042 How Much Money Should A First Year Accounting Firm Make?

Welcome in. It's Q and A Wednesday. I'm gonna tell you about my slide whistle. We're gonna talk about somebody that's thinking about switching into the accounting profession. Where to start? What's a reasonable revenue expectation when you're kicking off a new firm? My thoughts on outsourcing, on video editing, on niching, whole bunch of stuff. Let's do it. Come on in. It's Jason D. So for every one of my main channel YouTube videos, by the way, this is not my main channel video. Bunch of people are joining the podcast. I make YouTube videos. That's kind of my original thing. But for each one of my main channel videos, I try to have some sort of bit that's like running alongside the learning. Because we all just get enough vanilla, boring learning these days and webinars and conference talks and all these things. I try to always have, like, a bit that's happening in parallel to it. And for the video that I shot yesterday, which will come out, I think, Sunday, the bit was this slide whistle. And I just think slide whistles are really funny. Like, there's just something funny about the sound of a slide whistle. Unless somebody gets them for your kids, and they get really not funny really fast. But I think a lot of people, like, the people who watch all my stuff, like, the people that are most plugged into what you do, like, they're familiar with the current stuff and kind of the state of your life. But most people, when they find me, like, they still think that I run an accounting firm. Like, they just think I'm a dude running a firm. That made a funny video. And yesterday I was just. I was feeling especially out of touch with the accountant experience because my life this year has just gotten more and more absurd. This video, there's several, like, slide whistle jokes throughout it, but it gets to, like, an emotional ending. And the video is about me leaving public accounting. And so, like, it builds to, like, this emotional ending. And at, like, the most emotional point from off screen, another version of me starts this slide whistle solo. And it's Sarah McLaughlin's Arms of an Angel. And I probably spent 45 minutes trying to play that song on a slide whistle. And, man, it's tricky. And I came upstairs after shooting that, and my wife's like, what's happening? I'm not sure. She still wonders if, like, I actually have a job. So what's the lesson here? I don't. Like, there's so many aspects of my life where if somebody had told me a few years ago, that was the case, I wouldn't have believed it. And I think that often happens with us, like, when you find success or when something doesn't go the way you planned. Like, the reality is we just don't know what's around the corner. And this video is kind of about this too. When you don't know what's around the corner, you kind of have to live a life that is optimized for serendipity. Like, optimized for that cool thing you could have never expected. Because as much as we try to take control of everything and. And chart out our path in a very intentional way and all of that, like, so much of all this stuff is luck is the right person finding you at the right time, and all these things that, like, you could have never possibly expected. I'm actually really excited for that video. It's coming this Sunday. It's just kind of all about, like, how do you optimize your life for things that you could never expect? And, like, in that, I think, is a message of hope of right now. I think a lot of people feel stuck in situations that aren't sustainable. And for some folks, they have a clear snapshot of what that better version is. They just need to execute. But for a lot of people, they're just like, man, I don't know. I don't know what's next for me, but it sure feels like what I'm doing right now, like, I'm running out of steam. So I think it's gonna be. I hope that it is encouraging for folks that find themselves in this situation. In many ways. Like, I hope this show is, like, I've shared how, like, this was a show that I needed just to feel like I had a friend and didn't feel isolated in what I was doing. Um, and that, like, when I. When I feel like I'm giving back things of meaning, like, those are always the most rewarding things I feel like I can offer people is, like, hope and encouragement and, like, hopefully helping people to find in themselves, like, what you are capable of when oftentimes it feels like we can kind of work against ourselves in, like, fulfilling that potential that is inside of us. Okay, enough of all that Q and A time I'm wearing a shirt that says Jason Daly. Listen, Jackie Meyer of Tax Plan IQ sent this to me, and I will pretty shamelessly open just about anything that people mail me for this show. This does have a little Tax Plan IQ thing on it. If you're a brand, don't send me your just normal, boring shirt with your brand stuff on it. I probably won't wear that. But, hey, I think narcissism is really funny. So I'm gonna wear this sweatshirt today with my name on it. Okay. Ryan C. Posted this on yesterday's video. What advice can you give the newbies like me to jumpstart the firm? Is it reasonable to get to 300k in revenue in one year from CAS and a little bit of tax? What tips techniques work best for obtaining new clients other than referrals? Thanks and keep up the great work. If you hit 300k in your first year running a new firm, God bless you. I wouldn't say that's necessarily realistic. In fact, a firm growing that fast probably kind of sucks because generally with, like, beyond a certain rate of growth, you're having to hire faster than maybe you would like. And sometimes they're making compromises