Financial Cents with Shahram Zarshenas

Welcome to Accountants Law Pod, where accounting professionals and law firms converge. Hosted by Linda Artesani, Sarah Prevost, and Stephen Libhart.

Welcome back to the podcast, everyone. And today we're going to talk about when to formalize your processes. And what was the rest of that? The Sharam Show, actually.

And what to look for.

When to implement and what to look for. You can tell we're having a lot of fun. We're in a real place.

Yes, this is not a fake background. This is Bonita Beach in beautiful sunny Florida. The first day since it's been sunny since I've been here. Yeah. So it's very, very pretty. It's very relaxing. I might move in here. But welcome, Sharam. And I guess you want to, you want to introduce him because you guys are buddies.

Of course we're buddies.

Oh yeah.

Yeah. I mean, well, Let's just say this, he is in the accounting space. So for those of us accountants that listen to this, Financial Cents is a product that we love and use, and it's, it's well built for our accounting firms, for workflow, for automation, for capacity and time tracking and those sorts of things. Or even if you're just not even time tracking, you're just sort of wanting to know how many hours you're occurring against a project. So—

And client communication.

Communication. Thank you, Steve. This app has really changed our world from about a year ago to today, and our team has embraced it and loved it.

Yeah.

But I think ultimately, I love the story of Shahram, how he got here. And Shahram, you should just share with us about you because I don't think everyone knows about you in the way that we do.

Yeah, yeah, I'd love to. So thanks again for having me on the show. Uh, really excited to talk about this today, but let me tell you a little bit about like my story, like how it all started, where I came from. So interestingly enough, like no accounting background at all. Like in college I was a supply chain, which is like logistics and business analytics major. I left though when I got done with college, like I didn't even go into that field. Um, I kind of found my way into the private equity world. So like investing in small businesses, helping small businesses.

Wow.

and grow. I worked at a firm for 3 years and then I started my own firm with a few friends. Uh, did that for 4 more years and then eventually I decided I want to make the leap of faith and start my own business. And through that, like I, through my past experience, so I learned a lot, right? How to help businesses grow. But I also learned a lot from a lot of really great business owners, like what worked, what didn't work. And, uh, I felt like I might know enough to do something. So I, I kind of found my, my way into the accounting space because, you know, I was talking to a lot of accountants and kind of understanding what are the biggest challenges they have. And what I saw was the biggest challenge they have is as they started to take on more clients or even maybe hire a few team members, like they struggled to really scale because everything became a little bit crazier. Like there's a lot of work to keep up with, you know, it's easy to kind of overlook and for something to slip through the cracks. you know, stuff starts getting stored in files and folders and on pieces of paper and things become a little disorganized and it became a huge pain point. And when we saw what firms were doing, they were using spreadsheets, maybe keeping everything in their head that wasn't effective. And then we also saw there were some tools on the market to help solve this problem, but they were either too expensive or too complicated, right? There wasn't really anything built for the average firm. And we said we want to bring those tools and make them available for all firm owners, not just the big firms. And to do that, it needed to be affordable and easy to use. And that's kind of how that all started. But it's, it's been an interesting and fun journey because again, I'm not an accountant, but we listen to our customers and we love learning everything that, you know, they struggle with, how we can help them. And that's how I kind of learned a lot about this space. And we'll talk about some of like— the cool things we've learned about, not just about our product, but how, what they can do to help them grow and kind of reach their potential today.

I think you said a key thing in there, which is you listen, which I have to say, I feel that way. I feel heard and I feel that way with a lot of, in the legal space for a lot of practice management utilization for software. You want to feel heard. You want to be able to have that positive impact that might gain a practice area some benefit. I feel like that could be a big game changer for certain people if they're not feeling heard, or if it's a bottleneck in their workflow, which also could impede on how you do your day-to-day work. And we often see that, right, Steve? Like, we— I feel that we hear that quite a bit with our clients that come to us. How about you?

Absolutely. And I think that One of the things that I really like about working with Shahram and his team and his product is that they do listen. There are, you know, questions all the time in Facebook. What do you think? Weigh in on this. Tell me. I love that, Shahram, that you do that and you give people the opportunity to feel safe to share with you what they like and what they don't like. And everybody else starts weighing in. And I don't, I don't say a lot in there in Facebook, but I read everything that you're doing. I love it. And, and I like that you offer the monthly meetings. Those are huge. Those are just huge.

