340 Don’t Post On Your Firm’s Social Media Accounts

Today on the podcast we are digging into why you may not actually want to post to social media under like a company firm names account. A lot of situations where you don't couple situations where it may make sense though. I'll help you think through how to decide also, but here's a Q and A Friday we are going around the world how to balance the desire to learn broadly versus maybe some of the business upsides of learning more specifically how to grow a firm past a million bucks, what are the walls you're going to run into and how my goals have changed over the last two or three years. Probably looks a lot like some of y' all who I know are growing super cool rad firms. And the problems you have, they are very different than the problems you had 24 months ago. And you are you're struggling with all of that and all the things that come along with it. Hashtag blessed life problems. Come on in, let's talk about it. It's Jason D. Programming Note. That's probably the last time I'll say it's Jason Daly rebranding everything to Jason on Firms, including the channels, the podcast, all that. Terrible idea after this many episodes, but everything I'm doing is basically just getting rolled up to Jason on Firms Jason on Firms Newsletter Jason on Firms podcast Trying to simplify. Good question. I got BT dubs. Want to ask me a question? Pop it in the comments or in the show notes. There's a little thing where you can shoot me audio, video, whatever you want. Good question here that teases out some nuance for how to approach social media. Here's a question. I'm a former CPA who did some non accounting stuff and was just hired by a friend as a marketing manager to help market and grow her business consulting firm. I love connecting with people and ideas and you've already given some great help to me. Question though. What account do you recommend we use to build connections and offer value on? As in what social media account? I have the time and the content plans and I'm somewhat comfortable with video, but it's not my firm. You said business brands don't generally work well for connection. Should our owner slash my boss carve out time for this on our own personal account? Thanks for advice. Keep up the great work. So do you post on the business account? Do you post on the personal account? We've talked before, like at a high level about how ultimately personal accounts will generally get much more engagement than business accounts on just about any social media platform. And you can always call out exceptions to the rule there. But by and large, personal people follow people. And if you're looking for where to start with social media, if you have never done it before, my advice to you, start personal. Because people don't give a hoot about your business, they give a hoot about what you can do for them. In fact, if you go through your social media and if you look at the stuff that you follow, I would hazard a guess that 90% of what you follow are people. And the companies we follow, the stuff that we're into, Nike, Space X. What like whatever it is that you're into, that's a very different form of consumption. Right. And I think these, these days we're trending towards more towards wanting to hear from people than wanting to see whatever like a brand has polished up and like put out. Now in this case, you've got someone who is not the owner of the firm and is just coming in to do marketing. Honestly, this might be the only situation where I actually recommend posting through that firm channel. You could hire a marketing person to come in and help her, an agency or something like that. Do you really want them posting under their personal account? Probably not. You want that work to be like an asset for the firm long term. Right. You're making that investment. But I struggle with whether you can ultimately do this thing, like do this very successfully. And if you've had success with this approach, I would actually be interested to hear about it in the comments. There's certainly loads of companies that are like, you know, have a marketing group on retainer and are pumping things into social media just like putting it out into the void. And I don't know that it's ultimately doing much, but the people who are crushing it are the actual people who are engaging there. And social media. This I would actually argue that this is a good thing. Like I am glad that social media is this way. So social media rewards personal connection. People like to think of social media as a billboard, as something where you can pay to play and you can put that stuff up there. And for sure there's like paid ads and that's a whole different universe. I'm talking about attracting folks via organic reach on social media. I don't think that the right way to think about it is I'm going to make this investment to be able to do this and it's going to bring this thing to my firm. You might have success with that. But for most small firm owners, the way to find success with social media is to be a human and is to make relationships. It is like going to a networking event and wearing a sandwich board that says, I will wash your car. And you walk around and some people might find out that you wash cars. This is a terrible example. We do very high trust stuff. What's a different high trust thing? You put on a sandwich