591 First Impressions: OpenClaw for Accounting Firms [Exactly how and when this will impact firms]

So last week we put out a deep dive on Claude Cowork, arguably the most disruptive AI agent the accounting space has ever seen. And in that week, over 50,000 accountants have tuned in to learn about that agent. But you know what I really think is we're actually talking about the wrong agent. We spent the last 2 or 3 weeks writing and researching a new video all about OpenClaw, which right now is kind of still framed as like this impossibly insecure AI agent that's very powerful, but not something anybody will ever actually use. But if I look into the future of how AI agents will impact accounting firms, the app that is closest to that reality that still today is very hard to get our heads around, it is OpenClaw. And what people still aren't getting about it is that it is more than a personal productivity tool. OpenClaw, I think, is a model for how the future of AI agents, like, inside of an organization will work. So today I want to run you through what it actually looks like to push out AI agents to your entire team. Because I think OpenClaw is actually closer to an interesting version of this than anybody else, than Claude, than ChatGPT. We are talking about every person on your team having an agent that can use their computer, that can work across all of their apps, an assistant that is vastly more powerful than anything we've had before. Also, a bunch of folks shared what they love about their desk setups. We're gonna talk OpenClaw rest of the episode. It's gonna be an AI detox. Wanna get into what a number of folks shared about, uh, their own battle stations, their desk setups. Also, we're taking a look at an accounting firm's website. Pretty good website, but some practical tips, actually some pretty easy changes that you can make to ensure that your, your website is as impactful as it can possibly be. Lots to cover today. Let's get into it. We already did one episode on OpenClaw, like very early days when it first came out. And right now there's just, are we exhausted by the AI conversation yet? Like there's so much of it going on. We're gonna be careful not to do too much AI on the podcast because while it is very, very important, the conversation is much less important than the learning, than the doing. And there's so little like effort being put into learning and doing and so much more into like, oh, let's just talk about it. And so it's why we're working on these really big lift videos that, that go on my my main YouTube channel, most, most recently the Cloud Cowork video, and very soon an OpenClaw video as well, because I just want you to learn how this stuff works and then like form our own opinions. And it's always worth remembering, like, we are in this just like bubble of folks that are way ahead of the curve and, and how they think about running an accounting firm and leveraging technology. And the bubble inside the bubble right now really is the people still talking about OpenClaw. Which remains like the most powerful AI agent there has ever been. And it is a big step forward from Claude Cowork, which itself is very exciting. And so today I'm just like going to speedrun you through the really, really powerful features that make it unique, but also what it looks like from like an accounting firm standpoint to push out access to something like OpenClaw. Because while it isn't something that, that we're ready to do yet, it can be centrally deployed like you can set up as a firm an OpenClaw instance that everybody on your team can access. And that's a, a really powerful signal for what the future of very, very good AI agents could look like. And so I want to also show you the powerful, like, sort of organizational features that are there, because if it's not OpenClaw, it will be ChatGPT copying these features. It'll be Claude copying these features. In fact, Claude has already, already copied a bunch of really cool OpenClaw features. So let me speedrun you first through the, the personal productivity features that make this AI agent interesting, and then more like the firm-wide productivity opportunity. So personal productivity features. If you're not familiar with OpenClaw, it can operate your entire computer, like click on stuff, keyboard inputs, hear the sounds that are being played through the computer, hear like your voice input. It is an agent with total control of the entire machine, like root access. And that is what makes it so profoundly powerful, but also profoundly dangerous. Now it can work either attended or unattended. So this could be something that's working on your machine as you're working, but it can also be something that you either put on your machine or another machine, and that machine is awake 24 hours a day and doing work for you. Now to like instruct the agent and tell it what to do or provide it with guidance, you can either do that on the computer directly that it's working on, or you can do that remotely. It can send you a Telegram message, a Slack message, even an SMS. Like it can kind of create any way of communicating with you that's going to work best for you. If you wanna do it in Microsoft Teams, like great, there's an API for that and it's smart enough to be able to build the connections to, to talk with you that way if that's your preference. So this thing can control the entirety of a computer. It can work if someone's on the computer or not, and it can interact with you in whatever way is going to be most productive to you. Does that remind you of anything? It's, kind of like working with another human. And especially in the accounting firm world where we are using like a mix of, uh, desktop and online software. And so much of the work that we do is just like kind of a manual integration of all these different systems because that is kind of the nature of the work that we do, bringing all that stuff together into one place. An agent that can work across a bunch of different apps in one machine, that's especially powerful for accounting firms. You know why, you know, QuickBooks' AI agents and, and all these other apps that we use that have their own standalone AIs that work within those tools, you know why those aren't very useful for us is because so much of our job is about bridging information across a whole bunch of different tools. And QuickBooks is not going to build an AI agent that then like talks to my practice management system and my Microsoft Outlook and all these different things, right? So for the way that we work, the agent that controls the entire machine works across all those apps. It's incredibly powerful. In the OpenCloud video that we've got coming soon, we have it not only working on its own, but working inside of like a practice management system. The agent has its own 1Password, like it is, it is managing its own passwords and access to different services. At one point we were doing like a batch import of a bunch of clients into a practice management system and there was an issue with the import process and it went out on its own, raised the question like, does this system have an API? Went out, figured it out, created an API key, and then did the same task via the platform's API. API since it couldn't do it in like the web app. It did all this on its own in like a 90-second arc where it got stuck, figured all that stuff out, and did it via API instead. That's not something that I know how to do, but it went out and did it itself. Other few really key features when it comes to personal productivity: it has persistent memory, so the stuff that you do with it, how you tell it to always behave, it can remember this stuff. It can leverage skills. So similar to Cloud Cowork, you can create skills just by like showing it how to do a thing and say, okay, save this now as a skill. Give the skill some sort of name, and then down the road, whenever it's doing something similar, it can call on that skill that you created. And that basically increases the likelihood that it's going to do that job to your expectations. And so if it's doing something in QuickBooks Online, if it is, uh, completing some sort of tax work paper, if it is, uh, associating receipts with transactions, not unlike the first time you just pull a stranger into doing that work, they can do a version of it like without much guidance from you. But the most helpful version of that is the one where you like really clearly outline the expectations of how you want it done. That's the sort of thing that you build into a skill. And then the next time it goes to do the same work, it's much more efficient, does it to a much better level. You probably then are still tinkering with the skill a little bit and continuing to improve upon it, particularly in what we do, which is so much repetitive, like month over month, the same thing for the client every single month, or, you know, we're doing 200 1040s. There are similar workflows with sort of different circumstances and, and client fact patterns, but we can build skills for the workflows themselves. Now we kind of touched on this already. Uh, Open Clock