027 Life AFTER Running A Firm

It's Q and A Wednesday. Buds come on in. Today we're touching on stuff like how does it feel to be on the other side of selling an accounting firm? How do you manage dad mode when you got work stuff and all the stresses of running a business? Change management. How to get off that old codgerly tool that you're using when you don't even know if you're going to the right one or not. And that just that whole existential dread of getting it wrong. Let's talk about it today on Jason Daly. So this is just a roundup of questions I've got last week and a whole bunch of different places. Some of them I've already answered. But I like putting the questions out there because and I used to make people do this, if they'd send me a question, I'd say send it to me publicly because then we get a bunch of other people's feedback on the same questions too. So if you have thoughts on these questions, we'd love to see them in the comments if you're on YouTube, wherever you hang out. Allison Rife Martin how do you go about how do you all go about finding contractors? This was about the sort of hiring resilience episode that we did. I can speak to my own experience. Not a particularly robust process. But I will say one source that people don't think about enough is potential or past employees. Oftentimes circumstances will change for an employee or they want to go out on their own and they're operating under the assumption that the only way that they can work with you is as an employee. Oftentimes I think there's ways to like rekindle that relationship on kind of a different, different kind of set of expectations that would open up a contractor relationship. So we've done this. I had success doing this with people kind of in my larger network where it would never make sense for them to be an employee. But pulling them in as a contractor for one. It gave me a way to learn more about them if I had never worked with them at length before to see do they know what they're doing, what do they like to work with. But but also too like to do that in a pretty low stakes way where it's not a huge commitment and doesn't come with all the strings attached of employment. I've done the Fiverr upwork stuff and there are good people out there. One thing I think you sort of have to plan ahead for when you're doing contractors is there's a really good percentage of Them that won't work out a much higher percentage than employees who won't work out. So you need to sort of plan accordingly. If you're planning to get a certain amount of work done with contractors, you really need to go out and find more than you would reasonably need worth of, you know, people to get that work done, because they're not all going to pencil out. There's services like Tax file now who will go out and source domestic tax preparers for you. So. So you could also go through a service like that. But curious what you all have done if you've had good luck with contractors. I suspect a lot of it is personal relationships. But like gig worker gig work is just becoming more and more of a thing. This is another area where it's really valuable to build a network online. Like for me, obviously, like, I'm an outlier here. But like, you know, if you need fractional work and you know a bunch of people that do this work online and they know you, the prospect of you saying, like, hey, could somebody just come do like a tax return or two a week for me? And they already know you, like, if you're Allison or something like that, they're much more likely to say yes. And maybe they weren't even before, like looking for contract work. But if you have those relationships, you'd be surprised who would be open to doing that stuff. So in my mind, like, yet another great reason to be building that network online. But if you've had good luck finding contractors through any other channels, feel free to post below. CJ Asked, do you feel like there's a sweet spot for employee headcount where you can have the impact you want, but can still reasonably manage and maintain solid personal connections? I can't tell if that's through the lens of like, client impact and connections or team impact and connections. And that's probably like, why this is a hard question to answer is some people will answer that different ways. Maybe what you take out of doing accounting is supporting the entrepreneurs. Maybe what you take out of it is more the relationship building you have with your team. For me, I was the latter starting out, I think I was. I enjoyed the working with small businesses and I still, I always did enjoy it. But ultimately what I came to enjoy more as I got myself out of the doing of the work was I actually came to enjoy more of the developing of the people to then manage those client relationships and how I could enable a path to success for my team, that ultimately is what gave me the most fulfillment. It's one of the hardest things I grapple with this year, with not really wanting to run a team anymore, but still in many ways kind of missing that fulfillment that came from being like, this is actually a pretty cool thing that we're building here and being able to take staff out of really negative situations and enable a much better work life for them and their families and all that. So is there, is there a sweet spot for employee headcount where you can kind