045 People Unfit To Run Accounting Firms

Kicking off another week. Happy Monday to all you lovely people out there changing people's lives. A debit and a credit at a time today. Are there people out there who are unfit, unfit to run an accounting firm? Almost certainly, yes. There's been a lot of discussion about this online in the past week. Let's talk about it. Who, if, if you're thinking about doing it, what are some things you should consider? And are there just people who have no business, no business doing it? Let's talk about it. Come on in on Jason Daly. So what kicked off a lot of this, at least on Twitter this week, was a video from Abeer. I'm just gonna play it here, uh, so that you can hear it. You don't really need to see it. It's about a minute long. I'll play it so that you can kind of hear what kicked off the discussion here.

Consulting firm. There's a good chance that at some point you've thought to yourself, I should start my own firm. If so, there are three things you should consider.

First.

Firstly, do you really enjoy doing the actual accounting or consulting work? If so, you should really just try to stick to working a job somewhere. If your current job sucks, try really hard to find another place to work. There are some really good workplaces out there, but if you try to go this route, you're not going to be doing the stuff that you actually enjoy that much. Which then leads to the second consideration. Enjoy doing all the other shit that goes into running a business, because you're going to be doing a lot of that. I'm talking about bookkeeping, insurance, filing things with the government, finding and implementing software for your business, managing all your it, building a website, doing content, dealing with marketing agencies, dealing with clients, invoicing, managing vendor relationships, sales, follow ups, proposals, contracts. Massive amount of your time is going to go to all of this administrative work that has nothing to do with the actual skill that you enjoy doing. And if your firm is going to stay super tiny, then maybe the ratio of the work that you enjoy doing will be high. But the more you want to scale, the less and less of it you're going to have to do and the more admin you're going to have to do. So make sure you actually enjoy the admin stuff if you're thinking you're going to have a big firm. And lastly, are you ready to grind? You can make more money doing this, but you're going to have to work way harder than you already do. So if the working too much is what didn't appeal to you about a firm, then definitely don't do this. Honestly, this isn't the right choice for the vast majority of people. It's a very rough life. So think long and hard before you decide to do this.

What do you think? Agree or disagree? I think I agree with a lot of the things that Beer said there. We've talked in the past about. I feel like I've come a long ways in the past five years about, like, self awareness of myself and what I enjoy and what I don't enjoy and what I enjoy in a fleeting way and like, what I will be bored of in a week's time. And I would say the more that we learn about ourselves and the more that we can be mindful of maybe how we're wired before making a big decision, like starting your own firm. Like, absolutely. Like, that should absolutely be something that you give a lot of thought to. This video, like, resonated with a ton of people. Like, people were all over it on Twitter. A lot of people agreed. And as with everything social media, like, obviously there's no such thing as context, right? It's everything on, you know, Twitter. Especially, like, by definition is this compressed, super concise thing that leaves out nuance. But I wanted to talk about this one because while I agree with most of it, I also think it could spook some people from potentially starting a firm who absolutely could start a firm and shouldn't necessarily be spooked. And I also think there's no problem with a technician starting their own firm. I've heard the dialogue. There's been kind of the dialogue of, like, people who look down their noses at the technician, the people that just want to do the work. I have seen people look down their noses at that type of person and say, I think the common phrase is, you're not running a business. It's just another job. Which in my mind is like, why does it matter? Maybe, like, I can say, like, there's a lot of people who would still be better served going out and working for four clients on their own terms than working for somebody else. So, like, there's 100 different flavors of what an accounting firm can look like. And so I think it'd be interesting to explore, like, for different personality types, what could be the headaches you run into when you're launching a firm, but also based on that, who should you be looking to hire first? It's interesting. Accountants have wildly different answers for, like, we did like a fantasy draft last year on Twitter where I put up polls Every day of like, hey, who's your first hire? Who's your second hire? Who's your third hire? And the answers were across the board. And so when you're, I think, aware of kind of yourself and how you approach work that informs who the best kind of initial hires are for you. At the end of the day, I think