606 Is Now The Time To SELL Your Accounting Firm? [Timing the AI wave]

Hey, Jason here. Before we get into the episode, we are just 2 weeks from the beginning of my 20-city live tour in-person events. These events we designed from scratch to be just for accounting firms. They are super fun. You'll meet a whole bunch of local accountants who also listen to the podcast. You get some continuing education. It's a bunch of, a bunch of snacks, an optional dinner. It is the only event I've seen where you can get continuing education credits with a drink in your hand. I want to see you there. It's happening in May and June. Did I mention this? Over 750 accountants have already signed up. I want to see you out there. To see the tour dates and get tickets for you and your team, head over to JasonOnFirms.com/events. Enough about your workshops. Let's get on to the actual episode. Has the AI hysteria reached an all-time high? Is it justified? People are beginning to ask the question, if I own an accounting firm, is this the time? Because I got people lining up out the door to cut me a check for my accounting firm. Should I get out? Because I simply don't know what the accounting industry looks like 3 years from now. We know better than anybody, Claude Cowork, it has reached the point where it can do some things and it's causing more people to question what does accounting work look like in the coming years? I got some thoughts. I want to flesh out the argument a bit, take either side of it, give you a clear framework for how to move forward. I know a lot of folks that listen to this show you as well are like, one day I aspire to run my own firm. Has that dream ended? We're going to talk about it. Also, we are going to break down an accounting firm website, and we're actually going to build it in a way that is very different to how most accounting firm websites are built today. Something that leans a little more into, uh, like the current trend of people wanting to follow people, like someone who's into you, who wants your expertise. How do you build a website that reflects the best of you? The thing they're trying to get to. We're also talking about using AI for cash flows and budgets. We're digging into a couple accounting firms' tech stacks and some career advice for a couple of folks who are kind of stuck at a crossroads. Plenty of ground to cover before the AI apocalypse comes. Let's get into it. If you're new here, welcome along to the Jason on Firms podcast where we just talk accounting firm stuff, man. Mainly how to run a better one, how to not lose our minds, and how to get home in time for dinner. Today, I think you can make a sound argument that AI is the biggest existential risk to accounting firms that we've ever had. Whether you buy into that or not, there has never been anything as fast moving as this. The result is more uncertainty than we've ever had before, and we really got to get our heads around this to understand where we are going to position ourselves in what's to come. Because most accountants who run a firm, the retirement plan is somebody cutting them a check for the firm. But are those days coming to an end? Because right now you can still get a pretty penny for that accounting firm. In fact, there's a lot of folks that are just hungry hungry hippoing up any firm they can get. But is that a reason for you to get out? I want to give you 6 thoughts on this stuff. Now, my background: I ran a 40-person firm. I've bought firms before. I've talked with umpteen different rollups that are all kind of taking different approaches to acquiring firms right now. Also talked with a lot of folks that have talked with PE and like gone down the entire, uh, rabbit hole from the promise of the big multiple to what that number actually looks like in the end and all the strings attached. So I think I've got a pretty sound window into the deals that are actually happening in the wild right now. And so I wanna give you my 6 biggest considerations here. Some are arguments for the idea of getting out now, cashing out. Some are arguments against. First consideration here is we have to think about, are we selling something as an accounting firm that AI is replacing? And the way that we communicate what we do is very, very important. If what you do is like a service, do I sell bookkeeping? Do I sell the classification of transactions? Do I sell preparing a tax return? This is all stuff that most of us can agree, like we're living on borrowed time. Those tasks are very soon going to be handled by AI. And just to be clear, every task inside of an accounting firm is the way it's always been. Every task has always been on a path to extinction. It's either going to be eliminated or it's going to be taken over by a computer. That's always been the case. What's changed is the rate at which it's now happening with AI. And so the identity of our firm simply can't be staked in the things that are going away. Otherwise, we won't have the language to explain what it is that we do that still has value in an age of AI. And it's the difference between selling the production and selling the advice. The value of the deliverable is going down. The value of you, the connections you can make, the advice you can dispense, that is going up. And you need only call your cable provider to understand just how much people appreciate getting to connect with another person when it comes to literally anything in life, let alone advising them on kind of their businesses, finances. Now, things to look out for. Are we serving clients right at the edge of what productized competition is serving? You look at TurboTax Full Service Business. You look at any one of a number of like productized bookkeeping solutions that do it for kind of rock bottom prices. Many firms, many shops, we've still set up our pricing to oftentimes be in the range of those like budget, high volume price taking shops. Rather than positioning ourselves as being the premium alternative. Because I can confidently explain, if you go over to that volume shop over there, here's what you're gonna get that is much worse than what you get over here. What many of us make the mistake of doing, and I've done this myself, is we win business on the premise of doing more for less. Yeah, we, we're actually cheaper than those guys and you get more from us than you do from them. I, I had a business partner who prided himself on literally closing every single customer he ever sat across from. And he would give these people his cell phone numbers. He would figure out how much the last provider was, was charging, and he would undercut them. Do you want that to be you? I tell you my take. Doing more for less, man, that's just sabotage. Pick one. Either do more and charge the same or more, or do less and charge the same or less. But don't do both. When you look at that productized solution and you're like, here's the really low level of service that you're going to get, that is why your fee should be twice as much. And as AI gets stronger, these productized solutions will continue coming upmarket. And that is not a place that we want to set up camp. We got to somehow escape