How to Run a Fully Remote Accounting Firm

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhart.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And today's topic is how to run a remote firm. And I think it's a great topic to talk about because some people are just kind of delving into working remotely. Probably through COVID, but maybe making that choice to be all remote or maybe working in a hybrid mode. But we've got some really great tips and tricks to share with you all. And Sarah, I'm gonna toss it to you 'cause I usually toss it to Steve first. I'm gonna toss it to you to see what you think about what people need to know about running a remote firm.

Oof. Well, time zones, I think.

Yes.

You and I experienced this, right? I mean, we're both on opposite ends. We've got time zones, we've got availability of schedule. So if you have a full-time worker, that's great. If you don't have that availability, they're kind of in and out throughout the day. What, what are good blocks of time that can be used? Equipment. I think another big thing is also access points. Like, so for example, With technology now, how do we access? We can all jump onto Google. We can all jump onto Bing and all these different search engines. But how, how safe and secure is it? Is it a personal device? Is it a work device that you're using? Are you a contractor? Are you an employee? All of these little things that happen. So remote work is, yes, easy in theory. Do you have a quiet space to work in? Less distractions with a small setup? Or are you in your bedroom with the guest bed behind you, maybe? Or what, what dedicated space has to be put into it and thought process? Steve, am I missing anything or have I kind of—

No, but you really hit a nail on the head for me. One of our people, bless her heart, was working on her dining room table with tons and tons of interruptions. And I went up to her house and, and helped her with some equipment set up and some different things. And she's got her own dedicated office space now in the house. And she's just so grateful for how much more productive she is.

Dedicated office is kind of critical if you're going to take this on because I mean, I've seen, like Sarah said, people working in their closet because they have better sound quality or people working with their bed behind them, which when I was kicked out during the hurricane and in a condo, I tried the bedroom that had a— I was in an office. They had a desk in there, but the bed was my backdrop. And I couldn't deal with that. And then I went on the dining room table. But like your client, it's so bad for your wrists and your shoulders and your body because you're not— it's not ergonomic for your body. And that's another part. We sit a long time, which we already talked about in the health podcast. But yeah, I mean, for sure, those are things you need to think about.

You know, the thing is, too, when we go into working on our own in our own business, We get so excited about, I'm going to rule the world. And guess what? The day hits you where you're really lonely.

Yeah.

All of a sudden you're like, oh wait, I'm sitting in this room all these hours of the day telling people to leave me alone because I have work to do. And I don't have somebody in the cube next door to me that I can talk about what I'm going to do this weekend or whatever. And so, you know, for your health, are you interacting with people? Are you getting outdoors and getting your vitamin D? Are you creating your work environment in your office so that, like, look at Lynda's office. Just gorgeous. And so is yours, Sarah. Mine is hideous, so I use a backdrop. But, but I've got a big office and it's downstairs in my house, away from everything else. And there's an aquarium down here and a fireplace and all these things. So in the winter, I can really hibernate and be lonely with myself and be happy. But it's also how creative are you with it? You know, do you have some of your favorite things around you? Do you have your favorite tools, your favorite pen that you can write with, your favorite calculator? You know, think of all those things. Yeah.

Well, I got—

look at this. I'll show you some. I got these little gifts from people. So this is from Heather Satterly, right? And I'm— for me, this is not something I normally do, but it's, it's a gift. It's a reminder. I've got a Dawn Brolin little car thing here. I mean, like you said, you surround yourself. So if you're the type that Some people are okay with paper around them. It's not for my clarity, but some people are. Does something for them.

You and I were really fortunate to be in the Theater of Public Speaking. We'll give a little plug to you with Miss Lynda Artesani. And backgrounds were one of the things she talked about because we work in a very professional environment, right? So I mean, Sarah's background, my background, and she was really big on having a real background, not having the fake one because your hands can disappear. And we always have that funny story story of that client that did the beta with the makeup, and she turned her head and her lips stayed over here, which was hysterical.

It was Zoom. It was a Zoom thing.