on the quality of those hires. I'm sure there. I mean, I'm sure people have done this. I built a cast practice to a million and a half in 18 months. But that was building a cast practice alongside a tax practice. So we were pulling clients out of that tax client base over to cast. So it was like shooting fish in a barrel to pull in new clients. And that was way too fast. My life was a nightmare because we had to hire so fast. I was working with people that I didn't enjoy, that didn't really know how to do the work. And so I do think I would caution, like, growth for growth's sake, because oftentimes when you do that too fast, you then spend a whole bunch of time unwinding all that growth. When you go about it the wrong way. And the reality is, when you're starting out, I mean, even not when you're starting out, you're gonna get it wrong a whole bunch of times. There's gonna be a bunch of stop starts and resets and reconfiguring around, oh, this better version of this thing that you found. And I know revenue is like the. Revenue is probably the metric people are thinking about when they first start out, because you're thinking, how do I just pay the bills in this new gig? I think the better metric always is just profit. You never want to build a firm to optimize for revenue. You always want to build a firm to optimize for profit. And that sounds really obvious, but there's a lot of situations in firm running where you come to a decision and can kind of be blinded by the revenue figures and lose sight of the profitability and I've definitely been guilty of that. Like, I shared on, on Twitter, the, you know, the biggest engagement I ever closed was, I think it was just over a million dollars. And it was this really cool, big, sexy project that came at a time for me where like politically within the firm, like it was, you know, the biggest project this 80 year old firm would have ever landed. And like, that was a real cool kind of, kind of, you know, little badge of pride that I could wear around and assert my dominance on, you know, the other kind of leadery folks and the firm. And I say that only sort of tongue in cheek. We do things like this for a lot of like very unfortunate, very human reasons. But that firm, that, that project was a big outlier for us and we didn't really have a path to doing it super profitably. But let me tell you, Top Line was super impressive. And you know, you kind of have all these revenue, like ultimately is a vanity metric, I think that can blind us to the more meaningful things which are how do I leave the office, 5, if not earlier? How do I ensure that I'm not being the hero for my staff and my clients at the expense of being the hero for my family? Those I think are especially like, especially important things to have front of mind when you are going out on your own in the beginning and, and trying to define those boundaries for yourself rather than having an employer define those boundaries for you in terms of reasonable revenue to get started. Honestly, like for me, that process would probably just look like sitting down with my family and deciding like, what do we need, what do we need to get to and trying to hodgepodge a few different sources of getting that work done, the more you open yourself up to being willing to do more things, probably the easier it is to grow that number in the beginning. So while ultimately the goal running a firm is to get more specific in what you do, because that's a better path to profitability in the beginning. I mean, the reality is you're taking on whatever's going to pay the bills. So I know you said what are the, what are the best ways to obtain new clients other than referrals? Just go out there and try to be relentlessly helpful to a bunch of people. So whether that's talking with attorneys, whether that's talking with other firms about the work that they don't want, whether that's taking on contract work to support other firms during their busy season, pretty much anything and everything. Just trying to be mindful of the stuff that maybe you especially don't enjoy that you don't want to get sucked into. I would also say starting wide when you're running a new firm is helpful when it comes to like informing ultimately what you want to do longer term. I know you said here casts and minimal tax, but I didn't know. I mean I don't think anybody knows what they really want to do until they've got a good amount of experience doing it for themselves. Which is different than doing it for an employer doing it for somebody else. So to me, the Northern Light when it comes to or the North Star when it comes to building a business as just trying to be helpful to people and that stuff will come back around. So start talking with other firms, talk with people online. I post a comment on this video Virtually everybody needs something and if you can find a way to be a solution to that pretty quick, you end up with more on your plate than you can reasonably handle. And then you're in the privileged position of being able to get more specific and start saying no to more stuff and double down on the stuff that you most enjoy and that's most profitable and sustainable. This episode is sponsored in part by Client Hub. That's right. Hey, this week on Tales from the Hub. Remember last week when we did this? Super smart accounting firm figured out that getting answers from clients was the key to unlocking the profitability of their firm. So they chose Client Hub Practice management system with a client portal at its core. When they rolled it out, the clients were like omg thank you. Beautiful and modern. Modern, simple experience. They said their exact words for this hypothetical