of optimize that? Obviously, obviously it's going to look different for everybody. There's definitely a threshold in any business beyond which the business starts feeling impersonal. Like when you start that thing and you grow it from scratch, anybody can walk into anybody else's office, you know, physically or, or hypothetically, and have a frank conversation about doing this, doing that, being able to change things. And as you get bigger, like, that stuff just goes away. We talked about that around, you know, Big four and regional and, and how those businesses are just kind of inherently rigid and impersonal. And some people will enjoy that production environment. A lot of people won't. It wasn't for me, but for me, yeah, when I got my team to a point where it was like, okay, we actually really need to have like managers handling the day to day oversight of the majority of the team, it definitely changed things. I think there's a lot of firms out there who need that manager level, but they're maybe in the more traditional partnership setup where it's just the partners that manage everybody and you just fundamentally do a bad job because there's not a support system there for all of the team. It's just like a partner and then a bunch of people supporting a partner. So it definitely changes beyond, you know, five to 10 employees, where you're really having to delegate a lot of that responsibility. That being said, the challenge and fulfillment of like managing more of an executive team or a set of managers is very different than managing, say, a team of bookkeepers. And so one thing that I learned about myself myself is that I am a much better coach and mentor to managers and executives and firm owners and that sort of thing than like a bookkeeper that we pick up. Like, I am way too pie in the sky and all of that for a certain type of person. And I didn't know that about myself until I had kind of done both of those things. And you can be phenomenal at one and really bad at the other, but I think you just kind of learn about yourself which of those things are going to be better. At and also what do you enjoy the most and what do you take the most fulfillment from? And for me it was working with. It was like what I loved was developing people from being like that entry level sort of grinder doing the work into more of a. More of a manager that was thinking strategically and then like instilling in them the ability to find pride in doing the same for their team members that I was able to do for them. Like, that was really fun for me. So the level at which I drew the most fulfillment there actually wasn't, you know, maybe the first 10 people that you hire into your firm, but it was more like our first foray into developing that support structure between ownership and all of the people doing all of the work. So I mean, it's easy to say. It's really easy to say, oh, it's going to be different for everybody. And it depends. It's one of those things where I wouldn't have known until I'd gotten into it. But if you're building a firm, like there's. You need to have a level of self awareness to like, like, just be mindful of what are the things that I'm enjoying and what are the things that I'm not enjoying. Resisting the urge to grow just for the sake of growing. I mean, that's still like, this seems so basic to me, but still like two thirds of thought leadership around accounting firms is just centered on growth, which doesn't really take you anywhere in my mind. But it's what everybody talks about. And Top line is, is really a really exciting vanity metric. But it's just, I think the main, rather than like, what is the absolute answer? I think the, the better framing is just to have a level of self awareness as you're going through that journey yourself to learn what am I enjoying? What am I not enjoying? Have I gotten to a point where this is no longer fun? And if that's the case, giving your permission to take a step back, back from that. Nothing that we do is as permanent as it feels. You can't really blame yourself if you get into a situation. Usually can't blame yourself if you get into a situation you're not going to enjoy unless it's, you know, the fifth time you've done it, because you generally, you don't know until you get there. Like, that was my experience. Like I just learned by doing. And there was stuff that was fun for a while that after a while became not fun. And so what I wanted to do changed a little bit. So, so I Think you kind of just have to find your own journey, like on a bigger scale, grand scheme of things. Yes. Like as a company gets bigger, it's gonna feel more impersonal. That being said, you will still be responsible to a subset of that team. And so if you enjoy working with a certain type of individual, maybe you enjoy working with executives and managers and that sort of thing, it is worth knowing about yourself that a small firm isn't necessarily going to enable that. So it's just about finding, finding the stuff you enjoy the most. I think CJ also asks, when do you think the best time for a new firm runner would be to connect with an advisor? I would love to get other people's takes on this, especially if you have pulled in an advisor or a coach. What about that was great? What about that maybe didn't end up being great? I. I'm kind of of the mind that there's probably