248 Does The Name Of Your Accounting Firm Matter?

Doesn't matter what the name of your accounting firm is, or should you just stick with Mick Johnson and Sons? You know, should career changers be starting.

Their own accounting firms?

Could that be the solution to the talent crisis? Should you build from scratch or buy one listener stuck on whether to get.

A CPA or potentially sell the firm they've started to build?

And then Microsoft dropped some AI announcements this week. You better believe we're going to get right down into the the nitty gritty. Okay, come on in. Let's taco about it. It's Q and A Friday. Welcome to Q and A Friday, where we answer questions on a Friday.

You got questions, Pop in the old comments. Shoot me a DM if you want to keep it on the DL I and we'll all get smarter together.

Lightem up. WMH commented. Here's a question for your Friday Q and A. Here we are. Mission accomplished. If I'm gonna niche my firm down.

But my firm name is just my name. Okay, so light em up and Associates. Like so many CPA firms, would it.

Help, hurt or have no impact to change my name?

Maybe the DBA or just new website to something that attracts a group.

Like Instead of Smith, CPAs going to be Keeper's bookkeeper.

Nice. Or something like that.

It's worth going out first.

In some states it's just not an option.

I wonder what this is like outside.

The US Some states you have to just like you can only use your name. In fact, famously, I think it was Aprio. They wanted to change their name to Aprio. Wherever they were based, that wasn't possible. And so the owner, one of the owners or something like that had to change, I don't know their last name or their middle name to Aprio or something like that to be. To be able to name the firm that way.

So if you're in a state where that's not possible.

Sucks to be you.

If you're in a state where this.

Is possible and you can name it whatever you want, which I think is.

The case in Oregon, then does your name make a difference? Absolutely it does. There's a reason that people, like, are.

Strategic about how they name everything, like every type of product and service.

Yes. It makes a great difference. Like I always come back to this analogy. You want to be so specific that.

It'S like if somebody's walking through a bookstore and they see the book on the shelf that's like so specific for.

Them, like speaks to a very specific pain to where they just stop dead.

In their Tracks and they're like, oh my gosh, I have to read this.

Like the first book that they've ever.

Seen for tax savings for bookkeepers or whatever it is. Like, there's a level of specificity there where they're like, oh my gosh, is.

Anybody else seeing this?

This is so specific to me. I have to get this thing.

Your name can be a reflection of that. And the best names, when a person tells another person about them, when they hear that name, they can tell from the name what it is.

And if they are somebody that is like a target customer, they're excited. They should be excited. Great example of an area where I bungled this, where I'm bad at this.

My accountant community, it's called realize and nobody knows what the heck that means. Ryan Lazanis community is called Future Firm Accelerate. Okay, I'm into firm stuff.

Maybe I fancy myself a bit futuristic. I'm interested. Right?

Realize. Nope. No idea what that means, buddy. Is it real eyes?

Like eyeballs.

I can't even spell that. Joke's on you. The URL isn't even realize. It's rlz IO bungle that. A lot of ways bookkeeping buds is another accountant community. You can tell from the name what it is. You can make buds with other bookkeepers.

That's a great name.

Smith CPAs. That's a great name if you just want people to know that you do CPA stuff. But if you're trying to take it.

Any further than CPA stuff, yes, there's almost certainly a better name.

You could Try to like 500 IQ.

This one a hundred different ways. The reality is, yes, names matter. Always. The same reason that copy matters. Same reason that people spend outrageous amounts of money on, like doing branding discovery. Like, yes, it does matter.

Will it make a meaningful difference for you? I think if you can get to something that is immediately apparent from the name, what it is, I think it will make a meaningful difference when people.

Talk about your brand. If your name is dental tax or.

Bee buddies or be Ledger B Bucks.

Yes, it will make a difference. It just does.

And if you say it doesn't, I don't believe you. Unfortunately, that's not.

It's not possible for everyone. But also, not everybody's a cpa.

Also, not every firm needs to be.

