060 How To Become The Luckiest Accountant

Listen, it's Monday. I hear you. I know, same. But let's start the week off with possibility, with talking about how to become a more lucky, more lucky version of yourself. Because the one thing you hear from people who are doing cool things, and for most of us, we can look back on our lives and see that the very best things that happen to us happened without our doing, happened, just happened. Like, and we are lucky. And those things just came about, from your very best clients to how I met my wife. Like, there are so many things in our life, oftentimes the best things in our life that just happened. Yet we are all clinging to the reins of our own destiny and fate and all these things. And we try to plan so much. And I think this is probably a very accountant thing to do also, where we are just trying to plot every step of our future paths when the very best things come out of nowhere. So how do we optimize our life for cool opportunities, stuff that we could have never, ever imagined? I'm going to share some stories, share some ideas, because I think as accountants, we don't do this enough. We don't optimize for the things that we could never imagine being part of our lives. So let's talk about it. It's Monday. Come on in. Let's get lucky. So I am a planner. I think most humans are like the professional achiever types, which is probably most of us. Like, the people who are engaging in stuff like this. You're planners. Like, you want to know what's next. You want to take control, grab life by the horns, and kind of dictate what's to come. And I do think there's a degree of that that's healthy. Like, we can't just close our eyes and trust fall into our futures. But I would say this is one of those Internet things where when the Internet rolled around, it fundamentally changed how we should approach some aspects of our professional lives. And we haven't quite caught up to it. Like, there's so many, in my mind, aspects of firm running and how we do professional services that have not adapted to what the Internet enables now. And we kind of just do it one on one and kind of like this, this way that it had been done for, you know, you know, from the beginning of time. And the Internet didn't really change that thing. I would say, like, how we control our own destinies and look for opportunities and build our networks still has not been impacted by the Internet and what that enables enough, like, putting yourself out there and it's because like our, our puny little monkey brains, we, we can't comprehend how big the world is. And a few examples of like this that I always see in the wild, you know, the, the kind of small minded, like competitive nature of some people where they're not going to share their playbook because somebody else is surely going to steal it. And how we are maybe slow to be collaborative with people that do the same things that we do. The fear we have of doing the same thing as somebody else and being afraid of stepping on somebody's toes, like, oh, I hear you're working on that thing. Oh no, then I won't do that. When the reality is there's how many billions of people in the world, two people can do the same thing. That's no problem. When we post things on social media, like when you develop that online identity, we just assume it. If you're saying something for a second time, everybody else has already heard that thing. Like we, I think don't repeat ourselves enough. Like if we're doing a newsletter for clients, if we are educating people, if we're talking online, you just assume that if it's a thing that you have said before that everyone has heard it and they're gonna be like, oh, they're saying that old chestnut again. I mean, this show as an example. There are things we've talked about at the beginning of the show that 2/3 to 75% of the people tuning in today didn't hear me say. And that is like amplified to, I mean times 100 when you post things online, like you're afraid of sounding repetitive. When the reality is you post something online, even for the people who follow you, 80% of those people, 90% of those people will not see that thing that you posted. And all of these things are examples of the world just being bigger than we can comprehend. You don't, like, our heads can't get around how many people are out there and more importantly, how many opportunities are out there for professional stuff, for building amazing friendships, for unlocking this thing that you could have never imagined. And if we lock down our lives and try to plan out, okay, here's what my firm is gonna do the next two years and then the next three years. And then here is my 10 year plan. It is good to have like a penciled in trajectory of like kind of, here's what we're going to do. But if 100% of your day is consumed by executing to that completely arbitrary thing that you made up, what you're missing as life flies by is all the other amazing people in the world that can enable things for you that you could have never imagined. So, so I'm 34 years old. I started posting online when I was maybe 30 years old and if I had said cool man, I made it 10 years in the profession or so I'm a partner now, like I've arrived like this is my life for the rest of my life and just went into work every day and worked with my colleagues and just