146 Making Hard Choices in an Accounting Firm

We all gotta make really, really hard decisions sometimes and it's not fun. Honestly. It's maybe the worst part of like running your own practice as opposed to the olden days when you just gotta do all that work for somebody else. Today we're gonna run through a framework for how to make hard decisions in a really rational way, mitigating risk. Especially at a time like this when we're doing re engagements with people and we may have hard decisions on the horizon. So come on in, let's make some hard decision. So we're borrowing a framework here that you may have heard heard of before from Tim Ferriss called fear Setting. It's actually not really from Tim Ferriss, it's, it's older than that, goes back to actually I think it was Seneca that like initially framed this exercise. But we're all familiar with goal setting. But the reality is a lot of our actions or inaction is actually more tied to fear than it is ambition. And the more explicit you can get about what those fears are, the more you can help yourself kind of process and think through how you mitigate those and actually make, make decisions through a more tactical lens rather than letting fear get in the way. And this has been an especially hard thing for accounting firms of late because many of us have had to drastically change our prices, make drastic decisions about people that we're willing to work with. And especially if you're a newish firm owner, this really applies to everybody. Oftentimes you get into the game and find, ooh, I'm, I'm playing a game that's maybe not sustainable and I gotta rip some band aids off in a big dramatic way. And when that usually happens is around the time of re engagement when you're thinking about whether how do I, how do I change this all next year to make it feel a little more sustainable for me. A couple resources here. I'll put a link to a TED talk that Tim Ferriss did that's kind of around this subject. I'll also put a link to a doc that basically outlines this exercise that we're just going to do live today because I think it's really helpful. The specific subject matter I think will probably be relevant to a lot of people, but this is something that really you can do on a recurring basis to define like what are the biggest things that you're afraid of right now. Kind of think through those things and get to the other side where there's a more kind of clear headed way of making a decision. So you'll find Both those resources in the link in the show notes, a few quotes, just kind of doing some research and prep for this that I really liked. One from Seneca. We suffer more often in imagination than in reality. Ain't that the truth? Mark Twain quote, I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened. And then another that Tim Ferriss mentioned in that TED talk that I really like, that was from a mentor of his. It is easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life. And when it comes to running a business and setting boundaries and changing things to get to a more sustainable place, man, hard choices, easy life. Ain't that the truth? So many examples of, you know, the, the future you see for yourself that is maybe an easier, more sustainable path. And between you and that reality are some really, really hard choices. But the flip side of that, if we are unwilling to make those hard choices, it actually makes our life really hard, right? Because we're, we're unable to do those things and kind of change your situation. And as a result, every freaking day is hard. Like you're just not in a good place. So here's how this framework works. I love it. Basically, three steps. Step one is define, define all of the things that you're afraid of. And these are kind of what ifs, what if this bad thing happens? In step one, we define what those bad things could be. We work out how to prevent those bad things, and then we work out how to repair those bad things if they actually do come to pass. And so that's step one. So step two, we're going to list out what might be the benefits of an attempt or partial success. So why is it worthwhile? And even if it doesn't go off perfectly, are the benefits to be found in a partial success? And then three, we will outline the cost of inaction emotionally, physically, financially, over the course of six months, one year, three years. And I like that this actually ends with the cost of inaction. There's a killer quote from one of the speakers at QuickBooks Connects this year that there is risk in not taking risks. Like oftentimes we're not thinking of the true price of inaction or the fact that the current circumstances are not sustainable. So something is required. But I like this framework, and this framework doesn't necessarily dismiss all of your fears. Some fears will be totally well founded, but as Tim Ferriss puts it, we're putting them under a microscope to be able to think more clearly about them in a way that's not like emotionally fear driven. So I thought I could do this for myself personally, but I thought, you know, of all the folks listening to this and the time of year and all that, we got holidays around the corner that I think oftentimes kind of put our real life, you know, into focus in a way that's like I have been focusing on work a lot. We're at a stage of the year where many of us are doing re engagements and we're thinking, do I really want to work with these people? How much do I need to increase prices? So I'm going to do this fear setting exercise through the lens of probably where a lot of us find ourselves this time of year, just making some really, really hard decisions. So the step one is kind of this what if exercise. We define the fears, we'll work out how to prevent those things from happening and then how to repair those things if they did happen to generate six fears for us. We're going to pull in ChatGPT Friend of the channel, Nervous Ned. He's back. I'm telling him we're considering doubling prices or aggressively reducing the number of clients that we work with to get more selective. But we worry about the fallout list 6 what if fears that could make this initiative backfire. So Nervous Net is a recurring character that we use here to kind of personify like that, that person, that version of you that is like very change averse and afraid of what could go wrong. Right. And so we will use these fears that he generates for us as the seed to kind of work through this framework. So here's Ned.

