Onboarding a New Attorney Client

Welcome to Accountants LawPod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Lynda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhardt.

Welcome back, everyone. How are you, Lynda and Steve?

We're good, right, Steve?

Yeah, we're doing great.

It's summertime. You get your sexy voice going on.

I am. I have my sexy voice. I'll do my radio announcer voice today. How are you?

You do.

Yeah, you really We got it going on today. Well, we're kicking off onboarding new attorney clients. You can really kick it off, Steve, with that one.

I could do the recording. Just send this and send that and you'll get 10 teeny tiny clothespins as a bonus. And wait, there's more.

Just follow the yellow brick road.

Yeah.

Yeah. Well, what do you do when you get a new client? And you're onboarding them. They've signed, everything went well, they've signed.

Now what? Anyone? Anyone?

Oh, I thought she was asking you. She knows what happens with us. She better.

We've got it together this morning, I'll tell you.

We're having fun.

It's summer.

I like to have a checklist of items for them and set up a Zoom meeting and let them know what we need and go through it and We use Financial Cents. I like to take, you know, I set up their portal in advance. We have that all ready to go. We'll set up some dummy transactions in there and we'll show them how it works and the notifications they get and all those sorts of things to kind of get their buy-in into the process that we're going to take them through. And then we have a whole checklist of things like the bank access for read-only access for pulling statements and looking at transactions and credit cards and all the different things that we need to do the job and kind of setting up the flavor for like the next 30 and 60 days, what that onboarding is going to look like and how we're going to— I always like to warn them that we're going to get started and you're probably going to see us disappear for a little bit and then we're going to circle back around and really start the ball rolling with all our questions and all those things. But I don't know about you guys, but that's how we like to do it because we like to poke around in their billing software. We like to—

Yeah.

Have everything in place before we start so we're not chasing them for the documents that we need and, and kind of building the flavor of our relationship. We call it the high-level look. What's that?

We call it the going dark period. We usually— but usually it's only in a cleanup, so we don't go dark. Basically, it's in the cleanup phase, but we still meet with them every week as the cleanup's going on. Initially, we do a lot of what you just said. We get the— we get on the bank account so we don't have to be asking them for bank statements unless it's inside of QuickBooks. But then even then we sometimes want it. And all the other details like you just mentioned, a lot of that stuff like the tax return already came through in the scope part of the job, so we don't have to ask for that. But we might be tying the books to tax as part of the job. We'll start at the beginning usually. If there's a cleanup and it involves trust, we will do that. But if we've got on—

Yeah.

Ongoing, we start that as well. So we kind of work the two teams at the same time. So we're cleaning up on one side and then somebody's keeping it going forward so we're not falling behind.

That's smart.

We don't typically start a job as soon as somebody's signed the contract. They know it's going to be a little bit of time because we have to get everything set up. You know, you're talking financial sense. We're setting ourselves up in carbon now, and it's a, it's a process to get all that set up. Typically what happens first is Sierra puts it in the channel so everybody can know, like, new client. She gets the website, and, and that way they have an idea of who we're working with. She puts like a little celebratory, you know, victory post.

I like that.

All the team, so everybody knows about it. And, um, then we kind of chuckle that somebody's always in the— I said, how do you think they're reacting to it? And I said, they're probably going, oh God, I wonder if I'm getting that client.

Am I getting— you never know. New challenge.

Who's getting it is really probably what they're thinking. I wonder who's going to get that one.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I feel like sometimes we've had to also— and I've seen other people actually do this in their firms, but we've had to go to this once in a while— is it's not as easy to get all those bank logins set up. It might be a volume of them. So sometimes just doing a meeting and pulling that in. Yeah.

Because some of them are— you get 24 hours. If you don't go and do it in the 24 hours, you're not going to get it. It comes in like a different time zone than mine. I'm coming in and it's too late. I don't get to it. So it's better sometimes just to have that meeting, initial kickoff meeting, and then just get all the pieces together because that's when they're really involved and they're really excited.