The value-add ones.

Yeah, the webinars.

Yeah, definitely.

They're not about financial sense. They're actually different value-adds for our staff. Absolutely.

Yeah.

Watches them all the time.

Yeah. Which I think is offered in some of the other legal softwares that we see. But I do believe that to the point of what Sharam started with, which was How do you organize chaotic mess? It's so admittedly, we all do it. We, we still have a practice management software, but we have a side spreadsheet. Oh, Steve, you're looking down. That means you have one.

Busted, Steve. Busted. You were totally busted on that one.

Okay, I'm moving my, um, my scope creep spreadsheet over to Financial Cents.

But Sharam, so what an interesting story. I love that you— I mean, admittedly, I feel like in our app space in the accounting world, we hear this often. I'm not an accountant.

I'm like, I know it's true.

We don't care. You're solving a problem. Yeah, it's a big gaping hole in our space.

But the fact that you listen to us is big because a lot of times you get software, they don't listen to us at all. And we're in the product living, breathing it, and we come up with great ideas. And for an example, we kind of cornered you and Sarah, like, Shram got his laptop out and she's like, this, this, this, this. Because I said, I warned you that Sarah's on— she's doing the Let's Fix Your Software tour. And she went to the vendor center like, this is what we'd like to see. It's not so much fixing it, but enhancements to what we would like to see, because software really does work great. We tried to adopt a software that wasn't designed to be practice management, and we tried to use that software for that purpose and build it out, and it just never worked. And this, the staff did not adopt it. And the fact that like nobody wanted to use it, I didn't want to use it. I'm like, I am so lost in what we're supposed to do here. And as soon as we started Financial Cents, we're like, look, we're investing time and money in getting this set up. You all better use it because we already had the first disaster and we had, and they all took to it, which was great.

Yeah.

I think one of the things though we did find as we were setting it up is that we told everybody here, you know, you know your accounts that you work on. We want you to create the workflow and the SOPs to go along with it, so that if you weren't able to work on vacation for a week, somebody else could step in and do the work. And then I started to look at what everybody was writing, and then I saw some of the language in there. I'm like, I need this streamlined. I want it to say payroll and certain things. I want it to be able to— whether you bop from one file to the other. And I ended up grabbing Nicole, who really is like the Mistress of financial sense. And she's just— it just— her brain. Sarah and I sat with her. I go, she needs to be like a part of this whole setup because she's going to make sure that it's— a lot of times people skip a step because they know it, but they mean that we want it documented. Because if you aren't there, I want somebody able to sit in that seat, follow the directions and follow the video, follow the written SOP, go forward. And that does take time. Money well spent and time well spent.

Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think, you know, with any type of practice management solution that a firm's looking to implement to like, you know, standardize their processes, keep their firm more organized, it's like you guys were saying, it's important to take time to like make sure, even if it's an easy-to-use solution, to properly set it up and get that team adoption. And one thing you were talking about is, you know, I think it's important to lean in on your team on this because they're going to be using the solution too. Like we see a lot of people, even before they set it up, right? When they're vetting solutions, we see, and I think it's really smart, they actually like listen to their team. Like, these are the 3 options. You guys take a look and tell me what you guys want to use. Like, which resonates for you? Because you guys are going to be the one that are using it every single day. I might not be in it every day as an owner or manager, but you guys are going to be clicking around, you're going to be tracking the work, and you want them to use it because if they don't use it, then everything becomes obsolete. Like, you know, nothing's getting updated.

Right.

They're not putting the documents where they need to go and, gets all over the place. But then when you go back to actually implementing it, like let's say you pick one, you also need to come back and say, hey, what's the— like you guys do this every day, what's the best method to set this up? But there is like a healthy line. Like you don't just want to like, here you guys go, like set everything up.

No.

Because then like you said, everything gets the naming conventions, like the projects are set up differently for this person. There needs to be some back and forth and Communication between that setup process. And we've seen a lot of people implement like, you know, weekly lunch and learns, right? Every week or 2 weeks, let's get together and take a look at what you guys worked on. Like, are we on the same page? Hey, no, what Jonathan did over here was really interesting. Let's maybe try to standardize that across the firm. And that's been really successful too.

