147 Why Accountants Should Educate Accountants

This year I, I changed my efforts from running an accounting firm to shilling stuff to accountants full time.

That's all I do anymore. And I got a friend with me.

Here who's recently done the same. Okay, maybe not. It's Ashley Francis. Okay, it is a podcast. You're going to have to do more than wave.

Oh, I am so sorry. Hello everyone. It's lovely to see you.

We're talking about accountants getting into the business of selling to accountants and like the how weird that is. The combination of weirdness with what a necessity I feel like it's become. So come on in, let's get to shilling. Okay, Ashley, for people who haven't met you before, what is the 32nd rapid fire Ashley Francis intro?

Well, before this year I was a specialist in ultra high net worth individuals trust estates. If you had an airplane or an island, I would work with you. And then starting this year, my life has taken a little bit of a, I wouldn't say a left turn because it's not like I went anywhere else. It's like I added another lane where I also created a, like a website and a class for other professionals called 30 Days of AI Tiny Lessons for Busy Professionals. And the whole point of it was to help other professionals learn AI skills in the very small amount of time that we have each day to do it. And in a not scary way, we'll.

Put links in the show notes to all this stuff and it is really interesting and it is needed. But what we're super going to focus on is like something that I've struggled with too where like the notion of okay, I'm a practitioner, all I've ever been is a practitioner and maybe you can't quite imagine ever like turning around and selling stuff to practitioners. When I think Ashley and I agree, like we actually need more of that. People that have this really deep understanding of the problems that we have.

I do agree and I think it's funny too because I actually, when I started out I didn't realize I was such a selling to practitioners. I just thought that I had a class that they could buy that was like supposed to be helpful for them. So it never occurred to me that I was actually doing like selling B2B, like doing the business to business work because I don't work with businesses. So it just never occurred to me that that was what I was doing.

What do you mean when you say that? Because obviously you're charging for that. Do you mean like you didn't see it really as a business or as an extension of your business?

I didn't see it as an extension of my business. I saw it as something that would be really helpful for folks. And I didn't want to make it free because oftentimes when people don't pay for something, they don't value it. And 30 days is kind of a lot, which I'm super glad I didn't know how much that was. And if anybody's thinking about putting together a class, that would be my first recommendation is maybe don't go for 30 on your first outing. But I just thought it was something that was helpful, that was needed, and I was going to put it out there for a price that people could afford to get into because it was important for a lot of folks to access it.

Do you still not think of it as selling? Like, has your thinking evolved on that at all? Or where are you at today?

I have a really hard time, and I'm sure other practitioners do too, with the idea of marketing and selling, because oftentimes it feels like, well, if it's good enough, people should just want to buy it. And that is something that I struggle with. And I have to be reminded. Like, sometimes it takes folks a couple times to see it come up, be reminded about it and learn, like, recall why they need it. So, you know what? Maybe, maybe I need to take a course if anyone wants to put something together about how selling isn't a dirty word. Yeah, I still don't think about it as selling. I just think about it as having it available and people buying it.

So you still run a practice. Is this like a business or is this like a fun thing you did on the side? Like, what's your thinking of where this slots into all the other work that you do?

I actually stopped taking new clients because I was trying to figure out where. Where it sat. Doing these classes does take a bit of time. And I think that there's also value to having a space where students can come and do the classes together. And that way they can learn from each other. But then also, we're also busy in our life, right? And we've all signed up for about a thousand webinars that we've never attended. So having that space to just come and sit and do it is also valuable, but it takes time. And so my thinking is now is that now that I'm done with Busy Season, I'm going to focus on releasing more classes that will help folks. I honestly thought that Microsoft the copilot would be out for everybody right now. And so My next class is going to be about that. It's going to be about processes and building processes. I've been talking about that a lot because I think as technicians, we are amazing technicians. We sometimes forget that we're also business owners and business processes are kind of universal in their framework. So if we can shortcut that, then let's do it.

