154 The Self-Destructing Accountant

We are about to kangaroo kick the door in on another week of being an accountant. Right now I'm real into the idea of identifying and putting under a microscope, like our own limiting beliefs. I shared a couple weeks back a concept that I'm just super into right now. The notion that your internal identity is perpetually lagging behind your external reality. And this is evidenced by people telling you, well, you can do this thing or that thing, or you're so good at this or that, and you're like, you're like, what little on me. We actually heard a bit of this when we talked with Ashley Francis where she said something along the lines of, you know, once two people tell you you're the person for a thing, you're the person for a thing whether you identify as being that yet or not. And so I want to run through an exercise that is actually a, I think, a really practical way of being more aware of the internal voices that we all have that are genuinely like, holding us back. Like we have this latent capacity that we're not able to real because it's just human nature to, I don't know, like, be slow and kind of hold that internal identity back. So come on in, this is going to be a fun one. So this idea came from this new sort of concept in the AI space around the notion of a council of advisors. What if you had a boardroom of all of your favorite think people and as you went through life and your kind of personal decision making, they could all speak into them like they were all your personal consultants. And we get a, like a version of this by reading and consuming content from people that we respect and, and all that. But AI potentially has the capacity to let us do that in a much higher fidelity way. For example, let's say you're super in value pricing, you love, you know, the whole Ron Baker sort of thing, and you have like a Ron Baker assistant where it's trained on all of his stuff that he's ever written, maybe some of his podcasts, definitely his books. Maybe you're super into, you know, like Ryan Lazanus thought leadership. Maybe you went out and you did that AI course from Ashley Francis that we talked about. And you need like, you need an Ashley Francis sitting on your shoulder, like helping you through AI stuff. Now that language models can retrieve like actual things that people have actually said and just regurgitate it through a specific lens. You can actually like build this council of advisors. Now what is the, like, the, the messy stuff is where does licensing work and fit into all of this. This will be like a really interesting thing actually to follow. Quick diatribe that's maybe a model for this. YouTube is running a, a beta where they have like 10 music artists where when you create a short on YouTube shorts, you can use AI to generate a song to go with your short from a real life music artist. And they have like given YouTube permission to do this. And they're probably getting, they're no doubt getting paid a bunch of money for this. But these are big artists. Like, I can't remember John Legend was one, but there were a number of them. And I'm old and out of touch with music. And even like half of them I was like, oh, I've heard that name before. Which must mean that they're really big. And so imagine a thought leadership version of that where you can weave together your own combination of thought leaders to help give you advice and help you through decision making and stuff like that. And what I want to do today is the polar opposite of that because we aspire to lean into the advice of the people that we look up to. But the reality is we have all of these internal voices that keep us from doing the things that in our best frame of mind, we know we need to do, right? Like there's such a big divide between when you're in the best frame of mind, what you know you need to do versus when you're actually executing and around the people that you work with every day, and back in that routine, how you actually act like there's a big void there. How do we close the gap? And for me, this takes a number of different forms, like different sort of internal voices that hold me back and keep me from trying new things and make me scared to do stuff that I'm perfectly capable of doing. One such avatar, we've already heard from Nervous Ned. So we've done a few episodes where we've talked with Nervous Ned, this sort of internal Persona that is very change averse and afraid to lean into new things. And so I, for myself as a thought experiment, I went down and actually made a list of, I think the seven most impactful, most hindering, like internal Personas, internal voices that I have that keep me from doing the things that I know I want and need to do. And I heard recently that when you have that negative internal voice, it's actually really helpful to separate yourself to it. And some people even say to give it a name so that when you feel that you're almost sort of disassociating yourself from that voice and acknowledging it for what it is. And I mean, similar to a comment on a YouTube video or reply on social media, can you look at it and be like, okay, maybe there's like a grain of value in this, but you're able to put it in perspective and still keep your eyes on the prize of okay, what's ultimately best for me. I might season my decision making with this feedback, but I'm making my own decisions. And the more you can disassociate yourself with that internal voice, the easier that becomes. Now my problem is I think I have multiple internal personality disorder where it's actually like, it's not just one thing that's blocking me, It's a bunch of different things. And so as a thought experiment, I built out seven different Personas. Nervous Ned being one of them that are Personas that are like limiting to me, things that are legitimately holding me back with the goal of putting them under a microscope, much like we did fears last week. I, I think if you put them under a microscope, you realize how ridiculous they are. But like when they're kind of this ambiguous thought and you don't really follow that thought through, like, it seems like there's validity there, but when you really shine a spotlight on it, you're like, oh no, that is kind of ridiculous. Or like, maybe there is a seed of truth to it and you just have to factor that into your decision making, but it shouldn't make you stop and like not take action. So we're gonna run each of these seven Personas through a common thing that is hard for accountants to do. Stuff like saying no, calling a client to set a boundary, getting on video, public speaking, posting on social media, firing a client, doing a podcast interview, going into a new social setting, stuff that is often hard for us accountants. We're gonna throw one of these things at each one of these internal Personas. And this was actually a fun exercise for me to like more distinctly think about, like, what are all these self limiting beliefs? Give it a name, give it a face so I can punch it right in the mouth. So if you have listened to this podcast much, you have heard Nervous Net a couple of times, I'm going to throw at Nervous Ned the notion of beginning to make a habit out of posting on social media. Nervous Net is the embodiment of that. Just kind of like angsty, kind of ambiguous. You're not even really sure like what it is you're afraid of. Kind of change averse nature that we all have. Like even me who, like, I love change. Generally I still have like that level of anxiety that comes from a new thing and Nervous net is the embodiment of that. So what does that internal Nervous Ned avatar have to say about posting on social media?

