Episode 50: Video Content and Profitability with Seth David

Have you ever heard any of our broadcasts? You probably have, right?

Yeah, of course.

Okay, so then let me tell you the format, because that better have been recorded. This man can only be introduced one way, and it's not with our traditional sound. He's a dignitary. He's a special one, and he's a little bit. A little bit off the wall.

Put your seat belts on for the Profit first podcast.

It's the most important episode you'll ever listen to. 50, 50, 50. This is like with the 50th anniversary.

Yes, we are golden. It's 50s. The golden anniversary, right?

Oh, what is it? I thought it's diamonds.

Is it called a 60s diamond?

I mean, I'll tell you, if you get to 50 years, you're so effing bankrupt on the money you spent. You know, when it starts out, here's a paper roast or something, here's some origami. But by the time you hear origami, well, I'm just saying now it's like diamonds, gold, someone's soul. You have to buy and trade. It's like, ridiculous how expensive it gets.

So welcome, everyone, to the Profit first podcast. I'm Chris Curran. I'm the founder of Fractal Recording.

And I'm Mike Michalowicz, the author of Profit First. And it's on this show that we talk everything about profitability. In fact, we got our own little tagline going now. It's not what you make, it's what you take. And here in studio with me is my colleague, Christina Pollock.

Hey. Hey, Christina. How are you?

That was really high pitched.

Let's see how low she can speak.

Hello.

I can go.

Yeah, that's not bad.

I meant low.

And when you sing, what do Christine. When you sing, what's the.

I'm a soprano one. So I'm like, up there real high, wailing it.

Wow. She taught us a singing technique here at the office.

Do not.

I will not share. I will not show you. No, I will not share.

Is it breathing? Yes, because I know one. I had a vocal teacher tell me once that to breathe properly, you have to pretend that you're squeezing a dime between your butt cheeks.

Oh, wow.

Awfully close.

There it is. Thank you.

So awfully close.

Oh, okay.

Even more graphic.

Oh, really?

So, yeah, the office is full. Like, there's like 15 people here. And Christina stands up in front of all of us and yells. And if you really want to sing, you gotta sing from your beep and beep.

Really?

That is not what I said.

And Then she went back down, started working. It was hysterical. We have a wall here in the office of quotes. Of quotes, and it's like right at the top. Christina says, so I won't say what it is, but anyone listening, you're welcome to visit our office. Just email Christina, myself or one of us in advance that we know you're coming by, and we'll show you our.

Wall of our list of dirty jokes.

So, by the way, where can people find us?

Mike, tell people what this show is about.

Please, Please.

I just said, it's not what you make, it's what you take. It's the alpha and mega of profitability. This show is discussion around making your business profitable, but not just the same angle of profitability in all aspects. We talked last episode, IT businesses hiring people, just simple accounting tricks, reducing your taxes. We talked about neuropsychology and the implementation of things where you can actually make more money than with implementing neuropsychology.

Crazy.

That's awesome.

Where can people find us, Chris?

Yeah, you can find our show as a podcast on itunes, Stitcher, Tunein Radio, and of course, the website Profit first, Podcast dot com.

Oh, you guys are so cute.

And there's all our episodes are archived there, so feel free to go and binge listen.

He has to clear his throat now.

He got cleared. My throat, yeah.

Oh, you're getting a little for Clem.

Got that.

Yeah, we didn't hear you muted it. But I will tell you this, man. We could be a rap group like Beastie Boys, the way we time some of those words there.

All right, let's try this. I'll say profit, you say pod, you say first. I'll say podcast, you say dot com.

You realize that could have been part of the rap.

Let's try it.

That's what I'm saying. Profit First. Podcast dot com.

Nah, the dot com didn't work so well. But the. The first.

Can you play one of those horns, please?

Profit first. All right, we got to get the business because we're starting to lose our last listener. Here we have one of the coolest guests that's going to be coming on board in a second. His name is Seth David. If you don't know who he is, clearly you don't know who he is.

Living under a rock.

Yeah, you are a rock. Liver. Not like the liver, but you live under a rock. Seth David is one of the marquee speakers at probably every accounting and bookkeeping event out there. He's coming. He's gonna be at QuickBooks, connect speaking. He was at Sleetercon recently. Speaking. He's just scaling new heights recently. Is speaking. He's at every event. Speaking. Why? Because he's got some very impactful stuff you can use. I had the privilege of sitting front row at his last speech. Before we bring him on though, I do want to thank our sponsors. Fundera, Funbox, Nextiva, and T Sheets. We appreciate you what you're doing for us. And hey, you listening right now? You just google them, you'll be impressed by what you find.

Yeah, and I real quick about our sponsors. It's not the way we do our sponsors here. The way we have our sponsors is we don't just take any sponsors who are willing to pay us. All of our sponsors are actually tools that help businesses be profitable. Right?