Right.

Busy, you lose that, you know, excitement.

Yeah.

I think sometimes we have a Slack channel depending on the client. We'll have a Slack channel set up. So we might want to do that at the same time if that's the type of client that requires that or, um, Or the types of communication styles that, like, like you're saying, Lynda, sometimes it is Slack.

Sometimes we have to develop one where, because of the cadence of work. So depending on the type of firm and the volume of work, we may need to set up additional, like, say, a Google Form or a spreadsheet in order to communicate for the day-to-day so that that week can be handled properly during the week because we're in their files so frequently. But yeah, Steve, I, I believe that we have a very similar setup. The thing that I have found though is learning the way to work with a firm. Sometimes it's the owner you work with, and other times it's someone that's assigned to you, or it could be multiple people assigned to you, and figuring out that style of communication, because not everyone's in at the same time communicating the same style. It's, it can be all—

Who wants to be copied on the emails, who doesn't, who, you know, all those sorts of things.

Yeah. Which is kind of the beauty of our new software too, that we're going to be able to have communications on email specifically if a client sends us something and then we have to bring in other people, we can actually have inside communication on the messages.

Oh, that's wonderful.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

The other thing too is, do you all find that when we're looking at the tech stack, Obviously, like you said, Lynda, we're doing cleanup. We're not trying to change a lot of things. Sometimes we're hired for a portion of the migration or cleaning up of the migration, but then we end up seeing a whole tech stack that you have to ask, like, what is this all used for?

What's the purpose? What do you do with it?

Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes they don't tell you that they have something. You find out later that they're using something on the side.

Mm-hmm.

I didn't mention I use Filevine. No, you never mentioned that. You have parts of their workflow that they don't tell us that we kind of need to know about. That's another thing that can happen.

Yeah, that partly goes to that inquiry thing. But, you know, even the best of us can, if you're not asking the right questions or following up with the right questions, it is hard to know what those things are. Also, what we have found of late is these migrations are happening mid-year. Not at the beginning of the year.

Mid-year, midweek, middle of everything. It's like, what? Why did you pick?

Yeah. Why do you find— why are they— what's their answer? Why are they doing that now?

That's when Cleo could do it. So they say March 22nd. I'm like, what caused that date? Oh, I don't know. So it's a half a month in the, you know, 8 days in the current month. Like, there's that line in the sand. It's such a— like, you were March 22nd, you should have said, oh no, we're gonna do it on April 1st. So you have a clear cutoff date and you can finish a month. And it's, it's crazy that that's how it's happening, um, but it is. So, and that makes it a lot more difficult because a lot of times they'll do a migration without even talking to us. And I can remember this happening with LeanLaw even way back where somebody did the migration and they, they did it through LeanLaw, they did an import, and nobody went back to check, did it all come through? Like, what's your— And we'll say, what is your original import, and usually Lynda was very good because it's usually Fred, and they get everything. He makes sure that everything matches. But on some of the software, there's nobody there to validate the numbers. So it might have had one amount coming on the bottom of the spreadsheet of the import, and then the different amount came in because some line items weren't picked up for whatever reason, and you're missing data. And that's a problem with trust, and it's a problem with client costs too. You don't want to miss any client costs.

So But how do you know the data is good to begin with too?

Exactly. And that's usually what happens too. So you get it out of some other software that's just garbage that came across. So it's not being read properly. And yeah, maybe you have a couple of names that are the same, almost, maybe a comma and space. And so it doesn't, it sees it as one name, even though in the other software maybe it was one name and now it's seeing it as 3 different names. Makes it messy. Or you can get duplications. It's, yeah, it's pretty, pretty ugly. So you wanna be able to check into that. Also, If you're doing a cleanup, it's a lot different because you're going to have a lot more to do, especially when it comes to trust. How far back are you going? Is it in a closed fiscal period that you're going back and cleaning up trust? Are you doing it in a spreadsheet to tie it all back because you don't want to disturb what's there? Or are you actually doing it in the, in the accounting? But you can't change transactions from the past, so in a closed period, so you have that to deal with. That's another part. Or maybe it's just somebody that came to us with Clio, but they never connected it. And now we're having to be that person to connect it because we want to integrate the software. And then that's a whole process that you want to have done by a professional. You don't want to tackle that job by yourself. You really don't. I don't care how easy it says it is. It's not. There's a lot of things that can go wrong in doing that.

