211 If You Only Knew... 11 Secrets About Being an Accountant

Somebody in the comments had a moment of vulnerability recently. That said, they sometimes struggle with feeling lesser than some folks around them that have a credential. And my immediate reaction was, if you only knew how unintelligent I felt the day I walked out of taking my last test for the CPA exam. And there's so many moments like this in so many situations where we look at that person, we're like, oh, man, they're so impressive. They're so this, they're so that. And it's like, if you only only knew the insecurities and the fire and all. All the problems that they've got. That's what we're going to talk about today. If you only knew 11 things about navigating your accounting career from junior stuff to big brain, senior owner stuff. We'll talk about it. To give you the confidence to manifest what it is you want to. This all started with a moment of vulnerability from somebody. An example of good things happening on the Internet when you share. And it wasn't even like, help me with this thing. It was just like, this is hard for me. And you know what? Had that person not shared it, we wouldn't be sitting here talking about it today, and it wouldn't be helping a whole bunch of other people. This is an example of being a citizen of the Internet in the very best way and how you never know the ways that things will get connected and you'll help people. Number one, if you only knew how smart your man manager wasn't. Oh, buddy, this one punched me right in the face. The first time I was asked to review something, and I was like, hang on, you must think that I'm somebody that I'm not, because I don't think you really want me reviewing anything. And then a second time, when for the first time, somebody who was previously my reviewer asked me to review something and I was like, listen, I'm flattered, but I'm not ready for this level of accountability. And then I did go and review it, and I found a whole bunch of mistakes that they'd made. And I was like, you mean to tell me that this person has been, like, crushing my soul for the last five years? They're very, very nice about it. I only had a couple brutal reviewers in my time coming up and, oh, my gosh, there's nothing worse than a reviewer who will, like, make it personal. There's probably a lot of people who have left our profession due to some rough reviewers. But the first time, one of those people who had been writing Me notes for years, asked me to review something of theirs and then I gave them a bunch of review notes. There is an aspect of my how the turns table, but also, oh, this person is bad at stuff just like me. Many of us never recover from like the entry level aspects of coming into this profession. And it just every single day being beaten down over and over and over again, being told all of the things that you do wrong. And if you are now in the privileged position to not be one of those people, it's worth being very aware of just how negative, how big of an impact that can have on people. Not everyone's impacted the same way, but I gotta think that's actually driving a bunch of people out of the profession. Particularly when it's not done in a tactful way or it's done in a personalized way. They talk about this in creative fields where feedback and all that, it's about the work, it's not about the person. And it ought to be that way. When it comes to our accounting work, it is not about the person who gave you the thing with all the mistakes. It's about the work. And it's about everybody working together to get to the best version of that thing without ego, without name calling, without having to put somebody else like down along the way to feel smarter than. And there are people out there who are managers and accounting firms where this is the closest thing they have to power and control in their lives. And they're gonna wield it by giving you these stupid, long, trivial review notes. And if you're having to wade through this right now, if you're on the receiving end of this, no, it's not about you, it's about them. Don't take it personally if you're on the other side of that equation. I, in running a firm was very on top of the types. The ways that people write review notes like that was something I always had my fingers on the pulse of. I had no patience for that stuff like going too far. I had some good ones and some bad ones and I was coming up and I knew, I knew just how big of a difference it made on like your self worth and what you were, how you were feeling when you came to work. Just how those things can be written makes a really big difference. If you're now in one of those positions of running a firm or being a reviewer, like keep an eye out for that stuff because it matters big time. I think the best way to help junior folks overcome this notion of, you know, putting managers on A pedestal is peer review. So there's certain things where it doesn't require a super high level technical review. It's like making sure they just didn't make any dumb mistakes. The sooner you can get low level people into peer review, the less mystical the review itself becomes. Reviewing. While sometimes it is technical in nature, oftentimes it's just like a detail review. Did they make any obvious mistakes? And the reality is everybody makes mistakes. It's going to happen. And letting them see into the other side of that is actually a really healthy thing early on. So peer review definitely recommend number two. If you only knew how little that credential matters. Who A