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True story today conversation I had with a developer who had the wise idea of buying an accounting firm because they thought, how hard can it be? I'll just write, I'll just write some software and it'll get all this work done and I will just print money, take it to the bank. Story as old as time. And this just, I mean this just warms your little accountant heart, like, yeah, let's watch them fail. Some fun tidbits that came from that conversation and actually very actionable takeaways for, for non developer folks like you and I are also because it's a Q and A Friday. Whatever happened to robotic process automation? Is there still a place for it in 2025? You remember RPA? That was the tech that was going to put Phil in accounting out of a job about three years ago. Where's Phil? Are you okay? Yeah, still here. Phil's doing great. Also, what's the non slimy version of like selling something on social media, being a quote unquote influencer or even just talking about what you do so that people learn about what you do when without getting called a shill. Right, we'll talk about that. The non slimy version of it. Come on in, let's do it. If you're new here, welcome to the Jason on Firms podcast where we talk about all things running small accounting firms. Pull up a chair. Welcome. So I'm in Melbourne the other day for a talk, as you do, you know, and, and a guy who I believe is a listener to this podcast, sharing a bit of his background story. He's a developer, traditional developer, making software, writing code, whatever that means. And he says, hey, about a year ago went out and bought a practice. It was about a $400,000 a year top line practice I think he said it was. Came in with, with high hopes to write a bunch of code. And do you know what engineers always think they can do is solve any real life thing with just a few lines of code. And you wouldn't be surprised to learn that it wasn't quite that simple. The things he was surprised about, one, bringing staff around, like getting folks comfortable with change, having to swap out the tech stack. They've done a lot of that, they've done a lot of the hard things. But getting accountants to commit to that change, especially in a situation where you're, you're very reliant upon those people sticking around, that can be, that can be a tough thing. That is when people come from outside accounting, whether they're developers or not, that is always the One thing that surprises them most, I think is the amount of time and pain that goes into systems change. Like right now there's an accounting firm on the market that is still doing things on paper. Bless your heart if you've got an appetite for taking that challenge on. But good golly does it take a long time to train a team of accounts to do accounting a completely different way. And in the meantime that's, they're not going to be very efficient at getting it done that new way. Which like, if you're, if you're wearing the firm runner hat, like almost to a degree, shame on the folks running those firms because it's like, are those accountants just write offs now? Like, what do you do with those accounting professionals who work in an environment where they've been told you're going to prep all this stuff on paper whether they like it or not? Maybe they've been advocating for something different, but the reality is their skill set is entirely based in something that is extremely outdated that like no one else is going to be excited to pay for. Like the years that it takes to reskill an accountant from doing things on paper to doing things digitally. Are there certain types of expertise that can be baked into that noodle that are very hard to replicate? Like the ability to research and understand the old ways of doing things? For sure. But when at the end of the day, honestly a big part of accounting is like hustling digital stuff and managing documents and pulling things down and organizing them. It's, it's really, really hard for a person who has never done that stuff before to be productive and it takes years to get there. I wouldn't say it, it doesn't raise rise to the same level yet. But when I talk about AI adoption in small accounting firms and how there's a statistic recently about basically 25% of job descriptions now are looking for comfort level or, or like AI expertise comfort with AI tools. If you employ accountants for the next three years and never put a, like a chat GPT in their hands, like you're truly hamstringing these professionals to ever be able to go and do something else if they haven't like developed that new skill. Now going from paper to digital, that was a big transition. Today it doesn't, it's definitely, that's way bigger than ChatGPT versus pre chat GPT but depending on like how these tools continue to progress. It is a very different way of work where I as an employer feel a response ability if I create this sheltered little, little workplace Where I don't let any of my team members do anything new until one day when there's a piece of software that just, you know, does what they do or I got to let them go or something like that, and then they're out, out on the job market with a skill set that's wildly out of date. Like, I definitely feel some responsibility for that. And the same is true of teams that are super averse to changing. Like if you're stuck between being the nice guy and forcing a whole bunch of people to change, how are you going to feel when you don't force them to change? You give it another few years and that