board and you walk around and it says, I sell life insurance or I'll manage your money. There we go. And you walk around and everybody sees you and they're like, yeah, okay, no, I see that you do that, but so does this guy over here that I'm having an actual conversation with and so does this lady over here. It's one of those things where if you're actually going to nail it, I don't know that that is a thing that you delegate. And I'm speaking like just through the lens of small firms and trying to attract specific, specific audiences. And the question says, should the owner slash my boss carve out time for this on her own personal account? I would say you don't carve out time to post, you carve out time to spend time there to meet people. The way to do social media is not shouting general things into the ether, especially these days. The X algorithm, the Twitter algorithm is in such a bad place right now, it's unbelievable. It is such a sad state of things that LinkedIn is the best place where you can do this stuff. Ah, the most business pants platform. I'm just so allergic to 90% of what's happening on LinkedIn. It's a bummer that like, that's kind of the ultimate place to find folks right now. But to me, the most valuable aspect of social media is like making human connections that even lasts like beyond the scope of whatever the impetus is for pumping social media right now. Maybe that's to attract beekeeping clients. But the really like the cool thing, the secret sauce of social media is along the way you meet all these other people. I hear from a growing number of folks who are like, I'm in it. I do this other totally random thing and I watch your videos because they're entertaining and I learned stuff and I've met all sorts of wild people that don't do accounting at all. Folks that I've super looked up to just by being visible and by being out there and showing up every single day and engaging in conversation. That is the magic of social media and it's. It is a career altering thing. Who is it? It was, I think it was Russell Brunson, the author, author of Dotcom Secrets he says, I promise you if you post on social media every day for the next 12 months or maybe it's 24 months, you'll never, you'll, you'll never struggle, you'll never struggle to make money again. And that is like your mind immediately goes to like make money how? Like I'm gonna, I'm going to monetize my YouTube channel and it's like it's a million different things. And that's, that's why like the accountant ROI based brain I think really struggles with social media is like no, you're being a citizen of the earth of the 8 billion people that are out there and all the things that you can't imagine or comprehend are the opportunities that you would not be exposed to if you weren't out there and if you didn't put your abilities on blast. That is the value of social media. And increasingly I think algorithms are going to crush the business stuff. The thing that you can hire somebody to do because there is no like person there. Like that is to me the appeal of TikTok. Like that is why that stuff became so, so popular and why UGC user generated content is being used so heavily by brands now is people just want to see people, they want to see stuff that's like actually authentic. Like there's a place for the super polished corporate stuff and there's still good versions of that. But in this day and age with a number of people that are pumping out stuff, if you're going to make a marketing hire, if you're going to go out and find an agency, you think you're going to break the algorithms with that. Now I would say for a very, very specific audience that can still work. The more specific that you go, the lower the bar is. This episode is sponsored in part by liflow. Big news. Liffel just raised raise a whole pile of money a new series A and you better believe they're going to pour that into making cool stuff. LifeFlow Easy way to connect your accounting ledgers to Excel to Google Sheets QBO0 liberate the data from the accounting ledger. But let me give you some backstory. Since they started in 2021 their mission has always been help businesses manage and understand their finances better. LifeFlow was born to help you automate manual work so you can serve more clients, scale your firm efficiently and deliver high value advisory services. And in this way every everyone wins. We all win. Today they support thousands of firms and businesses but they are launching Live Flow next a game changing platform designed to help you and your team become high growth financial advisory powerhouses. Whole bunch of new stuff coming there that I'll be telling you more about in the coming weeks. Okay. Lots of fun stuff happening at Live Flow. Check out the link down in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by Team up, who helps you find super talented accountants in the Philippines to hire directly. We've been talking a lot about AI recently in this new open AI model and how that could unlock some really cool efficiencies for accounting practices. And a big misnomer when it comes to offshore hiring is one, that you go low skill when you hire Offshore and two, that AI is like going to replace offshore. When I hired offshore people into my team, they were, I mean they were just like anybody else in our team. I didn't use them in my firm and client facing