Whoa there. Tread carefully. Oh. As a certified public account, I've seen financial strategies go sideways faster than a caffeinated squirrel. So let me dive into the what if fears CPA style with a dash of angst, of course. What if customers revolt? Imagine this. We double prices and our clients collectively gasp louder than I do when I see an unbalanced ledger. They might take to social media, spreading negative reviews like wildfire in my mind. Backlash. It's a full blown social media apocalypse. What if competitors swoop in? Picture this. We're hiking up prices or cutting down clients and suddenly our competitors are circling like vultures. They're offering deals, discounts, maybe even freebies. Our market share could shrink faster than my self esteem at a high school reunion. What if revenue plummets? Gulp. By reducing clients or upping prices, we risk a revenue nosedive. It's like watching your favorite stock plummet. You know, the one you invested your life savings in because a fortune cookie told you to what if we lose key clients? You know, the big fish, the whales. They might not take kindly to price hikes or feel special in a reduced pool. Losing them could be more disastrous than finding out your calculator's been lying to you for years. What if brand image suffers? Raising prices or being picky with clients could paint us as elitist. Like a luxury brand that doesn't care about the common folk. Imagine being seen as the accounting firm equivalent of a snooty waiter at a fancy French restaurant.

That is a good one. Wow.

What if employee morale dips? If our team sees clients leaving or grumbling about prices, it could be demoralizing. Imagine walking into an office that's quieter than a library in a ghost town. So, yep, lots to chew on. Remember, every financial move is like a game of Jenga. One wrong move and crash. Down it goes. Gotta love the thrill, right?

Okay, thank you, Ned. Those are actually pretty good, Gang. This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow. Live Flow is the easiest way to sync that QuickBooks data back and forth to your spreadsheets. You may have seen this actually had a big announcement lately. So this fall, G2 gave them the top spread in their fall 2023 report as the leader in the financial analysis category. That's right. They won number one. Nice work. If you've been around my channels for a while, you've seen Live Flow kindly. They have sponsored quite a bit of stuff. And I'm not. I mean, I'm not saying I'm taking credit for it, but that was probably why I'm not familiar with Live Flow. Super easy way to sync that stuff. Sync your QuickBooks data back and forth with Google Sheets. They got a whole pile of templates too, to make the process of building that stuff for the first time as easy, easy as possible for you. Stuff for managing cache, AP KPIs, like everything you can imagine. Sync that data into your existing sheets to make them smarter. Get it to auto sync or build your, like, custom new sheets that talk with QuickBooks totally from scratch. Pretty cool tool. Check that one out at LifeFlow IO. This episode is sponsored in part by copilot. Okay, gang, circle around. Bring it in. It is change management season for most accounting firms. You, you're going through some hard tech decisions. Honestly, it is spooky and like high stakes and really hard to decide because there's a bunch of solutions out there. Frankly, a lot of good solutions. But it is high stakes because if we go like, switch all this stuff, how are we gonna ever unwind that. What if we don't like it or if we go put this thing in front of a bunch of clients, what if they all revolt or we don't end up liking that? And the more stuff we're changing, the more risk there is inherent in that. And I actually think this is a solid argument for Copilot who is only tackling the client portal problem. And if you've watched much of my stuff, you know how adamant I am about the value of client requests, about clients being able to self service in a portal to come get a tax return or a month on close or so they don't have to email you for that stuff because it's 2023 and you should have a website where people can get that stuff. But if you're stuck on changing, I don't know, too much at once once, or the notion of chucking all your stuff into this all in one tool where it's like, well, what if I like the workflow better over here in the portal over there? Actually I think this is a solid argument for Copilot. All they're doing is trying to give you the most flexible client portal experience out there. You can embed stuff from external services, they got a bunch of their own built in goodies, but they are really wanting to build a platform not like a super opinionated portal so you can customize it to be whatever you need. So that sounds good to you? Check out copilot at the link in the show notes. So Ned's fears here. What if clients revolt, spread negative reviews, ruin your reputation, Totally legitimate competitors sweep and take your