243 Would I Ever Start Another Accounting Firm?

If I was convinced I could run a stupidly profitable accounting firm, like ridiculously profitable, would I go back to doing it instead of whatever? All this is a cool example of a drip campaign. Like an email marketing drip campaign from an accounting firm. Couple other thoughts on the big AI announcements from OpenAI and Google this week and how they impact accounting firms in the short term, and how to decide whether to keep investing in something that may not feel like it's yielding immediate dividends. You know, like that old problem of do I just keep grinding away on this because people say be consistent and do it for a long time versus when you should just like either pull the plug or pivot? A few thoughts on how to navigate that one today. Come on in because it's Q and A Friday on Jason Daily. Still in Austin for Right works, Having having the time of my life. It's great to be in Texas. Big sky country. Okay, CJ had posed this question in the comments this week. Jason, if you could run a one million dollar firm with 70% net to partner and took you 10 hours a week, would you get back into it? And a bunch of other people actually hopped in on this thread and I actually think the most relevant thing to my answer is actually yesterday's podcast about wealth ladders and like learning new business skills that lead to you running totally different types of businesses. From the spectrum of service businesses to productized to running product businesses. I can tell you where I'm at right now. What makes it hard for me to get my head around running an accounting firm again is I feel like I've learned new skills that have like almost taken me to a different wealth ladder or a different rung. Like thinking about it through the paradigm of what we discussed yesterday, I've learned how to do more productized things so I can make a video that a thousand people can watch and that's really powerful. And in some ways going back to a traditional service business, even if you're making stupid money, is kind of going backwards on the rungs of that ladder. Now a version of it that I would get excited about is one that is like what's a super productized accounting firm look like? What would it look like to build an accounting firm around digital products? Around community? Like what's a community, a membership community first accounting firm look like? Where that's like how you launch an accounting firm from day one is with a membership community. Stuff like that I get interested in. Otherwise going back to at least you know, my model of what running an accounting firm was when I last did it 18 months ago. It was a service company that was trying to get more productized. I feel like, what's a way to say this that isn't braggy and makes me sound like a jerk? I think as you go through life, there's a financial threshold, and it's probably a different number for everybody. There's a financial threshold beyond which money really yields diminishing returns. And they've even, like, shown this in studies. And that number probably looks a little different for everybody. I think this study said it's something like, I don't know, 120,000 year, 160,000 a year. Whatever it is, there's like, some threshold beyond which earning, Earning less than that, more money has a big impact on income, but beyond that threshold, making more money than it doesn't really ultimately impact your happiness so much. So I can say, like, I'm past whatever my threshold is for that. And so the ways that I like, the ways I choose to spend my time, are things that I can get excited about, things that I feel like will help a lot of people. And I know not everybody works this way, but for me, when you're beyond that threshold, at least at this stage in my life, it's not really a big about the money. The money is very secondary to. Is this something that I'm going to enjoy? Is this helping me to develop a new skill set that could lead me to something that I enjoy even more? Or is what I'm doing building me any sort of leverage for something else that may be interesting down the road? And a great benefit of running a podcast and doing social media and that sort of thing is you build an audience, and an audience is a huge hack for anything that you want to do down the road. And the reality is, I got no idea what I want to do down the road. I can tell you I really enjoy doing this stuff right now and meeting a lot of smart people along the way and, you know, folks that ask questions in podcasts, being able to talk with them at conferences like this and, like, build real human relationships. That's super fun. Getting to travel, getting to. You know, I've never been to Austin before, so getting to come and do stuff like this is really cool. So if I were to get excited, get excited about running an accounting firm, it wouldn't be because of money. It would be because of a novel kind of different way to do it that leans into some of the new skills that I've developed after running my last firm. How to do things in A more productized way, how to build and attract people to products, products that can be bought, you know, while you sleep, without any additional incremental effort from you. So maybe if I saw a