282 The First 20 Hires I’d Make in My Accounting Firm

We got an exciting one for you today. How would you build an accounting firm from hire 0 to hire 20? We are doing a draft. I'm going to pick every single hire.

I would do to get me to 20 employees. Actually 22ish.

Going to be a fun little experiment because there's a hundred different ways that you could do this. But if I did it again tomorrow, this is what I think I would do. And I'll be honest, a lot of it probably going to surprise you. Come on in. Let's draft an accounting firm team. Welcome to the first accounting firm team draft.

Here's how the rules will work.

I will make 20 draft picks each.

Being the next team member I will add to my team after myself. I am hire zero.

With each hire, we'll discuss org chart.

What that just broke pros and cons of that hire. How my responsibilities evolve with that hire. So I'm hire zero. My first draft pick is hire number one. This is a sportsball vernacular. Draft picks. If you're not familiar and I am.

Not using my personal hiring advantage at.

All, we're gonna assume I can't go out to social media and hire anybody or nobody knows me.

But I do have my skills and my entrepreneurial inclinations.

Like, I am a entrepreneur through and through. I am not a manager.

I'm not the person making the pies.

I'm the one that gets distracted very quickly and should not be trusted for building systems systems. So I can't. I can't untrain myself of that. So for the scope of this exercise, that's me. I have my skills as well, largely in sales and marketing. But I don't have any unfair advantages when it, when it comes to hiring. This was a fun exercise for me to go through. It could have gone a hundred different directions. But isn't that also how actually running a firm goes? It could go any one of a bunch of different directions. And you kind of just got to decide what with the best rationale you have in the moment. And that's sort of what I've done here. Now, I would actually do this, by and large the same for an accounting firm or a tax firm. And so I'm not even gonna dig into which is which. If you're doing both, it would fragment this a bit. But I'm not even gonna skin that cat here. I'm just gonna assume we're just doing one of those things. All accounting or all tax. All right.

My first draft pick of all the.

Things that I could pick.

And when I say all the things.

Like types of draft picks. I' here, is this a junior person, a staff level person, a senior person? Are they onshore? Are they offshore?

Do I just outsource the work?

Do I hire an outsource like contract group?

Do I hire a recruiter, a cto, a coo, a contract person to come.

Automate some stuff for me? Analysis paralysis. So many different things that you could do. That's what makes this exercise valuable.

Okay, my first round draft pick. Where am I going to start?

Where do you think I'm going to start?

I'm gonna start with a junior offshore accountant.

I'm gonna hire this person to be my grinder, the person who is going to do the work.

Cause Lord knows I'm gonna get bored.

Doing the work real fast. And I know that enough about myself to know that I could come in and like never connect with the work and just never do any of it. But I don't know.

For me, even though I am super.

Entrepreneurial, I still need to have some connection with the clients, with the type of people we're gonna help. And I in order for me to be passionate about this stuff, but I'm being realistic here, I'm gonna pull somebody in day one that's gonna do a ton of the heavy lifting. A few things specific for me. Why a junior, I wanna train him from scratch. Now if this were really me, I don't know that I'd need to do this because I could find hires that already align with my way of thinking. But for this exercise, I'm assuming I don't have that advantage. I'm the everyman, the person that doesn't have that network. And so I like the idea of bringing this person in on day one and kind of training them on like this is the approach that our firm is going to use to get the work done. Why offshore broke is I am poor.

I don't have money. I just launched a firm. I could pick up a super good.

Accountant in the Philippines for a thousand bucks a month or less. Honestly and for myself, how I'm going to build my fulfillment team longer term, it's going to primarily be offshore. Like that's just. I know that makes. There's some people that makes mad I think doing anything different. If I started a firm today is kind of swimming in against the tide of just how the world works these days. The fact that I can find people offshore who can do the fulfillment, the doing of the work, every bit as good as people onshore can do. If I'm making hires That I want to invest where I want to invest the next decade in these people to be really, really capable and love working for my firm.

Where's the world going to be a decade from now?

It's just going to be more globalized than it is today. So for me, that feels like the right answer. Why an accountant is a junior onshore accountant. Why an accountant and not something else? Man, I just need somebody to do, to do all the grunt work for me.

Arguments against this hire. Maybe.

