393 Is $150/user/mo Too Much For Accounting Software!?

Today we've got platforms in the accounting firm space running upwards of $150 per user per month. Are you kidding me? Is there any universe where that is that juices is worth worth the proverbial squeeze? Also because it's a Q and a Friday, some cost saving tips for implementing software and managing the lifecycle of tools within your firm and who has access to them. Got some questions around the capture system that I use to keep my brain smooth as butter. Nice and smooth. Nothing going on upstairs. And last, is there any world where it would make sense to acquire a paperful firm? Not a paperless firm, a paperful firm. Is there any. Is there any tuning up that clunker to make it worthwhile? Buddy, we're going to talk about it today. Come on in. Welcome to Jason on Firms. Comment on a video the other day. It was a practice management system. The comment was simply $150 a month for accounting software. It is unbelievable. Outrageous. We've covered a few different versions of this on the podcast where different firms have wildly different appetites for what they'll spend on technology. Firelands Accounting commented the other day. I spoke with an older accountant just yesterday and they almost had a stroke over me telling them what I was paying for a pm. I the suggestion was every client needs a cover sheet. Remember cover sheets when a legal sized sheet of paper with two holes punched at the top, that was all you needed. I mean there's, there's a big part of me inside that like yearns for that simplicity still. Does that exist within everyone? We're probably getting to the age where we got zoomers that just, they don't know what that stuff is and so they don't have that sort of romantic thing. But that, that's kind of the trouble with romantic old stuff that you remember is you remember the upside and the simplicity and all that, but not, not the downside and all the headaches and how that just fundamentally doesn't work and like a distributed work environment. And when people went to do work at home, they would literally lug physical files. Oh my gosh. We had a situation where an employee's car got broken into and they like they regularly take files home. In this case, thankfully they didn't. But yeah, no, we can all agree lead sheets, those cover sheets, that's probably not the move anymore. But people still have wildly different appetites for how much they're willing to spend on accounting firm software. And I do think the biggest thing that is front of mind here is there is such A vast delta in what accounting firms charge, honestly, for very similar work oftentimes. And we've got folks listening to this, this pod who are running the side hustle, who are just in the very beginnings of doing their own thing. And the reality is, at that stage, you're gonna take and do just about anything for anybody. Because goal number one is, can I make a living from this? Which is freaking rad. Like, let's not cruise past that. You know how like, badass you are to be able to run your own business and manifest like, I have this skillset and people are willing to pay me enough that I can run my own business. Talk about being in the 1% of the 1%. That is so cool. And I know about you. Every holiday season when I go back and spend a bunch of time with family, I'm reminded of what a, what a red pilled snowflake I am to work for myself. Because when I go home for the holidays, I'm surrounded by a bunch of other people that work for other people. And they're playing the game as it is defined by all those other people. And it's not a game that they ultimately get to control or set the rules for anything like that. And there's a lot of great parts of that. Like, I mean, I think the biggest one for me is probably when I was under someone else's employee. The amount of time I spent with my kids was kind of the leftovers, the remainders, and spending more time or that changing was out of my hands and I could point to somebody else to blame for, for that constraint. So you go to work for somebody else, there's this expectation of how much you, how much you work and then everything else in your life is like, happens in what is, whatever is left, whatever waking hours you have left. And this has been the hardest part of entrepreneurship for me is when it's actually you that's setting that schedule and you're defining, well, what are the number of extra hours? Because really, you could probably work three hours today, you could work 10 hours tomorrow. Like, you have greater control over that. And you know, before I had kids, it was like, well, yeah, no, that's kind of fun. Like, maybe I should have more hobbies or something like that. But I enjoyed my work, so I did a lot of it when I had kids. That is when the real existential crisis started. Because it was like, whoa, well, what is the right amount of time I should be spending with my children? It's a whole lot more than my dad ever spent with me. So is that just what I should be doing is like, should it be kind of one step better? I digress. You, you're running your own thing and like ultimately the, the benefits of that is kind of total flexibility and not having to do things the way that your, your early accounting, early accounting career, daddy figure did them or mama figure, whatever, whatever that looked like, like those people that you looked up to. And I find that it's, it's oftentimes like it is the folks who are kind of anchored in that different era of running an accounting firm before you even had practice management systems, before that was