A quote unquote like accounting firm, which in some states have kind of its own set of restrictions. So all those restrictions aside, pay attention to those. But all those aside, yes, like name name matters. I love this one.

In fact, I'm going to chuck this one directly in to our futures into JSON AI this is a frequent guest of the podcast built with a tool called Delphi D, E L P H I.

We did a whole episode on it.

Going to chuck this question at Jason Bot to see how it does Jason Bot, how's your Friday going?

Hey there.

My Friday's rolling along pretty well, thanks for asking. Just wrapped up a Q and A session which is always a blast. How about you? Anything exciting planned for the weekend?

Wait a minute. You just wrapped up a Q and A session? I'm doing a Q and A session right now. Oh, that's awesome.

Q and A sessions are where the magic happens, right? It's like a live brainstorming session. What kind of questions are you tackling in your session? Anything particularly spicy or thought provoking?

I got a good one right here. Let me bounce it off you. I forget that you do Q&As every Friday also.

Okay, so here it is.

Love your content. I'm working on changing careers to accounting. My degree is in finance and I'm working on my accounting bachelor's degree for the CPA requirements. How much experience and what type of.

Experiment experience would you recommend for someone looking to break into the space?

I'm an entrepreneur at heart and have three side businesses, so I'd like to start my own firm one day, but I'm finding it difficult to get started in the industry.

Not a lot of open accounting jobs where I'm located. Any advice would be appreciated.

All right, let's dive into this. First off, kudos for making the leap into accounting. With your finance background and entrepreneurial spirit, you're already ahead of the game. Now about the experience. Ideally, you want to get a mix of public accounting and private industry experience. Public accounting will give you a solid foundation in various aspects of accounting for from tax to audit, and it's a great way to build a network even if there aren't many open jobs where you are. Consider Remote opportunities Yep, the accounting world is increasingly digital and many firms are open to remote work. On the private side, working in a finance or accounting role within a business can give you a different perspective and help you understand the operational side of things. This is invaluable when you eventually start your own.

Take a breath, Jason.

Bottom Given your entrepreneurial background, you might also consider offering freelance accounting services to small businesses. This can be a great way to build experience, get your name out there and start building a client base. Platforms like Upwork or Fiverr can be a good starting point. Lastly, don't underestimate the power of networking. Join local accounting groups, attend industry conferences, and connect with other professionals online. Sometimes it's not just about the open jobs, but about who you know and the opportunities they can lead you to what's one of your side businesses. Maybe there's a way to leverage that experience in your accounting journey.

Bless.

Not bad. I think he's probably already got private.

Experience though, if he's got a finance background.

Thanks, Jason Bot. I'm gonna put you back in the drawer for now.

Let's get back to your Friday Q and A. That's actually pretty funny.

It's all about experience. I'm gonna echo Jason Bot here. You don't know what you love until you do it. And and getting a CPA isn't gonna make you love it. It's maybe the worst thing about the.

Cpa, frankly, is folks put this in their head. There's this giant wall around doing accounting work that is getting a cpa. When you run a profitable firm doing all sorts of stuff without having a cpa. If you want to do tax work. If you want to do tax work, a CPA is a very long meandering path as compared with like just getting an ea.

If you already got three side businesses, that's a lot.

And admittedly it might make it a little harder to do some of this entry level, get some of this entry level experience where you're probably not going to get paid much like I would see. Is there a way I could go to work part time for another firm? The more you can, given that you don't have any experience in public accounting firms, while you shouldn't go out and try to just copy what everybody else is doing, to do the opposite and just go out never having seen into another firm, that's really tough. I'd steer you towards.

Is there a way that you can cut your teeth and get some experience.

With a firm just to see into how it works, make sure it's not a. If you go to the run of the mill average firm, it's going to be a legacy firm. You're not going to learn much. If possible, try to get some experience with, you know, someone you respect that's running a progressive firm. That will probably shave years off of lessons learned by building your own thing. But there's a real.

A lot of people.

You see this on social media a lot.

There's a real like romantic notion around.