roles. Although a growing number of firms are doing that. But man, they were like at all levels of the skill spectrum. I think oftentimes because we interact with offshore workers in like low skill context, like support and stuff like that, that makes us think that offshore people can somehow only do low skill things. And it sounds ridiculous to say out loud like no, they're going to do whatever you need on that value ladder. And we got big four firms hiring tens of thousands of people all over the world. So you can find skill anywhere. But interestingly, these language models as we talked about with the studies they're doing on how AI up levels people, the biggest impact is on the low to mid level folks and bringing them up to a more standard senior level. And this is where I hired in my firm I was hiring like 20 somethings, which is usually what I hired, both onshore as well, like folks that I could kind of build from scratch. But these were the folks I was hiring in the Philippines. And what I'm seeing with AI right now would have taken them to senior accounting level so much faster. By having AI as this like dream assistant. It would have made my junior bookkeepers so much higher output. It would have improved the quality of what went to the senior's desk. Absolutely would have impacted how I was running my firm. But I would still be hiring offshore AI or not. I don't think that really changes the calculation. If you want to do direct hiring in the Philippines, check out Team Up. I've talked with a bunch of listeners on the POD lately who have done hires through Team up working with Isaac. They every time I ask them how is the experience, are they doing a good job? They absolutely love Team up saying that, say they're doing great. So if you want to explore that, check out the link to team up down in the show notes. So I could go out to social media right now and I could go after bonsai tree tool makers. Bonsai. Is there some other way to say it? I think I'm saying that wrong. We had a client way back in the day, you know, little tiny trees. I think it was originally a Japanese thing, but like there's folks all over that are super into this. Little tiny trees. Well, they have to scale tools. It's just about the coolest thing that you've ever seen. Little tiny trimmers. We're not talking like, like ego pop a battery in hedge trimmer. Like nothing like that. Just like little hand tools also. How cool would that be? Super cool thing. Whole like community of folks that are super into that stuff, conventions and all that. If I wanted to be the go to solution provider for importers of bonsai tree hand tools, I could go out there, I could write a book, I could post on social media, I could run a YouTube channel, and you know what? My stuff wouldn't have to be that great to find people. And in my opinion, that's a good place to be. Especially if you haven't done this stuff before and you're already stuck on like, I'm not good enough to do all these things. Oftentimes that's the same person that's like, well, I'm afraid to go specific. And like that's, that's a version of social media that just doesn't work. You, you, one, don't know how to do it because you've never done before. And two, don't know who you're talking to because you haven't like gone down a niche path yet. That is where 99% of social media efforts just kind of go to die. And you can understand why that is because there is no shortage of people who are posting stuff online. I think it was three or four years ago, 4 million videos a day were being uploaded to YouTube. And I'm sure that's a much bigger number now. And so the other side of that is you can kind of grapple with like, holy geez, why in the world would I do this? Like, where do I fit into any of this? I think, I think you can, you can make the same case for your business. Like, why does the world need another accounting firm? There really are no shortages of accounting firms and people that will work with you all over the country, distributed firms, and also all over the world. I mean, how many messages do you get a day from offshore groups wanting to do work for you? Ultimately, I think you got to find a corner of the world that you enjoy working with. That's always a great life hack. Find the thing that to you doesn't feel like work. Who are the people that you really enjoy chatting with? The stuff that you enjoy talking about, the stuff that you would be scrolling on your phone at night, whether it was your work or not. Like that is a great competitive advantage. When the folks that ultimately are successful are usually gonna be the ones that put in the most repetitions. If those repetitions for you come easier than they do for others, it's a great place to find yourself. That's how I found myself into video. I learned that I really enjoyed it so I could push past the annoying stuff. I could stay up late just spending far too much time on a stupid bit, but nobody else would done that. I did it because I learned that I enjoyed it. If you can find that specific thing and then actually build real human relationships, like that is the way to do that. And if it's hiding behind a company account, you could potentially do the same thing through a company account and people will get excited about it. But if you are going straight to the company account, I think oftentimes, if that's where your mind