Yep. Yeah, every. Nicely done. That's absolutely true. And every company we have a working relationship with. So these are not just, hey, can we give you some money and you can put us on there. Which we may accept, but. But no, these are companies that have a working relationship with. We have used Fundera for funding our company. We haven't been in a situation to have that specific need, but we funded multiple of our members and clients through Fundera. We have T Sheets we use internally, nextiva. We use internally. Fundbox. We've now implemented with some of our clients. They're brand new sponsor and we're starting to do more and they're seeing the gains. We're now actually considering it for internal purposes too. So all companies we work with now get down to business. We got Mr. Seth David sitting there. He is the Dean of beans at the school of Bookkeeping. He's the president of Nerd Inc. Nerd Enterprises Inc. But I want to focus most of our conversation on School of Book. Oh, we're okay. I'm not gonna say much more clear. The crowd is getting too fired up. But with no further ado, we'll do the real intro when he's on board. It's Mr. Seth David. Welcome.

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

I knew you were gonna do something like that because when we first connected, you're like, can I, can you hear me? We're like, no. And he's like, can you hear me?

Yeah, it's called paper.

Can you hear me now?

No, actually, no. We have a bad connection now. What's up, man?

You know, I don't know. Just living in temperatures north of 100 degrees here in beautiful downtown Burbank, California. You know, you guys complain over there on the east coast about having Cold winters. That's nothing. It's like 102 here.

Do you have California hammered this year, Seth?

Do you have good singing technique? Do you use good techniques for singing?

I, you know, I think so. I've never tried the test that you guys alluded to earlier about the dime.

You got to fold the dime.

Do you have a dime on you?

I, you know, I don't. You know, I have, actually. I was in Israel earlier this year, and I have one of their coins that's probably a little bigger than a dime. And then I imagine I would have to sing in Hebrew while I use this.

Yes, yes, actually.

So tell us a little bit about school. School of Bookkeeping and what the organization does.

It's, you know, it's a total waste of time, to be honest with you. I'm not sure why you even had me on here today. You want to hear the backstory? How SchoolOfBookkeeping.com was born? It's an interesting story, actually.

Okay, then I'd love to hear it.

So years back, I started making videos, right? That was probably like in 2000. Somewhere between 2007 and 9, I started making videos, just throwing them up on my website because I was getting tired of hearing the same questions over and over again from my clients, bookkeepers and things. So I said, if I make a video, first of all, it would be a fun thing to drive traffic to my site because people want to come and say, what video is he going to put up this week? And most of them were based on questions I was being asked by clients. And I would even tell clients, hey, by the way, if you have questions, let me know. I might feature your question in a video. So I started making these videos and putting them up every week. And then I had hired. This is long before I met Eric Greenspan, who's my partner@schoolofbookkeeping.com I had hired this Internet marketing consultant. And when he saw that I was doing this, he says, seth, you gotta get these videos up on YouTube. And I said, YouTube? I said, I thought that was just for putting up videos of people burning Elmo dolls. And the guy said, no, that's there. There is that. But no, there's definitely a good business use for putting videos on YouTube. I said, okay, it can't hurt. Doesn't cost me anything, right? He says, no. I said, great, I'll start putting them up on YouTube. Lo and behold, they started getting traction. People actually liked them. And mind you, I did some research on this before I started putting videos on YouTube about QuickBooks and I found some videos, and I liken it to remember Ferris Bueller's Day off.

Hell, yeah.

And that scene, you know, with Ben Stein going, bueller.

Classic.

Anyone? Bueller? That was pretty much what I was getting out of most of the QuickBooks videos that I saw on YouTube. It was kind of the same thing. It was like, click here, bank reconciliation, control W to write a check. And it was, you know. And so I said, wow. And I immediately saw a tremendous opportunity to be honest with you, like, all kidding aside, because that really was kind of what I experienced. I mean. And so I said, okay, opportunity, you know, I'm gonna throw videos up. I can make this exciting. It always bothered me when they came out with the movie the Firm that they could make a movie that made lawyers look exc. Exciting, but they never did it for accountants. So I said, I'm going to go out there and I'm going to show that accounting can be fun. And in all seriousness, where I specifically wanted to be able to hit on that was here's my essential message that I wanted to go out there and send. And this, to me, is important if you're talking about giving people advice and tips, you know, for the accountants and bookkeepers out there who are considering creating content, which I absolutely am convinced you have to do. You want to increase your profits, you need to increase your client base. You want to increase your client base, you need to produce content for the web, period. There's no more getting around that. As far as I'm concerned. If you don't do it, you're dead in the water. So I said, here's my essential message. And I think everybody has to have this. This is the story I wanted to tell, which is a. Accounting can be fun. And here's how you might not think of the actual bookkeeping stuff as fun. It's not. It's very boring and dry. And that was what I saw that concerned me when I did my research on YouTube was that the people that I saw out there were taking an already potentially very dry topic and making it worse. So I said, here's my story. My story is this. When I can show you and Mike, I know you'll be able to appreciate this because I know who you are and what you're all about. When I can go out there and show people how you can use this information to figure out how to increase profitability, to figure out how to make more money and take it to the bank and accumulate that and build net worth based on the proper use of this kind of information after first ensuring that it's accurate and reliable. Now, that's pretty damn exciting if you ask me, right?