Drumming fingers anxiously. Social media?

Whoa there.

That's a minefield waiting to explode. Professionalism is key in accounting. Ha ha. Yeah. I'm certified. Did I mention that It's a badge of honor. Do you really want your firm's reputation teetering on a cat meme? I'm not kidding. It happens. And the resources, all the resources. Are we rolling Kyndao to waste on tweets and likes? TikTok goes the clock and their numbers to crunch? Pal, my calculator is my bestie for a reason, you know? Plus, who's really scrolling for tax tips next to their friends vacation snapshot.

Hmm.

Does your target audience even live in the social media jungle? I'm certified, not crystal balled. Nervous chuckle. Stick to the ledgers. They don't bite. Usually.

Usually. Okay, what are the actual points that Nervous Ned made in there somewhere? Do you want your firm's reputation teetering on a cat meme? I do think most people think the function of social media is like screwing around and meeting memeing and personal stuff. Almost like, like the Facebook days, like very early social media was just that. But you know, because you probably follow like business folks that you respect on social media. You know that like real business happens on social media. Gang. This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow. Live Flow is the easiest way to sync that QuickBooks data back forth to your spreadsheets. You may have seen this actually had a big announcement lately. So this fall, G2 gave them the top spot 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 life float 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, if 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 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 Liflow IO. This episode is sponsored in part by Copilot. I don't know about you. Whenever I am considering a piece of software, I like skulking the review sites to be like okay, like what are people actually saying about this? What's the bad stuff that maybe they're not going to put on a landing page that might be highlighted there? So I did a bit of skulking for Copilot. I'm looking at captera now. 4.9 stars across 19 reviews. Compares it to Monday.com who has a measly 4.6. Nice try. Stuff that people are highlighting real live human being users what they're saying they love about Copilot Actual Quotes the Portal has made it super easy to navigate with clients that aren't the best with tech or have to rely on something like Google Drive to share files. Clients who are bad with tech. Hello. Never had any of those. The entire team over at Portal is absolutely incredible, wonderful to work with and very helpful. Product is very clean and our clients are impressed by the simplicity and experience of working with with Portal. I love the feedback about specifically clients reactions because I think that's oftentimes what we get afraid of. Especially in the context of that client facing Portal. Is it going to be too hard for people to use? Are people going to be annoyed that I'm asking to do it this them to do it this way when in the past maybe it was a human process. The Portal team is very helpful whenever I have a question or need some esoteric support and the product itself works great for everything we need. I'm excited for their new features as well. There you go from actual human beings. You need to hear it from me. I mean I'm getting paid for this. Those people, those people, they're just happy customers. You know that's Copilot. It is a specifically a customer Portal client facing Portal. Not trying to do all the workflow stuff. Just wants to squeeze the ever living heck out of building a killer client facing experience. Learn more about that one at the link at the show. Notes Second point Are we really rolling in dough to waste time and tweets and likes? This is the ROI thing, right? Like we struggle with of all the ways that I could spend my time, how am I going to get my ROI out of posting on social media? But the reason we're doing it is as a long term investment in you and leaning into building more human relationships. Trusting the fact that out there in the ether are more people and potential friends and potential associates than like you can even imagine. And like, try to build an ROI framework around. I'm living proof of that. Right. And then three, who's really scrolling for tax tips next to their friends? Vacation snaps. That kind of goes back to the notion of what is the function of social media. Do my clients even want to see helpful stuff on social media? I can ask you this. Are your clients sending you tax tips? Like, have you ever gotten a social media post from a client where they ask you questions about it? I think they do. I mean, clients are listening to podcasts like they're consuming self improvement stuff everywhere. In fact, more and more of consumption of all types, I would argue is going to social media. It's going to algorithms that we can scroll. I think it started as keeping up with pics with grandma and stuff like that, but now it's like all of consumption is really trending towards social media. And that like, self improvement is very much a part of that. Actually. Reasonable arguments from nervous Ned there, but those are the sort of things where a bunch of those things come to mind. And I think we don't sit down and take the time to put those things under a microscope to say, like, no, I already kind of know that, but here's why I'm doing it. Anyways. Okay. Meet Spotlight Sally. Have we talked about the spotlight effect much? Whenever you were doing stuff that is visible, we have this sense that everybody's watching us. As if everybody is super fixated on what you're doing. When it's like, no, everybody else has lives. Honestly, they kind of don't care. Or at least they don't care as much as we think they do. But spotlight Sally is that voice in your head that's like, what will people think when you go and do that thing? So what's a good spooky thing for accountants where we might be afraid of the spotlight effect? How about. How about getting on video?

Oh my God. Like, seriously, just imagine what your business school buddy Chad will say when he sees you trying to be Spielberg with your little office camcorder.

This is Spielberg.

Total cringe fest, am I right? And your sweet grandma Betty, who still thinks fax machines are like the peak of technology. She's gonna be all confused watching her darling grandkid on YouTube or whatever. Plus, remember that time in high school at the talent show when.

What?

Well, never mind. But like, everyone has not gotten. Okay, just stick to spreadsheets and numbers. It's what you're good At. Don't embarrass yourself again with this video ridiculousness. Why not just hang a sign that says Desperate on your firm's door?

