408 This Guy’s Solo Accounting Firm Made $182k Last Year

Yuri Kaplovic recently posted his full P and L of his accounting firm to LinkedIn. And it went about as you would expect. It was actually super cool to see he's only a few years into running his firm, making really good money with a really flexible schedule. So I wanted to pick his brain, talk with him. Why would you do such a thing? Right. But also, like, this is super inspiring if you're thinking about doing your own thing. Really fun conversation. Yuri's a really unique guy, unlike most accountants. I think you'll like it. Come check it out. Okay. Yuri, if anybody hasn't met you before, if they didn't see you burn down LinkedIn this month, what's, what's the 32nd intro to Yuri?

32Nd intro is I have my own firm. I've been in the profession for about 15 years. Jumped through seven firms trying to find the perfect place to become a partner at. Didn't find it, and went out on my own. And since then. Yeah, you know, been burning up LinkedIn in one way or another since then. Just started kind of riding in there and growing the brand, which grew into this, the fun CPA brand. And the main purpose of that is to show the profession how things can be done, that it can be fun, and that accounting is not boring. Love it.

I like to tell people, I think the annual video that Logan Graff does where he shows us full accounting firm financials are the single best advertisement for the accounting industry.

Yeah.

I like to say if Logan can do it, anyone can do it. But you had the courage to post your full financials on LinkedIn this last week, and it kicked off about 100 different things. But first and foremost, which I think is the point of why you shared this, like, things are good. Like, you haven't been doing this all that long in the grand scheme of things. And, and things are good. It's not a bad gig you've got going.

Yeah. Yeah. I appreciate that. Sometimes, honestly, it takes. It takes others to kind of say that because we inside are always very critical of ourselves. And I'm guilty of the same thing where I'm like, yeah, that's nice, but, like, I could do better, you know, but. But yeah, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, 100. I. I'm, I'm right there with you.

The, the year over year change, that, that's. I know even for me in my business, that's extremely helpful because you've got like this hamster wheel in your head that's like, oh, no, it's not going Fast enough, this and that. But then when you zoom out you're like, stop complaining. The problems you think you have right now, like if, if you could only if you're 5, 5 years ago self could only see you now if anybody hasn't seen it. And I'll link it down in the, in the show notes, but just for context, you did 2,218top line last year. That was almost a 50% increase over the prior year. And 181 bottom line, almost a 40% increase over the prior year. And it's, I mean it's full PNL from QuickBooks. So. Yep, everybody and their mom on LinkedIn just, just had a heyday with it. But to, to before we get into like the, the social media of it all, let's contextualize this. How long have you been doing your own thing? You said you went through seven firms like trying to find that right partner spot. That's amazing.

Yeah.

How long into firm running is. Is this what we're looking at?

So August 2021 is when I officially launched the firm. Officially quit. You know, my, my, my old job went into a full, you know, full time like all, all, all, all into it. So yeah, so about three and a half years.

Dang. So it's primarily a tax firm. So that's only three full years. So it's your third full year. You're, you're clearing 181 and it's pretty much all you. Right. You've got a little bit of contract support, but largely just you.

Yeah. So the practice is. Yes, like you said, mostly tax. Probably going to call it 85% tax account, like bookkeeping obviously and tax. But I do, where I do the books, but I don't do them myself. I basically have a contract kind of firm accounting firm that I work with out of Brooklyn and they take care of the actual like books and sending the reports to the clients and all that. And I meet with them quarterly to just go over that and do the returns.

Okay, cool. What do you think? So about three and a half years into this. Yeah, there's a lot of people who are on the other side of this maybe thinking about doing their own thing and kind of blocked and, and nervous about that. When you were in their shoes, would this, was this what you expected? Like did you have that self confidence? Like did you think it would go this, go like this?