As you think about a lot of things about just software in general, we also kind of look through that lens of like your payroll provider.

What—

how have you been booking that? I guess One thing is, Lynda and Steve, is one thing we have found is at times is how credit cards are handled. They're not handled as you would think.

That is a slippery slope a lot of the time.

Yeah, so it's put in not as a dedicated bank feed style, it's put in as a bill or even an expense, right, Lynda? We've seen it as, and you gotta wonder why.

Or it's their personal card that they've, linked to the bank for some reason.

And yeah, yeah.

Or they haven't linked it to the bank and they go, oh, you forgot to put these expenses in. Well, where are they? Oh, they're on my personal card. How do I get them out of there and into the books? Well, we have a few ways we can do it. If you want to get them in the books for the fiscal year that's being closed and it's already passed and it's in last year, then we're going to have to put it in like as a loan and then you're going to pay it in this year. I mean, you have to if you want to get it in for the right fiscal period. It can get really messy. That's why I said you need somebody that knows what they're doing. You can always see when somebody's tried to do it themselves or they had an admin do it that doesn't have the accounting background. It usually shows itself pretty quickly, especially with compliance. I love— we used to have a running joke, Sarah and I, when we would go into a file. We've never— everybody says, well, I think ours is reconciled. Then we get in, oh, not reconciled. Does it match? Does it match? And then we had one. We had one like, oh my God, it is balanced and it's balanced properly. And I think it was a bookkeeper, retiring bookkeeper or something that knew what they were doing. But it was like, oh, that ruins our, you know, nobody ever has one reconciled. But we did find one. It was a smaller account. But yeah, I think that's part of it.

Steve, I was going to ask you, we have found this and I wonder if you have seen this of late. Talk about retiring, bookkeepers retiring, or they don't like the software that the firm is going into. Yeah. So they just bow out. They leave. How do you— how have you encountered that? Or have you seen that on the rise a bit?

I haven't seen it on the rise. We did stumble across one this year that had been with an attorney for a long, long time and was actually doing everything in Excel.

In Excel. Oh, oh my God.

Fortunately, we were able to convince the attorney to let her finish 2024 and we'll start fresh with QuickBooks in 2025. So thank goodness. But it's a good time during the onboarding, you know, in some of these situations to bring up practice areas again. What are your practice areas? You know, how do you work within those practice areas and what do you want that to look like on the books? Because that's a great time to hit the ground running in the right, the right direction right from the get-go.

I can imagine you're going to be able to give that attorney so much data, like live data as of whatever.

Yeah.

Never had if it was in Excel.

Right, right.

And that person was probably making a full-time job out of something that maybe is only a few hours now.

That was my first thought when, when I saw that. I was like, whoa, we can save so much time there and get so much more data.

Yeah, yeah. The response back, I think you'll be able to pull anything that they probably never had.

Right.

Because just spreadsheets, oh my, and also thinking of all the mistakes that could happen with a spreadsheet.

Oh my gosh, yeah.

Pick up a number or, you know, you're grabbing a column, you're adding the column up and you miss a cell or whatever.

Yeah.

Wow.

And the, you know, the onboarding is such a good time to really get personal with the client and find out what makes them tick and, you know, find out You know, how big is your family? Do you have, you know, you mentioned you have children. How old are they? You know, kind of just get to more personalize the interaction with them. And that always leads off into, you find little tidbits that help you work with them. Does that make sense?