a thing. Uh, it's the folks kind of anchored in that era. They're having a really hard time coming around to the current state of things, which is not what is the price. It is what are the capabilities and the upsides of better leaning into tech to get work out the door and create a more premium client experience and understanding what you can charge for that. So you've got the firms that are kind of like, you know, spent decades doing the COVID sheet thing. You've got firms that went out and are going and doing their own thing from scratch right now and not charging very much money. But then you've got the more modern, more progressive firms and there's a whole bunch of them that engage with this content, which is awesome, who are charging premium fees and delivering a really good client experience. Those are three very different types of firms. The legacy or legacy ish firm, the upstart firm, and the mature, like premium firm. But if you're a software platform, you charge one price to everybody. And what's really lost with online communications, which is kind of a bummer, it's just the context behind every single comment. In fact, if I can brag and show off something real quick that we're doing in my online community, realize recently we rolled out basically you can have like flair next to your name for any of your posts in the community. And we've basically taken control of that flare and said that that flare for users is going to show the size of their firm, the practice management system that they use, the, the service mix they deliver. Is it tax? Is it just bookkeeping? Is it a combination of the two? Is it something else? So that anytime somebody comments on something inside the community, you can see the context. And so for that person coming in and saying like, we're, we're a. The $150 per employee per month is outrageous. We could never actually do that. I would love to know the context behind that person's situation. Because for a super early stage firm where they're charging $100 for a tax return or $100 for a month, end close. The reality is, man, accounting firm tech is largely priced out. Those types of firms, like they don't have an option really, besides hustling a bunch of spreadsheets, maybe the COVID page sort of thing. There's a size below which you're going to be able to build a full stack as I would normally recommend it because tools today are priced kind of for, for something in the middle. Now the upside there, as with all things software, is when you charge twice as much for a tax return, is your software vendor going to require any more money from you? They're not. So this is why it's a no brainer for larger, more mature firms to lean into software who can, where that can kind of increase their output and all that. And I mean, keeping this all in perspective, $150 per user per month for a tool does feel astronomical. But for that same person, in fact, even for that legacy accountant who's like, all we need is a cover sheet, what do you think that person charges per hour for their time? At at least $150 an hour, I would imagine. Think about how much time your practice management saves you and the team every single week, let alone every month. I mean, I gotta think that tool is saving me at least an hour of my time. It's funny, this tool in particular, and I don't even really wanna call the tool out because it doesn't matter, actually has the most free, the most generous free practice management system offering, which from a strategic approach I think is actually very interesting. Kind of the barbell approach of get folks in with really good free stuff, but also have a really full feature set where if they want to go whole hog and like use absolutely everything, it's a more premium option. But if we strip all this back to like why did we begin buying software in the first place? It is not like to get to some sort of percentage of revenue of here's how much money we should be spending on software. It all boils down to like what is ultimately the ROI for you in the way that you run your firm. There's certain tools where that will be a no brainer for you and certain tools where it won't be. If I run a firm where we only serve like 20 clients and we do a whole ton of different things for just these 20 clients, it might not make sense for me to have a practice management system because like organizing across those 20 clients, that may not be actually that much of a headache. So my needs are going to be fundamentally different. If I run a super high volume firm where I have say 3,000 once a year tax returns that we do, my needs are going to be very, very different. A lot of practice management systems aren't suited for that sort of volume. So like to me there is no magic number to say like this is too much money, this is not enough money. It is very specific to you and your firm. I just wish we could get more context in the way that we like share that information online, you know? This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow. Do your clients just throw up in their mouths a little bit when you send them a PDF of their financials every month? I bet they do, because what is even that? What are you supposed to do? A set of financial statements? Most people, they don't know how to make sense of this. What if you started delivering something, something better? Okay, think about it. Live Flow, kind of the OG what they used to do, they let you connect your qbo, your Xero to Excel and Google sheets so you can, you can make your wildest, wildest spreadsheet dreams come true. Now they have these simple little