It's a great question. You know, I had the self confidence enough to just take those first steps and I, and I think in many ways, like I Don't. I would have never imagined, you know, this, this LinkedIn, you know, called fame. That's not what it is. You know, the LinkedIn brand development, the fun CPA, the networking events, all this other stuff that now, looking back, seeing it grow is cool. But no, I would have never imagined that. All I knew at the time was, I'm done jumping firms, I'm over it. This opportunity did present itself to buy out France practice for 100 grand. I could jump into that story too, to share that if you, if you, if you, if you're open to it. But basically that was the reason why I gave the notice. So what happened was my, my friend came up to me, hey, you know, listen, I want to be out of the game here. I got 100 grand that I wanted to sell to you, and I'm like, perfect. I could take that and I can run with 100 grand because I was making 150, so let's do it. But then what happened was I gave notice, and five days after that, he got sued by his partner and he was no longer allowed to give out any of those, so they did not belong to him. And so because of that, basically I had nothing. But I already gave notice. So I had two options. I either kind of tuck the tail and say, hey, yeah, never mind, I'm gonna stay. I'm not, you know, I'm not leaving like that scene from Wolf of Wall Street. But, but no, but I decided that I'm gonna, that I'm just gonna run with it. And then the next couple days, could call it like a week and a half, you know, of that notice period was me trying to figure out what, what I'm gonna do. And my first instinct was, well, obviously I can't just replicate 100 grand out of nowhere. So I got to figure out how I'm gonna do it. And then I said, what can I do? Well, I can certainly sell via my marketable skills, which is reviewing million dollar tax returns, you know, multimillion, all these high net worth people and other firms. So I started reaching out to some friends, got a job at this one, like a contracting gig in Manhattan. I was taking the bus. That's where my LinkedIn bus thoughts initially began. That's why I started posting. And then that's kind of where the LinkedIn presence began. Then that became a little bit too much, way too much of a commute. So I found this firm in New Jersey and I was contracting from them about 20 hours a week. That's how it all began. So but to go back to your question about did I see this? No. All I saw at the time was, I want to buy this practice. Oh, crap. I can't buy this practice because the guy got sued. Oh, what am I going to do? I'm on a contract. Okay, well, I'm contracting. Let me start building.

What did building look like alongside doing the contract stuff? How did you get those first clients?

So it was, I mean, honestly, it was, it was kind of amazing to be able to have that experience where you leave this structured, you know, 9 to 5, you call it, but, you know, it's accounting, so it's more than nine to five, but you leave that and all of a sudden it's like this wide open field where you could do like whatever you want with your time. Right? So I took on this gig for 20 hours, 20 hours a week, and it was paying me like 75 bucks an hour. And I was like, holy shit. Like, I'm making good money doing this, you know, and only 20 hours. And the other 20 hours I was basically, for the most part, it was, you know, some referrals, some word of mouth stuff. A few of the clients that we had started talking to with that person that I was going to buy the firm out from ended up just being like, I feel more comfortable coming over to you, blah, blah, blah. So it's kind of like a little bit of a more natural transition of that. So some of that came over. That's probably about 15 grand or so worth of work. So. But between the fact that I was making about six to eight grand a month contracting, like I was good with that, and the rest just kind of started building up slowly. And as my LinkedIn presence grew and I was able to network at scale, it was more, it was more of a B2B thing for me where, you know, financial planners, attorneys, things like that kind of started seeing me on there, relating to me, talking to me, and then referring some clients as well.

That's super interesting.

The.

You said something that may not resonate with some people where when you went out on your own, you started calling your friends that ran accounting firms. How and why do you have friends that run accounting firms? Because that's probably, that's probably unusual for accountants.

Yeah. So I started. So a few of my friends, when the ones that I graduated with or the ones that were in school with me, I would reach out to some of them I knew specifically one of my closest friends, she was working with that person in Manhattan and she was just an employee there. And I was like, hey, can you introduce me to him? And I started talking to that owner and he was basically the first one to right away be like, yeah, cool, I'll take you up, whatever you need, I'll hook you up and you can come by and you can work on whatever returns you want. So I was really appreciative of that at the time. It was probably the scariest moment really, because I was like, I don't know when this money is going to come in from. And when he was like, yeah, whatever, come by. Can you work however many, however many hours you want? But yeah, outside, outside of that, I don't know too many other people that had their own accounting firms. But obviously I was willing to ask whoever and, and whoever would listen to me. I mean I would go to any firm at the time to, to scoop up those 20 hours a week.