You know, part of the listening to your clients that really impressed me too was when 2 things. You include all of us, or several of us, in your beta testing, which is real— I'm grateful for that. We get to, we get to see what you're thinking and we get to try it and then we get to recommend. And number 2, you took it to another level, which was huge for us in that the clients are involved in there now. And the clients are loving it and they're finding it easy to communicate with us. And, and I'm, I am in our company, I'm seeing that they answer so much quicker than by other methods. Because let's say it's an uncategorized transaction, you know, I can send that over to the client and ask a question and they'll get back to me right away and it's done. You know, it can be categorized and done and it plays well with QuickBooks. And all of that comes from— and it's a compliment to you— all of that comes from somebody who's caring about his company serving his clients. So thank you so much for that.

Yeah, I mean, thank you. I mean, I appreciate that because, you know, we put a lot of time in it and, but again, like it goes back to like all of you as well because like, you know, not being an accountant, I think it's actually an advantage for us because like you guys were talking about, some people don't listen, right? Some apps out there, they, they are accountants and they assume they know what you want.

I was just going to say, you don't come from a place where you know it all. You're like, what do you need? Help me out here. Teach me. Let me know.

Let me absorb this.

And then you make it work.

Exactly. And like you said, anytime I ever have a question, like, I'm thinking, wait, how should we do this? I just go to the Facebook group. I just drop the question in, and I'm like, hey, it could be something small. And that way there's no doubt in my mind, and we let the majority decide.

I like when you do your surveys in Facebook and somebody will be like, 65% want this one.

I'm like, no, I want this one.

What's fascinating too is honestly, when we think about just our clients and how they utilize their product and what we want to see, because we're kind of an influencing moment in that workflow for them. Ultimately, we need the data to be constructed in a way that works.

Mm-hmm.

And we have found that we— one of our clients was using a very expensive software and we found out, to your point, Shiram, it was 2 people in the firm out of 50, let's say, that was like, oh no, we need to use this.

Mm-hmm.

But those 2 people are probably either not there or half utilized it, not to its capacity. And it's a very expensive software. So then it made me nervous of like, why are we spending this money if we could capture this in a Google Form and make it work here? So I think what your value add as an owner of an app is to say, and what your experience is, is what has worked in all these other places? What did you see? Because you probably saw a ton of different things, especially private equity. And just fundamentally, I'm sure there's a baseline of workflow, like you're saying, before you know it, you're gravitating to, do I use Google Notes? Do I use Apple Notes? Do I use Google Documents? And then we're in like 4 different apps and you can't find your stuff. And that's, I feel like I don't even know what the percentage of time wasted on that alone.

Searching.

Do you want to pay for that with your admin staff or your support staff or your legal staff? Like, that's not fair to utilize.

Yeah.

It takes forever. So yeah, I think that's a valid point.

It is expensive. And it's not just accounting firms, like you said, like all, I think all companies as they start to grow, especially when they start to hire other team members, they all face this challenge of, Like we, we like to say like getting work done, like it's not just about knowing what to do, but it's about having everything to actually do as well. So you need all the information and the documents and the notes to still get the work done. The problem is when you have a few people on the team and Jonathan's putting everything stored in his email locked away somewhere, or it's in a Slack channel, or it's in a text message, or it's in a, on his on a piece of paper on his desktop, or it's in this app or that app or this app. Like, no one can find the— they're just like asking people and interrupting people like, hey, do you know where this is? Or they're spending 15 minutes trying to find it themselves. Like, that alone is just like— causes— costs a lot of time and money and frustration and slows things down. And centralizing all that into one place— Or if even if you, it lives in other apps, having it connected to that single source of truth so you can access it is so important as you start to grow. Because when it's just you, you can kind of keep up with it all, right? It's, it's all on your desk probably piled up.

Yeah.

But as it grows, like as you grow and hire people, like you want everyone to know exactly where to go to get it. And when it's in 5 different places, they'll never know. They'll always wonder, is it this place or that place? Yeah. So creating that thing is key.