Zoom. And she tried the beta feature of having— she had no makeup on, so she did the makeup feature, and it hurt. Literally, her eyebrows and her lips were over off of her head when she turned her head. And I'm like, that's why it's beta. No, we would never use that. But she was, she was a sweetheart. We had so much fun with her. But For sure, right? So we've learned how to be professional and how to make it so that even though we're home, I think that's the biggest thing. So if your home office is on the dining room table or you're in your, you know, you have a smaller home, like say you're in New York City and you're in a smaller space where your office is your living room, it makes it harder because you don't have that delineation of when does my day start, when does my day end? I think you have to get really creative with that. For mental health because it can absorb you right up. And in fact, I was listening to a YouTube video from our friend Jason Stats this morning, and it was another plug, but he's—

I adore him.

I really enjoy listening to him, and we'll put that in the show notes. And he, he was talking about the dream job and having a job where you run your own business and you run it from home. And, and he was talking about how you end up working so much. And I think people go into it thinking they're gonna have time that I'll take Friday off and go to the beach. And I can start the laundry I can do this. I can do that. I can start the laundry. And one of the worst things too is the refrigerator is not that far away. It's the full refrigerator, right? It's not just like the office refrigerator, kind of like the office water cooler. The office refrigerator is stacked full.

So you have to— And there's not somebody in the office eating your lunch.

Right. That's right.

Exactly. Or meal prep. Meal prep is a big thing too. I mean, I don't have— I mean, Lynda and I've talked about this very candithy between each other. We don't have the luxury of going in and making a salad or putting something together when you're between meetings or the demand of the day. We, we have staff that we need to support, we have our own work that we're doing. So we both of us have outside services that come in and, and I take a break from it occasionally, but I have meals prepped for my personal lifestyle. I'm not—

Healthy meals.

Healthy meals. Vegetarian.

Because we know we will go to crackers and stuff if we don't have Yeah, that's the thing.

And as far as equipment— For me, that's what I've done in the past, like in my old days. But yeah, I think you, like you said, it's your environment. The way that you described it, it may not be like you have the option of having a backdrop like you have. That's great. That's awesome.

It looks professional.

—yeah, but for your everyday, it works for you. It's got to— but it's got to feel like— sometimes I call it the sliding door. I've got to be able to slide in and out. I physically right now in this space, I have my own office that's outside of my home. And that's because I was told I was really loud when I talk. So I'm told that too, Sarah. My husband built it for me and I love it. And it's electric. It's got its electrical and it's got its needs for internet and so forth. But I do have a downtown office that I go to, and that's where we work downtown. And sometimes you'll see that space, but it is nice to have that kind of separation. Now, I don't know, Lynda, if Jason talked about this. Obviously the dream of like, I mean, yeah, sure, you're the business owner. You can take off and do whatever you need at the time that you need to do it, right? For me, sometimes the structure or dedicated times work better. It's a mix. The work-life balance phrase bothers me because this is my life. My work and my life are blended. This is who I am. And we were, you know, just on vacation and I had payroll to do. That's fine. I'll do it. It's not interfering. I'm up before people. I'm doing things that I need to get done. I have that luxury to do that. That's the difference, I think, of what we experience.

And you know what you just made me think of that's huge? Yeah. Is the word boundaries.

Yes.

So here's when all of your neighbors learn that you're working remotely from home in your own business, you've gotta set boundaries. Don't come ringing my doorbell during these hours. Don't ask me to pick up a package for you or to, you know, or whatever. You've gotta set boundaries and have that respect for those boundaries so that you can really be creative in your work and do what you need to do during the time you've allocated for it. And that took a long time to train my neighbors because I'm— you guys know me, I'm kind of outgoing, I'm friendly to everybody. And so my neighbors were used to when they were at work, I could pick up the package off their porch and save it at my house. Well, I don't do that anymore. I can't do that, you know.

Yeah, yeah, we don't have the ability, like if you're especially where you're sitting, maybe location-wise, but I don't— you don't want that revolving door. You'll never get anything done. Right.

