398 Should Accounting Firms Offer Done-With-You Services?

Today on the pod, we are getting into we all do done for you services in our accounting firms. That is clients bring us stuff, we do the work, we ship it out. Right. We're all familiar with that. But how about done with you where like you offer a degree of support to the client, maybe coming down the value ladder a little bit, doing something a little bit more collaborative. On the one hand, it's a good way to get in front of more people and expand your reach. On the other hand, is that really what we do? Like, don't. Like, shouldn't you just be giving me all this stuff and getting out of my way and letting me do it? We're getting into that, but also because it's a Q and A Friday. How do you not overthink putting stuff out into the world like you make a thing, Is it good enough? The struggle of hitting the publish button My thoughts on Safe Send being acquired by Thompson, Reuters and Wyatt's a good thing. What Jason, I thought you were cool. What if Anish is too competitive and the coolest AI email feature that I've seen to date. I'm going to tell you all about it. Come on in. Let's do it. It's Jason on firms. So this one came from it was a question I think on the podcast from Musicians tax adviser a couple few weeks ago now said I've already done what you're talking about on the done with you, not done for you sort of down market service offering. Said it's a very steep learning curve and I'm not entirely sure it will succeed. It's targeted at a very niche market. Love to explore whether anybody else is doing this and what their successes and failures have been. As we're talking about this, if you do have experience and have done a version of this, drop that stuff down in the comments. If you're listening on the podcast feed, as most of you do, click through your podcast player. There will be a link to the YouTube video and you can pop a comment on the YouTube video. Okay, done done for you versus done with you. It's a spectrum. Intuit CEO Sasan Gadarzi famously said that Intuit, the company behind QuickBooks and bunch of other stuff, famously said that Intuit is in the process of becoming a done for you company. Is a company that historically just sold software products that was all they were known for. But they're transitioning to becoming a done for you company. And if, if you don't really know what this could look like for you. I actually think that Intuit is a helpful example. So they have, for example TurboTax, their sort of tax software platform and they have QuickBooks online. Well, with TurboTax they started like offering the ability for you to hop onto a call with a tax expert to ask some questions. Cause maybe you're not quite sure what input to or what selection to make. And, and that went really well when they first launched it a while ago. And that eventually evolved into an even more hands on service where that professional will basically do the whole thing for you and starting to look a little bit more like just a straight up tax firm. And that was a progression from like a DIY do it yourself to done with you. I can call an expert and ask questions to done for you. They will now do the whole thing for you. Similarly on QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping, which, which is intuits like we'll do your bookkeeping for you type of service, it's actually rolled out a little different I guess because it started with QuickBooks Live Bookkeeping, which is our bookkeepers will do your books for you. But now they've rolled that back to now there's an assisted version where you can ask for help and ask questions and that sort of thing. So there's a whole spectrum there of DIY where all you're buying is the software and you just do it yourself. The other end of the spectrum is done for you where they're handling the whole thing and then there's something in the middle that is done with, with you. And most accounting firms, all we've ever done is done for you. Right. And it may even be hard to get our heads around like what an alternative to that would even be because like I don't want to be liable for something that I've half done or some dumb mistake that a client does. Right. Like that's, that's completely reasonable. But as we talked about, I think maybe one of the more important episodes we did here was around the development of the value ladder. In fact, let me. We'll link that episode down in the show notes. This was a really juicy one worth getting back to. Basically the idea that most accountants have a value ladder in terms of the services they provide to their clients that is like too samey to everyone else's and sort of stuck in this middling kind of like common denominator of what clients want from you. That is, you know, for a tax preparer, you're doing a whole bunch of tax prep because that's the one thing that everybody needs. But we don't have Much that goes above that on the value ladder that captures your premium clients and what they're willing to pay. And I'm not just talking about doing more work. I'm talking about doing better paying work. So going up the value ladder with something more premium, but also coming down the value ladder with something either less premium and, or free. The purpose of doing that being it increases your reach 10 times as many people find out about you. And that ought to thus increase the quality of the people that then like filter through to those sort of subsequent steps of working with you. Right? I mean it really is like, it is so, so important as we do this stuff. And I get everybody's allergic to marketing, we're accountants. It is so, so important to remember how big the world is and how distribution blocked every single one of us are. The fact that people don't know what you do and they don't yet know why something that you can do for them is, is unique to, to you is something better than maybe what they're getting from their current provider. I mean, you can go, you go post on social media right now, millions and millions and millions of people can see it, or you can post something very, very specific for like a micro niche. And those people will be like, oh my gosh, right now I'm working with a generalist. This person actually understands taxidermy. Businesses like this is great. I will immediately jump and go work with them. And the quality of our firms by and large is a product of the quality of that client list. And if we're not doing anything to increase our distribution, if nobody knows you exist, you're not going to have a very good client list. Like you just don't stumble into that stuff. Will you have a client list? Yes. And