firm and a killer mobile app. How many of our like accounting platforms right now have a helpful mobile app? Not many. Now the firms and the clients are on the same page about what's required to do the work. The staff at Super Smart Accounting Solutions can assign clients tasks for the clients to tackle. They can be like a yes, no answer. They can be a request for files, even requests for categorization. It'll automatically sync back to QuickBooks or zero. That's handy, right? Whatever the client task is. They discovered that their clients on Client Hub now respond right away and have overcome some of the like blocking that happens with getting the work done waiting for clients. Nobody likes that. Hey, to learn more about Client Hub and how you can unblock your life, check out the link in the show Notes. This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at Cloud Accountant Staffing. Do you hire accountants? Bless your little heart. Not the best part of the job in my opinion. Not something I ever enjoyed. Well, listen, you can build your accounting dream team with talented offshore accountants in the Philippines that work 100% full time for your firm. Their accountants aren't freelancing or contracting for multiple firms. They're all yours. They work exclusively for you and are incentivized to stay with you and your team long term. They're not gonna get swiped. Cloud account staffing is 100% dedicated to the account industry and founded by a former accounting firm owner that understands your business, knows your pain points. They had to hire some accountants and they said, you know what, we're going to build our own pipeline in the Philippines, going to pull in some super talented people and then open that up to other firms. Basically that's the story. I've been talking about a lot about staffing, building more resilient staffing pipelines for your firms. I had staff in the Philippines like totally red pilled me to like oh geez, like we need to globalize the way that we get our work done. Check these folks out. Link in the show description Cloud accountantstaffing.com CJ posted this on Mondays. Vid will be interested to know your thoughts on outsourcing out of the country. Seems like a couple people started and then boom, everyone is doing it. And now the pitch from these companies is while everyone else is doing it. It does feel a little like solving yesterday's problem to me though, because outside looking in it looks like the work getting sent over is work that no one has to do at all. I think was getting out there is, it is the low sort of entry level work. So I'm a big advocate of offshoring. So not just outsourcing but offshoring. I think the biggest misnomer when it comes to offshoring is that it is somehow optimized for a certain level of work. Like it's for low level work. And that's definitely not the case. I think, I think the reason we probably think that is where we come into contact most day to day with offshore workers is in low level work and like support roles and stuff like that. You know, the reality is for firms 100 people and up, you know, regional and up, they've been, they've had hundreds and thousands of offshore employees for decades and beyond. You know, every firm I know beyond a certain threshold is leaning really hard into offshore. And this isn't necessarily a new thing. I think it may be a newer thing among smaller firms, but firms beyond a certain size, like everybody has been doing it for decades and a lot of Those firms that I've talked to, like many of their most senior technical people are offshore, you know, their most senior tax managers and that sort of thing. They're, they're go to sort of in house experts on certain topics are oftentimes offshore folks, which is great. So I think, I think it's worth pushing back on that misnomer a bit that you can only hire people to do low level work offshore. Ultimately the hardest thing to offshore is the client experience. And so that's, that's something that most firms will, will never wade into as, as putting those offshore folks and client speaking, client facing roles. That being said, nearshore is becoming more of a thing where you've got folks in the Caribbean and Latin America and South American stuff like that, where you have people who are very good English speakers who probably could do more of that client facing stuff. So even that's getting challenged a little bit more. In my case, I had a team of folks in the Philippines and we were kind of designed our practice around letting the onshore folks be the kind of client relationship managers and more of the fulfillment and the production and all of that was being driven by the offshore team. And there was a phase in my career when that was unthinkable to me and I was caught up on the, well, my client will never go for that. Which is the first thing people always say. And it's like, like as if their clients are somehow different than everyone else's clients. And Steve's clients over there will be thrilled about it that like everybody goes through that. I would say the more you educate yourself about how offshore works, the more those points of resistance kind of get like torn down. And then once you actually do it and you work with these people and you realize these are super sharp people, many of whom have like right or wrong, have a, have a different approach to work than some folks that you get onshore. But you start working with them and you're like, oh, these are human beings that are actually very intelligent and will grow really quickly and will turn up for work every day just like the folks that I hire onshore. Once you get turned on to that, you kind of can't see building your