version of a firm that could work with that, it'd be interesting. I tell you, we do talk about it actually. A good degree in the team, launching another accounting firm not to make money as much as to show the path to literally build one from scratch and document the entire process. Because I think doing that would make it feel much more accessible for a lot of people and even for folks who already ran a firm to see the real, the very real day to day of like the decisions that you make, the compromises you have to make, how it's just not as clean as people that have a framework to sell you would, would like to make. You think. I'm not calling out anybody in particular there. It's just the way the world works these days. Like the more you can boil it down to a framework, the more it's like, oh, so I just have to do these steps and I'm good. And it's like, no, like if you do this, you know, it's never quite that simple. So the really important thing is in that really messy nuance, what do you do and how do you maintain relationships through that and like try to do right by people without taking it, you know, being advanced, being taken advantage of. I think that whole more raw story of, you know, a several years long journey of building something from scratch that anyone could go back and consume, I think that's really cool. The reality is it would take a lot of time. And so it's got to be, you know, a more compelling thing than any of the other options. There's also a part of me, admittedly where I, where I don't know if part of what makes that appealing to me is like, ego is like, oh, people don't think I can actually do this, let's go do it and show them. I don't know how much of it is that. Cause ultimately that's a really dumb reason to do something, especially if it's gonna be like a multi year commitment. But I do think about it quite a bit. I don't think about it through the lens of like, can this make me more money? I think about it more through the lens of is there a version of this that I could do that would make running a firm more accessible or feel more accessible for people, which might actually be a completely different firm than the one I was just talking about? One that's like very productized and more aspirational. This thing that you build, you know, with an audience, that like fourth wealth ladder sort of approach to firm building that may actually be a completely different type of firm to build than the version you built from scratch that's going to feel accessible to folks that have never built an accounting firm before. So I don't know, maybe someday there's something in there. The reality is I've got enough squirrel syndrome to where I don't know that I ought to commit to like multi year things. As I shared yesterday, we just Itty Bitty Baby Soft launched something. There's another thing that actually some people that listen to this podcast have access to that were Itty Bitty Soft launching. Those two projects are my main focus right now. And then we'll see down the road. Maybe there is a cool way to tell the story of building an accounting firm from scratch that'll help people. I wanted to call out this example of a we talked like kind of beginner email marketing the other day. Cool example of a drip campaign that Automate with Josh shared in the comments. He's got a drip campaign called Tax Basics for business Owners. This is from a comment he left. It goes through how shareholder loans work, pay, paying yourself salary versus dividends, expensing large equipment, corporate tax rates, and the final email how to save 195 grand in tax when selling your business. Said he hasn't had loads of people go through it yet as I'm slowly rolling it out. Good reception so far and they spur good questions from clients. I love that. That's like so many heavy hitter common tax issues. Regardless of what you do, whether you're an accounting firm, whether you do tax in the US or not, we've all got like a top 10 list of what are all the things our clients get wrong and the most common questions they have. And those things are near universal across everybody. That's a great place to start with a drip campaign. A drip campaign again is like an email journey that you set up in an email marketing tool where it's like here's the first email, here's the second email, here's the third email. Somebody subscribes and then you can set those things to go out on a schedule. You can set those things to go out based on specific behaviors that are detected in that email. Like did they click on something? Well, if they clicked on this thing, send them this other email next. If they didn't open it, maybe we send them a different type of Email. It's a great example of building a relationship with people in a way that works while you sleep. Not unlike social media or YouTube or something like that. It's a machine that you can make once, that can reach an infinite number of people. And that's a really exciting thing. Cause every time somebody sits down to read that thing with you, they're spending time with you. You're spending time with me right now. And for the people who are still here, that didn't unsubscribe earlier this week when I said, I'm a Mac user now. Like, with every episode, like, you learn more