an advisor for every step in the journey. And one thing that I'm been thinking a lot about this year is the more success you have and that like the kind of further down that path of financial independence you go, you just have so many compounding advantages to other people. And your ability to invest in yourself and like money beyond a certain point is kind of pointless, obviously, but like, what an amazing luxury to be able to reinvest time into, like having a coach and like improving yourself. I think oftentimes when we do the ROI calculation, it's like, what is the ROI of a coach going to be on my firm? Because that's maybe how you justify the cost. When the better mental framework is what's the ROI of the person I'm going to be on the other side of that coaching or of making that investment in myself. It's not just about like, are they going to help you make a better software decision or package your services better so that your top line's, you know, more higher over the next couple of years for doing the same work or something like that. It's not just about that, it's about who you are on the other side of going through that. And I think we in general will chronically undervalue investing in ourselves. I think that's human nature because we don't see the compounding value of that over time. And I talk about this a lot with automation stuff and with AI and with learning. ChatGPT. If you're gonna decide whether or not to use ChatGPT to write an email, and one person uses ChatGPT to write an email, doesn't save them any time it's a wash. And the other person says, I'm not gonna do that when I can do it myself just as fast. The advantage the first person has is they just got better at ChatGPT and the second person didn't. So when it comes to coaching, you know, if you have the money, I think the greatest privilege of success and all of that is being able to reinvest in yourself. So I would, I generally will encourage people to lean into coaching even maybe more than their accountant ROI brain would lend them to kind of do naturally. But curious to hear what experiences other folks have had there too. If you have any good recommendations, referrals for folks that helped you. I do think there are different types of coaches for different things. Obviously in different stages of firm running, what you need to get off the ground is very different than what you need to make your first hires. Different than what you need to, you know, go from 5 to 10 employees and 10 to 15 employees and all that. I've had this conversation with Chad Davis of Live Ca a couple of times and he built that's a, it's a cloud accounting firm in Canada that they've built. They built beyond 100 employees from scratch and the whole notion of an org chart and like what is, what is the optimal org chart for an accounting firm? Like, it changes, you know, every few employees, like that optimal design changes. And so it's more about the process of adapting it over time to what your firm looks like than getting to some sort of ultimate framework. But very different people, people have very different expertise is at different stages of that firm's development. So like Lazannas, for example, like kind of the premise of his future firm accelerate, at least it used to be what he talked about a lot was I going to help you grow your firm to, you know, $1 million. And if you're a, you're a $15 million firm and you want to get to 20, like is Lazannis the guy to work with? I don't know. Maybe, but probably not. So as you are deciding who's the right person to work with, keep that in mind that there is not like really any general maxims and what we do and do they have experience specifically working with people who are at the stage that you're at. Nathan Sosa asked, can we work through the decisions to look at when making a decision to change a note taking or project management platform, like the poor people who are trapped in onenote and need help escaping those poor people or people using practice cscs work stream. I need to make the move or switch. Yeah, change management's really hard. Those are kind of two different things to me. There's personal change management which, like, Maybe I use OneNote for managing all of my client notes or something like that. And maybe that only impacts me. And so the notion of changing that to something else, that's one thing that's kind of just a matter of getting yourself over the hump. And the most helpful things to me were just always being able to see into how other people do that same thing on a different platform. Not that I would rip that off, but it would be helpful. You know, when you move to a different system, it's kind of a oftentimes a different paradigm of how the same thing is done. And ultimately the more you can steal from other people who have been on that thing for, you know, three to five years, the more it's gonna shortcut your learning process. But it will ultimately never replace your learning process. Like that's a journey that you kind of gotta go down yourself. There's some self discovery there. Getting stuff off OneNote. Get the heck off OneNote. All right. People are talking on Twitter today about Microsoft Copilot and how that's going to breathe new life into OneNote. Listen, Microsoft, create a loop their Notion clone because OneNote sucks. Even Microsoft doesn't want to have to