business any other way. So I've kind of been harping on this for new business, new firm owners to be thinking about. How are you diversifying your approach to fulfillment? You should absolutely not be getting all the work done with your onshore team. There's different challenges to building around an offshore team, to building around contractors and every sort of alternate method to fulfillment. But absolutely this genuinely, like, the smartest folks that I know in firm running are leaning really hard into offshoring for great reason. Like, because these are super talented people, you can pay them phenomenally well for, for, you know, what is the norm in the place that they work and like, have a fantastic work relationship with these folks. It changes how you build out the org chart and how you delegate responsibilities and probably what you have your onshore team do a bit more. But if you had a sustainable hiring pipeline from which you could get the work done, like, oh my gosh, like, of course you're going to lean into that. And when you are kicking off your own firm and all of that, in my experience, most folks, they start out with the intention of, oh, I'm going to do the work. And very quickly they're like, how can I get out of doing this work? Because the next version of sort of my firm and how I'm developing is having a team of people doing the fulfillment and I'm managing more of the client touches and the sales process and all that stuff. When it comes to all of the outbound that's happening from offshoring groups like the DMs we're getting on LinkedIn and all those things, it's kind of unfortunate. And it doesn't cast a positive light on offshore services. I think the best way to find a reputable group is to talk with your peers who are doing that already, who have, who are people that you respect running successful firms, see who they're using. There's a few groups out there really targeting accounting firms. You know, TOA is probably the biggest one. Toa, TOA Global. You'll see them at almost all the accounting conferences, stuff like that. When I see, when I see companies making investments like that, it gives me a different, different level of confidence and kind of their staying power and the trust that's there. Got an offshore group from Philippines that is, that is sponsoring some of my content cloud account staffing. So like I, when I see folks, when I see companies making that investment, it puts them to me a big step ahead of like random people. You're getting DMs from online, right? So there's an abundance of options out there and I cannot recommend enough experimenting with that, doing some dabbling in it, a bunch of different ways to do it. From having people who are basically your employees and spend 100% of their time with you and you train them and develop them and all that, to groups where you're basically buying work, where you're like, you just send the month end close over and it's up to them to get it done and they send it back. So you're like paying for a month end close or paying for a tax return prep or a tax return review. Yeah. Like on the subject of offshore only doing entry level work, there's some really fast growing technical review services out there that are really valuable, especially if you're a solo person and you don't have like a fellow reviewer to look over your shoulder or something like that. Those, those are to me, like really interesting services to look at. Romeo posted, your video editing is so good. You outsource that, Romeo. My feelings aren't hurt, but I get this so much blessed your editor. What a genius. How did you do it? Listen, bub, let's see. The last video I edited 100% myself was the one the GPT4 announcement live stream where they showed off preparing a tax return. I did that one myself, beginning to end, because I thought it was so important that I just, I wanted to nail the messaging on that one. And that's probably my, like my favorite video. I. As is the case with any of these things, I think the more streamlined and the better your deliverable is, I think the easier you make it look. The reality of how the. And these, these videos are easy. Like I've. Like my editor does cut these down like for the podcast. And these are straightforward. They don't have graphics and all that. But for the main channel YouTube videos, I've got an editor that I work with where he does the first couple of passes. The final version always comes through me and I hop into premiere and I'll tinker with this or that or add a couple more ideas before doing the final rendered out version. My editor Martini is fantastic. He's editing this video right now. Martini, look me in the eyes. You're doing a great job. I appreciate you stop putting fart sound effects in the first version of the YouTube main video channel. Main channel videos, though. I just. We're already pushing the boundaries of professionalism with like spongebob, spongebob jokes and silly sound effects and all that stuff. Bathroom humor. It's just a step too far. We're not there yet. We might get there at some point, but. But we're not there yet. So right now it's basically 50. 