there's very few people that absolutely shouldn't start a firm. But to me, it's a bigger question of what should I know about myself now to, like, best position myself for success? So, super simple personality type framework that we've talked about before, what they outline in the E Myth, basically, three different types of people. And this is a generalization, as all these things are, but three different types. The technician, the doer, the one that likes to do it. They love to tinker. They live in the present. They're interested in methodologies, backbone of cultural traditional, and they ruminate. You've got the entrepreneur, visionary, dreamer, lives in the future, craves control, creates havoc. People, problems get in the way of dreams, and they like to dream. And then the manager, they see problems and clean messes. They live in the past, they crave order, and they're pragmatic. So you've got the entrepreneur, the manager, and the technician. And what the E Myth book is kind of all about, which E Myth is like, it's got some issues, but it's almost required reading. I think if you're an entrepreneur, the kind of the core premise of the E. Myth is you have a person that loves making pies, and so they create a business that is a pie business and then are never able to make pies. Or if they just focus on making pies, all the other kind of peripheral aspects of the business fall apart. Because, yes, when you go into business for yourself, you do get sucked in to a bunch of other stuff. But I could point to a lot of folks anecdotally who I think kind of conflict with this kind of common knowledge, that if you're a technician, you can't make it work in a firm of your own. So let's go through each of these three people types. Myself, I'm an entrepreneur, and like, that is my person type. I'm a visionary. I get bored by things quickly. I've learned that about myself. I absolutely create havoc because of the rate at which I want to do things. And I come in and I just like, drop a new idea like a bomb. And everybody gets frustrated, right? Like, we've all worked with people like that. That's totally me to A t if I am someone who is in public accounting and I'm frustrated, like, what is the best path for a person like me? You know, I can share my own journey. I built an accounting practice within a tax practice. And so like what got me energized was building a new thing from scratch and having kind of that like creative outlet to build something new. But that also like, was not the only thing I was doing. I was doing that while building the YouTube channel and actually managing a bunch of the tax practice and all that stuff. So I don't think I could have just done that. But for me, like as that type of personality, I knew I could never start my own firm. And it's why I bought into a larger firm instead of going out and building something on my own from scratch. Because I didn't want to have to do all of this stuff Abeer is talking about here. Like I did not want to get sucked into the admin and all of that stuff. So while I wasn't a technician, I still didn't want to do the admin stuff. And honestly, I don't know that anybody really does. Maybe manager types, but there's very few people that like think about billing and like all these peripheral things that go into running a practice and they're like, yes, I'm excited for that and that's okay. Like, so like if you're thinking about going out and running your own firm and those things aren't appealing to you, in my book, that's completely normal. Now my partner, a partner I had in a past business, when he started his firm from scratch, he started with an admin from day one. Somebody that he knew really well, had a huge amount of trust in and kind of their operating agreement coming out the door was, you're gonna free me up to do all the technician stuff because that's all I wanna do. And so he had that person in his hip pocket from day one that would manage everything but the technical stuff. And she was a rock star and clients loved her and she could do all these things. But he had that self awareness about himself from day one. To come into running a firm with that person kind of by his side taking that stuff off his plate that he didn't wanna do. And he was fundamentally a technician, like up to having a firm of 40 people, that was what he wanted to do and that was what he loved to do. And he spent probably 80% of his time doing technician stuff. And it worked. Like we built a business around that, I think where it doesn't work. And when it really goes sideways is maybe when it surprises you and maybe when you don't have that honesty with yourself to say that that is what you you are. Because if you come into launching accounting firm and like the main point of a beers video is there is so much stuff that you don't even realize you're going to get muddled down into before you start a firm. And then you get into it and you're like, I thought I was just going to do accounting, but I actually just sit here having an existential crisis about practice management systems until the end of time. And so like there is more of that that happens than I think most of us realize before we get into it. So absolutely be aware of that. And that is kind of like the core premise of the video, I think. But