can also use a browser and you can create cron jobs. So like chronological jobs, do this thing every day at 8:00 AM, do this thing every month on the 5th of the month. And remember, it can work across all of the tools that we use. Now today there's not a version of this that you can really trust at this point to run securely. We just did a whole episode on the security of AI. AI agents. The big issues right now are it has full access to the web, so it can be tricked by things on the web. And that's doubly troublesome when it has access to privileged information like sensitive client information, the ability to log in to, say, your practice management system. Like, it has access to the keys to, to all sorts of sensitive things. And so we can't yet trust it to then go out and do stuff on the web or respond to emails, that sort of thing. but it is fundamentally the most powerful personal AI assistant we've ever had. And honestly, it's not even close. Like I spent 2 or 3 weeks with OpenClaw now. It's why I'm holding a tablet for my show notes and not using this laptop because this laptop's been wiped and I can't put, I mean, I can't put my Notion where my podcast show notes are. I'm not going to give this laptop access to Notion because I've got OpenClaw on it and it's doing all sorts of other things and I don't want it to have that privileged information. When I saw the headlines around OpenClaw and like, it's been a huge, huge driver of the whole AI conversation. When I saw that stuff for the first couple of few weeks, I'm like, this feels like one of those AI things that will flame out pretty quickly. And it didn't. So I spent a couple of weeks with it thinking that I would like just throw together this quick thing that's kind of a helpful guide for folks, make basically make a YouTube about it, a YouTube video about it for accounting firms, and then move on with my life. And that is not at all what happened. I like got into it and I'm like, holy smokes, there's so much more depth here. Ultimately, like bought a standalone machine where we'll be having an OpenClaw setup that basically the entire team accesses. So that sort of got you into like, what are the cool personal productivity aspects of OpenClaw? But let's now talk about like the firm-wide productivity opportunities that are here, because I think this is the missing part of the conversation because most of the people shouting about AI online are like, solo-preneur people. I, I don't know, like they, so many of them just kind of feel like people without any actual business experience. But the real power here, uh, and we'll come back to the example inside of my company, is that OpenClaw can be basically like deployed in a centralized way. So one of the like built-in ways that you can interact with OpenClaw is via Slack. So Slack's just a messaging platform, kinda like Microsoft Teams. I can have OpenClaw running on this laptop. But connect it to Slack and let other members of my team interact with it all, uh, with their own independent conversations. It could be happening via direct messages, could be happening in specific channels. Uh, you can tailor how OpenClaw functions according to where those conversations are happening. So we could have a channel that is like workflow-focused, uh, around a specific job. And so there's specific skills that it employs, additional context that makes it better at that specific job. But all those conversations happening across across my entire organization are all coming back to the same instance of OpenClaw. Now, within OpenClaw, you can have agents that are, are basically set up to do different jobs. So it's not just a single generalized AI assistant. In some ways, you could think of it maybe as custom GPTs, if that's something that you, you've used before. And so they are like agents purpose-built for doing specific things. And, you know, you're, you're AI champion in the firm, or, um, Maybe specific folks with domain expertise can speak into like how it ought to do these specific jobs, and then the rest of your firm can leverage that. Like, I mean, it's like custom GPTs, like cranked up to 1,000 because the same agents can use the same software that we're using, like work in the practice management system, go out to BlueJay and ask a tax research question. Super powerful in terms of like, how do you centralize a cool tool like this, but also give everyone access to it, right? I feel like ChatGPT, Claude, they haven't really cracked this, whereas OpenClaw, it truly is this instance that like just belongs to your firm that can have all these sort of different tentacles that do different jobs and you can set up however you want the team to interact with it to be where you already work. And this is really important is it doesn't become one more app for your firm. Your firm just interacts with it where they already work. And so in my team, that is Slack. Everybody's already in Slack. I don't have to give them a login for OpenClaw or anything like that. Like they're just interacting with it where they already work. And so it truly becomes an asset of the firm in a way that I wouldn't say any AI tools to date have, have really been. We are still largely just using off-the-shelf AI stuff, right? And you may have prompts that you like. Maybe you made a custom GPT here or there, but we're not really like building an AI that is an asset to the firm. If you look at OpenClaw, if that is what the future of these, these sort of agent systems look like that we deploy inside of our accounting firms, that very much becomes an asset for us. Right. And this is a much more customizable version of software really, because we're saying like, here is how we do this specific type of work and you're just, you're going to take this a step farther than software has ever been able to take this for us. In fact, you're even going to hop in and like update the practice management system when you're done with that work. And there, there isn't a version of that that a software developer is really gonna build for you, like, and be useful off the shelf. Like, the opportunity here is if ChatGPT let you kind of do some cool personal productivity thing, it sort of skipped a step from where, where you have off-the-shelf software that solves the problems that the entire industry has. ChatGPT can solve sort of personal productivity problems that you have, but who's solving for the firm level like workflow opportunities where, where we actually want everybody doing this work the same way. And we have these agreed upon SOPs for how to do X, Y, and Z. Where's the AI that will deploy that for me? This is the problem that I think this solves for that ChatGPT and Claude have not really given us a solution for yet. This centrally deployed AI that we can customize to the way that we work. And like, I mean, the tool itself, it is good enough to do all this stuff right now. Really the only thing holding us back is the security concerns and OpenClaw, the project, it is an open source project. They've been shipping a ton of security stuff. Like security really is a big part of what they're innovating on and trying to figure out like this is incredibly powerful, but how do you do it the right way? The founder, like the guy that created it, has since joined OpenAI. And so what we see from OpenClaw today, we will have down the road in your ChatGPT and your Claude and stuff like that. But right now when everybody's like, what is, how do we even build a tech stack to like understand where we're headed right now? Because we've got this weird sort of AI agent notion that it's like this agent can just work in all of my apps. Well, do I still need those apps? Will the AI agent just like somehow do the work and bypass those apps? OpenClaw, I think right now is, is like the best model we have for where this probably goes, which is this really messy era where we have AI agents, that like use these underlying tools that we're also paying for? And then those tools themselves end up having more agent users than human users. What does that mean? Does that break user-based pricing? It probably does because your agent's doing most of the work in the tool, right? It probably means a lot of those tools go away too because the agent can kind of be the glue. Like, do I need a tool for running amortization schedules? No. Those little sort of like trivial side tools like those probably all go away because it's something that the AI agent can just do. But then does that mean that we're like buying an off-the-shelf agent now? Like, oh, there's just an accounting agent and that's an app that I buy and it works across all my apps. That seems really messy, right? And so I think the closest thing we have to an answer of what this messy future looks like is what OpenClaw is right now. An agent that I can run from even this laptop and then connect it to some sort of messaging channel that the rest of my team uses. And then you kind of customize the way that your team interacts with it. In a way that makes sense for your workflow and is more intelligent than just a general AI assistant. We got more AI headlines