006 Should You Deliver Projects Early?

Okay, so the client engagement says you've got to deliver it by let's say the 20th, but the work is done on the 10th. Ah, what do you do? Do you send it to them on the 10th? Does that set an expectation that's maybe unreasonable and problematic for the future? Let's talk about it. Do you over deliver on expectations today? Jason Dal. I love this debate. I think it encapsulates so much of the squishy, contextual human elements of running an accounting firm. And this came back up after I put a poll on Twitter over the weekend. So US tax preparers are in like the sweatiest two weeks of the year where they're coming up on the first extension deadline, which is kind of a non deadline, but clients don't always understand that. And so I put a poll out on Twitter posing the question. Most tax preparers will have a cutoff to say you gotta get me all your stuff by say March 15th to get it out by 4:15 or March 1st to get it out by 4 15. But what if they give you their stuff after the cutoff and you can get it done? Do you deliver it by 4:15 or not? This is something in my firm that was always super controversial. The traditional way of thinking on this was really like exclusively, always go the extra mile, like just get it done. Like we're in, we're in service of them. And a lot of people echoed that. And in the poll There was almost 800 people voted. Almost 2/3 of people said, you get it done. And I think the, I think that side of the argument is what Jamie Cat said here. Of course. Why play games, right? Like why over complicate all the mental math and this whole discussion and, and everything that goes into it. Just, just get it done. If you're not getting it done, then you're like doing this weird like withholding thing just to be difficult or something like that. Like just get it done. What's the downside? And obviously the downside is are they gonna come to expect that in the future? Are you reinforcing negative behavior? Because when you have that cutoff date, like what that looks like is in all of the year end documentation and everything you're putting in front of the client, you're saying, here are the rules and here's what we expect of you. For us to be able to do your work. And that's very explicitly outlined. And then they don't follow the rules. And in some ways if you still file the return, you're kind of rewarding them for that, Right. And so that's the other side of the argument is is this enabling a behavior that you shouldn't be enabling? Are they going to come back expecting the same thing next time? Are they going to take the rules that you set out as not, you know, not take those seriously the next time around? I think especially in firms that are more kind of white glove, there's a real force of clients always thinking, I get this is the rule. But, but come on, I'm Steve, right. This doesn't apply to me. Right. Like, right. And like letting people still get the work done in time kind of reinforces that. So I think it's an interesting discussion. I think it's relevant to not just tax people, but where it's an even bigger thing I think is in the month end accounting close and I had put a very similar poll out. Looks like this is August of 2022. So let's say the engagement letter target date for financial statement Delivery is the 15th, but the financials are done on the 3rd. Do you deliver on the 3rd? Do you deliver on the 10th? Do you deliver on the 15th? And this is probably a better question, this is probably a better poll than the tax one. Interestingly, 25% of people said deliver on the 3rd, 50% of people said deliver on the 10th, even though the engagement target date is the 15th and 25% of people said Deliver on the 15th. And the arguments, the discussion is largely the same as what you see on the tax side. And it's, it's funny, like there's really smart people in the replies on both sides of the discussion with like very valid input. So like John, John Ray replied here, used to deliver early if they were done, but it conditioned people to expect it and then they got crotchety if you couldn't do it that way every month. Really funny. Kelly park said, I have a story. The engagement said the 15th for nine months. She delivered honor before the 10th. Re engagement survey said that their closings weren't on time. She called them, reviewed the engagement and the client started paying more for an earlier close. So that's an example of you're setting a new expectation and human nature is just such that like it's going to be really hard to then train the client off of that expectation once you deliver on it. But it's still kind of ridiculous, right? Like it's done, like just give it to them. So like what's, what's the happy medium here? And I could share. So I was kind of thinking about this over the weekend and it's one of those things where it's definitely dependent maybe on the type of your firm, the type of people that you work with. Some may be more. Some clients may be more susceptible to taking advantage of this than others because there's people. For example, I started when I was in public practice. I did a lot of work with folks in healthcare, and then later on I was doing more stuff with clients and professional services. And. And the really refreshing thing about the people in professional services was just like me, they sat there sending emails all day and managing scope and they had a really deep understanding of the same problems that I had and as a result were more respectful of those boundaries as opposed to people in healthcare where it's like they don't sit down in front of a computer, like they don't even have an office. Written communication is not something they do a ton of. And so they just weren't as versed in how you set those boundaries in a professional services firm. So maybe you work with creative agencies and they deal with those same issues too. And so they could totally understand, they totally get like the importance of the scope of the engagement and all that. Maybe it's a different answer with that sort of client. But here's kind of where I landed on was like three, like my take on what the. The quote unquote right thing to do here is in general, if there is such a thing, when people run very different types of firms. I think my answer to that question, so first would be I would deliver sort of early. So I think I'm in