132 Follow Your Dreams or Run An Accounting Firm?

Holy schnack. What a week, gang. We're doing a Q and A, but a few things we're touching on a question about do you follow what you love or do you like, do the thing that you know will be a job? And like that old chestnut, I launched an AI toolkit with the icpa. Talk about that a bit. We announced the Practice Management System Roundup and it was absolutely bonkers. And a few other odds and ends. Come on in. We're doing it Q and A Friday. So I just got off as I'm recording this workflow con for Financial Sense. I did a talk about AI and I didn't tell them I was going to do this. I did an AI generated image of like a fragrance product photo with like a green fluid in it. It was like all fancy and then I had gold embossed financial cents on it but like S C E N T S and I started the talk by saying, I know that you're all here for hair products, but I'm I'm excited to announce that we're working on a line of fragrances called Financial Scents. Man, it is so easy to get last with AI stuff right now. Just so much fun stuff to be had. Okay. Oh, Rethinking Doing Something youg Love I want to read this question that I got. I lost my job a few months ago and if you have a like wisdom to share on this too, please drop it in the comments. I lost my job a few months ago and been considering starting my own solo firm for SEC reporting, financial statement prep, close optimization, and audit support. But this video made me second think things as Even though I'm qualified to do that, it's not really something that would bring me as much joy as just focusing on building a pastry, YouTube and cottage food business. I can always go back to accounting if any year I need money. I think me wanting to do both at the same time is just a fear response of having a backup plan if I fail at the pastry gig. The only reason I majored in accounting and got my CPA is because a teacher told me I was good at it. Oh man, does anybody? I mean, if you think of the percentage of people who are in accounting, what percentage of those people were ever like, oh boy, when I grow up I want to be an accountant. I so many of us just stumbled into it and then we all go, why don't the kids want to be in accounting? Because it's accounting. I know I started in accounting because the internship paid better than any of my buddies and I just haven't found a way to leave yet. But this is a toughie. Do you follow that thing that you're super passionate about or do your job? And I think there's a number of things that influence our thinking on this, and a really, really big one is the people around us in our lives who have never seen somebody do what you do and how they, how they perceive what you do. I think for most of us has a big impact on, on our decision making. And so there was nobody in my family that was even vaguely entrepreneurial growing up. Like, I'm in a, I'm in a, the state capitol. It's largely a state town. 80% of the people here work for the state. And so like, it was not something that I was surrounded with. My family's been here for a couple of generations and many of those folks work for the state. And it's like, that's just not something that anybody knew anything about or even had a model for. And when I came into ownership in an accounting firm, they were like, oh, wow, like cool, cool, you're successful. But it's an 80 year old accounting firm and I got partners and a bunch of employees and yeah, people will always need accounting. When I stopped doing that, everybody's like, do we need to send him to rehab? Like, what's happening? Like, they didn't understand it. That was really scary for them. I had reached like the top of what everyone else understood success to be and then just bailed on it to go do something that I was passionate about. And along the way, I kind of like formed my own model for what success was. Because the reality is most people out there are working for somebody else and they're working for an arbitrary destination. They are trying to climb a corporate ladder or like they're just fixated on the next promotion. And that's just the way that people go through life with work and they don't know anything else. Honestly, that is 95% of people. It's probably not a lot of the people that listen to this because you run your own practice or you, or you aspire to do that someday, but that's how everybody else like around you in your life thinks. And they don't have a mental model for anything else. Most of them could never imagine, like starting their own business or doing any sort of entrepreneurship. And oftentimes that keeps us from trying something new. And to me, it's as much about trying something new as it is learning, ooh, what happens on the other side of that something new. Or what did I learn about myself by trying that new thing? Because I. And maybe this was ingrained to us when we were young and it's a generational thing that's changing, but we come of age with the expectation that you're gonna go into a profession and just do that profession, right? Like you get to middle school and they're like, oh, you need to start thinking about college and what you wanna be when you grow up. And implicit in that is the notion that you're going to do the same thing until the end of time. But that's super, super self limiting. The notion that you're ever too old to do a new thing and the years that you spend doing whatever you're doing, like that's all really valuable experience. But it's also like there's like this sunk cost fallacy that you can't go do something else. Even things that are like lateral moves, something very different, like your experience that you've done to date, like that stuff will inform whatever it is that you do next in one way or another, whether it's how you work with other human beings or from a strategic standpoint, whatever it is. And that's why I