going around than ever before right now, right? Accounting firms are hiring AI agents to do real work, but one company, they said, we know better. They said, we're going to be here for you when you need a human. You know, remember a human, the original AI agent. And Cloud Accountant Staffing, it's run by folks that used to run an accounting firm and help you find accounting talent all over the world. Now they've got a self-service portal where you can actually go out right now and in 60 seconds or less see all of the candidates that they've got who are looking for roles, even book interviews directly from that portal. They even do human benchmarking. They do assessments with these folks so you can see their personality type and like what percentile they come in on certain accounting skills. They've done all this pre-work for you. So for you, it's as easy as hopping into the portal and booking an interview. These humans come absolutely packed with all sorts of features, all sorts of things your AI agents can't do. Okay, so I know you're hiring a bunch of AI agents right now, but if you need a human— maybe this is a hot take— if you need a human, talk with Cloud Accountant Staffing to learn more. Check out the link down in the show notes. It's that time of year. It really is when your tax hosting provider absolutely grinds to a halt. Because everybody's in there hammering on the tax software at the same time and the hosting servers are like, I need a break right now. There's— gang, there's a better approach. That approach is today's sponsor, Barido, who will give you your own private cloud. You don't want to share a cloud with whatever other weirdos are hosting their software in your cloud with you right now. I don't know what that guy's doing. You want your own cloud that never slows down. And would you believe me if I told you it is cheaper than you would believe to move to Verado from, say, your Thomson Reuters hosting, Drake hosting, something like that. It is both cheaper, it is faster. What? That's two things. Kind of a no-brainer. They can move you over a weekend, and they can even handle all of your, like, outsourced IT support, like function as your IT department. In fact, the cost to have Verado be your IT department and do all of your hosting is less than the cost of just Thomson Reuters Virtual Office. Buddy, this one is a no-brainer on the list of to-dos to knock out right after April 15th, buddy, you're going to want to talk to Verado. To learn more, check out the link down in the show notes. Now, at the firm level, important to note, because it can use the tools that our firms use, it can also automate the tools that our firms use in ways that we've always wished we could. So you've got, you know, you want this tool to be able to talk to this other tool. You wish it could do X, Y, Z. This agent, it can do that stuff very well for you behind the scenes. And so it sort of augments the tech that we already have because it can just, it can do this stuff without any of your humans having to lift a finger. And so if we're thinking about what are the jobs that my humans can give to the AI to, to help them with, we will be doing a lot of that, like humans coming to the AI saying, help me to do this thing. But we also got to remember there's a lot of jobs that we would happily just have none of our humans doing. And the AI agent just takes that over. So then how do you do that in a way that doesn't become a mess? Well, you probably still need some sort of breadcrumb trail of what it did. And right now, to me, that probably looks like the practice management system. And you have AI agents that are effectively acting as if they are human users in your practice management system and signing off that they did X, Y, Z and producing work papers. And like the whole provability of everything that they've done is just as important as if a human accountant in your firm is doing the same work. But it's not just going to be about how the humans interact with the AI agent. It's going to also be about, okay, we could also probably just get it to like do X, Y, Z. Like every time somebody uploads a file in this system that we really want in that other system, it can just do that. Like it can move that because that's not a hard, complex operation. And that saves our team from having to do that annoying thing. Right. And so to me, the real news with OpenClaw, like the real thing that I feel like it cracks that normal AI assistants do not is what does it look like to take this really messy, abstract thing that we're all really struggling to get our heads around right now and somehow deploy it across an entire organization? Like, can you even imagine? If you've done much banging around on Claude Cowork yet, like you've seen, like how sort of freewheeling and like powerful it can be. And I'll say it again today, Claude Cowork and Open Claude, they're not ready for client-sensitive work. For a whole bunch of reasons that we don't need to get into a tangent on today. But if you played with Cloud Cowork much, you know, like just how much there is to that. How much is there? How much meat is on that bone to then plop it in front of a member of your team who is the same person where when you plop ChatGPT in front of them, they're like, okay, can you tell me what to do next? And you're like, what do you mean what to do next? You can do anything. It's incredible. And they're like, I see that you're excited, but I don't know what that means. 'Cause I don't, is this like Google? And you're like, how do you not get it? And they're like, I'm just gonna go back to get my work done if you can leave me alone. If we struggle to get people plugged into ChatGPT and maybe you even yourself struggle to like remember like, oh, how do I, how do I pull this into my work? Then what we're talking about here, Cloud Cowork, OpenClaw, like it is another level of complexity and by extension opportunity. So how do you push that out across your team? I think I have a vision for this now for the first time after all this work and testing that we've done with OpenClaw. Basically, you have a centralized instance of this AI that you use with your firm, and your entire team could probably still DM with OpenClaw and use it like a ChatGPT, throw whatever they need at it and see if it can help them. But we can also layer on top of that more specific streams of work that the AI agent is doing, like say in a Slack channel, maybe, maybe you, you've got a specific mode for like doing tax research, putting together a basic bookkeeping file, something like that. It's a combination of, yes, it can still be your personal assistant for whatever you want to throw at it, but it can also be given specific jobs and progress these specific workflows. And so if we get back to how our accounting firms actually work, well, we do 1040 work, we do monthly bookkeeping work, we do X, Y, Z, right? Here are the steps and how that work gets done. Now we can actually take an AI assistant and show it, here are all the steps that go into this work. I now want you to do steps 1 through 3. Anytime something in the PM gets to step 7, I want you to do X, Y, Z, annotate it accordingly, produce this work paper, and then progress it in the practice management system to step 8. Like, we can do that now. I say that we have the tech that is good enough to do that now. We're still figuring out how to do it securely. And so the exciting thing to me here is that combination of personal AI assistant, but also like AI as infrastructure, like it is in the walls. It is just making stuff happen in the accounting firm. That is something that Claude Cowork right now I would say is not really touching. It requires someone to come up and ask it to do a job and know how to use it and go through X, Y, Z, as opposed to these processes being durable and something that we set up to just happen automatically and get that work done either without lifting a finger at all or getting it to 80% so that when you got to come in and do, do part of that task, there's only the 20% remaining. I'm tickled that our Cloud Cowork video is doing— it's one of the best performing videos that we've ever done. And I think it's because people are just really hungry for practical, just like dead simple. Can you just show me? Show me what everybody's talking about. Show me how to do it. There's such an appetite for that rather than people talking about it. I'm equally excited for you to see our OpenClaw video. Should be out in the next week. If Cloud Cowork opened your mind a little bit to how significant this change is, OpenClaw is yet another step. Of like, holy smokes, there's part of me that thinks like this time next year, next January, February, March, there's part of me that thinks, man, we're going to be getting work done in such a different way. But there's still part of me that also thinks like, yeah, but we've been saying that for a while and the world has so much inertia and just how we get stuff done. And that's been sort of the easy answer for the last few years to say like, yes, it's exciting, things will change. But it will take longer than