use OneNote, otherwise they wouldn't have made loop. Also on this, while we're talking Microsoft Copilot, nobody's gotten this stuff in their hands. They made some like cool announcements and some razzle dazzle videos. At the end of the day, I want to reward the people who are like shipping stuff. And I don't have Copilot in my hands yet. So I'm excited about the premise. But I literally ran through everything they were talking about doing in my AI predictions for the year on January 1st. That's not a product that anybody has in their hands. Like it's cool that it's all possible, but like, until people are actually using it, I don't know. I'm getting impatient on that front. But yeah, for bigger stuff like practice management system and kind of the bigger operating system that your firm runs on, I can absolutely relate to the terror of making those changes. Somebody said this, was talking about this on Twitter the other day. So I pulled this tweet up. He said, the problem is you really only find out which software is best by using it for a considerable period of time. No. So for me, I'm just hearing from others Going out on a leap of faith and just picking one. And that's probably what I would have said five years ago. I shared, I've shared before the story of going to the wrong practice management system and how that cost us years. Because when you get to the other side of that and you're like, well, this isn't the right one, what do we do now? Burn another year switching to yet another system or just stay with it knowing that you are pouring time and money down the drain every single day that you're using it? That was made especially painful by like 30 to 35 change averse people being drugged through that process who didn't want to do the change to begin with. Just because most of them just don't like change, getting it wrong is astronomically expensive. So like for me, how my process has changed is I've invested the time in having a network man. Like there's so much value in building a network of other tax professionals. People are more collaborative than I think people realize, more happy to share the playbook than they realize. So for me, making a big decision like that, which I shared with the firm on Canopy last year, and that was a product of sitting in a room with five to 10 people that use Canopy, that use carbon, that use like all the different tools I was considering for a firm of our size, getting the real story about what works and what doesn't work and having as informed of a decision as possible. But another really powerful thing that you can do there. And so when it comes to decision making, absolutely do not yolo it like it's not worth it. That can feel like the easier path. But the cost of getting it wrong and burning years like that's, it's just an astronomical cost. But once you have seen into what other people have done and you feel like you're on the right track, going through software changes in parallel with other firms can be extraordinarily valuable because you're all on this learning process, trying to figure this stuff out together and having like a lifeline that is not just your account rep who will be helpful sometimes and not helpful other times also. That looks very different with many onboarding processes. Once you're past the sales process, you go to like a different team and oftentimes the experience there isn't quite as good. But in a perfect world, if I were going to go change practice management systems tomorrow, I would find a few other firms that were going through the same transition and I would find a sponsor that is somebody who has used that tool for A few years to be kind of part of that crew. And you go through that transition together, you're able to share what's working and what's not working with your peers along the way. And you're also going to have the insights of the sponsor to be able to speak into. Yes, here is how we manage that problem. Here's maybe a workaround that we found now that is absolute best case scenario. And how to manage a change like that, whether you have all those people in your network to do that or not is another question. But the more you can push the process towards that, you are mitigating so much risk, so much wasted time of doing the wrong things. I mean, you think about something like a practice management system or a file management system, once you've used that for three years, think about all the dead ends you went down in that path that you know, it was a setting that you didn't make the right decision on initially. Or like when you kind of strip that path of all of those wrong turns, you're so far ahead of where you would otherwise be. And that's why ultimately, like, you got to do it, you got to rip the band aid off, you got to make the change responsibly. A tool like a practice management system, where you can't easily go back, that's a much bigger decision than like, you know, we've never done meeting transcripts before. Should we try using Fathom for meeting transcripts? Like, that's whatever, that's not a big deal because that's something that you can just bolt on, pull the plug on down the road if you end up not needing it. But big decisions like practice management systems, even though they are really big, you, you still have to make those hard decisions. And even if you're on the wrong system, like there's