Yeah. Well, you learn a little bit of the, maybe the need or the demand of financials, like how are they paid? What are their needs for their fam—

Good point. Yeah, I mean, are the kids, are you saving for college? Are you, you know, what are you doing?

Yeah. The other thing too is I feel like it's also a good time to sort of look at the way you handle client costs, understanding that workflow. Are you moving into a new software? How have you decided to handle that familiarity of reporting styles that you might need? 'Cause like you said, Steve, you start to learn where is it that they're most concerned. You know, it's nice when somebody is, okay, I'm— I really want to know this, or I'm— this has always been in the back of my mind, I don't understand how this works. Then Lynda and I can lean into that and say, okay, that helps us because we'll want to make sure your chart of accounts is supporting the thought process of how you get to those numbers kind of thing.

When do they come to you?

A lot of times Sarah and I will start the file. Like if we get a new client, we'll kind of go in and start the work so we can understand a workflow and how we I wanna lay it out and we'll do it initially and then it gets passed to the bookkeeper depending on the client, not always, but sometimes with certain clients we have to jump in and kind of look at, especially if it's a big cleanup, understanding like what are we looking at? And we know that from the scope, but sometimes clients don't sign the contract for a while and you have to go back. We've been putting expiration dates on them now because I mean, I can't be telling, I can't be getting somebody that I looked at in January or December of last year. Right. Now they're signing, the price isn't the same if you waited that long. And yeah, I mean, it's just try to remember, right?

So much has gone on since then. Like, yeah, what is the work that's been done?

Is that which one was that again?

Yeah. Um, where were they in their life cycle of changes in their firm? Yeah, it's—

How do you set expectations for communicating? How do you lay that out?

For us, what we have found is In the beginning, what we have is a go dark as we're collecting. You'll hear from us, but then we try to develop, based on a communication, a tailored service communication style, check-in points. So we'd like, ideally, if it's once a week, depending on the volume, if it's a larger firm, once a week, sometimes twice a week has to work because there's so many questions. Other times it's every other week, just 15 minutes on the calendar just to make sure that we're checking in. We have found success with that. It doesn't always work with every single client though. That's not to say that what we've decided works for us is going to work for everybody. And that has been true for a few firms because they're smaller, the availability of time or the partners or the people dedicated, there's transition happening. Mm-hmm. So it is hard to say like, hey, I want to commit this person or have this time. And then we find— this has happened to us too. We found out that we're spending time with one person and that's one tiny piece of the pie where there was like maybe a couple other people or some of the answers needed to come directly from the owner. So that again goes back to that kind of evolving conversation. Check-in points at minimum, we— like Lynda does a great job for us. She'll send a weekly update or some sort of notice of, hey, it's been a minute since we've last spoken. Here's what— here's where we're at.

Oh, I like that.

Um, just because if we don't, then we hear from clients and what do they say, Sarah? They say, well, I had somebody do this work, but I never heard from them again, right? Never had one ounce of communication with them. And I don't— I— we know what that feels like when we're doing work with somebody. We want that. Just even, even if it's just a message, if they're really busy and they're like, I can't do a meeting every week, but if you just let me know what's going on and we outline it just exactly. This is what happened. This is what we did in the last week. This is what we're working on next. So they have an idea and we're in phase 1, phase 2, phase 3, or whatever in the project. So then, and then sometimes I'll just take, like, if we finished phase 1 or if there was parts of phase 1, but then we had some reason that couldn't make it through, I'll actually take it out of the contract and I cross it out with the, you know, strikethrough what we had done. And then we leave whatever's open and with some notes to say why. It's kind of, it's really a good way to do it because it also helps us know where we're at in the contract. Yeah. And in the phase. And then also helps the client because they already know what they signed up for, and then it lets them know where we're at. And then especially when we're letting them know that next week is— so they don't think we're just sitting back ignoring them, not nothing's happening. And sometimes I think that can happen with a client if you don't stay on top of it. And they really do appreciate the updates. I know they do.