Whoa, that's an oof. Okay, so spotlight Sally. What were the arguments? There going to be a total cringe fest, man. I mean, that's a biggie, right? Like where? I don't know. I'm always afraid of that getting on video. I still am, and it still often is. Your sweet grandma Betty. The people in your life, what are they going to think if they see you do this thing? Man, we. That's totally something. That's a blocker for us. And I'll be honest. My take on that is if somebody can't be supportive of you and what you want to do, that's their problem. I want supportive people around me, but also, folks aren't just sitting there and, like, watching what you do all day long. Third point. Something in your past about the high school talent show. Don't embarrass yourself again, I don't know what that is. I mean, I do have things in my past, though, like that impact. I don't know that, like, create new mental blocks for me. So maybe there is something in your past that makes that harder. And then four, why not just hang a sign that says Desperate on your firm's door? That was actually pretty. That's pretty solid and a very real feeling. Like, for people that have never done this, I think for me, I think you got to focus on being helpful and, like, adding value. It's not about you. People want to see you because they want to connect with a human, but it's not about you. If you're shooting a vlog of you going to this or that and, like, putting that in front of your clients. Okay, yeah, that's weird. But that's not where we're going for here. If you're getting on camera, it is to deliver value to a specific type of person. Don't overthink it. Don't go wild so that it is cringy. You don't have to be Spielberg, but keep valuable. And that's not something that's going to feel desperate. Okay, third Persona, Peter the perfectionist. We got to. We got to nail it, guys. We got. We got to clear the whole next week so that we get this Twitter post just right. That perfectionist that keeps you from just doing when it is the doing that makes you good at the thing. And so then you never do it, and you never actually get any better. What's a good thing to chuck at Peter. How about public speaking? Woo. That's palpitation inducing for most of us.

Public speaking, you say? Have you completely thought through the ramifications of this action? Remember, the peak of your achievement, remember, was being recognized as the local business of the year. And that came from meticulous client service, not oratory gambles. Speaking demands absolute perfection in delivery and content. And let's not forget, can you truly afford to squander precious hours, hours that could be dedicated to precision in your accounting practices? The opportunity cost is simply massive. Have you considered the more targeted approaches that align with your firm's unmatched dedication to detail? The risks of damaging your highly respectable reputation through a possibly imperfect public appearance are immense. What if your message doesn't resonate perfectly with every single attendee? Are you prepared for such a contingency? I urge you to reconsider this perilous deviation from your tried and true excellence in accountants. Why risk mediocrity in public perception when you have cultivated a brand of exemplary accounting services?

I mean, he made several counterpoints here. I think the biggest through line here is the whole notion that right now everything is perfect. Right now you're running the perfect business and you only have something to lose by going out and doing this new thing. Buddy, you're messed up. You got unhappy clients. Things are not as good as they could be. But I think human nature for most of us is to focus on the potential downsides. As we acknowledged in that fear setting episode last week. What does even a partial success look like? Like, what about the upsides? Perfectionism. It is probably based in fear. And what could go sideways if something isn't absolutely perfect? But that's also like there's like this inherent implication that what you're doing right now is perfect. It isn't. Just isn't. So you gotta do the math of like, is the potential upside better than the potential downside? I think internal monologue probably skews more towards the downsides. When have you seen public speakers? Have you seen