financial dashboards you can build, have all the same connection points to your accounting ledgers, but you can build like a more intelligent report that your client will actually understand. You can give it to them on a monthly basis instead of financials, give it to them on a weekly basis even because it can connect to the ledger in real time, still means you gotta do the bookkeeping every week. But if you're looking for something your clients will actually engage with a little more and get more value out of that ongoing accounting that you're doing for them. Oftentimes the answer is to change the deliverable to something besides that stanky, stanky old PDF financial statement package. Okay, I'm not the boss of you. I'm not here to tell you what to do besides mosey on down to the Show Notes and learn more about Live Flow via the link down there. This episode is sponsored in part by Team up, the people who help you find talented accountants in the Philippines, but hire them directly. Very common progression I see from firms who lean into offshore hiring for the first time is they, they turn to like some offshore megacorp and it's like this big skyscraper where they, they put folks in there and they're, they're maybe scared about security things and all that. Understandably, the first time they work with people offshore. And they're like, oh, yeah, give me this big sanitized environment where they like, strip search everybody before they go into work at the beginning of the day and they leave. And it's like, this is fundamentally more secure than the way that we do our work on shore. Like, I can understand how this works. But before you know it, you're paying this group, like, you're paying them as much money to employ those people as you're actually paying the people. And when 50 cents of every dollar that you pay goes to some other company instead of the actual person you employ, that's just a bummer, man. That's just a bummer. So a lot of firms I know transition to just hiring people directly. That is what Team up specializes in. No, no middle people. You're just engaging that person to work with you the same way you would somebody onshore. And 100% of that money is going straight to the person. One hundo dollar out of your pocket, dollar into their pocket. Guess it wouldn't be a dollar. It'd be whatever the local currency is. You get the idea. To learn more about Team up, check out the link down the show notes now to kind of flip the value pricing conversation on its head. You look at that tool and you look at the ROI that it offers. And if the upside is there, I mean, I kind of don't care what that tool costs. Like, I mean, we've talked before about, you know, hiring coaches and stuff like that and, and the value to me of a shortcut. If I can find a shortcut that's going to shave five years off my journey or cause my business to be a million dollars more profitable, how big of a check am I willing to cut to to do that? Probably over a million dollars. Like, if this is an unlock that will serve me for the rest of my working years, yeah, I'm going to be willing to cut a big old check for that shortcut or for that unlock, whatever it is. But that very strict, very basic ROI calculation assumes that there's only one solution in a vacuum. When it comes to the software space for accounting firms today, you got a whole bunch of alternatives, which is a good thing. You've got competition. So if it makes sense from an ROI standpoint for me to use $150 per user per month tool, I need to also confirm that there isn't a $40 per user per month tool that gets me 90% of the way there. Right. And so I don't. I don't ultimately really feel Sticker shock the way that many folks do. I mean, I think the folks, I guess the folks I can most relate with are the early stage folks who are not commanding premium rates where this is like, that's a lot of money. The market I don't think is, is positioned to serve like the tools today are not positioned to serve that part of the market well, because they're trying to price the larger firms who can pay much, much more. My take is actually the bigger consideration than how much of my margin is this tool eating up in the short term is will this tool accelerate my firm's progression to being a firm that is charging more premium rates so that the cost of that tool actually becomes trivial? You can see a world where like you don't have money for any tech and so you're just banging rocks together and it's really hard to get yourself out of that hole. And maybe the best example here is tax return tools where the software charges per tax return. And right now the cost of that tool might feel like a really big percentage of what we charge for that tax work. But if the alternative is to spend a tremendous amount of time doing things manually and maybe do a third less volume, consider not how much margin that's going to take out in the short term, but consider that maybe the bigger opportunity is that that tool accelerates your firm's path to becoming a more premium firm where you charge more for all of the work that you do because you're focused on on the more important things. Ultimately the collective headspace of your firm is going to be focused on what are the things those people spend their time doing. Do they spend their time getting numbers from government forms under the tax software or doing basic work, work, paper preparation, that sort of thing? If that is what all their time goes into, that's what their focus is going to be on. I shared this example in the past when I built a cast practice. When we were