really stress for people as you're thinking about decisions to make through your business and new skills to build are those high leverage skills that will always aid you forever no matter what you do. That's why I'm so into stuff like video, podcasting, social media, at being a human being when it comes to managing people and managing clients, getting good at that stuff will always help you. In this case, it sounds like this person has some Runway where they could try that thing, which is an incredibly privileged position to have that most people absolutely can't have. And like they don't have that. I try to optimize my decision making for what 10 year in the future me would be proud of. And oftentimes that's the uncomfortable decision or the decision that the people in your life around you are confused by, or not that they're necessarily against it, but they don't really understand it. Which is, which is two very different things. Oftentimes those people not understanding can make you feel like, yeah, what am I thinking? You know, and it's like, no, like nobody knows what you're going to be passionate about quite like you. And ultimately for me, like I'm going to work, you know, until I'm really old probably, and I want to work on things that matter. I'm reading the new Elon Musk book, man, that guy's a freaking maniac. But of like the lessons taken from that book, there's probably nothing better in life, at least for me, than if I'm going to work, having something that I'm really passionate about that I can do for my work. And so, like, for me right now, that is like, I love what we do as accountants enabling entrepreneurship. Cause I just love entrepreneurship. And that was what got me pumped about owning an accounting firm. And the notion now that I can be kind of like a force multiplier for other people who are going out and helping entrepreneurs. That's awesome. I love that. And I've got, I've like, I'm able to kind of, I don't know, be more creative in this aspect of doing kind of the same thing I was doing before, but, you know, for a different audience. But nobody around me understood what the heck was going on. My wife is still terrified. I like to bring my wife to conferences and then she can. And then people come up, they say nice things and they're like, oh. And she's like, oh, you actually do help people. This is okay. It all kind of makes sense. Makes more sense now. But I think a lot of our decision making framework is influenced by the people around us. And whether or not they understand what you are doing now, I think you should push back against that. And ultimately, because if you go out and do this now and you say, I'm gonna do this for six months, are you ever gonna regret that? I mean, I don't. There may be situations where you will. Or maybe that creates, you know, a financial disaster that, you know, takes a long time to unwind or something like that. But if you got the Runway and if you got the freedom to do that, I don't know that you're ever going to regret that. And even just how we frame this decision of do I just go out and do this baking YouTube channel instead of being an accountant? It is such a static, short term ROI calculation that we're doing on this. Like, can I really just burn money? And would this even be a business? Because we don't know what's on the other side of doing that. And for me, it was like I started making these little videos talking about a new piece of software every single week. And now I do this stupid stuff. And now like last year I produced, you know, a commercial for LinkedIn and like all of these things where I absolutely would have never imagined doing any of this stuff. But I started and that start took me on a better path. And so like, if Right now it feels like, do I go here or do I go here? Like, it's not that. It is like you've got this massive like flowchart of like all these timelines of what your life could be and these two itty bitty nodes that are like just like a millimeter away from where you are today. And one is accounting and one is creating that YouTube channel. And from each of those things, those things may cross over and you may end up going back to accounting after doing it for three months. You may find that you don't like it. But that to me is the real value in doing it, is you learn it about yourself. Like you're learning. Is this the thing that I truly am into? What do I like about this? What do I not like about this? Because I. On the other side of that thing, you're going to have another decision to make. And when you make that next decision, you will be fundamentally in a better position to make that decision than you would be if you didn't make the hard decision today. Right. Does that make sense? And that's how I have learned a ton of about myself in the last three years. Because I've got to do a lot of different types of things. And I just have a better idea, I think of what to me is going to be rewarding long term and what I'm going to enjoy. And like, what, what is that Venn diagram of stuff that I can enjoy and stuff that I think is meaningful, that like actually helps people. Right. You got any sage wisdom on that hard decision? Pop it into the comments down there. This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at Client Hub who are building some super rad AI stuff into their practice management platform. And I want to, I want to tell you about stuff that they've actually got. It's in there, it's happening. When you look at emails inside of Client Hub, you're going to get an AI summarize threat like, like a summarized, shortened version of your long emails. They're writing an email and you just, you. Maybe you're a little hangry. Maybe it's just, maybe it's just one of those days, you know, Client Hub is going to help you revise the tone of that email into something that will, let's just say something that