so the fact that you can do it does not mean that it is the best way to do it. This day and age is just all about being visible, optimizing for visibility and letting people know that you even exist. The folks who are not even doing a degree of that you are fighting with two hands behind your back. And the fact that you can build a business these days, doing that is not a reason to do it. It's just a very unoptimized version of doing it. And this is maybe the juiciest, juiciest argument for done with you services. The notion that we are going down the value ladder a bit to widen our reach and find more people and attract more people who could potentially be great clients. The flip side of this, going up the value ladder looks like offering Something that a small subset of your client base will pay like premium, top dollar for. And the, the trap here, like where people get this wrong, is they perceive this as, no, I'm just going to do more work, more of the same type of work, or get paid the same to do more work. Like, this is the big, this is the big trap with tax planning. And is people think that tax planning means, well, if I usually get 150 bucks an hour or so for tax prep, then if I'm going to start selling tax planning to my clients, I'll just get to do another couple few hours of work for them at 150 bucks an hour or whatever I normally get. That totally misses the point. Going up the value ladder means doing something that has even more ROI to that individual that they will pay. In my mind, it's got to be like at a bare minimum 1.5x, they're paying for the same inputs. So going up the value ladder means not, not doing more. It means doing something more profitable that something that is better for you. And I didn't do this well enough in my firm, as evidenced by the fact that I had like 350 clients in our most premium offering. If you're sitting there with a hundred clients or more in your most premium offering, do you really not think that there's no, not a subset of those clients that wouldn't happily pay you to do more? There is. And you really have to like, challenge your notion of what that something more could be, because that could go really far. I mean, that could be CFO services in some firms, that's literally taking an equity stake in the client's business, which may be unthinkable to you, but I take it from me, if you wet your whistle a little bit in other traditional businesses that are, that are very profitable and not subject to some of the constraints of service businesses like we run, I mean, there is, there's a lot of money to be made. And taking an interest or being an investor or along for the ride on somebody else's thing, that is making money, can also be a tremendous trap. Can also be a way that somebody asks you to do a bunch of free work for them. That's not the move. Taking equity in exchange for not getting paid for what you do. But all that is to say the top of the value ladder. Think about just how high you can push that. I think this is a hot take. Like, I think most people would disagree with me on this, but I'm totally an advocate for doing some version of done with you and some version of diy which in our case is like free content, putting out, you know, products or something like that. That is digital products, like info products. Putting that stuff out doesn't cost anything or doesn't cost much, but maybe even going up to like done with you services in order to broaden my reach because I'm just, I'm so convicted that the success of your firm is so, so tied to your reach. If you got a hundred clients on that client list, the most important job you have is to ensure that those are the very best hundred clients you could have. And they absolutely are not like the hundred people who most feel the pains that you solve for. And so as we come down the value ladder to find more people that, that starts with what is the free stuff, the thought leadership, what you put out in the world. Maybe it's a podcast, maybe it's social media posts, maybe it's a blog, maybe it's a website with helpful resources. Until you do this and you show up, nobody will know that you exist. And so you're completely reliant upon referrals which can certainly build your business, but is a framework that is just not leaning into the bigness of the world and just how many people are out there and the benefits to being visible that you just can't otherwise will into existence yourself. Like you. I mean, if you think you're in demand now, you will be unbelievably more in demand the more visible that you are. I think maybe the, the most common example of a done with you service that is kind of the norm for firms right now is when you clean up somebody else's books and prepare a tax return with it. That's, that's really like a done with you service because the client gets the books. You know, 80% of the way there. You come in, you fix a bunch of stuff and then you file the tax return with it. That's really a done with you service. If we go back to there's that Blair ends book, the new Blair ends book that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. The, the four conversations. One of the things that stuck with me most from that book was kind of the two approaches to lead generation to getting people to come and work with you. One was just like sheer volume. Tell those people that you will do anything and everything. But the better approach was what they called the, the armor piercing acquisition approach. That is a service that you provide that somebody's current provider doesn't offer. Because all the really, really good Clients, they're already working with somebody else. They're not, they're not cruising Google reviews trying to find the best rated accountants. Like those are not the best clients out there. And so if we want a foot in the door with somebody who is a really loyal client and a really high quality client and already works with somebody else, offer them something that they're not currently able to get today, that could be a free info product, that could be a done for you service, like help with an industry specific compliance headache where maybe you just review the form that they prepare before it goes out the door or something like that. The nervous Nellies are like, well, liability this and that. Like, yes, you have to work through that stuff and think through like, is this worthwhile or not? Am I assuming responsibility for this and that? The reality is like if you're a tax preparer, you virtually don't because all of our, all of our engagement letters and it's like we are doing this based on information that you're providing and