goes, you might be missing what the opportunity actually is. It is an opportunity for you personally for the rest of your life. Building those connections, building an audience, never being out of work again. You're accountants. You're never gonna be out of work again, no matter what. Speaking of being human, building connections, I'm doing a meetup in Boston next Thursday. I try to keep these episodes evergreen. Let's just rip that band aid off. This isn't Evergreen. Next Thursday, doing a meetup in Boston where I got like 20 or 30 people that are gonna be there. I think that number's gonna go up. If you're in the area, come hang out. I'll put a link to the LinkedIn post in the show notes about it. If you're in the New York area, we got a big old crew of folks that are taking the Amtrak up. It's going to be quite the party bus. We got a super cool venue lined up. It's going to be a ton of fun. The furthest attendee we had in the first couple of days was coming from, from Greenville, South Carolina. But now I think we got somebody coming from Portland. So what? What is your excuse? Okay, maybe do one in Philadelphia next month also. But Check out the link in the show notes. Next question. Very much related to the first one, by the way. Thank you for that question. Very good question. How do you handle social media when it's like something you're doing for somebody else? Like, that is a level of nuance that I don't think we've dug into before. How do you balance the desire to learn broadly versus what is probably like a business upside of learning more specifically? What a. What a good. Really, really good question. I, I spent a decade on this. Like, I spent a decade in this frame of mind where I'm like, now I actually really enjoy talking to a fisherman and somebody that runs an auto body shop and this and that, all these different things. And I'll be honest, I. We're all in different places here. But I think, for me personally, I think where I've gotten with this. And I'll return to an analogy that I, that I use a lot, where you're in a room full of doors and you think when you walk through a door that you're losing a bunch of options, but you actually find you're just in another room that you didn't know existed that has a whole bunch of other doors. The struggle to balance learning broadly with learning specifically, I think comes down to the fact that the room you're in looks like the most fun room there is because it's the only one you can see. Right. And this is a great signal that you're, you're, you're enjoying learning broadly. That's, that's awesome. There's a lot of people that can't say that about what they do. And so you're in a room right now and you can see all these doors and you have all these opportunities and, and you're having fun, but because you can't see what's in that next room until you go through the door, that room doesn't seem as fun. But I would hazard a guess that in all likelihood, when you go through that door, you're still gonna find something that's fun. I would argue in most cases, you'll also find something that's a better business or you'll learn how to better go through the door so that when you inevitably go into another door, you're more equipped to do that. And if I can find fun in that next room, I would gladly find fun in that next room. If it meant my business was making more money, I was more protected from the changing times and general tools coming up market, I could get home in time for dinner. I could buy a bigger boat. Woo. I think we say that. I think we say I do like doing the general stuff because that's, that's, that's all we can see that. Like, that's all we have eyes on. Remember, we are the people that will fully geek on incredibly nuanced tax stuff, on incredibly nuanced accounting integration stuff that would make any other normal human go absolutely insane. I. That's us. And you're telling me you can't find joy and specificity? Poppy. I say also something I've learned, man, I got to have a life. Like, I got to have hobbies too. And if I'm looking for fulfillment personally, I go super specific on my work. I like to go wide on my personal stuff. I have so many freaking hobbies. There are not enough hours in the day. My whoop tells me that I just have mounting sleep debt every single day. And. But I'm like, man, there's so many things I want to do and so many other things that I've wanted to explore that I've never gotten to do. I'm. The way I think about it is I save that broadness for what I want to do personally. And when I'm working, I'm not afraid to go specific because me personally, I think there's actually a lot of satisfaction to be taken from, like going into those weeds. Like, if you ever go to an accounting conference and you get that excitement of just finding that person that has a super, super deep understanding of that one really nuanced thing, that problem you have, that integration headache, whatever it is, that's a great example to me of like, how we are kind of the experts at geeking on specific things. And there's actually a lot of fun to be had in that. Okay, you get your firm up past 1 million bucks. Look at you, big shot. How do you keep growing? There's another question I got interested to learn more about growth hurdles for firms like can two partners juggle a book of business 2 to 3 million in size, that sort of thing? What are