clients. This is a very real thing. We, as I was making these changes, we had a very real discussion around like what about the other firms in town? Like does this make us look bad if they swoop in to be the hero for all these clients that may leave as a result? What if your revenue plummets? So what if more clients leave than you think? This is a huge one. What if you lose the key clients, the whales? We've all got people in those client in that client network that are kind of the hubs. Maybe they've sent you a bunch of referrals. Maybe you really want their respect. What if you lose them? Like the, the, the personal fear of the friction there and disappointing them I think is a huge factor. Your brand image suffers, you end up looking elitist. This is a such a big one for us. And then what if employee morale slips just from how hard and stressful this is to go through? That's Absolutely. A thing that actually ended up being a very real problem for me that I didn't consider in the process of going through this. So six, six great fears from Ned there. And so that is the first step is like explicitly outlining what those fears are now one by one. Let's think through, how can we prevent those fears? So the first fear, clients revolt, spreading negative reviews. How do we prevent that? I think a lot of this comes in how it is communicated. There's like a flippant, low touch way of making a big change like this. And I think that is what frustrates people most, is maybe they don't see, like what about this is hard for you and why this decision felt necessary, like maybe for your own well being or for the health of the business. And if all you do is like mail out a letter that is like very low touch, maybe very concise or something like that, or, you know, abrupt, it's absolutely going to take people off like that. It will. And so I think in the prevention of clients revolting, what is a high touch way that you can deliver the news. And this is probably just having a bunch of uncomfortable conversations. If people can understand where you're coming from, I think you're going to mitigate the risk of folks going out and, you know, leaving a bunch of negative Google reviews. Second thing, competitors sweeping in. How do we prevent that? To be honest, I don't know that you even need to prevent that. This is like, you know, firms are all part of a food chain. You've got firms bigger than you that charge more, you've got firms smaller than you that charge less. When you're making this hard decision to increase prices or get more selective about who you're working with, you're really just going up the food chain and you're losing the folks that you don't want to work with going forward. So that second fear, which is a very real fear that many of us have, like competitors swooping in. What if the other people across town that you've always kind of been competitive with pick up those clients? It's worth outlining that fear, but it's also worth acknowledging that's okay. That's, you know, like the circle of life. The clients that put food on your table, maybe when you're first starting your firm, they're not gonna be the perfect clients for you forever. And the biggest risk of hanging onto them is you may be keeping those clients from putting food on somebody else's table who's just starting. The third fear, revenue plummets. And how to prevent it. This is a math thing. What a statement. This is a math thing. This is something that people sweat a lot. But I think we actually, if we run the numbers on this, it's not as big of a risk as we think. I can tell you in general, and this is very consistent, there generally will not be as many people leaving as you expect to leave. Like this is one like near universal truth from everybody who has done this, who will, who will tell you about this, they came in with an expectation of how many clients would leave and the actual result was less. Like, you would be shocked. We will always underestimate the number of clients who are on your client list right now who would pay 3x the fees right now and not leave. So we under, we underestimate this, but we oftentimes strictly look at this through the lens of revenue. Well, what we should actually be doing is looking at this through the lens of profit. So for example, if you're running a firm at maybe a 50% margin and you lose half of your clients, but you double your prices, you're actually making more money. Assuming there's some variable costs in there, because an increase in price goes straight to the bottom line, you can oftentimes afford like at running, running around a half margin, 50% margin, you can afford to lose more than 50% of your clients while doubling your prices and still make the same money. So if you like financially going backwards is a concern here, actually do the math, model that out and you'll find you can actually afford to lose a ton of clients. If you're aggressively increasing your prices, which is, which is kind of what you want. You want to aggressively reduce the