about me. And like, there is. There's an asymmetric relationship there. And the reality is that's just how people learn and consume content these days. Like with traditional media being dismantled, you've got a few podcasts that you're into, you've got a couple newsletters that you got people that you follow on social media. And running an accounting firm doesn't mean you have to be a celebrity or an influencer by any means. But creating things that work while you sleep, that encourage people to spend time with you and your brain, that's super valuable because when those people come in to ultimately become clients, they're ready to pay more. They'll get out of the way of your expertise. The perceived value of what you do is much higher because you're the only person they've spent that time with. Right? Whether that's justified or right or wrong, or whether you're the ultimate be all, end all expert or not, the reality is they have that relationship with you. And certainly it can be abused. And the whole kind of parasocial relationship thing where folks become obsessed with influencers, the framing of that is largely negative because it can be abused and those influencers can manipulate people. But the reality is that happens on mega scales, but it also happens on itty bitty micro scales. And it's, in my opinion, it's not a bad thing. Like, I've got folks who I consume all of their content and I am fans and I learn from them and I trust them. That's kind of just how people consume these days. And drip campaigns for firms like, that's a cool way to build something. Once that people can come around and like, read and consume for years. You can even keep building on it or, or making it robust over time or iterating on like, well, did this email do better? Or that email do better? Well, then let's use this email. I love I'm a tinkerer And I know I'm more of a tinkerer than than many of us, many accountants, maybe folks that listen to this. But I really enjoy building machines that are a reflection of my expertise that can provide value without you having to sit down and do the work. And drip campaigns may be like the most simple, accessible version of building that type of machine. This episode is brought to you in part by TeamUp, helping you recruit top Filipino accountants without any ongoing monthly fees. The difference between teamup 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 up can source accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Zero, QBO 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 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 ol 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. This episode is sponsored in part by Live flow. The spring G2 little award badges just came out. You know G2 like the software Platform review platform? What The Software Review Platform. Just going to read you the the Spring Little Award badges that Live Flow won. Leader. That's all it says. Just leader. Spring 2024 next one best estimated ROI, best usability most implementable best relationship AW and momentum leader. All those just from spring 2024. Live flow. It takes your QuickBooks data, syncs it out to Google Sheets or Excel, whichever flavor you prefer. And obviously the kids are loving it because they're burning down. Big news lately is they now support Excel Suite Score Huzzah. And shortly before that, they released consolidations, the ability to roll up different company chart of accounts, like whether they have matching chart of accounts or not. They give you a super straightforward way to consolidate those things. Man. When I was running a firm, we had like 20 plus company consolidations that were so much bloody work to roll up. We actually stopped doing it monthly because it was just taking so much time. And we said we're only going to give you the consolidations quarterly because we can't be bothered to do it. This makes all that way easier. And because it will actually sync that data out like live in real time on an ongoing basis. You can even do some cool like near real time consolidated stuff. Pretty wild. Learn more about this one. The link in the show notes okay, Ann Percoco, you listening? You hear? She commented, you can have AI Jason record your ads. Honestly, not a bad idea. There's so many examples of like, well, AI could totally do this thing, but is that weird? Is it cringe? What's acceptable? So many AI things right now are like not being seen through the lens of is this useful? But rather is this acceptable? Chatbots on, you know, your accounting firm landing page is a good example. There's probably a version of that that you could do that is helpful. But like, are people going to think that's weird? Like we talked about the whole notion of somebody selling a chatbot that is like a version of their expertise. I'll be honest, that still feels really cringe right now. Maybe a few years down the road. It's normalized and not weird. But right now that still seems pretty weird to me. But this is a great example. What if I have, and I do have a cloned version of my voice? I don't. I choose not to use it because honestly, people think, people thinking that I'm faking things with AI is a problem that I don't really want to lean into. Like, people already