did that stuff until the end of time. Think about that timeline, which is what the vast majority of accountants are living. Even a lot of the people listening to this pod, that is your life. You go into work every day and like you help a lot of people and you can make a real difference and that is valuable. But think about that timeline compared to the timeline of a person who is posting online every day. And that could even just be replying to other people's content online or like posting in the comments of this YouTube video or writing up a little article every now and then and posting it on LinkedIn. Doesn't have to be anything super ambitious. The person who is putting themselves out there in that way, going out to accounting conferences not because they need the cpe, but because they know they're going to meet some like minded people. The timelines of those two people are very, very different because the second person along the way, there will be millions of people who will see the things that they put online. Even if these are just things they put out once a day and they don't have a big audience, you do that stuff consistently, an unbelievable amount of people will come in contact with you and they're gonna meet, they're gonna bump into probably thousands of people at accounting conferences where they can build these like really kind of high resolution relationships that could lead them anywhere. But that same person can do those two things. You can be the partner that stays on that, or firm owner or employee that stays on that track of just working with your colleagues every day and not kind of getting outside of that bubble. Or you can be the person that is like living a life that is more optimized for luck, for the things you can't foresee. Because I am very confident that at the end of our lives, if we look back on all the things that we did, the majority of the best things that happen in your life I'm pretty sure are gonna happen not because you put together this plan and executed on it for a decade, but because of serendipity, because of something that you never could have expected, right? And so if that's the case, like, if you agree with that, we cannot live our lives in so locked down of a way as to never enable. That serendipity is to, like, not lean into it and enable opportunities. So, like, you know, for. For me, like, And I think this honestly applies to people of any age. Like, just think of, like, kind of all of those branching timelines of where your life could go depending on the people that you meet, depending on the opportunities that you get. That unbelievable client that could open up that new niche that is way better than what you're doing right now. Or something completely off the wall where it's like, yeah, I never identified as the type of person that would do that, but I now learned I actually really enjoy this. And so I'm gonna lean into it more. And it's better than that other thing that I was doing. Hey. This episode is sponsored in part by firm360. You know,360 because it handles all aspects of your firm in a single single platform. You don't want to hop around all these. All these different places to do different things. That's why it's 360. You think they've got. Hang on, sidebar. You think they've got, like, VR headset support? You see the new Apple Apple VR thing. Wonder what that would look like, right? Okay, let me tell you about Amanda Spivey. Amanda approached Firm360 in the second half of 2020 because they needed a platform to streamline their processes. Enable and enable remote work. Remember that old chestnut, remote work? Oh, a lot of people having to rip that band aid off. Coming into Covid. Before firm360, their team had to haul boxes of work documents between home and the office if they wanted to work remotely. That is disgusting. That is absolutely disgusting. But you know what? Gonna level with you. That was happening. That was happening at my practice more recently ago than I would care to admit. But let me tell you, thanks to firm 360, they had the opportunity to add more clients. First three months, they were seeing improvements in team productivity, better transparency into what everybody was working on. And it was because they could pull all that stuff together into one place, all in one place. 360. Put those goggles on. That's not a thing yet. Maybe soon. If you're still hustling information in a whole bunch of different places, check out firm 360 link in the video description. This episode is sponsored in part by dark horse CPAs. Hey, if you're a regular listener of the show. You've heard me say that Dark Horse CPAS is a platform CPA firm about five times now. And I know that each time I've said that, you're like, what the he double hockey sticks? Does that even mean? It's a community of accountants operating under the same brand, building their practices collaboratively together, Turnkey resources. You're not reinventing the wheel. All the stuff that solves for you and will get you through. You know the hard things about launching a firm, about not making the same mistakes everybody else is making. Dark Horse brand will help you attract the talent you need and the clients you want. Buddy their tech team. There's a tech team? Hang on. Tech team alert will ensure you have what you need to automate the mundane