workload oftentimes and the net result is you're making the same money doing much less work. Fear number four, losing key clients. This may be the biggest one for some folks. Honestly, the interpersonal relationship aspect here and the fear of disappointing somebody who, whose respect you want, you know, somebody who maybe has referred you a bunch of clients, maybe they're kind of a figurehead in the community and you want their respect, how do you prevent losing that? It's probably a communication thing. If they can understand where you're coming from and why this is a necessity for your business, for your well being, then they ought to understand where you're coming from and why you're doing it. It doesn't mean that that person's still going to send you a bunch of work. It may change the, the kind of business opportunities associated with this person. But if they can understand where you're coming from, I don't think that they're going to lose your respect. Other way around, I don't think you're going to lose their respect. And if you do, if you tell them, man, I gotta have a life, I gotta, I gotta make things easy. Like, this is way too hard for my staff. We gotta pare this back somehow. And that person is still irritated, then I would argue, maybe they, maybe they aren't a person that ought to have your respect. Right. Again, the goal here isn't to, like, make all these fears totally go away. It's to put them under a microscope and just have a more clear framework for thinking through it. Fear number five, your brand image suffers. Actually had a great line in here. Imagine being seen as the accounting firm equivalent of a snooty waiter at a fancy French restaurant. How can we prevent that perception? That may be a hard one. I mean, obviously, like, in your copy and how you hold your brand out, like, there's definitely snooty versions and non snooty versions. But are people going to have the perception of you being snooty if you just have higher prices? That's a tough one to manage because oftentimes, like, the best place for your firm to be is in a place that's so specific that nobody, except for the people who you're great for, could possibly understand it. They're like, why in the world would somebody pay so much for that thing? And it's because that really small subset of people that you're great for, they're like, oh, I would absolutely pay this because I have this deep understanding of these pains that nobody else does, but those are the people that you're great for. And so that's like the only perspective that really matters outwardly for folks outside of that bubble. How do you prevent looking snooty? I don't know. Maybe there's some, you know, limitation on even what you put out there visibly. Like, if you are for this mega, mega micro niche, like, maybe you don't put the fact that annual fees start at 10 grand on the website. Or, you know, maybe there's some way of managing that. There's definitely versions of landing pages and copy that come off, like, super bad and super snooty. And how that comes off, I don't know, like, depends on the size of the firm that you run. But if it's a small firm, and that's something that feels very personal to you, you usually want that to kind of Align with yourself and like, how you identify as a person. But to prevent this, you still want to be mindful of, like, the external visibility of your firm. What does it look like? Like, does it now look exclusive to a degree where maybe it's something you couldn't be quite as proud of? And then last employee morale slips. We went through these really hard changes, and this is something that I actually underestimated. I was at a point where I was working on the business, I wasn't working in the business. And so when I made these hard decisions and they impacted the clients that my team worked with most of the time, most of those conversations, it was the staff having those conversations with the clients when they were frustrated or disappointed or didn't understand why we were making the change. And that absolutely impacted the staff. It wasn't fun for them. It wasn't the kind of conversation that they wanted to have. And so how do we prevent morale slipping around this? I think it's just something you have to pay really close attention to and you have to be more plugged in with your team as you're going through this transition than you probably, like, otherwise would. And that may look like creating space for people to talk about these conversations that they're having to have so they don't feel like they're doing it in isolation and kind of suffering through this. It means probably creating more communication, touch points between the team to share how they're managing these conversations. I think seeing into other people's conversations and best practices around how to get through that stuff and the things to say and the things to not say. If we can share that amongst the team, I think that's helpful for people. Helps with that sort of visualization of what a constructive version of that conversation looks like. And then at a more meta, meta level, like, what else are you asking from your team at the same time? Like, are you putting too much on them? Are you creating space for the fun stuff? Or are you just kind of asking them to grind through a really hard, not fun process, you know? This episode is sponsored in part by Forwardly. Are you tired of waiting for payments that seem to operate on their schedule, not yours? What the heck? Say goodbye to slowed ACH transfers and rising credit card fees. 