50. Like a lot of the. The. The why Martini has been a phenomenal editor for me is like our senses of humor are very much in sync. So maybe half the funny bits that you see in the videos are like, you know, like, in this last video, we had a thing where I was like, if I'm a fly on the wall, and I think I had a note in the script there that's like, you know, let's put a fly on the wall and a stock photo of an office with my head on it. Like, 50% of it is probably me coming up with funny stuff like that. But then when that sense of humor is, like, really in sync with the editor, like Martini can, the other 50% can be stuff that he chucks in. And the more we work together on that, like, the better. And, like, the better that whole thing comes together. And the process right now is basically, he'll do the initial edit, we usually go through one or two rounds of revisions, and then it comes to me to finalize. But it's like, also the product of doing this for years. Like, the. Like, the polish. And, like, all of that is just the byproduct of doing it really badly for a really long time. And at the end of the day, like, all the videos, like I said, I try to, like, manufacture this sort of. This thing that's kind of happening in parallel at any given time. Like, when it comes to engagement and making a video interesting, if there's, like, several sort of things progressing at the same time, it is much more engaging and keeps things interesting. So, like, the whole, like, slide whistle bit in this video, like, coming up Sunday, like, the recurring bits, we build in, like, the Steve guy who's just this hilarious old man. There's a bunch of videos on. On this stock video site that we use. You kind of build up that language over time, and it makes the editing easier. I've also gone through over 40 video editors, and I'm with Martini because he, like. He, like, we worked a bit. We work together better than anyone else has so much of, like, doing things really well. What's the saying? It's like putting more f. More time and effort into it than anyone else would seem as reasonable. So. And that's, like, absolutely. The case here is, like, nobody's invested the same amount of money and effort. And this stuff is. I think I have. And it goes beyond a threshold that I think most people would seem as be like, that's nuts. Why would you do that? So I do have a phenomenal editor right now, but it's like, the product of a whole lot of stuff that goes into all of that. Hey. This episode is sponsored in part by Firm360. Firm360 is practice management system. It's just gonna help you get more done, help you run a more organized accounting firm. If you're out there running an accounting firm on a spreadsheet or on that legacy tool that your tax vendor said, oh, no, we're gonna bundle this one with you and it's gonna be like, free for three years. Okay? If you're that guy, you already know you've made a mistake. Okay, listen, cloud practice management systems, they're here to stay. This is the future. You just gotta get on board. Okay, Let me tell you a bit about firm360. Nice thing about firm360 is it's trying to do all that stuff for you. It is trying to do project management, file management, time and billing. You're getting all that stuff into a single place in the cloud that you can work with anywhere. You can associate your documents with the projects that they related to, your time and billing, all that stuff in one place. Just like that crappy old tax vendor told you their tool would do, right? How's that going for you? Mm. Check out firm 360, developed by actually an accounting firm that was like, none of these things do the things that I want them to do. Let's build our own solution, right? If that's feeling like you right now, check out firm 360. I'll put a link in the show. Notes. Teresa A. Had some great thoughts and questions on niching. Let's bring it home with this couple questions. Should you always niche down? And how do you run multiple niches, especially in the beginning, if you haven't quite figured out what you want to specialize in? And this was a comment on the pricing video I did recently that talked about how you're probably not going to get your niche right on the first try. And so when you're first starting out, don't be afraid to explore several different niches. Because I know in my case I didn't get it right on the first try. Like, what's the likelihood that you're just going to say, I think I want to do this, and all that goes great on the first try. I think what most of us do is we get afraid to niche because of all the things that we're doing we're theoretically closing the door on, and we ultimately never, never invest in developing a niche. And what you miss out on is learning what it looks like just to develop the niche, the skill of developing it, as opposed to being like, I think I want to do this, I'm just gonna do it. Or I think I wanna do these two things. I'm just gonna do it and start. That person's gonna be so much better informed 18 months down the row about a road about how to build a niche. But than the person who is like sitting there concerned about picking the right one and overthinking it like we always do. Right? So one other thing that I want to season into this and it's actually a Twitter thread that John Ray of Scrutinized posted this morning. I want to read this and then we'll kind of work through those questions and I'll kind of give you my thoughts, he said. So I'm reading John Ray's Twitter thread here. I'll put a link to it in the show. Notes There are benefits to serving a specific niche, for sure, but there are also two major risks no one ever talks about. Here are my thoughts on the downside of niching and how to protect yourself. The first risk is economic. When you become a service provider to a specific industry, your ability to grow or retain clients is directly tied to how well that industry is performing. Consider picking two niches. I know the whole point of niching is focused, but no one said you can only pick one. Pick one industry with lots of upside and one with more stable growth prospects. I think that's like an ex. Like a recommendation is. Consider picking two. For example, software companies and auto repair shops. In economic