Maybe my first hire should be a senior accountant because I want to truly be out of the work. And that person would get me more out of the work because they could do the client facing stuff. I'm thinking in this setup, I'm doing all the client facing work and the technical reviews on the work that the junior accountant is doing. So the fact that person is a junior, the fact that person is offshore has zero impact on the quality of the work that goes out the door. Because I am still the technical person overseeing it. But an argument against going junior offshore first could be because I'm entrepreneurial, I should be out of the work from day one. So you hire a more senior person. The reality is the level of person I would have to hire to delegate technical review to them is a very high level person. If I hired a staff level onshore person, if they're just staff level, I couldn't trust that the technical work was totally complete. So I'd still have to do all that but a senior technical person. And we're well into six figures these days to get a person like that. And man, I just quit my job at Circuit City. I don't have money to pay somebody that much for my brand new firm. Okay? So as much as I don't like it as an entrepreneur, I gotta do the technical reviews for now. Sneaky skills I'm looking for in this first hire, can they be compassionate with their colleagues and have some degree of training skills? But I think that's largely led by their ability to be human and compassionate, have empathy and all that. The way I'm going to assess that is in a test project where I create a hypothetical scenario where they are like writing review points for a peer or developing a training video or an SOP or something like that for a peer. I frequently use the writing review notes test in demo days, not demo days and trial days with potential hires in my previous firm. Because we've all seen the difference between a reviewer who's a jerk and one who can lift people up and be helpful and like have really clear written communication. I want to assess that in this hire because the reality is I'm building an offshore fulfillment team. And my first few hires in the perfect world, they're sitting at the top of that org chart, you know, five years down the road when we've got a big fulfillment team. And when I make my second hire, I want that person to be hiring or to be training person number two on their job. So their ability to have empathy and build training manuals and stuff like that in that first hire, it's really important because if they don't have that skill, it all falls on me. Second hire, I'm doing more of the same. I'm doing another junior offshore accountant. I still don't have money. This is still a very, very small firm. I also like the notion that hiring two offshore people in the same market, culturally, there's gonna be a lot of similarities there. That could eliminate some barriers for cross training. Because in a perfect world, hire number one here is hiring or is training person number two. They're kind of shadowing that person. I'm still gonna be involved, but I'm not having to put all that on my back like in my first hire, my second round draft pick here. I'm also gonna be looking for empathy and the ability to train other folks and all that. We're talking about higher number two in the firm that will go on to be the most successful firm in the world. So obviously this, you know, you think about Facebook hire number two, employee number two, that's big deal, right? That's, that's the equivalent of what we're looking at here. So those skills in this person, very important.

Now with this second hire, I now.

Have what I will call my first pod.

I am the senior person in this.

Pod and I have two juniors supporting me. Or maybe, maybe we call the first hire, you know, staff level person and the new hire a junior person. Sometimes that matters, sometimes it doesn't. But either way, this is now going to function as a pod with me heading up the pod and two folks running support for me in the pod. I'm doing all the client facing stuff. I'm still doing technical reviews. I'm in charge of all that stuff. I'm also doing sales and marketing to attract more folks to my firm.

I gotta be really mindful again of.

The fact that I'm an entrepreneur and I'm gonna burn out on this quickly. So we are working with folks that I super enjoy right now.

If I did this tomorrow, and it.

Would probably be with Professional creators. So folks that create social media content online and are building online businesses around their content, in this exercise, I have the skills and the experience that I have. So if you used to fix tractors like man, work with dealerships, right? Like you can speak the lingo better than anybody else.

When you're coming in, you gotta kind.

Of work with what you got. And what I've got is a knowledge of content creation and how to build a business around that. And those are really fun people for me to chat with too. I think all that's fascinating. I'm inspired by the creativity of those people. So as an entrepreneur that's going to struggle to keep focused, if I have to work with those clients, the best case scenario for me is they're people that I really enjoy and I'll build fun connections and relationships along the way. So with those two first hires, they're both junior offshore hires. And we now have our first podcast.

Where do we go from Here?

With the third round draft pick, you start looking onshore for the first time, perhaps.

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People have strong opinions on offshoring.

How dare you send accounting work, accounting work overseas. I've shared before starting to hire people offshore was probably top three top five.

