371 Behind The Scenes of a New Accountant Community

Are you sick of hearing about all the accounting firm communities that are spraying up left, right, and center?

Me.

Me too. Okay. Why are there so many of these? How do I even know which one to join two people that I really.

Like today that teamed up to launch a community.

I want to have some of these conversations just to contextualize them and help you learn about the people behind them. And if you haven't explored account communities before, find one or at least help.

You decide on one that may be a great fit for you.

Which we talk about communities quite a.

Bit here because that's kind of how my quote unquote business got started, was my accountant community. And so obviously, they hold a very special place in my heart.

And the reality is, like, man, we are just scratching the surface of what.

Communities can enable for the profession as a whole.

There's so few accountants living online, let.

Alone finding, like, more private communities where they can collaborate in more meaningful ways.

Two super cool people.

Rebecca Driscoll, Mike Sylvester, Tim.

Today we're having a chat about their.

Community, what they're doing with it.

Come on in.

I think you like it.

Okay, let's dig right in. Rebecca, if anybody has not had the pleasure of.

Of meeting you yet, you want to give us, like, the 32nd Rebecca Driscoll intro?

Sure. I'm Rebecca Driscoll. I live in Virginia, and I am a mom of two, and I just recently sold my CPA firm, actually, and I'm focusing my time on a new community that Mike and I started and on doing one on one coaching with other firm owners and helping them figure out the ins and outs of the wild ride of owning an accounting firm.

That whole.

If you saw it, Rebecca posted on Social that she's thinking about selling her firm. And it was like a feeding frenzy. There's like a whole podcast to do on that. And actually, like, what an amazing hack that is. Like, you have a little bit of audience and connections on social media. That kind of blew my mind.

Yeah, I was going to pay a broker to help me, and it was like. I mean, I had like 100 letters of intent. It was crazy.

Okay, Mike, if anyone hasn't encountered your stardom online, what's.

What's the 32nd Mike Silvestro Sylvester intro?

I'm a CPA in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Accounting's my second career. I'm a licensed electrician. I've been to 37 countries. I've been to every continent, and I've been to every ocean but one. I like to travel sometimes. I'm A bit grumpy.

I'm a pretty straightforward guy, licensed electrician. I think that was my, that was the biggest surprise for me from that list.

I also worked in nuclear power plants. I actually have moved irradiated fuel rods in the crane before in Nebraska. They do glow. My wife will tell you, do not watch submarine movies or nuclear power movies with me ever because I'm a perfectionist about it. When the reactor is critical, that's a good thing. I know a lot of startups at sea and critical is good.

What's one thing that people would be surprised to know about you? Like there's the Mike Sylvester, you know, the Mike Sylvester Persona online. What's the one thing people would be shocked by? Like, do you watch a stupid reality show? Or like what's one just super anti Mike thing that you do?

Talk to my kids quite a bit. I'm an empty nester and I like it. I have a lot of friends who are from both sides of the political aisle. I don't drink much. I don't do drugs. I'm a pretty straight laced gun.

These all feel straight down the middle. I was looking for like Housewives of.

Atlanta or like something off the beaten path that would surprise us.

Well, I used to tolerate my kids chose, but I hated them. Things like Dance Moms was terrible, but you know, my daughter loved it, so we watched it. I read a book during it. I really can't think of any off the wall. My God, Mike, I'm embarrassed I did this. I really can't. I'll tell you, I guess, I guess what it's going to be is going to Texas. My daughter offered, you know, said, hey, let's go to a spin class. So I'm going to go and I bought a specific outfit for it. My business partner said, hey Mike, you should dress up for her and she'll giggle. So I bought hot pink biker pants. I bought a lime green shirt. And then I was talking to Mary McDonald in a Zoom call and she said, mike, you should buy a bandana. So I bought a do rag with skulls on it.

Skull topic.

I'm going to post a picture of that and that's not going to seem like Mike Sylvester.

That's. That's the one. That's it.

That's. That was better than anything I could have hoped for. So that's. That is pretty great. Okay. Okay.