You don't get anything done. Yeah. So distractions are a thing. It's very easy to get distracted. So you really distracted. So you really have to be really motivated. And sometimes some days that's not there. Like, it's so easy. Or if you feel tired, like I've been feeling tired this week, not sleeping. We've been having a slew of thunderstorms come through in the middle of the night for some strange reason. Usually they're 4 to 5 and they've been in the middle of the night and I've got a dog who's terrified of them. So she gets on the bed and she just shakes and she can't sit still and keeping me awake. And then I'm tired. And yesterday I kind of got up. I kind of walk around the living room after, you know, talking to our guests last week. I was like walking around the living room going, oh, maybe that'll wake me up. And it didn't really wake me up. Then I laid down on the couch and Simba jumped on me and I'm like, okay, now I've got him jumping on me. He's not letting me lay down, just take a little teeny tiny nap because I was just yawning and yawning in everybody's face. And I didn't want to do that. But— I also think when we talked about equipment, you really have to invest in good equipment, not just your background and whatever your, you know, what way your camera's facing. Don't be near the window 'cause it can make you into a silhouette. For years I was the silhouette because of the window behind me. I'm in a room that has high ceilings 'cause I'm, you know, in Florida. So this time when I remodeled after the hurricane, I got the long drapes and I've got the rug on the floor that's bigger and hopefully it absorbs some of the sound so I don't have that sound. I want good sound quality. You need a good microphone. I got the Yeti, Yeti X. A Blue Yeti is always really good. Something that's gonna give you a nice richer sound. Lighting, you want good lighting so that you don't look washed out even if you are tired. That's one good thing about Zoom. There's a setting in there that'll kind of take away the wrinkles and the circles under your eyes, you know, pimple on your nose or whatever. It gets rid of all of that. But those are things that, you know, you have to invest in Zoom or a good program for that. Mm-hmm. Don't use Google. I have to say, Google is like the worst camera quality. It's the worst. The whole experience is—

I swear to God that—

Which is surprising, right? With Google.

It's the same with Teams.

Teams is awful too. Yeah.

I am not a fan of both of those products personally.

They use Zoom, but they do this weird thing where you're at like this small thing in the bottom. So if you're looking at yourself, you're looking down the corner.

Well, if you think about it, I mean, yeah, it's included with, you know, a business Google for the business stuff. But it's— to me, it's, it's not easy to share on at times. You can't annotate to the certain things. It just doesn't lend itself to the tools. I'm— there might be other tools out there like a Zoom, but I'm just saying these other products that are just dedicated to this just works really nicely. I get it. Cost is a thing for some.

But those are— that's money that you should invest in because it gives you that— if you're looking for professionalism, you want to have that. We want to have that professional look, you know, to go along with our brand. So it's important. We use Fathom, which is part of Zoom, which records the meetings and gives us the whole script of everything we say is recorded, and then it highlights it and kind of takes down and kind of summarizes it for you. That's another piece, another software that's great to have. When you're doing this work?

You know, like, Lynda, depending on your— you were saying, like, sometimes our microphone, sometimes our other equipment, sometimes your computer, just your internet speed, your makeup of your computer. If you don't have enough memory, you're not going to be able to have a Teams and a Slack and a Zoom and a blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Or whatever the combination is. So being cognizant of what causes those glitches. I mean, things happen. Things are gonna come up.

Yes. A stink bug can fall down into your pocket in a meeting. That was the funniest meeting I've ever been on. Sarah had a stink bug. I don't know where it came from. I don't even know what a stink bug is. We don't have them in Florida, but she put her hand in her pocket and all of a sudden she— we were in a meeting trying to convince somebody to hire us and she put her hand in the pocket and she pulled out a bug and she screamed and then the camera went and she was just the funniest thing. Left me with the potential client going, he goes, that was hysterical because she went off camera, off the meeting.

He wished it had been recorded. He couldn't. He never— it was just hilarious.

I had a spider once come down in front of me. Great.

Now driving, when you have that driving, oh my God, you look like I'm a crazy— like spiders and yeah. So, oh man.

We were talking about as we were queuing up for the podcast this morning, one of the equipment examples is that I gave was like, you know, we all run over to Pinterest and go, I'm going to have this perfect office. And you see, you see like 5 screens. Well, I did that for a while, but it was really difficult when I would share screens with clients in a Zoom meeting, having to hop back and forth between screens. And so I ended up getting this big 4-foot-long curved— what is this, a Samsung screen? It's just beautiful. It was expensive, but I can load up all the spreadsheets and the QuickBooks screens and everything on there and just hop from one thing to another with a client. It's just amazing. And you know, how many times have we talked about having to use T-accounts between liabilities and assets and all this? So Joy, I have to give her a shout out on our team, designed these mouse pads. I don't know if I can get it up there, but there they are. And so right on our mouse pads, you know, there's a great tool. Beautiful. And I'm always, when we're in meetings, I'm like, Joy, I'm going to use your mouse pad. Yeah, we make fun with it too, you know.