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Not the best part of the job in my opinion. Not something I ever enjoyed. Well listen, you can build your accounting dream team with talented offshore accountants in the Philippines that work 100% full time for your firm. Their accountants aren't freelancing or contracting for multiple firms. They're all yours. They work exclusively for you and are incentivized to stay with you and your team long term. They're not gonna get swiped. Cloud account staffing is 100% dedicated to the 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 going to build our own pipeline in the Philippines, going to pull in some super talented people and then open that up to other firms. Basically that's the story. I've been talking about a lot about staffing, building more resilient staffing pipelines for your firms. I had staff in the Philippines like totally red pilled me to like oh geez, like we need to globalize the way that we get our work done. Check these folks out. Link in the show description Cloud accountantstaffing.com so those are some ideas for how to prevent those pains. And these won't be like 100% preventable, but thinking through that as a helpful exercise. Third here, how would you repair these fears if that thing actually happened? So fear number one, clients revolt, spread a bunch of negative reviews. Let's just have a battle plan for what if that happens. So let's say somebody leaves you a negative Google review. Let's think through right now how we respond to that stuff publicly. And that's probably a reply on that review that is just, you know, I don't know if it goes as far as apologetic, but it is just making clear is really unfortunate that we had to Come to this decision and pare back the number of people that we work with or increase prices to cover. How difficult and complex this work has become. A concise, like, clear plan for how we reply to those messages. It's really important. Now, ultimately the goal is to prevent that stuff and to communicate things in a way where you're not gonna get a ton of that. But let's say somebody does leave a bad review. You gotta have a plan for it. Both acknowledging the bad reviews, but also be more proactive, maybe about collecting positive reviews and getting folks who love you to go out and leave those reviews. That is a repair kind of plan for that fear. Second fear. What if competitors sweep in, take your clients? I don't know that we even need to prevent or repair that because, like, that's just the circle of life. Third fear. What if your revenue plummets? How would you repair that? This seems extremely unlikely, but it is still worth thinking through. If more revenue left than we thought, how would we downsize our practice? And usually this involves hard people decisions, but for you, the business owner, it's still worth, like, modeling that out and thinking through, like, oh my gosh, what if 75% of clients did leave? Like, what would the business look on the other side of that? And would that still be okay? And would that be better for me, and would that be more sustainable long term? I think oftentimes the answer is yes. But if your big fear is revenue plummeting, thinking through that worst case scenario and modeling it out, I think is totally worthwhile and considering the hard decisions that that may lead to, because then at least you have a model for the worst case scenario rather than this ambiguous fear, which is often the blocker. Very ambiguous, not very concrete. Number four, what if we lose key clients? How do we repair that? I would say maintaining relationships with those whales. I had to cut cut ties with some clients. We had business associates leave, we had team members leave. And I always went out of my way to maintain a relationship with those people. So just because one of those whales whose respect may be important to you, leaves, that doesn't mean as a fellow human being, they're gone. You know, like, if you're worried about repairing that, invest in, like actually maintaining a relationship there. And it doesn't even have to be a business relationship. Number five, what if your brand image suffers? What's the repair plan to you? Looking to elitist, this may feel a little too cold and calculated, but like, how about doing something that's very much the opposite and not elitist like investing in, you know, service opportunities and that sort of thing. Actually helping people who super, super need your help. Not the person who drives a Lexus but isn't willing to pay, you know, $1200 for a tax return instead of $800 for a tax return. We should probably be doing the service stuff anyways. But if you're worried about, about looking elitist, I feel like you can lead with your actions here. Like, what is, what is something that is not elitist that your business can do to actually help people? 