You know what I also noticed about your software is that, um, you speak to the 3 different ways of learning: the visual, the actual, you know, electronically touching things, and the auditory, because you've got the lessons and all the things in there. So you can take somebody on a tour— like, I'll take clients on a tour and say, this is what we use and this is how we use it, and this is why we're going to communicate with you this way. And this is what it looks like. And they don't even argue. You know how, Sarah and Linda, sometimes a client will go, oh God, another app, you're going to make me do this? I've never had any pushback with yours because it's easy to use. It's, it's all there, it's all organized. And it's really cool when you get a new team member too. You can take them in there and say, here's where you're going to learn this, and here's the flow that we've already set up, and it's all there for you. And it's, it makes it so much easier for them to learn.

I think employee retention is probably the missed opportunity here because I can sense—

Yeah, good point.

I feel like I've seen this with my own spouse who's working, you know, for 2 different people. And one, it's very clear, it's the organized, it's— and it's the modern-day system, as Linda and I like to call it. And the other is still half paper form. half this, half that. We're still mailing things. And you've got to wonder about the cost and the burden of that. But then I'm thinking, Sharam, you're meeting us in a day and space of time that we need to retain young talent and meet a talent pool that wants this stuff, that are hungry for this stuff and want to learn more. So I feel like in any user, in any firm, professional service firm, of the like, you need to find what is like we always say, what is the cost of that one moment? How many clicks is it going to take you to get there?

Yeah, some software, that's my biggest beef. Sometimes the big green one sometimes adds more clicks instead of making it easier. You have to click 5 more layers deep.

Why?

Why? One of my favorite features on Financial Cents though is because some clients, especially with trust accounts, they have IOLTA accounts that are not online because the banks say no. We're not doing that anymore. They get mailed into the office or, or whatever, and we have to ask for them because we're just have to ask for them monthly. And we actually have it set up to send out, remind them, and they'll write back and say, oh, I didn't come in. And then it will remind them again if we didn't get it.

Mm-hmm.

So I don't have to remember to remind you a second time that we didn't get the form. It automatically does it. So you've automated that step that we were always like running in and to write a note. to them and, and ask for it to retrieve some documents that maybe we don't have access to. And I think that's a big time saver.

And let it be true of any app, really. If you've got to utilize it, to Sharam's point, you got to build it to where the people are. And, and as you explore new ideas, which, by the way, I have to ask you, how does it work with your team? Because you guys really—

You've grown.

You've grown. I just love what you're doing with your own team, watching you grow.

How do you use Financial Sense?

Do we use it? We do. The marketing team does a little bit. Yeah, I know they tried and then they stopped using it and then we were back to it because it works. But like, it's not—

you're not an accounting firm. But yeah, but your team has definitely grown. Your team has grown quite a bit.

But what is your approach with your team? Like, How do you all— I mean, that's a lot of channels of people giving you feedback or unsolicited information. What is the approach? How do you culturally accept all of these things or handle it together collectively?

He's brought peace of mind to all of us. How do you keep it inside your own place?

Is the question more about the feedback we're getting from our customers? How do we filter that through the organization? Or is it about how do we maintain like a cohesive culture among—

There you go.

Okay, uh, so I'll answer the culture one first because that's really important for us. Like, we spend a lot of time thinking about culture, and we're a fully remote company, right? So I'm the only one in Atlanta. You know, we have half our team— I think about like 3/4 of our team is in— half our team is in— 3/4 of our team is in the States, and then we have some people in like the UK, Canada, And, and some other parts of Europe. But we grow— we grew fast too, right? We went from— so last year we went from like 7 to 23 people. Um, wow, it's a big jump. But the biggest thing I think we do to create, like, to be able to grow and not like break, right, is a lot of trust, a lot of— which is really hard to do as a remote company.

Yes.

Um, because like you're not seeing them every day, you don't know what they're really doing. Like, I've struck— we struck the business where, you know, you have the leadership team and then under each they have their own. And when we hire, we believe in full ownership. So it's like you own your role and I'm not gonna check in on you. These are the things we want you to hit. We have some ideas of how you can get there, but you own this, you decide this. And if you hit the—

Wow.