make that joke a lot and there's all sorts of wild stuff I could do. But as soon as you do that, I don't know, it kind of. It cheapens what I do in a way. I don't really want people having to wonder when what they hear, like, is that actually me or not? So the very limited situations where I do that, I'm like very clear and it's kind of an experiment. But let's just take this itty bitty example of okay, what if people just started doing ad reads with AI Boy, it would be wildly convenient because it's a whole lot better than like sitting down and actually having to do the recording. Particularly when you're working with sponsors that want to review the wording. That can be a real headache. And some are more overbearing than others. But some podcasts, they'll have like, you know, the co host or some other person do the ad read, not even the main person, and you're like, oh, does that count? Some podcasts just play an audio file from the sponsor where it's like, it's not even them doing the ad read, it's an audio file that the sponsor provided. It's just a straight up commercial. And it's like, well, that's kind of lame. So isn't wouldn't AI Me still be better than both of those things? Maybe not as good as the real deal, but still pretty cool. I can tell you we used a voice earlier this week when we were drafting cold DMS and AI voice that I am particularly fond of. I just really like it for some reason. So to test Anne's hypothesis here that we should be using AI voices for ads, I've had the new OpenAI model GPT4O write a fictional ad read for us about some hypothetical product and we're going to use this AI voice from earlier this week to read this ad for us. Drumroll, please. Upbeat background music BEGINS ANNOUNCER okay. Attention accountants and tax professionals. Are you tired of unexpected client drop ins and last minute quick questions? I sure am. Sound effect Door opening ANNOUNCER introducing the Client Detector 3000. Voiceover with cutting edge technology, the Client Detector 3000 alerts you when a client is within 100 meters, giving you ample time to prepare and make a quick escape. Oh. SOUND effect ALERT BEEP VOICEOVER no more surprise visits. No more unplanned interruptions. Stay one step ahead with The Client Detector 3000. Upbeat background music FADES OUT ANNOUNCER Order now and reclaim your productivity. The client detector 3030. Because forewarned is forearmed. Sound effects swoosh announcer Visit clientdetector3000.com today. Music ends. First of all, what an awful product. Detects clients if they're within 100ft from you. This feels like something that schools need to have. Like there's something predatory about this. What have we learned here? And I think we've learned that was just a bad idea. We shouldn't have AI read ads for us. Although that was that. I don't know. I can't tell if that was a good thing that just happened or not. Can we get back on track here? The problem with AI Bits like that I've learned is listeners fall into one of two camps. Either that's the very best part of the podcast or it's the very worst part of the podcast. Okay, couple other things I wanted to cover. One, I got access to the Mac ChatGPT desktop app. It's honestly been a really wild week for AI. This desktop app is interesting because I think we may never go back to using the ChatGPT web app now, which is great because the worst part about ChatGPT right now is you have to go log into a thing and then figure out like, how do I describe the problem that I'm having and type it out. And that's just a pain. The desktop app, since it can see my screen. And as they roll out support for like the new like voice support, to be able to talk with it and interrupt it and that gets really compelling, it then means rather than having to go out and now with that voice support, I can just talk to it as I work. I can keep clicking around and doing all this stuff on my computer and I just tell it, can you help me figure out why this doesn't balance? Or can you go figure out how to do this or that thing in this app that I'm using? I've already been chucking some stuff out at like ultratax screenshots, things as simple as I've got this government form 1099R. Where do I put this in the software? And it's like, well, if you look at the options on the left hand side, I see a retirement option. That's probably where you would go next to enter the 1099R. This assistant that's always with you, you can always talk with and I can see the things that you can see. Maybe it's not wildly helpful for the pro that already knows all the places to go and where to get all the answers, but for the junior that's still figuring all that stuff out, man, does that seem compelling. So just to level set where we are today, they've launched the Mac desktop app, no Windows desktop app yet. And they're in the process of rolling out the better speech like voice support to be able to talk with it. But if we have this, you know, in all of our hands a month, two months down the road, this sure feels like something that's going to be very helpful, especially for our staff level folks. And it is adding more urgency, I would argue, to the, the security conversation, because whenever I post about this on social media, one of the first replies is