won't come back to haunt you in the future. More stuff they got in the works. Magic, magic meetings. You've been in a magic meeting, meet with clients inside of Client Hub and it will capture the transcript for you. So it is Right there alongside your files and everything else. They're also working on Generative Email that can see into the replies, the past conversation and magic answers. A lot of sorcery happening. Ask Client Hub for anything related to a client. Client Hub will answer it based on all the context they that it's got. Your meetings, your emails, your notes, your files. That is the kind of sorcery I can get behind. Love to see him investing in AI. You want to learn more about Client Hub, Check out the link in the Show Notes. This episode is sponsored in part by Copilot. Is your client portal just a portal or is it a platform difference? With a platform, think of something like QuickBooks. You can plug a bunch of other stuff into it, right? Like it's like, we got this thing, it's pretty cool, it can do some stuff, but we're also perfectly happy to let you build more stuff on it, to let developers build other stuff on it. That's the difference in Copilot's approach. They want to create just that, just that candy coating around your firm. Just the layer that talks with your clients. Not all the other stuff. Just the frosting on the cake. They're going to handle that part in a way that will be flexible long term and ensure that your clients have not only the very best, most seamless experience possible, but also like they have all of that stuff in one place. You don't have this fragmented experience where they're having to like log into this and magic link into that and go all these different places. Right? Like, nobody likes that. It kind of makes your firm look silly when their clients are like, why can't you not just have everything in one place like my utility provider and the library? And you're like, it's complicated. Okay, well, co Pilot's taking a kind of a different approach and holding themselves out as a portal platform. Got APIs. You can actually develop your own stuff on top of that platform if you want to. It's interesting. And they got a whole bunch of accounting firms running on it now too. If your firm's missing that candy coating. Learn more about Copilot link in the show Notes. Okay, so this week the AICPA dropped their first AI toolkit. It is completely free. No need to be an AIC CPA member or anything. Just go to the landing page and swipe it. I'll put a link to it in the show notes. I recommend you check it out. They talk through stuff like risks and security. And I put together five really practical use cases along with a supporting little like 3 to 5 minute video for each stuff that you can do in like 10 minutes. And building any sort of AI resource is really hard because everything is changing so fast, right? So the ultimate goal is to like get a base level understanding of how security works so that you can start like using this stuff respons responsibly. But, but the big thing is just to like jog your creativity and like get you thinking about what could be possible. Because ultimately the best solution is the one that like you stumble into yourself or the next time you run into that problem you're like, oh man, I could totally use ChatGPT for this. Like that's where we want people to get. Because accountants have so many nuanced personal productivity problems where it's that fiddly one off thing they're doing for a client or that annoying little extra task in the month end close every single month where they gotta run a report out of this system, but it's not in the format that they need it to go into in the other system. And it's like large language models are killer at that. Like those are the little things I really want to help people find because it's, that is an area of AI where it is good enough today. Like those little applications, like they are awesome today and should absolutely be saving people time. I don't normally partner with anybody on stuff like this. What got me excited about it is the profession as a whole is obviously way beyond, way behind the folks that, you know, tune into this podcast and all that. I did a webinar earlier this week and they, they pulled how many people had used ChatGPT so far and less than half percent of, less than 50% of the audience has had to use ChatGPT yet. So I wanted to help the ICPA with this because bigger picture in the profession reality is they're, they're the biggest voice and so they're going to get that stuff in front of a new audience. But also the notion that anybody could get this, that it wasn't like this gated thing, I think that's awesome and like bravo to them. Like I'm not the only one involved in this study. There are a bunch of folks, but good on them, like investing in this thing that they're literally just giving away, man. The big news this week was the practice management roundup that we put out. Holy geez. I know we talked about this on Wednesday and I hope you enjoyed the episode with, with Logan yesterday. But announcing big things is really stressful and I Generally avoid it, especially when it comes to announcing something on social media, because stuff can totally bomb sometimes, like, for some weird reason, outside of control. And so I try to avoid these, like, big buildups and investments in a thing that could either flop or not. Because it's just so stressful and it's just not. Not how you build things these days. You don't go, like, shut yourself in a garage for three years and then come out and say, ta da, I built it. Because generally nobody cares about what you're doing. Like, at the end of the day, like, people just don't. People are consumed with what they're doing and what their problems are that day, and the fact that you worked really hard on it and invest a bunch of money in something, and