6. Fear. What if employee morale slips? What do we do to repair that? This probably looks a lot like prevention. It is just like creating space for people to struggle and get through this stuff. Maybe helping them if they're having a hard time getting through these conversations with clients, being mindful of. It can also be a trap to like swoop in and always be the hero when there's something hard to do. And honestly, like, this could also involve like pulling in new people and pulling in new ways of getting the work done. So worst case scenario, somebody really doesn't want to do this or morale slips and they leave. The way that you prepare, that is you find another way to get the work done. And so thinking about, thinking about that worst case scenario and how you would do that, I think is worthwhile. That's the first step to this exercise is, is going through those three things again. In the show notes, you'll see a doc for how to kind of work through this framework either yourself, also with a team, with a business partner. Like, is there a person who you're in your firm who you're struggling to get alignment with on this hard problem? Carve out an hour. I think this would be so valuable. I'll take you through the next, the, the last two parts of this exercise here fairly quickly. What might be the benefits of an attempt or partial success? So what are the benefits of doubling prices or getting more specific about the people you work with? These are all the things that you probably already know and it's what's pushing you to make this hard decision. The fact that you can do less work for the same money. The fact that you're probably going to make more money by increasing prices and working with fewer clients. That is a very real impact on you and your profitability. You can give more space to your staff because the company as a whole is making more money. Less can be asked of them. They can be paid more. You can do a better job for the clients that you keep. Oftentimes when we're not proud of the work that we're doing for our clients, it's because we're out of the gun, because we're. We're rushed and stretched too thin. You can ensure that you're taking great care of the folks that you have left. And these things hold up, like, whether it's a complete success or a partial success, like, even a step in this direction is worthwhile. You can invest in yourself, maybe get some time back, maybe not be fully work consumed and lean into some of those things that maybe you've always wanted to do that you were just, quote, unquote, too busy to do. You can spend more time with the family. That's a big one for me is. Is being engaged in kids stuff. As my kids get a little bit older and they're like, starting to get into things. Like, I've got a pre K boy that's a freaking piano wizard. And I'm like, I've never seen my kid be so into this thing. How do I enable this? For him right now, that means pounding out Imagine Dragons songs, looking at the cheap music on an iPad on a keyboard in my bedroom. But is there something more that I could do to enable that? Like, actually get him doing, like, live lessons with somebody? He's super shy. So, like, is there a degree of, like, performance that would be helpful for him, giving him confidence to do that stuff, you know, the stuff that actually matters. What was that? I think that was six benefits. There's probably a whole bunch, but listing those out I think is helpful. And then third, the cost of inaction, emotionally, physically, financially. First, what is the cost of inaction six months down the line? I would say the biggest cost for many of us is the reality that maybe you just can't get the work done. We were up against this, and this is what I think was the straw that broke the camel's back for us was we were looking at the increased amount of work that was going to have to go into each project to do it well. And realized with what we have right now and the people we have on the bus, I don't know that we can actually get all this work done at the level that we want to get it done with the clients and the people that we have. And so for us, that cost of inaction over six months would literally be not being able to get people's work done. And letting someone engage you to do a thing that you can't do, that is a. That's a bad move. That's a recipe for disaster. Emotionally and physically. Cost of inaction, man, it might be, like, very real taking a toll on you in a very real way. If you're in over your head, if you're not looking forward to next busy season, if you don't see a path to getting back down to a more manageable