Biggest unlocks I had in my firm.

Running days because we're perpetually people constrained. And when we started hiring folks in.

The Philippines and they just became a part of our distributed team, I ran a distributed team and they were just one more team member. We went four for four. Every single one of them were awesome. I had never hired four people in a row onshore and all of them worked out. They were going through trainings alongside my onshore team.

So stinking good. And the amazing thing was just the.

Supply of accountants in the Philippines was completely different than it was here in the States. So we could actually plan and know, okay, we will be able to go out and find this type of person and that type of person before we get there. Like, here's what we want things to look like in nine months, here's where we might make a hire. There's where we make a hire. I had been blocked for four years on any sort of planning like this. Just because we have such a hard time finding the right people onshore. This completely changed how we ran our firm. It did change the makeup of what roles were client facing and what roles weren't client facing. It shuffled that up a bit.

But there is a certain inevitability to.

The globalization of work. I'd encourage you to learn more about it.

I'll put a link to cloud account staffing in the show notes. You can hop on a call with them, ask all the embarrassing, the ignorant questions. It's just one of those things where a lot of people have strong opinions.

On it, but most people still just haven't done it, haven't even touched it. And I think until you work with offshore people, until you have integrated them into your business and seen the pros and the cons of it, I think it's a big blind spot, big old blind spot. Particularly in the context where we are usually going to be staffing constrained people. Blocked. Right. Want to learn more about that one? Check out the link in the show.

Notes what I'm going to do for.

The third round draft pick.

Hot take here. I am going to hire for the.

First time a contract group. So this is not a necessarily offshore or onshore. I'm not even going to delineate that because it could be either it's simply an outsource group that I'm going to contract. Not where I work with specific people. I'm not contracting to work with Steve or Jim, I shouldn't say Steve. Steve, that name's got a lot of connotations doesn't it?

I'm not contracting to work with Jim.

I'm contracting with a group to buy month end closes or buy tax return preps. Now, just like hiring a junior, an intern that doesn't know anything or an offshore person. Just like in that situation, all that work still comes through me. I'm still the one communicating with the client and delivering it. And I'm the one doing the technical review. So there is no excuse in your firm, people get caught up on how the work gets done too much.

There's no excuse at the end of.

The day for you delivering a crap piece of work to your client. Everything that happens before that step, how.

It gets there, as far as I'm concerned, doesn't matter.

Like, are there disclosure rules and stuff like that? Yes. Everything that happens upstream of you delivering that project to the client, that is a business decision where you have to decide here's the most efficient, the most cost effective, the most enjoyable, whatever it is, way to get that work to where you're gonna do the technical review and send it off. At least in this stage when you're doing the technical reviews yourself. So my third hire here is a contract group. I might even consider engaging two or three different contract groups. Now why I'm going the contract group price is I want the contract group path is I want resilience, I want my flex solution. Because if I get sick, I guess I'm still hosed no matter what here. If I get sick. But I only have two team members doing all the work right now.

If either of them get sick, if.

They go take a job, if something happens, I'm hosed.

I never want to be in a.

Situation where I'm like one person biting the dust away from being in a really, really tough spot. So I'm going to throw some work to this contract group. Not a huge volume. It's going to be more expensive than doing it in house. That's just the cost of having that release valve. But I want to get into a setup where if I had to, I could throw more work at them within a reasonably short time frame. It may not be realistic to think a contract group is going to pick up 50 month end closes for you in a week. Some of them may be willing to, but I can tell you if somebody leaves and I don't have a great plan for replacing that person, me having to be the stopgap for a month and then the contract group taking over after that is a whole lot better than having no plan. So that's why I'm going contract group. Third, it is a question of resilience. I think the biggest thing people will get mad at me about for this is the various ways that I'm getting fulfillment done. So I want to stress again, at the end of the day, it's still up to me to ensure that the quality of work is, is where it needs to be. Am I going to hire onshore people? For sure. Am I going to invest in people in my country? Yes, I will. But is that a reason for me to exclusively hire local people or onshore accountants? The reality is these days, if I take that approach and then the other firm takes this approach and they have much better cost efficiency and kind of some of the benefits of building a team globally, then I'm inherently at a disadvantage. And if I'm starting my firm in 2024, that's just not where I want to be. So that was hire number three, which it wasn't really technically a hire. Right. We're starting to work with a contract group.