skill set is even more out of date and you are left holding the bag with a workforce that is antiquated and has absolutely nowhere to go if you let them go. Like that's the imperative of keeping up within reason. Like we don't have to be at the bleeding edge. I would say before 2025, ChatGPT, it was helpful, but if you had the whole team on it, it was like a let's get ready for where we're headed kind of thing. It could save some time, but it takes some time to learn we're doing it as more of a readiness sort of thing. I would say in 2025, with the new set of models, new features in ChatGPT, you are now actively losing time by not using ChatGPT. Like there is more than enough upside there to where it will save every single person on your team's time. And this is still the worst that it's ever going to be. Like it's just going to get more powerful. Outsiders that come into accounting firms, I think they are surprised oftentimes by how much of a technical debt there is in the tool sets that accounting firms use, but then also are surprised at how difficult it is to change it and to evolve to something better. They think they're going to buy five firms and roll them up and change all their systems and just like talk about that like it's a trivial thing. Goodness sakes. In no way is it a trivial thing. But I'll tell you what was a trivial thing for this, this individual, which I think is interesting and very actionable for the rest of us. Workflow was a real headache. They, they definitely got on some better systems and made some incremental improvements on workflow, but where they made massive improvements was in sales and marketing and positioning the firm. Within about 12 months time, I believe they said they had basically doubled the top line or at least the recurring revenue of the firm by more clearly communicating who they're good for, like identifying a positioning they could get excited about and then just doing some very traditional sales and marketing efforts around it. And this is again, it's a developer, like it's not a, not a content creation wizard or anything like that. But he said far and away the easiest and the biggest improvement that they could make was in how that firm presented itself, how aware people were of what they did and just being able to get new work in the door. And to me, this speaks to what one of our limitations as kind of technicians at, at heart, oftentimes accountants is. We will so quickly geek out on tools and workflows and procedures and all these things which are all great and all important, but mean nothing if we're not serving the right client. I don't care how efficient you are, that client that complains about the build a day that you already wrote down, they're still going to be a pain in my hiney even when my, my systems are great. In fact, trying to improve your systems to be more efficient, to cater to the underpaying client, like that's the worst of both worlds. And how many times have we heard that like, oh, we'll be more efficient next year, so we'll get some extra capacity back or once we change that system. This project wouldn't have been underwater if we just had this new system. How about we do both? How about we get a better new system, but we also find some better clients? And yes, there's only so many hours in the day, but if you aren't working on finding a better client, who will pay you more, of, of which there are tens of thousands out there, like they exist. If you aren't doing that, then who will? Right? Like you're the big boss. So I thought that was really interesting that the big takeaway was, is actually positioning, sales and marketing, that was the easiest immediate win and the firm that they acquired. And frankly, gang, I suspect that would hold true for most of our firms that the shortest path we have to running a vastly better firm is not workflow, not the technical, it's not the stuff that we naturally go to. It's the other stuff, people just knowing that you exist, being willing to do the scary thing of saying that we're for a specific type of individual, like trusting that the world is big enough to bring those people to your doorstep, even if the way we talk about it is through a much more specific lens than saying that we're for business owners or Something like that. Anyways, love that story because it scratched the itch of getting to dunk on the developers that have always told accountants, we're just going to automate you away. But also was like a great data point, like a great outsider's perspective that says like, actually, even though I'm not in marketing, sales and marketing at all, in the case of this firm, the most immediate ROI came and just giving a little bit more thought to positioning sales and marketing. This episode is sponsored in part by the folks at Canopy. Canopy, the practice management system. I've spent a lot of time digging through PMs trying to filter through the 43PMs now that I believe are marketing to North American firms. As you probably know, Canopy is on is on my short list of recommended practice management systems. And nobody likes having any more tools than you absolutely need to have, right? That's why you start building your tech stack with the practice management system to let that do as many things as possible. And when it comes to all in 1ers, Bernie's hard to beat Canopy. In fact, a couple years ago when we did this giant roundup of feature comparison of all the PMs on the market, Canopy may have actually had the most complete feature set of any PM out there. Now that's not always the