all this time, reality is like, nobody else gives a hoot. But we like to oftentimes have these, like, big ta da moments. But, man, like, that is so, so risky. So to try to mitigate some of that risk on this project, I did a post last week saying, like, hey, we've got this super cool thing coming. Really excited to share with everybody. We're in the process of finalizing it and it'll come out next Tuesday. And I posted that on Twitter and I said, drop a reply if you want me to shoot that to you next week. As soon as it comes out, drop that on Twitter, on Instagram, and on LinkedIn. Because, like, we'd invested way too much time in this to just make a single social media post about it, right? Because reality is people have lives. What if somebody doesn't get on social media that day or they're on vacation or, like, that is the reality of it. Like, social media is ephemeral. And to make this awesome asset and then just give it away once on social media, like, probably not the best idea. And so a slightly less bad version of that, that's still pretty bad. As I posted about it the previous week, it did okay on Twitter. I don't have, like, any followers on. On Insta, but on LinkedIn, I posted it. And this is just. This is a cautionary tale. LinkedIn for me has grown so fast this year, it's. It blows my mind. We're like, at like 13,000 followers now or something. But let me tell you the impressions for my posts before this one. So this is like, this is a big deal. I did a whole, like, promo video for it, like, giving this thing away for free. Big deal. I post this last week. Let me tell you how many impressions my past LinkedIn posts, the most recent ones before that had on LinkedIn 5,000, 5,000, 12,000, 3, 4, 10, 13, 23, 4, 12, 16, 4, 9. 4,000 impressions on that big promo thing last week. 165. 165. Excuse me. Like, I've never had like my stupid meme posts. Like the Let the potato rest microwave meme post where I replace potato with tax professional. That gets 4,000 impressions. I post this big announcement about this PM thing that I've been sitting on for months and it gets 165 impressions. Pardon me. Something broke. I don't, I don't know what it was. Something broke. There was like an issue with the captions on the video. Cause it was just music and I said, just wipe out the captions. I think maybe beyond that point it didn't show it to anybody else. But that is a lesson in the risk of like just banking on a big announcement is like, stuff can happen. And that's really scary. Thankfully, that wasn't the actual announcement. That post got 165 impressions. The actual announcement on LinkedIn. I'm shooting this Wednesday afternoon and I posted it yesterday morning. The actual post yesterday now has over a thousand comments on LinkedIn. We're probably going to hit 100,000 impressions. It's absolutely bonkers. I've never seen anything in our space that had a thousand comments on it. And I'm pumped. And like, selfishly, I think it's merited because this is this sort of guide. Like, I have wanted it for so long and I would have absolutely done anything to get my hands on something like this. So, like, I'm like, good. Like this part of me that's like, yeah, it should, it should do really well. The reality is you never know. And especially when you've had your head on a project for so long, it starts at, oh, this is a killer idea, we got to do this. But by the time you get to the end, you've thought about it for so long that you end up with all this self doubt and you're like, oh, what if it isn't actually what? Nobody else actually likes it because you've been looking at it for so long and you kind of lose that perspective. So I was super, super happy with how all that stuff went. The Twitter one went pretty well too, but totally fell apart because I started getting rate limited and couldn't actually send the report to anybody. So that one kind of fell apart. And I think like a quarter of the people that asked for it on Twitter, I actually gave it to them. I ended up putting it in the link in my bio on my profile page, and then like, had to send another tweet saying, go get it here. But it's like you got all these people that have replied and there's absolutely no way they see that. So that's kind of too bad. But something like a thousand people use the report in the first 24 hours, which is awesome. Honestly, Big a lot of respect for the, for the tools involved in the process that nobody, at least so far, has gotten grumpy. I think it definitely lifts all boats in that space. The cloud practice management systems. I know a lot of the folks that listen here are already on cloud practice management systems, but that is not the majority of firms. Majority of firms are still on that old system from their, from their tax software provider. They're on spreadsheets, they're on trello, they're on something like that that isn't really optimized for what they do. And so I think just by being in the report, like, I have to think that is helpful for everybody. Hopefully a good example of how we can, like, open source certain information and create resources that, like, help everybody. And I've had a number of people ask, like, oh, can you do a version for this or that or that region? And I'm like, no, I can't. But I hope this inspires you to do it right. Like, I don't have to be the one to do all those. Like, man, go out and do it. I think the fact that it wasn't sponsored helped as well. Like, all of these things. When you see reports, like, when's the last time you saw a report anywhere in our space that wasn't sponsored or didn't have a software company or a computer something behind it? Right? Or that didn't make you provide your email to sign up to their newsletter to get it? Like, do you know how much goodwill I, I just got by doing that? Like, and this is probably more a software company issue, but we're so fixated on