And yeah, I think attorneys really, really do compared to a lot of other businesses because of the type of work they do, and their clients are expecting They don't do a good job of it themselves though, do they? It depends.

Yeah, it depends on the— but you know, it's— you kind of open the door, Steve, there. There are some people that we've worked with through the years that really, this is like, you know what, just don't check in with me until you're at this stage. Yeah, they'll just tell you straight out. Okay, no problem. Um, if something comes up in between now and then and it's a little bit of a not like a red flag kind of conversation. It's a great reminder to say, oh, based on our last email, this is the communication style that we were adhering to.

This is what we're still waiting for from you. Yeah. You know?

Yeah.

This is why it's getting held up because we're still waiting for this piece.

Yeah, this isn't done because I'm still waiting.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Sometimes the bigger the firm, the more cooks are in the kitchen. And so then that also, has to lean into, okay, let's strategize. Let's make sure we kind of like an agenda style of pieces, phases maybe. But when you're onboarding, it's such a critical moment for us as well, as you know, Steve, like we're like, if I'm onboarding you, I'm wanting, like you said earlier, I want to understand what's going on. What is it? Is your comfort level? Are you a bank balancer? Meaning, do you always open up your bank account and that's how you validate it in your mind?

Well, you know what, to your point, oh my gosh, I'm glad you brought that up because I run into this frequently. They'll say, well, the bank says we have this much money.

How can you—

excuse me, how come you say we have this much in QuickBooks? And I like to include that in the onboarding. And I also like to include where there's multi-member firms, to your point, with all the cooks in the kitchen. I tell them it's okay for you guys to talk to each other before you bring the question to us so that, you know, you don't have this going on between the two of you.

Yeah, that's so true because we get those calls. Another one that we've gotten is when they look at the— if they're on the home page or whatever on QuickBooks and they'll have the widgets and they'll look at the widgets, but the widgets are set to accrual and then you'll send them the financial reports and like, days don't match, something's wrong. You're like, okay, well, you're looking at accrual-based here, and this is— then you have to go through the whole explanation of what the difference is in the two. It's like— and I'll tell them sometimes, don't even look at that, what's on QuickBooks, just trust me that the documents I'm sending you, you know, they're, they're specifically picked and designed for you. But we've had that, and we've had the panic call with, why is my balance negative but my balance is positive? Well, you had all these unclear checks. That you haven't addressed that go back 5 years. You have to have that conversation.

We've also had communication between partners saying two different things.

Yep.

So, I mean—

That's why I brought up that phrase I use. It's okay for you guys to talk to each other before you call.

It's a good point, yeah. 'Cause, I mean—

And if you can set that expectation up front in the onboarding, They know that you're on top of it and that, you know, I have no problem sharing what another partner told me when I need to, you know, and that's not always easy, but it's like, you've really got to talk to your partner because that's the level we're at here, you know. This partner is telling us to do this. This partner is telling us to do that. You guys got to talk.

The one that's been interesting for us in— and we didn't know this in the onboarding stage, it would have never come up because it's not even a forethought to ask— is how your firm works with responsibility. Meaning you have the rainmaker, the operator, the managing.

Oh, yes.

All the different things, right? Well, at one point in our existence of working through kind of the newer side of it together, Lynda and I, and figuring things out, We had one where the partners rotated the seats.

Oh yeah, I remember that. Yeah, they changed positions. So we were—

Oh, okay. Unbeknownst to us.

And we didn't know. All of a sudden it was like the year flipped and they switched seats. So now all of a sudden the go-to person on our file was not the same person that we initially started with.

That's an interesting approach, isn't it?

Yeah, it's like they drew the short straw or something, I guess.

I told them that. I understood the logic to it. I didn't feel that that was appropriate for the person. It's not the strong suit of the individual. So it's like taking an employee and saying, okay, you've done this role, now I'm gonna put you over here. And that person's scared to answer the phone or scared to whatever, doesn't have attention to detail. And that really, the communication, it's a whole reset. So when things like that occur, you're asking us to basically re-onboard you.