Hire number four.

We going onshore yet?

Hire number four.

For me, it's going to be a contract virtual assistant. At this point, we got enough projects flying around that there's a good amount of coordinating and just processing documents, triage, stuff like that. I'm going to pull in a contract virtual assistant. Probably going to be offshore. I'll probably go Philippines because that's what I would do with my accountants as well. I can also use this virtual assistant to help me with some of my content. So like basic editing or publishing or scheduling tasks, stuff like that. I'm still carrying the weight of sales and marketing, but as my team grows, that gets, that gets harder because I'm being asked to do more and more things. So what I'm going to task this virtual assistant with as my, as my fourth hire. And this is probably a, I don't know, a third time person, maybe a halftime person. And so if I'm hiring them in the Philippines, this is, this person's costing me 3 to $500 USD per month. I'm going to have them help me with my content, I'm going to have them help me with my inbox. Just run triage with clients. Whether that's on the inbox, whether that's in my client portal, whatever that looks like, they're gonna help me with the minutiae there. And they need to have phenomenal written communication skills. Not everyone will offshore, just like not everyone onshore will. But for example, I've got team members that work for me in the Philippines right now, you can find folks that have tremendous written communication. Nobody would ever know them any different from somebody who is sending you an email from, from onshore. And because my preferred method of work is asynchronous distributed team, it's a ton written communication. So just for getting things done and being really clear, written communication is hugely important.

Okay, hire number five. I'm using hire.

In fact, maybe the round, the round draft pick is better because it's not, it's not saying hire because some of these are not traditional employee hires. My fifth round draft pick. We're doing it.

Oh, tighten, tighten the old purse strings. We are hiring a senior. Oh, a senior onshore accountant. Vacation is canceled this year, kids.

Sorry. I'm gonna bite the bullet and hire this person. And when they come in, I'm going to groom them into being the lead of this pod that we have. Not the lead. That's not the right framing. Because eventually I will actually have a manager over the pods, but they will be the most senior of the three people in that pod and the person that then delivers all the work. Previously it was me and two junior offshore folks in the pod. I, I was doing all the technical reviews and all the delivery of work. This senior person I'm pulling in for them to then be in that pod of three. And I'm, I'm now podless. I do not have a pod. This person's gonna remove me from technical reviews. Praise be. I probably have to be involved in it to a degree to ensure that they can actually do this stuff in the beginning. But this is getting me off the hook for technical reviews, which is great news. Now I'm still very exposed here because the contract group can help with fulfillment to a degree. But this person now I'm putting a lot, a lot in them. So the reality is at this size, there's like I have like a quarter of a foot still in this role, probably because I don't have a great way to hedge from my most senior person disappearing. So I now have a single pod with a junior staff level and senior person in it. Probably at this point, one of those first two hires is probably kind of progressed into staff level. I'm going to move to production based pay by pod at this point. So I'm going to incentivize the pod to support more clients and get more efficient. Not by paying them by the hour, but paying them according to production for the pod as a whole. So we get a new client. This changes the mindset from oh My gosh. Are you really going to expect more of us to. Hopefully. Cool. Let's figure out how we can squeeze this stuff in by getting. Getting more efficient or talking scope with a client where we're maybe getting into too much work. Big believer in production pay. I think it's. It's not perfect. And in some ways it changes the game from gaming the timesheet to gaming the profit share calculation. But that's still a better game to play. I'm pumped here because I'm now removed from technical review and delivery. So that's great news. With our fifth hire, I'm out of that. I'm probably doing a bit of advisory, but mainly sales and customer acquisition.

Hire number six, let's be real. I'm still feeling super poor because that.

Last hire was really expensive. So we're going junior offshore accountant.

But where do you put them? Does this break our lovely little pot structure? We have a nice little pot of three. Well, along the way, our first two.

Hires hopefully now are crushing it. They're getting comfortable.

I hired four folks in the Philippines before.

Didn't lose a single one of them. Maybe that was total dumb luck, but at this point, I'm hoping that these people are starting to grow and it's getting to be time that they need to evolve out of their tasks. They're now capable of doing bigger and better things. So this sixth hire, this junior offshore accountant, they're going to join the pod as a fourth person and they're going to run support for the two offshore people we already have.