always well, if there's sensitive stuff on my screen, it's gonna be able to see the Social Security numbers and all that stuff. It's like, yes, it will. For the same reason that if you upload a document to ChatGPT with sensitive things, it can see that sensitive stuff. And too many folks are still stuck on never PII in an AI app for no particularly good reason. There's still kind of these spookies around AI, much like we had around cloud, but it's not based in, like, first principles thinking. So first principles thinking on AI apps. The only difference with an AI app to every other cloud app that you use is whether or not the prompts you give it are trained into the model. Because if I give it something sensitive, but then that sensitive thing gets trained into the model that everybody uses. That's bad, right? Well, this was the case in the beginning. In the early days of ChatGPT, everything was trained into the model. Now, if you use ChatGPT on a business plan, nothing is ever trained into the model. Nothing you type it, no files you give it, nothing it hears, nothing it sees is ever trained into the model. Now, does that give us a green light to chuck anything and everything into ChatGPT? It definitely doesn't. But what it means then is the due diligence process for your AI apps is identical to any other cloud app you use. And we use cloud apps that we put PII in all the time. Your practice management system has all sorts of stuff in it. So if that has passed the bar and met muster and you feel that that is a secure app, what are the requirements that that met that ChatGPT potentially couldn't meet? Because ChatGPT, you can enable multi factor authentication, which you can't with many of the other apps that we use. It's a SOC 2 type 2 certified company, OpenAI, you still have to do your due diligence on it, but it's no different than any other cloud app. And we use lots of cloud apps that have sensitive information in them. So as long as your prompts are not being trained into the model, which is never the case on ChatGPT's business plans, it's no different than other cloud apps. Now, that's not the case for other AI apps. OpenAI is generally ahead of the curve on how they approach security. And it's why, honestly, it's the one that I talk about the most because it's the most well understood from a security standpoint. But it's really going to challenge the notion of like, Just why are people stuck on AI apps and never putting anything sensitive into them? Because these days there isn't really a great justification for why that wouldn't. You know, that's not all the same reasons why you may not for another cloud app. But what's going to accelerate this is when it's super useful. And I think this desktop app and the voice support is crossing a threshold where that thing is always available to you. To just ask a question based on what you're looking at, I think it means we never go back to using ChatGPT in a browser again. Probably because the thing that can see all the stuff that I'm working on, that's just so, so much more helpful. You think about the way that Microsoft's rolling out AI and really just crapping the bed. The chat assistant that is built into Microsoft Excel, which by all accounts is, is really bad right now. The chat assistant built into Microsoft Excel will never be as helpful as the chat assistant that can see both my Excel and the PDF that I have open next to it. Right? And as accountants, we are constantly working in different apps. Moving data between different systems is why we need umpteen different monitors. So the AI assistant that can see across all that stuff, it'll always be way better, way more helpful than, than that assistant that's built into QuickBooks or the Assistant that's just built into Excel and can't see anything else. Right? But I think this conversation's gonna get accelerated hopefully in a really productive way when people are like, okay, okay, this is getting more and more compelling. Where do we draw the line on security now? I'm hopeful actually in the next 30 days I will have something really helpful for you here. I'm working with a bigger brand in our space who was also working on developing a responsible use policy that you can swipe for for your firm, a template and you can modify it and like get down to the nitty gritty yourself and make some of those hard decisions. Along with a comparison of all of the different like best models and plans. And for each of those plans are prompts trained into the model. Can you enable multi factor authentication? All these different things, all the stuff that you're like, man, I don't have time to go research all that right now. Trying to make that as easy and as swipeable as possible so that anybody can come out. And this is something that's completely free. You're not required to even give your email address to this vendor. So it's something I've been helping them develop that. I hope we'll have out in the next 30 days to move the conversation forward in a, in a productive way. Because it's, it is being limited in many of the same ways that like, cloud adoption was limited because people could point their finger at folks that did it wrong and then like, apply that to everything else. 1000% there's wrong ways