If you hit it, I don't care when you work, I don't care how much you work. Like, it's— you're on your time, right? Um, and One of the reasons I think that's worked for us, because it's, you can't do that if you don't have a good culture that people feel valued and believed in. And just like with our customers, like where we, we ask like, hey, how can we make this better? We do the same thing with our team every month. We have surveys, we get on calls, we talk about, hey, how can, like, are we, I always ask these 3 questions. What should we keep doing? what should we stop doing and what should we start doing, right? So like, and that always answers like, okay, they like this, let's keep doing that. We're not doing this and they want this, let's start doing that. And they don't like this, let's stop doing that.

Yeah.

And through that, you know, we've, we, they feel, you know, the team feels heard. But also we share, like we're very open about like our numbers and everything. We share it across the company. so everyone can buy into and they can see like what we're doing. And it's really just about communicating with your team, giving them that trust and, and make, again, making them feel heard, you know, like listening and actually implementing what, so that like the, the listening, like that's not just with our customers, it's across the organization.

And—

Yeah, nice.

We actually just won Inc. and we were on the Inc. Best Places to Work List recently.

Well, good for you. Awesome.

Yeah, that was great. I was excited about that. I think we did a survey and it was like 100% of our team would recommend Financial Cents to others, someone else. We had people say like this is their forever company, and this is like, that's cool. I'm like, I'm like, okay, I think I'm doing some things right here, um, which is, which is great. But that's kind of how we kind of go about That allows us to grow quickly and not have to like, because, you know, we're not— we're delegating a lot of it and we're trusting and we're creating that place for people to be heard and those ideas to come to the top.

Well, you know, that's, that's what makes you different too, because you're not, you're not a great big giant corporation that stops listening to its customers because they have to satisfy the board of directors and, you know, the investors and all that sort of stuff. I mean, you're, you're at this level where You're reaping the benefits of listening to people and giving them what they need and fixing things and all of that. And I hope you can continue that as you grow, because kudos to you. That makes a big difference for all of us out here.

Yeah, it gets harder as you get bigger. And yeah, yeah, I used to be on all the calls with the customers and doing the sales and support, but now I don't. And that's why I have the Facebook group now, which has been great. And I still own that because that's kind of my channel to our customers and also the conferences. But like virtually it's, it's the Facebook group that helps me keep a pulse on like, what are you guys saying? What do we need to do better? Like what, like, and everything so forth.

Yeah. As a, it's interesting because as business owners, all of us here, it is hard. that is the one thing there's, there's got to be a point. And Linda and I share this equally. We got to have our hand in something, not because we want to micromanage you. I, I fully agree and believe I'm not here. I didn't hire you to babysit you.

Exactly.

And I feel like that gets missed in culture because some people are so used to that style of culture. But that's not what the current market is asking for.

No.

Um, but it is hard to measure.

We follow that too with, you know, our team. who has what accounts, and you own that account from soup to nuts. I want you to be able to answer the questions from the client. I want you to be able to be front-facing in the meetings because it's not scalable for Sarah and I. We have to be in every single client meeting. That's just not going to work. We'll all just sit in this little space. No, no, we want to. Yeah, we don't want to be either. But yeah, so it's kind of— but that's a little bit of a grooming, a little bit of a training. But we've come— I think we've come a long way too because we've really grown quite a bit too. Yeah, I have to kind of develop it as you go along. And it's not every decision we make is perfect because there's some that are not. And then you kind of have to dial it back a little bit and redirect and, and try to figure out what works. But overall, we've— I think we've got a very good culture. We have a lot of people who all love each other, which is the most important thing.

I think it's just remarkable that something that we utilize every day and that you guys have experienced this amazing recognition. But it— that's why I was asking is, how do you— how does it translate? Because I do feel like it has to translate from within to showcase out. And I— it's interesting to— as, as you develop your workflows, whatever they are, whatever industry we are, it's that approach of innovation and creativity, like those 3 points that you hit on. We, we have somebody on our team that Felt nothing against the prior employer, but wasn't able to bring forward some better ideas to implement. So—

Tried, but then the answer was, no, we're not changing anything in our processes. But what if there's somebody who's working, doing the work, finds something that they think is a better process and has a better method? And it might work, it might not work, but I don't want to close the door on that innovation, or they might want to find a way to make something better, faster. And I mean, the software changes all the time. And look at the size of the room that was at Scaling. It was huge, the vendor room, and a lot of familiar faces, a lot of software we had seen before, some that we had not. So you wanna be able to keep that door open for— I don't wanna squash their creativity either. You wanna keep it open for the staff.