So the two offshore people we already.

Have will train this new hire. That person is basically going to serve as an assistant for those two. They're now the most junior person. And this is exciting because this now allows our first couple hires to start spreading their wings and getting into new, more valuable stuff. That is hire number six.

Hire number seven. Can we really plug a fifth person into a pod? Doesn't that seem like too many? It does. Big news, gang.

New pod just dropped.

Hire number seven is a staff level onshore accountant. I'm going to take the highest performing.

Offshore person in the first pod. They're going to join this new staff person, this new onshore staff level accountant in our first second pod. What first second pod? We now have two pods.

First pod has our first senior onshore hire in it.

And then two offshore folks. Our new second pod now has a new onshore staff hire. But the most capable offshore person, honestly, is carrying a lot of the weight there in the beginning because they know what's going on? They're already crushing it. They're going to help that new hire and, and between myself and the senior and the other pod, we're going to kind of run support to ensure this new person can get up to speed. Hire number eight then is pretty obvious. We're going to hire another junior offshore accountant to round out that second pod. We now have two three person pods. Each pod has one onshore person and two offshore. At this point I'm only doing sales and marketing so I'm having a good time and am out of client delivery. We are, we are eight hires in. We've got some flexibility with our contract groups. When we need to flex stuff, maybe we get over capacity, maybe somebody gets sick. I've got a virtual assistant that's helping me keep my sanity and we've got two pods that are getting stuff done. There's a little bit of built in resilience there where if one person gets sick or one person leaves, you go out and you try to find a replacement for that person. Still a small firm so like you've still got some exposure here.

So where do you go from here? We've got a nice even number of.

Folks in these pods. Hire number nine.

I'm going to go onshore staff level accountant and here's how I'm going to.

Fit them into the existing two pod setup.

I'm going to promote the highest performing onshore accountant.

We have to now a pod lead where they are a quote, kind of like pod group leader. They oversee the two pods. So we're now bringing in a staff level onshore accountant to join the pod that that person's getting promoted out of. So we now have a person overseeing those two pods. This pod leader now is going to spend more time on systems, more time on mentorship, something we often don't talk enough about. How do you build in mentorship as a process? They're also going to serve as a buffer for me and those pods for the first time. So I'm even further removed from systems building managing the day to day. So at nine hires, if I wanted to, I could only have one direct report. Knowing myself, I love being much more involved than that. But that's an option and the reality is if I have that person, they are going to shield me from a lot of that stuff.

This episode is sponsored in part by Team Up Story time. Gather round. Sit in a circle. Jonathan, happy team up customer.

See if this story sounds, sounds relatable.

Clients were beating down Jonathan's door. He was Growing so quickly, he couldn't keep. The problem was he couldn't find anyone in the US at a salary that he could really afford. Then he had an experience that opened his eyes. He hired his first accountant in the Philippines. Couldn't believe how good she was. Not only did she do the work well, but she was fast. So he hired another. This time a senior accountant. He wanted to be in charge of quality assurance. Needed her to do things like set up special funding accounts and make sure.

Equity accounts are correct.

Things he struggled to get his US tax to do well. It went so well with the senior accountant, he hired another and then in a few months, another. Now not only is client work getting done on time, he has room to grow. Good for you, Jonathan. Here's a quote from Jonathan. We've hired very high level accounting talent stateside. I have to say that our Philippines based team is outperforming most of our US based staff. How dare you, Jonathan. I was absolutely blown away with the type of candidates that we got from our job posting. Team up really helped us navigate the things we weren't sure of. That's Jonathan's story. A real live accountant just like you. For some reason we have this thing in our head. Maybe it's an American thing where you.

Think when you hire somebody that's not in your country, they're not going to be as good as somebody in your.

Country just because their power plugs look different. But that, you know, that just doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? If you're exploring hiring folks in the.

Philippines, if you are stuck on your.

Your U.S. hiring strategy, hit up team up link down in the show notes to help you find some super talented accountants in the Philippines that'll get that client work straight out the door on time. This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at Genwise. Have you ever wanted to hire like.

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At 10 people we make another big change.