I would say none of us like that. And so if the only people that are going to go out and start a firm are the ones who do like that, like there's not going to be anybody left to start firms. So have a plan about it. Like understand what type of person you are and how you can fill in the gaps from day one. Or the second thing we're going to talk about build a firm that that is admin optimized or doesn't have a lot of that stuff going on. We'll talk some more about that this episode is sponsored in part by Client Hub. This week entails from the Hub. You remember last week Super Smart accounting firm, totally a real firm, fixed their client request process by implementing client tasks. And Client Hub they're leveling things up. They discovered Client Hubs internal workflow features this week. They use it to track deliverables and they were wowed. Wowed when they found Client Hubs Magic Magic Workflow. It's GPT Power and Client Hub. Stop the music. Keep playing the music. It is still an ad read. GPT Power built right into Client Hub. Give Magic Workflow a few words that describes the work that needs to be done and it will generate the initial task list automatically. With AI now, Super Smart Accounting is no longer putting off documenting their processes. Within a week they're all set with their client work and detailed processes. It's all captured in Client Hub. Somebody want to take some pto? Remember that episode from last week? Unlimited pto? No problem because somebody else can pop on in do that work because it's all documented in Client Hub. How's your documentation looking right now? Bubble? Hmm, that's what I thought. That's it for this week's. Installment of Tales from the Hub. Learn more about Client Hub the link at the Show Notes hey. This episode is sponsored in part by dark horse CPAs. Ever heard of them? Hey. In an age of rapidly evolving AI, Dark Horse CPAs has decided to entirely abandon the computer and go back to doing everything by hand. Bold move. We'll see how it works out. They believe that public accounting is rooted in miserable toiling. So to deprive accountants of the pride and bragging rights of working over 3000 hours a year is a slap in the face. Sure, they could use computers to work half the hours for five times the what is this ad read, but what is an accountant if not burned out and underpaid? Sure, they could be known to their family and actually have relationships with them, but the truth is, accountants just don't like people. And if you're looking for a firm that will exercise an undue amount of control over your life and actively participate in the decline of your physical and mental health, you should get in touch with the overlords at Dark Horse. I feel like somebody that doesn't like Dark Horse just bought an ad on this show. This is tongue in Cheek. They're passively seeking mediocre talent to fill roles that are obsolete to the modern accounting firm and would appreciate the opportunity to stunt your career growth for as long as you let them. Check out the link in the Show Notes to Dark Horse CPAs to learn more. So I was an entrepreneur. I still am an entrepreneur and I knew that about myself and that was a rationale for me to buy a larger firm where I could come in day one and help develop people, which I love doing, help work on bigger picture strategy. And that for me was a reason to buy into a larger practice rather than start my own firm. Now let's say you're a manager type at a firm right now and you're like, eh, this isn't for me. Should I go out and do my own thing? A manager could go out and do all the work themselves from day one. To me, what would make sense if you see yourself as a manager type is straight out of the gate to really have a fulfillment solution that you can oversee. Maybe that's a part time employee straight out of the gate. Maybe that's a couple outsourced options that you're gonna oversee and be responsible for the output of coming out of the gate. One thing that I think technicians generally get wrong when they are starting a firm is they're not thinking ahead about fulfillment and how the work will get done via multiple channels. Because if you start up your own business and like, you are the one making all the pies until the end of time, all it takes is you getting sick and that business, like, stops in its tracks. You have no diversification of how fulfillment gets done. And that's just really risky. And most of the time I think we burn ourselves out. And so, like, being trapped under the weight of absolutely nothing will get done unless I do it. It's just kind of a stressful place to be. So if you are a manager type of person and you're coming into running your own practice day one, maybe it's just got to be you. Like, maybe you do have to do all of that stuff. But probably sooner than the technician, the manager is thinking about, where do I find the people across whom I can diversify fulfillment? And we've talked about that enough in the past. Whether it's traditional hiring, whether it's contractors, whether it's outsourcing, which does not necessarily mean offshoring, but it certainly could. The manager's job is to get the systems together and make. Make sure that everything is operating to a T, like according to the system. Now, the technician man