and augment your advisory muscles. Advisory muscles? Do you have those? Dark Horse is the only CPA firm built exclusively for CPAs. Unlike a franchise, they will work with you one on one in group settings, get you everything you need. You're no longer a lone ranger. There's a better way. There's a better way. You got a whole squad behind you now. To learn more about how Dark horse is helping CPAs build practices from scratch and scale existing practices within a community that helps each other continuously up level their game, head over to Abetterway cpa. So how do we do this? How do we build a habit of optimizing life for this? We've talked about this a bit, but honestly, I think it just starts with putting yourself out there consistently. So this is not like figure out a corporate social media strategy. And it's not, how can my firm benefit from posting online? Like, that's probably a thing, but this is about you. Like, this is about you the person. Not you the business, but you the person. Because ultimately all the good things that will come from your life, like professionally come from you being a human. Like, okay, maybe there are some clients that will make decisions based on having a big impressive firm or something like that. But for you personally, like, the most valuable things stem from human relationships and connecting with other humans. And that's why I think, like, if you're gonna start somewhere with social media, I think you just start with being you. Doing social media as you does not mean that you can't, you know, do that in a business context and pick up clients from that and all these other things. But I think it starts with just being you and the people that don't post to social media. I think the most frequent thing that I hear is I Don't have anything to say. And, like, that's totally fine. In my opinion, the best parts of social media are happening in the replies, in the discussions. Like, who are the people that are talking about the things that you're interested in? Those bubbles, like, the people engaging in those conversations who are also into those things, man. Like, those could be your new best friends. And so that's where I got started with social media. And frankly, is still where I spend most of my time on social media. Like, perception is like, think, boy. Putting out stuff to teach people things and all that. When the reality is for every tweet I send, I'm probably in somebody else's replies or in my own replies. Having a discussion like 10 or 20 times. Like, it's not about, like, having this moment of enlightenment and putting out this thing that will change somebody's life. It's about, like, learning from other people's learned experiences and sharing that stuff and us all getting better along the way. And then you start making friends and you start, like, making connections, and those things just kind of happen organically. But for me, that all started with being present in a meaningful way on social media. And I think right now we all spend a lot of time scrolling, but there's a difference between scrolling and engaging scrolling. Just scrolling until the end of time, that is probably not a good thing. Like, you can definitely learn and all of that. But, like, we probably all acknowledge that may not be the best thing for society. But where that becomes really valuable, I think, is when you're engaging, when you're building relationships, when you're meeting cool people online that then become online friends and in person friends and like, business associates. Could you say that again? This Siri watch is going to be the death of me. So don't think about engaging in social media as needing to have this big, incredible thing to say. Think of it as being part of a community. Because your next killer hire could be listening to this podcast and see your name in the comments and boom, like, your firm just went ahead of every single other firm because you have this common thread. Your next client could be reading the replies to that tweet that you engaged with online. Like, more important than putting a ton of work into something and coming up with something novel is just being consistent. Is that just being part of your life, engaging in that and that being, like, your form of networking, like, that is how I've built some incredibly close friendships. And obviously what has led to, like, what my professional career is now, I think another situation where we don't factor in the luck side of the equation. And the instead focus just on explicit ROI is when we're deciding whether to develop a new skill. So we've been talking a lot lately about like presenting over video, and that's just one example. But like public speaking, you know, like I've shared, I've been doing improv this year and that's become like an amazing thing for me to kind of open my mind. What is that other adjacent skill that will become a force multiplier for the expertise that you already have? I think most of us do technical education, like to the end of time, like that is what we do. We spend all this time going from the 90th percentile to the 99th percentile of expertise, when our written communication is garbage, when we don't know how to run a business in a way that'll get us home for dinner, when we don't even know how to communicate in like an emotionally