Right. Truly, because that person's— it's not like they were having meetings in the background keeping each other abreast of what was happening. They just were like, okay, my term's done, next person in. And they don't know anything. They don't know anything about the past. And then we have to teach them everything that happened and all that happened. This is what we did. This is what Mary Jo said to do or whatever. And it's like, oh, that's not how I would've handled it. Well, we have to keep the documentation because this was happening. We weren't aware of that.

That really becomes crucial.

Yeah, it was very odd. It's an odd way to do it though. Usually there's somebody in the partnership that's stronger suited to accounting and that takes that role. And that's the person that's our approver basically. Usually you get a person in the office that's physically doing the work that we work with and then there's a person above that that person reports to. But that was a really weird situation in that case.

It also was very uncomfortable because it wasn't inclusive. So that's another thing. I think Steve, you brought this up and I feel like Lynda and I feel very strongly about this. In order for this to be a strong relationship, it has to be a relationship.

Exactly.

So to, you know, to— when you're making big decisions, I get it, it's a firm decision. Including us just on a cursory level would be very helpful because your decisions do impact our workflow. They do have some financial means attached to them. And so that's also another thing is we do our best to, you know, like we're supplying this information. Yes, we're doing this role, but we do wonder about where you're at, what is your ideas, what is your growth, where do you want to see yourself if you want to even grow, like, or is it just about quality of life for you and the team that you currently have?

Good point.

So onboarding is on the front end, looks like, like I imagine, like you're walking into a spa, you're filling out your pieces of paper. Here I am, they're reading it over. Okay, let's talk about you. That on the front end looks so simple, but really what happens is the evolution of the conversations and the information and to find out that you, forgot to share that you have 5 other credit cards. That's a big problem. Now our pricing is not aligned with what we discussed. That's a lot more work. Or you have this whole year-end true-up that you do, which what I love to call true-up, meaning you go through all of your records and figure out what you spend on your personal, and then you hand a big slop of stuff. No, no, that's— this needs to be very concise. You need— you wanted— you said at the beginning you wanted good financials. And then you send 12 months worth of stuff at the end of the year, that's not good financials. You didn't do a service to your business as well.

Yeah.

So, um, and then also the other thing too is the value. This is— yeah, you're paying for a service, but this isn't just about paying for a service. There's value behind it. And Lynda has brought this up repeatedly. A lot of people have what in their minds, especially when they're smaller, they need the CEO, the CFO, the coach, this, the that, and you have no means to afford it. And if we just had a candid conversation together, there are parts of the advisory services that we could offer you and then say, hey, look, we do want to bring in a partner that could lead you. We've done this before. We know what this looks like. We have the 50-foot view. We see a lot of firms do this. We work in tandem with X, Y, and Z, and they— if you're looking for that growth, we can look at that and we have the right partners to partner up with that.

So— I like what you just said about working with a lot of other firms. We have experience, and that, that can come in on the onboarding process too, where you give a tip. You want them to do it a certain way and you're trying to figure out how to get them to do it that certain way. You can say, we have another firm that tried this and it worked really well for them, or this idea really didn't because, and this is why we're asking for it to be this way. That really sets you up to be the expert during the onboarding process and set the tone, if you will.

The client says that to you. I mean, we've had that. They'll look at Lynda and I and go, well, you know this, right? Like, yeah, we actually do. Thanks for asking.

Yeah, yeah.

You want the onboarding to be very smooth. You have to remember it's going to take time and you have to let the client know that expectation is going to be time-consuming. We are going to probably be working with one of your employees. It's going to take time. That it's a building process, especially if you're changing software or moving into a different software. And I think sometimes you have to let them know that because of this, I mean, it's costly to the client, right? So that's the switch is costly to the clients, just like changing and adding a new employee. We have to learn the workflows and the processes, and we have to come up, you know, our job is to come up with something that makes it really smooth. Mm-hmm. More efficient, more accuracy. We give them more because that's what they're buying from us than they ever had before. And I can tell you lots of clients never had a 3-way bank reconciliation, at least a proper one, and they get that from us. And then they find out, well, you can do this, you can do that. There's more things that we can add. Like Sarah said, we don't change the, you know, we're not going to reinvent the wheel here. We're going to do this over time. So maybe they got a really crappy payroll program and we're like, ah.