This is the problem with growth is every couple people the best setup changes. And that's just part of life. When you're at size X you're like, oh, this is the optimal setup for size X. Optimal setup for why is always going to be different. At 10 we're making a big change.

We are moving for the first time.

To develop functional groups. These are functional lines of people that get a specific type of work done that are separated from the managing of the client relationship. So we're going to start transitioning to pods managing the client relationship. And these functional lines being like the manufacturing facility or where fulfillment gets done. So what this looks like at hire number 10 is we're going to pick up another junior offshore accountant. And the highest performing offshore hire will now launch this functional group. They're going to be, you know, head of bookkeeping, head of tax prep, whatever it is. That highest performing offshore team member now launches that group. This could potentially be an onshore team member too. And then this new junior offshore hire goes into where that person just left. So we still have two pods of three. And now this high performer who's like the grinder that can get stuff done super fast. They're now the lead. I guess they need to be a person that can think about systems too, not just doing the work, but they've now created this new functional group and then hire a number 11. It's going to be another offshore accountant, probably a junior that goes into that functional group. So we now have two people in the functional group. Now as part of this change, the expectation of the two pods will now be that they can take on more capacity and take on more clients and begin delegating that grunt work, the doing of the projects to the functional group. Eventually down the line this is a much more lean like you have an account manager managing relationships and then the functional group's doing the bulk of the heavy lifting. This is gonna be hard for my.

Pods cause they're used to doing all.

The work themselves, right. But because of our incentive structure where they're paid based on pod production, I'm gonna throw some more clients their way and tell them you have this cheap to them resource, it has to factor into the, into the production calculation somehow. But they have this resource that is now this functional team that will get the work done. And their job is now more about delivery and managing the client relationship. So we're through 11 hires. Now we have two pods of three. Two people in a functional team, a contract group and a part time VA who's probably getting more full time by now.

Hire number 12, I'm going to go.

Like HR slash recruiter here. So they're probably going to be halftime.

I'm going to bring them in to.

Find me one more pod and two more functional group hires. So my hire number 13, the next one is probably an onshore staff accountant like we did last time. We're going to pull the highest performing offshore team member from an exist one of the existing pods and pull them into a new pod with this staff level onshore hire. So we now have two pods of two and one pod of three. Then hires 14 and 15 will be two more offshore accountants to make those two pods whole. So after hire 15, we have three pods of three each with one onshore and two offshore team members. Next two hires will be two more accountants, probably offshore, maybe an onshore that go into the functional group we now have. How many people we have in the functional group now? Four or five.

And then at 18, I'm throwing out the playbook again.

This is just how it works. You talk to anybody that is grown their firm, they're like, oh, I thought we would get to this model and it would just scale forever. And it's like, no, you throw out the playbook like every five hires. Here's how I'm throwing out the playbook at hire 17. No, it's higher. 18 where I throw out the playbook. I'm going to switch away from pods and running those pods more lean for those people to now basically be relationship managers. So be further removed from the doing of the work. Now in charge of making the client's wildest dreams come true, but more available than ever before. That's literally their job is to keep their clients happy. I think this is good because it optimizes for the client relationship. The work is still getting done, but it eliminates some of the friction of. My job is to do the work while also be your friend. This person's job is to be your friend. This one's a bit of a hot take maybe. It may feel kind of foreign, but that's the fun of this exercise. So relationship managers now are no longer capable of technical review. That's now part of the. The role of the pods. No, sorry, not the pods. The functional. The functional group where that work's getting done, they're in charge of the technical stuff. The relationship manager manages that client relationship kind of goes without saying, right? That functional group, the work getting done is, is largely offshore. It should give us the margins to really like have talented onshore folks that we can pay really well for. Relationship management. High touch folks, like high emotional IQ types of people. We're going to strip down. What were those pods to just be an onshore relationship manager and one offshore person running support for them. Because that person will still have admin. There will be some degree of work that they're still doing on projects. And when you want to have and keep high level people like that, it's actually a fantastic perk for them to have someone that can almost serve as their assistant, like be that helper on their projects. So onshore folks, so some of the Offshore folks are now just running support for those account managers. The highest performing onshore pod team member is now promoted so that we now have two people sitting over those account managers. And I think it's the two highest performing offshore team members from the pods. They're going to become account managers as well. Was it two or three? Trying to figure out how the math worked out. It was three. So we've got three onshore relationship managers and three offshore relationship managers.