agreement with the people on that month end close poll where 50% of people said if it was ready on the 3rd, even though the engagement said the 15th, they would deliver on the 10th. I think that's me. What I don't like about delivering on the third is there's an element of like, I don't even want them to know what I'm capable of because if they know, like the reality is you could turn financial statements around on the 1st, and if your whole client base, the general expectation is to get it on the 15th or the 20th, somebody's is gonna be done on the 3rd. Right? There's probably a lot of them that are done on the third, and maybe you've got a few people that are paying astronomical amounts to get them that fast. But I would probably go with the 10th because it feels like the balance between not doing it so early as to tip my hand as to what the team is capable of, which kind of sounds ridiculous even Just to say out loud, but I just don't want to give the client that ammunition. But then feels like a nice middle ground from, like, just not arbitrarily sending them over on the 15th just because that's what's in the engagement letter. But I don't love it. But it's maybe the answer that I don't love the least. As far as the tax poll goes, man, I think, and we talked about this in episode four of Daily. I think. I think the only solution to having reasonable client expectations around tax filing is just scheduling the work. Is everybody having a window where they're expected to get their stuff in and a window where that stuff's expected to go out. And anything other than that approach for me, like, just breaks down. That being said, I ran a firm that had this approach for years with the whole cutoff methodology, and it came down to a partner by partner thing. The. The. I don't know, traditional. The. The firm. The partners that have been around for longer would bend over backwards to get it done as soon as possible. I wouldn't. I would usually just have a conversation with the client, and it was like, it doesn't really matter if it goes out by the deadline or not. And they're like, cool, if that's what's right. The friction that created in a firm where you've got different people doing different things was you're sort of battling over shared resources. And so oftentimes that would mean the partners whose clients got that stuff anyway, that was the stuff that the staff worked on. Because I'd had that conversation with my client, and I'm like, you'll get it by the end of April. No big deal. So that wasn't super healthy. It's probably worth having, like, a accepted kind of firm, wide framework for that. And there are exceptions to this rule where there are genuine sources of urgency, like mortgage applications or something that is legit a legitimate source of urgency, where they jump the line, fine. I think that doesn't apply here. But if it's me on this tax poll, I think I probably extend and we get it out on the 15th or on the 20th or something like that, just because of the fact that you gave them rules and you let them break the rules. And so I just think that precedent is damaging enough or is so damaging that it doesn't overcome the absurdity of sitting on work that's otherwise done. And I get that that's ridiculous. And it's just sitting there on a shelf and it seems kind of petty, but if your clients like are unwilling to like follow the framework and the rules that you designed for them, that's going to create all sorts of issues for you ultimately. So I think I'm probably in the minority here. I think I'm probably in the extend camp. There's some nuance there where it's like, is there any important, like do they owe money? Like I'm not going to tell them, you know, in this case if they owe money, it would be good if they could get that payment in by 415. And so if I know that I'm going to tell them, I'm going to like withhold that information. So some common sense around that. But I think I'm probably in the extend camp because. And this is particularly relevant in tax firms now, it's relevant in accounting firms too because everything that you do and how you capacity plan and all of that is built around your ability to plan work and avoid those spikes in required output. So like, you know, the age old problem of running an accounting practice is just the month end close is the first half of the month is just so sweaty and it's a big old bottleneck. Same thing with US tax firms. And I think tax work, the majority around the world is it's cyclical. So how, for the sake of your business, do you avoid that cyclicality and smooth it out as much as possible and ensure that you don't end up upside down where there's way more work to be done than you have the resources to do the work. And so if, if the only solution for that is making rules and just making a plan, I think is the biggest issue is we just, we don't look like we have a plan to our clients. Like we're not telling them what timelines to expect things on. But the only solution to that, to mitigating that cyclicality is having a plan and enforcing the plan. And then as soon as you roll that plan out, people break the plan and you're like, NBD bro, I'll still, I'll get it done for you. Then like, what's the point of the plan? Like, it just kind of like cuts the whole legs out from under how you are trying to build a more sustainable, more reliable firm. Because the flip side of this, not having a plan and just being like, yeah, chuck it in, we'll do it as quickly and efficiently as we can, that's just setting like expectations up for failure also because inevitably you get a big old glut of that stuff and you're not Able to turn it around as quickly as maybe some people would like. Or clients come in with an expectation that's wildly off from reality. Maybe they think they're gonna get that work back in a week's time, but that's really more like three weeks. Unless you have a plan in the beginning where you say, like, no, here's what to expect, you run the risk of maybe them having a wildly different expectation than what's even possible. So I think, because the only way to really run a business like this in a calm way is to have an annual cadence and really important deadlines that you enforce and clients have to adhere to. I think I'm in the. I think I'm in the extend camp on the tax pool. So that's how I got to, like, my answer is send it to them