commoditization, and that is selling things that are a race to the bottom, selling bookkeeping, selling tax prep. Somehow we have to become different. That's why it's increasingly hard to be a generalist accounting firm. I've got to somehow be different than the guy across the street. It's the only way I can kind of be one of one and command premium pricing. But it's also worth considering what percentage of the client base wants you, your time, your attention versus simply wanting the work to be done. Because the work being done is interchangeable. That want for you, I'm pretty sure that persists even when AI is doing the work. And this can be a little bit at odds with the notion of running a hyperscale firm. You're pushing everything off of you, right? You, you're really focused on the production and getting work out the door. That stuff's going away though. I think we can almost all see that. So consider if you are selling something that AI is replacing. Number 2, this is an argument for getting out, and I think it is a completely valid one. There's more risk today than there has ever been. Seriously, like, go back and think about any time in the past. Right now, if you had to project forward 5 years, it is a real crapshoot to know what all this stuff looks like. We can guess, and like, I don't really think it will be that bad. But I would say there's a greater level of uncertainty now than there has ever been in the past. We're going through what is basically the industrial revolution for knowledge work, the realization of thinking machines, truly thinking machines like knowledge in a box. And so the fact remains, this truly is the most risky, risky time to sit on that asset that is your accounting firm. I said that asset. Okay. Consideration number 3. Right now, accountants are integrators. We bring all this stuff together that can't otherwise be automated. Like external people are like, ah, accountants do repetitive, monotonous stuff. No, we don't. Like we've already automated all that stuff. What we do is all the crap that slips through the cracks. We chase people down for information. We bring all that stuff together. We are human integrators. And on the other side of AI, after all the tech, after everything is automated that can be automated in a big complicated world, where there's umpteen different stakeholders and people and agencies involved, is there not still gonna be a lot of integrating happening? Feels like it. Like at the end of the day, we kind of pick up what slips through the cracks. And I mean, it like, it feels like a pipe dream to think that in, you know, any legislative environment where politicians are still changing rules, you've got local government doing this or that, challenges for specific industries that we're serving. Sure feels like somebody's still gonna be the integrator in the future, just like they are today. Like that is the aspect of accounting and compliance that I just feel like never goes away. Ultimately what we do is we overcome blockers for entrepreneurs. That's what we do in accounting and compliance. Wherever there is a wall, like we help them overcome that. It's why we're the first ones they send this random form to and you're like, what? I'm an accountant. What does this have to do with my job? And they're like, well, it was a form that you have to put. Words and numbers into, so I just assumed you would do it. I got a hard time imagining that stuff ever going completely away. Consideration number 4. This is another argument for dumping your firm. This is probably the most tinfoil hat one on the list. There's a timeline. Ah, in kind of the bigger picture with AI, there's a timeline where the money just stops, where it actually dries up for a lot of people, be it knowledge workers, be it folks in transportation when we have full self-driving. A lot of people think with this like runaway AI situation, if it gets so good, you know, they talk about kind of universal basic income and stuff like that. A lot of folks are worried AI taking over everything kind of stops the flow of money and you are either left with or you are left without. And if this really comes to pass and AI kind of takes over everything, I think you're looking at like major societal changes there for like what does an operating society even look like at that point? But if we reach that point, you are going to look back and think, I should have got that bag while I still could, because right now you really can. Like, you're a month away from selling the firm for a decent amount of money. That is something that just about anyone can do that owns a firm right now. There is a buyer for almost every type of firm, which there shouldn't be, but there is. Now, last two. These are a little more positive. Is if you stick this out, you stay in the game, we're going to be positioned to settle into what the next version of accounting firms looks like. AI right now, generative AI, its capabilities are, are gonna drive us through a really significant change. I think not unlike the Industrial Revolution where how things got made totally changed. Folks, uh, moved to the cities, but that wasn't this like exponential thing that just kept taking off forever. It was a much more efficient way of like creating and distributing, uh, physical goods. But generative AI does something similar for knowledge work and information. There's gonna be a point at which that plateaus. And on the other side of that, we gotta think about what is an accounting firm? Is it something completely different or is it actually something pretty similar? Because right now accounting firms are a whole bunch of tech that everybody shares. Like nobody's building their own tech. We're all using the same apps. The different from account— the difference from accounting firm to accounting firm is the humans that are using the tech. So on the other side of AI really like coming into knowledge work and sort of hitting that next plateau, Are accounting firms just something wildly different, or is it still just a bunch of people using a bunch of tech to try to enable entrepreneurship? Last consideration here, number 6. This is probably the biggest thing for me. A mistake that we make is we get fixated on the asset that is the accounting firm. When I would say the real asset is, is your asset, is you, is what the business is making you into. We, we miss this so much. We're like, the only thing of value that I have is, is this firm. If somebody took that firm from you tomorrow, you know how much faster you would build a firm to the same point the second time? In fact, a lot of us, that sounds kind of fun, right? Like, what? Oh man, starting over from scratch. I would, I would have so many shortcuts. The moment that you get out of the game, you stop investing in the most important asset, that is you. And so if you sold your firm, what are you gonna do? Like, what are you gonna start Brickland? The robots are coming for that too, buddy. And so as much as we can drum up this like existential crisis around AI and accounting, welcome to all of knowledge work. Everybody's doing this and there's a lot of spaces that have it a lot worse