This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at lifflow. Are you ready to spice up that reporting that you put in front of your clients? Of course you are. Because you know what your client says when you send them just the balance sheet PNL out of QuickBooks. I mean they look at that thing and they're going like how in the William H. Macy am I supposed to extract anything valuable from this live flow? I mean the first thing they brought, they brought to accounts was kind of the QBO and Xero connector to your Google sheets or your Excel, because in a spreadsheet you have the ultimate flexibility to present that stuff however you want to. Well now they've got like super, super simplified online dashboards where that same simple connection to all of your clients ledgers gives you just a super straightforward way to build financial dashboards that can be as basic or as sweaty as you want them to be. And you can actually call out the stuff that your client wants to see the information they'll actually use and it'll pull all that data in from the accounting file automatically, do one time sync, have it update on like an ongoing basis automatically. As long as the books are up to date, the reporting is going to be up to date too. It's pretty cool. Learn more about lifelong the link in the show Notes gang. This episode is sponsored in part by Carbon, the practice management system. I'll tell you one thing I like that Carbon does is they tell you what they're building. In fact I at the end of the year they announced like here's all the stuff we're really Cranking off for 2025. Let me run you through some of them. One carbon for clients. A vastly upgraded portal experience. Thank you. That is so important. Custom branding.

This is.

There is such a long list here. Let's just say a vastly better client portal experience. Engagements, nice. Proposals, agreements, Automatic billing, which they already have. They already have some automatic billing, but I think they're just beefing up proposals and engagements. Google Drive integration. SharePoint integration. Quick replies, suggested short replies to emails. Oh, now in beta. Yeah, buddy, that's got to be. I think that's AI email refiner. Okay, more email stuff. I like it. Client segments, E signature with KBA API enhancements, new reporting dashboards. Can I, can I pick what I'm most excited about? Probably the client. The upgraded client portal. And there are improvements to the email experience. Email, so, so time consuming. If there's one thing that Carbon absolutely crushes, I think still does better than anybody else, it is the email experience. And we spend so much time on email, so that matters. Okay, Learn more about Carbon. Check out the link down in the. In the old show notes. You know what they're called? What did the LinkedIn like strategy, if you can even call it that at that point, like, what did that look like for you? Early days? How intentional was it? Or were you just trying to be.

Out there in the early days? And to this day, I'll be honest with you, there is no strategy. And the reason I say that is because, like, I don't sell anything. I don't. I Certainly don't go B2C. I don't go direct to consumer. I don't want anybody really, like, hitting me up directly from LinkedIn saying, hey, you know, can we work together? It doesn't happen often and I'm glad for it. And I think it's because, you know, obviously I'm very outward to say how my minimum fee is, which pushes away a lot of folks, which is great, is what I want. But outside of that, I like the ability to have like that recommendation, almost that word of mouth, like trust, like introduction, like I get from the folks, like the financial planners, the people that are out there. There is no, like, you know, there's no hesitation in price. There's no negotiation. It's like, hey, this guy told me, you, I want to work with you. I. I want to work with you. So what is it, 2000? All right, cool. No problem, obviously, as long as it makes sense. But. But what it has, again, initially it had no strategy. To this day, there's really no direct strategy. Just post valuable stuff that at least I find valuable. And. But out of it grew out the brand and out of it kind of grew out the, the, the fun CPA movement, the networking events and all that. Most of the folks that were coming through to my events are all from LinkedIn.

How did that, how did that start? Like, what was the baby version of that where you're like, I think I'm going to run a live event. That to me, like, that live events are terrifying because they super feel super high stakes and you're supposed to make sure everybody has a good time. Like, how did, how did that start and why was that worth your time and attention?