Yeah.

Are you guys getting pumped?

Yeah.

Oh, my God, that was awesome.

It's pandemonium. The crowd is going crazy.

That's right. Hold it there, cracker boy.

I'm not playing it, so keep going. So. So I started creating videos along these lines and in my own. And the guy who had suggested that I do this said, you know, find your voice, you know, make sure that you have your own personality. And knowing what he knew of me, I remember he compared me to like a Bob Newhart type of sense of humor, he said, is how he, you know, considered it. So I said, okay, I'm going to go out there, I'm going to make these videos, and I'm going to kind of make fun of what I'm doing before anybody else can, right? And I'm going to go out there, I'm going to say, you know, this is Seth David from Nerd Enterprises Incorporated, and today we're going to talk about bank recs. And I know how exciting that is, but take a look with me. Let me show you actually why this is exciting. And then so I rope them in with the zaniness. But then once I know I've got them, I grab them close and say, okay, here's the deal. This is why this is actually exciting. Because when I do the bank Rex, when that's complete, the process itself may be boring, but the result is not. The result is that I now know I can rely on that information that much more because I've taken the time to confirm what's there and for that matter, what isn't.

It sounds like the old product industry. They said the product doesn't matter as much as the packaging. In many cases, it sounds like you've packaged the information that other people were trying to transfer, but they are just packaging in such a boring, unengaging way, I guess is the term that. That had a real impact on your business.

Yep.

Hey, let me ask you this. You found a way to test the market. Like, it sounds like you had these videos, you put them online, YouTube, and now you're seeing if it's working or not. Did you. Did those videos help you build the platform for school of bookkeeping in the way you designed the ultimate service you offer?

I'm so glad you asked me that, because that's the next part of the story.

You told me to ask you that. You sent me an email saying, make.

Sure you ask for this, by the way, nobody can see me, right? If I pick my nose, it's okay.

No, no.

Green light, green light.

Well, green booger green something.

Yeah, let us know if you need to take a booger pause.

Right. Either that or a bio break. Right?

You're allowed to do that, too.

So what happened was, as I said, I was getting asked the same questions over and over. So I was making those videos, I started putting them on YouTube, saw that they were actually getting traction, then started getting the feedback that validated what I had set out to do was actually a good thing. People were like, you actually make it fun. And now to this day, fast forward, years later, I love when I get this feedback. It's worth more to me than any amount of money people could pay me. When I hear somebody come back to me and say, I, I love watching your videos because I know two things are going to happen. A, I'm going to have some fun and I'm going to learn something along the way. And I'm like, mission accomplished. So what I did, though, was I started getting a lot of clients where the underlying story was the same. They had hired a bookkeeper before they came to me, and after a while, I started to put this picture together that there were a lot of these bookkeepers out there that were apparently figuring out, hey, you know. And this was before the Internet was what it is today. So in other words, people were still buying QuickBooks in a box and taking a disk and installing it. Right. Today we download it and install it. Point being that I got this image that there were people out there who. And one of my friends actually confirmed this because knowing what I did for a living, she actually made this suggestion to me that she said, hey, you know what? Just to pick up some side money, maybe I should just get a copy of QuickBooks installed and I can just do some bookkeeping on the side. And I'm just like, you know, that's when, like, facepalm, like, you know, shaking my head, going, this is the whole problem with the bookkeeping industry is people believe that. They believe that it's that easy that they can just go buy a box. And, yeah, QuickBooks makes it look easy enough. I can fill out. I've written checks before, and in QuickBooks, they have a pretty picture of a nice green check. It looks familiar. I know how to fill that out so I can do bookkeeping. I was consistently seeing that there were bookkeepers out there who were holding themselves out as bookkeepers on the basis that they figured out how to buy the software, install it, and fill out the check form. Then the invoice isn't too hard either. God forbid they get into inventory. That might present some challenges, but they can figure out how to create an item and connect it to an income account. So, again, not so bad. A monkey could do this, right? And then, of course, the client realizes that their books are a mess. Nothing's done right, and then they've got to hire me and pay me a small fortune to clean it all up. And so what I did was I said, you know, I have an opportunity there now where I can go out. And here was the tagline I started using when I built what was the original school of bookkeeping course, which is I said, hey, are you a bookkeeper who's gotten in over your head? Click over here, sign up for my course, I'll help you keep the client kind of thing. I was targeting those bookkeepers specifically who bought the box, installed the software. And I said, rather than you lose the client, let me fill in the gaps for you that you couldn't have possibly gotten filled in by simply buying the box and installing the software, and I'll help you keep the client. And so I built a course that was based on the bookkeeping fundamentals where the first four chapters, and I was calling it a book in a blog, because that's really how I saw it. I was using a blog platform to create the digital version of a book, complete with chapters and videos embedded and so on, where I was walking them through. And so the first four chapters didn't even touch QuickBooks. And QuickBooks was the underlying software that I was going to use, because that was, and I think to this day, largely still is, the most widely used bookkeeping accounting software for small business. So the first four chapters just dealt with debits and credits and normal balances and understanding how transactions actually flow. So I set that foundation in the course. So then from chapters five and on, I would show you, for example, when you're posting an invoice and you're using an item and you're mapping that item to an income account, I would actually demonstrate the whole flow. And I'd say, okay, I kind of stopped the video and say, let's go back to my Excel spreadsheet with my T accounts, and let's examine before I hit save and close, exactly what's going to happen. I want to make sure that bookkeepers can predict exactly what's going to happen when they hit save and close. Specifically, how's it going to Impact, impact the balance sheet and the profit and loss. And God forbid they know about the statement of cash flows.