doing kind of managed accounting for some clients, we had some very small projects that we took on in the beginning that long term we weren't really very excited about. We ended up outsourcing the most basic bookkeeping projects that we had. Because if I didn't, the focus of that entire team would have been on the bookkeeping and just getting that month end close done by the due date. But by outsourcing that work and losing some margin on it as a result, the focus of those individuals could be on higher value work. And so that's where we started getting into like cash advisory and things that Clients would pay at better for than the actual bookkeeping work. But as long as like what they rock up to their computer and do every day is would have been bookkeeping, that's what they would have been fixated on. And so if there's, there's tasks that we are doing that we're fixating on that software could otherwise do, I would argue that's actually impeding our path as a firm to being a more premium firm that's focused on better things. Another related point slash question that somebody made in the comments a couple of weeks ago, which I think is really smart. This is from Pink harbor, basically. In short, for a given app, consider how many subscriptions to it you actually need. For example, in a tax firm, if you have tax resolution software, does every single accountant need access to that tool? Probably not. Anytime you do an app rollout, basically consider who needs that tool and who doesn't. A practice management system is really an outlier example where it's one of very few tools that probably everybody needs access to. The vast majority of tools in your firm, especially as you get more experimental, probably everyone doesn't need access to. We talked about scheduling tools recently and how oftentimes you will get excited about using a scheduling tool and then circle back 12 months later and find that, you know, Half people or 2/3 of people aren't actually using it or are only booking one meeting every single month. And so the ROI isn't really there. If you really want to get in the weeds on this, even going as far as the like, the plan level, like are you using all the features at the tier where your subscription is at? Oftentimes it's one person that needs all the feature set at like that next level. But then when you have 20 other users, it pushes everybody up something to look out for. Because while I, while I don't subscribe to like, there's not a single right answer for how much you should be spending on software, I also don't want to spend any more than I have to. And so as, as aggressive as I am about seeking out new tools that are going to make us more productive, I have to be equally aggressive about rooting out stuff that we're not using that we need to get rid of. And when you look at, you know, something like a chatgpt where we are more kind of spending time with it in order to kind of be on board for the upside of what in the future feels like, it's going to be a real unlock for us, but it's going to take some learning to kind of get us there. Something that I've actually seen from a couple places now is more of a use it or lose it approach to some of these tools. Perplexity is another really good example. Perplexity is kind of the best AI search engine sort of Google alternative. But Perplexity has a paid version, Perplexity Pro, that unlocks some really cool stuff like being able to give it your own sources and only use those sources. A deeper level of search that yields better accuracy. And in all likelihood if I have a 10 person firm, there's going to be a person or two that are really excited about that may want to geek on it. And then everybody else is like, yeah, I could maybe see how it's useful. And If I give 10 people access to Perplexity Pro, if I look at the usage, I would hazard a guess that after 30 days you're going to have maybe one or two people using it a bunch and virtually no one else using it at all. And so this, I have seen this sort of use it or lose it approach where in order to maybe put a little bit more pressure and motivation on folks to try to make use of something that you're actually paying for, if they don't use it, it goes away. You know, is that unfair at the end of the day if like, if Chad or Perplexity or something like like that becomes this sort of big tremendous unlock? Maybe it is. But for some of these tools, I wouldn't say that they rise to the level of being like a non negotiable, like incredibly powerful, huge workflow unlock. And once they do get to that level, I think you come to the team with very specific training to say here are all the ways that you should be using it and how it should save you a bunch of time. But I thought that use it or lose it was kind of an interesting spin because oftentimes, and I've done this before, team members like there will be a new thing, they don't want to miss the boat and they're like, yeah, yeah, like include me, get me that, that scheduling app or whatever it is. But if it's nobody's job to then circle back a few months later and see who's using it and who's not using it. That's where you get big time app overload and bloat and all these tools that like one person uses or you're paying for a whole bunch of licenses when most people like kind of fall back to their habitual usage patterns. So that use it or lose it thing that may make sense for you. Okay, two more questions. What capture system do I use? This one came up on the episode we did about kind of building a a writing habit and the value of that capture systems for me, as I