there, There are a ton of accountants out there like this. And you can even see them online, like, in the way that they talk about how they run their businesses. They're technicians. They just want to do the work. Like, they're not thinking about the bigger picture business stuff zooming out. That's not something that comes natural to them. Like, they love the craft. And so they're the type of person that when they're doing CPE or something like that, they're investing in the technical things because that's what they enjoy. And gang, that is totally fine by my book. Like, those people are not wired the same way that I am. But I also know that there is still joy to be had in being a technician for yourself. And so if you are wired that way and you're thinking about going out and launching a firm. Yes. Like big old caution tape. Be aware that there is a ton of extra work that you take on when you go to start your own business. We've talked on this show a lot about, like, the hard woo woo things of setting boundaries for yourself for the first time. Life's a lot easier when you can put your finger on the boundaries your employer set for you. When you've got nobody but yourself to blame, that's a little stickier. That gets a little bit harder for you to process. But if you're a technician, like first step is know about yourself, which of these things you are. And second is either build a firm that is going to be like optimized for not having a ton of admin and we'll talk about what that looks like next or come in from day one with somebody who will help you with the admin. And honestly for some people, like that's a spouse, which I know we're all triggered because we've seen how badly that can pan out with clients oftentimes. But just somebody that you trust and absolutely doesn't have to be a spouse, somebody that you can trust that can come along from day one and help and be like that immediate person that you can delegate those things to so that you can focus on doing the work. Now many people I think start out as technicians but over time develop into something else. Not to say that you should and that there's a right or a wrong answer there, but oftentimes like what people are excited by will change over time. And so if you've been working for someone else and all you do is production, like you may think that you're a technician or the other things might look really sexy because you haven't had the opportunity to do those things. Like literally the vernacular, a manager is like what we're all told we need to develop into. Like simply by looking at the org chart success moving up the org chart is becoming a manager. And you know, obviously we've all seen how oftentimes that's just inherently bad because you being a good technician doesn't mean that you're going to be a good manager. But if you're coming out of the gate as a technician, you just have to take care not to get, not to like get yourself in over your head and think about bringing somebody along with you that can fill the gap. You'll notice in like all of these solutions. For me, I almost always need that other person to come, like fill in some gaps because peeps, we all have gaps and there are all things that we despise doing. And so for me like quality of life is almost always improved by having that like yin to your yang, like the person that can tackle the stuff that you least enjoy. Because I don't know really anybody that enjoys all aspects of this stuff that we do. But the biggest thing here I think is like self awareness, just knowing about yourself, what you are and like how to build a firm that is designed with you in mind and like what you enjoy and what you want to pursue. I would say and I don't think the video like went this far, but I would say the last thing we need to do as accountants is be like gatekeeper Y or say, like, you have to fit this perfect profile to launch a firm. You think of, I mean, all the ways that we're losing accountants out of the profession right now. I do think there is a big issue right now and people who are in frustrating situations not being able to get matched with awesome firms. Like, we are a really, really tiny bubble. Like the people that come and hang on this show and you know, the friends that you make online. We're a tiny bubble. A tiny subset of the population that relatively speaking, run super rad, generally flexible, cool firms compared to accounting land at large. If more of the people that were out there in unfortunate kind of legacy positions knew about these really cool firms, buddy, you and I's firms would have people like chomping at the bit to come work for us and we would be keeping people in the profession, I think. So. I do sometimes fear that the folks in those frustrating positions feel that their only options are to either go out on their own or leave do something else or go into private or something like that. So there is an issue of like, we're not doing enough to pair really cool people with really cool firms. Hopefully we do a little bit of that on this show with like now some of the ads actually being job placements. But as much as like entrepreneurship and building your own thing can be glorified and hopefully, hopefully even like this show doesn't necessarily glorify that. But as much as that is