we're not offering any sort of assurance on the stuff that you're providing. If the client produces incorrect information, that's generally on the client. But for sure do your due diligence on, you know, whether it's worth it to roll out this, this new service. But, but if you look at an industry, a specific group of people, and you can identify something painful to them that's kind of adjacent to all the other stuff that you do, that's usually gonna be the best way into working with that client. And then when they have a good experience, they're like, oh, this group's actually legit and they do all this other stuff, I'll just bring this other stuff to them. And that's way, way easier than having to somehow stand yourself up to be the better like general accounting firm that will do your tax and your accounting and all that. Because they just don't know and they already work with somebody and there's so much risk involved for them to just jump ship and stop all the things they're doing with that current provider and go to somebody else. Even if they have a referral, they still can't see the reality of what that relationship is going to look like, which is where like a very specific service and this could absolutely be a done with you service that is like the armor piercing approach where I can, I can actually start doing that for somebody that already has another professional relationship. And that's the thing that convinced them, convinces them to ultimately bring all their stuff to me. It is you know, this is kind of like DIY stuff and info products done for you services that are probably going to be a little higher volume and lower touch your success of getting that stuff out there. I mean, it's going to be very tied to what sort of skills have you developed in attracting attention? Like are, are you putting out content that people actually engage with? Is it specific enough to be exciting and interesting to a very particular type of person? Those done with you services, they do require a little bit more of that, but the ability to do that and garner attention for what you're doing, I mean there's arguably no more important skill to have in this day and age. I mean, if you can just make everybody aware of what you do, you will never be short of work again in your life. Like I, I was railing a couple months ago about like if you don't know kind of where you're at or maybe you're not happy with where you're at in your career, if you commit to posting to LinkedIn for the next 365 days and being useful and sharing what you're learning and helping other people like, you will never again in your entire life be short on opportunities. Because the world is so big and we are so reachable and connectable. Like there's just so many ways that we can make new relationships these days. If you're just willing to not lurk and like be earnest and not be an a hole. It's honestly not much harder than that these days. Like even when I look at the stuff that I do, like thought leadership around accounting firm running, so much of where I have separated myself from other people or folks that have done this stuff in the past has just been not being a jerk and being helpful to a different degree than other people are willing to be helpful. Like responding to a high volume of messages and emails and being thoughtful and doing things that people will never see. Like so, so much of it is just like what does it look like to be a good person and have this expertise? Like you already have the expertise. That's the hardest part. But then we go back into our firms and we do it in these little private engagements with people that oftentimes don't appreciate us and nobody ever sees that you have those capabilities and so nobody finds you and that, that's just kind of a frustrating place to find yourself in. This episode is sponsored in part by Live Flow. Hey, it's year's time. People turning up to to the gym in record numbers. And if you ate like I Did over the holidays. Oh boy. Is it, is it time to cut back? I'm not proud, but you know one area of our firms that we don't talk about being lean enough with the information we put in front of our clients. Good golly. The reports we run from our tax software, from our accounting ledgers. You actually think the clients look at that? They sure don't. I can't even get them to read my email, let alone go through a 60 page report. And so if that balance sheet and profit loss is not something that your client's actually going to make sense of, or God forbid, the report from, I don't know, your tax planning software, your bna, Gross. If they're not going to make sense of that, maybe it's time for a better way to put information in front of your client. AKA live flows. New financial dashboards. They can be as sweaty or as simplified as you like. You can connect them with a QBO or a zero file so they'll pull that data in automatically and you can augment them with any sort of additional information you want to. I'm a big notion nerd. It's the closest thing I've seen to notion for financial stuff. Pretty cool. Okay. We did actually a demo of the new financial dashboard stuff on the YouTube channel recently. Just go search Jason on firms live flow simple financial dashboard YouTube video. Bob, just pop that in the YouTube search bar. You'll find it. Or check out the link down in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by cloud accountant staffing. Hey, scenario. What if, what if he 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 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 kind of as simple as that. 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. Stuff just with accountants. Check out cloud accountant staffing link down in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by Core V Tax firms. Please do not go headlong into tax planning season without the right tool for the job. You are flying blind, you are wasting time and you're probably underselling the value of your work. Core V to help you find like a bunch of tax saving strategies for clients. Like not just maximizing retirement contributions, but a whole bunch of opportunities. But the problem for most firms is we just undersell the value of our tax advisory work across the board. You look at small tax firms, the ones that are absolutely crushing it. People we've talked to on this podcast that are working like half time making several hundred grand a year, they are making that on the back of charging top dollar for tax advisory. And I honestly didn't know how to do it until I saw a really good tool. Prove the value of your work and we kind of forget about it. Like we understand