454 Do I Regret Selling My Accounting Firm?

Got a DM from somebody the other day who got a killer offer for their firm. And they posed the question, do you ever regret selling your firm? A couple years ago, I sold my firm back to my partner. Ever since then, I've been doing whatever you call this sort of thought leadership and all that. And the answer, it's kind of complex, but it also applies to much more than, than firm running. And I think it's critically important actually to examine a few things, but before you would ever even consider a change as big as running or selling a firm. But interestingly, it's like the same framework that we ought to be using every day when we stop doing anything, when we delegate something. And I've realized, I think only in hindsight, that my willingness to do this has, like, accelerated my growth a lot. So I want to share that with you whether you're in a position where you may sell a firm or not, because I think it actually could be the, the biggest driver in getting you to the next level, whatever that looks like for you. Let's talk about it. I've got sort of six thoughts here that are. That are specific to how I would answer the question through the lens of how I felt about my firm and selling it. But what I found as I was kind of writing these thoughts out is man does do these same, same things apply to so many different daily, weekly, monthly decisions that we do and blockers that we sort of put in front of ourselves that keep us from getting to where we want to go. So I'll run you through these six things, but my hope for you is that it can actually help you unblock maybe some of the things that you're stuck on right now. So my first thought, first thing that came to mind when that question is posed, you can always do it again, right? Like very few things in this world are permanent, it's always worth thinking about the reversibility of a decision. If, if a decision can be reversed, then the amount of, of time and thought that needs to go into it can be like 80% less. If we're talking about selling a building where I've got 100 employees in it, that that's a biggie, right? But if we're talking about something that could easily be walked back or done again to a degree, running a firm, like on the, on the, the longer arc of your career, you can absolutely go out and run a firm again. And if you're in a position where you're thinking about selling a firm, there's going to be a lot of like, well, what else am I going to do? Doubts about if your skill sets are relevant to anything else in the world. Right. Because it's all you've ever done. I mean, my gosh, that's, that's been a big time thing for me is I literally went out of school, did tax prep for a decade, ran a firm for three or four years, and it's kind of my only skill in this life. And I didn't even, I didn't start doing video stuff until Covid. So I really, like, I've never had any expertise besides preparing tax returns and then building a cast practice. And so when it came time to sell that firm, it's like, really, Buster? Like, you think that you're capable of doing something besides how you've made your money to date, but the reality is you could always go back. Like, you could absolutely do it again. And you know how much easier it is to do the second time than it is the first time? You know the traps. Oftentimes you've got a. Not oftentimes you will have a network that will make it way easier to pull the right people together to do that thing again. And in all likelihood, you're going to do it way better than you did it the first time. On the scale of like, very irreversible things and not reversible things, selling your firm, like, that's probably somewhere in the middle because now you're not going to go back and get your, your old firm back in all likelihood. But these days, especially when you got the skill set, the network, not that hard to launch a firm. And I'm saying that through the lens of like, like, if you're someone who's done this before, the notion of doing it a second time, not that intimidating because you've done it before. Right. If you're doing it for the first time, 100, you're learning so many lessons the first time. That's a really hard thing. You're probably out on your own, you're your own boss for the very first time. Like, there's just so many things you're learning all at once. But if you really ultimately regret selling a firm, you can always go back now. Like, the most common question I get asked, it comes up pretty much daily on social media, but even in person at events, it comes up quite a bit. I was at a conference yesterday and three people, three people brought it up in the span of about 45 minutes as they're like, do you ever miss it? Like, do you worry that your knowledge about it is only relevant for so long. That is how to, how to run an accounting firm. Because I don't anymore. And I would say what I try to do now is actually something completely different. The value that I provide to people. You don't need somebody to tell you what it's like to run an accounting firm, right? Like if you do that already, you know exactly what that's like. But when I was running an accounting firm, I could tell you that I was heads down in my own little universe. And I learned the most valuable thing for me was to be able to come up for air