like, you know, could be framed as the American dream sort of thing, I do think that there's, there's definitely like types of folks who could go and find the perfect work situation and totally thrive there and be happier than doing their own thing like the like. That's absolutely something worth considering. Now, not all practices come with the same level of like administrative overhead. So in the US tax practices are like really overhead heavy I think because they're generally the traditional model for those tax practices is they are volume practices because you're doing work for people once a year. And so you gotta run a pretty decent number of people through there. And so the more of a volume practice you have, the more you're going to get sucked into admin stuff. But let's say you, you know, are used to, you want to build an accounting practice or something like that. I mean, a quote unquote accounting firm can be you running the back office for, you know, Three clients and having control over your schedule and the way that that work gets done and all that stuff. That's not a bad gig. You can make a lot more money doing that sort of thing than you can for many cast practices. Not all, but like, that's not a bad gig. That's not an admin heavy gig. If you are a technician and you just want to do the work, definitely I would say be slow to hire like that person who can be your assistant. Like, that's probably, you know, a virtual assistant or somebody that's not going to be a ton of work to manage because generally a technician is not going to get excited about setting quarterly goals with staff and stuff like that. Like, you just want to kind of put your nose into the books and do the work. Um, but man, like there are. You can build a killer business with a ton of flexibility around just having a small book of business, like not having a volume. Accounting practice. On the spectrum of, you know, how much admin firms require, that is way less than like spinning up a tax practice where you gotta run, you know, one or 200 tax returns to make money. So as with all things social media, it's pretty hard to have nuance on anything on that. I would say the key message should not be scare the technicians away. Or in my mind, like, I'm absolutely not in the camp that says technicians shouldn't be able to run their own firms. I don't look down my nose at the people who are technicians running their own firms. We need all of these people, for goodness sakes. But definitely be aware of like, there's a lot of stuff that goes into running a business. There's a lot of. I would say for me, the practical, like, doing of the tasks is almost secondary to the mental struggle of being an entrepreneur and running your own business and setting your own boundaries and the existential crisis of like, anything being possible. There's no friction to change. Like any silly idea from a YouTuber or something like that could be like, oh, yep, we got to go do this. Like, for me, that's an even harder aspect of running a firm yourself than like the administrative stuff, which is still a pain. But if you are thinking about doing your own firm, like, yes, the takeaway ought to be like, there's a lot to it. Think about whether it's something you want to pick up, whether it's something you want to get help with from day one, and make sure it's not the sort of thing that will be so soul sucking to you that it Will take the fun out of getting to run that practice. At the end of the day, I think we need more people starting practices, not, like, build up fear or gatekeep the starting of practices. Starting an accounting firm is not a. Not a forever thing. Like, I think we. We stack too much weight on these decisions and think that when we do that, that's just what we're gonna do, and that's gonna, like, define our career. It's not. If you build a book of business, you can sell a book of business. You can roll a book of business into another firm where maybe what they do is complimentary to what you do. You can sell that book of business, walk away from it. Like an accounting firm. Like, in the grand scheme of things, compared to, like, other types of small businesses, like, is a relatively transferable asset. Like, that's not a bad thing to build and invest in. And for me, I think the. I think the going through the process of working for myself and having the guts to, like, go out on a limb and do that, man, is, like, one of the best things that I've ever done, Because I've tasted that rainbow now I'm never gonna go back. So I wish everybody at some point in their life, like, I hope they have the opportunity to taste entrepreneurship, to see if it's something that is for them. Because ultimately, what. What I try to optimize for in my life, I don't want to project this on everybody, but, like, this is my approach. I'm thinking about the person that I'm gonna be on the other side of that thing, because stuff's gonna work sometimes, and stuff's not gonna work sometimes, oftentimes for reasons completely outside of my control. But is it gonna put me in a better position in the future than I am in today? Like, will I be better informed about myself, about the world, about how things work? And the answer when you try something new is almost always yes. You're gonna have a