Oh, man. So the way it started initially. So I'm a big. I'm a big fan of like, of the parties, putting them together. You know, I'm in my house, so we have my friends and having a good time. But the way it honestly started, the first one was in May of 2023. And the way that that started was I was just really bored in tax season. I didn't want to do a return. I was just sitting there and my.

Mind was bored in tax season.

Yeah, more so bored, just. And also didn't want to do the work. So it's kind of like a combination of like, like procrastination and like, I.

Was going to say distraction. Procrastination, I think.

Yeah, yeah, bored. Yeah, bored is. You're right. Yeah. Bored is a bad word. I was not bored. I was probably just. Just not into it at the moment. So I was sitting there going, you know, what can I do? She's kind of like, my mom was wondering and it's like, you know what, like, what if I did like an event with like a bunch of accountants got together and it was like, fun. And at the time, the fun CPA was already like about a year old, give or take. And so I was like, that would kind of be cool with the brand. Like, that's kind of fun. How do I. How do I even do this stuff? Like, And I literally. I'm not even kidding. I probably spent about the next two days calling people. I did not do any work. I caught calling all these vendors, trying to figure out where I'm gonna do this. And then I found this cool bar that was on the sand, like overlooking the water. I'm a big boating fan. If you haven't seen my post about that in the summertime, I'm obnoxious about it, I guess, but yeah, so. So I found this like, basically bar that was on the water. Oh. It was like I was able to get an open bar get the whole place to ourselves to have fire pits right there with seating areas. And then my, the, the boat club that I belong to, I contacted the owner and I was like, hey, can you put some boats on the water for me from like 6 to 8 or 6 to 9, something like that, and run them. And I'm gonna have groups of people like on there as like a, like an icebreaker kind of thing, because you're kind of just hanging out on the boat. What's cool, a little breakout session, you know. And the guy was like, yeah, no problem. Like, you know, and so, and so it was like, obviously the coolest thing. And I had the DJ that usually comes to my house to do parties, I had him come to this party and do that. And then I had, I found a barbecue vendor that's able to just kind of do like unlimited barbecue right there and then open bar. And I was like, all right, this is gonna be cool. And then I was like, in my mind, I go, all right, I'm gonna roll this out. I'm gonna charge like a hundred bucks. I'm gonna have so many people come to this thing. And I was like, but you know, it's gonna be so many people that I, I'm like, in my mind, I was like, I'm gonna limit it to 60 people because I can't have any more than that. Yeah, roll out the eventbrite crickets. And I'm just like, wait, really? I was like, it's for real. Like, damn. Like, I thought this was gonna blow up. No. Okay, so I'm gonna start, like, I started out posting non stop on LinkedIn, trying to promote it and got a couple of tickets here and there. Instagram, same thing was promoting it on there, telling everybody about how much of a good time it will be and that. And it was just pulling teeth, man. Every single person that came to that event along along with the next three events was a lot of pulling teeth. Like, a lot of just like, hey, come to my event, come to my event. Then I'm like, okay, forget it. I'm going to go out there and create a free, like a discounted coupon or a discounted price and just roll out 20 of those just to get people to come. And at that time I actually had basically no sponsor. So because I was thinking to myself, I'm like, it'll cover it with the people who are paying. Yeah, I came out of pocket like $4,500 on that first one. Oh, but the event, how many people? Came around 50 by me pulling.

Oh, dang. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah, I'm very good at annoying people to come through to my events, but. But it was fun. I mean, you know, it was fun. We had a videographer there. It was. It was a really nice time. And. And I was like. And then. Funny thing is, is that event ended like the day itself was incredible. Like, really had, like, such a great time. It was so, like, it was so cool to be able to put so many people together. And it was a bunch of different professors, like industries, real estate and accounting and doctors and all this stuff. Really cool. I didn't really get any money out of that, or I didn't really even get any referrals necessarily out of it at the time, but you know how that works. That's always a long game. So then the event is done, the day is over, and I'm like, all right, I am never doing this again. I told my wife, you know, and she was like, well, at least, you know, you tried it. Yeah, so. So that's good. I'm like, yeah, it sucked. And then fast forward a couple months. I'm like, so, yeah, I'm going to do another one. And then she was like, wait, for real? I was like, yeah, I guess. So let's. Let's do it. Because I got this itch again and another one, and you're just stuck on.