Mm-hmm. That's really important. I mean, I was actually, I was in a meeting or we, I was in a mastermind the other week and we were talking about the 5 dysfunctions of a team. And trust is the base layer. But after trust, it's about— it's called conflict. You need conflict, actually, because that's where these ideas come from.

Right.

They need to feel comfortable to be, hey, I have a differing opinion on this. Let's just talk about it instead of everyone pretending, not bringing anything up because they want to protect the harmonious of the team. They don't want to offend anyone, which, I mean, you want to be professional about it. But people need to be able to say, hey, actually, I disagree. This is my concern with that. Then let's talk about it. And they can—

No elephants in the room.

Exactly. Because then people start harboring resentment and they don't want to talk and they feel like they can't buy in and they don't want to do— they don't— why? You're not going to listen to me. Why would I do what you want me to tell you? And it's so important to create that safe place or that vulnerability. And it comes from the top, right? Like, you just— like, they were saying they call it mining for conflict, trying to actually find ways to be like, hey, does anyone actually have a problem with this? Like, I just— or like, hey, this number looks bad. Do you guys think anything about it? Like, actually calling it out, me like, hey, I want to hear you. Hey, you've been quiet over there. What do you think about it? Like, trying to get people, like, pull it out of people and then it becomes part of it. And having those healthy discussions of like those diverse opinions. And you may not go with it, but at least they got the chance to talk about it.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, you heard.

It's a phrase, being nice is not really kind. It's another thing too. But you said 5, so you just mentioned 2. What are the other 3?

Okay, see if I can remember them. Let's see, there's trust at the bottom, then there's conflict.

Okay.

And then there, there was accountability. So like, actually, like everyone holding everyone accountable. Hey, like I noticed, like being like, not just letting everything slide, because then high performers don't want to be a part because they're not being— no one else is being held accountable. Why would they continue to work hard, right?

That's a good one.

And then there's results. So focusing on results. I'm trying to remember the other one. Now I'm gonna have to—

You can come back.

Sorry to put you on the spot, but I'm so fascinated by it.

And oh, Okay, I remember now. It's lack of— it's lack— it's commitment. So, oh, I think it— I don't remember the phrase by Bezos, but it's like disagree and then commit or something like that. But it's like, let's talk about— like everyone has differing opinions. Then at the end of the meeting, making sure, okay, hey, this is what we're gonna go with. I know you disagreed and we decided to go this route. Can you commit to this? Like, can you get behind this? Can the whole team commit to it? Because Mm-hmm. If someone's not committing, then they're gonna go— everyone's going in different directions. So it's just like getting that commitment at the end of the day, even though— and getting everyone on the same page so they can fully buy in. And part of that is listening to their opinions. And even if you don't go with it, at least you heard them. And typically most of the time, and if someone says they can't commit, ask why, you know, like why? What? Let's talk about this more. And then, okay, I see that concern. Maybe there's a middle ground. Let's test this stuff for 3 months with— 10% of the clients. Let's see if it actually works or it doesn't work, and then kind of getting, getting there somehow, if that makes sense.

That makes sense. And, you know, I think that in, in the situation, to back up a little bit where you said maybe this isn't going to work and we're not going to try it, but thank them for, for bringing it forward. And I think that that's where we see law firms changing a lot nowadays. It's not— they're, they're becoming less and less of that that corporate structure, you know, of they're going to hold it all to their chest and the employees just get whipped every day and that sort of thing. It's, it's, you know, the law firms seem to be changing too. I mean, I think if that's one thing that COVID taught us all was how to work in different environments in different ways, to be more open, to be more flexible. And that's, that's one thing I really like about your company and about your product is that, you know, there's all this flexibility that goes on and creativity there. It's like, oh, There's— you can do it this way, this way, or this way, and you're still going to get the same result. It's going to work. There's safety.

Yeah.

Steve, you're going to crack up at this, but you know what hit me in my brain when you said that? I was thinking of Suits and the bullpen.