better picture of, like, what it looks like to do all of this stuff. And I think that's why I am faster to make decisions and try different things than most people, Because I really try to be intentional about fighting the urge of it feeling like a forever decision that is somehow gonna define me and my career, my success, or something like that. So if you're thinking about doing a firm, definitely educate yourself, inform yourself, Surround yourself with other people who are doing the same thing at the same time, who are, like, one to three years ahead of you. Come into it in an informed way. The Internet's phenomenal for that to, like, find those other people who are going through that journey. Definitely be informed, but I don't think you have to be afraid. I don't think it's anything like that. Spooky. This episode is sponsored in part by Finn Daily. Finn Daily Ever heard of it? Entrepreneurs, let me tell you, they don't have time to focus on their numbers. But Finn Daily solves this problem by sending business owners an automated Daily email. You know what automated means? You don't have to do a thing. It just sends. It goes right on out. It includes key metrics, bank balances, and accounting for about a buck a day, a dollar a day. You know what? That's less than the cost of a cup of almost anything these days. In addition, Finn Daily allows the emails to be white labeled, I. E. Slap that firm stamp on there, Putting your accounting firm top of mind with clients, because that email's sliding right into home every morning. Try my Brainchild. It is. I didn't. I did make it. I created Finn Daily. I don't own it anymore. Try my Brainchild for free. Link in the show notes. Go check it out. Pretty cool. Okay, parting thoughts. Some cool Chat GPT stuff. Some maniac on Reddit created a plugin that allowed ChatGPT to see their local file system. Now, like a ChatGPT that can see the local stuff on your computer, it's something that we've talked about quite a bit, like going back to the very beginning of this show. A huge unlock is going to be when ChatGPT can work with all of the stuff on your computer. I'm talking about tax practices and tax software. GPT4 built in has image processing capabilities where you can give it an image and it will detail all the things it understands in that image. They still haven't released it yet for safety reasons. GPT4, like that model, was finished being trained last fall. We're coming up on 12 months from them having finished training the model, and we still don't have access to image processing for safety reasons. But once it can understand what it sees, you pair it with like an RPA bot that can click things and work the keyboard. Then it can click the things that it sees. And so you combine the logic of, you know, ChatGPT being able to go out and see like QuickBooks online help documentation and then navigate QuickBooks according to the help, you know, documentation and a PDF file there of a bank statement like, that's just around the corner. And that's fundamentally gonna change the way that we work once it can control the things that we have on our screen and like, we're just about there. And so I've always been super positive, super excited about this. Somebody on Reddit created a plugin for ChatGPT. They can see their local file system. And what I think is interesting is the reaction has been wildly negative. Top upvoted comment found the beginning of the end. And like, all of the commentary that I've seen around this is like, this is like our worst nightmare. Because if there's a malicious version of this that gets on somebody's computer that is like, you know, that is malware on a level that like we have never seen before, that level of intelligence to be able to navigate and do everything on your computer and they're right. And this is kind of the struggle with AI is does that make it a reason not to do it, not to use it? Right? Are there scenarios where the bad outweighs the good and who gets to decide what good and bad is? It's, it is shocking to think of the power that open AI has on their hands right now. Like stuff like this image processing, like, there's things like that and you know, the image processing I think will fundamentally change how we do OCR and like turn entire industries on their head. You know, on top of how AI is kind of already doing that, the fact that a private company has the authority to like decide when that sort of thing gets released is pretty wild. But thinking more about what this like desktop enabled version of AI looks like, I'll admit a little spookier than I thought it was the more I thought about it. And then on the heels of that, Microsoft at their annual Build conference last week announces Windows Copilot. And so that is like a chat experience built in to Windows. And so initial version, it looks like it will have access to like all the text in the various applications that you use and all that. I don't think right now it goes as. And this is like nobody actually has their hands on it besides early access testers. And with the way Microsoft's been releasing things right now, like, it's probably still going to be a while until we can get our hands on that. But I don't, from what I saw, it didn't look like it really has the ability to like click and navigate