That's a good— But those are things you need to use to invest in remote work. We are seeing where attorneys are leaving the big firm and then they're starting out on their own and they're collaborating with other attorneys, which is really cool. And they've got like this, they'll have a, an, like a place to meet, like a conference room that they'll rent, but they're collectively separate law firms, but they're collaborating. Like maybe one does estate planning, but if somebody comes in and needs family law, they'll refer. I think that's something you're gonna see more of in the future that we don't, you know, that's kind of born out of, I think, the pandemic. I think, well, we had a client when we first started with, in the beginning of the pandemic, that they didn't have a camera, so they would join our calls on a phone, or they would, they didn't have cameras in their computers, so they couldn't show their faces. And they bought the cameras right before the pandemic really took off, and then the camera pricing went way up. So, you know, that's something I think everybody should invest in a good camera. We have still have meetings with law firms that are— they just don't want to invest in the equipment, and I think that they, they don't realize how important it is to really like have a microphone, have a camera on the computer. They should all come with a computer and a camera at this point. Sarah got us these really good ones that kind of move and follow us, these Macs that we have, but which is really cool. I mean, I think the camera quality on this one in particular, Sarah, from what I had before is like night and day with the Apple product. It makes a huge difference of how we look in these meetings now with this. And I think protecting your day is important. So not doing back to back to back to back to back to back meetings where you never get to get away from the desk for a bit and get your eyes away from the screen.

Well, we've done that. We've done that mistake. I mean, full admission, we're saying this, but it's from experience of where we're like, Oh my God.

Yeah, we would actually log in and go, I have to take a bio break. You know, I mean, yeah, tell somebody that, you know, we should have that space.

But it's unfortunate though, meetings do run over naturally. So things happen. I think the forgiveness factor of where we currently are post-pandemic is higher. Pets, things are happening around us. It's a different work environment. To your point, Lynda, like—

But I also think, Sarah, one of the things we should talk about is how do you, with staff—

Yes.

How do you work remotely with staff? So our, all our staff, global team, US-based team, everybody's remote. How do you manage that piece? Which I know we talked a little bit about having teams and my cat's now joining. But you know, how, how do you manage that? Because from personal experience with Artesani Accounting, I, don't think that the person that was working with me was working the amount of hours that were being clocked in. So that's always a fear as a business owner that, you know, you get to look at the production of work and is that person doing the work? Is that person goofing off and logging in and then watching TV or taking care of their children or whatever, doing Facebook or something and not producing? So those are things that I think a lot of, I think a lot of law firms when they called all their staff back into the office was that was one of the driving factors that they felt that production went down. And I think sometimes production can go up when you have somebody at home, if it works better in their schedule and they don't have to drive to the city, or I think that will save time, gas headache. If the kids are sick, they're home. I think that that's a better way to be, but it really, it's really an individual.

I mean, was it you and I, Lynda, that, and maybe it was Steve, there was that whole piece that came out where people employees were actually working longer because they didn't, to your point, have the front commute and the back commute. They justified things differently.

But they had less interruptions and so they could focus more. And before you know it, the day is 12 hours long.

And they're not taking lunch and getting away from the computer either.

They're eating lunch. But there's some people that can't work like that. So if you're in an environment, let's say you don't have a headquarter office to go to, Maybe somebody does need like a WeWork style space or a collaborative space. That's a conversation, an individual conversation to have with that about what that looks like. Depends on the engagement of what the services. I think also that Lynda, you were alluding to this a little bit and we haven't got it all worked out ourselves, but we've used certain tools in place that lock our domains down, um, so that— and I couldn't log in as our assistant right now. I could not log in as her on our domain because that is her login, because we've locked it down. I mean, sure, as an admin I can do it, but as a colleague— so, and then we take other measures to protect your environment too. And there's, um, classes that were recently taught on the virtual desktop interface, which, you know, we do find that we're in that space a lot because law firms have these servers that they've spent a lot of money on and they have things locked on there. And then you get your own login and you log on to that to do whatever it is that's needed on that platform.

And I think that's so safe. And they don't realize that that's not as safe as cloud-based software.

Some, some do and some do— it depends on their setup, right? Or there's a legacy segment to it.