that sunk cost fallacy of we've gone through so much work to get here, but if that's still not the right place to be, then it's still not the right place to be now. In reality, you gotta weigh that with like staff's, you know, endurance for going through another change. And like that, it all becomes a really messy calculation. But the fact that it's hard to change it doesn't make it the wrong decision. Another example we went through of that as we went from Lacert to ultra tax and we had people who have 20 plus years LACERT experience. This is a US tax prep suite, people with 20 plus years lesser experience, and that was absolutely not going to translate to ultra tax. Like all of the input fields are different. It's just a shocking amount of scavenger hunt for every single little field that you need to mark the right way to get the output to be what you want the output to be. We got to a point with Lessert where it just fundamentally like the infrastructure of it was not capable of doing some new things that were happening. You couldn't do stuff like multiple monitor. And so Ultra Tax was fundamentally a better product, like better from a technical standpoint, even though it is super archaic. And we had to make a really hard decision of going to it. And holy smokes, people went so far backwards on how long it took them to do things. And so you look at it through that lens and you're like, we're gonna go backwards. But I think you, you don't take into account the cost and the downside of not doing anything right. So like, oftentimes that decision comes down to, well, what's really the alternative? And the change is going to be painful, but ultimately like, you're making an educated bet on what's going to be the best kind of long term investment for us. And that's going to involve some steps forward, it's going to involve some steps backward. But that decision should still be as informed as possible. Great thing about the Internet, it's never been easier than it is today to connect with other people that do what you do. And that's, that's another one example of kind of that ROI accountants make of why am I going to screw around on Twitter? Or why am I going to screw around on LinkedIn when there's not like an immediate, you know, I could go instead and get paid for this next hour of my time. I think you got to be thinking long term about stuff like big software changes where building that network will actually help you to shortcut decision making and kind of those that meandering path that you may otherwise make just trying to figure it all out on your own. Because we ultimately should not be doing that stuff. And if you're here and hanging out right now, you're probably not in the subset of people that are trying to figure it all out on their own. But just remember, like, virtually every problem you're having, somebody's gone through that before and there's probably a solution for it. And at the very least they could help you find a shortcut. And to me, that's the value of places just like this and comment sections just like this. The fact that we can have these conversations and not try to do everything from Scratch by ourselves. Okay. Cucho Speedy on Twitter, Emilio Canado, you mentioned that you film any of your vids after daddy duties. I'm a solo practitioner with lots of support from my wife and close fam, but still struggle to find the work. Solo practice, life balance. Any tips? Yeah, no. In the like. So I published two videos a week to YouTube for 18 months. And in that 18 months, I think I barely hit 500 subscribers, which now I'm over 5,000 subscribers. People never see that part of your past and your process. Like, they see you for what you are today and they want what you have today and they never see that. Like, oh my gosh, you had to do all that stuff before. So, like, if you are grinding right now, whether that's your very first clients in a firm, stuff like that, like, just gotta do it. Like, you just kind of, you gotta stick with it. Success is just like so much about consistency and being prolific at something is so much about trying harder and doing it more than anybody else thinks is reasonable. So, like the amount of time and money and like effort I put into video production, like, that's why it looks good now. Like, that's why it's impressive, is I did more than anyone else would reasonably, like, seem like, no, I would never go to that level of effort. Anyways, I digress. Work, solo, practice, life balance. Yeah, it's easier said than done. I used to have to shoot all my videos on the weekend. This year I can shoot them during the week because I'm not at the firm during the week. So that's been pretty awesome. That being said, I still end up doing some stuff on the weekend. Listen, I'm not proud of it. I think for me. So there's, there's a couple things here. There's having kids, then there's having a partner too. And so like me, Emilio's got the kids and the partner. I actually think first here, this is a negotiation and expectation setting with your partner. Nothing wrong with working on the weekends. Like, nothing wrong with working a weird schedule. Honestly, working seven days a week, like, working, we're all gonna go through seasons of life being self employed. Your work schedule can also be weird. Like maybe what works best for your family today is working half