.com or send us a message through our website at www.accountantslawpod.com. And if you want to join us in the Accountants Law Lab, which is way cool, Visit our website at www.accountantslawlab.com to sign up. We meet every Friday. It is a group of accounting people who have chosen the legal niche and we really answer a lot of challenges. We bring in guests from different venues that can help us out with our businesses and it's a great format, great options for you. So please, please seriously take a look at that. Look for us on YouTube, Spotify, Where else? Where else are we?

Apple, Google, I believe. Tierra has just knocked it out of the park for us and so exciting. And also you'll have some adventures coming up, which I'm so excited. I'm so excited about your Airstream and like where you're going to be and some of the cool things that are gonna be coming up for us.

Well, thank you.