like yes the stuff that we do is very valuable, but we forget about just how much money we can put put like we regularly put back in our clients pockets through tax savings and tax deferrals. And then we go out and you like bill the time. You know it took you an hour and a half to do that. Here's this $400 invoice for that 40k in tax that we just deferred. That mindset shift of how to better capture that value. It's actually made way easier with good tax planning tools. Corby is my tippy top recommendation. Other tools in the space that do this. Steph Corvy is actually the number one one that I recommend. Check out the link down in the show notes to learn more. So personally for me done with you services, I have no problem with them. I think they need to be tied to a specific industry niche because the further down you go on that value ladder, the more those efforts are really about finding and attracting people to you. So because you're going down the value ladder, I think they need to be tied to a specific avatar so specific type of person that you're trying to bring in. So it may require a little more, you know, quote unquote marketing, whatever that looks like for you. But because we are also Distribution Ltd. And it all really comes down to the next client who will pay us a little bit better to do the same thing. Like I think That's a pretty good argument for done with you services. Hard to give a pile of examples of that because it needs to be like tied to an industry. I mean, I could talk about the industries. I worked with dental. I would argue that our like patient payment or cash reconciliation service was a done with you service. I've talked about this before, but dentists have this problem where patients will pay with cash. The person at the front desk will put the deposit into an envelope, they will post the payment to the practice management system. But then whoever reconciles that cash hitting the bank to the payment that comes into the practice management system, the dentist shouldn't be wasting time doing this. But the dentist also doesn't want to give the person at the front desk banking access because they're then both handling the cash and can. Can manage banking stuff. So there isn't really anybody in a small dental clinic like that that can handle the process of reconciling that stuff. That's where we would come in and we would work with both the doc and the, you know, whoever the office manager was to get that as far as it possibly could. And then we would kind of finalize and sign off on it to say like, yes, all the payments that were posted here came through the bank there. That was a done with you service that was specific to a very, very niche need. But you could dress up marketing for this a hundred different ways. From preventing theft in your, in your dental clinic to enabling the doc to have more time chairside where they're actually making money rather than wasting time on admin. Admin. Did I say admin? Am I saying admin like a Canadian now? To me, that would be an example of a done with you service that is like very closely tied to a niche. Every niche has their own specific set of needs. The people that say every single niche is the same, they're just not deep enough that niche yet. Those services are there and they're a great way to attract people to what you're building. All right, this one came up. I probably shouldn't say who, but just kind of the. The existential crisis of recording a podcast or writing a blog post or making a video. The existential crisis of like, is this good enough? You watch it back and you're so critical of yourself, right? And oftentimes in the process of doing it, it actually feels worse than it looks like on the other side. I don't know. Some people have that experience. There's people that are the other way too. Like where they're doing it and they're like, oh, this is fine. And then they watch it back and they're like, oh, that sucks. Maybe because they're then like comparing it to somebody else, right? But how do you manage the struggle of kind of overthinking how much effort should go into it and whether it's good enough, whether you should be afraid to even publish it? I've got a lot of experience publishing, right? Like, we produce basically seven or eight videos a week. I'm on social media every single day. I write actually three newsletters a week now. And I can tell you that the ability to press publish is a learned skill. And it's, it's a balancing act to know when should I publish and when should I not publish? Because there will be times when you should just let something die that will happen for all of us. But I would say in the beginning, that voice is too loud in the beginning. I think you need to be more biased to publishing. I could probably count on two hands the number of episodes I've shot for this podcast that I ended up just killing because afterwards I was like, that doesn't rise to the level of like, how good I need it to be. And even with that, like, the nature of a daily show, of anything that you do daily, is there's going to be ones that are going to be bangers and there's going to be ones that aren't. And that's just, that's human nature. I mean, that's how we are turning up to work every single day, right? When you're starting out or when you are newer doing something, I do think there is a louder voice in your head saying, like, oh, what will this person and that person say? And I think it's, it's actually usually framed through spotlight effect. And that feeling is oftentimes in your head. You're bouncing a reaction to that off of somebody you know or somebody you respect. And there's, there's like a degree of fear of like, oh, was that good enough? But the real fear is what will this type of person think or this specific person think? The reality is a spotlight effect. Spotlight effect. Nobody freaking cares. Everybody is self centered and focused on themselves and generally only interested in what you can do for them. And I mean, even if you take somebody in my position, that puts out a lot of content and a lot of people follow that very closely and they take an interest in you and they're like, no, we want to learn more about you and this and this and that. Jason. Like, there's even A degree of that. That's like, you know, a parasocial relationship that may not be healthy because, like, you look at celebrities making, say, political endorsements, it's very easy to point at those people and be like, what? Like, they're good actors. Why should I be listening to them about literally anything else? But the people that you follow, and I'm the same way. But the people that