What? Like, if you can think back to your frame of mind before you had done any of this stuff, I think, I think probably 95% of practitioners would never even consider putting a thing out that other people could, could buy or consume. Like, I think most people have a hard enough time posting on social media, let alone like putting something out that they would stand behind because it's not in the line of work that they do. Like, it's not a tax return, it's not a month end close. If you can go back to that frame of mind before you did this, like, what, how did you end up there? When you're running a practice, you have plenty of things to do. Like, what made you make that first step?

I guess, you know, I was listening to this guy, Jason Stats, I'm sure you've heard of him. And he had this, I think it was one of your Jason dailies where you were talking about like doing other things to like monetize in your firm, monetize your content. And you said creating communities, creating like a newsletter or creating classes. And so I was like, well, I write quite a bit. I create a bit, quite a bit of content on, you know, Twitter or X now around like trust and estates and AI. And maybe since I'm already doing, spending all that time doing that, maybe there's a way that I could package it together because people have asked me, can you just put it all in one place? And so I went and watched a one hour video on how to create a class. And I was like, nope, that is too much work. I'll just create a newsletter. And I did that. And then I think a couple weeks later I was like, okay, now I'm ready to create a class. And the thing is like, for other practitioners who are thinking about this, if you have ever helped a client think through a challenging situation or helped a colleague think through a challenging business situation, you already have these skills. They're pretty much figure out where the person is, figure out the journey that they want to go on, and think about the steps along the way. Once you have those pieces, then the rest of it kind of falls into place. And I guess the other thing I would say is that you're not going to know 100% of anything when you start. You probably won't. Like you could watch all of the videos in the world and you will still be surprised.

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Right?

Is that too much to ask for? If you're into that kind of thing, check out the link to Copilot in the show notes.

I. Okay, can I say one more thing? One more. The third thing. You're not gonna stop me. I'm here. The third thing is, is that the work that you put into creating these classes actually goes back to helping you support your clients. Because you're getting in that mindset of putting yourself in somebody else's shoes and getting them from point A to point B. You're putting together content that is easily digestible and understandable and, and you're packaging it and providing it in a way that folks can find it and absorb it. So the skills that you learn in creating these things actually does help you improve your business.

Yeah. And it's you, you shared that you're already putting a lot of this stuff out and like, maybe this is just a different way of packaging the same stuff, but also to the point you made when people are like, what would I even talk about? Like, and making it as simple as posting on social media, like, what would I even talk about? I don't have anything to say. We sit there and answer stupid questions from our clients all day, every day. Like literally just capture all the questions that you get in a week and answer maybe the five most common questions and put it through the lens of, you know, a specific type of person. Like, that's your content. Right. Like we, I feel like we all already do that stuff.

Right. It's almost like we're surprised how much we know because we don't take time to capture everything that we've been doing and information we, we've been providing. We're essentially, I would say as a profession and I don't think we get thought of this way. We're kind of financial educators, not in like the financial planning sense, but oftentimes we're the person speaking with the client about a whole bunch of financial things and answering tax questions and answering questions about their accounting. And that's a really broad topic that a lot of people are scared of. So right there, there's plenty of places to go if you just want to stay in that, if you want to go beyond that to like running a business or were making content on social media or anything. Like folks know a lot, they just don't know that they know a lot.

Why do you think most of your.

Content though is, is like inside baseball, accountant facing versus client facing.

Well, why is most of my content facing? Because none of my clients would use AI to do what they do. So I mean, like I said, I don't work with businesses. Right. So I can see business owners getting a lot of value out of AI tools and AI applications. And I think there is some space for individuals to get support and use it in their own lives. But for the most part, I think there's a, a bigger audience to starting it on the business side and integrating it, especially with accounting and tax. I feel like at first we were all like, oh, this won't impact us. I mean, I think you and I were like, oh, this is really cool. But I, you know, we're all seeing that it's going to be coming in and infiltrating our practices. Let's get into it.