Running an accounting firm. Like it's just appealing to some people.

And to be honest, I'm not sure why just today somebody slid into my.

DMs and they're like, bro, why aren't you just rolling up accounting firms left and right? It seems like you're perfectly suited for this.

And my answer was because they're still accounting firms. No amount of rolling them up makes.

Them any less accounting firms.

It can be great, but it's just.

Like, I mean it's like any other service business. It's, it's work. It is not to be taken lightly.

And you don't know what you love.

And you don't like until you get in and do it. So anytime I hear somebody like building.

Up, you know, putting years into potentially doing that thing down the road that.

They haven't even even done before, my big recommendation is what is the quickest way that we can get some experience to validate that this is something that you actually want to do if you.

Do want to do it?

Man, running a firm can be a killer, killer lifestyle. Like if you get it right, it really can be.

This episode is sponsored in part by Client Hub. Here's the thing, here's what's different about Client Hub. Interesting kind of different methodology to building.

A practice management system is they have built a, like a client portal that they say your clients will actually want to use.

It's sort of a, almost like a.

Side by side workspace where you have your tasks and your client also has.

Their own tasks where you're getting into.

Like largely the same space. There's a whole like firm only side of it that they can't see obviously.

But when they log in you can see all the stuff that they can see in their portal setup is actually looks pretty much the same way as how you manage your work. And I remember man, this was maybe three years ago now where we were running our cast practice in ClickUp and we had just a killer system for managing tasks and getting everything done.

And we got to the point where.

Like this would be so much easier.

If I could literally just send an invite to this client where they could see this same space that we're working out of and they just tackle the stuff that we're assigning to them. But like the only way to do.

It was with like these guest accounts and there was problems with views being shared and them seeing something that maybe they weren't supposed to see. That's kind of been Client Hubs approach from the beginning is like what would.

A shared space look like where you.

Could come in, do all the stuff that you need to do, have all the tools you need to manage the.

Firm even cool like AI stuff like.

Generative email they're doing now while also being something that like your client would.

Actually appreciate and actually use because it's an easy place for them to see what you need from them like all rolled up into one space.

Reality is most our clients these days.

Like they are using task management systems.

Also and unfortunately a byproduct of us supporting them is usually stuff they just.

Got to do for us. So if you're looking for a more.

Collaborative way to get that stuff done, check out Client Hub recently also did a five minute sponsored demo day video on YouTube for Client Hub.

So if you want to see me.

Like running through how it works, just pretty silly things in that video, check that one out too.

To learn more, I'll put a link.

To ClientHub down in the show. Notes this episode is sponsored in part by Cloud Accountant Staffing Tax Firms Check out this resume, a real resume from a real person that was accompanied by.

An intro video from this applicant.

Two associate's degrees, one in Accounting technology, the other in Accountancy. Started doing tax work in 2019. Became a tax associate with a US firm in 2021. Was promoted to a senior tax associate in 22 and a tax manager and.

Team lead in 2023.

Work with assert with Intuit Pro Connect Tax Pro Series CCH Access Tax Dome, Intuit Practice Management Goodness sakes. Tally for QBO0 prepping corporate and personal returns 10659 90s 1041 Goodness sakes. Specialized in equity equity compensation, year end tax planning. This is a real live resume from a talented tax pro in the Philippines. The Cloud Accountant Staffing placed with a US Tax firm. If you listen to much of my stuff, you know I was building a ton of my team in the Philippines.

Super talented people over there totally changed.

Our approach to getting work done. Nice thing about working with them. You can just give them a call, have a conversation, tell them what your needs are. They've got recruiters on the ground the Philippines that'll go out and find folks.

That are qualified for what you need.

You get resumes, you get video intros, you can hop on calls and interview these folks folks without dropping any money. You only gotta pay cloud accountant staffing when you agree to hire somebody. So literally you only are gonna pay a dime. If you got somebody that you fall.

In love with, that's gonna be great for you.

Worst case, you're gonna learn a whole.