like, the ROI and capturing specifically for this activity, what was the value that we got for. And that totally misses the point. The way that you earn people's trust is by, like, giving without expectation of receiving. Like, that is. That's how the Internet works. But everything now is behind. Give me your email address and like, six demographics about your firm. And like, and I'm just, I'm bored of that. I'd love to see more people doing what I'm doing and I would love to see all of us Reward them for, for doing that, you know, so that we can have like a kind of a more, I guess, independent ecosystem of people sharing their firm running journey. Today's episode is sponsored in part by firm360. You checked out firm 360 at practice management System. You know, I could tell you about the razzle dazzle features, about how it gives you a 360 degree view of your practice, everything you need all in one place. But instead, let me, let me let the people talk, the people who actually use Firm360. What are the users saying? Here's Joshua S. About six months in using the tool has a firm between 11 and 50 people. Firm360 is a practice management solution I have been looking for. In my 25 years in this industry, I've used many different products, all claiming to save me time, money and be the best product for my business. I've tested every other online practice management tool for accountants and all have fallen short. Except firm360. Finally, a product that has everything, is easy to learn and use and support that is second to none. Because you know what? We all need a little support these days, right? Listen, stuff's going to happen sometimes. Maybe there's a surprise. Maybe you just can't figure something out and you need a friendly person to help you work through it, right? That's why support is so important. Okay, gang, if you're looking for the supportive Practice Management system, look no further than Firm360. 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 your. 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 accounting 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 gonna build our own pipeline in the Philippines, gonna pull in some super talented people and then open that up to other firms. Basically, that's the story I've been talking 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 okay Nancy McClellan, do you listen to this podcast? Nancy McClellan posted this in the Financial Sense webinar I just did and somebody sent me a screenshot. I'm going to read it to you. I hope you do listen to this. Okay. How come I don't get the joke? Jason always uses elderly people in his AI images. Is he teasing us because accountants are so slow to evolve or something? Someone help me. I'm too embarrassed to ask him. First of all, why are you too embarrassed to ask me? How hard do I plead to get people to post in the comments of my videos? Nancy I do do a lot of old people stuff and there's been times where I've like been like, should I stop doing like silly old people thing? For some reason old people are just funny to me. And I know a lot of super rad old people and very progressive old people that are absolutely 100 counter to like all of the generalizations. But man, old people just have some funny mannerisms sometimes. My favorite is Steve from my YouTube videos. Like just this guy that's in all these stock videos. The that's just the most weird kind of like twitchy old guy. Not like in a tremory old guy kind of way, but in just like this really bizarre sort of mannerism kind of way. In this slide deck for this talk, I had a whole bunch of funny AI generated images and they were all like early 90s themed elderly professional people. And there's something about AI and all of this stuff changing really fast that I think makes us feel old. At least for me it does. Like you've got all this technology changing and it's like oh my gosh, like how do I keep up with all this stuff? And it feels like you're falling behind. And so oftentimes when I'm doing that, it is through the lens of like this is, this is totally genuine. It's through the lens of like me feeling like I'm going to be a grandma unless I figure out, you know, how to do this stuff. Oftentimes it's that sometimes it's just like when I generalize clients being confused with technology and stuff like that. It's like a stock video of an old guy just having, just having a heck of a time with an iPad. And that's just tickles my funny bone. I will say I can see how that could be, I don't know. It's not particularly kind for elderly folks, is it? I'll do better. Nancy, put that one in the feedback box. A couple folks asked. So I was in D.C. at the beginning of this week doing a keynote for aspa. So ASPA is Association for Pension Plan Professionals. And I don't normally do talks outside of the accounting space, but this was a fun one. At the time I agreed to it, it was like this would be the biggest room I'd ever spoken to. And it was like, it just felt like good experience, like something that I should do. A good excuse to go to dc. I'd never been to DC before. That was super fun. There was, I don't know, 800ish people in the room, I think, or so talked to AI. Super fun. Feel like it went super well. I talked with a guy there who wanted to get more into speaking and he had just agreed to do like the biggest talk of his life in about six months time. And he's like, man, I'm just, I am petrified. Like, I am so nervous, I'm so scared. He does webinars all the time for the group that he works for. Like big webinars, has no nerves at all. But he's like, I just agree to this thing six months in the future and now I'm just like, man, am I just going to lose sleep about this for the next six months? And I like, I've experienced the same thing before. The best solution is just repetition. Like there's nothing, nothing compares to experience and just having to