shared, there are are the key to always having something to write about. If I am really good about jotting down thoughts that I have and then I kind of organize those at the end of the day, the next morning, I always have a kind of brief bullet point list of plenty of things to write about. And usually when you wake up in the morning, there will be something on that list that kind of jumps out to you and you're like, yeah, this is something worth exploring right now. But how do you capture that stuff? You know, GTD Getting Things Done. A really good old book about kind of having a system for capture and then what happens next to organize those things that you capture? Biggest recommendation I can make is ensure that you have a way to capture in every context of your life. Do you have a way to capture when you're driving, do you have a way to capture when you're playing with your kids, do you have a way to capture when you're in the shower? And that first stage of capture, the trap oftentimes is trying to get it to the destination at capture time. When the goal with capture should literally just be to make a super low resolution note that gets processed later. So like a cleanup process that happens every morning or something like that. Or you may even have an admin that takes it to ultimately whatever the best place is. I end up using Apple Notes quite a bit, end up using my Apple Watch quite a bit because I'm always wearing that. And so contextually, even if I don't have my phone on me, that's an easy way to make a note, you know, if you have a family or you know, just do stuff outside of work if you're one of those people, you know, I do think it is very valuable and aids in being present in whatever you're doing, work or not. If you give yourself the freedom to religiously capture things even if you're not working. Because in my experience, if I'm playing a board game with the kids and something comes up and I'm like, oh, that's kind of spicy, then if I don't capture that, the rest of that board game I'll be thinking about that spicy thing. Whereas if I capture it, it kind of releases that item out of my mind. And I have a system where I will ultimately circle back to that thing later, actually, once I've had some time to cool off on it. And we'll have greater perspective of, well, here's the 10 things I captured in the last 24 hours, which are the ones that actually matter. And so if you struggle getting to sleep at night because you think of something like, there's. There's a bunch of versions of this. I've got to deal with my family, where they understand that if I got to pull my phone out and make a quick note or I say something into my watch or something like that, they understand that that is a note that I'm making now so that I can stay fully focused on hanging out with them and what I'm doing. And I will circle back to that later because right now they're the priority, and I need to get that thing out of my head so that I can focus on what I'm doing. So, like, my number one tip there is just ensure whatever context you find yourself in, whether it's riding the peloton or riding a subway or driving into work, have a methodology of capture that works in any of those contexts. And then at some point, you got to go back and organize those things and pull them into a centralized place. But like, a trap that I made was like, you know, I managed my whole life kind of in notion, but notion mobile stuff has always been terrible. And to, like, navigate to the database in exactly the right place where it should be, that takes too much time. There's too much friction there. And it's not possible if I'm riding a bike or if I'm running around outside with kids or something like that. So keep it simple and value your mental resources, because, like, your brain can only work on so many things at any given time. And I, like, I almost think of it as this computer where if I am intentional about the tasks that I set it to, then it's actually a really powerful machine that's kind of always working for you in the background. That, to me, is the opposite of negative things being allowed into your head or anger being able to kind of fester and squeeze out the things that are ultimately useful for me. And so the more control I can, I can take, and it's easier said than done, but the more control I can take over the things that I am dwelling on and thinking about, the more I can put my brain juices to work on the things that are ultimately beneficial for me, rather than letting other people control the stuff that I'm, like, focused on. Stinker. Clients are a great example here where you get that one vaguely salty email or phone call or something like that, and you're just like, the nerve of that person. How could they be that way? Sometimes it's totally off base. Oftentimes there's a little seed of truth there that makes you doubly mad because you're mad at yourself for not being more responsive or a little better in a way that maybe would have prevented that issue. And so now it's like this like indignation at this other person combined with like a little like a hint of self loathing. And before you know it, your head is just in a totally different dimension that's in no way productive to what I need to get done today and like furthering my efforts as a human being and what I want to accomplish. So step number one to that for me, I mean, there's a bunch of things from exercise and actually sleeping and all those things, but having a good capture system is a huge help. There's. This episode is sponsored in part by Cloud Accountant staffing. Hey, scenario. What