to use AI, but that doesn't mean that there aren't great ways to use AI, right? And man, I'm so excited about this desktop thing. The notion of just being able to work and at any point in time be like, can you help me figure out why this doesn't balance? I actually think that, that like, our monkey brains will be able to do that really well. Because, like, or that's just like a better interface. It's like a human coming and standing over your shoulder as you're working. You know how to explain to them what it is you're doing and what you need help with. And it's as seamless as that. It's something that our brains are already wired to be able to do. So it's just a much more natural interface than having to go to this app and try to figure out what my problem is and type it in and am I typing it in in a way that the AI can understand? Like, it's just this feels way more natural. This episode is sponsored in part by Cloud Accountant Staffing. Tell me how this resume sounds. Graduated with an undergrad in accounting in 2012. 14 years experience now the last five with US public accounting firms. Six software experience, QBO, Xero, Netsuite, bless your heart, Bill.com, stripe, Shopify, Gusto, Justworks. Rippling full cycle accounting. Oversaw the monthly close and review. Onboarded new clients, coached and trained staff. Oversaw a small team of bookkeepers getting stuff done. Not bad, huh? That is a real resume from Cloud Accountant Staffing. A super talented accountant in the Philippines that could join your team. Not this person specifically, because this ad read might be old, but to find the accountant of your dreams, all you gotta do, get on the horn with Cloud Accountant Staffing. Talk about what your needs are. They've got recruiters on the ground in the Philippines. They'll find you somebody great. You get some resumes, you do some interviews. You wanna know the wild thing? You don't pay a dime until you decide to hire somebody. Literally. What do you have to lose? The only reason you're gonna end up cutting a check to Cloud Accountant Staffing is if you got somebody that you absolutely love so why not I sure before I hired a bunch of people in the Philippines completely changed how we approached staffing our onshore firm. Give it a try. Link to Cloud Accountant Staffing in the Show Notes this episode is sponsored in part by meo. If you have small business clients, and I know you do, you know just how hard it is for them to track all their payables and receivables, especially when they're doing it manually. Now there's an easy to use solution that turns all that tedium into an easy task that only takes a few minutes each week. Melio is a B2B payments platform that saves you and your clients many hours each month on bill pay by offering robust payment capabilities including advanced approval workflows and a two way sync with your accounting software. Also helps maximize cash flow by allowing you and your clients to pay vendors however they want to get paid, including instant transfers and per payment financing. They can also use Melio to pay international vendors. Can all be done in minutes and you can more easily keep track of everything on your end. On May 21st, set your calendars. Melio is hosting a webinar for accountants and bookkeepers where they'll cover some exciting updates to to their platform that includes new features, product improvements and more. What could that be? What's in the more you think they'll also answer any questions you may have, helping you set up your account to ensure a smooth onboarding process, I'll put a link in the Show Notes so you can sign up for that webinar and get to know this platform. That's a game changer. Spots are limited. Make sure you claim your seat asap. Thanks to me. Leo, check out that link to the webinar down in the Show Notes. Okay, last thing I wanted to touch on. It's come up in a few different conversations lately. There's some of the hardest things to invest in are the things that we think will take a long time to pay off. For example, beginning to do social media to attract clients, starting a podcast, starting a newsletter, that sort of thing. And there's a lot of advice out there that says things along the lines of you're not gonna get much for your first couple of years, but after this it's just gonna be hockey stick growth buddy. And that's what makes it all worthwhile. Man, don't listen to those people. That happens for some people because at a certain stage they got good at it. Now I can't sit down at a piano having never played a piano and just Rip this unbelievable whatever you call a really good piano song. That's just not realistic, right? Because I don't know how to piano. And so if you roll up to social media, you roll up to a podcast, you do a video for the first time, how hard should we really be on ourselves that you're gonna stink at it? Like, that's how anything in life goes. You just gotta practice. And so the passage of time and doing something more will certainly make you better at it. But that's different than doing something just to pass time with some future promise. Oftentimes, this discussion is framed through the lens as if, like, the social media platform doesn't reward you until you have done it for years. That's