sort of early, not super early, not necessarily on the deadline sort of early. Maybe the tax equivalent of that is like shortly after 4:15. So that was kind of the first thought I had. Second is, I think in the way that delivery gets communicated, it's very important that they're always reminded of the terms of the engagement on delivery. So it's one thing to. So even if you don't want to extend or even if you do want to send it to them on the third, I think it's very important in the context of the delivery to always keep reiterating what the expectation is. So, like, as a policy, when that tax return gets delivered, when those financials get delivered, whatever the deal is in the engagement letter needs to be recommunicated in that deliverable so that you're constantly reminding them of that. And this may give you this, I think, mitigates some of the concerns of going above and beyond. It still sort of tips your hand on, like, what you're capable of so that if they, like, swoop back around a few weeks later and they're like, hey, can you do this thing for me? Super tight turnaround. I think it may open the door for a little of that. But even there, I think you need to have like, just a general expectation of, like, how quickly can you turn around different types of things for special requests? So I don't know. And like, no matter what, I think you need to always be over communicating what the engagement letter says. Using Kelly Parks example, she over delivered nine months in a row. Delivered early. I think, correct me if I'm wrong or if you disagree. I think if that deliverable is modified simply to keep reiterating, we delivered on this date engagement letter is that date we're X days early. Like, here's your stuff. I think it helps with some of that, especially when it comes to renewals. If they're re engaging and like their level of happiness with whether you're delivering according to the engagement letter, I just think that's going to keep better alignment. So that's probably a. Regardless of what side of the fence you're on, that's probably a good general. Just like thing we ought to be doing is anytime we deliver, reminding them of the expectation. And then the last, which a lot of people hopped on is rush fees, paying extra to run something through. How do you feel about that? I would love to know how do you feel about rush fees, especially if you've done that before. What was your experience doing that? Positive and. Or negative? Share it. Maybe before I spill the beans on what I think here so that I don't skew your thinking, here's where I've landed on rush fees. I think on the hierarchy of what is the best way to manage this. I think where I've landed is that rush fees end up being a net negative because they enable a sense of entitlement from the client to put potentially unreasonable demands on your team. So the rush. And maybe there's a, maybe there's a way of structuring rush fees that doesn't do this. And if there is, please share. But in my mind, oftentimes the rush fee is like, you're gonna cut me a check for a get out of jail free card where you can demand whatever you want. And that's probably being overly dramatic. But what I don't want that to enable is then a bunch of people cutting a check to jump the line. And then if anything they're like more entitled. Like, no, you got, you need to get this done because I gave you this extra money. And that's not really a, like a, that's not a situation I want to find myself in. Like, I don't want a client to have that power over me just because they gave me that money. And I get the appeal of, oh, I can, I can make X dollars more money on this thing if we turn it around. And like, you could probably point to, you know, 20% of them are done early. This would be X amount of revenue if all these people paid rush fees. I think it's kind of a, it's kind of a band aid to a problem that maybe shouldn't exist in the first place. So like, if you zoom out and you think about what's the most sustainable way to build a practice that avoids urgency in general, that has like a capacity plan for the whole year so that you're not underwater and as smoothing out those bottlenecks as much as possible. Like I think that is, that needs to be kind of the North Star for how you build things within your firm. And I think rush fees kind of take away from that and at worst can have a negative impact on what you do in your team. I know for most of the accountants that I worked with, the single great and they're not all this way, but the single greatest stressor they had were those Rush requests where all of a sudden they needed a bunch of catch up work or the client needed this or that and it was like they needed it within this ridiculous turnaround time. That was the greatest stressor for most of the people I ever worked with. There were people on the opposite of that, like the firefighters who loved that. And so the best system we ever had for that was when you had dedicated people who would oversee the ongoing, ongoing cycle of doing the work, who were separate from the firefighters who could swoop in and get those rush projects done. Then the people who were stressed out by that were isolated from that stressor and the firefighters like were able to lean into what they enjoyed most, which was firefighting. Took me a really long time to get there and even by the end, like didn't totally have it nailed. But I just don't like the idea of blank checks and people being able to hold something over me because they paid me extra for that thing. Right. I feel like it's. I don't know, I feel like it's kind of an unhealthy precedent. But if you feel differently, please share. I'd be interested to see, especially if you got experience and that's either gone positively or poorly. One other thing I want to talk about today. As I was getting, I was getting relentlessly trolled on Twitter over the weekend, which is like such a normal thing. I'm so present in so many different places that in any given time usually I'm getting trolled somewhere and a lot of people are like completely sworn off social media because of this, because they just can't handle it. And there will be people who like email me or something like that and they're like, how do I stay plugged into this or that? And they're like, I don't want a Twitter or where they say I can't Twitter or they can't handle