volume of work, literally nothing else matters if you can't take care of yourself. And oftentimes we like to be the victim for the sake of the firm and the people that rely on us at the, you know, our staff and all that. But you're a monster when you're overworked. You're not going to be the at your best for them. And if something happens to you, like, none of that matters, like, all that falls apart real quick, let alone the people you know at home and the other people in your life that actually need you. Accountants. Accountants can find work these days, but it won't be as good as working for me and my firm and my team really needs me. They're going to be fine. Like, you got to. You got to look out for yourself. The other biggie that always kept me up at night is if you run a team and you are putting too much on your team, there's a very real risk of, like, this cascading disaster of folks leaving due to overwork. You get one person that leaves, and that puts more pressure on everybody else, and they're like, I already had too much to do. I don't want to pick up some of Tina slack now that she's gone. And then that person leaves, and you have this, like, cascading sort of disaster scenario. That's a very real risk of overworking people. The cost of inaction, one year out, kind of all those things. Even worse, right? You've got now a bunch of clients who you either had to cut corners on or maybe you couldn't get done within the timeframe that you really needed to. Maybe you have put even more pressure on yourself over the last year and arguably, even worse, your team. It's one thing for you to make dumb decisions for yourself, and you physically pay the price for that. It is another thing to impose it on other human beings. And then what are the costs of inaction three years out? I think for a lot of us, if you're in a tough spot right now, it is. Can you imagine doing what we've done for the last 12 months, for the next 36 months? Is that gonna be sustainable for you? And for a lot of folks right now, the answer there is no. That cost of inaction, might be getting a job in private, might be folding up, the accounting firm, might be just straight up not being able to keep doing this. I would encourage you as you're thinking about these hard decisions. I know the, a big driver for me, especially as I've had a family, is it was really hard for me to resist the urge of like going into work every day and putting on the cape for everybody at work, while the people who actually cared about me in my life, like were the last ones to get a slice. I wanted to be the hero for my clients, for the people that I worked with, because that was something that I took pride in and it was like such a, such a core part of my identity as an entrepreneur. Like this is what you are, this is what you do, right? And if you're letting these people down, then it's calling into question like your very value as a person. When I think there's a lot of risk in staking our identity in really any aspect of work, the people who are going to be the best at work are going to be the people who are the best humans and they do more than work and they have a side of them that is interesting because it's completely non work related and because they're investing in the community and the people who are near them and their family and all that. But it's really easy for work to creep in in a way where that's all that you do. And I think we can tell ourselves, well, this is our identity and it's, it's okay for me because I'm an entrepreneur and this is unique and I'm creating opportunities for people and all that. When I would actually argue you're going to be best at all of that stuff. When you have a level of balance across all the things that you do that many of us can lose sight of or lose our grip on as we try to do more through the business and pursue like this sort of misguided, you know, growth for growth sake and all that. But highly recommend this framework. Check out the document in the show notes. For many people, you're going through this not just with you, but with someone else in your firm. Maybe it's a manager that doesn't see your vision. Maybe it's a business partner that struggles to see that vision. That person who you send my stuff to, who you're like, yeah, see, listen to this point that he's making. Maybe it's a family member in a, in a generational accounting firm. It could be really helpful to go through this exercise to together with that individual, get on the same page about the downsides and the upsides of this. It doesn't mean that you're gonna be able to mitigate every single fear, but by putting those fears under a microscope, you can make much clearer decisions around them. Hopefully that's helpful. We're getting into holiday season. It is Thanksgiving week. I think we're gonna do episodes Monday through Wednesday because y' all shouldn't be listening to accounting podcasts over a holiday. We're gonna be back tomorrow with a fun interview, and I'll see you there. Sam.