lot of folks listening to this who have not climbed Mount cpa, Mount ea, whatever credential you want to pick credentialless people who don't feel like they can, they can throw their weight around quite like the people with the credentials can. The reality is, I think at the end of the day has very little bearing on whether you're going to be successful, whether you actually know what you're doing. The best tax pro I ever worked with had no credential. Many of the best accountants I ever hired weren't even accountants when I hired them. There was some, some fistfights that broke out on, on Twitter last week around, you know, tax people don't make for good bookkeepers. And all tax people are like, hey, get off my lawn. Reality is there's a, there's a bunch of tax people that are crappy bookkeepers, man. There's also a lot of bookkeepers that are crappy bookkeepers and there's tax people that are bad tax people. I don't know they can really generalize across credentials at all. In fact, biggest. One of the like biggest signals from a tech company that they don't know their audience yet is putting things like the best solution for CPAs or this or that in their copy. Oh my goodness, like the cpa, like that's such a, the people who have a cpa, such an arbitrary cross section of professional accountants. And so, you know, sometimes if you are feeling lesser than some of that can be self inflicted. But it can also be those people gatekeeping and making you feel lesser than or you know, the association bodies making you feel lesser than through your credential or lack thereof. But I'll let you in on a secret. The people who want to show off and signal with their credential, even if you had that same credential, they're not the people you would want to be hanging out with anyways, if somebody thinks they're cooler than you because they got that credential, spoiler alert. If you go out and get that credential, that's not going to be a cool person. Now, tactically, within an accounting firm, if your clients are asking about your credentials, I would argue you've already lost the battle. The solution, when any new client is coming into your firm, you want them talking about your expertise, which is not associated with your credential. Credential, There's a few situations where it matters, like if you're doing a test work and that sort of thing. But that is not 90% of small accounting firms, when they come in the door, I want them coming in because they're like, man, nobody knows them bees like you do. You're the guy. You are the beekeeping guy. And that's why I'm here. And they could care less about whether I've got a credential because they've heard me on a podcast, they've read my blog, they've seen my tweets, they've seen my LinkedIn posts, whatever it is, they're coming in and they already trust my expertise. That's the goal, is to get people to that point, because then they're coming in willing to pay more. They have no doubts about your expertise. They're not gonna question your work. They're gonna come in, they're gonna sit down, they're gonna shut their traps, and they're gonna do what you tell em to do. And that's not because you have 15 different credentials listed behind your name on LinkedIn. It's because you've proven that you know your stuff. I think the, the worst application of credentials is folks coming into the profession or considering a profession change who are like, I think I kind of wanna go do this thing, but it's gonna be really hard for me to go out and get the credential. Don't, just don't. For one, if you're starting a firm for the first time or changing things, you don't even know that that's a thing that you want to do yet. And I can tell you a really sad place to find yourself is investing a whole ton of time and money, time away from family, all that stuff, into a credential, only to find out, well, I don't enjoy this now, but I'm going to have to stick it out because I just spent so much time and money on that thing. That is not a way to do life, man. If you're trying something new Please do not invest all that time in a credential. There's limited situations where you need it again, doing a test work, maybe signing a tax return. But even then, you shouldn't be starting that on your own. If you're doing it for the first time, see if there's somebody you can do some contract work for, like, get some experience with somebody who can sign on the dotted line there. But don't think that to go do that thing, you have to get that credential. I mean, imagine how many people didn't start an accounting firm because they thought they had to go out and get their cpa. And if we could just like, help them to hear what we are saying right now. No, that's probably the worst thing you can do if you're still learning if you actually want to do this or not. If people just knew that, how many more accounting firms we could have. So please, if you don't have credentials, they matter much less than you think they do. Don't let that get in the way of your ambitions. Don't let that get in the way of your ambitions. Number three, if you only knew how much. Firm owners are just making it up on the fly. Firm owners kind of wear the hat of having to be the source of stability. Oftentimes they have to look like they've got it all figured out. They have to be the kind of the stalwart, like, person that everyone can kind of rally around, the source of consistency. After all, for these people, like, you are the one signing the checks, you are paying the bills for them, you are their livelihoods. And