A really hard tax return or something and thought, this is the time.

This sucks. I don't want to do it again. Yeah, surprisingly not, because that other one was in June, so it was like, outside of tax season. And I started planning it in, like, May. This time I did not do it during tax season, so. So, yeah, so that was a surprising one. I guess now I was like, full on. I actually wanted to do it, so I did that one and that one went really well. Again, still had to pull teeth, get people to come through because again, it was on the higher end because this time I actually had a saxophone player there. I had again, a dj. I had cigar rollers there, making cigars around on the spot. And I had a. You know, like, I. It went all out. But that time I actually had a sponsor, Tax Dome, which was really cool. They came through and did that and. And that was great. But I still came out of pocket, but not 4, 500. So I did better on the next one. I came out pocket, like two grand or something like that. And then the last one I did again, and another one was another Brew is a Brewery. And that was actually probably one of my favorites because it was low key. It was not like a crazy wild party like the one at. With the saxophone player and stuff. And yeah, that one was more like kind of chill vibes and, and, and that one was cheaper for the attendees and still had to pull teeth to get people to come at $35. So. And like I said, every single time after one of those, I was like, I'm never doing this again. And then I did it again. But I think, you know, to me my main driver behind it is, I mean, obviously I'm not profiting on it, so that's certainly not it. But it just drives the brand, the fun, the, the, the concept of being able to do something else in accounting that nobody imagines possible. And nobody associates accounting and accountants with throw networking events that are actually fun. Yeah. And that to me, aside from actually planning it and, and doing all that, like when the day comes like that, that is the enjoyment that I get out of it. Connecting people, you know, few other people that came. One of the guys that came through, came through in this last one, came through from three hours right around three hours away to come to there.

Wow.

He wanted to meet accountants because he wanted to, to do a little career change for whatever it was after that event. I connected him with the recruiter that I, that, that I'm a very big fan of his, does phenomenal work and he was able to secure him a job that, that he's been wanting to have and just couldn't get through to it. He just messaged me the other day. Nothing compares to that, man. Like that, like that is what it's all about to me. So, so yes, leading up to it and yes, afterwards I'm like, this sucks. But then I'm like, maybe it'll come. Maybe something will come out of it. I don't know what it is, but I'm going to keep going.

Yeah. Hard to, hard to do the ROI calculation on that sort of thing, but oftentimes those are the most rewarding things where that's. Or that's murky.

Yeah. Yeah.

This episode is sponsored in part by cloud accountant staffing. Nothing grinds my gears quite like a vendor in the accounting space that knows absolutely nothing about how accountants or accounting firms work. And there are, there are all too many of them. Not all of them. There's a ton of smart people in software and all that, but you definitely know when there's like a sales rep or something that's just tone deaf and doesn't understand what you do. Cloud accountant staffing, this was their experience trying to offshore, trying to hire talented folks in the Philippines. And so they kind of just started rolling it themselves. Cloud accountant staffing. Basically, the founder was an accounting firm owner, had tremendous luck hiring talented people in the Philippines like I did, and eventually just started doing it for some other firms. And it grew and they started advertising on my channels and now it is a proper big boy business. And the reason they're crushing it is because they get what it's like to run a firm and how to do this stuff and how to even work those people into your team successfully, if that's something you're exploring. To learn more about cloud accountant staffing, check out the link down in the show notes. Today's episode is sponsored in part by Canopy, the practice management system. Canopy. They're one of the earliest, like, really solid cloud PMs that the accounting space got, and they continue to somehow be like, very progressive and kind of at the leading edge of cool new stuff. Unlike a lot of very early cloud tools where they just kind of end up looking long in the teeth, man. Canopy has one of the, if not the most complete feature sets in the biz and everything that they've got in their practice management system, just super polished, super professional, something you can proudly put in front of your clients and your clients not have to be like, like, give you some grace because they just expect that the tools that you use will suck. Oh my gosh, how long has that been a problem in the accounting industry where they're like, yeah, it's cute. Wow, look at that portal. I'm just impressed. My accountant has a portal where it's like, no, like, we should have really good tech that is professional and works as well as any other apps that that person uses. That's been my experience with Canopy. Just polished from end to end, one of the most comprehensive systems out there. To learn more about Canopy, check out the link down in the show notes. Okay, financial statements. I think the question everybody's wondering is most people don't get out of bed in the morning. Go. I know what I'm going to do today. I'm going to fire up QuickBooks, I'm going to print PDF and then run over to LinkedIn and say, hey, everybody, look at this. What was, what was the initial motivation? I think I know, but, like, what, what led you to, like, do that in the first place?