Bunch about the process of hiring folks offshore. So what do you have to lose?

Honestly Check out the link in the show notes to learn more. Couple other kind of rapid fire questions.

About launching buying firms. This is Isaac Carmichael in the comments. I'm a CPA in Canada and and.

I've been thinking about the cost over benefit of starting my own firm as.

A side hustle for now and growing with it versus buying out a sole proprietor or client book and taking it on full time. I want to implement a lot of technology but won't see as many benefits until I achieve scale, which is what purchasing a current firm would do from the start. Curious of your thoughts. Actually the yesterday's podcast with Patrick was super to this point. If you haven't heard that yet Isaac, be sure to check that out.

Basically, if you're buying, you will spend.

Your time and energy integrating, managing the people you're coming into like a split family.

It's like marrying somebody that already has kids.

I shouldn't say that. I have no idea what that's like.

When you buy, you're spending your time.

Like integrating and all that. And if you're, if you're pinionated on systems, that can be a real toughie. Bringing a firm from a one set of systems to a totally different set of systems. It is whatever you think it is going to be harder than you expect because accountants, they're going to accountant even clients. Like even if there isn't anybody in the firm that you acquire. Like even getting clients to change systems.

Particularly if they just changed owners, can be real sticky cause they're already kind.

Of the on the edge of like do I leave with this new owner or do I stick around? And then if you change a whole bunch of process on them, it maybe makes them more likely to leave. So that's what you get when you're buying somebody else's thing.

When you're building, it'll take a bit longer, but you'll trade integration time and.

Those headaches with instead having to do a bunch of sales and networking.

So it's probably just a question of.

What do you enjoy more.

If you are on a race to.

Build a $10 million practice, almost certainly acquisitions are going to be the fastest way to get there.

But also consider, you know, once you.

Get there or once you get to any threshold like you know, say, say.

You'Re, you're either going to build from.

Scratch to a half million or you're going to buy to a half million. Also consider what life looks like on both timelines. On the other side of a half million, if it's something that you Built from scratch where you feel it's, you know it's yours and everything is set up just the way that you like it. And every single person, if anyone has been brought that's brought into that system on the employee slide side like those folks were with you from the beginning, it's going to have a very different vibe to folks that somebody else hired that you then acquired. That's on the internal staffing side.

Same thing on the client side.

Externally, really, if those clients came in to you day one, they're likely going to be more aligned with how you want to do things as opposed to them being somebody else's clients that you acquired and brought in and then tried to get them to like change direction, to bend to your will.

Those are kind of the trade offs.

That you deal with.

And some people are super opinionated where.

They really want to run it their way. And I'm getting a little bit of that from your comment, which isn't a bad thing. You said I want to implement a lot of technology but won't see as many benefits until I achieve scale.

If you're pretty opinionated on how the sausage gets made, it could be a.

Little harder to take an existing practice and get it into the form that you want it to be.

Other people kind of, you know, fire.

Themselves from that role and kind of, kind of raise above that to where maybe you can actually deal with multiple different systems or you let the rest of the team decide, like how do we want to get this work done? I could tell you when I ran a 40 person firm that I had bought with a partner, that firm looked wildly different than the firm that I would have built myself from scratch. So that those are kind of the trade offs.

If I can leave you with one.

Thing, just do something. Because oftentimes people will be paralyzed by this for years and do nothing. Just start, just start down a path like that's that. That's my best advice.

One other question, this is an interesting one.

And then I'll we can run through the Microsoft AI stuff from this week.

Jason I started an accounting firm at 22 years old.

Bless. Started it two months ago. I just closed a $3,500 contract today. It was my first bookkeeping contract that wasn't a family member.

I'm in an odd position because I.

Finished my CPA exams, but I don't think I can fulfill my CPA work experience requirements by owning my own firm. Assuming that I continue down this path, do you think it would be worth it to sell my business eventually to get my license. I don't know enough about the requirements right now to know whether that's true or not. So I would say maybe, sure that that is actually the case.

You can absolutely go to work for.