little local events gang? Not. Not the highest bar. This episode is sponsored in part by Fin Daily. Did you know few years ago I actually developed a SaaS app and eventually sold it. And this is that app. Fin Daily, we are fully jumping the Internet. Think boy shark today. Build app, sell app. App then buys ads on your content. That's weird. So why did I build this thing? What is it? Basically it is like an email template builder that will send automated emails out to your clients and inject those emails with important financial and banking information. So for example, I'm going to build out a template that gives them like a weekly rundown of maybe their bank balances and outstanding bills. Stuff, stuff like that. You build out these email templates with placeholders and then schedule them to go out on a certain, you know, whatever, every day, once a week, whatever. And those placeholders can be things from QuickBooks, things from Xero, things from Plaid, like bank balances. You can even do mathy things to like generate, you know, like roll ups of sets of data, even use Zapier to pull in any other figures from third party systems. Super cool, super flexible tool. The way that I used it was we did cash reporting for clients who had like kind of short term cash planning issues. And this was a way to automate that process by pulling the bills in from the accounting system and pulling live banking balances. They have built on this tool further to do some cool new stuff like having multiple accounting file connections. For example, you've got a group of companies being able to send out, you know, say to a client who owns multiple businesses, send out information about all those different businesses in a single email, all on an automated basis because it fetches stuff from the API right before the email sends. Pretty cool. It's called Fin Daily. Check out the link in the show notes to learn more. 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 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 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, Ian the imposter syndrome guy. You worry that the more you put yourself out there, the more you will be exposed for the fraud you are. Because we're just, like, pretending one day at a time, right? If I really put my neck out on the line more, aren't they going to realize that maybe I don't know as much as they think I know? What's a spooky thing here? Ooh, how about a podcast interview? You just found a beekeeping podcast that all the biggest beekeepers listen to, and you could go on and do an interview. But what if you look like a broad? Do you want to go on a podcast? Are you kidding me? They'll see right through you. One slip up and it's game over. Can you even handle the questions live without fumbling? You'll damage your professional image before you even know it. You think your small firm's audience is even listening to that podcast? No. It's of time, new clients. Plus, do you really want to risk spilling confidential beans and landing in hot water? Stick to the numbers. It's safer that way. The notion that everything's good right now and you've, like, lucked your way into where you are. Yep. What if you slip up? What if you embarrass yourself? What if you say something you don't mean? What if you spill a confidential bean, as it were? What if you don't? I don't know. That one feels kind of weak sauce to me. That's the value of doing this, though, in my mind is like. And that's actually why I love journaling is like, I write out all those things that are kind of blockers for me. And when you write it out, you're like, well, that's dumb. But at least now I got it out of my system and I know the right thing to do. Ian, I'm. I don't know. I'm not that convinced by you. How about Carly, the comparison lady, where every time you think about doing a new thing, you're like, well, I'm never going to be as good as this other person that's legendary at this thing. Thusly, I should never do it. I've been there. This one, this. This one's. I'm actually bad at this one. Well, why would I do it if someone else already does it? I won't be as good as them. Okay, how about let's do public speaking again? That feels super applicable to this one. And something honestly, that, like, in one form or another, we ought to all be doing.