the traps? Past a million bucks. So my firm, my firm is about 3 million when I bought it and about 5 when I left, maybe just shy of 5 a few years later. And we very much had transitioned from a traditional partner model with like five partners at one point to me and me and my partner. So we definitely consolidated. There's going to be a million ways to get past a million dollars. That million dollar threshold for an accounting firm. Like that is the threshold at which you outgrow what a single really talented business owner can do with the team around them like that million dollars and there's you could totally push it to one and a half or two or there's people that are gonna run outta steam at a half million. But it's beyond that million usually where you have to kind of reinvent the business to continue growing or add on like more partner verticals and then they just do a version of what you do and then you add another partner, that kind of thing. Today's episode is sponsored in part by Cloud accountant staffing. They're gonna help you find super talented accountants in the Philippines come work for you. I biggest thing I learned in the process of hiring Filipino accounts to come work for my firm. About about half of the last 10 hires I made were in the Philippines when I was running my firm. Biggest thing you learn they are completely normal people with families and lives and are incredibly capable and moldable and they can pretty much do anything your onshore team can do. I don't know why that is. And there's something about it that is uniquely American. We oftentimes we associate offshore work with like junior level stuff, entry level stuff, probably because support calls and stuff like that go offshore. But boy did we have people doing technical stuff. So I'm just going to show you this resume is a real resume. The one of cloud accountant staffing's recruiters in the Philippines were able to bring to a firm. This guy got his bachelor's in accounting three years ago and spending the last few years doing US Tax Prep Pro Connecting tax online. You use that RC reports Core V. What is this guy Sponsored by Jason Daly 1040, 1065, 1120s, 1120 man. This is the sort of resume where if it came across your desk and it was an onshore person, you would be like please come to my office stat. And we will have talks. And there's a growing ecosystem of super talented folks in the Philippines because there's so many firms hiring over there now, not just small firms. You've got, I mean big foreign, regional. They've got tens of thousands of people in the Philippines that work for giant firms. But that is all feeding into there being an ecosystem of super talented accountants over there that are all going through the same things that onshore ones are. They want a better lifestyle, they want flexibility, they want a lot of the things that small firms can offer. A cloud accountant staffing can help you find some good ones. Learn more Check out the link down in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part By Core v Gang, you run a tax firm. Can you hear it? Can, can you hear, can you hear the end of the year coming? Choo choo, big boy. It's gonna be here before you even know it. And I know that you are still tired from the deadline, you're still in the thick of another deadline, but you know what's about to come up and punch you right in the mouth. Oh, about, about six weeks after the deadline there where you're like, everything is good, nothing is ruined. I probably have to make some software changes, but it is chill mode. Then you gotta start Christmas shopping. Then you're into that whole thing and before you know it, you're straight back into January 1st. Well, if you do that Gang, what you're going to miss out on is the biggest opportunity in building a profitable tax practice. And that is tax planning slash advisory. We used to call it tax planning. Seems like the cool kids call it advisory. Now you can charge top dollar for this stuff. And the way you charge top dollar is by demonstrating the value to accountants. To me, truly, right now the easiest platform to do this with is Corvi generates reports, reports that show like tax deferral, like visualize things in a way that the client can actually understand to where even if I was doing honestly the exact same work in my tax software, the platform to me is worthwhile simply to sell the engagement. And the way I would do this is actually a bunch of like doing like half of a planning engagement for a bunch of clients, estimating the savings of us following through with the engagement, putting that in front of them. And for this I'm usually charging at least 2x what I charge for prep. So it ought to at least 3x the annual engagement. On a whole, it is not any more work than the prep is. In fact it makes the prep way easier because we're doing some more work upfront. Also got the benefit that they're paying in tax by year end. So it takes the pressure off of busy season. I only let companies sponsor my content that I would actually be a user of. We turn most of them away. Corby. That's how I would be getting my tax advantage advisory work done. It's not the cheapest tool to get started. If you got sticker shock with Core V, I would say it's because we're not charging enough for tax advisory work sort of thing that like your first two or three engagements ought to