day, seven days a week. Our schedule has changed a lot as our kids have grown. And now my oldest is in all day kindergarten and we're kind of just starting to get to that age where they wanna go do stuff like gymnastics and rock climbing and all these different things that demand extra things of the Family. So what that negotiation looks like has been a moving target. But that's also the very best aspect of entrepreneurship is like, as those kids grow up, like, you're gonna be one of the only. Honestly, then I'll just say it like, you're probably gonna be one of the only dads turning up for the soccer games and stuff like that. Like, the flexibility that entrepreneurship affords is like the best and the worst thing about it, right? So I do think it's just kind of gotta be like, doing it successfully stems so much from, like, having a healthy relationship with your partner and being on the same page about boundaries and expectations and how much you're gonna work and sticking to the plan. Like, you know, right now my kids are super into gymnastics. I got a piece out from work early every Tuesday. So I'm shooting this right now on a Tuesday afternoon, and at three o', clock, I watch the boys and my wife goes and does gymnastics with my daughter. And that's a fun thing they get to do every week. Having that, as I say that, having that cadence and like that weekly schedule that we have to stick to, that's been helpful. It's also a forcing function for spending time with the kids. But then the other hard thing of this to me has always been when you work for someone else, they define how much time you ultimately are able to invest in your family and your kids and all that stuff. And you can always point your finger. It's cop out, but you can always point your finger on, well, we never could do that because I had to work graveyard, or I had to work 12 hours a day during tax season or this or that. And it's absolutely cop out. But we can point our finger on the expectation that someone else has put onto us. And when you go to work for yourself, there's a whole level of like, I could work two hours today, or I could work 20 hours today. What's the right amount of time I should be pouring into my children today or into my partner? And outside of the manufactured framework of 8 hour workdays and 40 hour work weeks, or 80 hour taxis and work weeks, outside of that entirely arbitrary structure, there's actually in my experience, been like more angst than I had expected. Because you have that flexibility and you just don't know what the right amount of time is to spend with your kids. So kind of like how things ebb and flow with the partner, that right answer there probably ebbs and flows with the kids. Like, there's gonna be seasons of life. Honestly, where they need you more and where they need you less. I think for me, like, I've kind of got like this threshold of like I need to have. I've got three kids now. I need to have individual time with them. We need to go, like, go do something fun, just the two of us, you know, once a month or something like that. And what that looks like during the school year is a little different than during the summer. So it's different for everybody. So much of it stems from like nailing that negotiation with your partner. But for me, as with many things like developing habits and kind of recurring things, has been a helpful sort of framework to ensure that like I'm getting that one on one time with the kid every week or at the very least, I've got like that dedicated time where I'm on duty, you know, the partner gets a break and at least there's that sort of forcing function that's happening. Just because it's a schedule that you made up, then it ensures you're doing some of that stuff and not just head down all the time. Easier said than done. Feel free to. If you've had thoughts or successes on how to manage all that, please share because that's a hard thing. It's the best and the worst part of entrepreneurship. It's actually ultimately probably the biggest reason why I. I got out of the firm was just to have that flexibility that I couldn't otherwise have, whether I've done anything with it. You know, like when you have that, when you have that freedom and you can look back and say, I've got that freedom now and there's nobody to blame but myself, that's. That can be rough. But to me it still beats. The alternative is still that agency, even though the agency can shoot you in the foot and give you nobody to blame but yourself, both you and your partner, that's. That still. Still beats the alternative of being on call for somebody else, in my opinion. Okay, last I got this dm. I'll keep it anonymous, but I suspect there's other folks in this place. Hey Jason, what does hindsight look like for you post fe firm sale? I'm strongly considering a sale myself and have some opportunities to do so. Feels like now's the time to exit before I blink my eyes. And I've missed pursuing some other joy slash passion. Passion. My business has become bigger and more complicated these days. I'm wondering what your experience has been. Thanks for all you do for the community. Boy. I think that always there's certain things that our Brains just don't do well. And we kind of have to like, temper our decision making with these shortcomings of our kind of built in mental models. And one of those things