and learn from a bunch of other people. What I'm able to do today that you can't do is I can spend all of my time talking with other accounting firms. I can put out a ton of content that all creates conversation where I will say one thing and folks will share their experience that may align and may not align. I'm the beneficiary of that because like my, my, my lived experience is only ever going to be what it is. But I'm able to pick up all this stuff from other people because this is literally what I do all day. So I am ignorant to the day to day because I don't do the day to day anymore. The service I see myself providing is what folks in the day today are ignorant to, right? Being able to widen the perspective because I have the really cool opportunity of just meeting a lot of people and seeing what they're doing, picking out my favorite things and then, and then sharing that with y'. All. Now there's a version of this that, that we like, grieve and have to navigate for anything that we agree to stop doing. So many of those same people who will ask me like, do you. In fact, I'm thinking of one person specifically who runs a really cool tax practice, but by and large, most of their time just goes into like they're managing client relationships. They're doing a bit of the final technical review managing relationships. You can go to that same person and say, do you feel like you're going to lose your relevance on how to put stuff into ultra tax and prepare a tax return from scratch because you don't do it anymore. Another guy I've talked with this week runs a really big bookkeeping practice. He's like, I haven't, I haven't opened a ledger in about three years. Is he going to lose his relevance because he doesn't do that stuff anymore? The answer is, is yes and no. Like that's just that's inherent in moving on to the next thing, to the more valuable thing, is absolutely, you. You. You pick up some ignorance on the thing that you're moving away from, but you're choosing to move away from it to something better. And so it takes, like, a willingness to be ignorant to that thing, to know less about it than you did for those skills to atrophy a little bit, because it isn't realistic for you to be able to do absolutely everything. We got to pick what our job's going to be and as the big boss and to have that agency. That's the greatest gift of being able to run your own thing, is you can choose the things that you want to work on. And if. If we pretend that we're not going to be ignorant to the other things, we're kind of lying to ourselves because we won't do a good job of that. Like, if we. If we hold ourselves out as still being the person to do all of that stuff, you just won't do any of it very well. So the second thing that came to mind specifically around selling the firm is you got to be real with yourself. Your heart is either in it or it isn't. And in my case, by the time I'd made that decision to sell my firm, I was publishing videos that, I don't know, maybe. Maybe 500 people would watch them the week after they came out. And that's like, 500 firms that I'm impacting as opposed to my one firm. And so I was already having. And at this point, like, my accountant community was a couple of years old, so I was already talking with so many other people every single week that I was. It was already really, really clear to me that the impact that I could have was much greater on this side than it was inside of my own firm. And, like, I'll be real with you. I'm a better leader of leaders than I am staff. Like, there's. I don't know, there's sort of this element of the. The person who is the best teacher for you is the one that's, like, one step ahead of you. The. The superpower that I have is all of the conversations that I've had, and the people that I know who are. Are running really cool, progressive firms that I think that we should be looking up to. And the product of all those conversations is that I'm just. I have, like, a framework for how to run a firm that's, I would say, pretty advanced because I've just been the beneficiary of being able to have all those conversations. So for me to come back to, oh, what's the best way to prep this tax return? Or the right way to do this? Or that's very specific thing in QuickBooks Online. I, like, I'm not that guy. I'm just not. And frankly, I'm not super interested in going back to being that guy because I love what I do now. And what I do now is, I would say it's more. More rare and more out of reach for folks and. And higher leverage because I can share this stuff with a whole bunch of firms. Those firm owners, then, like, they're creating a better place to work for the rest of their staff. Like, that's just a. That's just a more fulfilling challenge for me. And so when it came time to sell the firm, my heart was very clearly in this other thing. And had I kept running my firm, my firm probably would have been the victim of that. That split attention and the fact that I had this other thing that I was very excited about. You may have experienced this with burnout preparing tax returns or burnout doing bookkeeping or something like that. Like, there was a day where that was really, really exciting. But you're like, I don't know that I can do this job anymore. I'm getting kind of sick of it. Or even dealing with clients. I