boom, software companies abound in the money prints itself. On the other hand, auto repair shops aren't going anywhere. This is just one example. But the idea is to pick one industry with huge potential and pair it with a steady one. The second risk of niching is social risk. Depending on how tight your niche is, there could be relatively few people who control the narrative. Now what happens when one of those people is an absolute turd of a human and you can and you just so happen to run afoul of their fragile ego. One nasty comment could damage your reputation and limit your prospects. The solution? Be a thought leader. Make your voice and opinions heard so people get to know and trust you. This strengthens your reputation. So John, there's sharing some some downsides of like going all in on one niche. Some general thoughts for me and let's start with the question of should you always niche down? I think like niche. When people think of niche they you're usually thinking of an industry when there's a whole ton of different types of specialization, industry being just one of them. But niche vs non niche has always felt too binary to me. Like there's a Massive spectrum. And I think the, the framing that I've always liked better is specialization. Because, you know, the new firm owner we were just talking about, where you'll take in just about anything because you got to pay the bills. That is a firm that is not specialized at all. A firm that exclusively does tax like, they are further down that specialization spectrum. A firm that only does tax in Oregon, they're further down that specialization spectrum because SALT is hard. A firm that only works with a specific type of retail store and they do tax and accounting for them, that's also a specialized firm. So we're all specializing to some degree. The only like absolute truth here to me is generally the more specific of a problem that you're solving, the more you're pushing down that specialization end of the spectrum, generally the more profitable that work can be because it's a more meaningful problem and the better you are at that job. Like if, if I sat down in a room of 10 business owners of any type versus sitting down in a room of 10 accounting firm owners, I'm just going to be a much, much better advisor to the accounting firm owners, right? Because I know that domain better. So it ultimately takes you on specialization, takes you on a path to where your team can be more helpful because they have a more specialized knowledge that is better for that specific type of, of person. You know, it's the reason that I, I make videos for accounting firms and not tech videos and not entrepreneurship videos like, because even though like my main YouTube channel will always be itty bitty, like it's like 5000 subscribers, I'm more interested in making something that's really, really good for a specific type of person. And so to the question of should you always niche down? I don't. I guess my answer to that is yes, because I think you should always be on a journey to finding more specificity. And so the, the framing that I've come back to a number of times is all you need to, you need to be investing time and finding the person for whom the problem you solve is 10x as painful as the person you have on the client list now. And when you stop and you think about that and you think about who's on the client list, you have people on your client list who value what you do to different degrees. And that is because the problem you solve for them has varying levels of pain to different people. But what I think the Internet enables is finding the people for whom that problem is way more painful, who will happily pay 3x what any of your Clients are paying you now because it just hurts so darn bad. So I think our job is always to maybe not niche down like in the traditional industry niching frame framing, but I think our job is always to get more specialized and more specific in what we do because people will pay you more, you'll be better at your job. But specialization goes well beyond industry to me. And it's not to say you shouldn't specialize in an industry, but it's also like, what stage are those people at? What's the demographic of the business owner that you're working with? Is there another very specific problem that you can pair with them? Like, you know, E Comm may be a niche, but E Com sellers, you know, that use a specific E Com platform is a better niche. Like I think our goal ultimately is just to keep getting more specific in what we do and to acknowledge what John has said here of the risk of going deep on one. It's absolutely the case. I mean I. My practice specialized in working with dental clinics like every accounting firm does. And when Covid came and in Oregon there was a shutdown and all the dental clinics had to, had to close down. We were concerned, especially at the time we were really leaning into revenue based billing. We were basically for the back office stuff, we were basically billing a lot of firms a fixed percentage of their revenue. So they got the shutdown order and they're like, cool, so I don't have to pay you anything right now, right? And we were like, that's actually. That's a great question. Let me get back to you on that. So there is definitely risk to getting so specific that. And let's use AI as an example. Like AI is absolutely going to disrupt some industries more than others. So there is risk in going super deep with a single one. And maybe that's a rationale for wearing several hats and having several sort of niches within your business. I think this is the case for most firms. Like as you grow larger, you kind of try to specialize around maybe, I