we think. It's maybe the first time right now that I'm like, that might not actually be right anymore. Like, this might really change a lot of how we get our work done. Like, if you've seen the Cowork video, there were things we showed off there from like how it handles, you know, one specific little part of tax prep, how it can handle one specific little type of bookkeeping project. There are things there that are already powerful enough to where if we knew how to do that stuff securely, not if we knew how to, If there was a way with the system to do that stuff securely, we would be using the heck out of that. I mean, every single tax project, a huge percentage of bookkeeping projects would all be going through that AI tool and already be making a big difference on how we get work done every single day. And so right now we have all of the, the collective brainpower and capital of, you know, the worldwide investment that's going into AI working on exactly what we're talking about right now. OpenClaw just changed things. Everybody's now reacting. Cloud Cowork has since shipped a whole bunch of features that were novel in OpenClaw, things like persistent memory, being able to control it from your phone when you're away from your computer, all these things that folks loved about OpenClaw. There's now a huge amount of investment and effort going into like this kind of being the future of how you use AI inside of an organization to make you more productive. And that is a tough horse to bet against. I mean, like in, in really in society right now, I don't know that there's anything that is not getting more of a push than AI for so many applications, from trivial work stuff to national security things. The last couple of years I've been excited about AI, but also very pragmatic because it just hasn't impacted the way that we work all that much. Right. And I would say even a month ago, I was in the same spot where I'm like, yeah, this stuff is cool, but like, yeah, it's like we just have such a specific way of working that has to happen in this very narrow lane of the tools we use from QuickBooks to our tax software. How does this really impact us still? And I'm like, I'm seeing the light and hopefully it's a light. Hopefully it's a good light, right? Either way, it's going to be exciting. It's going to be interesting. We're already working on other AI videos because there's like, oh geez, well, this thing that we talked about, you can also use it for X, Y, Z. And I think that will be more of a push of the main YouTube channel is just practically show me how to do X, Y, Z. And I love making those videos even though they're a lot more work because I think we're in a position where we have the expertise and like the production team to be able to do really good versions of these rather than just talking about stuff, rather than just adding to the conversation because there's way too much talk. Like I spent basically 2 weeks off of social media just like, like using the tools, doing research, like figuring out how to create, you know, fake bank statements, fake tax documents so that you can actually like do real work and run real work through this stuff. And boy, was that time well spent. Like now coming back to social media, I'm like, ugh, can I just go back to being heads down and like working and actually like using this stuff? So hopefully we're an outlet for the people who are just like, just show me, please. Like, I'm kind of done talking about this stuff. Okay, let's rinse our brains out. Enough AI talk. Let's get back to strategy. We're going to break down a really cool accounting firm website and then we're going to circle back a bit to your battle station, your desk setup, some things that folks shared that they loved about their setups. But first, let's roast this accounting firm website. Roast my website, I wish you would, because I know that mine isn't very good. Okay, I've got this website from someone who sent me a DM, I think. Want to get your website roasted? Pop it down in the comments. Send me an email. Send me a text. My phone number is in the show notes of this podcast episode. Who would do that, right? Let's get into it. This is an accounting firm that is niching into construction. And this, I would say, this is one of the better websites that we've looked at. Should give you some ideas for how to make that website something that's more than just a business card and like actually can, can do a job. The big hero headline text on this website, a construction CPA in your corner, and then subtext below that, we help contractors and trade business owners track costs by job, plan for taxes year round, and work with a CPA who knows what running a trade business actually looks like. This smells a little bit like they listened to the episode about like figuring out your sort of one sentence. Very important for you to be able to get to like a one sentence elevator pitch. I guess that's not even an elevator pitch. That's like a walking, walking by somebody on the street pitch. A single line statement that explains not only what you do, but what the profit opportunity is for the person on the other side. Because I don't want to be in the business of selling services where everybody else is selling the same service and we're all in the race to the bottom. I want to be in the business of selling opportunity. If you give me $1, I will unlock something that will give you $2 in return because for that there is no price ceiling. And so being able to frame what we do through the lens of an opportunity for you that will make you more money, like there's no better way to sell something than that. And so the first line of sort of the subtext here on the website, we help contractors and trade business owners track costs by job. That's kind of getting there. What it doesn't totally land for me is how it will make them more money. And there's some other text on the website here that is more through the lens of seeing what projects are making you money. And I would say that's a step closer, but like the goal line, what we're trying to get to here is to help you basically make better decisions to ensure that every job makes you more money. That's the goal here is to make these folks more money. Now, one thing to always think about with your website is when somebody lands on it, what are you asking them to do? What is the next step? And as I look at this website, there's actually 3 buttons, and I'd encourage you to go do this on your website right now. Just put in the URL. Don't scroll. Just look at that initial screen. What are you asking them to do? On this website, they're, they're basically asking for 3 things. In the top right, there's a button that says get in touch, but then there's 2 buttons on the hero panel of the website, the very top panel. The first button says get started. The second button says View Services. So we have basically 3 call to actions in the very first view. We've got Get Started, View Services, and Get in Touch. And in a perfect world, we could just, we could just guide them on a single journey. So we're not asking them to do a whole bunch of things. And the easiest thing to cut here honestly is either Get Started or Get in Touch. Like if somebody wants to work with you, for sure there'll be a way on your website where, where they can figure out how to work with you. But 95% of people will never get past this very first view. They won't. And so like this first view needs to optimize for what will keep the right person here longer. And there's another situation where the more specific the messaging is there, the more likely you will keep the right person. And so, for example, this firm only works with, you know, $2 to $5 million construction businesses. Put $2 to $5 million construction businesses here. When somebody sees that, it has the effect of making it feel like this is something that is, that is custom made for them. That's actually a big step forward from just, quote, a construction CPA. I'll be honest, I would also flip kind of what is their primary hero and their secondary subtext here. Their primary hero text right now is a construction CPA in your corner. And this is attractive to people who are in the market for a, quote, CPA. But if you think about setting that as like the terms of engagement from the beginning, from the outset, then what they're really doing is comparing you to other CPAs. Instead, what I want to sell them is an opportunity. Here's how we're going to make you more money. Here's how we are going to save you money on taxes. Here is how we're going to ensure that the projects you're saying yes to are only the most profitable projects. That's an opportunity. I might be a CPA, I might be an EA. I could have all these credentials and all this other stuff, but so does everybody else. So I want to sell them on the opportunity first because my identity, the thing that I may think is impressive— I'm a construction CPA— that's kind of secondary to the person on the other side of the table. And it doesn't matter how much work you put into this credential, how proud you are of it. I mean, I made