mean, that was one for me. I got really burnt out on the exact same client conversations every single day. I just got bored with that. And you may look at that and think, is this for me? Like, do I really want to keep doing this? To me, I think the great news is your progression through running your firm, whatever that looks like, like, you have the agency to craft the role that is going to put you in the position to be the greatest help you can be to your team. You're not going to be at your best when you're not doing something that you're passionate about. The progression of what I was passionate about, it started with having an internship at an accounting firm that paid better than my buddies. I was passionate my sophomore year in college about making money, stacking cash, buddy. And when you're a sophomore in college, it doesn't take much, but simply the fact that I was making more than my friends, that was what I was passionate about in that moment. That took me into tax prep. And I wouldn't say that I was passionate about tax prep as much as I was. I could see what a profitable business running an accounting firm could be. And if there's one thing the first guy I worked for taught me it was. He was transparent enough to be like, hey, this is a pretty good gig. And that was ultimately because he wanted me to buy him out and so he would share some of that stuff with me. And I'm like, dang. Like, he's in this rinky dink little, little office, only has a few people working for him, rolls in in a sweatpants at about noon every day, and he's making good money. I wasn't excited about the tax work, but I was like, this seems like actually a pretty solid gig for me. Someone who was not attracted to the big four of it all coming out of school, even though that's where they were funneling everybody, you know, into the Portland big firms. I peeked into that and I was like, okay, you're all going into audit. Like, I can see what that lifestyle looks like. It's 50, 50, whether you make it past two years and you're going to be on the road the next two years. I don't do that. That sucks. So after simply making money, my passion became like, a little more entrepreneurial. Like, okay, I could see running a firm like this is actually pretty cool. By the time I was at the next firm that I. That I ultimately bought a couple of partners out in, it was there that I evolved out of doing client work. And so we had a. We had a team of about 40 people. And it was like, we are of a size where I need to be managing. We actually need a level of people below me that are also managing. Anytime I'm spending with clients is taking away from what I can be for the rest of my team. And so at that point, my heart was into the strategy, how we were pricing engagements, ensuring that we were serving the right type of client. That was the very most viable thing I could bring to the firm. This was also during COVID when we were navigating all the COVID relief stuff. And that was just wild. But that was the biggest way I could impact the firm. And it was actually Covid relief and learning from a bunch of other firms online how they were navigating that and seeing how I became like a superhero within the firm that just had this level of intelligence that would not have been possible for any single person to have. But I was the beneficiary of all the other really smart firm owners online who are sharing that stuff every single day. And so inside of my firm, like, I. I had this, like, impossible level of knowledge because I had access to a bunch of other firms that were sharing this stuff day to day. And, and so our firm benefited from that, our clients benefited from that, and ultimately, really that. That seeing that play out. And I'm sure there have been versions of this in the accounting profession before, but I really think Covid accelerated the appetite for learning from peers online on social media, which was just, and still is to a degree, but not as much was just a joke at the time. The notion that somebody would share something valuable on Twitter, that was like, that was. That was laughable. And it was from there that I got into creating content. And then my passion really became like, how do I help people at a larger scale? And you can't. Like, you can't lie to yourself about what's lighting your fire in that moment and what isn't. And I'm. I'm a big believer in. To the degree that you can. Following the thing that you're passionate about is a. Is a real hack. And like, video is another example of that for me is I learned that video was a fun way to, uh, make silly jokes in sort of an educational format. And I got more joy out of that than most people do. And it's what had me producing videos late into the night and at a larger volume than most folks while having kids and running a firm and all these things. But my competitive advantage was I was passionate about that. I was having fun. And that's. That is a gift. When you have something that you are geeked on to the degree that you can, following that through your career journey, that's something you have that other people don't have. And when you're old and crusty like us, sometimes that's. That's the differentiator that you need. The fact that, that you are super into it, you want to be doing it whether it's for work or not. A lot of people