Another firm while managing this side hustle. If you got a $3,500 contract and you're doing some work for family, keep that baby humming. Maybe don't go out and try to do a ton of sales and marketing yet, but you could totally go to work for another firm. It was pretty commonplace in the past.

Back in the day when I was.

A child, when you had to have experience in all the different domains. Like you would go to a tax firm and they would loan you out to an audit firm to get audit experience, to kind of check the box of all the different types of experience that you needed to have. I think you could find a firm to go to work for, to be a contributor without having to sell your firm. I don't think you have to do anything that dramatic if you've already done all the work of passing your CPA exams. Finish, finish the job, finish the job. Don't let that stuff just die. But yeah, see if there's a local.

Firm you can do some work for. Perhaps that may be the easiest, the easiest thing.

Just know that's probably going to be a legacy firm, may not be a great model to follow since that's, I'd argue that's what 80% of your run of the mill firms that you walk into these days are.

And in the meantime, keep that side hustle going.

Like there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast that just work for someone and they're like, someday I'm going to launch my own firm. They don't have any side hustle going.

So if that's ultimately what you want.

To do, you got a great head start.

It's not to say that you couldn't.

Rebuild it again, you've done it once.

But I'd probably try to keep that.

Thing going while I, while I go to work for someone else.

Okay, Microsoft AI announcements. We got OpenAI and Google last week.

Was that last week? Was that two weeks ago now?

Microsoft came with some announcements, a couple surprises, a lot of follow ons that.

Kind of felt same to what everybody else was saying.

So one copilot agents. This is basically the whole Google teammate.

Thing that we spent a whole episode on.

Was that this week?

I think that was this week. The notion that you can actually give that thing a job and it complete tasks for you. And like in Google's case, it even had an email address and you could talk with it on team chat and all that. It was like an AI assistant framed as a person, which is kind of interesting. Microsoft basically announced the same thing. They're calling it Copilot Agents examples they gave meeting facilitator. Copilot enables a more productive discussion and meetings by managing the agenda and taking notes. Anyone in the meeting can co author group collaborator. Copilot helps everyone get more out of chats surfacing the most important information. This is the same thing Google showed off where it comes in in a group chat and we'll pull information. Third project manager we talked about this one. Copilot ensures every project runs smoothly by creating and assigning tasks, tracking deadlines and notifying team members when their input is needed. That one's killer. If we can make project manager fully the job of AI, that would be a huge savings for folks. We go back to the the analogy of the person that would go around and poke their head in everybody's office, go through their project list, make sure everything's on track.

That's maybe gotten a little more ambiguous.

These days as we're using practice management systems to request information from clients and all that. And you've got all these deadlines. You're kind of working backwards from where.

You got to get the info to.

Be able to get it done.

And am I actually paying attention to.

All the things that need to be.

Done by a certain date?

If AI can be more helpful with that, great.

In my experience, practice management systems, just like every task management system today, it'll tell you what's overdue and what's not.

Overdue, but isn't particularly helpful about working backwards from that. That's an area that AI, I think could help us.

This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow. I think this is my favorite tagline.

For live flow where QuickBooks Online ends.

Live flow begins.

Aw.

LifeLow gives you the ability to sync a whole bunch of data and reports and all that out to Google Sheets or Excel. Because there's a lot of data captive in QuickBooks Online that you may want to give people access to or you maybe don't want in the QuickBooks file. But even if you just need to get that data out and cut it up different ways, They've got a LIFO's.

Got a Consolidations product that lets you roll up all sorts of company files with different, different chart of accounts and.

Something I'm kind of hot on right now that has absolutely nothing to do.

With LifeFlow, but I'm going to include in the ad read anyways.

Is getting away from the traditional month.

End cycle delivery getting away from financial.

Statement delivery as being the thing we.

Build deadlines around like because that ends.

Up being the crunch for your accounting firm, right?

Getting the financial statements out by the 10th?

Well, what if instead we had something that was not the financial statements?

But maybe I don't know what the.