a— I ticked a bunch of people off on Twitter the other day. What was the tweet? Nobody tells you when you get your CPA that you're joining an esteemed group of, what is it, like 670,000 other active CPAs in the United States. My goal is not to be one of 670,000. My goal is to be like one of one, one of 10. I can still be a CPA. I mean, I am a CPA. I mean, you can still have that credential, but there's a path to being even more specific than simply someone with that credential, right? Couple other things about this website. Their domain is a.cpa top-level domain. So their website is here'smywebsite.cpa. I don't have a problem with that, but anyone using a.cpa domain, you need a.com domain as well. And that.com domain needs to redirect to, you know, the.cpa domain. The problem with.cpa domains, is you always have to think, what will people think if they see my website, they see my URL? I can't put myaccountingfirm.cpa on the side of a building and have anyone actually expect anyone to know what that even is. Like a normal person who's not an accountant, if they see johnsonandjohnson.cpa, they will just think that's the name of an accounting firm. They won't even know that that is a website, a URL that they can go to. And so what this firm's actually done, which I think is the correct approach, is they have a catchy, like, very simple.com domain that just then redirects to the.CPA. Now you can make an argument. Do you need the.CPA domain at all? Does it just add some confusion? Potentially. I think the folks that are most into the.CPA domain are the ones who are very into the CPA certification and like the level of trust they think that provides. Some of that is real. Some of that I think can sometimes be Well, we put a lot of value in it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the other people put a lot of value in it. All I will say is, is if you do want to use a.cpa domain, make sure if you're going to have a single URL that you're going to put up somewhere visually, don't put a.cpa URL up because nobody knows. I mean, even a lot of— I mean, most CPAs, I think, don't even know that there is a.cpa top-level domain. Tax firms are up to their eyeballs in 1040 work right now. You really are. Everybody is sending you all these documents and you're doing the old hokey pokey You have like, ah, what do I need? What do I have? Uh, you never sent me number 3, 7, and 9. AI gang can automate honestly all of this at this point. This episode's sponsor, Sorban. They've been at the top of my recommendations for tax workflow since they launched. And they're using AI as effectively as anybody to take the pain out of 1040 work. And as you know, listening to this podcast, it has never been more important than it is right now to make sure that we are making the most of these unbelievably good new AI models. Your clients don't get value from the document gathering process. In fact, it gets away, away from like the, the stuff that you actually want to be doing, right? It devalues what you do if they see you as this just document sort of admin gatherer. Software has solved for this. It really, really has. To check out how Sorban is now using AI not only to automate 1040 intake, but also automate the input into your tax software and, and in the delivery of the tax return, check out the link down in the show notes. Super cool product. If you are building an accounting team, you know just what a headache it is to get all of your team doing month-end closes the same way, right? There's that stage where you're all in the same room and you can kind of like keep in sync because it's such a small team. But beyond a certain threshold, you're like, oh my gosh, everybody's choosing their own adventure. These engagements are taking on lives of their own. And it is what makes the latest feature drops from this episode's sponsor, Financial Cents, It's ever so important. So they are historically a practice management system for accounting firms, that is Financial Sense, but they're shipping a bunch of month-end close automation features inside of Financial Sense. So it has actually a deep integration into the accounting ledger, and it is pulling all the transactions into the platform to review, like, were there any weird outlier transactions? Like, it actually goes through, like, remember what it was, like 6 to 10 different categories of things that could be wrong, and identifying those transactions for you in an automated way. And if there's an issue, you can fix it right from within Financial Sense, and it will push that fix back to the accounting ledger. They also do the same with uncategorized transactions. So if you're doing the Amazon purchase hokey pokey with a client and you're like, hey, what is this? Can you give me a receipt? You can manage all of that from inside Financial Sense as well, giving you sort of like a single place that is everything that you need to run your bookkeeping practice. Some really cool stuff they've been shipping, and I've got a special discount code that you can use. If you are a firm with 2 or more users, use the code JASON10 to get 10% off the annual team or scale plan. Worth checking out. I think you'll like it. To learn more, check out the link down in the show notes. One thing this website is missing, which I think is, is very important, is because we have to remember that 95% of people, really more than that, are gonna bounce without ever taking action. What I really want my website to do first and foremost is get them one baby step closer to, you know, booking a call or completing the form. Because most of the people, when they get to your website, they will not be ready to complete the form. And so if I just lead with the form and the only call to action is book a call, we miss the opportunity to give them something that, that makes it even more likely that they will then do that. And this is— I mean, this is basically a lead magnet. So if you put your coach hat on and you think about this construction firm that does bookkeeping, does tax, what is the juiciest lead magnet you could lead off with straight off at the top of that website to get somebody to like give you their email? And get that thing from you to build a little bit more trust, to actually make it more likely that they will then book a call. For most firms these days, if you do tax, tax savings opportunities, I mean, it's pretty hard to beat that because it is found money. Most of the paid ads that you get on social media platforms for accounting firms these days, they are built around this is the way that we can use tax strategy to put money back in your pocket. There's a reason that that's what you see on almost all the ads for accounting firms. Because nothing works better than found money. And it's why even like for bookkeeping firms, we got to frame what we do through the lens of, well, when you have this information, you will do X, Y, Z, and that will make you more profitable. And so for this firm, if I had to pick one thing, it'd probably be something like the 6 most common mistakes that cost construction companies millions or, you know, or something like that. Now, in a perfect world, you can juice up the website with like actual data from your firm. So, If you think about what is the very first thing that a client's going to do when they come to me in the US, if you're a tax firm, usually that is we're going to review your last few years' returns to make sure there weren't any mistakes. Now, for the last 100 construction clients that you brought in, what if you were tracking? Here's how many that we found mistakes on. Here's like the average amount of tax savings or tax deferrals that we were able to find for people. Imagine actually having that data and being able to augment your copy or that lead magnet with that. We looked into 100 construction businesses. X number of them had this mistake and it cost them this much money. That's a way juicier version of the same thing, right? And so compare those two websites. The website that is like a business card that says, here's what we do. We are very nice. If you'd like to book a call, here's how to do so. Versus the website that is like, hey, construction businesses, we just looked at 100 of them. Here are the most common mistakes and how much money it cost them. Grab it here for free. That's the better, that's the better website because for most people it is, it is too big of a step to get to a website for the first time and immediately book a call. And so we all have some version of this. For me in my business now, it is our, it's our app recommendations. I've talked with thousands, tens of thousands now of accounting firms. They tell me all sorts of stuff, the tools that work, the tools that don't work, the weird off-the-record stuff. How would you like to avoid making a really bad, really costly, software decision inside of your accounting firm, I can help you do that. Grab these app recommendations. They're totally free. I've got the whole sob story of my firm. I chose the wrong practice management system, genuinely cost us over $100,000 and like 18 months of productivity. Do you