So you're talking less technical heady stuff. But you package it nice and energized for folks. Now the folks listening in, business owners of all different types. It sounds like you're sharing. There's an opportunity here. If I have a business, I could provide a similar service to you. And I'm not saying for bookkeepers, but couldn't I replicate the model you're using? Do this for any industry. Isn't there tons of people that go into every industry that are ill prepared? You had bookkeepers that didn't know what the hell they were doing and you're salvaging them, but through training and teaching them T accounts and all this other shit. I don't know what the hell you're talking about, but I'm just thinking like wow, I could go into the IT industry and do this. There's millions of people that say they can fix computers because they know how to turn one on, but they don't know how to. I can go into the recruiting industry. There's millions of people say I can run an ad in Craigslist. I can get people. Doesn't this model apply across the board? And if so, how would, how would the person listening in do something like that?

Definitely, without a doubt. So I'm actually glad you brought that up because now we can kind of segue into something. And I forgot, I thought most of your audience were actually accountants and bookkeepers.

So now I'll make sure they don't listen anymore.

They've dropped. Well, they know everything. They don't need to listen.

So now there's another show we call GMAF called Grow My Accounting Practice. That's the one. And we're getting on that show too. That's all accounts of bookkeepers, this audience and thanks to me for not preparing you in advance. And people listening to this live as I teach you what I should have told you a long time ago. This audience is entrepreneurs that are looking to make their businesses more profitable.

Got it. So let me share another story with you. This one's a little quicker. So years ago I was working as a CFO for a real estate developer and this guy was really into like self help kind of stuff. And I don't know if you've ever heard of Mark Victor Hansen.

Kinda yeah.

He and Jack Canfield co wrote the whole Chicken Soup for the Soul series.

Yep.

So. So Mark Victor Hansen at this time got together with a guy by the name of Alex Mandosian. And they created the seminar called Mega Marketing Magic. And we went. It was like twelve hundred dollars for like a three day seminar. And it was. I still remember a lot of what I learned there to this day. And this was many years ago. One of the things that struck me that I took with me, that I believe really was underlying what I was describing, that I built with School of Bookkeeping, which is as follows. They basically pointed out. And it resonated with me because here I am, I'm an accountant. And they made the point that, you know, if you're in a professional services type industry, especially then you're in jail. And the reason why you're in jail is you constantly have to trade your time for money. And their objective with what they were trying to teach in that seminar, among other things, was how to make money in your sleep, right? How do I wake up this tomorrow morning with more money in the bank than I had last night? And so it goes exactly to what you raised, Michael, with the question, which is, yes, any industry can do this. And the core concept that goes into this, which is how you have to think about it and then translate it into your own industry, is taking the knowledge that you have in your mind. If you run a business in your industry, hopefully you're an expert in that industry, whatever it might be. If you sell widgets for a living, you know widgets better than anybody else. You know everything there is to know about widgets, right? So why not create educational content that's really aimed at giving people a better understanding of what it means to be a widget, what it means to sell a widget, how to. How a widget is made, how it's sold, and so on, and create educational content around that. In other words, what you're doing is you're taking the knowledge that's in your head and you're packaging it up digitally and then offering that out there for public consumption? Some of it's going to be.

Hold on one second, bucko. I got a question for you. Mr. David. If I do that, wouldn't I want to teach the people the reality that you make more money by teaching? Aren't you saying, sir, aren't you saying that Alex Mendozian said, hey, Seth, you should be teaching this, not doing this. Now you're telling people how to do it, don't you? Don't they really benefit by teaching it, too?

I'm just kidding. But first you have to position yourself. No, it's a good question. You have to position yourself as the expert first. Nobody's going to come to me and ask me to teach it to them until I first established myself as an authority on the topic.

Gotcha. How do you do that?

So you do that by doing what I did years ago, which is I started putting videos out, teaching people how to do this and that with QuickBooks in my case. Right. And then I said, and here's how I evolved my business, Nerd Enterprises, before School of Bookkeeping came into the picture was I started. After a while, I said, you know, there's Only so many QuickBooks videos I can do. Eventually, I will cover everything there is to cover in QuickBooks. I mean, yes, each year there'll be a new version with some new features I can cover, but how you handle an NSF check is still the same thing 10 years ago versus today. So there's only so much I can do. What am I going to do when I run out of QuickBooks ideas? And then I realized, wait a minute, there's other stuff that I'm using in my business that I've gotten to be really good at. Things that have gotten me to be really efficient about what I'm doing. Things that have really made my life easier. And based on that, I said, I can teach that stuff, too. Then I started doing.