you follow, you're like, oh, what? Like, I. I need to know, like, those were cool shoes. What were the. I want those. Or, like, what's. What is their, you know, advice on raising a family or something like that. And I get that. That's a totally natural thing because I do it too. In fact, I've shared before, like, Ali Abdul is a YouTuber, and I think he's cooled off a bit, but there was a time where I was super into his contents. It was really good. And he does, like, productivity content. And he did like a Day in the Life video, which is just like, like leaning into parasocial relationship stuff, just fully headlong. Because it's like, well, you're a. You're a productivity YouTuber, and there's people that just want to follow you around for a day and see what you do. I don't know. It's fine. But he basically shared a whole bunch of products that he. He used and at his end of the year video that he does where he shares, like, all the money that he makes and kind of all the different sources. His biggest source of affiliate revenue that entire year was the skin care products that he shared in his Day in the Life video. And this is some random productivity youtuber. He is not a guy that knows anything about skincare routines or anything like that, but a bunch of people that are super into his content, they watch it, and he watches his face. In fact, if you ever. If I ever make a video where I'm watching my face, please tell me it's time to pull the plug. He washes his face and he puts a link to the products that he use, and a whole bunch of people run out by it. So there's like a parasocial level to, like, people want to learn what you do and stuff like that. But I don't think we need to dwell on that because 99% of people don't give a crap about me. But if they're scrolling their feed and there's. I post something that is related to a problem that they're currently feeling, they will stop and be like, ooh, what can I extract from this? And the parasocial things complex. And there's parts of it that are fine and parts of it that are weird that you shouldn't lean into. But what is universally good is being helpful, is putting out stuff that's actually smart and actually useful. And I would argue that's why people engage with my stuff. I think you can't have one without the other. You can for sure get people that, like, become fans and, like, will follow you to the different stuff that you do. But I think it has to start with, did I give them something of. Did they extract something of value from what I'm putting out there? So to bring that back to the spotlight effect. The spotlight effect tells you everybody's going to see and judge me based on this thing. That is, they don't care. They only care if there is something of value that you can offer them. And so after you made that thing and you're like, do I hit publish on this or not? Ask yourself in a. In a cold, heartless way that accountants are very capable of doing. Cause we're wired this way. Ask yourself, is this helpful or not? And if it isn't helpful, probably go back to the drawing board. But more often, we have extremely helpful things rattling around up in our brain that are table stakes for us. And we forget how valuable that expertise is to other people that don't have all the perspective that we have. So more likely than not, we're blocking ourselves from putting something valuable out into the world by having this fear. But it's yet another argument for regularly publishing for. For writing every day and developing that habit. Because it gets better. It gets easier over time. The ability to press publish, but also the quality of what you're doing is going to suck in the beginning, like it just will. And if you want to be really good at it, like, optimize for repetition, like, that's ultimately what. What makes you good at something. Safe Send who? Safe Send, one of my recommended tax intake tools. I only put. Put the old Jason stamp on three tax intake tools. And there's a good number of other ones now that I haven't recommended yet. But the three I recommended were Safe Send, Sorban, and Stanford Tax. One of those companies sponsored me early days. A second started sponsoring my stuff after I recommended them. Third one we haven't done anything with. But Safe Zone got acquired by Thomson Reuters Legacy company for $600 million cash. Cash at that number surprised a lot of people. And sometimes you can, like, prop up this number by giving them stock like, you know, 600 million bucks. But say 400 million of it was stock. And something else, like sometimes you will see that the fact that this is cash and it's 600 million bucks, that surprises a lot of people. And the reality is this is kind of a death march for, for any tool to go into a legacy company like this. Thompson acquired sure Prep back in the day. Normally the way that these things go, the owner, the team, they've got to stick around for X number of years, but they're out of there. Like the whole point. Like the cycle of this, they got this big old exit and they're going to bounce. Most accountants, if you sell your accounting firm and you get this big juicy exit, your plan is not to go to work for the mothership until the end of time. Like, virtually nobody does that. And so you take a, you take a company that's doing cool, innovative, innovative stuff, pull them into an environment where there's no development and nothing interesting happening, then cool developments, they just, they stop. It doesn't mean that the, the product gets worse immediately, though sometimes that is the case. A support will get worse. Maybe support for competitive platforms might get worse. But I'm just, I'm just generalizing here the way acquisitions normally go. And so for the same reason that I don't recommend sure Prep, even though it is a pretty good product, it just hasn't gone anywhere since Thomson Reuters acquired it. For the same reason, I don't recommend switching to that tomorrow. I probably can't recommend Safe Send anymore, which is too bad because Safe Sense, pretty cool platform. Now, I'll say the same thing for Safe Send that I say about sure Prep is if you're on sure Prep right now, I wouldn't necessarily rush to something else. Like, it is a pretty good solution. Just don't plan on it getting much better. There's some solutions that are so bad that they're actively hurting you. And easier example of this is around practice management systems. I put out like a list of. Here are the practice management systems I recommend. Here's another group of practice management systems that are like, all right, and you don't need to be in a huge hurry to switch. But then