want to make the same mistake that I did? And so I've got this whole like, it's like the driver's ed red asphalt, scare them straight, sort of. I've got all these versions of that story, right? And it's a real story. And it was a really low point in running my firm. But I can solve that problem for you like that. Literally just click this button. Give me your email address. You will never make that same decision. For me, that's my juiciest lead magnet now. And for you, that might sound like really impressive and ambitious and all that. And you're like, dang, I don't have a version of that now. I didn't have that version of that 5 years ago either. But something is better than nothing. And putting those things out there, especially on social media, testing what works, that's how you learn what will perform best. In fact, the very first like tech sort of resource we put out was this big report on practice management systems a couple of few years ago. You may have, you may remember seeing this. We compared like my 14 favorite practice management systems. It was this big feature comparison. It's so much freaking work. And we put it out and the thing ended up with like 1,600 comments on LinkedIn. And I'm like, okay, that's a signal. Like we probably need to invest more in helping people make tech decisions. And then the next version of that is our kind of like app recommendations, over 100 apps. It gets a whole bunch of people into my web and kind of into the, into some sort of connection with my brand that I wouldn't otherwise have gotten my fingers into. And even for people today who still find my stuff, of whom, like, I mean, most, most accountants, most accounting firms do not know I exist at all. Like, there's definitely some bubbles where you're like, how could you not know Jason? But that's not most of the profession. I share the story of going and speaking at a state society event, 350 people in the room. I think like, what's, what's, I think like, what are some of the most widely known software companies just to kind of assess the room and see how familiar they are with tech selections in our space or tech options. I say, how many people here are familiar with Karbonn? In a room of 350 people, 2 people raised their hand. That was a State Society event 2 years ago. None of those people knew who I was. I mean, I could count on one hand coming into that room how many people there had ever seen me or any of my stuff before I got up on stage and did that talk. And the talk that I ran them through was, here's the coolest stuff that I'm seeing in the tech ecosystem. Here's what I do talking to thousands of accounting firms. I'm about to blow your mind with all these cool things you haven't seen yet. But don't worry, don't even take notes. I'm going to give you a QR code at the end and send you all of these resources totally free after this. And in that talk, I closed 80% of the room. 80% of the people in the room gave me their email address to get that resource because it was such a painful problem for those accounting firm owners. And so consider the ROI of me just going and giving a talk that's just a normal slide deck versus me doing that. And getting those, you know, 300, 300+ people on my email list. This is the power of finding a great lead magnet, not only for your website, but for that podcast interview that you do, for that stage talk that you do. It's a force multiplier for anything that you build, be it your website, be it, you know, the marketing efforts you go out and do. You got to find that thing that's really juicy for the person that you're trying to attract, and it will make any effort that you put into any sort of marketing much more effective. Last thought on the website is specifically on this firm's intake form. So if you click, you know, get in touch or get started, it takes them to a 6-step form and immediately it shows that there are 6 steps, basically 6 screens that you will go through. I probably wouldn't do that because that kind of makes it feel like a lot of work. Also, the very first question they give is this checkbox selector of like, what brings you here today? And then there's this big old dense list of a whole bunch of different things. The combination of that giant list and the fact that you're signaling there's 6 screens, that feels kind of sweaty. Like if somebody's like really, really wants to work with you, they'll go through that. That's no problem. But most people, when they're coming to their website, they're not to that level of commitment. So try to make it feel like it's not going to be a huge lift. But also, for every accounting firm's website, the very first questions need to be whatever will qualify them to work with you. And so that, you know, for this, for this, this is probably, are you a construction company? Yes or no? What is your revenue? And a dropdown of like kind of a few different options. That needs to be the very first questions and should impact what they see next on the very next screen. You may hand them off to like a free resource if they're not somebody that you want to work with. If they are somebody you want to work with, maybe it goes straight to your calendar or maybe you gather some additional information. But as quickly as possible, get to the factors that will make them either a fit for you or not. Like cut straight to the chase. With as little friction as possible. And I know I just said put your scheduling link up there. Only give that away for like AAA folks. And there's an argument that you should really never put your scheduling link on a website, but be really, really protective of stupid meetings ending up on your calendar so that you can be very, very attentive to great meetings that should be on your calendar. Right. And a good intake form, like it should hit that stuff immediately from the beginning. What are the 2 or 3 questions that will either make them a good fit for you or not? Or at least throw out the 95% that you know won't be a fit for you, right? Thank you to this brave soul for volunteering as tribute to have us run through their website. Like I said, you want to have us do the same? Shoot me a message, shoot me an email, and maybe we will get to yours. But we got a mailbag to get to, to talk a little more about our accounting sort of battle stations. Mailbag, mailbag. This segment is called Mailbag. So most recently we did an episode on desks. Before that, we did an episode on monitors and another on kind of my 3 favorite desk upgrades, but got a bunch of comments on the desk episode. Wanted to run through some of them. Light 'em up. Making an argument here for the L-shaped desk. In that episode, I made the controversial claim that the L-shaped desk is the, the 6-monitor setup of desk arrangements. It's too much. It is so much surface that you just find things to put onto the desk because you have the desk space, so you should, right? Same thing you do when you have too many monitors. You just throw a bunch of stuff up there that's going to distract you. Like, you have two eyes. You can only look at two monitors at a time, right? Light them up here. Here's the argument, though, for L-shaped monitors. So my L-shaped desk is used so my monitors sit on one section and the other half is to talk with clients across. Although I do stack paper there when there are no clients. First of all, what are you doing in 2026 sitting across from your clients? Sounds incredible. I'm joking, but hear me out. This is yet another argument for the almighty monitor arm. Okay? Because how many times have you found yourself in a situation where you are sitting across from a client and you're like, ooh, they can't see what's on my screen right now. But then brief, like very briefly after that, you're like, oh, they need to see what's on my screen right now. Enter the monitor arm. And so if you do a lot of in-person meetings with clients, great. I'm still, my take here is I still just want a single rectangular desk, but then if I need to, I can, I can flip that bad boy around. If I got two monitors, I could even mirror the displays so that one's facing me, one's facing them, and I'm kind of walking them through all the impressive things on my computer. That is, that is 50% how I feel about this predicament. And I'm, I'm, I'm definitely like digging in here just in defense of my own take. If I'm totally honest, what Light 'Em Up is describing here is literally the office that I had for probably 8 years. So some of my conviction here is I'm just trying to win. But the other 50% of my answer, I would say, is how do we feel about meeting with clients in, in our offices in the same space where you work? Because increasingly I feel like those ought to be maybe two, two different places, especially if there's a world where you've got like physical client stuff out on your desk. Like, do I— like, I probably don't want that out with other clients bumping around, right? So I would say the other 50% of how I would push back on this is In a perfect world, I'm not meeting with my clients where I'm working for just for a lot of reasons. But not everybody has that