Oh, you're going to do public speaking, huh? Just like the big shots with their TED talks and viral videos. Those people have charisma oozing out of every pore. Ever watch them and feel like you're listening to a symphony, while when you talk it's more like nails on a chalkboard. How much time do you think you have to become that good?

Ouch.

You're running an accounting firm, not a circus act. Stick to the spreadsheets, will ya? Everyone's seen those speakers who think they can wing it until they bomb on stage. Remember that. You don't want to be that guy, do you? Time is money, and you're about to waste a lot of it.

Okay, the big shots with their TED talks. Yeah, I mean, we are like. I feel like we always compare ourselves to the best of the best, and that's never helpful. How much time do you think it will take? There's the ROI thing again. We get super fixated on like this short term yardstick of roi. How does this help me in the short term? Rather than thinking of you as an actual human being that's going to develop for the rest of your life and like, stacking skills that will serve you your entire life, like public speaking, rather than just like, how's this going to make me $20 in the next week? Yeah, time is money. I think that was the fear of it going sideways. And time is money. It feels like same old accountant trope, like struggling with that ROI calculation. Okay, two more. Ira the isolationist social anxiety means you are always afraid to do the hard thing. Because what if it leads to this really uncomfortable thing at little league practice? Or like this one. Seems ridiculous when you write it down, but it's actually a huge factor for many of us. So what is a good problem to throw at Ira here? How about making a call to a client about setting a boundary? Maybe they crossed a line and now you got to have an uncomfortable phone call.

So you're about to make that call, huh? Imagine it's done. And the next time you see your client in person, you walk into the room and immediately there's an unmistakable chill in the air. You extend your hand for a shaking, and guess what? Your client initiates the world's most awkward fist bump instead. Ouch. Who mixes up those gestures these days? And oh, as you sit down to talk business, your client keeps bringing up those new boundaries you set. Can you feel the sweat forming? How many times will they mention it? Will they understand your reasons? The agony, the Agony.