Interesting. Yeah, most people, I think their default would probably like their mind would go to client facing stuff first. But I hadn't thought about that level of nuance, like working with, what was it? People who either own airplanes or islands.

Right? Yeah, airplanes or islands.

So they're not worried about AI because they've got, I mean, their manservant is doing all of that stuff for them. Like that's, that's not a them problem.

That's correct. So like when I was sharing it before I started sharing it broadly on Twitter, I was sharing it with the financial advisors that I work with because they're the ones who are also in that space trying to wrangle like client data and work with clients in a way that works for the client, basically.

Obviously I harp a lot on, I think, the value of putting out content to find a more specific type of customer. I'm also a big advocate of accountant facing stuff for you as a practitioner and someone that still learns from, you know, other accountants and that sort of thing. I think because you're doing a degree of this, you probably have a different window into like the value of accountant facing accountants than other people. But what is your thought on, I guess your appetite for like buying things from other accountants and how people should feel about this? Maybe if all they've ever done is run a firm and they can't get their head around, like, maybe I'm really good at this thing, like, zapier and I could help other firm owners. Um, how do I guess, how do they think through that process of deciding, how do I start down this other path that could be totally different than my firm running?

I feel like you might have asked me three different questions there, so I'm gonna. I'm gonna pick the one that I wanna answer.

Okay.

So I think if you feel weird about. Okay, so the first answer is, I think that accountants are the best people to sell things to other accountants. For one thing, we mistrust anything that's not from accountants anyway, so. But the other thing is we also know. We also know our pain points, our specific pain points. So when I go in to, say, 10,000 GPT prompts to help you run your business, like, those aren't specifically addressing my pain points as an accountant. But to your second question, how did they get started? Well, first they have to figure out what they want to talk about, right? So if they're interested in Xavier and they, like, can make something about that, I would start with, like, start with three or five things that you want to talk about, because otherwise you are going to want to bring in the entire world and make it perfect. Or at least this is what I wanted to do. I wanted to, like, explain every single little thing that could ever happen with AI. And people don't want that. What they want is they want to know what you know, they want to understand what you know, and they want to be able to implement it. So it's easy to set up an online class. There are a lot of different online class platforms. It's easy to set up a blog. There are a lot of different blog platforms. But the first step is think about what you know stuff about. Like, people are like, oh, my gosh, that's the person. You're the person. Stop saying, no, I'm not the person. I just know this stuff. Yes. If more than one person has said, you're the person, then you are now the person. And then think about your audience. What do they want to be like at the end? Like, what if they were starting from zero? What would be a small step forward that would make them feel successful? And how can you get them there?

Do you feel like you're the person now?

No. This is me giving advice to other people. This is not me taking. Taking my own advice, I guess. So I guess if you get enough stages where people are like, tell us about AI Then you start feeling feeling like the AI person. Yeah, but it feels so weird to say that you're the AI person when you're also hanging out with people who are like AI. AI people. But you know what? That goes back to another point is that we're always going to compare ourselves to other people. And if we let that stop us putting out things that can help people where we are, then they're not going to like those folks where we are aren't going to be able to access what those more advanced folks know. They they can access what you know and where you are on your journey. And then maybe someday they'll get to that advanced stage.

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I mean this is kind of like how we think about specializing our client work. There's so much value in specificity of expertise. Like we, we see all the news articles from AI generalists and all that, but who's going to put it through the very, very specific lens of what we do? The like general AI experts certainly won't. And I'm not going to like sit back while some engineer just builds things like without really us speaking into it at all. I do think sometimes we get too fixated on being the expert as opposed to just sharing what we're learning. But I, I, yeah, there's the whole like, is that me? Am I the person now? It's interesting. I do, there's like that whole notion that I think our internal identities legs behind like your external reality and how other people see you. Like other people see you as this maybe before you see yourself as this. And so you're like, I don't know, there's like that insecurity of like putting that out there and even putting something out that signals that I think I am that person. Like who am I to teach people AI, you know?