answer, right? Just more, more, more. But I can tell you we're also pretty burned out of just like having to build these ridiculously big stacks. So having a, having a PM behind your firm who has the mindset of we want to try, try to pull everything that we can into one platform for you and to know they're gonna keep investing in that in the future, I can get behind that. Hey, I'm a big time tech nerd, but I also don't like playing software night janitor. So if I can get all that stuff in one place as much as possible, I want to do that. That's Kanopy. To learn more about Kanopy, check out the link down in the show notes. Today's episode is sponsored in part by TeamUp, the folks that help you hire people directly in the Philippines to work for your accounting firm. Team ups put together a killer guide, actually a 2025 salary guide for hiring accountants in the Philippines that you can swipe for free down in the show notes. One thing they called out in this guide that I wanted to cover today, what it means to direct hire. Because a lot of offshore groups, you're actually hiring the company and they have an office and they have kind of this resource pool of people that are getting work done. Team up their approach, you hire those people directly. So Team up pays recruiters on the ground in the Philippines to find those people to come and work for you, which means they're just another member of the team. If you run a distributed team, they are no different than the folks that you got across town. Now, there's sometimes like, disclosure rules, stuff like that that you got to navigate, but in terms of, like, building a workplace environment, they're just part of the squad. It means there's no like, middleman that can complicate that relationship or anything like that. It means the culture and the relationship that you have with them. It is not entangled in any other stuff that's going on, you know, in their office or, you know, the aspects of their work experience that you don't have control over. Like, it's just you hiring a person to do work. Simple as that. The Salary guide. Super good. Grab that down in the show notes and thanks to Team up for sponsoring this episode. Two other questions we're tackling next Whatever happened to robotic process automation? We've talked about this a few times on the podcast before, but rpa, it was like the cool automation tech secret sauce of, of three to five years ago. And honestly, RPA actually was a much bigger deal outside of the US market than it ever was here. So in Australia and the uk, I found way more people are still active users and proponents of RPA than we see here in the States. And part of that, I think comes down to the regulatory environment and things being able to be made a little bit more turnkey than most of the tax compliance issues that we have here in the States. Stuff like quarterly filings, some aspects of payroll reporting, some things that in the States, like we're not a simple RPA workflow from. From being able to nail. But the reality is RPA robotic process automation, still very powerful and still has its place. If you're not familiar, RPA is like it's basically software that runs on your local machine and it moves the cursor around and it will do keystrokes and all of that stuff and navigate the machine the same way a human user would. And you may be thinking, isn't that I've been hearing about AI agents? Isn't that what AI agents do? The difference is with rpa, every single step is like kind of hard coded, programmed like, not. Not necessarily coded with lines of code, although it certainly can be. But the exciting thing about RPA was kind of like an Excel macro. You could like record a sequence of steps and say go here, go to that website, click this field, type that, maybe pull all this data from a CSV. Like you could record all those steps to create a workflow and then hit go and it could theoretically do it over and over again. Whereas AI agents, they're like a conversational version of that where I, I just tell the AI agent, go out to QuickBooks and print me a profit and loss report cash basis comparative this year and last year. And an AI agent today can go and do that like, like pretty reliably. It's slow as heck, but it can do it. So it doesn't require like dictating to it every single step. It can kind of read between, read between the lines. So AI agents like they're kind of like a, just a better version of rpa. But the reality is AI agents like they're not here yet. Like they're not good enough yet to be using heavily in production. And that may change as soon as like by the end of this year. But honestly, in many ways like RPA walked so that AI agents could run or fly or whatever the next one is because many of the same workflows that if you ever went down the RPA path where you're like, okay, of all of our processes, what processes are most suited for rpa? A lot of those are going to be the exact same processes that we sick AI agents on first. Like if you can imagine a more beefed up version of ChatGPT operator, their current agent offering that costs 200amonth. If you can imagine a better version of that, I would probably have like some recurring tasks in their setup to where that on the 1st of every month the operator goes out to this website, pulls this data, maybe saves this, this data to my, my workpaper files, like my Google Drive or, or my practice management system, wherever that stuff lives. You can imagine having some recurring things set up like that so that it just goes out and magically does that. And gang, that's