So the initial one I did, I did something kind of similar to it the year before, like since 2023, but not as robust now. You know, it was just kind of like high level. Here's my gross income. I did it again and right after tax season to show how much I made in tax season, which was about 102 roughly out of tax season. And then I was. And then to me, you know, when the year was over. The reason is very similar to Logan is to show that it's possible, you know, to show that you can make decent money, work a decent schedule. And no, you know, it's not millions of dollars. Right. It's not a multi million dollar firm. I know for a fact there's thousands of people doing way better than I do. But to show that if you focus on the value drive first, you know, have, have the higher fees to your clients and focus on your time and what you want out of the firm. Working less than 40 hours during tax season and 10 to 15 outside of tax season, it's possible to live a pretty comfortable, good life. I can, you know, double my hours and double my income, but I don't want to.

Yeah, what's kind of your. You talked about this for hit record. What's kind of your framework of like the ideal, like if you can craft kind of your perfect firm. What's, what's your schedule? What's that look like for you?

So I'll give you like, I mean, I'll give you what my schedule is now, you know, which is basically, honestly, I guess that is the ideal for me at the moment. You know, so wake up. People probably wake up around like 7:30 or so. And whenever my kids wake up, 7:30, 8 o', clock, get them ready, take my son to, you know, to the bus stop, then get daughter, my daughter ready, get, you know, and then take her daycare. Then I hit the gym, usually done with the gym around 10, 10:30, come back, you know, usually breakfast or whatever, shower, whatnot, get ready, start my day at 11 o' clock and then my son comes home at 3:30, that's the schedule. And there's a lunch somewhere in there for about a rushed one because I'm like running around like a madman, you know, between a bunch of different things that I'm doing. That's the schedule right now, man. And I gotta figure something out for tax season to be honest, because you know, I gotta probably move the gym too early or maybe like six so that I could get that out of the way and just get cranking once I come back from dropping off my daughter and from daycare, but that's it, man. And I think, and I've been doing that, you know, I'VE been doing that for about a year, all of 20, 24. So, you know, I think, I think I'm intentional about making sure I hit the gym. You know, it's important to me three to four days a week. And then obviously once my son comes home to 30, it's a little challenging to get any work done. So the majority of the work is about four hours a day.

Okay.

But now that it's tax season, I'm gonna have to probably work after I put them down, after they go down.

In general, what was the response on LinkedIn? What do people say? What, what was, what'd you take from that?

In general? I mean, the response was very positive. There were a few outliers, obviously. Some folks doubting the numbers, some folks saying, you know, there's a. Whether I made them up, some folks questioning some of the other expenses, specifically the software expense, which I'm sure you found interesting too.

Yeah, you're putting up some rookie numbers on software expense here.

You got to pop up those numbers. It's true. But you know, honestly, I run again, the firm in a very, I think, simplistic way. And you know, we spoke about this. To me, you know, I was running this firm off of the Excel for the longest time, you know, and just, and just fairly recently updated it. I was using Google Drive, dude, and like up until, up until November 2023 to share to, to share documents and, and, and have, you know, that, that, that part of it. So it was like very clunky on my side. I upgraded tax dome in November 2023, which was awesome. And then, and then just recently got onto like anchor. But, but to answer your question, I mean, overall, very positive. You know, out of the, you know, 200, 300 comments, I mean, mostly were positive and a few, there were a few audits in there, right? Yeah, you know, a lot of people wanted to audit all my numbers. That was, that was entertaining.