But yeah, we've invested in Practice Protect to protect our passwords and our clients' passwords. We've spent a lot of money on that. We've spent a lot of money on these things, this software. We've invested in it because we're invested in protecting our clients, just like we want to protect our own data. And that's one of the things I think you're going to see going forward. We're already starting to see it where these people that are wanting to hack things in, they're getting very creative and they're, it's so easy 'cause that's usually the weak point is—

Yeah.

A staff member will open an email they weren't supposed to or click on a link that they're not supposed to or go to a website they're not supposed to and, and, you know, very innocently or share data that they shouldn't have just emailed out that sensitive data. So those are the things that are part of working remotely, I think that are critical. When you're working with firms that you need to institute policies when you're working with your own staff. And when you're working with the staff, sometimes we have to educate our clients because they don't really— I don't know if they don't think about it. I mean, you have to have that, like, and you do really have to now analyze your, your setup and how you do things because it's so easy. You're not there in their office to see how they're doing it. So, yeah.

Steve, how do you, how do you do that? I mean, I know that You're— there's a small change with your setup in that you all are in the same state. Your distance is apart. It's not convenient to drive into a place. I mean, that's not your setup. But client— through the client experience side, how do you navigate that to assist to make sure things are met? I mean, because we're dealing with timing efficiencies, schedule efficiencies. I mean, one of your team members might work super early and get off late, or, you know, early, start early and get off early. Some might lag, you know, cross over. How do you handle that for yourself and your—

Well, we're, you know, I'm gonna look at Practice Protect again. I looked at it before, but we're using Keeper app for all the passwords, which is a very strong password protector. We change those passwords quite frequently and we meet every day. At a set time. Now, if we're in a big project, like right now we're in 3 different trust cleanup projects.

Yeah.

And so some days I might send a message out to the, the other 2 team members and say, do you have anything for this morning or not? But I always check in with them every morning to make sure that they've got what they need. And generally we'll have a meeting every day and we just go through what we're doing, where we're at, where we need help, those sort of things. Being available is hugely important to the team. Obviously you guys have them all over the place. So you've really got to think, you know, you're on the West Coast, Sarah and Lynda, you're on the East Coast and I'm in the middle. And so, you know, sometimes coordinating things can get a little bit wonky.

But yeah, yeah.

When we have Ben Day on, I think he's one of our upcoming guests. I really hope he can share with us how he's using Clockify and project management because to your point, Lynda, you mentioned the one employee. He gave an example. He's one of— he's one of my business coaches. I just totally adore working with him. I just love that guy. But he shared a story about how he was able to look at a bar graph on an employee, and he could see that this project was taking forever. And he's like, wait a minute, something's wrong. This, this isn't right. And lo and behold, the guy was taking lots of naps. And you know, but he was able to pinpoint it right away because he had his SOPs in place, standard operating procedures in place. Yeah. The expectations, keeping track of the staff, what they're doing, having them clock in and out by project. That really helped in— and he's a lot like you two in the size of your company, your shared company and your individual companies. There's that much volume that he's— that's what he does. He's kind of like the network operations center, if you will. For the company. He's watching what everybody is doing all day and he's available to them. And also one of the things I learned from him that I really like, and it's a goal in this company, is to have a shared calendar so that they can see when I'm available and when I'm not available, you know, because that's hugely important. I always want to be available to them. Mm-hmm. Last week, as you know, I was traveling. We recorded podcast from my RV.

Yeah.

But I had a client in a personal injury firm who had a huge settlement come in during the middle of my trip, and he was able to contact me. He had no clue where I was at.

Yeah.

And I was able to help him with the settlement from where I was at and get it done. And he just thought I was in my office somewhere. So having very— back to what you were saying, Sarah, in the equipment, having a really strong internet connection, a really reliable internet connection.

Don't skip on that. Yeah, you want to plug it in too.

You don't want to be doing it wirelessly if you're going to be on something. That's one of the things every time I've recorded for Intuit, you have to be plugged in. They don't want to hear that you've had a Wi-Fi blurb while they're trying to record. Yeah.

The other thing too is we VPN in addition to all of our security.

A VPN.