do not have that thing that they're passionate about. If you do, man, don't run away from it. Like, pay attention to that. Today's episode is sponsored in part by Cloud accountant staffing. Their backstory. They were actually an accounting firm that started hiring accountants in the Philippines. They started doing it for some of their friends, and now, now they will do it for you, comma, friend. They help you hire talented accounts in the Philippines because they've got recruiters on the ground. They're pulling from what is actually an increasingly powerful finance workforce in the Philippines. All of the big four offices have, like, huge offices over there. Any type of talent you can hire in the US you can hire the Philippines as well. But when you start out, you're going to have all these ignorant questions and the stuff you're even afraid to ask, like, how do I even get them a computer to work on? Do they work on their own and VPN into mine? Do I send them a computer? What about like power outages, Internet outages, like team building? How does any of that stuff work? I can tell you the mistake that I made is I got stuck on those things for like two or three years and try to think through all these solutions. How am I going to do my disclosures and all that? Gang, that's like half of the value of these services is they've walked so many accounting firms through this. Stop trying to guess what the right way is to do it. Let them tell you what has actually worked and not worked for other firms. They will hold your hand through it like it's the reason that these services exist. So if you're considering it, like just hop on a call with them to learn. You got nothing to lose. At the very least you'll come away with like some new ideas and thoughts on how this stuff actually works. Highly recommend having a chat with them. To learn more about cloud account staffing, check out the link down in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by Ignition. Come, come, come, come, come. Here's the thing. Here's the thing about client billing. You can't bill for the time you spend billing. You can't. You can't. It is pure waste. And we're bad at billing because it's, it's icky. You let things slide. You don't get paid. You waste time. Waste time chasing people for money. That's not what I did. I would just. I didn't want to waste time chasing them. And so just. I just eat it. Don't do that. This is where Ignition comes in. The leading revenue generation platform for accounts and professional services. When I was running my firm, Ignition wiped out our ar, it's true. And significantly reduced the time spent billing clients. Saving our partners over a thousand hours in the first year. Cause they didn't have to bill all that stuff manually. Man. With Ignition, we want more business with impressive online proposals. No more hustling. Hustling PDFs and Word docs. We automatically pulled payment upfront or at the end of a job when it was done. No more dial in for dollars. We transitioned our firm to more recurring revenue and better managed scope creep. No more leaving money on the table. Ignition is making thousands of firms more money and genuinely made us more profitable. Check out over 7,000 of the smartest businesses run on ignition@ignitionapp.com. put a link in the show notes. Third thought I had around selling my firm was, was, we are capable of focusing on fewer things than we think. And I'm still struggling with that. That was probably a big, a big punch right in the oof bone for, for many of you, we're capable on focusing on fewer things than we think. And I would say the majority of us entrepreneurial folks, we'll go. We'll go our whole lives spinning too many plates at the expense of the one plate. That is like, man, if you just cranked on this like, that was probably the move. Now, there's a balancing act here of, like, what's fulfilling what is best for the business versus what is best for me. Because as we talk about a lot, there's a level of financial security beyond which, like, more money. Not that big of a difference. Extremely privileged thing to say. But reality is, most accounting firm owners, you are past that threshold and you get past that threshold shockingly fast. And so beyond that, there's a mountain of things that you could do that are, quote, unquote, best for the business. But if that burns you out in five years, and I try to be really, really conscious of this because my line of work, creating content, you are like, you are like, in many ways like a professional athlete. Like, how many, how many content creators have you seen do it for five years or more? You got to be really mindful of how do you actually make this sustainable so that you don't end up super burned out. Sick of being in the public eye, sick of constantly putting yourself out there every single day to be picked apart and the, and the target of whatever people feel like putting out into the ether that day. When you're deciding, like, here's what's right for the business versus here's what's right for me. Again, it's a privileged thing to be able to do, but you got to be, you got to be really paying attention to what's right for me and what's going to keep this thing sustainable, even if it isn't the right thing for the business for me personally. Right now, that's live events, that's