flexibility, right? I will concede. I think it's the strongest argument there is for L-shaped desks. I'll give you that. Okay. Jessica Berkeley, writing desk pads. She said, says my desk is made of wood, but the desk pad keeps my keyboard and mouse in place. Jessica, let me take the counter, the counterargument side here with is it? Does a desk pad like a, like a desk pad doesn't have like a fence around its perimeter, right? I would, I would argue more that it is gravity. Keeping your keyboard and mouse where it is. I was anti-deskpad for probably 15 years, but I have gone deskpad the last 2 years. I have, I've got a gymungous sort of oversized one because I, uh, like I suspect Jessica does, there is something nice about like the OCD of like my keyboard and my mouse are on this, are on this thing now. And it's maybe it's like a little sweater for my arms. It's a little more cozy than, you know, the wood desk, right? So I totally understand that. I can tell you I may be going back away from the desk pad because— and I'm not proud of this and I don't know why I'm sharing it— I'm a desk eater. I eat at my desk when I should probably be taking a break. And I've had some real calamities befell my desk, befell my desk pad in the last month or so. And I think I just kind of need to throw it out because mine's like, what is it like neoprene? I don't know, kind of rubbery, like the black sort of almost like a mouse pad. And that thing can only like survive so many scoops of ice cream. Okay. Jessica also says invest in a keyboard rest, like something for your wrists to go on. I've never had this problem and I like, I've never had like wrist pain for like, and we've, we all, we grew up with that person that had like the really squidgy keyboard pad thing, right? And maybe that was you. I've never had that as like an ergonomic issue. And I don't know if that pad is to prevent, like, I don't know if my hands are going to fall off in a couple of years because I wasn't using it. Or if it's something I need to turn to if I do start having wrist issues. I can say when I see people say like, oh no, you need to type with your wrists up off the desk, right? Like don't rest your wrists on the desk in front of the keyboard. I don't know how to do that. Like hold my wrists up while type? Like it feels like I'm running a marathon and I get about 45 seconds into that and I'm exhausted. If you type all day holding your wrists up, that's incredible. More power to you. But right now I will say I do type like a Neanderthal. My whole arm is just flopped on the desk. Ask as my fingers tippy-tap away. Maybe I'll pay the price for that one day. So much talk about AI right now and the recent steps these models have made in the past couple of months. We've been talking about it a lot on the podcast, but the company that probably nailed putting these models to work before anybody else, it's probably this episode sponsor, Maker's Hub. They've been using AI to take the pain out of accounts payable management. Pushed the automation of that entire department to totally like new levels. I would say it's probably the only department in accountingdom that has truly been turned on its head by AI. And every time you see a powerful new AI model launch, oftentimes we think about our software vendors and we're like, do something. Like, why are you not using this yet? If you're gonna bet on any horse in the accounting software space for who will like start running with this stuff right away and get get the most out of it, MakersHub, it's a pretty good bet. So right now they're doing really hairy accounts payable stuff. So if you have to do project tracking, like receiving, inventory management, stuff like that, MakersHub is tremendous for that, whether you manage this stuff for your clients or whether your client just has to fuss with it. We've actually got some great demos of MakersHub on my YouTube channel, worth checking out or sending to a client. But to learn more about MakersHub, check out the link down in the show notes. So this is a true story. 7 years ago, I'm talking with this gal that runs an accounting firm, and she's very progressive in many ways, and she's She's kind of just showing me her model for how she does a number of different things. And then it just comes up as an afterthought that, oh yeah, most of my staff is offshore. And I'm like, what did you just say? You're— the people that are doing your work are not even in the country? And she's like, well, some of them are, but a lot of them doing the heavy lifting are offshore. She said these folks are easier to find than onshore hires. They are just as productive, if not more, and they are half to a quarter the cost. And I was like, I was like, but America and disclosures and all these things, right? And it wasn't until I saw somebody that I respected for whom this was the norm that I was like, okay, maybe I gotta reassess kind of our position on all this stuff. Now, thankfully these days we have groups that help accounting firms with this, that have done this with loads of firms. Today's sponsor, TeamUp, they will help you do this for the first time if you've never done it before. TeamUp's actually run by a former bookkeeping firm owner who just had a hard time finding good accounting talent offshore. So they went out, they hired a bunch of recruiters in the Philippines, and they pull in the very best people. By the way, I mean, all the, all the top 100 are investing in the Philippines. Like, there's a tremendous amount of account accounting talent in the Philippines. And so they're pulling in bookkeepers, tax folks, executive assistants, whatever you need. And TeamUp specifically has a direct hiring model, which means all you do is you pay TeamUp up one time a recruiting fee to go and find you your next dream hire. It's, it's as simple as that. But if you haven't done it before, you're gonna have all sorts of questions and blockers and all that, right? Don't just sit with that stuff. Talk with TeamUp because they've helped a load of firms navigate these exact same questions. Learn more about TeamUp. Check out a link down in the show notes. Also, we didn't get into keyboards. I mean, honestly, I could do a whole week of episodes on keyboards. I will say, and I'm bringing this up because Jessica said that she uses a Magic Keyboard. Magic keyboard. She also said that you can't clean a Magic Keyboard out with canned air. There's no way to blow that sucker out because the keys are so tight. Ooh, think about that. Think about the whole ecosystem going on inside of everybody's Magic Keyboards. Because you know stuff's getting in. I know. You just don't be a desk eater, Jason. Anyways, keyboards. I don't know why more accountants are not mechanical keyboard aficionados. The amount of heat and flack that I take The few times that I've shared my extreme nerdiness around the level of importance I put on my keyboard, specifically the nuance, the details of what is the right mechanical keyboard for you. Every time I get into this, people are like, what a nerd. Meanwhile, accountants are the people who will hammer on like a physical 10 key, like, oh, that feels so good. Just absolutely pounding on that thing, right? Why does— how does the same logic not hold up for our keyboard? The highlight of our day is pounding on that temp key and just listening to that printer whirr. But then you come back over to your keyboard and you're okay with just some sort of little mushy meat-like membrane Dell keyboard? No, no, no, no, no, no. Not on my desk. Okay. If you haven't explored the world of mechanical keyboards, don't go out, search Logitech mechanical keyboard. That's not the move. If you're looking for a safe jumping off point, a place to start, probably look at Keychron, K-E-Y-C-H-R-O-N. Now, very important that you know what sort of keyboard switch you prefer, because there are all sorts of different types of keyboard switches, usually referred to by color. If you're looking for something real clacky that is maybe the most similar to the mechanical switches you would have in a TenKey, probably look at a blue switch. And so when you're buying a keyboard, there'll be an option to select which switch type and you would pick blue. It's not like the keycaps that are blue. It is the switch underneath. You don't actually see the switch. It just impacts the tactile feedback, like under your fingers when you type. I can feel myself getting made fun of. Let me finish. If you want something quiet, usually the brown switches are most popular for the quiet options. Mechanical keyboards, by the way, don't have to be loud. But I will say, I don't think with brown that you get the same satisfying punch back on your little fingertips as you are typing. You also genuinely type faster with a mechanical keyboard. Than you do with whatever hunk of junk that Dell just sent with your, I don't know, Optiplex 9310. Okay. Panforkknife, this is the name of a commenter. We are on the internet after all. Said Stream Deck, end of story. And I thought I was a nerd. If you're not familiar with the Stream Deck, it is just a little device that gives you a whole