What we're actually doing here today, we're talking about communities. And when I, when I saw that.

You two are launching a community like.

That felt so out of left field to me. Like, I don't know that you two even. Even knew each other, but I'm curious from both of you, like, what was.

The origin story of that? Just as.

As simple as why does the world.

Need another accountant community? And like, what is.

What.

Why are you.

Why are you even the ones to do it? Right? Like, what's. What's. What's. What are you bringing to the. To the table there? That makes this, like, a unique spot for people to come and learn.

Mike, you want to tell them how we met?

Okay, so basically, I have been having. I'm all over social media on Twitter. I've probably given free advice to 150 different firms. I decided that it was really challenging to do all this one on one on the phone. Hey, here's what I would do. So I really wanted to set up something that was one to many instead of one to one. So I actually decided I was thinking about doing it, but I didn't know if there'd be enough interest. So I put up a post on Twitter and. And within 24 hours, I believe 17 people reached out to me and said they'd like to partner with me on it. And I think 254 people said they'd be interested in joining. And I was pretty stunned. That's a lot of people, right? But a lot of them are people that I've helped with something. And you can only do so much help one on one. And then what's interesting is I was having a hard time deciding who I wanted to do it with. And then Brenda Cannon. So schedule your tax return, said, Mike, you have to talk to Rebecca Driscoll. Rebecca Driscoll. She is the person. And I had just met Brenda for the first time a couple months before. I really like Brenda, and I thought, huh, I'll talk to Rebecca. And the rest is history.

That's very kind.

Aww.

I think most people have that reaction to Rebecca. Rebecca. What. Why.

Why was this good for you?

And, like, why is this something that was interesting to you?

Well, Jason, you are the one who gave me an opportunity to try helping other accounting firm owners in a more, like, formalized way. And I'm like, man, I really like this. And I kept talking to Brenda because we're. Because of. In realize we were matched in a mastermind and became close friends after that. And I kept thinking, like, how do I do this? How do I make this a thing like this? When I get off of a call helping another firm owner, I feel energized. When I get off a call with a client, I feel like, drained. Like I want to keep having this feeling. It feels so good. Like I love this. And I just couldn't get anything off the ground running myself. Like it. I just. I just didn't want to do it alone. Which is. Which I'm like, really good at doing things alone. So it's like very bizarre that I just didn't want to do it alone. And then there was like a post and Brenda tagged me in it and said, oh, talk to Mike or whatever. And I thought, like, yeah, maybe maybe I just need a partner. Maybe I. Maybe it's okay to do something with someone. Maybe, you know, maybe I don't always have to do everything myself. Um, and so that was kind of. And. And the only way Mike and I knew each other before was he helped me with a tax question like a year before that. And I was one of those people he got on the phone with for free and helped with something. So that was kind of funny. But. But yeah. So then we had a series of like four hour, not four hour, but like two hour zoom calls, like late at night, just talking after the kids were asleep about, how do you want to help people? How do I want to help people? And how, how can coaching be incorporated in this and how, you know, what kind of things have people been asking for help with and how do we make it collaborative so that it feels like we're really giving the people what they want and need. And it just kind of evolved from there over a couple months.

Wow. So you guys didn't know each other at all before that. And I can kind of see Mike like being the like. So Rebecca, for context, has like done coaching in my community. And that's something I know you've been. Had. Been wanting to explore further. And Mike's is kind of the end of the. That yang where he's got like the online following also and, and kind of his own. And so like combining the best of both of those totally makes sense. It's funny the willingness of people to.

Just hop on calls with Internet strangers.

Like if you had to explain this to someone who doesn't hang out on the online places that we do, like they would think that there. That was, you know, you'd need to be concerned or something.

Yeah, it's like my husband, he's like, what are you doing? Who is Mike? Are you always on the phone with Mike? Like, don't worry about it. He's a cpa. It's fine.