in person stuff. In person stuff. Not a good thing for my business. It really isn't. For sure, builds a greater level of depth with folks, but it is not the highest leverage thing for my business by a mile. But it's the thing that gives me energy. Like, it's the thing that gets Me excited to be back at home in front of a camera again, going out and having a bunch of conversations. I was in Tampa. As I'm recording this, I was in Tampa 16 hours ago talking with a bunch of folks who are, you know, avid, avid podcast listeners. And to like to meet people in person and have those conversations and put faces to names, it's so energizing. And if I don't do that, like it, like just to be clear, in this room right now it's just me. Occasionally I'll hear the garage door underneath me open and close. It means my wife and son, they're going out to run errands or something. But it's just me. And latter half of last year I was pretty burnt out and I didn't really realize it until, until later on as burnout usually works, right. And earlier this year I had a couple opportunities to do some more in person stuff and it was so good and I came back so jacked, like so enthused. I'm like, okay, this just needs to be part of the energy management plan, you know, like how you're recharging your batteries. And so now that's a really becoming more of a core part of, of, I don't know, my business is the right word because it's not great from a business standpoint, but my priorities being able to create spaces for folks to come together and hang out in person because that's, that is the thing that, that I'm most amped on right now. And again, number three, we're capable of focusing on fewer things than we think the trap here can be. Oh, here we go. It's one more thing now. And so this realistically looks like, how do we build a team that can put on killer events? Is all the stuff we're already doing at a place where it's self sufficient or is it too early to really be able to move away from those things or do you just kill those things as a result? So some inside baseball, you know, this week will, will probably be the first week where we've got our short form video sort of lifecycle kind of self managing with a few team members so that myself and my kind of producer, like higher level, over the top media person are totally removed from that process. And so the short form stuff, like it's kind of happening on its own now. Those are going out on, on YouTube shorts, on Instagram, on TikTok. And then the highest performing one of those will pull over maybe once a week to LinkedIn and Twitter. But that's now in a place where it's self sustaining so I don't need to be as hands on with it. I've also got the right person in place so that if something does go sideways there or we lose a key member of that team, there's a manager that, that's job is to come in and get to the bottom of that. So like I've got some resilience there to where that won't come back to me. And so the, the reward to me is focus, is I don't have to have my head into that anymore. And while I probably have no business going out and doing this other thing, like the reality is that like that's where my heart is right now. That's what I'm really excited about. I think actually the move towards social media and even online communities to a degree and living out more of our lives in a distributed way and not working in person with folks, it's just cranked up the appetite for all things in person. Like we've done anything in person the last couple of years, you know, you know this just the vibes are off the charts, especially when it's with people you've already kind of built a relationship with online. That's just like 10x as exciting to have all those people together in the same place. Nothing beats it. And so like when I look at all the things that I can do and enable for people, I honestly think that's the most valuable thing I can probably enable is be a hub for a certain type of person and get those people together. And like sometimes in your career you just, you hit on something where you're like, yeah, like that's the really, really powerful thing or the really meaningful pain I can solve for these people. And, and you got to follow that, even if it means some of the other stuff falls off. In fact, I was watching a video about the business of dude perfect. So dude perfect, they do like trick shots. Very family friendly YouTube channel. Really cool guys built a massively successful YouTube empire. But now like their YouTube videos, they don't put like out the same volume and effort that they did. And their views on their YouTube videos are a fraction of what they were at their peak. And you look at that and you're like, is that a failure? But the reality is they're doing like arena shows, like they're traveling the world, meeting their fans in person, doing that stuff. They're talking about building like literal theme parks because that's the thing that they're excited about right now. That's that's a deeper level of connection than just making one more YouTube video that'll do 20 million views, right? And that just when I saw that, that actually resonated with me so much where you got to be so careful getting sucked into the vanity metrics of it all and the hamster wheel of showing up. Like, there's enough of y' all that