intelligent way. All of this amazing stuff that we've done to clients because we develop this technical expertise but then don't know how to do anything else. Like we don't have all these adjacent skills to enable all of that. But these adjacent skills, like, can also put you in front of more people. Like the speakers that you go and, you know, the Tony Nitty's of the world, the people that you have all this respect for that you want to go see, speak at conferences and all of that, they're there because they're really good at public speaking. They might be good subject matter experts too. But the reason that they're in front of the room and getting access to all of these opportunities that you don't have access to is not just because of their technical expertise. Okay, send help. Is not because of their technical expertise. It's because they're really good speakers. It's because of their persuasiveness. So. So being willing to invest in yourself, even in something ambiguous, where it's like, what exactly is the ROI directly to what I do today? Like, that's okay. Like if it's something that you think is gonna be worthwhile for you personally, how many years have you got left in your life where you're gonna be able to benefit from that skill that you developed? I think we can kinda get blinders to like what we're doing today and not give ourselves the space to develop those SK. This episode is sponsored in part by Client Hub. This week on Tales from the Hub. That's right, it's back. Remember last week we were Talking about super smart accounting firm and they were celebrating how everyone could stay on top of things from clients. From Client Hub's jobs dashboard. That's right, I said celebrating. They were celebrating it. Now they're getting ready to head to conferences. It's conference season. I've been talking about conferences a lot lately, right? Man, they can't wait to take their partnership with Client Hub to the next level by doing some IRL glad handing, back slapping and a lot of other analogies like that. I tell you what, it's one thing to chuck support requests into a system to email with that support team, you know, share your new ideas for features. It is a whole other thing to stand in a booth with the delightful people that you've been talking with and actually build, build some human relationships. Client Hub co founded by a former firm owner. It's why they just seem to get it. It's why when you flip the switch on Client Hub, you're like, wow, these people understand me. They understand my pains and they understand why all I want is for my client to respond to my request. Well now, super smart accounting firm, they can't wait to see Client Hub at scaling new heights in a couple of weeks. You gonna be there? I'm gonna be there. Client Hub is gonna be there. Let's all hang out. Even if you're a Canadian, they're going to be at cpb, CPB Ignite in September this year. I got no idea what that is, but if you're Canadian, you probably do. That's it for this week's episode of Tales from the Hub. Check out Client Hub. If you're going to be at these conferences, let's hang. Swing by their booth. You can meet the actual people behind it. How about this? When deciding how much to engage with peers, like at conferences and communities, that sort of thing. I still the most common thing I hear about conferences is like accountants doing the ROI calculation on cpe. And I've even heard people say like, oh, the death of the in person conference was when you could get unlimited CPE programs for, you know, $500 a year or something like that. That stuff happens at conferences. But that is not the highest value of conferences. The highest value is that you're sitting in a room of a whole bunch of people that invested to time and money to come make themselves better. And those are really valuable people to have in your network because as they're making themselves better, they can also make you better. That for me is what is always exciting about conferences. That's why it's a worthwhile investment. People assign very different values to their time and to their learning and to their ability to shortcut the learning process. And this, I mean, this comes up a lot with, like, you know, I have an accountant community that's $180 a month. And so I talk with people about why the pricing of that is the way it is all the time. You look at conferences and those aren't cheap, and you got to pay to fly out and you got to pay to find or have a room and all of these things. And people fundamentally assign different values to their time and to the ability of that space to shortcut their learning process. I mean, put a dollar value, and I'll just use my own example, put a dollar value on choosing the wrong practice management system and doing that migration for 30 employees for 1500 clients. What is the cost of that? As opposed to. If I had a network of people where I was like, I can get on a call with three people for every major practice management system and say, show me your live setup. Tell me what works well and what doesn't work well. Like, compare those two decision making methodologies. So I think we assign. We don't all assign the same value to getting into the rooms that will accelerate your own learning process and cut years off that process and help to validate your decision making