Right. Yeah, it, it's, it's so funny because you don't know that you can do it until you do it.

Yeah.

And if you don't do it then you won't know if you can do it or not. So you might as well just do it and flail a little bit and see if it gets comfortable. I think a lot of folks would be super surprised that they can do it. They just didn't or haven't been.

Yeah.

And like that's like I, I love that so much. The notion that like stuff happens because people decide to take that left turn and make that thing. Like that's the only reason that things exist is somebody's doing something else and they're like, I don't really identify as the kind of person that would do this or I don't know how this is going to work, but like, I believe in it, so I'm just going to go do it. And that to me is like the very best part of being a human being. Like the notion that you have that, I don't know, agency, especially as an entrepreneur, where you're not working for somebody else. But yeah, the whole notion of like, am I the kind of person that would do this? Like, that's a big stopper.

Yeah, I think it's. I think because I was having a conversation with somebody today and they were saying that like they weren't getting on this AI thing because they were not, you know, they weren't, they weren't like the whole old dog, new tricks phrase. And it was so funny because it's someone who has brought ideas that are like really advanced and really great to our community and in their own head they have put themselves in this box of, well, I can't do that because it's, it's something new and I haven't tried it. And so oftentimes I suspect that we get in our own way more than other people would get in our way.

I think sometimes we can manufacture excuses for like, not engaging and not taking the time. It is hard though, like, especially as a firm runner, you have so many things to do. And it's hard enough figuring out in the morning when you roll up to your desk, like, what do I do first? You've got all these emails, you've got these tasks, all these things, and then you somehow insert this other more abstract thing that doesn't have a clear ROI that maybe somebody's not paying you directly for. Like, I think that's I something that people struggle a lot with. Like, how do you prioritize all of those things? And for you, when you were starting with this, was this a fun, like, was it a fun thing? Was it like, I want to see if I can do this kind of thing? Like, how do you. Because we're all very ROI based accountants. Like, how did you, I guess rationalize that for yourself?

I think the thing is, is I'm not an ROI based accountant, so it probably helps that I'm a tax accountant rather than an accountant. Accountant goes back to the fact that I don't work on small businesses. So ROI wasn't. Wasn't in my head at all. But I have also discovered through my writing about trusts and estates and about AI that I've learned the topic much better than if I just read it and sat on it. It's a different way of engaging with the topic and so when folks are thinking about roi, they might be thinking about dollars in the door today, but missing out on the ability to do more things in the future.

Yeah. And how, like those skills that you learn seemingly just get more powerful as the tech gets better.

Right.

Can I ask you a personal question?

You can.

Why are you so into Microsoft stuff?

Oh, you're so funny. You know what? And the funny thing is, is like, you wouldn't even be the first person to ask me this question in this month. So I am into Microsoft stuff. Let me tell you about the second job I ever had as a baby cpa. So I had gone and got my master's degree, had my cpa. The firm that I was with, that I started out with, wasn't going to suddenly start showering me with a whole bunch more money, even though I had a master's degree. And I took that moment to go work for a. It was a hedge fund, but it was in their financial services department, so preparing tax returns for very wealthy folks. And the one thing that I learned there that I've taken with me throughout my entire career is they didn't even have last names for clients. They only use the initials. So we would never refer to a client out loud by their last name because everybody, like, it was like, if you weren't assigned to that client, they got strict privacy. And from there that I, I've just had that paranoia about client data, client information getting out. And so I have seen it over my entire career where like a company will start out with one privacy policy and then over time get bought or not have the things in place to keep data private. And so Microsoft does. And I know that they're not going to get bought out. And I know that whatever they're going to do with their software maybe isn't going to be the prettiest, but. But it's going to do a thing. And I know that it's all going to be in one ecosystem. I don't have to worry about tomorrow if someone's bought it out or if, you know, someone left a hard drive somewhere.