I have, I have three One on one coaching calls from firm owners that I don't know in just the next 10 days. But what's interesting is what Rebecca coaches on is completely different than what I do. And most of the people who reach out to me, it's like, Mike, should I buy this firm? Mike, this firm's really old. Do you think I can fix it? Mike, should I switch accounting firms? I had one coming up. Hey, my, my firm got bought out by pe. I have this offer from this other company. How would you weigh the two against each other and which one would you do? Because I've done a fair amount of consulting over the years on people buying CPA firms. So I've looked at a lot of numbers and man, I've probably done that with 75 people in the last. That's been half of what people have talked to me about is where to go.

So how do you bottle all that.

Up into like a one to many version that works? Because obviously that is inherently different than hopping on a call with somebody. Right? So in terms of, of formats, like, of the ways that you deliver that, what have you, what have you settled into so far?

We started with just sending out a survey to anybody who was willing to fill it out of like what topics would you want us to be supporting you with in a community? And then we made, we kind of looked for trends and made spaces for each of those topics so that there would be like a home for conversation about those things. And then we went in and populated all of those spaces with as many initial resources and ideas and thoughts that we had to kind of get the ball rolling. And then we are both adding our own templates and resources and things that we've found that have helped us on our journeys to these different spaces. So that's kind of one piece of it is just like places to have conversation about different topics. And then the other thing is events. So we decided to try something a little different and have free events and paid events, which is a little different model. And we thought with the paid events that could really be like small group coaching, like very intimate, not recorded, very, you know, private, where you can really, each person can bring to the table like what they want to talk about, about a certain subject and then get supported and get coached on that topic. So we're, we're doing that and then just plenty of free sessions as well that are about all sorts of things that are in demand. And then to make it even more collaborative, we are having members lead lots of different sessions so they can fill out A request form to. To lead a session and then we create an event for them. So now everybody's like really involved and then like if they enjoy leading the session, they can become a coach. So then there's like a coach section where you can meet all the coaches and just. Yeah, just kind of trying to keep like coaching and like collaboration, I guess, in mind with everything we do.

Mike, why do, why do we need.

A community for this? That was probably the biggest question I got when I launched my community was.

We have social media for this. You have Twitter live, like whatever.

All the versions of it are like, what ultimately is the value of having that separate space for it?

So I think for us the value is going to be live events. We have 14 scheduled in November, our first full month with seven different speakers. That, that's pretty exciting. But as far as why do we need it? Actually, one of the, one of my good friends online asked me that and he said, I just don't get it, Mike. And I said, well, my friend, what you don't get is if Mike Sylvester posts something on Twitter and says, I need help with the Tennessee franchise tax return, I will have direct messages from seven people within 24 hours saying, Mike, call me. But if you don't have a Twitter following and you are new to Twitter, you don't get that same response.

Right.

And to me it's for people who are new to social media, who are new to firms. But what excites me about the collaboration room right now is roughly a third of our members are from bigger firms and they almost all want to help the people from smaller firms. So we have this huge number of people trying to help others, which is exciting.

Yeah, I like the idea of pulling members in and to run stuff too. That's, that's kind of the like, I always felt like the worst versions of communities are fan clubs. And the more it's community driven, like the more organic that can be, the better.

Today's episode is sponsored in part by Client Hub. It is practice management season. You know that you're looking around, am I on the right platform when it comes to picking a PM client hub says it comes down to the 4C's capabilities, client experience, clarity, and community. Today we're talking about community. You know, I'm a big old fan of community, but is your PM platform, are they in the community? Are they excited about the profession? Do they participate in community events? ClientHub, it's a small startup that was co founded by a former firm and top 100 pro advisor. Who knows a thing or two about accounting firms. When you adopt Client Hub, you don't just get a practice management system. You become part of a community. Ah. As part of Client Hub, you can ask questions, get advice, share your page perspectives, all with a welcoming community of small firm accounting professionals like you. It's not cold, cold, lifeless sass.

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That'S more than just software. Learn more about Client Hub. Check out the link down in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by Carbon, the practice management system. 2025 recommendations just went out. You better believe Carbon was on the list. Can I devote this whole ad read to their practice marketplace that they launched? I'm not supposed to do this, but this is my show.