So you're teasing. The practical execution of the technology that you have mastered as an expert, and the little more of the umbrella of how to build a business around this, how to. That you gave them.

Right. So, like, I started doing videos on Evernote. I love Evernote. It's one of my favorite applications. If it was a girl, I would marry it. Right. Would you really?

Would you be a.

Totally would.

In Japan, they have those freaks that, like, marry their pillow and stuff. And I'm not picking on the Japanese. I just seen these articles after articles. Someone married their PDA recently. Really? I don't know. Going. Yeah. And now Seth David is marrying a. Application. Yeah, he may be the.

Actually, if you're going to go that route, I would want to marry my dog, Ralphie. I have frequently referred to him as my. My. He's my furry gay lover. No question.

Oh, my. Play the. Play the horn. Play the horn. Quickly.

Play the horn. I'm trying to find it. I'm trying. Oh, jeez. Wrong one. No, no, no.

It's a movie.

No. Oh, there it is. All right, we're back. That was the only reason we did that, Seth, was to distract people from what you just said. Carry on, sir. What were you educating Us on.

I started doing videos on Evernote, right? And then. And then, you know, then I started just having a lot of fun with this stuff. And so one day I was watching a video that was put on by a couple of guys that was teaching you how to make videos. And at the end of their video about how to make videos, they showed that they use this product called Trello as their project management application that helped them manage the whole process of creating that video. And just at a glance, I saw it and I said, that looks cool. Let me go check that out. And I started playing with it. I'm like, wow, this is really cool. How can I use this for my business? It's so much fun to use. I want to figure out a way to use it.

How do you know you're not going too broad? How do you know you're introducing new things to your target market bookkeepers? How do you know you're not going too broad and diminishing your expertise?

So here's what happens. I always tell people, don't do what I do because I'm the kind of person that. And I've made it part of my business model to go out there and learn a lot of these different toys that I can play with for the sole and specific purpose of then. So now we get to. What is schoolofbookkeeping.com all about today? Today it's about. It started off with that core bookkeeping fundamentals with QuickBooks course. Now we have courses on so many of these different applications that I've learned to love some of them that I've learned just for the purpose of doing the course, where companies have now come to us and said, hey, would you do a course on our app? And we talked to them about it and said, sure, we'll do it. Then I'll just have somebody walk me through a demo. It turns out one of my gifts, it seems, is the ability to absorb this stuff and learn it really quickly. Part of it is probably my OCD tendencies, because, Mike, if I get my hands on something like a Trello, let's say, and I've never seen it before, and I'm really intrigued. I will be up all night learning everything it does. I will not go to sleep tonight.

You didn't hear my jibe Jib at you there.

The dog?

Yeah. He said, when I got my hands on something, I'm like. Like a dog. You were not entertained by that? Only one dog, you know, and you're marrying him.

But I'm.

Let me ask you. You Seth have proven beyond your ability to absorb this so quickly. You have an uncanny means or effective way of translating the complexities into this really simple format that people can understand. How do you.

That's my other gift.

Yeah, you clearly have that gift. How do you scale that, though? You're one of the rare few that can do that.

So here's what happened. So. And it's funny, one of the things that I think really kind of helped me tap into that gift of mine, and I really do believe, you know, that it is kind of a gift that I'm able to somehow take technical stuff and translate it in terms that people who don't have that technical expertise can understand. But here's where it came from. I don't think it's so magical, actually. That same Internet consultant that I referred to a while ago, who I had hired years back, was watching some of my videos and talking with me and he said something to me. He said. He said, seth, he says, you have to remember, he says, when I watch some of your videos, the ones where you get real technical, he says, what I walk away with is a very strong sense that you really know your stuff. He says, but as somebody who's non technical in that topic, I'm lost. He's like, so you've got to find a way to relate it to me in terms that I can understand. And I believe that was a pivotal moment in my experience where he actually helped me think that through. And it probably reshaped the way I did my videos from that point forward where I started to really think in terms of like, I'd stop myself when I caught myself using a lot of technical terms and started thinking in terms of how can I break that down and translate it from my technical expertise into terms that somebody who doesn't have that technical expertise can understand very easily.

Did you see results? Did your customer base come back and say, seth, this is amazing. Do they buy more? How do you know that was working? This new approach?