to ensure that you're headed down the right path. But there's so many examples of this, like, whether to write a book. You know, I. For as much as the world has changed, like, there's still a lot of value assigned to writing traditional books. And especially if you're developing expertise within a niche, that's something that right now most of us are totally capable of. Like, you have had hundreds of those conversations with people where you could absolutely put together a book that would be valuable to people. But we don't do it because we don't identify as authors and we don't know how to write. And, like, that's just not who we are. When the more you look into what that process actually looks like, like, there's a hundred ways to get that book out from, like, starting with Donna Bordeaux told me she starts with just voice recordings and, like, have a conversation like you would with a client. We talked about how you could basically build a client newsletter around Q&As. Like, we do Q and A Wednesdays. Like, there's a bunch of ways to make that easier for you, from a really good editor to even a ghostwriter. But something like a book you put that out there, that could unlock a whole bunch of doors for you. Right? Like that is an example of something that is leaning into luck and leaning into opportunities that you could have never imagined having. I think the more we plan and the more we try to like plan every moment of the day and not leave space for that stuff that doesn't have a super clear roi. The more we plan, the more we shut the door on potential opportunities that you, you couldn't imagine. This may be easier for extroverts. I don't know. I'm not an extrovert. I think you have to be open to new experiences. There's probably something too. Like as we get comfortable and find success and all these things, I think it's easier to shut the door on doing uncomfortable things and continuing to push yourself outside your comfort zone. There's probably value in that. But part of this is leaving space and bandwidth for interesting opportunities that you didn't expect, like to be able to explore something in a low stakes way. Because in the process of that you're going to meet new people, you're going to build that network further. It's how I've made like my best friends that I have now. It's what's led to pretty much every business opportunity. And this isn't like this indeterminate amount of time. Like, okay, then when do I ultimately get the payoff? If I do it for X long, do I get the payoff at this point? Like that's not what it's about. I think that misses the point. It's just a way of going through life. And so for me like four years ago, never having even posted online to now, like doing the things that I do now and this somehow becoming a business and having relationships with all of these people that I had like idolized before from like your Hector Garcia's of the world that are running these super cool, you know, big YouTube channels to, you know, Jamie McDonald was a guy that reached out really early on that I'd always really respected and was like, this is so cool. The fact that I'm putting stuff out online, like I'm building friendships with these folks who then engage with the stuff that I do that I have a ton of respect for from, you know, the aicpa, like asking me to come do an AI keynote. We look at the people who are on the other side of luck and the other side of getting to do all of these things and we think, well, that's not me, buddy. These people have a lot in common with you. They Just put in the work maybe to optimize for luck or they've stumbled into that thing that you just haven't stumbled into yet. And you will never believe that you can until you do, until it happens. That's the way that it is for everybody. So think about that. In your life right now, are you engaging with the larger world out there in a way that is going to enable luck for you long term? Because the best things that can happen for you in your life, you could never expect. You cannot plan for them. But there's a big difference between people who are optimizing for serendipity and people who are not. Bunch of my thoughts here came from a guy that wrote a book called the Luck Factor. I will put a link to a really cool interview with him in the show notes. Super encourage you to check that out if you want to do a deeper dive on this. It's super inspiring for me because when I'm at my worst is when I'm thinking small and when I'm thinking of the circumstances I'm at today or what's really fun for me, what gets me really jazzed is just like possibility meeting amazing people, like opening doors that you could have never expected. Like, that is like the human experience at its best, I think. But we miss it if we have tunnel vision and try to like, take the reins of our day to day and just plan everything out. So how's that for a way to kick off the week, huh? If you had any, like, positive experiences, like stuff you couldn't imagine, maybe drop it in the comments. That could be like an inspiring thing for other people to see and maybe motivate them to do something today. I mean, my entire life is this now. Like, I don't want to drone on about that, but do it, do it. It'll take you places you could have never expected. Thanks for coming and hanging today. I'll see you tomorrow.