Client actually needed to see because they.

Don'T really understand the financials.

What if you had a more real time dashboard that was the stuff that.

Was actually actionable for them that they.

Wanted to see that could be populated on a weekly basis or real time.

Or you could use live flow to.

Like pump into a spreadsheet that they use. If they've got this info near real time, then it takes the pressure off.

Hey, one of those financials going to be ready right? Which ends up being the bottleneck for.

Your entire accounting firm because lifelong just about any QuickBooks report you want out to your spreadsheets, you can cut that stuff up to do any sort of.

Reporting that you want. Either pulling that data out like when.

You choose manually or continuing to sync.

It out real time on an ongoing.

Basis could be just the thing to get the crunch off that month end close all right. Learn more about LifeLow VI 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. The 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.

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Team up can source accountants with experience working at US or Australian firms familiar with tools like Xero, 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 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.

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4K one time. Somebody at Robert Half just did a spit take.

Robert Half reference.

We ever going to 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 Timo.

The biggest surprise is these. They announced PCs with Copilot plus, which are computers with built in NPUs. I believe NPUs are for neural processing units basically instead of processors on the x86 architecture.

Instead of like a traditional processor, they.

Have an ARM based processor similar to what Apple did a few years ago. And this different type of processor handles AI workloads much better. So right now Apple has light years.

Better hardware for running AI stuff on than PCs, like for running it locally.

Unless you had a PC with a.

Big old sweaty graphics card, which work PCs do not have.

And so they announced these, these co.

Pilot plus PCs, they got the new.

Co Pilot keyboard button.

Very exciting. But they've got hardware that can run AI stuff locally better, which is an.

Interesting choice because most of the AI we use these days is not run locally. In fact, I would argue Microsoft's done a pretty crap job of making Copilot helpful with the entirety of the Azure server Farm's horsepower behind it. To think that like a neutered version that can run on a millionth the hardware on my local laptop that's running out of battery, to think Microsoft's gonna.

Make a useful version of that feels like a stretch for me right now.

We'll get there, it'll keep getting better, this stuff will all keep getting more efficient. But one of the big features they showed off that is unlocked with these.

Copilot plus PCs is called recall.

Some people were excited about this, some.

People were very sketched out.

Basically it's the ability to recall anything.

You'Ve ever done or said or looked at on your computer.

I and I'm not even going to hazard a guess as to whether that's problematic for you. But basically you can search anything you've ever had. A tool called Rewind does this.

It's a, an app that you can install locally and it makes everything you've ever done on your computer searchable. Now a lot of people, Elon Musk actually retweeted and was like, yeah, I'm going to be disabling this feature.

They say everything is managed and stored.

Locally on the machine. And like in theory that should be totally fine. It's literally all locally on your machine. But Windows also like serves ads locally on like your Start menu now. So that's kind of a hard thing to trust.

You can disable it, you can also.

Delete things from it, like the same way you could delete things from your browser history.

So that's interesting. Maybe super useful, maybe kind of weird. I don't know, everybody's kind of still.

Up in the air on that one.

Two other things. One, they demoed somebody playing Minecraft while talking with an AI assistant, which just.

Feels extremely lonely when you could be playing Minecraft with a friend. No, you're going to talk with this AI assistant.

What materials do I need to make a sword?

And it'll kind of talk you through that stuff and that's fine. The much more compelling example of that is Talking to my AI friend when I'm using QuickBooks, when I'm using my attack software. That's what we talked about last week with OpenAI's announcement of a, of a.

ChatGPT desktop app that can see on your desktop and you can talk with the voice assistant while it sees your desktop. So you can be like, why does my trial balance not balance? And it may or may not give you something helpful back, but I kind.

Of think that's the future of computing it, being able to see your screen while you talk with it.

But weird choice for them to demo.

Somebody playing Micro or Minecraft.

It's almost like because they've already baked.

Copilot into every other app that they have, it would have just caused confusion if they were using Excel or something like that.