go through that and it does get better. Public speaking is absolutely one of those super high leverage skills that is worth developing that will always aid you in anything that you do. Ultimately, now that we have the Internet and the notion that you could put something on social media and put something on YouTube. Honestly, in some ways I, I think it devalues public speaking relative to the value of it in the past. So let's think pre Internet, when the only way we had all to get together and speak with 2,000 people at a time was literally in a room with a thousand people. So like there's definitely more opportunity now with the Internet and the ability to put video out there, but in person still remains like the most pure, highest context way to connect with people. As we meet more and more people online, in person cuts through that in a way that like nothing else does. We get so many spam emails and DMS and all that stuff. Like in person is really, really valuable. One Thing that I know helps some people actually. Beyonce talks about this a lot. The notion of, like, getting into a character when you go on stage as a way of kind of giving you permission to be maybe like the best speaking version of yourself, which may not necessarily be the same as you when you're talking with your meemaw, but is like this personality that you can develop that is kind of optimized for this situation and may put on, you know, to have more confidence than you actually do. But, like, ultimately it's something that aids you as a speaker. I think I probably do a degree of that because I absolutely have a character that I play, you know, on the main channel, YouTube videos. And I think this podcast, I'm a little less that character. There's some days where I know, like, there's some days on this podcast where I think I am that character. And it's when I've got like, a lot more energy. Because definitely if you've tuned in from the beginning, like, all these pods are not the same energy level. But that character that I play in the video is more or less the character I try to play in talks, especially if it's in the accounting space, because that's what they're expecting. Which is kind of hard when people develop a relationship, relationship with you in these super edited, super tight, slick videos. And then they come to see a human being talk and I'm like, sorry to disappoint. I am a human being. I've got a bit of a stammer, like, I don't like it's not going to be perfect, but I do think for me, it helps a bit to kind of slip into that character that's a little more shouty and more animated because it kind of leans into kind of the comedy elements. And also, speaking to an accounting crowd can be work, like, to get them excited and energized and laughing at things and all of that. It's not always the rowdiest bunch, but I super recommend it. Public speaking, it's almost like having a podcast and being able to have guests on where as a result of it, you get connected with people that you wouldn't otherwise meet who are like interesting, influential people. So, like, you know, hanging with the past and current president of the the organization and like, there's just. There were people that I was able to meet in passing and spend a little bit of time with over the course of doing that that were cool, successful people that I wouldn't otherwise have gotten to meet when I've done talks. In the past, getting to chat with other speakers, super, super exciting because they're very interesting people. And it's one of those things where nobody emerges from the womb and, and thinks, man, I was, I was born to do this. This is my thing. Public speaking. Like nobody, nobody I think sets out with that ambition. It is just something that you stumble into and is something that just needs to be weighed along with all the other ways that you could spend your time. So I, I gotta do the calculation of is it really worthwhile for me to go out to D.C. and do this thing and ultimately take away time from producing YouTube videos or posting on social media or this or that? And so like, it is, it is a thing among many that you can do to make, build your network and all that. But specifically the skill of public speaking and being able to speak confidently in front of a big group like that, that's super, super valuable. Like, at the end of the day, our job is to promote ourselves. And I know we don't like that, but if you don't do it, who's going to do it? And that's, that's a problem for a lot of accountants right now I think is we're just, we're so head, head down in our work. We never, we never stop to promote what we do to find a better client. And promoting what you do doesn't have to be skeevy. Like the most friendly version of this that I always try to focus on is just sharing my journey. Like not being a know it all and, and though I can be a know it all sometimes, like not coming out and saying I'm an expert at X, Y, Z, but just like coming out and being, being curious and willing to learn and to share that journey with other people who are learning similar stuff or interested in similar things. If you're serving like a specific type of person, it starts with just that, that curiosity and willing to be visible about it and to bring this full circle back to the very first question. You know, the really cool thing is, is just that you never know what's on the other side of it, but you certainly can. And, and you don't even have control over what's on the other side of it. But you can certainly optimize your surface area for luck and serendipity and finding cool new stuff and being visible public speaking stuff like that. Like that absolutely optimizes you for serendipity and opening up cool doors to, to things that you could have never imagined you would be doing. What a week, man, thanks, y', all for coming and hanging, and I'll see you next week. Bye.