not how this works. In fact, this is the very best thing about social media is for all the problems and biases that algorithms have, in many ways, they are a greater meritocracy than the real world because anybody has a voice. Your first tweet could be seen by 10 million people, your first video, your first LinkedIn post. It's exceedingly unlikely because it takes time to get good at it. Just like you're probably not gonna sit down and write this or play this amazing song on the piano if you don't know how to play piano. But don't think that the passage of time is going to make it happen. You need to think about, if I'm gonna take this seriously, how can I get better? So in your information diet, in the people that you follow and all that, do you have a couple people in there that are just giving you practical, real tips to make those posts just a little bit better every single day? Are you talking with other people who are going through the same challenge? I see a lot of you listeners making an effort and posting stuff to social for your clients. And I love it. And I'm a little confused why it's showing up in my algorithm, but I love it. Have you found another few people who are doing the same thing right now? Where you could spin up a Slack channel or a teams channel or a group chat or something like that that shares what everybody's posting and, like, learn from each other along the way? All of these things will shave, like, years off your learning process, as opposed to just you posting and not going out to learn from other people? So let's be real here. Nobody wants to plug away at any of this stuff for years to get results. We want results as fast as possible. And fast results are a product of fast learning and fast development and finding a way to do it just a little bit better each time. And it does take time to get good, like with anything else. But not everybody gets good at the same speed. And so don't rely on the calendar to make you good. Be intentional about it. Now, the one caveat I'll put here is podcasting is a different monster. Because podcasting is the one channel where there is no algorithm to discover, really. It's not like social media, where if you write a banger post, it's gonna put it in front of a bunch of new people who will find you. Because it's a really good, helpful post. If you make an incredible podcast, that's kind of it. You hope that those people share it with somebody else. Cause that's really the only way a podcast grows, is word of mouth. But the magic of podcasts is that it's the last kind of long form way that you can build a relationship with your listener. Everything else, video, all that, everything's getting crunched down and shorter and shorter and the human's getting squeezed out of it. The podcast is the other end of the spectrum. For some reason, they're going longer. Like, do I really want to listen to a three hour interview with Tim Ferriss or Lex Friedman or something like that? Somehow that stuff's like going the other direction. But the relationship that people build with you is a product of how much time they spend with you. And so podcasts are very unique in that regard. They're like kind of the best way to build that relationship over a long period of time. But it's just gonna take longer to build a podcast. Reality is podcasts a much slower burn in general. Unless you have a skill set that lends itself particularly well to podcasts, it's gonna be a little slower burn than social media. Now, at the end of the day, there are plenty o fish in the sea for you to make a killer business out of any of these platforms. My recommendation is follow the one that you enjoy, maybe that you're a big consumer of. Like, if you love Instagram, do Instagram. Because the thing that doesn't feel quite so much like work is much more sustainable. You don't have to rely on willpower and that sort of thing. But please, please, please don't listen to the folks who are saying, like, it's about the passage of time, and then it really goes wild from there. What this is, if there's any truth to that at all, what this is is making, oh my gosh, the H Vac keeps turning up, Is making the decision to Invest in yourself. Like, you are a collection of all the things that you've taken the time and spent the money and all of that to pour into yourself. And you end up being a hodgepodge of kind of all these different collections of personal interests and business skills, all these different things. And at the end of the day, that is, like, that ought to really be the thing behind the wheel of how we spend our time. Like, how is the way I spend my next week crafting me into being the person that I want to be? I know it's cheesy, but I saw a great Gary Vee video on Instagram last week. Lady walks up to him at a conference and says, I'm 50 years old. I'm starting over. What's your advice? And he's like, good for you that, you know, you need to do something new. Here's the good news. You're only halfway there. Like, it's up to us to invest in ourselves and the way that we choose to spend our time changes you and changes the things that you're capable of and the things you can get exposed to. Things that I've been really, really proud of myself, like where I stepped out of line