But all those versions of Copilot kind of suck right now. I mean, I don't want to rag on Microsoft too much here because nobody wants me to. I mean, I want them to succeed as much as anybody else because almost everybody in accountingdom uses, uses Microsoft except.

For your, you know, your Google workspace, skinny jeans wearing firms here and there.

And I could say that because I use a Mac, but 18 months ago, Microsoft, 14 months ago, they sold us on the world. They said, we're going to plug Copilot.

Into your Outlook, into your Excel.

You're going to have this standalone assistant that can see into all these things. You plop your buns down in the chair, say, hey, summarize whatever happened to.

Me over the email. It's going to give you all your.

Spicy emails, it's going to give you any team chat messages. You, you missed all of these things. An entirely better new way of work. And what do we have to show for it now.

Well, I think you can pay $30 per user per month more to get access to Copilot, like built into Excel and all that stuff. And by all accounts it is bad.

And in the testing that I've done.

It was extremely not impressive.

We're now over a year removed from them announcing that we've gotten a number.

Of new models from OpenAI since then. Updates, big updates to GPT4. Now GPT4O.

Meanwhile, Microsoft's like, yeah, no, no, we're going to bet our entire future on this. But boy, can you put your finger on a single AI thing Microsoft has.

Built that has made your life better.

I mean, we're 18 months removed from ChatGPT.

What does Microsoft have to show for it?

I would say the best thing they made at this point is probably the.

Team'S meeting assistant that will do transcriptions. You can chat with it during the meeting. That's pretty cool. But boy, do I struggle to find anything beyond that.

So they showed off some stuff and it's like, okay, like, yeah, I'm excited, but I'm going to temper my excitement. OpenAI has seemingly been able to execute.

Anybody better than anybody else so far. And shipping really surprisingly useful things.

And as soon as somebody disavows me of that, you know, either open air.

Dropping the ball or somebody else picking.

It up, I will jump ship so fast it's not even funny. Last thing that they announced, really cool. So Khan Academy, if you've heard, if.

You'Ve heard of that, it's like an online schooling sort of platform.

They announced an AI assistant for teachers that's completely free. Meet Khan Migo, your free AI powered teaching assistant.

They've had an AI powered like tutor built into Khan Academy for a while now. And if you've seen the TED talk about this is really interesting. Like this hands on tutor for every single student like this. It just seems so compelling.

But this is specifically for educators says.

Streamline your day to day prep, meet the unique needs of your students, defeat writer's block. It's like an assistant built custom for teachers.

I love this. I am not plugged in enough to.

Education to render like a meaningful opinion on all of this stuff. But I can tell you where I live. It's a big, good sized school district.

Last week they announced at the drop.

Of a hat they were laying off one third of all of the teachers in the school district is a big, big district. Poof. Overnight a third of all the teachers are gone. The student to teacher ratio was not good before this. And everybody's like, you can do that. Excuse me. Like, three weeks before school's out, too.

I can tell you, as an accountant.

In an accounting firm, my reaction to something that can help and maybe take some of the jobs we do off of our plate.

My reaction to that is, buddy, can't come soon enough. Accounting firms need help.

It sure feels like educators might be in the same spot right now.

Like, there are so many jobs that.

I cannot take fast enough because there.

Aren'T enough people to do the jobs. I don't care. I don't really care why you think that is. If it's.

Can't get good help anymore, the kids.

The kids just don't want to work. Whatever it is that's causing it, boy, it would be great to get help.

And help, like, right away.

And honestly, who's in the driver's seat.

More than the Microsoft.

Like, Microsoft, it has every reason to.

Come out of this, like, as the biggest org of all time and just exponentially grow as AI, you know, seemingly does all these things in the future and surpasses human intelligence and all that. Like, who's best positioned to win from that?

Microsoft. They own 49% of OpenAI. They're already massive. They have all of our data. Like, man, I hope we get there soon.

I genuinely do, because I think people need help.

That's it for this Friday. Got any questions? Hey, drop them in the comments. Been a fun week. We got more stuff in store for Monday.

See you then.