I mean, it happened sadly. It did happen at the conference, and thankfully a vendor was available to assist with that whole thing. And it was just— it's just such a— it's just a simple misstep. And unfortunately, we get a lot of pushback from clients and staff, depending on— not us personally, but just in general. I've heard this before of not wanting to follow, not wanting to do this. But at the current risk of where things are going and what we hear, and like Lynda to your point you brought it up, like they're getting really crafty, they're getting a little bit more savvy in their approach. It does boggle my brain sometimes that, you know, like, like you said, Steve, you're down— Susan mentioned this in our, in our last episode with her. She was just literally down the street, right? She— and, and people just want to come over, or clientele wants to come over and drop stuff off. Well, she's actually not literally down the street. She's like in another state in a campsite.

Yeah.

Yeah. Just scan it or fax it. And she mentioned her older clientele. She's like, if I could get these people to do this, it's similar, it's the same thing. We just went through that. Thankfully, sadly, with all the stuff that we just went through, that was one of the benefits of understanding how we all have to work remotely because things were not available to go into. We couldn't go into a bank, we couldn't go into a certain space to get things done. You were forced into it.

So now with the law firms, that really, like, we're not ready for that.

Yeah.

Well, let's use QuickBooks Desktop and QuickBooks Online as an example. QuickBooks Desktop has to be continually updated and have patches put in and things like that. And then somebody's server goes down and corrupts data, and then that has to be repaired and all that sort of stuff. To what you were saying a while ago, Lynda, You know, we're safer on the cloud. We really are. And that seems to be a sticking point with a lot of our legal clients. They're like, why is my information out there? And it's not. It's, it's, it's in little packets in lots of computers all over the world that it all has to be brought together instantaneously. It's much safer than QuickBooks Desktop on a server in the closet, in the hallway by the bathrooms.

You can't see it. QuickBooks Desktop is slowly going to go away. This is not going to be—

I agree.

I mean, 2 years from now, maybe it's not around at all. I don't know. Or somebody owns it. But I mean, they just canceled what, QuickBooks in France? And I think someplace else too, wasn't it, Sarah, that they canceled?

Oh, on the desktop. Well, you know, I think about this, Steve, to your point, and Lynda went through a hurricane. She had a server-based business.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

If you didn't have that in a cloud environment, which is what a lot of certain platforms do, like the Write Networks of the world and all these different types of things. But even them, I mean, it's just the backup to the backup. Well, we talked about Lynda and her videos. She backs them up now. It always takes that one moment and then you got to reset.

And you know what else is very key? Check with your business liability insurance at least annually, have a review. And find out what they're recommending and requiring for cybersecurity.

Well, yeah, they have cybersecurity audits. You can hire a company to come in and see if you're a big enough company, have them come in and review how processes— because something that gets lost, say you have somebody working and then they're not there working with you anymore. Who has what passwords? Who has what? You know, if you're shutting it off, like just letting someone go, you gotta cut 'em off and get, get them off all the files. You need to have a policy and procedure in place when you're working remotely, just like when you're in the office, same thing.. But you need to have that. You need to have that list. Those are things you gotta think about because somebody could do a lot of damage to your firm too.

That's right. Yeah.

You really wanna make sure you've got that in both.

Solo person, solo attorney, solo, solo anything, right? Your computer, if, what if you're just based on a laptop, which is totally fine.

Right. But then if you— Laptop or leave it on a plane.

Cloud-based. Yeah. Leave it on a plane as Lynda did.

Oh boy.

If you have a brand new one backed up, like, it's just so simple to think, ah, I'm just gonna set up, which is great. I think it's amazing that we live in a day and time that we can just literally get certain things in place, get certain policies and procedures for ourselves with, you know, liability insurance and that kind of stuff, and, and set up camp, you know, set up shop right away. And then now what? And all of the other things kind of happen after the fact, and They're scary to think about.

But they are. That woman at the conference, I mean, she was in tears, but she logged into the free internet for the conference. She didn't— Sarah and I have our own little internet boxes. We carry them. We bring them to hotels. We don't use the hotel when we're working because we work at a conference. We have our own, which is protected with a password, and it's ours and it's locked down, and we have VPNs. These are things you have to think about when you're going to work remotely. And if you are on the road or you do anything like that, it's just important stuff that you have to really lay out the groundwork before you delve into that working remotely. And if you are already in that place, start to take a look at and review your procedures and what—

What is, uh, safety and hazards, Lynda? Like you have that in everything. You have your, I forget what it is, what it's called, but it's It's in every other industry, construction, farming, you know, spa. You had it in the spa, in restaurants, right? Like, to what you're saying is—

Yes, safety.

Yeah, it's a good topic.