Yeah.

I want to change that, but I want to wait till the end of the year and we'll change it at the end of the year. We'll start to have that conversation in November. Plant a seed. Yeah, because otherwise if you change too much on people, people don't like change. So because you're changing accounting teams and all of that, you just want to make it as smooth as possible. I think all three of us have been doing this enough that we do a very good job at it. But if you're listening and you want to figure out how to do this, because it's just remember, put yourself in that person's place that you're onboarding. I think that's the best way. And how would they feel if you were asking them constantly all week for things? Or would they feel better if you did a 15-minute meeting with them direct on Zoom and just did it then instead of— it's, it's very naggy and you're, you're interrupting their day a lot. You don't want to do that. You want to make this smooth. They'll be happier. You'll be happier.

It has some accountability to it too, right, Lynda Artesani? It allows them to have time to get homework done and say, hey, we need it. We're actually delayed now, but without it being a penalty or a punishment feeling, an adversarial call.

Keep it transparent, keep it documented, well documented, because people have short memories. Why isn't this done? You said it would be done by June 30th. Well, we're missing this, this, this, and this, and we've been asking for it every week. You're not going to get that why is it done if they're the person that's holding it up. So if you document it well, you know, as a legal bookkeeper, you want to document it well too.

I think today's episode will really resonate with especially new accounting and bookkeeping people. If you're listening or watching this today, take lots of notes because this will really help you out.

Yeah, there's a lot of good tips and nuggets throughout this entire episode that will help you. Yeah, frame it, frame it for you. Make it— I will say this. Don't try to be us.

No.

It's gotta be your style.

Yeah, it's gotta be your style. And I, I feel like that's a, that's a big difference here is, um, you know, as you're stepping into this or growing it, make it about how, how it works for you and then what's repeatable for you. Because what I do and what Lynda does, sometimes we do totally different ways of something. We get to the same end result, but we just have a different style. That's okay. We're fine with that. That's how that works.

I think the word is customize. Customize that onboarding and tell the client that that's what you're doing. I am customizing this onboarding just for you.

Yeah. And if you're unsure, you could do like a survey as you're going along to certain clients, see how they like the onboarding. Maybe they might have an idea that might help you. Give them, you know, how did you like the onboarding process? Did you feel it was timely? And then can you give us a few notes? So don't make it long, make it like 3 questions, but then you're gonna get some feedback that might help you in the long run.

Sometimes though, don't you feel like everyone's—

I don't want the report card.

I'm so done.

I know, I don't want the report card either, but it might help you, especially—

No, but it's even like just having to answer it. So I'm like, just—

I know, everybody surveys us to death, right?

I know.

And I just got a survey from my grocery store. It's like, oh God, I don't want it. And it always says it's short, but it never is. They never are.

It's like, oh, your credit card, your bank, Your telephone company.

Airline, hotel.

Well, you know what you could do, especially if you're new to this industry, is you jump on a Zoom with a friend. Not a friend that's gonna make a lot of fun of the process, but a friend who really cares about you and onboard them. Do a practice onboarding. You're gonna learn, you get to see what you look like.

You signed yourself up.

Especially if you're a morning person.

I said, okay, Steve, you just signed yourself up.

You want to be a guinea pig, Steve, for us?

Sure. Why don't you guys onboard me after we're done here today?

You're welcome.

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You know what I was thinking about when she was saying that? I want one of those orchestra ones and just be like, click here.

I love it.

It's a great topic though.

It was. Thank you.

We'll see y'all next time. Bye.

Thank you, everybody.