everything else, if you are not on one of those, you're costing yourself a ton of headaches, a ton of time. Switch. And so Safe Send probably goes into that bucket of like, if you're using Safe Send and you're happy with it, I don't, I wouldn't like actively tell you, go, you must go find something else. But for people to go to it. Like net new people. I would send them to something else where I have a greater degree of trust in the, the development of that over time. And I'm sure Safe Stand still has stuff in the pipeline, but like, let's just be real. They. They put out the letter same thing with Dext the other day. Getting acquired by Iris a couple months ago. And Iris has acquired stuff in the past and shut it down as well, although they totally will not shut out, shut down Dext because Dext isn't a competitive product. It's. It's still really good. But you don't look at Dex now and say like, oh, I can see that getting a whole, a whole bunch better because it's now gone through this acquisition. That's just not how things go. Like, let's be real realistic now. Why did I say this was a good thing, gang? It's a good thing because that just opened a whole bunch of eyes in that ecosystem. And you have a bunch of upstart tax workflow tools. Some are actively getting investment, some are struggling to get investment. And you just saw $600 million cash exit for a tool. Think about how specific Safe Send is a tool that is just for us tax professionals. Whole lot of people are licking their chops now. So the investors that were like, is that too specific of a market? I don't really want to get into the investors who are like, is AI just going to like start doing all the accounting and tax stuff. So both on the investor and the founder side, seeing a $600 million exit like this in workflow tools for tax. Not even tax software, because Safe Send wasn't a tax prep software. It's just workflow. Seeing this size of an exit for tax workflow tools absolutely just dumped gasoline on this category in the best possible way. And I fully expect to see more investment going into it and the category continuing to develop, which is super exciting because the next tax prep platform probably comes from this category. And the biggest time savings we've had for tax firms and I get not everybody listening to this is tax firms. We'll get off this. But like the. The biggest timesaver we've had for tax firms in the last decade has been tax workflow tools just like this. So sucks if you're a Safe Send user. Really does. Especially if you're not in the Thomson Reuter suite. Yikers. That may be a situation where you actively look for a replacement, but for the category as a whole, it actually is great news. This episode is sponsored in part by Stanford Tax Gang Stanford Tax was one of the like original original originators of cool new tax workflow companies who have built killer stuff around intake. Specifically I've been shouting from the mountaintops tax firms headed into 2025, you need a tax intake tool. Will save you a massive amount of time. Stanford Taxes is one of only a few that I recommend. The whole having to like sit down and go through when you've got a stack of pile of client a pile of client information and you're like okay, here's everything we had last year. Here's what we need this year. What have they actually given us? Stanford Tax Gang it will generate a complete checklist based on prior year pro forma information of everything that you need and you can drag all those documents on and it automatically checks off all the items. A stack of 40 PDFs drag them on there, it'll auto resolve all those checklist documents. Items will follow up with your clients until they get you all the stuff that you need and just completely eliminated that entire step of doing 1040 work where you're like do we start the project yet or do we follow back up with the client for more information. Absolute game changer. Big fan of Stanford Tax. Check out the link down in the show Notes this episode is sponsored in part by Financial Sense. If you were plugged into my 2025 practice management system recommendations, you would have seen Financial Sense on the list. I know a bunch of really smart firms that run Financial Sense. Since I have, I've been on record as saying it is arguably the best small firm all in one. Er right now it's really hard to have a PM that does both tax and accounting work well. And while I'm not a believer in all in ones that do everything from tax intake to nailing proposals and all of that, what I am a fan of is the platforms that get closest to that. Right? Because at the end of the day I do want all in one and I also want them to be investing in in a more all in one path to where Maybe right now that feature isn't good enough for me to replace that other tool, but I could see how two or three years down the road it is. I want that as opposed to the platforms that aren't investing in that way. Right? Financial Cents has actually absolutely been crushing their marketing the last couple of years. They run an annual thought leadership event for accountants. It's really good that I've been a part of. They're putting out actually really good social media thought leadership as well. Not just around like buy my product, but around better ways to run small firms. And those are the brands I want to get behind. Like those are the brands I want to work with. They got a smart vision for the right way to do it. The product's going to be a reflection of that. Learn more about Financial Sense Check out the link down in the show Notes this episode is sponsored in part by Maker's Hub. If you've tuned in to much my stuff, you know that I'm a big fan of how Maker's Hub is using AI to crush the accounts payable headaches of accountants everywhere. Arguably the domain and accounting dom that is being most disrupted by AI. Well they recently shipped support for purchase orders. Good golly gosh how much I hate purchase orders, but they are a necessary evil for companies of a certain size. But it turns out that purchase order matching, you know, matching the invoice to the po, to the receiving slip, whatever you want to call it, turns out that's way, way easier when your AP tool does like rock solid line item extraction. Got my hands on with the PO6 system that they just plugged in recently. Super, super impressive. If you have clients that struggle with this like I did, oh my gosh, Makers Hub is about to probably save them a whole heck and a lot of time. Learn more about that one. Check out my I've got a couple videos on makers Hub on YouTube that are like quick 5 minute demos. Otherwise I'll link their