have tuned into this podcast for long enough to where I know if I if this is the last podcast episode I ever made, but I emailed you in three months and I'm like, hey, I'm going to be running a dinner in town. Want to come hang? You'd be like, totally. I'm there and I'm looking. I think what I'm excited more excited about next is like that deeper level of connection actually creating really cool, really impactful experiences for people at a at a different level of depth. Today's episode is sponsored in part by Team up, who helps you hire talented accountants directly in the Philippines. You ever wondered how much it would cost to hire a senior accountant? That is what do you pay a senior accountant in the Philippines on an ongoing basis? Senior accountant just so we're on the same page. So somebody who can like manage the entire end and accounting process. Post all the closing entries. In fact, here's the profile of a senior accountant Team up recently placed into a firm that a bachelor's in accounting. We're a certified public accountant which is a Philippines certification bill.com and QuickBooks certified 6 1/2 years experience in accounting over 5 years experience with US firms experience managing, training and reviewing the work of junior team members. Doesn't that sound nice? Proficient with QuickBooks, Xero, bill.com, rippling gusto expensify a salary 2000 bucks a month. The normal range for a senior accountant in the Philippines between 1700 and 20 $200 USD per month. Buddy Accounting. It's a global language really. Yes. Doesn't matter if you have butts in the seats in the land of the free or in somebody else's land. Accounting's accounting to learn more actually could swipe Team Up's whole salary guide that they just made. It's really good. I'll link that down in the show notes. Hey, quick word from one of today's sponsors. Me. Me. Yes. I run a community. Realize that is for accounting firm owners and realize is kind of the secret behind how I've done all of my content and been able to like financially turn thought leadership into a business. About 100 firm owners in there realize is a systematic way to build connections with other peer firm owners. It's not a framework for how to run a firm. It's a way to introduce you to other super cool firm owners. Right now we're putting together small groups so you can have a group of like 5, 6, 7 other firm owners just like you that you meet with every single month run very similar firms. Having this, for me, totally transformed firm running my North Star. Like, my goal for you coming into this group is to make a new best friend, somebody that runs a firm, because that was what I needed in my journey. The whole community is built around that. It's called Realize. Link down in the show notes if you want to learn more. All right. Fourth thought on selling my firm is for me doing it again. Running a firm. It's actually totally out of the question. And this, this question comes up a lot. Would I ever go back to it? Like, do I miss it or anything like that? There's aspects of it that I miss. And the biggest thing is probably creating a really cool place for people to work and getting to see the people I work with start here and end here and be like, man, I can see how in 36 months time, like, we've just. We have left you in a vastly better place for. For the entire rest of your career than. Than where we found you. And that's an incredible. That sounds. That was like a weirdly objectifying way of. Of putting it. But that was an incredibly satisfying thing to create those opportunities for other people because I worked a lot of years where nobody was making that investment in me. And I look back and I'm like, Dang, I did 10 years and what changed? Like, where did that decade just go? That part of it I miss. But I would argue in my job now, I can also create those same opportunities. And if I were to launch a firm right now, it would be one, to be able to document the journey. And that may be enough of a reason someday to come back and explore that more. But two, the reason that's kind of floating around that decision is are you doing it to like, prove something to the people who. Who think you can't do that or don't believe that you can do that and that's the wrong reason to do something. I mean, ju. Just like the. The polar opposites of my day yesterday, I'm in Tampa in a hotel getting crapped on on a bunch of stuff on social media. Just like, folks who are like, kind of what a grifter? Like, just the Normal stuff. You. You that, like, anybody putting thought leadership online deals with. I walk 10 minutes down to where the conference is going on, and I'm. I'm frankly blown away by, like, how many people there were excited to see me and, like, excited for the talk and all of that. And there are a bunch of people there that I got to meet for the first time, and that was super fun. And there was just, like, this level of, I don't know, like, appreciation and excitement. And a lot of that is, like, the realness of the. In person of it versus just metrics on a video where, like, I walk into that room and I'm like, why was I just wasting my time with these people online, right? Like, why am I trying to win some battle there when I'm like, obviously, people value. Value what you do. You kind of just got to focus on the right