I'm going to do it.

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How are the two of you settling into this? Cause oftentimes the blocker here isn't your own, like, capability to do this, but your own grappling with, I'm a firm owner, I'm this or that. And, like, just kind of accepting the fact that, you know, you put out your feelers and people are like, yes, we want you to do this. And you're like, okay, well, I guess I am this now or that. Part of me is this. I'm capable of this. Have you, have you struggled with that at all.

The biggest struggle we've had is teaching Mike how to record a loom video. And I feel like now that we've overcome that, we can do anything.

You know, I have a LIM subscription now.

Yeah, you've got a limb subscription now?

I do. My partner's always had one, but I added myself to it.

Do you struggle with like seeing yourself on video? With like putting yourself out there being self promotional maybe for the first time?

Like, how's that been?

Well, for me? No. I spoke at national political conventions. I've testified at the State House multiple times. I will get up in front of anyone. I run like an hour long live event in our community. And my. I'll have a sheet of paper with like eight, eight phrases on it. I do everything off the cuff.

Yeah, I'm not like that.

So I was gonna say no sweat for Mike, Rebecca.

Yeah. But he's really empowered me to like, just be like, I'm always like, we're being too pushy. Let's not remind people. Like, I don't wanna bother people, you know, And Mike's like, no, like, we have this awesome thing to share, like, we're helping people. It's good, you know, so it is funny how like, people who are different can end up being really great partners, you know, like we. I feel so balanced together, which was like kind of unexpected or surprising, you know, but yeah, we kind of just both settled into like, I do a lot of the administrative stuff because I enjoy doing that. And Mike, you do a lot more of like promoting us and talking about us, you know, on social media. And he's good newsletter writer and hosts a lot of events, a lot of live events. And yeah, we just kind of are. It's. We're. We're exploring still. It's like we were really like thinking that we should launch this like after tax season or something. And then I kept thinking of you, Jason, with your thing about like, what's the lowest lift version?

Right?

Like, it's okay to just like try something and just let it evolve and it doesn't. And you know, I try to tell firm owners that too, that like, you don't have to have it all figured out today. It's okay to just, you know, pick somewhere to start and just start, you know?

Yeah.

How far out ahead are you thinking? Like, do you. Are you thinking kind of here's the arc of what we'll do during busy season, like around your end, are you kind of just thinking through programming a month at a time for what's top of mind in that season.

We've got events scheduled out to February right now. I think our next big push is going to be CPE and that's a 2025 thing. We've got to get our application finished. It started. We going to get certified to teach CPE. I used to teach CPE for Sergeant McCoy traveling around the country. That also kind of helped me not maybe not being afraid to speak because I would fly around the country and talk to 30 strangers and. And it was. I would never do this again, by the way. But I would do like 16 hours. I'd do like four, four hour sessions on topics I didn't write. And that's, that's a very different animal, right, because you're using somebody else's material. But that got over any shyness that I have, you know, doing that for a while. I, I'm more looking forward to doing an hour at a time.

And I guess like, there's always like been a misconception like for at least for, for CPA CPAs, like, you know, like, oh, it has to be like, you know, know super technical, like what you're learning for cpe. But then, you know, you go to conferences or, you know, you go to like I'm in the, like the aicpa. I was in this like small group where we'd meet in person twice a year and it was like, well, wait, we're getting CPE just to like work on things that we naturally like need to walk work on in our firms anyways or want to. So that's kind of where we thought of like, wait, could people get CPE for just like trying to make their firm a better place and be happier like that? That would be incredible. You know, and we've been looking at CE for enrolled agents as well. And that does need to be more tax technical. So, you know, we want to be inclusive there and we'll, we'll look into what we can do there too. But I mean it's like earmark. It's like, what if we could just get CPE for just like doing things that we naturally want to do to be better at our careers, you know. So I hope that, you know, people can earn that CPE that they need while just doing the work that they need to do to be happier.

I'm curious if you have any thoughts.