than us right now. Creative work, oh my gosh. There, there are a lot of industries that are really being impacted by AI right now. Accounting arguably has not been all that impacted, but I think with what we can see right now, the next few years we know are gonna look different. And it comes at a time when there's like a vast shortage of accountants in the profession. And so much more demand for us than we could possibly fulfill. But if you're not doing this, you kind of stopped investing in yourself, right? I don't know about you. There's a part of me that's very excited and intrigued to see what is on the other side of this. And part of that is because I'm very happy to ride the AI wave. That is, put this stuff to work to run sort of an AI-native accounting firm and see where this takes us. Don't forget, being an accountant in an accounting firm, you have conversations all day long with entrepreneurs who are incredibly rare people. You go to Whole Foods, all the people bumping around there, by and large, not entrepreneurs. Like the folks we get to talk to every day at like working in accounting firms. These are like exceptional, very capable people. We sometimes forget like what high-level conversations we get to have on the other side of this AI stuff. Can you imagine a better network to have? A whole bunch of other entrepreneurs like you are an incredibly connected person. Just by doing the accounting firm thing? My take, I'm gonna keep doing the accounting firm thing, man. See where this takes us. Agree, disagree? Let me know in the comments. Gonna be an exciting couple of years and we're gonna be here talking about it. Okay? You think AI's gonna wipe out this podcast? Yeah, there, there's actually a good chance that it will. We'll see. No, I think I'm mostly joking about that. Right now you could use AI to generate a podcast, right? But you're not listening to that. And in the context of you running your firm, if an entrepreneur can generate endless advice from an AI, will it want that advice or will it, I want your advice. I think we still want to connect with other humans over this stuff. Maybe I'm just saying that because it makes me feel good, but I do think that we're learning there's certain things that we really don't want from a machine. It comes from a level of connection you get from like communicating that with another person. Hey, real quick, do you need to hire any humans inside of your accounting firm? I wish you could see what I'm seeing through my own two eyes right now. I'm staring at a portal of qualified pre-vetted candidates that are champing at the bit to come and work for your accounting firm. These are real human beings. Aubrey, a bookkeeper with 3 years experience, $3,100 a month. Samuel, an executive assistant with almost 10 years experience, $3,000 a month. Maycol, a bookkeeper with 6 years experience, he's got a CPA experience with, with Bill.com, Accounting CS, Deal, Power BI, QBO, NetSuite. Let's find a tax person. Mia, US tax accountant, experience with CCH Access, Drake, and UltraTax. Oh, bless her heart. $4,000 a month. Gang, these are all super talented accountants that are ready to come and work with your firm through Cloud Accountant Staffing, longtime sponsor of the channel. They have a portal where you can go around and see all the folks that they have pre-vetted and even book an interview directly with those people from the portal. You don't even have to hop on a call with Cloud Accountant Staffing. All these applicants have They've got resumes, they've got intro videos. Can't tell you how many firms that I know who have been very happy with Cloud Accountant Staffing. Accounting, it is a universal language. Luca Pacioli, buckle up for this one. Not American, Italian. You know why? Because accounting knows no borders. Here accounting, there accounting, everywhere accounting, counting. Okay, you need some human talent in your accounting firm? Talk with Cloud Accountant Staffing. Check out the link down in the show notes. If tax season just punched you right in the grief bone, I have good news, my friend. There's a better way. We talk a lot about AI on this podcast and the group. That is using AI to automate a whole bunch of the 1040 process? It is, it is one of this episode's sponsors, Soroban. With every like new headline you see around new AI models and new AI this, new AI that, the companies that are moving fastest using AI, they get better with every new AI model. And especially when it comes to the 1040 prep process, like if you're a US tax firm, oh my gosh, is there so much tedium still associated with collecting information from clients, getting it into the tax software, delivering it. It is a nightmare. If you are a firm doing like volume 1040 work, say 300, 500 1040s a year plus, this is a no-brainer. Take a look at Sorban. We've actually done some demos of them on my YouTube channel. You can even see how it works. Definitely worth checking out. More information down in the show notes. But up next, we're gonna talk through this accounting firm's website. I wanna show you kind of a different paradigm in thinking through how to build a website for your accounting firm that feels a little more of the times than accounting firm websites of yore. Let's get into it and roast this website. Your website remains the most visible thing about you on the internet. You get it right, you will literally collect new clients while you sleep. But most of us, well, a lot of us collect things from our website, but they're not necessarily the clients that we want. I got this message from someone building their own firm right now. Thought it'd be a fun thought experiment for us to kind of think through building out a different type of website for an accounting firm. Here's the backstory. They're launching a firm after a 25-year corporate finance career. Bless your heart. Good change. They were CFO at a large food service organization and launched a fractional CFO practice. They're CPA, but they're not doing tax work. Their background is in operational finance, accounting, M&A, and building teams and processes at scale, working with small to mid-sized businesses on margin improvement and getting ready, ready for capital events. So based on that introduction to this person, like, imagine in your head what ought to be in that website, right? Like, we ought to be speaking exactly to the unique experience this individual has. 25 years. In corporate finance working in food service organizations, which, by the way, I had to Google. Is that just a fancy way of saying restaurant? It isn't. It is more broad and includes like distribution of food. Like, think about how food gets into cafeterias and corporate stuff, even food distribution like Sysco. Basically, 77% of food services is restaurants, ghost kitchens, that sort of thing. 