if. What if you had this buddy that was running another accounting firm and they stumbled into this thing and they like, they start hiring these really good offshore accountants in the Philippines and you're talking with them one day and your buddy's like, hey, I got some really good people here. You want me to hook you up? You want me to find you a few, Find you a few accounts? Accountants? What would you say? Would you be like, nah, I'm good. I can find accountants all day long. I don't need more accountants in my firm. Poppycock. You'd be like, tell me more. That's what working with cloud accountant staffing is. Because the team behind Cloud account staffing, they were literally just an accounting firm that started hiring people in the Philippines, had really good luck, like I did, with the quality of who they picked up and then they just started doing it for other firms. It's not, it's. It's kind of simple. If you're looking for somebody who understands you, who just works with accounting firms, not some rando sending you cold DMs on LinkedIn, a group that actually does this stuff just with accountants. Check out Cloud accountant staffing link down in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by Carbon, the practice management system. Funny story about Carbon. So we did our 2025 practice management system recommendations. There's like 40 some practice management systems out there. And we pared it down to a list of. Of. Was it 7? Some much shorter list where I'm like, these are the only practice management systems that I recommend. And doing that was a big undertaking because we looked at basically six different sizes of firms and for each of those different sizes, firms of different service mixes. So if you did tax, only if you did bookkeeping, only if you did tax and bookkeeping combined. And for all those different scenarios, we gave a top recommendation and two secondary recommendations for the practice management systems that are best suited for those types of firms. Now only two platforms got five top recommendations. One of them was Keeper, which honestly is not even a practice management system. It's like month end close automation. The second was Carbon. Carbon's really good man. It's like it's one of the only tools out there that raises to the level of if you are considering tech change in your firm honestly, practice management system or, or otherwise, you have to see what carbon does and understand what it does. Because if you go down the list of really, really smart, like thought leader accounting firms right now, Chad Davis, great example comes on the pot. A lot, a lot too much. A lot of really smart firms are running on carbon. And sometimes honestly, like, that's what I need. That's all I need to see. Do I really need to like out big brain these other firms that I look up to or do I just say, okay, they've done a whole bunch of due diligence. I still gotta do a bit, understand what works for me. But there's, there's something to that. Learn more about Carbon, Check out the link down in the show notes. Last question I'm looking for. Any tips on taking over a legacy style firm. Hourly charging outdated work papers and software. No automation and paper files. Yikers. And converting it to a more efficient and modern practice gang. Nothing in this world is impossible, but there are certain things that may not be, may not be worth your effort. I'll tell you what, the most common context in which I get this question, how do I convert this super legacy firm? The most common context where I get that one is from folks who are coming up in a legacy firm and they don't want to give it up. They want to fix the people that they've been working around and all that. And while that is incredibly noble, oftentimes this is, this is a real harsh reality. Oftentimes, uh, you are sacrificing yourself for folks who would rather that you didn't, rather that you actually didn't disrupt what they're doing and make them uncomfortable. Even harder version of this. And so I'm thinking About these. The kind of junior overachiever person that wants to come in and buy a firm that, that they work for even harder version of this family ownership. And I know there's a number of you listening to this who, like, this is your reality. You work for the old man or you work for mom. Uh, or maybe you came in, you made a career switch to their firm because they want to retire with the plan of buying them out. I don't know if this is too cavalier. Oftentimes these firms you come into, they have teams already. And the reality is those people don't want to change. And I'm a. I mean, I suffer from like the trying to be a fixer too much and wanting to be the hero and the. The allure of that as much as the next guy or the next person. But I. Where my mindset has changed on this is as I have developed a greater awareness of the more progressive firms out there who are super hungry for those type of. Types of people where that same skill set and willingness to kind of climb the uphill battle would be rewarded rather than the exact opposite of what everybody wants. Like, when you go in to work with those people every single day and they don't want to change and you are making them do something that they don't want to do, that is a thing. Thankless endeavor. But there are thousands and thousands of firms out there who would happily reward you for the exact same thing because it's what they want, it's what they're looking for, it may even be what they're lacking. And I just think over the years, I have put a. Less of a less glorification on that