On kind of the future of online communities, because I think Covid was a really big tipping point where a lot of accountants went to social media for the first time. I know that was huge. For me, just like benefiting from what everybody was learning along the way throughout Covid Relief. And that was a huge resource for our firm. But it definitely seems like communities now are getting more contextual and you're seeing more spaces pop up for folks that maybe want a more intimate version of the same thing. And to your point, Mike, a more trusted network where if you haven't built that for yourself online, you don't have an interest in doing it. Maybe you just can't. To be able to have like a trusted group of folks where there's like a degree of vetting that's happened there already, or at least a bit more specificity.

You have any thoughts on where that.

Goes, like, over the next three to six years? Is that like, you just keep seeing more and more of them? Like, what is. What do you think the path is? And is there anything analogous to that that we've seen before? You think so?

In my mind, I think it's going to continue to evolve. I think what's going on today won't be the same as six years from now. I think it's hard to picture what's going to happen in six years because of automation and AI. But what I do see, and I think Jason and I talked about this briefly online a few months ago, it's really hard and I've tried for many, many years to form a network of firm owners in Fort Wayne, Indiana. They won't talk to you because they think you're the competition. So you could even go knock on their door and they say, oh, you're that CPA firm. Well, I don't want to share information with you because you might take my clients and you're grinning, but it's the way a lot of accountants have over the last 20 years. So I think when you look at social media, you're only looking at 5, maybe at the outside 10% of the accountants involved in the profession. So I think there's a lot of room to move outside of that group. And I think that there's a lot of firms that are very old school that need to change. And I think they're going to look for communities of people who can help them incrementally change their firm kind of at the pace they want. Instead of maybe paying $10,000 to jump into here, let's radically change everything tomorrow. I think there's going to be a big place for communities who can help people with incremental change.

Yeah, I agree. Like, even just Mike and I, like, Mike's closer to retirement Age. I'm more of a. My age would make sense to like be wanting to buy a firm maybe, you know, and if, if everybody, Mike's age is getting ready to sell their firms, then having communities where they can connect with potential, you know, people who are more, you know, interested in buying or more interested in a modern firm or virtual firm or whatever, being able to like connect and talk about how to bridge the gap between those two generations, I think would be really powerful for all these, you know, legacies that firm owners who are retiring soon would love to have live on, but they just don't know how to modernize. So I think that's one thing that hopefully can happen is like, you know, we could really help modernize more firms. Like all of us, all these different groups. And then the other thing I was thinking is like, what about like a subscription? Something where you could subscribe to like a bunch of them together, like kind of like group them together. Like, I wonder if there's a way to like, like for each community to work together and collaborate on things in, in bigger ways, which I think could be cool.

And I think what's interesting is the people that reach out to me for coaching, they're not my age. They're. They're your age, Rebecca.

You get dad vibes, you know, like they're coming to you for like dumb advice.

Want, want something. But most of the people who reach out to me are in their 30s, probably.

Yeah.

And they're looking to buy a firm from somebody like me. And they're like, hey, Mike, how do I do this? Mike, does this make sense? Mike? They're not, they're not, they're not listening. I don't know if their firm's viable. Can you help me? You know, it's a lot of that, but I do think that's one of the things that makes Rebecca and I work. People just look at us differently. People don't say, hey, Mike, can you help me with my technological issues? Because that's not going to go well. Right.

My loom's not working. Can you hop on a call mic? Exactly.

Tech stack, Mike.

Exactly.

Right.

Okay, that's funny because people come to me for Tech Stack advice. So I'll get. Let me, let me work on my Sylvester Persona and maybe I can balance myself out a bit.

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I'd probably search Jason Live Flow Dashboards. Pretty cool release from the folks at Live Flow.

Learn more about them.