a godsend. Like if that actually works, that's going to be so nice. We'll probably have loads of those things set up, right? Set them up once, make sure it can do that task properly and then only ever report back to me if you break. If you were an OGRPA nerd back in the day, sounds a lot like rpa, but it's now getting much more accessible like in the form of AI agents. So you actually had a lot of like automation agencies that would specialize in working with accounting firms and a Big part of the secret sauce behind the scenes was RPA was how they were automating all these platforms. So for example, an agency could create a way to maybe print and arrange all the bookmarks or something like that in a tax return PDF a very specific way, and then save them with a specific naming convention to your file system or something like that. Like that. That's kind of the opportunity. Here is these, these agencies that would work with accounting firms could build some like custom automation stuff like that for you. And for those people, I kind of feel for them right now because we're kind of stuck where it's like, should I really invest in building an RPA bot right now? If an AI agent may be good enough for this in like 9 months time. And the reality is like, like that's probably true to some degree. If there is value in still leaning into RPA right now, honestly, it might just be to help you identify the workflows that are going to be like the. And these workflows are always the most repetitive things that your entire team does, more so than the one off thing that you do for that one client. Although setting up an automation for that certainly helpful. The even better thing is like, what are the things that we do a hundred times a month for all of our clients? Or that didn't make sense. The thing that we do once for all hundred of our clients every single month. If I can build a bot to do that, that's a much higher volume use case. That's really cool. Or like, what would it look like to build like a file system, Roomba, where it's like it can cruise through all of your files, make sure all the naming conventions are done correctly, but do all that on an automated basis. These are all things where like, there are hard ways to build this stuff today, but we're on the cusp of it getting much, much more simple. And so it's getting a little harder to justify. Like a from scratch version of this. It will be fascinating to see like how we build AI agent stuff in the near future. Like what, how do I give it like branching logic to say like, I want you to go out and try and do this and if this happens, go down this path, but if this other thing happens, go down this other path. There are some tools right now that let you do some sort of like agent workflows. So for example, let's say somebody completes a lead form on your website, they want to talk with you, they give you a few data points in the past, how would we Filter that, like, if I only want to work with businesses over a million dollars, then maybe they get an automatic email if they're under a million dollars that says like, hey, we're not ready yet, but like, here's our YouTube channel, here's some courses that we've made that could be helpful and once you get over a million bucks, let's talk. And we could set that up with like Zapier or something like that. But these new AI agent tools, they are. Let me call a couple of them out. Actually, uh, Bardeen is one that I've seen quite a bit. The biggest one of late though, by the way, like Zapier and make the kind of. The previous no code platforms for automating some of this stuff. They are getting more built in AI stuff so that you can build AI logic into those workflows. But the big one that's been taken off a lot is N8N. It's N8N, the number 8N IO. It's been around for a while. It was like back in the. When we're at like Peak Zapier and Make or Integromat. It was back then, back when those tools were super popular. N8N was around, but it just wasn't as big. But I've seen some wild like AI workflows lately where for example, you can trigger an N8N workflow every time you receive an email or every time you know, it gets tagged a certain way. Maybe you've got inbox rules that are tagging email certain ways and then have like a whole branching decision tree of logic where a large language model reads the email and then you tell it, if it's from a client, go down this path. If it's not from a client, go down this other path. Or if they're using an angry tone, do this. If they're not using an angry tone, do that. Like the notion that you actually semantically identify what things to look out for. And the LLM can, can just do that, can just make that determination pretty accurately. Not perfectly, but neither do humans. But then like the subsequent steps happen according to that LLM's decision. That's pretty wild. I'll track down that N8N email example because it's. While it's kind of technical, it may, it may blow your mind. But when Sam Altman of OpenAI says that, you know, intelligence is the next oil, not essential oils, it's not like an mlm. He means like crude oil. The notion of AI delivering intelligence that can be applied to anything. In like, very small and simple ways. That's kind of what he's getting at. And, you know, maybe the earliest example we've seen of this has been in the bill pay space where you have language models behind the scenes that are like, does this, does this look like it took into account the previous payment that we just made, or was this printed before that? Like, very simple things