cover the cost of for the rest of the year. Learn more about Core V. Check out the link down in the show notes. So there's going to be a bunch of different ways to grow beyond a minute. I can tell you the main things I bumped into. It meant truly getting away from the traditional partnership model for me and building a. An actual legit like org chart. So what does that look like? What were the things that were missing in the traditional partnership structure that we needed to build in? For us, that was like a middle management layer. That was having people who could sign stuff and get it out the door oversee the team. Because two people should not have 40 direct reports. That was the big change for us. And in the traditional model, those people are too expensive to hire. But in a more like an org chart model, you just have to have those higher level people. They're going to be more hands on with the team. They're going to be a way better job of training and helping them. They're going to do that way better than like your two big bosses would. Right. So it meant bringing in some different people with more skills. Because a downside of that partnership model is oftentimes it will suppress a certain type of staff person who or actually retain or attract a type of staff person that just wants to be the person doing the work and doesn't have a ton of enthusiasm to come up and manage people and move beyond that. So it required some different folks on the team. In my case, it required somebody going all in on strategy, how you position the firm and talent acquisition. That was the hat that I wore. How we position the firm as a whole, how we handle price increases in the service library and attract the next hire, that sort of thing, that was what I did. I got out of client work and that was a really big driver of the growth of the business and kind of the reorganization of how we worked. And honestly, it also comes down to being okay with cutting the bottom 30% to give you the headroom to grow into better work. You don't want to get a bigger and bigger firm doing more of the same work. In a perfect world, if you're growing, you are. I don't know if moving up market is the right way to put it, but, but taking on more profitable projects, solving more painful pains. So folks are happily paying you more money for doing largely the same work that you did before. And a big blocker for folks trying to grow oftentimes is that unwillingness to cut what got them there. Because that feels wrong. They're like, oh man, these were some of my first clients. Like, I'm not going to leave these people flapping in the breeze. And it's like, the reality is, when you started that firm X years ago, what you were capable of then is wildly different than what you're capable of now, because you have evolved and your firm has evolved. What was a great, fit client before, it's now completely different. And that's not your fault. I mean, if you want, you could never change, and you can do the same thing until the end of time, but I don't think you want that. And the longer you cling on to those clients who are no longer a great fit for you, and honestly, that usually comes with a lot of friction because along the way, they're like, why isn't it like it used to be? Why do they keep increasing prices on me? I don't understand this. And it's because, like, the problems you solve for are now different. Like, you're not a great solution for them anymore. And. And you're kind of lying to yourself by discounting that work and keeping them, like, bringing them along. And the longer you do that, the more you keep them from being a killer client for somebody else. And this is where referral relationship and building a professional network makes this much easier. Because you can be like, hey, I got an upstart accountant who's really, really good that I love, that I would love to pair you with. And honestly, they're a better fit for what you need these days than what I can give you. That. The willingness to do that. And I framed it before as, like, forgetting your roots. Like, that's kind of what it feels like, right? A willingness to do that is a big blocker for a lot of folks. Last, I think it was Romeo that had asked this question, what was 2020 and 2021? Jason's goals, like, what did they look like versus my current goals? I feel like it's a pretty big vibe shift from your launch FA days to now launch for accountants. That's a deep cut. How many people we got hanging around that were. That were on in the launch for accountants days? For sure, my goals have changed. I mean, everything. What was I doing in 21, 2020? I think I just bought the firm. One of those years in there, I just bought the firm. And I was like, I did it top of the mountain. And you're like, you know, 30 years old or 32 or something like that, and you're like, well, now what? And it was fun for a while, but I like to dunk on, like, if your job sucks, then when you reach the top of the mountain and Become a partner. Your job is still going to suck. It's just going to be harder to leave. I had a degree of that. My job didn't suck. I enjoyed what I did. But I was like, don't want to do this for another 30 years, maybe, maybe not. So, I mean, that was an entirely different universe, which, if it's a reminder of anything, your life can change so much so fast, it's unbelievable. I still remember