I don't know which one of us thought of it. It's a good topic. So any last thoughts before we dial this one back in?

Well, I wanted to to share. As you know, I travel a lot in the, the summer. And back to what you were talking about, where you carry your little box with you, your little, with your VPNs and everything to the conferences. I do the same thing. And within my RV, I've got one system and then I'm getting ready to add a redundant system on the back of that.

Ooh.

So as an example, my current system works off of SIM cards from the, in, phone providers and it's very secure.

Yes.

And I've got my VPN and all of that. And that's what I usually carry around to conferences and stuff like that. And then I'm adding Starlink and Starlink will also link with my, in the RV system and I'll have that redundancy there. So I can be on the SIM cards, I can be on Starlink, I can have them failing over with each other. So like we can be in this Zoom meeting from the RV and I don't lose anything. And it's all very secure and it's all very mixed, if you will. It's not in one place.

Mm-hmm.

And that, I went to a Starlink presentation at the recent Airstream convention I was at. And I was, I was amazed how many people are really tuning into security and, and those sorts of things. And so for those of you who are watching this podcast today that are like, oh my God, how can I afford all of this stuff? Let's go back to what Sarah said a minute ago. If all you have is a laptop to start with, fine, sit down and get started, but don't lose sight of what you need and what you need to budget for. So instead of buying that really fancy packet of pens and things like that and all that and all the pretty things, think about what you need to make yourself secure and safe in the cloud environment and you'll be fine and you'll be a lot more efficient and you won't be working like in environments that we were talking about, like with QuickBooks Desktop that can get corrupted so much easier. Mm-hmm. Yeah, so that's my final thought, but I love it.

Well, I think it's just no matter what it is, it's remarkable what you can do in the remote environment. We are blessed. We are. And but it— I, I just say it's not for everybody, and that's okay too, because some people are not— like you said, Steve, you can't work alone. They're not disciplined. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that's, that's okay. That's okay. You know, no judgment. We would never, you know, it's— if you try it, you tried it. Didn't work. Okay, that's fair. But there is more. It sounds glamorous to some, to others it doesn't. They're fearful of it. Totally get it. But it does take a little bit of forethought and a little bit of consideration and all these things. So that's all I kind of want to put out there.

I'd just like to add If you are lonely and you're working out of your office, I mean, there's plenty of ways you can reach out to other colleagues and maybe just chat during the day or maybe pick up the phone or be on Zoom all the time. Or, you know, there's plenty of ways.

Yeah.

There's plenty of ways that you can kind of, we could, Sarah and I can work on Zoom just staying on the camera and working at the same time. Obviously we work together, so that's easy. But even if you don't have the same company, Sometimes you can just work, even if it's not on Zoom, you can just text back and forth, check in on people, and then you just don't feel so isolated. And I think that's probably one of the hardest parts of working remotely is you can be isolated and it's easy to throw yourself into work, but definitely put some boundaries like Steve said and, you know, break up that day, get up and walk, get outside, you know, eat your lunch away from the screen, give your eyes a break, and for sure take a break.

Take a half-hour nap. Take a half-hour nap.

Take a half-hour nap.

You know? Let your brain reorganize and recharge.

Yeah. So I hope everybody enjoyed this episode. Make sure you subscribe to our podcast and our YouTube channel. We'd love it if you could rate this podcast, give us some love and some 5 stars or whatever the stars are, wherever you're listening to us, and share it with your friends. If you know the colleagues or any friends you think might find this beneficial, we'd love for you to share it with your friends. If you have any topic requests or guests suggestions, you can always email us at info@accountantslawpod.com. That's P-O-D dot com. And you can send us a message through our website, accountantslawpod.com. Also, we have the Law Lab. If you're interested in joining a group of bookkeepers and accountants and lots of fun mastermind people that just love legal bookkeeping, you can join us there. It's www.accountantslawlab.com. And Steve's actually— are you home now, Steve? I am.

I am in my office working at home. I'm going back out on the road again next week. Okay. And then back home for a couple of weeks and then a little bit more traveling between then and October. But this week I'm in my home office.

Yeah, it's always good to be in your own bed, right? Oh, don't forget to follow us on Instagram too. So we're also on Instagram. So we're all over the place thanks to Tierra. So our love behind the camera. So for sure, Join us and, um, and we'll see you all next week.

Bye-bye!