that a human could also determine but currently require human intervention to identify. Just little bits of intelligence that can be applied to get that thing to the next step on its own. That's the age that we're entering into. Like, I have this, this brain in a cloud and I can apply it to the things that I do. How do I do that? Like, it's such a framework shift to know where, where would I even apply that if I had this, this bountiful source of intelligence that was pretty darn good and accurate depending on the instructions that I gave it? Like, like the hard thing there is just knowing how to even use it. Because when we sit down and we do work, we're doing the exact same thing. Like, we're, we're applying our own intelligence and the body of our experience to decide this or that, this or that, this or that time and time again. But you know, if you've been doing this for long, just how many times you're having the exact same conversations, making the exact same decisions. In fact, a great analogy is like the first time you build out a service library in your accounting firm when you go from every single engagement being different and distinct and its own unique thing and thinking, I got to build an SOP from A to Z for every single client engagement versus, like, putting in the work and realizing, oh no, like, these engagements have these 80% of ingredients in common. And so we can build an sop, or they're very close to being in common, so we can build an SOP for that 80% that works on all these types of engagements. Meaning the client specific SOP then has to be very small, very concise. To me, that's a good analogy of some of the decision making that we do every single day. It may seem very unique and abstract and as if every single decision that our whole team makes all day is, is like a decision you'll only make once in your lifetime. But that's probably not the case. We're probably doing a lot of the same things. But every time you open a QuickBooks file, what's the first thing you check? Did the bank feed break? Like, what are these things that we do the same every single time on a client. And now how can we begin to use AI to apply just a little bit of intelligence to an automation to make it be able to go five times as far? That's like the most exciting thing about AI is like the notion of having intelligence in a box where if I can instruct it, here's when you should choose A and here's when you should choose B. Like the models are already good enough to be able to do that for us. And then you combine like you add in sort of AI agent stuff and being able to navigate the user interface the same way that we do, it is going to be a geek's delight. And I know that gets you excited because you're still listening to what has been in a tremendously nerdy episode. They aren't usually like this. If you're new here, I apologize. Yes, they are. He's lying. Who was that? Today's episode is sponsored in part by Cloud Account Staffing. They will help you find super talented accountants in the Philippines. But they're not just going to drop off after off the map after that. They will help you with a lot of the logistical issues that come with hiring folks in a whole other country. How do I get them a computer? Like very basic it, things like that. What happens if, if they wake up one day and their computer doesn't work? How do they get a replacement? How about power outages? I was talking with the cloud account staffing folks the other day. They're like, they actually will help the folks that they pull into. Firms like get, have like backup generators, like whatever they need to have a redundant power supply. Redundant? Redundant. That's not the right word. You know what I mean? Cloud account staffing, what they do goes well beyond just finding smart people to come and work for your firm. Because the reality is there's kind of other logistics that come with that, some easier to solve than others. And I need help. I do. And Cloud Account Staffing wants to make that as easy as possible for you. To learn more about that, what they can do for you, check out the link down in the show Notes gang. Today's episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at Carbon. Every year, Carbon does a report about AI and its impact on the accounting industry. They survey a whole bunch of accounting firms. You may have heard, we actually did a whole episode of the podcast about it. It's a really, really good report. Bunch of interesting insights from real accounting firms to see how they're using it, what's working, what's not working and kind of get the commentary on either ends of the spectrum. A lot of really interesting trends that developed just in 2025. A whole lot less fear in 25 than there was in 24. People seeing it more as an opportunity. Still a very big divide in the excitement of leadership versus staff level folks. That means we as leaders need to be doing a better job communicating and normalizing AI as a part of work so that it's not this amorphous, spooky thing that folks kind of are unsure of. Lots of exciting stuff happening there. I'll link access to that AI report down in the show notes. Totally worth checking out. I think you like it. Okay, last question by the way. You got a question? Drop it down in the comments. Join the conversation earlier this week I railed on like accounting industry vendors pushing advisory and the need to sell advisory to our clients. And while there's a lot of validity to it, it was just, it's over amplified the messaging because there's a lot of software platforms