What you mean to tell me we're letting offshore folks manage client relationships at this point?

The clients already have a relationship with them. Most likely. It's probably not going to be problematic.

Also a good number of clients for.

Whom we're only ever really doing written communication. So they actually wouldn't tell the difference between someone who's onshore versus offshore if that made a difference to them. But. But we also have two onshore folks managing those account managers now. They're, I don't know, account manager managers. I don't know what you call them. If somebody really has a beef with working with an offshore person as their account manager, maybe that senior can help. But we're also probably gonna try to shift those client relationships. So if somebody really is bent outta shape about that, they're gonna have an onshore person.

So that got us through 18.

After that we're pulling in a few more offshore hires. Maybe another onshore hire that is a pure relationship. Like they got to have some technical experience. But this is the first time that we're hiring someone onshore to be like, you're a relationship manager now. So we can find somebody that's super high emotional iq, who could do this stuff really well, who's energized by the notion of that being their role like a relationship manager.

And that'd be frankly even better at.

This potentially than some of the folks that we have doing it right now who are initially brought in to be part of a POD and be at least somewhat involved in the technical work.

What do you think?

That was my first actually like 21 hires. What would I do next and what am I missing still up next, I'm pulling people into sales. In fact, I'm probably pulling an account manager and a. A person from the fulfillment team in to help with sales and onboarding. I'm a big believer in having an onboarding team to transition a client from where they were to. To where they are. Particularly if this is a bookkeeping practice. Do the first month or three months with this onboarding team. Cause you've got everything cleaned up at that point. So when it's handed off to whoever's doing the ongoing work, it's not a complete mess. And that's just a really important time in the client relationship, like what that first experience looks like. So at this point I myself was still doing the sales, so I'm going to pull in probably an account manager and then a person from the, like the bookkeeping team or something like that. They're gonna tag team this sales and onboarding to get me out of that so that I can focus on content. That's probably the highest and best use of my time, is attracting people to our firm before then handing them off to the sales team. At this point, our functional team, be it bookkeeping or tax reps, probably gotten a little bit too big. So I gotta probably be thinking about an org chart within that functional team of who are the senior sort of technical reviewers. There was probably already a version of this happening, but that team now maybe getting a little big for the team itself to just kind of be one homogenized group of people. So I'm probably thinking about that, maybe thinking about coo like a very processes minded person, maybe thinking fractional CTO potentially. That hire may come down to who's the person I can find and do they have a little bit of skills in both. If that unicorn exists, then I'm probably looking at a business coach for myself, like having a third party to bounce ideas off of who can come in and say I see what you got now or what does the next evolution look like? What are the gaps and what are the bottlenecks we have today? How do we, how do we overcome them?

What do you think about that? The fun of this is to not.

Be bound by anything that you've already done. To be like, well how could I do this differently from scratch tomorrow? These pod evolutions are things I've done in my firm. And so a lot of what you're seeing here is like my lived experience and what I saw that worked and what didn't work. But what would be really interesting is getting the perspective of other people to come in and actually run them through the same draft. Hopefully they don't see, they don't see this episode. So I don't, I don't know, impact their thinking at all. But I'd love to run some other people through here who have different lived experiences to say, I think this will or won't work for me. Maybe they're also wired differently. They're not like entrepreneurially minded like me. They're not. They don't have skills in being able to market and attract clients. And so if, if you don't have those skills like I do, then maybe some of this doesn't apply to you and we bring somebody else in and you're like, yeah, that person's actually a little more like me. How would they draft this? There isn't a right answer, obviously, as this is running a business. But that's kind of the fun of this is with the information you have and what you think is going to happen, what would you do next? I think that's what makes this, makes this a fun exercise.

Drop a comment below with what would.

You do different at 20 people? Is there anyone we're missing here that you ought to have? Is there a different way that you would structure things? If you're running a 20 person firm right now, what works and doesn't work about that that would change the Progression? Your first 20 draft picks would love to see that in the, in the, what do you call them in the comments.

That's it for today. Thanks for coming and hanging at the first accounting firm team draft.

All right. By.