is seeing what's possible on the other side of what you're doing today. So like, you've got your weekly cadence of the things that you do every single week and the people you work with and the clients you serve and the stuff that you do, that's all very apparent because the stuff that you just do all of the time, but on the other side of that, like, so you have 2020 vision on the stuff that you do, but on the other side of that, you don't really see into what that reality could be because you haven't lived it. And so we, I think we underestimate the opportunity that is on the other side of that. I mean, ultimately, as a firm owner, even as an accountant in general, there's really a very few things that we need to be afraid of. If you sold your practice, the worst case scenario is probably that you go out and you build another practice. And that's a pretty darn good worst case scenario. Being able to do that again, avoid some of the missteps that you made the first time. Like, that's, that's, that's not so bad for me. My wife and I were talking about this the other day where, you know, middle of last year, you're like, I'm kind of thinking like, man, like, am I really gonna do this? Like, am I really gonna get out of firm running? And a hundred things go through your head from what am I gonna do on the other side of this? To like, how am I gonna be able to still talk to people about firm running if I don't run firms and stuff like that. But we were talking the night before last and I was just like, wasn't it hilarious to think that just last year we were thinking, well, if I'm not running a firm, what in the world am I gonna do? Whereas like, now this year, it's like, I've been able to do so many cool things that I'm so grateful for. I've been able to get out in front of so many more people that never would have, you know, been able to, I think, see the message and the little community that we've built around this content that hopefully is steering people in a positive, more sustainable direction. And there's just like, everywhere I look, there's opportunities, there's all these different things you can do. And, and honestly, that is the Case for like virtually all accountants is there's so much demand for your skill set. And in software and accounting firm running in private, like, I mean there's just, and making something new of your own of coaching other firm owners, like there's just opportunity everywhere that you look. I will say there's still an element of optimizing for serendipity where the more you put yourself out there, the more it's going to enable the likelihood of those opportunities presenting themselves. Obviously I put myself out there to a shocking level, an irresponsible level. The notion that anybody wants to listen to what I have to say every single day still kind of boggles the mind. And so I'm definitely on an extreme end of the spectrum where like I'm so out there that I'm just privy to a lot of really cool opportunities and people in relationships and all that stuff. If you're at the other end of the spectrum where you're not out there at all and you're not having those conversations, that may be a little harder. But in my mind, even when you're firm running, like you need to be putting yourself out there and doing that network and all that. So it is kind of one more argument to be out there and turning up a turn up at conferences. It's not about the cpe, it's about all the people that you meet when you're there. But I absolutely don't regret any of it. I think I've helped, you know, selfishly, like just talking about what I do, I think I've helped so many more people than I would have otherwise just staying in a firm. And I had a lot of pride in creating a cool place that people come and work and grow and feel safe and all that. But on the other side of that, like I've just, I have helped way more people and I've. I've had access to opportunities that I wouldn't have otherwise had that I'm super thankful for. So I would say if you're thinking about that decision, a couple things that our brains trick us on as decisions like this always feel more permanent than they really are. It's not hard to start another accounting firm. Like if you have to sign a non compete or something, be mindful of that. But selling a firm feels like this super permanent thing. But you could absolutely go back to firm running someday and you're going to do it better than you ever did before and then recognize that you are underestimating what those future possibilities are because you're not on the other side of what you do today yet. And when you get to the other side, like, you kind of see a different world, you're able to have more of those exploratory conversations that you maybe had to block out because you're running a firm and you've got stuff to do. So I would say kind of that, that decision making framework, take those two things into mind because those are just kind of like, I don't know, things that our brains things that our brains aren't going to take into account naturally in that calculation. So that's Q and A Wednesday. You got cues, drop in the comments, shoot me a dm, whatever. And as always, if you have thoughts on this stuff, too, I'd love to hear them. Please share. And everybody gets a little bit smarter along the way. So thanks for coming. And again, I'll see you tomorrow.