and advisors with money to be made by people buying into this. This psyop. I love, I just love calling it a psyop because that's very overly dramatic. And I ended up railing on, you know, all the people out there in the world that have something to sell to you and how we make sense of all of those things that are coming in. Like that new friend that, that you think you're really hitting it off with until you go over to their house and you find out they're in an MLM and they just want you to join it. Like what is there's a lot of accounting versions of that and how do we look out for it? The irony of this being I'm an, I'm an accounting influencer that sells things to accountants telling you how to cut through the noise. I get that. But I, I, I've told you many times on this podcast that one thing we don't do enough of is just going out into the world and reminding people that we exist. We don't see ourselves as marketers and so we don't go out and market, but we then just do nothing. Like we literally shut ourselves in an office from 6am to 6pm head down doing work. And that is not a way to go through your professional life that's optimized for serendipity for making connections. And so like version one of marketing for you is simply showing up and being helpful on social media. For most people that just means going out posting on LinkedIn every single day for the next 365 days. What do I post about? What do you think's interesting today? What's a problem that you're working through? What's a problem that you solved for a client? What's a question that you got from a client for the hundredth time that you can write an answer to and post online to attract folks that have that same question? Do you still have something to sell in that scenario? You absolutely do. You're an accounting professional. You run an accounting firm. And a big part of the ultimate goal is that future clients could find you there. And it unlocks new opportunities for your business. Where does that cross the line to something slimy? In my opinion, it is when you abandon being helpful in favor of pushing a specific objective. So I made a bunch of friends online by giving a lot, by being generous with my time. You look at people like Chad Davis with the Stanley cup among the greatest things that Canada has given us. And when I say us, I mean America, because Chad spends a lot of time in America. I still hear stories of Chad getting on zoom calls with random Internet strangers, helping them troubleshoot things in their firm and their tech stack. Just, like, random. I'm like, who does this? Like, who stops and just randomly DMs someone online and says, hey, want to hop on a zoom? And, like, helps them for two hours to figure out some sort of thing? Like, that's weird. It's. It's weird. It goes farther than I go. But the best version of marketing is, is. It's just. It is being helpful. It's answering people's questions. It's not letting your ego get in the way. It's okay to be opinionated, but when you're only willing to engage to the end that it, like, ultimately serves a very, very specific purpose for you or furthers a very, very specific agenda, then I think it kind of misses the point. And that's where, like, an accounting software company that will, like, just run advisory webinars every single month, and that's all they ever do. Is that useful? Yes, it is still useful for the folks that want to be into that. You know, Take Logan Graf. Logan Graff has an online community for new firm owners. If all Logan ever did was just started posting to social media about his community and how great it is, that would suck, because that's not useful. If he stopped engaging on other people's posts, posting helpful replies and sharing, you know, his experience with similar issues, that sort of thing. If he stopped doing that, that would suck. That's abandoning being helpful in order to, like, further a specific agenda. And the good news for people who your favorite thing in running an accounting firm is being an advisor, is helping people. The good news for you is great marketing looks the exact same. It's going out and being helpful to people at scale. That question that you've been asked a hundred times, make a video, record a little video, put it on YouTube, do a LinkedIn, post, a blog post so that a thousand people can read it for free. That's awesome. They wouldn't have otherwise known that you exist. Go on a podcast, start writing a newsletter for a very specific type of entrepreneur there. I can tell you it's, this is like a cool job for me. Like, being helpful. Like, there's a lot of joy and satisfaction to be had in that. And it's honestly, it's the least fun when you start feeling competitive and you start comparing yourself to others. But, like, if you can keep focused on, like, the fact that there are actual human beings on the other side, it doesn't matter how big the numbers get. If you have a million people looking at your thing or 10 people looking at your thing, there's real, perfectly normal, cool human beings on the other side and like, making those connections and helping folks and learning from them in the process too. That's just a really fun way to go through life. You know, like, my background is running an accounting firm where when you're the big boss of an accounting firm, unfortunately, especially when you're removed from client work, the only stuff that ever makes it way makes its way to you is the mess, the nasty stuff, like, and that's just kind of what you end up mucking through each day is the stuff that the rest