It's, I love, I mean, the biggest thing you hear when you're a super cringe content creator like me is like, oh, if you, if you really knew stuff, you'd be, be doing all this yourself. And you know, people, people putting out thought leadership who really maybe aren't super capable of running a firm. And there's a, there's a lot of that, like a lot of folks running firms, big firms who are like thought leaders where it is a hot mess and there, I mean, I know people running, I know people running multimillion dollar firms that are clearing less than you did last year. So like, there's. It's a whole across the board, and you can't tell from the quality of somebody's LinkedIn posts, like, do they actually know what they say or not? But I just love that when somebody goes full transparent and they're like, I do a bit of thought leadership. Here's my P and L. That the reaction of some is still, you suck. This isn't real. This. This can't be right.

Yeah, that's the downside of the Internet. You know, you're gonna have a lot of. A lot of folks hating, and a lot of folks like, you know, say, you know, insecurity or whatever it is. But you know what? You know, one of the most interesting reactions was to this, to that post was actually the folks who, who, like, reached out DM me personally and said, you know, they're like, I've seen your post before, and I really thought you were making so much more than I was. And they're like. And I. They said that they felt, like, good about themselves, that they weren't that far off from this person who looks like they make millions of dollars and work less than 40. So that real reality, that, you know, realness, that I bring the authenticity that, that I don't adjust my numbers and, you know, make myself look so much better, that part of it made people feel better about themselves and their firms and to feel like they are in a good spot. And I love that. Yeah, because, you know, everybody's. Everybody's journey is different. Just because I do a lot of value stuff and focus on value creation and value building and whatever else doesn't mean. Doesn't mean anybody else has to, you know, if it's working for you, it's working for you. If you want to make 200 grand in tax season only and never work again for the rest of the year and just do that again. But you. But your tax season is crazy. That's cool, man. Great. Good for you. Like, you know, there is no wrong answer in, in my opinion, so long as you yourself are happy with what you've created.

That's kind of the beauty of running a small firm is like, you, you're choosing your own adventure. It is so your relationship to positivity and negativity online. We were talking beforehand, and it sounds like you're to a degree, like, okay, the kind of some ebbs and flows there of. Is it worth putting up with the dumb headaches or not? What, where, where are you at on that right now?

Great question, man. If you, for the last like two months, it's January now. For the last two months I've been on this kick where I'm like, I don't want to post anymore. Or like at least it felt forced. When it feels forced, I stop when you know, it's all vanity metrics right at the end of the day. But it was taking up an absurd amount of my time. So for the record, that 10 to 15 hours that I was referring to before, outside of tax season does not include social media time. Doom scrolling, doom scrolling or posting and then sitting there and checking and replying to messages and doing all that. And to some extent, like it, you know, wears on you to, you know, check that, you know, to, to, to keep doing that, to not be present in the moment. A lot of times that's the reality of, of, of posting with the intention of bringing value. Because you're focusing on that. You're like, did that bring value? I don't know. What should I change? You know, is, am I, what am I doing? Honestly, what am I doing here? Is quite frankly a very frequent question that I ask myself. Because I don't have. There's no necessarily end goals, just posting stuff that, that, that comes to my mind trying to push forward the accounting profession. But then I'm like, you know, it was just me sitting here at home and it's like, so what am I doing? Am I doing that thing that I want to do? Obviously I'm not getting paid necessarily for, for it. So, so what's, so, so what's happening? Is it worth it? You know, that's, those are the downs, you know, with the ebbs and flows. When you hit the downs, that's where that, that's where it hits most.

What would make it worth it for you? And it doesn't, it doesn't have to be like tangible money stuff. Like it's, I could literally be the dms. Like what would make that worthwhile?