don't know, four to, you know, 10 domains. If we're talking about a 500 person firm, they usually say like, here are the types of clients that we work with. So I do think that's normal, the larger your firm gets. But you know, what John's saying is valid. You're kind of like, darn if you do, darn if you don't. If you're a single person firm, it is admittedly going to be hard. Like to Teresa's point, it's Going to, like, you are spreading yourself thinner to go to, you know, invest in several different things at the same time. So one helpful framing that John brought up in that thread was like, what is the risk? Like, is it an industry where there are very obvious risks to that industry that could impact it in the near term? Like, definitely worth considering that sort of thing, right? So ultimately, like, yeah, there is risk in going super, super deep on a single niche. I will say the one. The one thing that I don't think that totally captures is, you know, there's that analogy of, like, every time if you're standing in a room full of doorways, and I think I originally saw this in the. The Win Without Pitching manifesto, which is a great book. If you're standing in a room of doorways and you walk through one door never to return, you know, and there were all those other doors, and by walking through that door, you're making the decision that you're never going to go through any of those other doors that you could have gone through. And that's a scary thing. And that keeps us from getting more specific. As you walk into the next room, there's a whole other set of doors that you never knew existed. So even if you did get so specific with a certain type of client, when you find that specificity, once you get into there, you usually will find, oh, there's way more here than I ever actually imagined or realized. So I don't know. Like, to be totally honest, I don't know that there's a level of specificity where you get way down into that specificity and that thing goes away and you're like, well, I'm hosed back to step one. I think the reality is, when you're on that journey, there's a ton of other things you learned about and got curious about and other opportunities that you see that you would not have seen had you not, like, initially invested in that specificity. So ultimately, I do think it is unlikely that you're going to specialize in something and then one day that rug gets pulled out from under you. And the fact that you did that specialization does not still leave you in a better place than you would have been otherwise if you didn't specialize. Like, I think making that investment and that specific knowledge, I have a hard time seeing a situation where that just poof, becomes valueless. Doesn't mean you won't have to pivot. Doesn't mean you won't have to change, which, we're accountants. That's kind of, you know, what we're constantly having to do anyways. But there is validity in that. Like, it is definitely worth thinking about if you went all in on web 3 stuff or people who made their money on, you know, the value of Bitcoin 24 months ago, like, you should know 24 months ago, that's a pretty risky spot to set up shop exclusively, right? You know, and you know this if you work with, you know, real estate people and the market goes up and down and all that. So it is definitely worth taking into account, like, what is the resiliency of. Of that category. The other question Theresa had, how do you run multiple niches? Especially at the beginning, if you haven't quite figured out what niche you want to specialize? I think back to the point of there being value and learning the skill of niching. I think there's value in seeing into different industries and see what you like and what you don't like about them. So a practical example of what, you know, looking into several niches would be is, like, turn up at some industry conferences for a couple different domains where you may be interested, and if you only went to one of those things, you would have tunnel vision for just what it looks like for that industry. And maybe you just assume that's what all of them look like. Whereas if you go to. If you have the opportunity to explore several of them, you may learn more about yourself in that process to say, oh, I actually now realize that I like this about that type of specialization, and I don't like this. So what does it look like to explore multiple in the beginning, it's more about what you do proactively to learn more about those industries. You could just explore one. I think you're gonna learn more by exploring a couple and seeing what you like and what you don't like about them. Because I think it is healthy to come into that in the beginning, giving yourself the grace to recognize that you're probably not gonna get right on the first try. And the likelihood that you will just walk into what is, for you, the perfect niche on your first try, probably not realistic. So I think from the beginning, you probably need to be thinking in that process, that discovery process about, it's very likely that this thing I'm looking at will not be the forever thing. How do I optimize for, like, learning more about myself and these industries and what will work and not work for me, rather than necessarily, like going whole hog in on the very first thing that comes to your mind? Because you're gonna learn a lot just by going through the process of doing it. That's it for today. I have a lot of fun doing these Q and A's, so keep the questions coming in the comments. You know, DMs, we've got a number that we didn't get to that we'll circle back to next week. But thanks for coming and hanging. Appreciate y', all, and I'll see you tomorrow.