That was the feedback I got. Most of my ability to gauge what's worked and what hasn't has not so much been in. I can't say. There's one thing I did and all of a sudden the sal skyrocketed, but it was more in the feedback I got. This is one of the things I love about the day and age we live in and social media is you get that opportunity for a direct response, which years ago I would have had to pay millions to get, and only then I wouldn't even know if it was Accurate, Right. But here I get the direct and immediate feedback, and people are not shy about it. On YouTube, they'll tell you straight out if they hate what you've done, because I've gotten some of that too. But people would tell me, hey, Seth, you make it really easy to understand. And then the one on ones that I do with people are, of course, where I get the most immediate feedback, where they, you know, and that's the real payday for me, honestly, is when I'm in those one on ones and people really express their sincere gratitude because before working with me, I helped them really be able to do something they could not do before. And when I know that I can consistently do that for somebody and get that feedback, that's when I know, okay, I'm onto something here. There's something, a gift that I have that I need to exploit.

Well, there's another gift you have. You built this amazing platform called Abbott and on Facebook. Now, listen, there's not many things that I envy. There's a lot of things I envy. And one of the things is, I mean, the power of the community you built. Abbo is probably the most powerful business, bookkeeper, accountant, community. I mean, it's just one of the most powerful communities on Facebook, hands down. How do you have such. And everyone listening? And you gotta check it out. Seth, how did you build a platform where the participants are so active, so supportive, so participative? And by the way, I never see spam up there. How do you pull that one off?

Oh, well, all right. So. All right, so we have a multi layered question here. So the way we pull the spam thing off is. I'll work backwards on this. First of all, the only spam that's allowed are Ray bans, because I wear Ray Bans.

That's funny.

And the funny thing is that's what we were getting a lot of most of the time was Ray Ban ads. I don't know, probably because Facebook is pretty good at figuring out contextually, like what to bring. And maybe it tracked that I bought Ray Bans online, I don't know. But we were getting a lot of Ray Bans. So the first thing is we have a pretty. We're pretty quick to crack the whip on that stuff and just remove it. The community itself does a lot of policing. If somebody spams, somebody will tag either myself or Eric and say, hey, guys. And, you know, again, because of the technology and because we're both kind of OCD and we never really sleep, it doesn't take long for the notification to come in on my phone or wherever, so I can quickly tap it through and remove the post. And usually I'll ban the member in the same tab. We make it clear we have a very strict policy on that. And the reason is because exactly what you just described. We wanted to make sure that we could build something that people could describe the way you just did. It's a safe place where people can go, where they're not going to have to worry about being spammed, where they can really just safely communicate with one another, express difficulties that they're having and get the help that they need. So now back to the first part of the question. How did I build a community like that? Honestly, Mike, I'm a firm believer in this stuff, like Birds of a feather and laws of Attraction. I started that community myself with some of my closest colleagues and we made it clear right up front. In fact, the original description I wrote for the group, I said, and I was being polite about it, I think, but I said, look, I don't want to see pictures of your kids in here. You can post those on the rest of Facebook. I really want this to be about helping one another. And that's the thing is I really think that I helped create an environment where people were giving by sort of enforcing that and saying, look, you need to come in here and you need to be prepared to give, to help out, to offer answers. If you don't do that, then you're dead in the water. And so I believe that attracted more like kind, like minded people who are also givers. And I think what happened over time as we were able to build it on that basis and we have policed it pretty closely, we have not really allowed people to get into it with each other too much. We banned people from the group for going at it with one another. And of course we warn them first and say, hey guys, you got to knock it off. Otherwise when we've had people get into arguments like head to head in a thread, we'll tell them, look, because we're not going to sit there trying to decide who's right or wrong. I don't have the capacity to do that. We just kick them both out.

Yeah, no, that's smart, right? That's smart. Because the community, I see, these things get tainted so quickly. It's like there was a book about broken windows. I think it was a Malcolm Gladwell book. And he talks about how crime explodes in communities when they allow broken windows to happen. When we see the graffiti and the simple, small crimes that people get away with. It goes crazy by you preventing even the head to head arguments, you're fixing the broken windows and it doesn't spawn or grow into this ugly community like so many do.

And you know what else I want to underscore is, and I think this is really important going along especially with what you asked about and how we created this kind of community, because there's that aspect of people, you know, bashing one another. Right. And getting into arguments. The other piece of it is, you know, we have all different levels of experience in there and what can tend to happen, especially if you build a group. And this is honestly what I think happens in a lot of other accounting groups that I've participated in, is you wind up getting a lot of people with a lot of expertise and a lot of experience. Right, right. And so first of all, who needs you then? Because we're all basically experts in this. So why do we, you know, yes, there are going to be certain things, but it's going to be much more limited. Then what happens is you get the really inexperienced person that asks a question where to somebody who's very experienced, it seems like it should be obvious what the answer is. So much so that you have a tendency to want to say something like, how are you even a bookkeeper if you don't know the answer to that question? Right. And how dare you not know what I already know and what I've known for years? That's almost like the, you know, and so I have been very quick to crack the whip on that kind of stuff too, where if somebody's sort of condescending or I remember, I remember instances where I really felt the same way. Like I was shaking my head and looking at the question like, how can you be a bookkeeper and not know the answer to that? But at the same time, I've had to even consciously remind myself that that's why they're here. They're here to get the help so that they can keep the client going back to my original, the core of why I exist, right. I want to go out there and make sure that I can help people keep their clients by providing them with the expertise, by filling the gaps that aren't filled yet so that they don't have to lose the client. So that I've enforced that pretty hard too. Now then Eric came in and took what I had built up to a very modest group of like maybe 86 to 100 people somewhere around there. And I was happy with that. But then when Eric got involved, and we started working really together on building School of Bookkeeping. And I said, this is the online community that we need to build as kind of like the free side of it. Right. So you come into accountants, bookkeepers, and business owners on Facebook. You ask questions, you get help. Let's face it, there's any number of opportunities there where I'm going to be able to say, hey, we've got a course on that, or we've got a lesson in a course that covers that. If you come over to School of Bookkeeping, sign up. It'd be worth it just for one month's fee just to get the answer in video form to your question. And I encourage others to do the same. I don't mind if people post a link to their blog post if it's relevant, and it adds value. But we give a lot more leniency on that kind of stuff to people who regularly participate. And there's no hard and fast rule. I can't say, well, you have to post five times a week, and then you're allowed to spam. Right?