it's not a great look for that person to come in and be like, anybody know what we should do today? Are we actually doing any of this stuff right? There's a level of that that's healthy, like openness and transparency. But sometimes, like, there's a threshold that you don't want to go beyond because you also don't want to, like, scare these folks, particularly those who are like, do not have an appetite for risk and for the freewheeling nature of running a small business. Entrepreneurship is literally getting up in the morning and just making it up. And perpetual anxiety that you are doing the wrong thing because you can literally do anything. The only reason this thing even exists is because you made this thing. So any constructs as to here's what it has to be are totally imagined. And that's the best part about entrepreneurship. It's also the worst part about entrepreneurship. And it's why for me, the solution to this is always confidence. And for me, I build confidence by being around other people that do the same thing and learning what they did and what worked for them and what didn't work for them. So much of like success in what we do is a product of confidence and figuring out how to get myself to a more confident place than I am now so that I have a more clear decision making framework for what I should be doing and what I shouldn't be doing. Now we may look up at these people and think that they have something that we don't. Oftentimes the opposite is true. They have fewer brain cells than you do. They're not thinking about all the things that go wrong that you might be thinking about. Some people are born with more confidence than they have any right having. I don't know that that's a gift. Just know that everybody's making it up just like you. You just got to find your own way to play the game. This episode it is sponsored in part by the fine folks at Live Flow. Tell me if you've ever had this situation before. Somebody needs some information from the QuickBooks file. Maybe it's an advisor, maybe it's like the financial advisor, some other stakeholder, a board member, maybe even the client, but you don't want that person to have to the actual QuickBooks file itself. Or maybe you're at like number of user limits for your QuickBooks license. Man, I had this all the time where I wanted to give them like a subset of information but oh lord knows I do not want them to have full access to the Books Gang is actually a really good use case for Live Flow because you can selectively sync any little detail out of the QuickBooks file to Google Sheets situation where we actually had this a lot. You've got somebody within the company that like manages ad spend but I need them to tell me like what events certain ads are associated with and they need that data for their own analysis but you can't give them the full P&Liflow can be a really great solution here to just get the information out of there that they need to see without getting them everything else. Now liveflow does a whole bunch of stuff, syncs data out of your QuickBooks file to Google Sheets, can be a one time sync or can keep updating that stuff on an automated basis. They've got a killer consolidations product now where you can roll up theoretically an unlimited number of companies with different sets of chart of accounts all in the same like really simple, easy to use lifflow interface People are using this for like Live flow for everything from like managing month end closes, even internally. Like they set up all their work papers and Google sheets. Kind of wild. That is Live flow. Learn more about that one in the link in the show Notes this episode is brought to you in part by Team up, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between Team up and all the other offshoring options is that Team up helps you hire staff directly. No middleman. You work directly with your new hire in the Philippines. Hire the person, not the company. Guys, Gals gang. Here's just a few reasons to hire directly. You have access to higher level talent. Makes sense. You have complete control over team culture and training. They keep 100% of what you pay them and it's a lot more affordable for you so you can retain your team for the long term. Team Open source accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Xeroqbo and Dex also recruit specialist roles. Team leaders, Tax specialists, Administrative assistants. Thought experiment what if you had an executive assistant for the first time this tax season? Just throwing it out there. What would they do? Start at that email video I did on the main channel recently. Get help with that stanky old inbox. I digress. Team up recruits these talented folks for a flat one time fee of 4,000 US American dollars. That's it. 4K one time. Somebody at Robert Half just did a spit take. Robert Half reference. We ever gonna get Robert Half to sponsor this pod? Not anymore. And they can connect you with an affordable employer of record if you need help with payroll and compliance once you hire that person. Big fan of hiring in the Philippines. You know I did a bunch of that. Check out the link in the description to learn more about Team Up Number four. If only people knew how messed up the accounting firms of thought leaders actually are. Oh baby. I have talked with some thought leader people doing big impressive things, running even big firms where you would be shocked how little money they're making. But then the opposite is true as well. People that run itty bitty firms that make shockingly large amounts