bunch of buttons and it comes with very good software that lets you then map those buttons to doing stuff on your computer. Now there's a lot of accountants that are very, very into Stream Decks, even some accountants that will have like multiple Stream Decks and a whole like array of buttons in front of them like they are at the, you know, bridge of the Starship Enterprise. Here's my objection and why I've never gone down this route. That's not true. I own a Stream Deck, but I'm going to be honest. This also feels like the 6-monitor guy equivalent of your keyboard setup. You got a lot of keys on that keyboard. Many keyboards even have like sort of an accessory, like additional buttons that you can map to stuff. My happy place is on the home row. And for the same reason that real, real computer power users try to leave the keyboard as little as possible, for the same reason that I'm not jumping back and forth to the mouse, I don't want to have to jump back and forth to this other array of buttons. Now, if there's an argument to be made for the Stream Deck, I would argue it's actually for the software. More so than for the physical hardware buttons because you can then actually— but if you follow that argument through, you can then use the software to like map all those shortcuts to buttons just on your keyboard keyboard. I was recently at a Star Wars thing and I'm not going to say any more than that because I've been made fun of enough this episode, but I was in a room with just a whole array of like switches and knobs and buttons and these like cool like readout displays. Like it looks like you're on like a Star Wars-like ship sort of at the helm. And my 6-year-old boy was absolutely in heaven, running around, flipping switches, clicking little clicky buttons. There's lights coming off and on. Like, eventually you work out that the buttons and knobs and all that will control some of the things that are happening on the screens as well. And just the entirety of his brain was so lit up. And I will admit there is also something inside of me that sees a button that gives a real satisfying click when I push on it. That awakens something in me. And so I get the attraction of buttons. That being said, the Stream Deck, those buttons, they are mushy membrane buttons. They do not rise to the level of satisfaction that you get from a mechanical keyboard key. But I too am a button lover, but I've learned in my, in my long, long 37 years that what I need is focus. That looks like fewer monitors, fewer buttons to push. That is just where I'm at in my advanced age. Okay. Also from Panforkknife said, also a wireless 10-key not attached to your keyboard so you can enter numbers with your non-mouse hand. You know what? That is actually, I'm, I'm so profoundly against separate 10-keys, but this is actually a very solid argument. They're saying so that you can use the 10-key with your non-mouse hand because your mouse is normally on the right, but then on your keyboard, the 10-key, the attached 10-key, it is also on the right. And so if you have a wireless one, you put it over on the left. That's a strong argument. I could tell you though, when I would use a physical TenKey at my desk, and I would say the last couple of years at my desk, I didn't actually have a physical TenKey, but whenever I did, I used my mouse hand actually for it. Is that, tell me, is that what you use? Do you use the same? If you have a physical TenKey, do you work it with your mouse hand? Because I definitely did. And retraining my brain to then use my non-mouse hand, even though I'm actually left-handed, my left hand is dominant. Using a 10-key with my left hand. That would have been weird. Moe the CPA. So the issue with putting casters on my desk, that is wheels on your desk, is the desk becomes too tall and many sit-stand desk frames do not go low enough for making the height right to get a 90-degree angle to your elbow. So Moe's saying if he puts casters on his desk, his sit-stand desk won't go low enough to get the desktop to the right height. I'll be honest. I haven't, I haven't dealt with this. I will say I stand at an ample 6 foot 2 inches. So maybe this is less of a problem for me, but sit-stand desks not going low enough. Have you had that problem before? He said this is why he ended up doing a keyboard tray because the desk won't go low enough. So the keyboard tray sort of solves for that issue because it brings the level of the keyboard down a little bit. I don't know, man. I don't know how I feel about that. It's a lot of complication on your under desk when there's so much opportunity in how you can use your under desk as we discussed in that episode. Last question, are you a laptop and dock guy or a desktop computer guy? So do I have like a desktop battle station or do I have a laptop that I always pop into a dock? I will tell you, this is such a problem because both have such trade-offs. I grew up as a PC nerd, like I was building computers in middle school. And so I was like a traditional sort of PC workstation. I would never buy a prebuilt computer sort of guy growing up. Laptop, but I'm on the road a lot these days. Hashtag ad. Spring workshop series coming up. Is it in the spring? No, it's in, it's in, when is it? It's in May and June. I'm going to be in 20 US cities. Ticket presale should be coming any day. It has taken so long. It's so hard. Ticketing platforms so bad. Anyways, I'm on the road a lot. And so I have to have a laptop that's like got everything that I need when I'm on the road. But laptop docks are so bad. Especially PC laptop docks. Oh my gosh. Now I am a, I'm a Mac guy now. Made the move over from PC a few years ago. Don't come at me, bro. Don't, you can't take my accountant card. I will say laptop docks for Mac, while they're still not perfect, it is easier to find things that will work consistently because there's just not as many Macs as opposed to the whole PC ecosystem. Like there's just so much different combinations of hardware that it's really hard to know what exactly will work with what. So these days I'm actually both a laptop and desktop setup guy. I will also say Mac is better at giving me a consistent work experience across multiple devices. Whereas with PC, like, I mean, it's virtually nonexistent. The notion that you can spin up another PC and it will load the apps that you use and there'll be any element of being able to share stuff seamlessly across devices. Like there's kind of ways to do that stuff. It's just a lot of work on PC. So I am both a laptop and a desktop guy. Normally I would just be a desktop guy if I wasn't on the road so much. But even today, I'm not a laptop into a dock guy because I just hate futzing with docks so much. I would say a great thing about Apple and kind of moving to the Mac ecosystem is the Apple Silicon on laptops have genuinely made system requirements like how good the hardware is almost not even mattering. Anymore. Like the Apple silicon is so good that it almost doesn't matter. Like, do I need an M5 chip, an M4 chip? Like most of us are so far beyond, or it's not, no, the opposite of that. So far short of what the hardware can now do that it like almost doesn't even matter. Like it is such a big step beyond PC right now. I mean, for years, like growing up, like that was the huge thing, right? Like how many gigahertz was the processor? And then you had like multithreaded, like multicore processors. And then it was, how much RAM do you have? I feel like that's still a thing in PC-dom and kind of not really a thing on the Mac side anymore. We've angered a lot of people in this episode. You got more hot takes on desk setup stuff. I want to hear it, man, because it is when we— is when we fight about these things, it's when we all learn, we all get better, and you may make the next killer upgrade to your desk setup. Maybe that's what we need. Not an app recommendation database, an office recommendation database. I would love that if I had a YouTube channel just shouting at the camera about Office setup things and new little widgets and all of that. I would— that, if you can't tell, that would make me very happy. Next time on the podcast, we won't have a main topic about AI because you know what? AI, while it is important specifically to like the how we get the work done part of the conversation when it comes to running accounting firms, it is actually a ways down, in my opinion, the list of priorities. Actually got a great question from somebody the other day that's like, I work with like 3 different AI tools every single day and I'm still just really struggling with building an accounting firm. And it's because building an accounting firm, at least today, kind of has nothing to do with AI. The AI is a workflow thing, how we get stuff done, but you can't workflow your way into a great accounting firm. You truly can't. So next time we'll get back to more of like the sort of core aspects. What are the things we need to be paying the most attention to right now? Because I get sick about talking about AI too. Okay, gang, thanks for being here and look forward to seeing you next time. Mm.