website down in the show notes. Two more here. Up next, this one's from Tim. Tim Cross Kraus. I don't know. Sorry Tim. On the subject of niche, this was a a comment comment on the daily podcast. I mean the Jason on firms pod on the subject of niche, I know there are very few niches and accounting that are competitive at all. Pardon me Tim, but with mine and my partner's experience, the main niche we would probably go after is the same niche Brandon hall does. He's a giant in the space. So how do you evaluate if a niche is too competitive or not? Tim, take my hand. Look me, look me deep in the eyes, buddy. There's, there's room in real estate for more than one more than one rad firm. I mean who doesn't do real estate? Especially as you go up to like bigger firms, every single one of them on their website. You estate know real real estate but real estate. Real estate is a million different things. I I think my biggest objection here is that is the notion there's very few niches in accounting that are competitive at all. Everything in the world requires accounting. And because of the Internet, firms can be more micro niche than ever before. So it doesn't like, honestly, I look at real estate and I'm like, that seems like a pretty busy one. I would probably go look at something else, like just me personally, I don't have a personal interest in real estate. Like, I've never that been that into like rentals and all that. Like, it just, it's a whole lot of work. I understand the value of it, but it never personally interested me. So I would probably look at something else myself. But every single one of these things has like pockets big enough to build killer firms. Like after all, like to your point, the goal is to be the firm for a thing. Nobody's going to be the firm for real estate. Somebody can be the firm for about 100 different things inside of what we would all lump into real estate, right? But this is maybe the thing that I shout from the mountaintop more than anything else. And I, I recognize I'm an Internet guy and I make content and stuff. And so like my perspective is biased and different than what most people will feel about this. But there is such unbelievable specificity to be had in putting yourself out there. And like there are such specific problems out there in the world that you can solve and charge top, top dollar for that. That is always the path forward. And there's so many people in the world that have very, very specific problems that there's a, there's enough of a market to build a firm for just about anything. But it takes a shift from purely a production mindset. You could be a generalist firm and stuff will walk in every single day and you'll get referrals every single day. You could be a generalist firm and that type of business, you are 100% focused on fulfillment just getting the work done. But where do all of those firms end up? All of those firms end up struggling being price takers because they're generalists. They don't do anything different than anybody else. And so then what do they say? They say, well, okay, we understand now we got to specialize a little bit and get a little bit more specific. But we can't do that until we market and we actually learn how to attract a more specific type of person. So it requires a shift in mindset from being a fulfillment driven business to really like, I don't want to say a sales engine, but something closer to that. Because marketing pulls in that specific type of person with a specific pain and Those people you charge 10x the rates of the generalist. My mom's 1040 or my mom's bookkeeping. Right. So, like, I'm glad this question came up because I do think a lot of people, they look out there and they see, like, what are the things I could specialize in? And they look across the street and they say, gas stations, there's one. Or they say franchises, there's a subway. Or they say, oh, there's a couple of dental clinics in town. And we kind of go there. But the world is so, so, so much bigger than that. And algorithms have made it so much easier to find people and trade shows and stuff like that to where if we can just find that very specific thing and to your point, be the firm for that thing, go out and talk about what you do, Be the most visible person in a space, you know, like working with the software companies in the space, being a guest on podcasts in the space, guest write somebody's newsletter in the space. Like, do all of those things to make your name the first one that comes to mind for a very specific type of person. Taxidermist. People like to dunk on me bringing up beekeepers a lot. How big is the beekeeping industry, by the way? Like, every quote unquote industry will also have like all of these adjacent things that you've never even heard of from. I don't, I don't even know what adjacent things to, you know, beekeepers would be. The people that do the, the. Not the bottling, whatever the process is of putting honey into a thing that you then sell. Like, I mean, every single aspect of production is going to have all these specialists, right? But until you go down there, you don't know what those things are. And it's like that third and that fourth level of niching where it's awful conversation at a dinner party because nobody knows what you're talking about. But it's an amazing business. Like, that's where you want to get to the global apicultural apiculture market size was estimated to be $9 billion. I mean, this is kind of the beauty of running a small firm as I don't have to sit back and be like, what's the tam Like? A software company does is trying to reach like a crazy scale. For me, I can be like, I have a hard time seeing me having any fun running a firm, you know, that does more than 10 million a year. And just about any type of specialization or business can fit nicely within a firm of that size. But I'm also Like calling out another trap here, which is to ever look more than like, 36 months in the future. Because I could also get to a $5 million beekeeping firm and be like, I'm into trucks now. Let's do some truck stuff. What's a niche within trucks? What does that. What does that even mean? Like, hauling mud flaps? But that's kind of the beauty of an accounting firm is, is you don't necessarily have to just stick with that one thing, but by committing to that path and. And the learning journey of, like, following through on that specificity, that's a skill that you can then transfer anywhere because you know how to build a specific type of client base. And you can see, okay, last time, Last time we wrote a newsletter, and that was. That was where we got 60% of our people from