things yet. But Microsoft right now has the best RPA that is like desktop bot platform with Power Automate. And I can absolutely see a world where that Windows Chat Assistant is paired with Power Automate and you have conversations about automating the things that you see on your screen. And this is pretty wild. Like this is like next 12 month kind of stuff, I think. And you know, we've, we've. I've been, I've been trying to do a lot of chat GPT prompt sharing to get people motivated and excited about the things chat GPT can do and the shareability of the things that you can build for it. Like, you know, we've done bank statement extraction, we've done, you know, uncategorized transactions, like researching tables of that stuff. But when that extends to, hey, I use Drake, I use Ultra tax, I use QuickBooks online, I use Xero. Here's a prompt to reconcile the bank based off a PDF bank statement, here's a prompt to like do these wildly meaningful things. Like, man, I think that's just around the corner and that's really exciting. It will be interesting to see whether as this stuff gets closer, the rate at which it is released gets slower. And so, you know, we're seeing this with OpenAI dragging its feet on the image processing capabilities of GPT4. GPT4 was finished training last fall and they spent like five or six months doing safety training on the model before they released GPT4. So they already sat on that for like half a year. They still haven't released the image processing stuff. And I think Microsoft is navigating this stuff too. So like they'll give you a cool trailer, they'll announce this stuff and show it to you. But like, you know, Windows, Microsoft copilot, like all the bigger launch, the announcement they did in like February or something like that, as of three weeks ago, only 100 people had their hands on that or 100 companies or something like that. So like we're still a ways from actually getting that stuff and we will see if the closer it gets, the more it slows just because of how disruptive it will probably be. A lot more rumblings now around AI regulation and how to do that the right way. I shared my thoughts on. I would never classify myself as an AI doomer, but the more I have learned and the more kind of further down the road we've gotten, I am, you know, concerned about stuff like the next election cycle and like much more concerned about that stuff than I was before because I think GPT4 is better at writing than the average human being. And yes, it's producing stuff that is the average of, you know, the human consciousness and everything it's ingested and it can't have any novel ideas. But I would argue that I, I can't either. Like, I don't really know ultimately what the difference is compared to other human beings and the fact that we're all just remixing all the things that we consume. So desktop stuff feels like it's getting closer. Cool announcement from Microsoft, but we'll see how all that shakes out. Because, man, could it accelerate, like, the way that we work really quickly. What does that look like for accounting firms? Is it going to be the big companies that nail it, which some people are afraid of? Are they going to get to that stuff first and be able to offer these like, ridiculously cost effective tax prep services or accounting services? The more complex things are, the more nuanced things are. So, like, you know, I always say, like, keep looking for specialization. Like, get more specific in what your expertise is. Because if you've got a client that is, you know, a vet, a machine that can get all of this stuff into the tax software, you know, in 60 seconds, that's great. But we all know there's a lot more that goes into preparing a small business's tax return than that. And we still have to be involved there. So I ultimately, I think at least in the, like, the near term, it's going to be all of us using these tools that just make us wildly more efficient, which is awesome, right? Like, ultimately, how does that change our business models? I don't know. Does it devalue anything about what we do? Or will fees stop growing? I don't really know. But for the kind of clients that we serve who have like, very specific needs, I do see tools getting way better and we're going to be able to use them. But I don't see it being like, Intuit now has this thing that's so good that your client doesn't need you. Like, I still have a really hard time seeing that, but we'll see. And you know what? We're gonna be here talking about it every day. The more I talk with people about AI and the spooky scaries and all that stuff, the more I realize if you just go and find the places where people are hanging out and having those conversations, you're gonna be just fine. Like, doesn't mean you won't have to change, but you're not gonna be surprised by anything. So, like, honestly, I feel really blessed in a lot of ways that I made the decision to leave my firm when I did. When so much is changing and so much is in flux, I think it's a great opportunity for us to like, come together and share what we're learning and kind of shield each other from, like, what's happening and kind of, kind of learn in community. So how's that for a woo woo start to the week? Thanks for coming and hanging and I'll see you tomorrow.