and developed this weird skill that ended up helping me in a way that I'm really proud of. 1. Getting good on video gang. Five years ago, I had never made a video. And when I made my first video, it is every. It was every bit as bad as yours will be. And I know a lot of people don't believe me when I say that, man, they were bad. They were so bad. So, so bad. I'm 35. I got a lot of years left. That video skill, that is going to aid me the entire rest of my life. In fact, there's maybe a little bit of a risk that it defines me too much, where it's like, I can do other things besides video, but if people see me and think I'm just good at video, is it gonna suck me into video things where I should really do other things? But the fact I developed that skill, that I took time when I was running a firm, when I was having kids and all that, to develop that skill when it was hard and be consistent. And a big thing of what made that easier is it turns out I enjoyed it, and so that helped make it more sustainable for me. That's a skill that I will carry until the end of time. Now, what are other skills like that? Getting good at social media. I mean, everything today is about attention. Why should somebody listen to you instead of somebody else. That is a very valuable skill and non scummy, like meaningful, heartfelt, genuine ways of doing that. Right. That aren't abusive and just trying to extract things out of people. Getting better at writing. At public speaking. We're so focused on the ROI of, like, if I learn this social media thing, like, how long is it going to take to pay off for the podcast thing? We're so focused on roi when the focus I think ought to be, is this something that I'm enjoying, like in the moment? Is this something that's fun and interesting to me? And then second, is this something that will take me on a path to something better five years from now if I'm really, really good at this thing? Like, will I be? Like, I'm glad I have that skill now? There's a lot of things we spend a lot of time on where I'm like, boy, I spent a lot of time playing that mobile game. What am I ever gonna do with that skill set? And it's not to say we shouldn't do stuff for fun and stuff that doesn't have to be about, you know, playing the forever game and all that, but don't be afraid to invest in yourself. Imagine going through all of life being so concerned about getting the project that's on your desk done that you never evolve into a person that can do that stuff even better and be a better entrepreneur and a better father and a better partner, a better, you know, friend. All that stuff happens when you oftentimes make non roi based decisions for how to spend your time. So be smart with your time to get that ROI back as efficiently as possible when it comes to learning a new thing. But at the same time, be convicted in how you spend your time to know that that's gonna take you to being a new version of yourself that's even more capable and even better aligned with what you aspire to be, rather than, you know, 100% of the time being in service of whoever the loudest client is in that moment or whoever you work for. Like, those folks in general are not going to be thinking about how can this person invest in themselves in a way that's going to get them to something even better and even more fulfilling, where they're helping even more people. And to get there usually starts with investing in yourself. And it is never too late to do that. Like, I truly believe that. Gang, thanks for coming and hanging this week. If I met you in Austin these last couple of days, man, I love that stuff. There's absolutely Nothing better than hanging with people irl. It's just the absolute best. If you don't do accounting conferences yet highly recommend. Like the relationships you make, the people that you meet, I genuinely believe it sets you on like a different path as a person. Worst case if you got to justify it. I always share the conferences I'm going to, man. Just come and hang, grab a pic together, get some hors d'. Oeuvres. Conferences are great at feeding you, man. I don't know about you, I'm a. I'm a sucker for any sort of free food or drink. If you got a skill that you're building like in yourself, that you're pumped about, drop that in the comments. Maybe that's get better at social media, at video, at just doing scary things, at public speaking, drop it in the comments. I would love for you to be able to connect with other people that are doing the same thing so you can encourage each other along the way. Right now, honestly, I'm trying to get better at running a business and being more operations focused. I'm an idea guy, but when it comes to execution, it all kind of falls apart. So honestly, what I'm working on right now more than anything is systems, plugging people into systems and I keep getting pulled away from it, I keep getting distracted. But when I look at the headaches I have, they're all systems related, not just in work but like kind of my personal system for how I prioritize and how I follow through for the family and stuff like that that isn't even work related. But if you got something you're working on, drop it in the comments. Thank you for coming and hanging this week. I'll see you next week.