Check out the link down in the show notes. Today's episode is sponsored in part by Ramp. Do you know what Ramp is? Maybe. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. Ramp is a spend management platform. Do you know what a spend management platform is? Maybe you do, maybe you don't. These are kind of cropped up in the last like three to five years and I actually think accountants are extremely well suited to bring spend management platforms to small businesses for the first time. And it is all about like better card hygiene, not using one card for everything, not having an office card card, you know that, that Jimmy runs out and uses for donuts. It's about using virtual cards, putting budgets on cards, how you manage those budgets across your team members. It is about enablement of your team members to give them greater flexibility to go out and do what they need to do, spend money with boundaries. And RAMP rolls all that stuff into a super tidy platform. And in the last year or so they've been investing in their account accountants channel big time. You'll see them at all the conferences. Super mature product. Now sometimes we're afraid to like put that new thing in front of a.

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The link in the video description. Rebecca, I know you were kind of on the coaching path before this and Mike, you were, you were basically just doing ad hoc coaching for folks online.

What is, what's the intersection between coaching and community?

Like, does one replace the other? Like, how do you see those things interacting?

It's a good question. I mean I think like some powerful things can happen like in the comments on a post where people are like showing up for each other on an issue and like really supporting each other. And that can feel a lot like coaching or challenging people to know, fire that client. And everybody's like, you know, giving them the support they need to do that. So I, you know, I think, I think it just opens the door for like coaching to happen anywhere with anyone, with any number of people. I definitely have clients who like, are just like, no, like I'm going through a thing and I need like one person to talk to about that thing for a while before I figure it out, you know. But then I feel like I can like draw upon the community of like all the experiences that I learn in communities to be able to support that person. Like, oh, I once, you know. So I think being exposed to other people can help you along the way in your path when you might run into, you know, something that you need to sort out.

One, one sort of the community vernacular has been as like a blanket. That's I feel like has gone over a bunch of different types of things. And some communities are more built around access to content, whereas I think other, other communities are built around access to people. Do you see as the, you know, the community space continues to grow, there's probably a degree of it that gets more contextual over time. Do you see that becoming more, you know, like to Mike's point, this is the community for taking your, you know, firm that kind of needs to modernize before sale and like we sort of take you on this journey that ultimately you probably graduate from. Like do you see communities getting more.

Contextual like that or more around?

Just we attract a specific type of person and simply by being around those people, we think XYZ problems will be solved. So more kind of track based versus peer group based.

I think you're going to see both. I don't think that everybody's going to follow one mold. I think you'll see Some that go for content, some that go for people, some that specialize, some that, you know, your idea of, hey, I want to slowly modernize my firm so I can sell it. Boy, that, that's been a lot of the coaching that I've done as well, believe it or not. Now they'll ask me and I won't tell them what to use for technology, but I'll talk to them about how much they spend, what they need to do, what they need to be able to accomplish. Maybe not by telling them the specific program, if you know what I mean. Hey, you can't have paper, they don't like that. You got to have remote employees, you got to have a strong tax software, you have to have a practice management system. I might suggest these four, you know, as, as a, as a look, but they're all different. I'm not an expert in any of the four, so some of my advice is maybe a little more generic in some cases, but it's more geared towards getting in the end. But I think you're going to see some. I think communities are all going to go in different directions.

I think it'd be cool if like you have that like subscription this like one big subscription that gets you, you know, X number of communities and maybe you have like some of your staff join one and like the firm owner joins another and then you all kind of get together and. But like like all together, all of these different communities could like really help a firm thrive with different, you know, either like journeys for a specific thing. Like we need to add automation in, you know, we gotta do this, you know, or just like this tax manager needs support, like they need, they need work life balance. Like they should join the work life balance community where account learn about work life balance and that and then bring that to the team. And so I think like all together we could like really hit every angle that like an accountant could ever possibly need for.

Because most accountants haven't explored communities before. Most accountants aren't even online to begin with. But how do you frame up like you. It's always funny when you have a conversation with an offline accountant and it puts into perspective just how in a bubble you are hanging out online and how different the group think there is to anywhere else.

How do you frame up for someone.

Who hasn't experienced a community before? Like is this a, does this rise to the level of like an essential part of any accountant kind of core growth stack?

Like we talk about tech for firms, we talk about all these, all these.