You've gotten to do some cool stuff with Microsoft now, right? Like, didn't you speak at a conference and like your whole, like, big with the Microsofties.

It's as cool as it sounds. I don't know, it's so funny because like, when you're an accountant and you're like, I'm going to go hang out with the software folks because they're going to be so much more fun, but you, you Hang out with the software folks who are like going to these big conferences and like working with a tool like Microsoft. They tend to be very much like us. They're like, there's, they're not the startup sort of whiz bang sort of accountants. So if you been to an AICPA convention, a Microsoft convention, there's mostly men, but. And they're all wearing like jeans, but it's, it's pretty much the same vibe. But I think the thing is, is it's really cool that they would let me speak on their stage because they have like their. There's a big push towards acknowledging that there's folks out there, hopefully, hopefully a ton more accountants that can use these automation tools and we're going to have those AI agents. But I still feel like there's always going to be a space for automation, even when our little robots are running around in the background putting out fires. And the fact that they see that folks like us can do this sort of tech, it's pretty neat.

Yeah, I love just the whole notion of tech getting more accessible and like software. I feel like the development of software has just always been getting more and more simple, like even more accessible for developers. And the natural destination for that just seems like, well, anybody can make software. And now we're like kind of seeing a version of that with GPTs. And I know Microsoft just announced their version of that, their Copilot Studio I think they call it. Yeah, anything around those, since those are super hot right now. Anything around those that excites you.

Goodness, there are so many things around that that excite me. So I think about them as like companions, like natural companions. No question to any time someone has to learn something new and they need a tool there that can help them learn it in their language. So for example, I was using, I was, I was in one of the Microsoft Learn education tools and the language that they use doesn't make sense to me because that's not the language that I use. So I took that and I put it into ChatGPT because I haven't had time to build a GPT yet and had it reinterpret it for me so that I could understand it. So I think that's going to be a huge, huge benefit to folks ramping up and understanding so much faster than historically they've, they've had to. The time period they've had to ramp up.

Let's ride this promo pony out of here. Where can people find you on Twitter?

Well, no, it's not Twitter anymore. On XM. Seattle tax. Seattle underscore tax. I'm Ashley Francis on LinkedIn. And then if you want to check out my class, it's www.kta.AI. three letters. Pretty rad.

Yeah. What is it? Kitchen Table Automations.

Kitchen Table Automations. Text. You can do it at the kitchen table.

Oh, yeah. What is the current state of that? Like paint. Paint the picture a little bit of what that class looks like.

That class needs to be updated. So hopefully by the time this drops, it's been updated. But I'm also working on a couple of other classes just because 30 days is a long time for some someone to commit. And I want a class for firm owners and I want a class for staff so they can get in, start learning things that benefit both of them. And we're not having this disconnect between firm owners saying we don't need GPT and staff already using it because they're coming out of college having used it. Like someone was telling me the other day on a flight that he's been consulting for a company and this company found out that they had 500 paid ChatGPT accounts.

I believe it.

Yeah. So like, let's get it done. Let's get it done right and let's get the most benefit out of this technology because let's not pretend we don't need it. We do need it. Like Congress is going to come up with a whole new bag of tricks tax. Why is this next year we just know they are. And in two years, TCGA TCJA expires.

So, you know, I'm glad I'm not in that game anymore. But yeah, to that point, AI can't come soon enough, right?

Oh, yeah. I'm kind of actually like impatient for it now because there's a ton of things that it can help with.

Awesome. Well, thank you very much for joining us today. Like I said, we're going to put links to all that stuff and Ashley's socials in the show notes, if you need an accessible way to get comfortable with AI to start making friends with AI, it's absolutely a killer way to do it. Obviously, a lot of folks have found this stuff from AI content and like, this is a killer, like, very practical way to start waiting in. So, Ashley, thank you again.

Thanks for inviting me. It's been fun.

You bet.

That's all we got for today. I'll see you all tomorrow.

Sa.