The agony. That's pretty good. This is, I don't know, like, if I'm tier ranking these internal like dialogues, these avatars, this one's probably top three for most people. How many times have you struggled to do that hard thing because you're like, well, I know that person outside of work, or they're a figurehead in the community, I'm going to bump into them or, or a bunch of my other clients know that person. What if it creates an awkward thing where then they're talking with other clients? Awkwardness is a real thing. We actually really struggled with this in my practice where there was a lot of clients we had where the person that had that client like had a personal relationship with them. And so the notion of making business decisions for them got really complicated. And that's. I know that's something that I don't know that we've all quite peeled back. Like the notion that you're running a business and you got to make business decisions and if you're not going to work with somebody, it's not a personal thing. Like those client interactions and hard decisions. I still think for most people feel more personal than maybe they ought to. Probably because we aren't framing that relationship through a business context and being really clear that like, hey, every year we're going to make a decision of who we're moving forward with and who we're not moving forward with according to the direction of the business, which has absolutely nothing to do with how I feel about you as a person. And because we don't set that precedent of it's not personal, then when you do have to make a surprise hard call, it feels personal. And we're bad at social stuff and we don't like conflict. And so we totally. I mean, you think of those very explicit in person situations where it's like super awkward and literally those hypothetical situations that are not even real are what get in the way of you making a decision. Okay, last one. This is 10pm Tony. This is what my brain sounds like after 10pm when you're laying in bed and you're mulling over the day's events and you're like for some reason trying to make decisions in your head that you won't even remember in the morning, but it still keeps you up at night. And then you just wasted a whole bunch of hours that you could otherwise been sleeping. Let's get 10pm Tony's take on firing clients. Hey, if you fire this client, you'll definitely face a snowball effect. First you lose their business. Then the rumor mill starts churning and suddenly you're branded the firm that dumps clients. Your other clients will hear about it, panic, and think they're next. They'll all start jumping ship. Then what? You're left with an empty office, a phone that never rings, and a reputation so tarnished it could pass for abstract art. Your revenue stream dries up like a desert creek. Before you know it, your firm's name is mud. Get up now. Maybe there's ice cream in the fridge. I don't know about your internal voice after 10pm that was a pretty realistic recreation. Also, maybe there is ice cream in the freezer. Oh, man. Yeah. No, it's like late at night. Totally. That like cascading snowball effect. You become known as the. The firm that dumps clients. I think we're all afraid of becoming like the hoity toity firm that's too good for people, right? And then word spreads and they're like, oh, like they're too exclusive and nobody wants to be that. And then before you know it, your revenue stream dries up like a Desert Creek. 10pm Tony. Boy, he's a. An ever present voice for all of us because we sleep every night. I don't know about you, I. Medications aside, like the most helpful way for me to go to sleep without like super dwelling on negative stuff. I've actually been reading, like trying to read something, chill until I get really tired and then I flop into bed. Got like a chair by the bed. I read there. And then when I get really tired, I hop into bed. If I hop into bed in a state where I'm like kind of sort of tired, I find that my wheels just turn. And then it actually takes me longer to go to sleep because old Tony, putting totally unhinged thoughts in your mind, telling you that you're actually hungry and you need to do something about it. There you go. I'm not sure if we all lost a few brain cells today. Time will tell. There is like a council of bad advisors. Maybe the opposite of what you want, but honestly, like, that is how most of our brains work. You have all these different voices in your head working against you. I would encourage you put them under a microscope. Like, follow those thoughts through, write them down. That's really helpful for me. And then you will see the absurdity of a lot of those thoughts. And if you're feeling creative, imagine them in the voice of 10pm Tony. And then you will really realize how absurd they are. Something to be aware of. That whole notion that who you can really be, like your external reality, is perpetually lagging behind. No, the other way. Your internal identity, like what you think you're capable of, is perpetually lagging behind what you're actually capable of. Because of all these self limiting, self destructive things that we tell ourselves. I don't know why it works that way. It's just a thing we have to acknowledge. So however you manage that, be it journaling, meditation, exercise, going for a walk, just be aware of them. Like shine a spotlight on them so they don't get in your way. That's it for today. If you're at Digital CPA in Las Vegas right now, so am I. I got a couple sessions. Come say hello and I'll see you all tomorrow.