Things that firms need to have is. Does community rise to the level of that where you would say like this needs to be part of the firm experience for everyone?

Yes. My friends who are CPAs and are not in communities, like, I feel like they're doing everything the hard way. Like my one friend, she just like finally gave her notice at her, the big firm that she was at and because the work life balance was terrible and she thought it was going to be like impossible to find a part time job as like a CPA that has like a ton of tax experience. Like, like there would just be no way like, you know, and, and she started working for me, but I was like, you know, you have like a million other options. Like you don't just have to like. But like she's not online so she just like doesn't like. Yeah, you're like, they're, they just have no idea. It could help them so much.

Yeah, I think so too. I actually, I was surprised. There's three firms within 15 miles of my office that joined. Two of us are getting together for lunch next week. They're like, we didn't even know this was possible. But we follow you on Twitter, Mike. One of them applied to work for me because of Twitter. Right. I mean it's, it can be a small world, but what people need is so different that if you have a community that's varied, people can ask different coaches, different people, different questions. You know, for example, people are not going to ask me what their tech stack should be. They're like, they're going to ask you guys. But I do have a coaching call Wednesday with somebody that wants me to explain three different types of basis to them. Because they started their own firm, they're doing some pretty complicated returns and they're a little lost on, you know, how to handle basis. So, you know, that's, that's a pretty specific coaching call, right? We're talking about a technical tax topic, not should I buy a firm? But man, what, what different people want is all over the place. But if you have a community where you have say 10, 20 people who are willing to help you, and I think we're probably going to be a lot higher than that. Well, you don't have to pick Mike. You don't have to pick Rebecca. You could pick Roger or you could pick Elizabeth or you could pick Jessica or any number of people, right? And I think that that's going to have a lot of value for people.

I think it's like normalizing help, like getting help is cool. Like, and people Want to help. Like I think all these communities are like normalizing that it's like okay to like not just like muscle through it on your own and it's like okay to help each other and get through it together.

And in some cases that's why I think some people have come to us for one on one coaching instead of group coaching because there's maybe a little bit of ego involved and they don't want people to know what they're asking. Right. So I've done more of the one on one than group. The group for me has been recently or years ago. And I'm going to tell you those sessions are very different. You know, I just did one for new firm owners with nine people and it went great. But it was very different than any one on one coaching I've ever done before because it was an active group. Right. And you know, I almost had to bring duct tape to make sure I only talked half the time. Right. Because it's hard. Right. But each group's different. Right.

So part of the, to me, the why I want to get community folks together and talk about what they're doing is I. This sound sounds self serving for all of us. I absolutely think like being in a community is just such an essential part of an accounting firm because it shaves years off of the learning process in so many ways. But the reality is there's a number of communities out there for people to explore right now. So what is the, what's the avatar that is like best suited for your community right now? Is it somebody that's already following Mike or Rebecca? Is it, is it somebody in a specific state in their firm running journey.

That'S a great fit.

Like who are the ones that you wish you could like really reach out and grab?

We don't know. And I, we talked about this a bunch. Mike's like, Rebecca, you're going to have to answer the avatar question because I don't know. And I'm like, I've just been thinking about it and I want to just be so honest about it. Is like we don't know that. And that's. And I think it's okay that we haven't figured that out yet. We want to help accounting firm owners and like organically, like the ones who know Mike have joined our group, you know, like in a couple people who know me and, and I don't. I think it's okay for anyone who wants to start a community to not exactly know who that like, you know, it's okay that we don't know yet. I think we have, you know, people who want to be in a collaborative setting and enjoy coaching and mentorship and like, all those things and they own a firm. Like, those are some, like, general things, but we don't have, like, if you're this many years in, or you're located in this area or you offer just this service or. But I'm excited that we don't know because that means that we have something, like, to figure out, and I think it's going to come to us. And could. Could we have been more successful if we had, like, really, like, found a more, like, specific audience to start with? Like, maybe. But we're really just like, we're both. We're doing this kind of for fun and, and just to help people. So we like, we'll let you know. We don't know yet.