that space was this newsletter that. That grew really fast because it was the first tax newsletter for beekeepers. And so then when you go do that truck stuff, you're like, okay, we're to make the first tax newsletter for truck mud flap manufacturers. And because you had that experience, you're going into it in a more informed way. Remember what I said about it being really bad dinner conversation? I'm a great example. I'm doing something micro, micro niche, not just for accounting firms. I'll say this. Not just for accountants, but for people in public accounting who own accounting firms that are small accounting firms that are in the US doing tax. I mean, 60% of this episode has been US tax related. I'm sorry. And I'm talking about news tax newsletters for truck mud flap manufacturers. A great example of something that would be terrible dinner conversation, but is super niche and can find people and be like, truly, truly helpful because it is that specific. Besides Brandon Hall, Come on, is he really that great? I don't know. Okay, last one. Coolest AI email feature I've I've seen to date from company called Superhuman. Superhuman is just an email client. It's the one that I use. It's probably what I'd recommend if you don't have a solid email client built into your practice management system. They launched automatic reminders, but not like requests as we think of them and say, your practice management system. Like requesting information from a client, but reminders that are created automatically based on your outbound emails. So if I email you and I'm like, hey, can you get me this headshot back by next Tuesday? I send that off. But oftentimes I forget about it because it's not hanging out in my. Inbox right? Like we kind of use our inbox as a to do list in some ways if there's something we have to respond to and it doesn't go away until we respond. But sense stuff doesn't really work the same way. And, and so now what Superhuman will do is it will remind you before we get to that deadline and be like, hey, do you want me to send a follow up to this person for you? How cool is that? How smart is that? And it's like, well, yeah, of course. That's not like, that's not even hard. You throw an email message at an LLM and say, are there any things in here like that I ought to remind that person of? As it gets closer to a date and it's like, no, because the email just says thanks Bob. As opposed to an email where you're asking for the headshot. And the LLMs like, yes, they need to get this thing back by this date. Create a reminder like, that's the value of LLMs. They're really, really good at those open ended jobs like that. And this is super cool. Super cool. Inside is Superhuman, but a fantastic example of where practice management systems, I'm going to get mean are still crap in the bed. There's so much valuable context in email, but so few practice management systems have a compelling email client like the. The, the process of writing email in that tool is absolutely terrible. And the process of creating requests is still entirely manual. This feature that Superhuman just dropped, which is super smart and novel, but when you see this, we need to scramble the interceptors and be like, oh man, there's a version of this that totally makes sense in our product because most practice management systems now they have requests. You can see my emails, make the flipping request for me. Don't require me to jump out and go and do that thing. Give me a pop up that says, hey, here's a draft request. If you want me to create it for you, just click the button and now there's an outstanding request and they'll get reminders and it just got added to their list of to dos in the portal. That's so smart. Superhuman. This is super smart. Last year they shipped generative drafts which I know I've shared before. Basically before you even read an email for the first time, it will write three drafts for you. So if the email is from my mom and she says, sweetie, do you want to go to lunch next Wednesday? Superhuman will draft three responses and give me three little bitty cards, three little buttons that say yes, no or schedule A different time. And all I do is click one of those options and it unfurls a draft response. Yes, dear mother, I would love to go on Wednesday, I'll see you there. Or no, I don't want to. And it will write like a polite response or let's schedule a different time. And because I can see into my schedule, it will propose other times. And this is, that's so cool to me because it means never writing another email from scratch. Like you get in and it already drafts kind of the different variations and it's my mom, so I'm probably going to change it. Whereas business communication is probably going to be more general, usually honestly, but at least gives you like a jumping off point where it has a email drafted in your own voice because it knows how you email and you click that as a starting point rather than writing from an empty screen. Another thing that's like if your app has email and if we want to harp on practice management systems now, if your system has all of the projects we do for that client, all of the files, all the work papers, all the past emails we've exchanged with them, that tool ought to be giving me a pretty intelligent suggested reply to that email. But practice management systems aren't doing it yet. Do it, do it. I've only been saying this for two years now, started tweeting about this December of 22nd, two or three weeks after ChatGPT came out. I'm like, I think the best use case of this magical technology is drafting email replies to clients and pulling in all the other context from the system to inform a reply. So if they're asking for last year's tax return or last month's financials, it's, it's in the file system right over there. So draft a response and attach what it looks like they're asking for, or I guess generate a request link so that they could like see it in a more secure way. Right. Okay, what practice management systems we got sponsored this episode? Do we alienate anybody? Probably. Practice management systems, man, they're great. I've been giving them some crap lately because I want them to push the envelope more on workflow. And they're listening and they're responding and they're, they're working on it. Like even in the comments of some of my videos, you will see product people, but let's keep pushing them to be better. Gang, thank you for coming and hanging. Friday is my favorite podcast of the week because we do questions and answers. You got questions? Pop down in the wee little comment section. I'll see you next week too, Loo.