of money. But in my experience, thought leadership does not always equate to I'm a. I am a savant at running an accounting firm and honestly, it doesn't have to like there's so many different types of thought leadership that don't have to come directly back to I can run a profitable firm and there's even like different levels of leadership. Like I found for myself, I'm a better leader of leaders than I am a leader of. Like entry level people. Like, I have a hard time getting on their level and getting excited about the things they're excited about and all of that. And that's totally fine. Like we're all going to be wired that way where there's a certain type of audience that you jive with best and you enjoy talking with best. Like, I'm a total nerd. I read a lot of books. I'm like a very entrepreneurial thinker and firm owners usually tend to be a little more entrepreneurial. So those are the folks that I really enjoy hanging with, the folks that are coming and looking for a full time job. Like at the end of the day, I don't have a ton in common with those types of people. So it's harder for me to connect with them. And oftentimes it's as simple as like, how easy is it for you to see the world through their eyes the way that they see it. So like thought leadership and being able to influence people. So it's more a question of like, what are the helpful things that I have to say. You don't have to be good at everything because nobody is. Don't be afraid to share that stuff and also don't come at everything as if, like, I'm the be all, end all expert at everything. The way better way to come at helping people is let me share my journey and you'd be shocked how much it helps other people. I don't know that I was a great firm runner. I tried to be good to people and that'd be like an overarching like, if we do this, it'll probably pay off, like, treat people the right way. But there are, I mean, there were so many unoptimized aspects of me running a firm and I bought a legacy practice that had all sorts of issues. And there's things that I'm definitely opinionated about now as a. And that's a product of talking with so many firm owners where I'm like, I'm pretty sure this isn't a good idea because I've heard from a whole lot of people that it usually doesn't work out. But I don't ever want to get to the point where I'm like, no, like, here's the ultimate framework. I think that's a blocker for us when we're thinking about making content for clients and that sort of thing too. You, your mind goes to all the things that you don't know when instead, like, let's just Focus on what we're learning. And if we're. If we are transparent in that and we share that, we share that journey. Along the way, you're going to pick up other people, and you're going to help those folks, and they're going to reciprocate what they're learning as well, which ultimately benefits you. Number five. If you only knew how great you look on video. Oh, gosh, listen, first time you make a video, you're going to hate it. That's totally normal. You're going to be picking apart every little thing about this. You're going to be judging stuff. I forgot to do a thing with a light. And, like, my video setup right now doesn't look like it's supposed to. That. That's the truth. It actually doesn't. It's going to have this weird green hue because if I don't close the shade on this window, the sun's bouncing off the arbor bites, and then it, like, makes the side of my head green. And what if. Ugh, people are going to come and think I have a green face? Gang, nobody gives a hoot because you don't look any different than you normally do. You already make them look at your ugly mug. When you meet, what people are going to think about is, wow, this person took time out of their day to do this thing for me. And I super appreciate that. Literally, that is what these people are going to be thinking about. Whether you got stuff in your teeth, whether you got a boogie hanging out of your nose. They might acknowledge it, they might get a bit of a chuckle, but their overarching thought after they watch that thing isn't going to be, yeah, I should have a salad for lunch. It's going to be, wow, that was really nice of Tina to make that thing for me. So get over yourself. Focus on the message. Number six. If only you knew how your voice doesn't sound annoying. The first time we hear ourselves, we drive ourselves nuts. That's like, that's human nature. If you don't experience that, you're a maniac. Everybody does this when they hear their own voice. They're like, oh, my gosh, my voice is so annoying. I can't handle doing that. And then they, like, won't publish the podcast or the video or whatever it is. And it's like, yeah, I got. I got bad news. I got bad news for you. That's how you always sound. So you can be in denial of it. You can go back to the drawing board and somehow change that right now, or you can just accept that fact, the people like you, in spite of how irritating it turns out your voice actually is, and move on with your life and instead focus on helping people rather than being so concerned with how I'm going to come across. This daily pod has been great for me, getting over a lot of things I said this early days. This podcast isn't going to be perfect every day. If you had ever, if you had somebody over to your living room every single day, there would be days that you were proud, there would be days that, that you just weren't proud. And the difference here is we're documenting my living room every single day for science and