23% is non-commercial. Corporate cafeterias, healthcare, schools, senior living, military, and there's 0% left. But the third thing listed here is food service distribution. And it's worth thinking through, like, put your coach hat on. Imagine you're sitting down with this person. They're coming out of corporate. They don't have a client list. They're like, how am I going to build a firm around this type of person? It's worth thinking about where those choke points are, where a lot of those folks— folks— folks will collect. What are maybe the big milestones or stepping points where they need a different amount of help? In their little bio, they talk about having experience with M&A, preparing companies for sort of capital events. So if you think about what folks in the world are magnets to food service peoples, I'm thinking about PE firms that are doing this stuff, lenders, franchise consultants, industry associations. These are all folks that are putting all their efforts into finding these people. How do I piggyback their efforts and become the person for X, the CFO referral for this. I, I had a bit of this situation in my accounting firm when we did a lot of dental, but we ultimately got into DSOs, which are like these big sort of private equity roll-ups of dental clinics. They were terrible in every way, but they were great business for the accounting firm. We got connected with basically some consulting groups that were like rounding up docs and putting these groups together, and they sort of had their preferred providers for doing this and that, and we solved a meaningful problem for them, which is you get a bunch of dentists together and they're like, oh, who's going to do the payroll? Who's going to pay the bills? Who's going to do the accounting? Nobody wants to fuss with that. We could come in for a fixed percentage of collections and just be the back office of the whole group. It was amazing, like, business, super profitable work. Ultimately didn't love it because, like, we saw the inside of how those transactions went and it was awful. So we didn't stick with it. But That's the sort of situation that you're looking for, where we're finding people at a specific crossroads when they have a new need and we can come in and be the solution to that. And so should the goal of this person be to create a website that's like, hey, food service person, come and work with me? I actually think that's a hard way to build this business. What I would instead build this website around is this person's expertise and this person's micro-celebrity. We're going to show off the folks that they've worked with, the success stories and all of that, not around the brand, but around the individual. And it does like it matters to a degree here. Are you trying to build a firm just around yourself? Are you trying to build, you know, a 500-person firm where the brand has sort of this big stamp of authority? This person, my impression is I just want to have some clients and maybe a few support team members. And if that is your goal, don't build an accounting firm around website around your brand, build an accounting firm website around you. Now, the very obvious downside is that is just begging for people to be reliant upon you. But for a lot of folks, that is the accounting firm that they want to run. And if this is the case, then your website should not be faceless. It should not be talking about bookkeeping services. It should be talking about you and your expertise. Now, this person, the best way to build their business is through these connections, is through these networks. And so if you think about like, you know, thought leadership, what does modern thought leadership look like? Like if I go to, you know, Dan Martell's website, Dan Martell's real big on social media, has written some books. His website, the hero copy, humanity's biggest cheerleader. And he's sitting on like an outdoor porch chair with a mug of coffee looking the other direction. Real cool guy energy. But you scroll down and there's 3 panels here, and it's for the different types of folks he works with: entrepreneurs ready to scale, AI founders, and young adults. And all of the graphics here are like, this guy speaking on stage and kind of his story about, you know, the way he wants to change the world's perception of certain things. It is about him. It is about his thought leadership. It's not about his company. You don't even know what his company's name is. The website is danmartell.com. And so if you're building an accounting firm around your expertise, why are we talking about the brand? When your clients call you, what are they trying to get to? Like, they're trying to get to you. So let's put you on blast. Again, depends on the kind of firm that you're trying to build, but in a situation like this, it is really your personal credibility that you want to put on display. So other things we could call out on this website. Oftentimes an easy way to get the foot in the door in a specific space is to also build a specific software stack expertise. So, you know, I think about the big platforms restaurants run on now, like, say, Toast or something like that. It can be helpful to give folks an additional thing to really hang on to where they're like, oh, we use that, or, oh, we're part of this organization. Like, how can we put that front and center? Even if it's on a specific landing page, maybe not the homepage, but maybe your website slash toast to give people a more contextual way in the door. Like, think about the accounting firms that went out and became the accounting firms for, say, CrossFit. Could those accounting firms do work for different types of gyms and different types of people? Absolutely. But when they present themselves as the solution for X, it creates this perceived scarcity, whether that is real or not, that makes the perception of what you do be more premium, be more specific to that individual. Now, the tradeoffs of this approach obviously is you're building the business around one, around your identity. And I know all too well how hard that makes running a business. Boss, can you get on camera again? Because the rest of us can't do our jobs unless you do. Sorry, kids, I'm out at a 20-city tour right now. I can't shoot videos. All right, well, we got like 9 people that need something to do. Hey, right now, as this episode came out, I'm on tour, 20 cities across the US hosting events for accounting firms. JasononFirms.com/events. Please sign up, buy a ticket, come meet other cool local people in your town. Anyways, the big trade-off with that type of business that is built around your identity is just a lack of leverage. But the way you escape that is being careful not to get fully locked into one-on-one services. If all you ever do is deliver expertise one-on-one, that's the lowest leverage way you can possibly do that. And a very basic example of how you could roll out something like this is to approach clients that maybe aren't going to become like full bore work personally with you clients. Give them a group coaching option. And just to like quickly financially model this for you, let's say you send out an email to kind of some trusted folks and you're like, hey, I'm going to do a coaching group for 10 people. It's $500 a month. We're going to do it for 6 months. You're going to get direct access to me. And equally importantly, you're gonna hear the questions of other folks in the same situation as you. Now, that will be for them