than maybe I have in the past, where you take pride in steering this big old wooden ship to a better place. And that's a really amazing thing. And it takes a. A lot of time and it's really hard. Some folks are probably going to leave in the process. You're going to lose clients, you're going to lose staff. But in the end, look at this better thing that we built. And it has taken me 36 years to realize that there are some things in this world that are meant to die, that are just meant to not keep going. And that's not always going to be the case. But it can be really easy to convince yourself that, no, this is the exception. This one will. This one will be fine. They're great people, and a lot of them are. They really are. I did a version of this. I did. I mean, I. In my firm, my 80 year old firm that I bought, it was a paperless firm. Like we had relatively progressive, quote unquote legacy partners, but had that firm. I mean, I saw it was actually the very beginning of my career. That firm transitioned to paper and that was brutal. That was like, I don't know, 2010s or 2010, something like that. Changing from paper full to paperless is a rewiring of the brain that's unlike any other process or tech change inside of an accounting firm, in my opinion. And the difference between the quality of problems you will have in a firm like that for three years versus a new firm or a progressive firm and what they can change and what they can do over those same three years, it is so, so different. And I totally get that is really hard to make the personal disassociation of, well, this is a firm that I've been with for years, or this is my dad's firm, or you know, all the, all these sort of other factors that are not business decisions. That stuff's messy and that stuff is really, really hard to navigate. I can just say oftentimes the trap can be to want to be the hero in that situation and think I can go in and do this. But we have to be realistic about the fact that the thing that you're glorifying is not actually something that anybody there wants. You see it as the only path forward to running an accounting firm because it is like, and I mean headed into 2025, like, man, that's not the move is another couple of decades of running a legacy firm. But recognize that you are, you are forcing that on folks that oftentimes don't want any of that and kind of setting yourself up to be in the driver's seat of inflicting all that pain on folks in the name of what, getting to ultimately be the hero. I don't know. I think that can be a trap if you are considering buying a firm like that. I think the better question to ask is why this firm when there are other much more progressive firms out there that do not have those same problems and you're going to pay more for them. But that's, that's the more important question to ask. And I think some of this is probably a product of your network, of your bubble, like especially early on in your career when you don't know anybody else that does this stuff. You haven't gone to conferences, hung out in online communities, like built those relationships. That firm that you're at and that, you know is kind of the only one that exists within your universe. But the bigger you can make that universe, the better. The more people you meet, the more you see, the more you realize how fluid a market it is and how many firms there are out there that are up for sale or could be sold if the right person came along. Is there value and loyalty and doing goodbye people and all that stuff? Absolutely. Just don't put yourself on the hook for doing something for a group of people that like, nobody, nobody wants that. And most of these legacy firms, that. That's somebody is riding into retirement and would much sooner have a legacy firm runner come in to continue operating it the same way as long as they can. I actually think that's a better path for most of these firms than for some skinny jean wear an avocado toast, like younger. Maybe not younger, but just more progressive accountant to come in and say, like, nope, we're going to rip up all the carpet and do things a completely different way. I totally get it. Just be really careful what you sign yourself up for, because there's a. It's a. It's a big old world out there. A lot of people looking for accountants capable of doing these changes where you can go into a firm day one with that progressive view on how to. How to run a more progressive firm. And that firm will be like, you were the person we've been looking for for the last decade. But too often, that person, they go into the worst possible environment for that sort of frame of mind. And everybody's like, we don't want this here. But because it's all that, you know, you just kind of keep beating your head against that same wall, and you're like, no, I can fix this. But you don't always get there. And it's not a particularly rewarding journey in my experience. Boy, that was a real upbeat one to end on. Jason, great pick. We got to do the order of these questions better, gang. Thank you for the questions. That one punched a lot of people in the oof bone. But just asking that question and having this discussion, you probably just saved a few people, like five years of toiling and headache. And that's the value of the questions that you chuck into comments and, and, and email me and all that. Send me DMS on social media. Q and A is the best day of the week. So keep those questions coming because you'd help not just yourself, but you help other people who are engaging with this stuff. And thanks for coming and hanging this week.