people a year from now will come back and see the day where things were not looking good. But it's one of those things where you could split hairs over these little trivial things that might matter and might not matter, or you can just every day relentlessly bet on the fact that being visible and being out there is probably going to help somebody. And I would rather do that. Doesn't mean along the way people are going to tell you what. Have I gotten a lot of comments when I grew that big old beard last year? Number of comments about looking super high. That's actually a color grading thing more than it is of me being high or not sort of thing. But for every one of those, like, you know how many people were like, oh, that's a useful tidbit. Thank you. Don't worry about your voice, number seven. If only you knew how valuable you are. Firms are funny, and I think employment in general has been funny for the last umpteen number of years. There's this delicate balance where you want your employees to feel valued, but not so much as to feel like they have any leverage. Right. Like, that's the age old. I think there's so many, like employer suppression of employee tropes. I think we're starting to get over now. And hopefully it kicks off, you know, a bunch of people having the confidence to start their own business and that sort of thing. But everybody wants their team to feel valued, unless it means they come and ask for a raise or something like that. And I think folks generally undervalue their contribution to a firm. And if you're working for the wrong boss, they will definitely feed into that and make you feel replaceable. But generally people are less replaceable than they think they are. At the end of the day, you have total control. You're in control of your own destiny. And if legacy employers weren't so busy trying to crush People into these little diamonds with no self worth. People might actually be a little better at their jobs and have the confidence to succeed. Like to have a confident conversation with a client or something like that. On the one hand, you will like browbeat them and give them a million review points and say, why can't you do this better? And then they have a conversation with the client and you're like, why, why don't you have any confidence? What is, what is your problem? I wonder why confidence is actually a real force multiplier. Because it gives you right or wrong. It gives you the audacity to think, I can go do this thing and I can go do that thing. And the compounding benefits of that over time are really significant. And not everybody's born with the same amount of confidence. And some of that is probably nature, some of that is probably nurture. But if I, the employer, am constantly like beating my employees down, they're going to have a hard time ever, like crawling out of their shell and thinking they're capable of doing new things and developing into somebody that is a better contributor for my business. Number eight, if you only knew what was on the other side of that goal. I don't know about you. Achieving goals can be kind of a bummer. Like, you get there and you're like, nice job, you. But then on the other side of it, you're like, well, what do I do now? Do I just start a really hard climb again? And it's why pursuing a goal at all costs is never going to be the answer. Like, you got to put the journey first. The journey is ultimately what matters. When you're on your deathbed, when your kids think about what life was growing up with you, it's not going to be the goals. It's going to be like the day in, the day out. Like, I have young children, so I think I've had business associates in the past who have said, listen, they don't really remember anything when they're younger than like 8 years old. Like, don't worry about it, don't sweat it, spend time with them later, work now. And I'm like, well, first of all, I'm like, I'll remember. But second of all, I'm pretty sure it still impacts them if I'm around, even if they don't remember that. And I grew up and I think I've shared this before. Like my dad was definitely. And I think that whole generation was all putting all the eggs in the retirement basket and everything's for this future payoff. You know, and then he got sick right when he got retired. And that kind of put all that stuff in perspective. And I just like, that's just not the move, man. Goals are helpful to me to the degree that they dictate my journey. Ultimately, it's the journey and like what every day can look like and can I get home for dinner tonight and not be a jerk to the family? Like, ultimately that's more important than am I going to get to that thing, be thinking about what is on the other side of that goal. Because if it's just another hill to climb, then it's like, what's the point? Number nine, if you only knew how happy that money won't make you. Which whenever you hear it, is always a very privileged thing to say, right? Nothing better than a rich person telling you money won't make you happy. I'm not referring to myself as a rich person. I'm saying in general, nothing's worse than like that person that just sold a software company for $100 million being like, those were some of the darkest days of my life. And you're like, oh, really? You know how much private school costs beyond a threshold? And there actually are like studies to back this up. There's definitely like diminishing returns on money beyond a certain threshold. So if money what you're after, again, think about the process instead. Like, think about the