just as valuable, if not more valuable, than the advice that you dispense, but the value still gets attributed back to you. Any value that attendees get from fellow attendees, they will attribute that value back to you because you created the room. But let's say we're gonna do this. You pull 10 people into a group coaching setup, one call per month. People pay $500 a month to be there. Say it's a 90-minute call and you spend the first 45 minutes going through some topic that you want to talk about. You spend the last 45 minutes going through questions, pre-seed some questions, plant some questions that you want people to ask. It also de-risks the whole setup in case people aren't asking enough questions. You get 10 people in at $500. That's $30K after 6 months for a single call a month, 90 minutes of your time. The next time you feel like you got 10 people that are ready to go, You start another cohort. The programming is the exact same. You save the questions people asked from the last cohort to make the Q&A section even better. Sort of pre-bake those questions in to make sure you get to the really valuable ones. At that $500 a month pricing, like I said, that's $30 grand across 6 months, but that's $5,000 a month, a $3,333 hourly rate. You get 5 of those calls going a month. That's $200 grand a year for 5 90-minute meetings in a month. We got to think outside one-on-one services. If you're at an accounting firm right now, this is something you could almost certainly launch tomorrow. What will make it good is specificity in the people that are there. If you can get 10 folks that are in a similar line of work, that'll all go in on sort of this group coaching setup. This stuff is really, really powerful. That then becomes kind of your floor offer. And then you've got another premium step up like that. Think like getting people together for an in-person event. We're talking about something that's probably 3 to 5x as expensive. It's more exclusive, maybe a smaller number of people. But that's a much higher leverage business than just selling one-on-one coaching, one-on-one services. I don't think we see this enough yet. The idea of like building an accounting firm's identity around the individual that everybody wants access to. The, the vast majority of accounting firms, that's what it is. It's one person with a team supporting them. And if that is what you want to build and you, you don't really want to go past that, then our accounting firm websites should be all about you. They really should. They should be about your expertise because that is ultimately what makes that type of accounting firm scarce. One of one, because you don't work for any other firms, right? You just work for your own. And to bring this back to the AI conversation, when AI is doing the production, it's doing the bookkeeping, it's doing the tax returns, people are going to come not to a brand, they're going to come to a person. I think brands get cheap, people get more valuable as more of the stuff we're bumping into every day is, is, is AI slop. Very, very good, AI Slop. But we still want that human connection, right? Hey, if you want to get your website roasted, drop it in the comments. What do you got to lose? Okay, enough of websites. Let's throw it to the mailbag. Mailbag! Mailbag! This segment is called Mailbag! Mailbag questions come from email, from text. Send me a text, 1516-980-4968. They come from YouTube comments, social media DMs. There are so many, so many ways for you to get in contact with me. First question: Can you recommend a decent AI app for cash flows and budgets? 50% of the people listening to this podcast, as they heard this, jumped out of their chair and said, Claude Cowork. They took the questioner by the ears and they said, you didn't know you can use Claude Cowork for this? Here's the thing. People talk about Claude Cowork displacing software companies and replacing these companies that kind of do these side jobs. If I had to go do cash planning somewhere or go build a budget somewhere, I am running straight into the welcoming arms of Cloud Cowork. It is really good, truly is, especially at spreadsheet stuff. Now, the reason a lot of people buy forecasting and cash flow management apps isn't for the app itself. It's for the methodology that the app employs. And this is the difference between actually feeling like you're going a direction with your planning versus just staring at an empty spreadsheet. And so if you don't know how to do budgeting and you don't know how to do all this or have sort of a methodology for it yet, I mean, you can look this stuff up online. There's a whole bunch of opinionated takes on the way to do this. But I would say, and I've never been a big reporting app guy, I would say paying for a reporting app or paying for a cash management app, it is a heck of a premium to pay simply for a framework, simply for a system, a methodology for doing this. When these days you can fire up Cloud Cowork, have it go research a bunch of methodologies, find something you like, name it. The 12-step cash planning process for 3-location veterinary clinics, and then build that thing with AI because it really is good enough to do that now. Spring is here. It is spring cleaning season. The perfect time to clean out the dusty corners of your accounting firm and just get rid of the stuff that you don't want to be doing still. And for most of us, one of those cobweb-laden services that is just stuffed into the corner of the garage. It is bill pay. Well, good news, my friends. Artificial intelligence is here to help. You might have heard of it. The platform that's crushing it right now, this video's sponsor, Maker's Hub. Listen, nobody likes bill pay, okay? It sucks, but almost every business has to do it, and oftentimes it's high stakes. It's messy. It, it impacts inventory. You're going after, like, savings. The Details matter. You miss a, you miss a zero or a comma here or there. Oh my, oh my, oh my gosh. That's a big deal on BillPay, right? We are getting wildly good new AI models seemingly by the week right now. And honestly, Maker's Hub are the folks that I trust to like put this work. Maker's Hub have been like arguably making the best use of AI models over the last 3 years to solve a very, very specific problem. The problem of BillPay nobody likes. So if you do this stuff for your clients or you have clients who deal with project tracking, receiving, like construction people and manufacturing folk, HVACsmans, super recommend you check out Maker's Hub, a great example of AI done well. To learn more, check out the link down in the show notes. Hey, real quick, month-end close automation software. It has kind of completely changed what doing bookkeeping work looks like the last few years. And did you hear the news recently that this episode's sponsor, Canopy, they are working on their own spin on month-end close automation that is coming soon and will be built directly into the Canopy platform. Canopy, who you may have seen late last year, launched their own version of like tax intake built into the practice management system. Now they're going after month-end close automation, and