So you know, every time when that happens, when, when, when the, you know, it goes down and I'm like, why am I doing it this? And I'll get hit up with a message like don't want to mention to you from the person who was at my event who wasn't able to secure that, that job and, and, and then, you know, literally life changing stuff like that, that's it, you know, like that gets me pumped up and I'm ready to go again. And I got a few of those messages after sharing those financials. I got a bunch of dms, you know, saying hey, like this is amazing. And. And I want to start my firm now. Like, this is inspired. Inspired me to do it. And I'm like, I, like, like, okay, cool. Like, we're. We're back. We're back on, you know, so, so. Yeah, so. So it's a lot of that. It's a lot of, of, of like, see, to me, it's a. You know, you're like, what am I doing? What's happening? And then people, Somebody will message me and be like, yo, man, like, your stuff is, like, inspiring me to. To do something and to. And, And. And keep going and, and, you know, maybe even start my firm. So thank you. Keep going. Cool.

Yeah. I got to pull up the metrics on this post because I guarantee you launched some firms that day. One thing I'm always amazed about is for everyone you hear about, I genuinely think there's. There's 10x that you don't hear about.

Yeah, Lurkers. A lot of lurkers.

Yeah. But I mean, this thing's pushing 300 comments, over 700 likes, hearts, whatever.

Yeah.

I mean, that was seen by tens of thousands of people.

Yeah.

And for every One person that DM'd, you saying, like, man, this is what I needed to put me over the top. I mean, I guarantee there's five people who aren't going to DM me. At least five people who aren't going to DM you, but then just had to switch computers. You. Did I just see you on the accounting podcast talking with Blake?

Yes. Yep. I was just on that in early December. It was great. Great to be on.

Okay, so it wasn't related to the financial statement thing.

It was not, no. But we were talking about that. And part of the things that did come up during that conversation was the financials, where I was like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to close out the year at X amount of money. And I was pretty spot on.

Is it something that you would recommend people like, you made the decision to do it yourself? Like, would you encourage others to do the same? Just as a way of getting people excited about what we do?

Like a shared of financials, you mean? Yeah, yeah. I mean, obviously, you know, obviously just Everybody going on LinkedIn and sharing their financials, I can't. I can't imagine that necessarily applying to everybody, but I think you would be surprised at how many people are at your same exact level or possibly even at a, you know, below where you're at. And. And just having that context of, like, the comparison to some extent. And not feeling so bad that you're behind or that you're not doing as well, I think is, is a tremendous benefit to someone. Because we beat ourselves up like we were talking about initially. Like, we beat ourselves up more than anybody else is going to beat you up in, in things statements like I'm not doing well enough. I should be doing better. So if you're out there and you're seeing everybody else and, and, and you have a little bit of a benchmark. Yeah. I mean, at least in a, in a, in a close group of friends, it would be, it would be good to have for sure. Cool.

Love it, man. You are, you're, you're a super unique voice in the profession, which is, which is fun. And I appreciate your transparency because I think it drives a lot of really good conversations. You gotta. You got a podcast that you're kind of pivoting to being for accountants. Right. Where do people find that? Where do they find you? Out in the wild?

Yeah, mostly I'm on LinkedIn, you know, still out here, still out here posting. I'll be, I'll be around. I'll be here. Maybe I'll, I'll lower the, the, the quantity of the posts, but, but they'll be out there. And I also got a podcast that recently rebranded the Fun CPA Podcast. Is the name of it really going to focus in, have some amazing guests, yourself included on there. That, that's going to, you know, drop kind of probably every other week. I'll be, I'll be targeting to do it, but the concept is let's keep bringing the value to the profession. Let's keep showing people that you can have fun and let's, you know, let's just make the accounting profession enjoyable. And a lot of it does have to do with the time that we spend in it, in doing the work and how much we glorify that over focusing on our free time.

Yes. And like how that work fits into life. 100.

Yep. Yep.

Yuri, Love it, man. Thank you for coming on and doing this.

Yes, sir. You got it.

I appreciate you.

You.