things. And so when it. When you see, like. And you. You experience this every single day in your client list, you got stinkers on one end of the spectrum and then people on the other end of the spectrum that think you freaking walk on water and would happily pay you twice as much. But who do you dwell on? You dwell on the stinkers rather than just like, dropping everything and running to the people that you're helping and being even more helpful and finding more people like them. And I worry if I went out and I started an accounting firm again, it would actually be to, like, prove something to folks that, honestly, I don't. I couldn't care less about. And you know what the very next thing would be, I would. I would launch a firm. But the way I would do it is so different to how a normal person does it their first time that it would probably just feel out of touch because, like, I can. I can hire really talented folks, and I have just a lot of advantages right now that people starting out their firm the first time, like, they don't have any of those advantages. So how relevant would that actually be? It? I mean, it'd be good content. What do you think about that? Okay, thought number five on. On whether I regret selling the firm. I'm very careful not to live the same 12 months for too long especially. So if me just doing the same thing is actually getting in the way of creating opportunities for other people. So let's say you're considering selling your firm. In my opinion, the very best way you can do this, as an internal sale, we've all seen, I mean, 98% of external sales end in a bunch of clients and a bunch of staff getting hosed. There are a lot of firms out there where you've got the people who could run your firm. You could do a seller finance internal sale maybe it has to be a long payback and there's some risk in that for you. But you getting out of their way is probably the best thing for them. Especially generational firms tale as old as time. Now I, I'll get asked to do like talks, you know, like, why do I, why do you not go do talks like QuickBooks, Connect and this and that. And the reality is we gotta get, we gotta get some new voices in there. Like, I don't. There's plenty of opportunities for people to hear from me. Goodness sakes. I try to. I don't know, like part of, part of what's fulfilling to me is creating opportunities for other people along the way. And if I'm sat there doing the exact same thing for years and years and years, I'm just very scared of a big block of time just kind of disappearing and passing me by, not meeting new people, not getting exposed to new experiences. That was a really big driver in selling the firm. As I was like, yeah, we could keep making the firm better. It's going to take probably five years. But boy, there's a lot of other really exciting stuff over here that I know will personally help me grow in a totally different way. But the big thing was the last one here, number six is I was focused on who the next people were that I could help. And there's so many examples of this in your day to day where you're unwilling to give up the thing that you do today because you're fixated on the value that you have for those people. And in the process, you're never valuable to that next group of people where that's probably an even sweeter opportunity both for you and for them. Selling my firm is a very clear example of this being great for the people in my firm who I loved. And that was the really hard thing to leave versus that letting me do, do things on an entirely different scale and be helpful to a new set of people. This exact same logic applies all the way down to you hiring a virtual assistant and being like, well, what if that client ever got an email from my virtual assistant instead of me? You know what an opportunity it is for that virtual assistant to, to do that for you or delegating a client to a member of your staff? Well, that client loves me. They're never going to be able to work with somebody else. Okay, well if you don't give up that client. If you don't delegate them, what person or what opportunity won't get your attention. That's even more valuable. It's out there. And I think if we don't think through this often enough, what have I really done in the last six months and am I, am I going to the next thing or like the cost and the emotional maybe connection we have with the status quo. If we're not willing to disassociate ourself from that in order to enable the next opportunity, then you're under leveraging, I think what you are capable of. But you're not going to have that bigger impact until you give yourself permission to do it. I jotted down these notes of my thoughts on my firm and I'm like, these are kind of notes on everything, like micro decisions, delegations, delegation. Do I hire that next person? Do I fire that client? I feel like it applies to a lot of things. Anyways, I a bit of a brain ramble today. Hopefully you picked up some tidbits in there. I had a super fun week being out and about, traveling if I saw you. Thanks for coming out. If you've been chatting with me on social and over email today about some live events we got coming up, man, I'm so excited about that and I hope to see you soon. If you're just here on the podcast, bro, thanks for being here. I'll see you in the next one.