Right.

It's very subjective. But we. But it works. So I know who the people are because I'm in there every day throughout the day, all day long. I don't always post every day, but I watch. And I know who's participating. And when somebody who. I don't even know who they're. You know, I recognize a lot of the names, at least when a name shows up that I've never heard of before, and I can check and see when they join the group. Sometimes I'll do that and I'll see. They joined the group a year ago, but they've been very quiet. And all of a sudden, out of nowhere, they're dropping a link to the webinar they're doing next week. And maybe it's not even really in the. In any context of what's being discussed. That's when I'm like, sorry, pal, and something like that. I'll give them a warning. I'll say, hey, you know, this is not okay, Please. And I'll tell them straight up, do me a favor. Participate more in the group. Let us know who you are before you start posting stuff like that. Then we'll let you get away with more of that kind of stuff.

Seth, so I could talk to you for hours. We got Casey Johnson, a buddy of yours, coming on. I want to get you on our other show, gmap, grow my accounting practice to talk about some specific strategies you have for bookkeepers. And accountants. In the meantime, where can listeners of our show here at Profit First Podcast learn more about you?

Churchofsatan.com no. So of course, schoolofbookkeeping.com, nerdenterprises.com and absolutely anybody. And you know what, the Abbo group that you referred to, Abbo stands for accountants, bookkeepers and business owners. I would love to see more business owners joining that group. I mean, what a wealth, what a resource for business owners who have questions about how to handle their own accounting. You have over 4,000 accounting and bookkeeping professionals standing by, dying to answer your questions, hoping to get the opportunity to show you how you know their expertise and knowledge so that you might actually even be inclined to want to reach out to them and hire them for more direct help. So please, business owners, come in to our Abbo Group and get help. Why not?

Yeah. And we actually here's one of the recordings of one of the Abbo people responding to an entrepreneur and asked a question.

I don't believe I ever seen such.

A display of courage, skill, nerve, grace, stupidity. That's how you treated bad people. Hey, Seth. Pleasure having you guys. We gotta get going, so let's, let's talk about what we learned about Seth just now.

Thanks, Seth.

Thank you.

Thanks brother.

Thanks for having me. I'm going to eavesdrop on you guys. I want to hear.

Oh, no, please do.

Yeah, I want to ask you something off the air too, Seth.

So what was up with Seth wanting to marry his dog? No. So listen, I want to talk about a lot of stuff about what we just learned. I want to thank our sponsors first. Seth actually knows every one of these companies because they're big time. They also work with accountants. Chris, you name them, Christina, you explain them. How's that sound? On the spot.

So let's start with our newest corporate partner, Fundbox.

Oh.

Oh, yes. So you have a client that's not paying you back, you go to Fundbox, they give you the funds. In the meantime, when the client pays you, you pay Fundbox back. And plus a little fee for their services.

Right. And Christina knows that we send out invoices all the time and sometimes those checks don't come in so fast. Now, you have a way of getting paid right away. Fundbox takes care of it for you. Alright, next one, Chris.

Oh.

T sheets.

T sheets. Time tracking. Track the time of your employees on an easy dashboard online.

Whoa. That was.

Wow.

Next one. That's beautiful.

Fundera.

Fundera. Business funding can't get any simpler than that.

Yeah, if you Need a loan. Go to Fundera. They get the money for you. You need to buy that piece of equipment, new office furniture, whatever. They take care of that stuff. Our tip only get funding for things that'll grow your business profitably. Next. Last.

Oh, Here it comes.

Nextiva.

Nextiva phone systems. VoIP. Right. What is voiceover IP?

IP.

Internet Protocol.

Internet. Thank you. Yep.

Yes.

Yep.

Yeah. This podcast we're doing over, it's denial of VoIP connection, but it uses the same technology. So you're actually. What you're hearing right now. You think this sounds good? Pick up your nextiva phone system and you'll hear the same. But my one tip is make sure your Internet connection is good.

Yes.

So when your Internet drops, like our office, not only does the does the Internet like you can't surf the web, Ron starts going ape crazy.