it is all, it is all part of Canopy's vision to be the single sort of all-in-one place to not only manage the work of your accounting firm, but to get that stuff done. I almost cursed. You know what I'm saying? Canopy always kind of been like a feature nerd's dream, especially if you are of the mind where you're like, man, I want to consolidate more of my stuff, eliminate some tools you're leaning maybe more all-in-one. Canopy has been one of my leaders in the practice management system category for as long as my recommendations have existed. Excited to see what they're doing in the bookkeeping automation space now as well. I work for a small firm with 12 employees and about 1,500 clients. We have no practice management software, not even a spreadsheet. We have— oh nice— we have note cards for each client and they are moved from one box to another as the work is completed. Ever seen this before? Yeah, it's called the Dewey Decimal System. I learned about it in elementary school. It was how we found where the books were in the library. This feels like, like a slight evolution of just the lead sheet system. So the way that this worked in accounting firms for eons is you have paper files and the way that projects moved throughout the office was they literally physically moved from office to office. And if they were in kind of a holding stage, they would go into a file cabinet. But at the very top of that paper file, you had lead sheets and the lead sheets included a list of every status that that project had to get through. And people would initial and date when they'd completed it. And this is— this— the notecard system just sounds like Your drawers are statuses and clients are represented by index cards rather than physical files. Some creativity was employed in creating this system, but it's a little misguided in 2026. I think we both see that practice management systems, they actually map very nicely to your drawer approach because they're all sort of status driven, which is ultimately what those drawers represent. Best of luck to you. Godspeed rolling out a PM across 1,500 clients. You're gonna, you're gonna have a ton of fun doing that. Done it myself, across 1,800 clients, nearly died. Worked on it for 18 months. I spent a bunch of money on it, rolled it out. A few months after the rollout, realized we'd picked the wrong system. Boo! Then had to change again. Ugh. Honestly, that experience, me having to roll out a practice management system and the scars I have from that are the entire reason that I do what I do now, because nobody should have to make that same mistake that I made. So I have my app recommendations. It's why I stress to accountants, Go talk to other accountants. Please don't buy software based on what a sales rep tells you like I did, because you can make the biggest mistake of your life. So many of, of firm running problems are simply solved by having access to your peers. In fact, somebody posted in Realize, so I have an online community Realize. In fact, let me find that post. The post title is Juno Tax: Who's Used It and What's the Verdict? It was posted 2 days ago. Now 10 people have commented on it. Firms who have actually used the software. This is how you run a firm in 2026, gang. We don't have to guess anymore. We can just ask. The world has never been smaller. People have never been more collaborative about this stuff than they are now. The answers are like right there. I run a community that does this, Realized Websites, rlz.io. Conversations like this happening every single day. There were moments in my journey running a firm where if I had stopped and asked the right question, it would have saved me years of suffering. And it is— it makes me so happy the volume of resources that are out there for people today for free. Like, if I think about the old farts in my firm that I bought out, like the old partners, the resources they had at their disposal, like pre and early internet days, like there's consulting groups and stuff like that. But oh my gosh, this is the golden age of getting to run an accounting firm, honestly. Like, if anything, there's a risk that maybe it gets too easy because there's just so much information out there on how to do it really well. But you now have people coming out and starting their firms and within 5 years just running them at a wildly different level than folks, the past generation of firms, like the stuff it took them decades to figure out. People are now just like getting right straight out of the blocks. I love that, especially as like a really core memory for me was coming out of school and going to work for an accounting firm that was an absolute sweatshop, like 100-hour weeks were the norm up to tax season. I think I've shared this story before. I started working at a firm between my sophomore and junior year in college. I worked full-time at this firm through full-time college. My senior year finals, the school is about a 35-minute drive away from my office. I— senior finals were during tax season, like right up before the deadline. I went 2 nights in a row not sleeping. I drove back and forth to school, I think 4 or 5 times over those 2 days to go and take finals, only to then return to work to get more tax returns done. And what was my reward for that? I think it was a $37,000 a year salary, no overtime because I was salaried. So the fact I was working 80, 90, 100-hour weeks during tax season, that didn't make a difference. It is a wonder that I am not wrapped around a stop sign somewhere in some field alongside the road in St. Paul, Oregon. That sucked for me. But in that firm were a bunch of people that had Families had obligations. I was, I mean, I had, was 21 years old. It was the only thing keeping me from not playing video games. So I didn't miss anything by working a lot. But these people had actual lives unlike me. And when I left that firm, the hardest part about that was looking at those folks and being like, these are amazing people and they truly think they can't do better. Like they're still at that firm. And so eventually I actually went back and I acquired that firm. Those folks ultimately came to work for me. In a vastly better work environment. But like, that experience is why I'm so motivated for the profession to just be better. And there's still a long ways to go. But a lot of us, in addition to me, like, not just me, we just need to share our stories around this stuff because there's so many people living this right now. They don't know there's a better way out. So many accountants come into my content and they're like, I love what you're saying, and it sounds like you could build a pretty cool firm these days. But the firm that I'm at right now, buddy, this isn't my reality. Case in point, this person that just shared the Dewey Decimal System story. They don't run a firm, but they're here listening to the podcast because someday they're probably either going to go find something better or go build it themselves. Gang, the more conversations we have like this, the more we sort of will into existence a better future for the accounting profession. Next question: What kind of expenses are