of the team hasn't been able to clean up. And for me to go from that job to this job where your job is just to be helpful, it is to, like, still deal with a lot of idiotic Internet commenters and kind of that stuff and people just hating on you because you're a quote unquote influencer, if that's what you want to call it. There's a lot of that. But at the end of the day, it's just about like trying to like, do right by people and be helpful. And if that's fulfilling for you, which I sure hope it is, carve out a little bit of time to have the willingness to do that in a public setting where other people can learn from it and the marketing takes care of itself. That's the way that you do this in a non skeevy way. Not I'm going to reply to your post and give you an answer. If you book a call with me to learn about coming and working with my firm, like, no, that's a very short sighted approach to this. Figure out how to be relentlessly helpful. And there's a lot of people out there who, when you give them value, they will find ways to, to return the favor, to make a connection for you. It may not be them, it may be somebody that they know. It may not come up right now, may come up two years from now. Just going through life with the strategy of being relentlessly helpful. It's a hell of a marketing strategy and it's never been like rewarded more than it is today. In an age of social media where it's easy to find people with a specific interest or a specific type of entrepreneur, it is very easy to do a non slimy version of that. But I think we can get spooked when we see other people do a slimy version of it. And when you see a slimy version of it, sometimes you can paint broad brushstrokes over that and be like, see, that's why I don't post to LinkedIn. No, no, no, no. That's not a reason to not post to LinkedIn. That is the reason why you should do it in a not crappy way. Like the supply to demand of quality content on LinkedIn right now. Like there is such a low supply because there's so much chest beating. And look at me and look at this thing that I achieved when, when I Turn up to LinkedIn to post something, I come in with the assumption that nobody gives a about me because they don't and they shouldn't. And a few of you do. And that's because you've, you tuned in for a really long time. We've hung out and all that stuff and that's great. But when I come to LinkedIn, I'm like, what can I give someone today that will get them over a hump that I was stuck on? Like, what did I need to hear five years ago? How can I be helpful to someone today? Like, that's the gig, that's the business. And if you're willing to commit to doing that reliably, like it just, it just takes you on a completely different path that you can't otherwise manifest yourself. And this is the hardest thing for people is not being able to plot the path to be like, well, what's going to make this worth it for me? To go down and do this thing, it's like, sorry, man, I can't. Like, I can't give you a clear answer to that because the world's big. Because a lot of people are going to see the stuff that you're sharing, because you're going to make friends that you never otherwise would have made, will make connections for you. And there's going to come a day where when you are in a completely different place than you could have ever imagined, but it would not have happened had you not shown up and been helpful and not tried to make everything transactional. That's the. Maybe the best part of social media is if I got to go to a webinar for a software company, they're doing it to get my email address. If I scroll social media and I see something cool or I see a way that I can help, we can just have a free exchange there, like, no strings attached. That's kind of the best and the worst part of social media because that'll cause people to also, like, be jerks and, and not consider the human on the other side. But if you can see through all of that stuff, there's so much opportunity in being able to build those connections right now. And, like, my. What I do, like, everything about my life is a testament to that. And I. I have, like, I do have traits that are unique to me. I think a lot of people will see, like, me making videos, and they're like, well, I was never that. But, like, I wasn't either. I published two YouTube videos a week for 18 months, and at the end of that 18 months, I had 500 subscribers. Imagine doing that. The only reason I could keep doing it was because I found out I enjoyed making videos. I liked making funny stuff. So where other people would have thrown in the towel after a month or two, I just kept doing it. And that's the only reason that I'm any better than anybody else, because I've wasted more time on it than anybody else in the accounting space, I think. So find that thing that you love doing. Do it relentlessly. And as many, like, slimy versions of this are that are out there, I can tell you my experience, it has been easier to avoid all that stuff, avoid getting canceled and all these things that people talk about. It has been easier than I thought to avoid all that stuff. If you just, like, try to not be a jerk and try to understand where people are coming from and be helpful, like, it's kind of as simple as that. I super recommend you go out and do it. Even if you're like, I don't even know what to post. Just start. Nobody cares. Kind of got nothing to lose. Gang, great to see you this week. You're looking sharp. Looking smart. Smart audience. Thanks for coming and hanging today. I'll see you in the next one.