journey, what the day to day looks like. I was actually talking with somebody about this today where it's like somebody dropped a pile of money in your lap tomorrow, would you keep doing the same thing? I think the answer for most people is probably no. They would stop, but then they would come back to something. So, you know, as we're talking lately, a lot about getting over the narrative of work needs to be suffering and the whole adage of don't make your hobby your job. And it's like, oh, God forbid you pursue something you're passionate about. Is that really good advice to people? Like to not pursue something that you love? If you're not working on a thing that you would keep working on. When somebody drops a pile of money on you, does it mean there's something better out there for you? And that's a very privileged thing to find to get to. And maybe it takes some money to be able to get to that place and afford the flexibility of being able to work on the thing that you're super passionate about. But that's, you know, the infinite game. That's the journey that you're going to enjoy going on regardless of what somebody's paying you to do it. So how do we trend towards that rather than towards, oh, well, this thing's going to make more money and that thing's going to make more money. This episode is sponsored in part by Interval. Interval helps accounting firms unlock opportunities and optimize results for your SMB clients. This one's pretty cool. It's basically like a connector that will then surface automated insights based on the ledger connection. So with more business owners to serve and less time to serve them, Interval is the conduit to information and insights that put your advisory practice ahead of the curve. Here's the curve. How do you get ahead of a curve just from a. Just from a geometric standpoint? Is that like another curve with a bigger radius? Through a quick connection to your client's financial data, you get access to automated data discovery and advanced analytics. Interval delivers actionable insights on valuation, industry benchmarking, excess working capital, tax, advisory opportunities, and more. Filtering out the noise and highlighting only what you need to spark advisory opportunities, Interval provides foresight into financial forecasts and overall business health, while protecting and growing SMBs, creating a shared understanding. Because when businesses grow, so do you. Man, I wish I had stuff like this when I was running my firm. If you've got access to the ledger, like that is a treasure trove of opportunity and good advice that you can give people. I was always like, if only we could like wire up all these ledgers to specific service packages that we have where anytime this triggers, we propose this package and we can set it up in a way where it's like a no brainer. We're like, hey, we see this thing, you should totally have us do this. And they'd be like, yeah, but where did that fall on its face, like monitoring the ledger data to actually make that connection? They got cool tools like Interval to do that for you. Whoa, we're still in an ad read. Learn more about Interval in the show notes below. This episode is sponsored in part by tech guru. Pop quiz. Your computer just explodes right now. What do you do? A. I'm gonna go down to Costco and get to get the best deal on a new tower that I can. B. Call my IT group and let them figure it out because they're the professionals. The correct answer is B. You thought there was gonna be four options. I'll be honest, when I started that, I thought there'd be four options too, but I couldn't think of anymore. Gang. We talk about delegation and the stuff that you ought to be worried about and stuff that you really need to get off your own plate. IT tech, Please just stop, okay? There's professionals for this sort of thing. I don't want Tina spinning up her new Etsy shop, going out and filing her own tax return. But computers? You got computers figured out, do ya? You just don't. Okay? You just don't. Tech guru. They just work with accounting firms. You know the stupid apps we have to use. They know the great apps we get to use. They know the. Oh, the cyclical natures of our business. So they're gonna get up off your back during busy season. But yeah, no, I'm sure that you know more about how to manage it than a company that literally just has a big old team of people that just talks with accounting firms about all their tech stuff all day, all night, deals with it nonstop. But, yeah, no, I'm sure that you know better than they do. Why am I so upset? Check out the link in the show notes to learn more. We're getting to deadline season. If you don't have a good plan for it, just book a call with them now so you got something on the calendar to force yourself to circle back to it and put together a better plan going forward. Somebody posted on Twitter the other day, why is generational wealth the goal when if you decide to have a family, so many children are messed up by generational wealth, right? And I was like, yeah, that is kind of interesting because oftentimes the framing for we got to sacrifice now to have that. That's my goal is that generational wealth to get. Get people to a better place. And again, there's a threshold there where it's like, yeah, that is a big boost. And then a threshold beyond which where it's like diminishing returns. And I think my takeaway was the real generational wealth is time. Like, do I have time to pour into my family that my parents didn't? Maybe, like, that's the real thing. And the