going into a 40% margin firm if the firm is remote and they only have one employee? Feels like it should be higher margin. So I always throw out the 40% margin. That's like the average accounting firm margin. It's actually a little bit above average. I would say 30% is more the true average. But for single owner firms, they hear that number and they're like, 40% margin? What do you mean? I'm running like 70, 80% margin. And that is because we think that we are free labor. And oftentimes we run our business that way, not factoring in what is the replacement cost of you. Because someone with the capability of running an accounting firm right now has a market price of, I mean, a minimum of $200,000 a year. And where many of these folks end up, like in the process of building a team and trying to get out of work, is they're like, well, dang, I actually— I don't have enough money to be able to make that next hire. And so now I'm stuck in this spot where I'm overworked but can't afford to get help. And how we get there is by not adequately valuing, like, our time. It's by having the mindset of, well, if I just did one more client, that's pure profit. That is a slippery slope, my friend. And so even for solo owner firms, if you simply factor in, like, what the market rate of you is, which is not cheap, It gets you to a more realistic snapshot of the profitability of your actual firm. And that's really important because we have to be pricing projects in a way that they can actually be staffed by somebody else potentially to do that work. Also, like, you're worth it. If somebody else would pay you that money, please yourself pay you that money. And if we're taking projects that can't command that level of money, look yourself in the mirror. Say some affirmations. I am smart. I am capable. I am accountant. That's what I say every morning, 30 times. And recognize that 80% margin is your free labor. That's how you get there. It is ultimately semantics at the end of the day, but it is like a helpful thing to, to, to bear in mind as you're building out your firm so that you don't end up in a spot where you can't ever hire to get that work out the door. This next one, I love this story. I've been listening to your podcast and wanted to reach out because your comments on well-run tax firms caught my attention. You talk about firms that manage capacity, schedule work appropriately, and avoid tax season chaos that burn people out. I'm a CPA retiring from the military after 20 years of service, mostly in leadership roles. We're going to relocate to another state in a few months, but while I'm working in the transition, I'm moonlighting at a local tax shop to see if this is something that I could be into. Okay, we were just talking about these types of people, right? Where you go to work at a firm and you're like, geez, there's got to be a better way to do this stuff. They said, I'm trying to learn how to find the kinds of firm you describe. Oh, I couldn't have teed this up better. From your perspective, what should I be looking for? What questions should I ask? And how would you recommend someone like me start getting in front of those firms for possible future job opportunities? Let me tell you this right now, brother. I say brother because I can see your name. 2,500 accountants will listen to this podcast episode, and probably 1,000 of them just got excited about you sharing your background coming out of the military, 20 years in service, mostly in leadership roles. You want to get attacks. I'm not exaggerating when I say hundreds, if not 1,000 people that listen to this are now like, I want to talk to this person. So suggestion number 1, be visible. This is you being visible. This is what happens when people stop lurking and start talking. We're all talking about this one very, very specific person right now, right? Like, you are pedaling away on the stationary bike, Peter, and you're thinking about this random dude that is coming out of the military. But you're also like, I could hire that guy. This is how the world works. Like, this is the benefit of visibility. Now, it is also something that I'm very, very passionate about. And we've had a couple forays into trying to facilitate, facilitate this stuff. If you remember a year or two ago, we did Jason.careers, which is like a placement agency basically where accountants can come and we will try to place them into accounting firms in my audience. Tried to do that for a while. Really hard business to build. I am very, very excited that we're going to have an announcement on this front very soon where I can actually help you accountants go and work in really cool modern accounting firms and vice versa, accounting firms. How would you like to hire people that listen to my content? That's something we're actually going to be able to enable for you very soon, hopefully in a matter of weeks. The people that are actually going out to my live in-person workshops will have early access to this. I'm going to be in 20 cities over the next 2 months. 85% of the US adult population, I'm, uh, an event will be within a 4-hour drive of. To learn more about those, go to jasononfirms.com/events. But if you are listening to this and you want to go to work for a better firm, stay tuned. I hope we're going to be changing some lives very soon. Hey, real quick, the most important question accounting firms are asking right now in 2026 is how do I use AI securely in my production workflows? I've said this many times, don't take security advice from a YouTuber. What you need is actual, like, proper IT help like this episode sponsor, Barrido. If I had to shoot from the hip, uh, With what I've seen from folks, Barrow might be the fastest growing IT solution for small accounting firms. I say small, I mean that like 100 employees and under. You need an IT group that just works with accounting professionals. Otherwise, you are paying this IT group to learn accounting firm things. Like I had a local IT guy that I once brought over and spent 2 days watching him learn CCH engagement, like how the like database worked on my server. Oh my God. Please don't do that. Work with an IT group that only supports accounting firms, particularly right now, as it is so important that we are beginning to implement AI effectively inside of our firms. You want to do that responsibly too, right? You need better help with this stuff. Look no further than Verito. They do hosting. They'll be your entire IT group. They'll do your— whisp. Can't recommend them enough. Check out the link down in the show notes to learn more. Hey, just real quick, if you're using Outlook or Gmail to manage email inside of your accounting firm, Brother, those were tools that were built, uh, 20+ years ago and not for accounting firms like yours. If you haven't heard of them, let me introduce you to one of today's sponsors, Missive. Missive, M-I-S-S-I-V-E. It is exactly what I needed. I actually used a bunch of like off-the-shelf help desk sort of email tools in my accounting firm. Man, man, do I wish I had Missive. It's a vastly more efficient way to manage email across across your entire team because email is not a hill that