it or something like that. Like one of the greatest skills I've learned from publishing online is just developing the thick skin of like not being put off by weirdos. And it applies to content creation, but it also applies to like running a business or running a firm and being okay with not being everything for everybody. That was always like, content creation is a very in your face example of it, where in the comments of a YouTube video you can have like a person who's like three minutes in and I've learned nothing from this. And the next comment below is like, this is the best video you've ever done. This changed my life. Thank you so much. And so like in content creation that's, it's very easy to see that you have, you know, wildly different types of people getting totally different things out of the same thing. But that happens everywhere in our life and especially happens when you run a firm. And you know, I've talked a lot about how your goal is to find the people for whom the problem you solve is most painful. And those are often the worst client relationships where you have clients for whom that thing you do isn't that painful. And so they just don't value it that much. I don't know if that's anybody's fault. It's just not where they're at. Oftentimes it's because maybe they haven't gotten burned before. Like, you know, that client who's maybe a first time business owner and they're just like, ugh, why is this so hard? Versus the 20 year business owner who did it wrong for 10 years and got absolutely smoked. And they're like, oh my gosh, you are the best thing I've ever found. I appreciate you so much. Those people extract a different amount of value from the things that you do. And no matter what you do, like no amount of effort is going to get you to a place where you can help everybody or be what everybody needs to hear. In fact, the effort of doing that and trying to be for more people and trying to do things to placate those fringe people that you have now, you usually takes you in the opposite direction of where you want to go. And maybe like, maybe the whole boundary around deadline discussions is actually a great example of this. Like if you're planning for the people that won't follow your rules, are you then investing in the worst of your client base rather than doubling down on the people who will follow the rules and the guidelines that you set up? But the main thing I wanted to touch on was there's so much value in being able to develop that thick skin and process what you're hearing in a very robotic, rational way. Definitely not engaging, like, in this thing that's going to then make you upset and lead to absolutely nothing constructive. But oftentimes those things are. There's like a small seed of reality, oftentimes in a really unfortunate wrapping or just a really hostile way of communicating it. But there is value in being able to stop and look at that person's perspective and say, is there a seed of truth to this? And usually there is sometimes. Sometimes there absolutely isn't. But sometimes there is. And it's worth, like, it is very valuable to be able to stop and be mindful of it without having an emotional response, which is hard. And I think that's where most people get tripped up is it's very hard to separate your own worth and, like, all of the things that they're calling into question from their perspective when, at the end of the day, you fundamentally are never gonna build something that's for everybody, whether that's a YouTube video or a tweet or a firm that serves a specific type of person. Like, that's just how it is. And it's worth remembering for all the people that you feel like you're disappointing or who maybe didn't get what they thought out of what you do or don't, like, they don't feel like it. Doesn't feel like they value you maybe as much as they should. It is really easy to dwell on the people that are on that end of the spectrum. Much easier than it is to dwell on the people who are on the other end of the spectrum who love what you do and would happily pay more for what you do and are so appreciative of what you do. Some people communicate that, but most people don't. It's the people on the other end of the spectrum that take up all your head space that you, like, lay at night thinking about before you got to go to bed. Like, that's why you're taking the CBD before you go to sleep, because it's just like, those knuckleheads are in your head. So, like, it's. I think what I've learned is it's. It's worth exercising the things that develop that thick skin. And, man, right now, like, I'm. And this Daily show is a great example of I'm putting myself out there in a very real way, letting people in much more than I ever did before in these highly produced YouTube videos where you kind of hide behind the character and all that stuff. Right. But, like, on the other side of it, I think I'm a better person, and I think I'm more capable of. Of dealing with that stuff and not letting it upset me. And I. That's not just a content creation thing. I think that's a life thing. Like, I think it's. I think sometimes we won't do those things because we are scared to put ourselves out there. But what you need to think about is on the other side of that. If you do put yourself out there, if you do do that keynote or go do that public speaking thing, that's really scary. Think about the person that you're gonna be on the other side of it. Like, think about what you will be capable of and how that skin will be, like, just a little bit thicker the next time somebody calls you out or isn't impressed by what you do. I think the more you do it, the less it gets to you the next time, which is really valuable because it keeps you in your own headspace, and it keeps other people from pulling you down a path where, like, you're just. You're trying to impress and make happy people who will just fundamentally never be happy by what you're trying to do. So hopefully that's a helpful reminder. I've had to, like, remind myself of that in the past week. Don't try to be everything for everybody. Just know who you're for and focus on how good you are for those people, not how not good you are for the people that don't fit that model. That's all I got today. Have a great Tuesday. Thanks for hanging out. Y' all are blowing me away by how many people are hanging and doing this show with me.