reality is you can get to flexibility with your time a lot of different ways that don't involve having a pile of money. It is like living within your means. It is like setting your priorities differently, prioritizing the time that you have to do stuff with the family, rather than, you know, slipping into the notion that work is just nose to the grindstone 10 hours a day, or that because you started your own business, you have to work more than somebody that's going and working for the state. Number 10. If only you knew what being insert age here was like. I was always Confused by people that were older than myself. When I was 20 years old, I was like, what could those 40 year olds possibly know? What could those 50? Like, what is there to know in this world? And as an old person, I can now tell you I know more people. I've picked up some things, but I still think I'm about to get found out any moment. I'm still totally faking it. I will tell you one really nice thing when it comes to professional services is when you are younger than all the clients that can afford your firm. That's a tough spot to find yourself in. When all of your clients are 55 and you're 30 and you're like, let me advise you on how to run your business here, dad. Like, that's a hard thing. The more folks get to your age, it's actually really fun. And the more like mainstream even becomes the things that are interesting to you. Because the entire time you grow up, it's like, mainstream is all the things that your parents think is cool, right? Seeing like you come into mainstream, the things that you think are interesting, that's a lot of fun. Professional services, like running a firm gets so much easier when there's people your age that are running successful businesses. It just feels like so much less effort and so much more natural rather than trying to advise people that are 30 years older than you. But I wouldn't say things just like, happen when you get older. Which leads into the Last 1, number 11 here. If you only knew how in control you are over what you do next. Because there's people who will go through life and they will like, close their eyes and get into a routine and years of your life will disappear. And before you know it, you put your head up and you're like, I just spent a decade doing what for who? Building value for this person that it turns out ultimately doesn't like, care about me at all. This employer who values me like, just as far as I can keep contributing to the bottom line. And if you're not intentional about how you spend your time, like, you will look up one day and years will have passed. Like, I. There are entire swaths of my life that have gone by where I'm like, dang, I put way too much time into that thing for that person to get nothing in return. And that's maybe a harder thing to identify in the moment than as you're going through it. But humans, like, we are habitual. You are going to do when you get up in the morning first what you usually do, like the things that you're going to do without even thinking about it. I get up, I wash my face, I take some supplements. I don't even think about that. That's just what I do. So that happens. First, the habitual stuff. It's why stacking habits and all that is so powerful. The whole premise of atomic habits. We've gone through that book before, but super recommended. Second, you're going to then do probably what someone else tells you to do. So you get there, you check your email first, you solve those people's problems, right? You go to work for somebody and you do the stuff there that you're supposed to do until the agreed upon end of time of you working. So second, you're going and you're solving other people's problems. And this is a big trap in running an accounting firm is just being a hero for everybody else at the expense of yourself. And then third, if there's any time left, you're going to do what you feel like doing after you've done all that other stuff, which usually means you are strung out, you're tired, you're burnt out from solving everybody else's problems. There's not a whole lot of juice left in the tank for much more than slow rolling Netflix. And isn't that upside down? What if like, instead you prioritize the things that are like, where do I want to be in five years? What's something that I would enjoy doing every single day that will get me there? Maybe it's doing a podcast interview each week with an interesting person in X space. Maybe it's spending 30 minutes learning the piano. Shouldn't the things that you want to drive, like your future and where you're going, shouldn't that stuff be first? I mean, you sit everybody in a room. When you're like of a clear mind, everybody's like, oh yeah, for sure. But that's not what we do. We put everybody else's problems first and they get the lion's share of our energy. I don't know about you. I get to like mid to late afternoon and I'm, I'm slowing down and this is really a, it's gotten to be a big problem. And maybe the last five years, I don't feel like I was always this way, but I get to 3 or 4 o' clock in the afternoon and I'm like, who? It's getting sleepy in here. Do people still work at this time in the afternoon? I get up, I work really early. Maybe that's part of my problem. But if you wait until the end of the day to do the stuff that you want to do, it's probably not going to happen. You add in the fact that we always think we're going to get more done in a day than we ever actually will, and by the end of the day, there is no time left for you. And so we go through