anybody should be dying on alone. We did a demo on the main channel of it. If you want to see it in action, just search my name and Missive. Really cool, doing some cool AI stuff as well. We're checking out to learn more about just what you're missing by using Outlook or Gmail. Check out the Missive info down in the show notes. Two more to go. Just found your videos online today, already reaching out. I'm getting ready to launch a company that will provide CFO advisory, FP&A, and outsourced accounting services. I'm trying to decide how granular to go with the accounting services, whether I should offer bookkeeping or start at the accountant or controller level. I don't do tax, but know a decent amount about it and can always work with the client CPA on that. Almost everyone that gets into CFO stuff goes through the progression of being like, I'm going to do the high level, higher level stuff. I'm just going to do CFO. And they get their first couple of clients. They're like, well, these books are absolute crap. And you go back and forth with the bookkeeper and you basically redo their bookkeeping for them and you just don't get paid for it. And eventually most CFO shops take over the bookkeeping because ultimately that is is the foundation of you being able to do good advisory, right? So you need one of two things, either to build the foundation yourself, and for a lot of people this ends up being the solution, or alternatively you need some really, really good partners, bookkeepers that are good at this stuff. And this is a totally viable path because the best way to build your client list is to, to find some more specificity in the type of folks that you want to work with. An added benefit of serving a specific type of entrepreneur is there's an entire ecosystem of other people that also just want to serve types of entrepreneurs, from attorneys to consultants to tax shops to bookkeepers. And so if I decide I'm just gonna work with beekeepers, then go out and find the tax shop that works with, with, uh, beekeepers, the bookkeepers that work with beekeepers. That is a, a way in because all those people are working their little buns off to find the exact same people that you want to get in front of rather than you just working your little buns off. Imagine how many more buns you can have working to your own ends if you are making use of a larger network of people that are serving that same industry. That is a sneaky, sneaky benefit of building a niche firm. But yeah, doing CFO work without the foundational bookkeeping being done right, like, that's impossible, right? So you either do it yourself or you find some really good partners who can do it well. Last question. Jason, I need some help figuring out how to improve our workflow. We are CCH Access users. I'm taking on the responsibilities at my dad's firm. Bless. Looking to implement SafeSend or Access client collaboration. Somebody lock the door. No, no, no, no, no, no. SafeSend, no Access client collaboration. Thanks for tuning in. Staging an intervention. CCH Access, if that is the tax platform you're comfortable with, fine. It sucks, but so do all the other ones. Biggest thing with tax software is where does your muscle memory live? That is where you will be most efficient. But, and this is a rule across the board, not CCH, but for any tax software provider, never buy anything from the tax vendor besides their tax software. Everything else, there is a vastly better solution to. What you will be fighting against is your tax rep. And I know your tax rep has your ear right now. They want to tell you, go use X, Y, and Z. Problem is there are too many firms right now where the only connection they have to the outside world is like their tax rep. And so that's ultimately the person that leads their tech buying decisions. Did you hear the story I shared earlier about picking the wrong practice management system? Yes, I know. We've heard the story before. Jason Staats, show us on your accounting firm where the Thomson Reuters rep hurt you. I made that mistake from listening to my TR rep. Don't do that. So if you're using Axess Tax, I see that you're looking at SafeSend. If automated delivery is a big deal for you, look at Trusts, look at Soraban, but recognize the biggest time savings opportunity in tax work right now is in automating 1040 intake. Both of those platforms will do that for you as well as automated delivery. That is probably the first tech change that I would make because it doesn't take a huge lift. Those are apps that you can plug in pretty quickly and they'll be working for you right away. If you want to look at more options, grab my app recommendations, jasononfirms.com/apps. I think they're also linked in every episode show notes. There's an entire tab, an entire an entire category of tax workflow tools. It is a really exciting growing ecosystem. But start there with the tax workflow automation tool and then look at practice management. This is the biggest, hardest tech to roll out in your firm, but is also the most important tech because it's kind of the operating system and where everything gets tracked. And recognize, I think there's maybe 40 or 50 people in my, uh, online community, Realize, who are generational firm owners and have gone through this transition, taking over the firm from mom, taking over the firm from dad. This is one of those things where if you know some other people that have been through that, it is, it will recharge your soul because to find somebody that has experienced exactly what you're describing is life-changing. And there's generational firm people who are hearing this right now that are like nodding their head. This is another great example of how connecting with other people that do this stuff will just change your life and make all this feel much easier. From how do I navigate this stuff with dad? How do I have this hard conversation? How do I put boundaries around how we're gonna approach the succession plan? But also, hey, anybody using SafeSend here to be able to ask questions like that. I can tell you, I got an email the other day from someone who was irate at SafeSend after last tax season. They've gone through an acquisition by Thomson Reuters. Word is things haven't been great since then. That's why I didn't recommend you go that direction. But good for you asking the question. We're having the conversation. You asking that question probably just saved a number of people listening to this from making that same mistake. And so let's keep having this conversation as we do on this podcast every Tuesday and Friday. Great to see all y'all here. You got any questions? Pop that stuff down in the comments. Shoot me a message. I want to see you in person too at these live events. As you're hearing this, I am probably out at a live event right now. It is continuing education. It is snacks. It is a proper dinner. There is an open bar. It is a room of 50 to 100 other accounting firm people from your local city. Can you imagine a better hang? I can't. It's a ton of fun. I want to see you there. But gang, thanks for being here. Stay safe. Keep accounting. I'll catch you in the next one.