one of my favorite podcasts that I ever recorded. I was in Australia at 0con. They had me and my wife out. We got to go to the Women's World cup final. And most of that podcast was me blathering on. We'll go back and find it and put it in the show notes because I think it's helpful perspective. Most of that podcast was me blathering on about, do you have any idea what an idiot I was five years ago and still am? But, like, now people hold you out as this expert, and it's simply because I put myself out there and I've gotten to have a bunch of conversations with really smart people that I now mirror. I now, like, reflect all those great ideas out and I share that stuff. And just the quality of conversation continues to improve. And I get great questions from people and we talk through this and you write about it. Like, I mean, I spend two to four hours a day writing. That's most of, like, what all of this stuff is, is just a lot of writing. And you can't do all that without, like, getting a very clear framework for what you think about these things. And, man, you would not believe how not far removed I am from just feeling like an idiot staff person that's not particularly good at this stuff. I was. There were a lot of things in my life that I was really good at. The thing that I went on to do professionally, it turns out it wasn't one of them. I could get by on tax work and stuff like that. And I could. I could, you know, glad, hand people well enough, like clients and that sort of thing. But I was by no means really good at technical stuff. It honestly wasn't until I'd bought out a couple of the partners was able to focus on strategy and not doing client stuff. And I'm like, ooh, I actually really like this. This stuff's fun. And then I learned I am actually a better leader of leaders than I am staff. And that's the truth. Like, I can sit there, I can work with juniors, I can work with staff. I can do all that stuff. But it wasn't until I got to work with more different types of folks and like got a deep understanding of what it was like to like be that strategy person in a firm and then talk with a whole bunch of other people who are doing the same thing. Like that was when I was like, oh cool. Like these are my people. Like, I feel like these are the folks that I can really help when I talk to staff. Like, honestly, I'm so like 10,000ft out of touch. Like reality is like, yes, I am out of touch in that regard. Like I totally am. But when you grow and you do new things like that, you also find like new things that you're good at that you wouldn't have expected or new things that you enjoy. Have a lot of the same things I'm sure you have navigated. If you have built a firm lifestyle, bloat. Everybody has problems. And as you find quote unquote success or financial success or whatever it is you, the human condition is, is as a funny way of finding new problems. And they're even firster world problems than the last ones that you had, but they feel just as real. A lot of, I mean a lot of my, most of my existential crises come from the kids. I am fundamentally just wired to be very entrepreneurial. And that's what gets me excited. My dad was the same way. My mom's actually the same way to a large degree. When my dad left my mom, she went out, started her own business and now she like hustles super hard. So I think that is just like, it's in my genes. But your kids can't bear the cost of that. You know, it's also gotten a little harder to find like similar entrepreneurs. That's maybe one thing. You know, you go like, you all experience this if you're entrepreneurial. And accountants are like, that's. I think the coolest forgotten thing about accountants is being entrepreneurial is no big deal because you see all the knuckleheads that do it successfully and you're like, really? That's all it takes. And so you're not scared of things that normal people are and justifiably should be very scared of. But you go home for the holidays, you sitting around the old, the old Thanksgiving turkey table, whatever that looks like for you, and you look around and you're like, I'm the only one here who's run my own business. And like I am red pilled to like just think about the entire world in such a vastly different way than any of these people that are around me. And that's why it's like so refreshing to hang out with other firm owners and that sort of thing. I will say content creator. I don't know enough people that do like content creation stuff like I do. I gotta get some of that because that's like, that's gonna recharge my batteries big time. But yes, goals have changed a lot. But still doing fun new things like this meetup. Actually, hang on, I'm getting a call. Oh, this is a buddy of mine from Boston. I think he's gonna come.

Hey, kid. Listen, I'm heading down to the meetup by the harbor. Gonna grab a Dunkin before I get there. You want anything? Maybe a regular coffee or a Boston cream?

You bringing Dunkeys?

Of course I am. Can't show up empty handed, right? I'll grab a box of Joe and a dozen donuts. We'll be running on Dunkin all day. See you there, buddy.

Oh, okay. I'll see you later, buddy.

Catch you later.

Okay, bye.

Bye.

Okay, see you later. See you later. Okay, bye.

All right, bye.

All right, see you then. See ya. Thanks for the donkeys.

Anytime, kid.

Okay, see ya. See ya. Yep, yep. Okay, see you there.