that routine and we think like, oh, gosh, this is so hard. I'm along for the ride for this and that, and I'm committed to these engagements and these people on this job and all these things. And I. And I'm not in control. And that is so dangerous because, like, every step along the way, everything you do, every relationship you have that you maintain, don't ever let yourself think that you are not 100% in control. And it is your job and your job alone to ensure that every single one of those things are working in service of where you want to go. And oftentimes it's too scary to think and get explicit about, well, here is where I want to go, because maybe the path that you're on right now is at odds with that. But if you don't do it, who's going to do it? And is this the very best thing for you or is it the very best thing for the person who you're helping today? Nobody's going to have that, like, high level kind of internal planning meeting, like, besides you sitting down and taking the time to think through that, you're always completely in control. There is nothing in your life that is too big to kill, and there's nothing you could do that's too big to start. And if you're telling yourself anything else, it is a lie. It just is. It may mean taking a bath financially, it may mean letting a bunch of people down. It may mean everybody in your family being like, the heck is this guy doing? But I can tell you, I don't want to get to, like, the end of my life and be like, yep, I went. I went down the default path. I did this thing and then I did that thing, and I just kind of progressed through that the right way. I want to do ultimately what I want to do. And like, that ebbs and flows with different seasons of life. And oftentimes for me, it's been at odds with the people in my life around me who, like, I trust and I love and all that, and they don't understand it. Oftentimes. I mean, the conversation of, like, hey, I bought an accounting firm. And then a couple of years later, yep, I'm out. I'm going to go do. Make YouTube videos like, they don't understand what it is I do. Oftentimes, choosing a path for yourself, it's going to confuse the people around you, and not everybody's going to be cool with that. Like, that may lead to some hard conversations and hard decisions, but you can't let other people live your life for you, right? And so for all these, like, artificial constraints that we see in the world and we think about the. All of these if you only knew type of things that are these barriers that either we create that limit us or gatekeepers put up, that oftentimes are just fiction, they all get in the way of you deciding what you want to do and like leveraging the agency. You have to set out a path to do something you enjoy. And if you peel back the reasonings for, for a lot of these barriers, oftentimes they are. There are not great motives. They are an employer who wants you to just do what's going to be best for them, not for you. It's maybe a governing body, like, who grows and influence just by more people having that credential. Like, they're hardly an independent party here. A software vendor who says, no, this is the best way to do this thing. Oh, yeah, and our tool's really, really good at it. Can I get you signed up? You want to. You want to do it? You want. Can I get you on a free little demo call? I feel like we got a whole bunch of these barriers that just get created that are not true. And the people who create barriers for you, they're usually not your friends. They're not helping you to get to that, like, better version of the journey that you're on now, the one that you're going to enjoy, feel fulfilled by feel like, man, I'm, like, excited to get out of bed this morning. Like, I'm in a spot right now where I feel super thankful that most days I'm pumped to get out of bed and work. Of all things. At no other point in my life, I think, could I have said that, that I was jazzed to go to work. I feel really grateful for that. And along the way, I let. I let a bunch of people down. And I've shared that before and I've confused a bunch of people. And people in my family said, this is a bad idea, man, I don't know what you're doing, but I'm pretty sure you've made a mistake. And sometimes that's good advice. Like, you do have to weigh it. I don't know that you totally, you know, turn your ears off to it, but you got to weigh it with ultimately, like, yeah, but what if I didn't? Am I making the decisions that would make the version of me five years in the future proud when I look back? Or am I like, being like, no, that seems too scary, too intimidating, where then you then get further down the road and you're like, I wonder what would have happened had I done done that. I don't want to do that. I would sooner try it out and learn that it wasn't the right thing for me and go back, coming back a better person, someone who knows more about the world, knows about myself better and what I like better and carry that information forward with me. I'd rather have made that mistake and learned than not had done it at all. And 99% of people go through life in that, like, scared mindset where they won't take that step out to even learn more about themselves along the way, like, what they even enjoy and what they don't enjoy. So don't let other people get in your way. It's all manufactured barriers. Ultimately, you're the one in the driver's seat. Don't be afraid of that crazy idea. Make those little baby steps into that cool new thing. That's it for today. See you in the next one.