Is there anybody so that we don't let Mike completely punt on this? Is there, Is there. When you think through, like, the calls that you've done with folks and when you've been on with people, maybe it's new firm owners, whoever it is, is there any specific type of person who, like, you sent them out the door and they're like, yeah, no, I just saved that person a world, a headache. Like, is there any type of person that comes front of mind, be it more legacy firm owners, new firm owners, like, any. Anyone in particular that. That you think you're suited for?

I bet you that there's probably. I'm going to say that roughly 50 people have. Have hired me either for free or for paid, to help them determine if they want to buy a firm. And let's just say it's 50. I told more than 40 of them not to buy the firm. There's two that I said, my God, I would buy that one. That firm's better than mine. You should jump on that tomorrow. And then there's maybe eight that I said, well, we got to dig in deeper. You got to give me some more information. I'm not sure, but 40 of 50 of them I save for making a mistake. And not a small mistake, right? A big mistake. And I think I really like talking to people about due diligence. I've had several people who want to buy another firm hire me to do the due diligence form because the firm does things they don't know how to do. I actually have a financial planner that hired me. He bought a firm bigger than mine, and he hired me to do due diligence because he doesn't know anything. About tax returns. Right. That was a fun engagement. I enjoyed that. I got to look deep in another firm, and in the end, I said, do not buy this firm. Do not. Do not do it. And they didn't. Right. It was a good engagement. Those are rewarding. Right?

Did anybody send you Rebecca's balance sheet when she was shopping that around? Mike, take a look at this one for me.

No comment, but. No, no, Nobody.

Oh, wow.

Nobody asked me, but I might have told Rebecca a couple things about.

Yeah, I did lean on you for support.

That might have steered her in a different direction. How? How?

Yeah. Super helpful. Yeah. And I would say I like, I feel like I'm getting this reputation for, like, helping people, like, clean up their client list, like, do a makeover to their client list. Like, I just, like, help them fire clients and help them face, like, the fears they have around that, and then helping them figure out how they want to rebuild. That seems to be, like, the people who like to book time with me.

That's a biggie. Cleaning up the client list. That's about as big as it gets.

It's fun.

Okay, last question for you. I sold my firm. Rebecca sold her firm. Mike, when are you selling your firm?

So I'm retiring on 5, 15 29.

He has the date.

I Sunday, yesterday, made up the path to tax manager for my staff, and I made the path to partner for my staff. My partners have to review it. We're going to get together and go through it. But my plan is to groom replacements. Been working on it for a year. Hired appropriately. We have four people in place, so hopefully at least two of them will want to buy in five, 1529. Write it down.

My internal buy you were going to get is. No, it isn't. Internal buyout. That is the best possible outcome. Hopefully, your partners don't get wind of a multiple you could command with your celebrity.

I'll tell you what. I've had three PE firms reach out to me in the last three months, and their numbers are pretty stagging, but I'm not interested in that. My wife and I are fortunate. We have plenty of money to retire. I'm not selling a pe. I want my clients better taken care of than that. And I want my staff to step up, and I want to help them do it. And that's a coaching thing. Right. If I can't coach my own staff to do that, I wouldn't be coaching other people.

Very cool. Well, thank you so much for coming.

On and doing this.

Thank you.

Thanks for having us.

Rebecca. And Mike are like just about two.

Of the nicest people you've ever met.

I also love when folks who are just helpful and like great people for the profession for the longest time without asking for anything in return. Literally just hopping on calls with random strangers to be helpful.

I love seeing those people win.

Those are the people who should win, right? Links down in the show notes for their community. Highly recommend you check that stuff out to learn more. And hopefully this is and hopefully this inspires you to look a little further into this.

Because I can tell you, for me.

It was like communities were truly transformational for my firm and made all this stuff just more sustainable for me.

Feeling like I had some peers that understood what I was going through to make all this stuff more sustainable.

To make all this stuff feel more sustainable. That's it for today. Thanks for coming and hanging.