Yeah.

What's wrong with the phone? It's like the Internet's dropped, bro. Oh, that sucks.

But other than that, it's great.

Well, yeah, but, but it's not. That's outside next diva's control. Right? So we, we have to get our. Our connection.

Yeah. And even when it. Your Internet drops, I mean, your phone system, if someone calls you, it'll go to the voicemail. Nextiva will certainly handle.

We had.

I don't remember, Christine, we had a blackout here for I think it was three hours. Everything down. Remember we went up to the stairs. We all, we just had like a brainstorm actually. That's where profit First Global con. That's where the first conversation about our conference, the whole company, everyone goes, and we're like, we're just gonna have a meeting. Every single call we have with clients, all of them were captured because of nextiva. Bingo. All right, dude, what we learned from Seth.

Did you need a little refresher?

Yeah, perfect, dude. Here's what I learned. Content is king. And I'll tell you this. You can test an entire market. Seth David, dude, Seth David built a business. He built a company around videos. He puts them on YouTube. Costs nothing. Produces the video himself. Probably costs very little. And now he can gauge what customers are interested in buying. He builds school of bookkeeping. The guy is a billionaire. A billionaire. I tell you, I don't know if that's true. He made some money, for God's sake. Because he tested out the market in a real simple way. What a great way to start a service based business. That was profound. What did you learn?

It's all in the presentation, you know, I mean, and that could be applied to anything. Like for example, I make cake pops. I can just make a cake pop. I can dip it in chocolate, call it a day. People like it because it's delicious, but it's not great. But if I take the time to, you know, take a theme and decorate them for Halloween or whatever and then sell them, people are like, oh, my God, these things are amazing. And it's the same thing with accounting. He took something. I don't want to say boring, but something that's just kind of bland, and now he adds an entertainment, you know, part of it, and it's just like, oh, wow. This is actually pretty interesting.

What a great analogy. First of all, I didn't know you could make cake pops.

Oh, yeah, they're pretty good.

Right around the freaking corner. We got off cake pops here for Halloween. That's awesome. Wow. Talented. No wonder you're so fired up the last few weeks. All right, Chris, what do you got going on?

Profit first. Cake pops, I think.

I like that.

I really like. He talked about creating educational content around your expertise, and he brought up. He actually said something, and this is what I want to talk to him about later. He used the line I always use. There's like, a treasure of knowledge and experience in your brain or in your head if you're an entrepreneur or business owner that has a good deal of experience. There's things, you know, there's stories, there's lessons learned that you'll never, you know, put. You probably never put pen to paper and write it all down, but somehow getting that content out of your brain and into the world, that's. I mean, it's like all that content is sitting in your head. It's not doing any good. So get it out. And of course, in my. In my context, I. I tell people podcasting is one of the easiest ways to do that.

Yeah. So that's a total lie.

Great point.

No, I'm kidding. Podcasting is awesome. All right. Yeah. Oh, this is big. But you guys see the sizes button she's got?

What is that?

That? It's the mega what button.

Okay, ready?

Mega.

So we had this huge button. We got a sample. We were thinking of getting buttons for. For Global Con, and everyone's desk was gonna have one of these cha ching buttons. And so we bought samples of different ones, and they sent this mega big button. It's like the size of, like, your head, really? And you push this button down and it goes, mega what? So now it's right at the entrance to our office. So when you walk in, person after person hits Megawatt. But if they don't, you know they're having a shitty day, so you leave them alone.

Can you put it on someone's chair so when they sit down, it'll.

Oh, we should do that to Ron on Monday.

We both said, ron.

What the hell? That's a good idea.

First guy, you thought it was Ron. Poor Ron.

Oh, my God, poor Ron. You wouldn't believe what we did to the poor guy. All right, we gotta get out of here, man. Tune that music because we gotta roll. You know, Chris, you and I have one more episode to record. It's called GMAF Grow My Accounting Practice. And we got a guest coming on there that's showing about 10. 10 minutes. Yeah, this show.

That's a different podcast show, by the way.

It's a whole different podcast show. We had a little scheduling issue, and we're called an Audible, so we're gonna have Casey Johnson over there. So if you're a fan of Profit First Podcast, but you want to get a much more in depth technical understanding of how to grow an accounting practice, that's the show to be listening to.

There you go. And if you want to find out more about me and podcast production, go to fractal recording.com and Mike. Profit First Professionals, bro.

Yeah. If you own a business of any sort and you want to become more profitable, check out Profit First Professionals dot com. Click on the find button. We'll hook you up with an accountant or bookkeeper that will drive profit in your business right now.

There you go.

Yeah.

So check out all our past episodes. Our website is profit first podcast.com. we've done 49 other episodes, and they. They've all been absolutely spectacular. Binge listen, binge listen, please.

And never, never forget this. It's not what you make, it's what you take.

There you go, Christina. Say it with some gusto.

It's not what you make, it's what you take.

Yes.

See y' all next time.

Peace.

Thanks, guys.

I'm assuming you just said Mike McAllister.