Yes, yes, you're right. Oh my gosh.

Yeah.

We're so far from that. But yeah, you can see the change. Like, we see the change in our profession. They're very like professions with legal firms and accounting firms in some ways. But you do see the change of even the naming convention of a firm. It doesn't really have a partnership name. A lot of times it's a different name, which is kind of cool, but it doesn't have 7 names, comma, LLP.

Yeah.

And the poor receptionist answering the phone.

Yeah.

But a fully remote team, I know that what I appreciate about what I'm hearing from you is similar to us too. We're a fully remote team, same with Steve. Steve is, you know, we might be, you might be in the same state, but there's a distance between yourself and the person that you're working with. It does take a little bit of a balance on that trust side more than we expect at times because you wanna ultimately, I don't care how you get the work done as long as it's the quality of work that we're looking for. And ultimately at the end of the day, the work is completed for the work that you need done. If it's not, that's where I feel like you're saying the accountability, you gotta go back and find out.

Yeah.

Ask more questions, which I'm sure is different for you in a software space because you have lots of things going on.

So, and I would say, like, going back to, like, practice management in general, I think a lot of firms, that's the biggest challenge they have, especially when they're making that transition from, hey, it's just been me, I've been doing all the work. Okay, I'm— I have too many clients, I can't do it all on my own now, I have to hire someone. But they can't let go. They're like, I don't know this person. I'm gonna trust them to deliver the work as if I were to do it. What if my client gets upset, they forget, the quality is not good, and I lose that client? Like, this is like the everyone, or then they micromanage and then the team member feels like you're smothering me and they leave, right? They can't keep good talent. So like, like implementing a practice management tool helps you get over that because one, you can document your processes. And if you do a good job, they should be able to do the work as if you were doing it yourself. So that gives you a little bit of comfort in knowing, hey, they've got the playbook I've been using. They know exactly how to get it done right, right? So you're not just throwing something at them and they're figuring it out and, you know, they're making mistakes. So it prevents that risk, but also the accountability. You can see even if you're remote, hey, okay, this is where he's at. He's got all this work done for the month, but he's behind on these. Let me reach out and see if I can help.

Exactly.

It's not— I think the biggest reason we see people implement a practice management tool is because they missed a few client deadlines. And the funny thing is they typically don't know they missed a client deadline until they get the client call. That's very uncomfortable.

So true. And you can't talk legal with court dates. I'm sorry, that's not—

Whatever is he talking about?

Especially those annual tasks, right? So the things you do once a year.

Right.

Sometimes different tax people require different documents or have a different methodology to the end of the year and to document it so that the next year you look like the accounting superstar because you provide exactly what they want. Maybe they want their GL to have different columns or whatever. You've got all that set up, but it's already also all the steps that are necessary. And I think that's— it just comes down to processes. But I still can remember when I first started and I got to the point where I wasn't able to do the work and had to hire. It's really scary. And then when you do get to that point where you're able to hire, Having a way to have them all, because now you're— you have to relinquish control at some level whether you like it or not. And that's another big step, another big hurdle. But then once you do do that, yeah, I mean, you, you're not gonna be able to continue to grow. And then once you do do that, you have to have a process in place. And if you're sitting here listening to the podcast, you're like, that's me and I've got it on a Google spreadsheet, really you ought to think about looking into something like Financial Cents because it isn't that expensive. It's not—

For the accounting side.

For the accounting side.

Yeah, for the other people.

Yes, for getting it For getting it in, getting your processes in place. Because sometimes we, we use a Google Sheet, we use a, I don't know, Trello board or some stupid thing that's not really in-depth enough because it just gets you by the pieces that you need. Then all of a sudden it's just like our clients, they start out with a spreadsheet for their trust, and all of a sudden they're looking at it and they're like, I'm just going to handle this, I'm going to do it at night, 10:30 at night. Then all of a sudden it's not being done, you're way far behind, it's a big mess. And in their case, it's compliance. But for us, it's just that phone call when somebody said, I'm looking at my file and nobody's reconciled this since last October. And then you're like, oh my God, why isn't it reconciled? And then you'll find out that the tasks aren't done. So to be able to— for us to be able to pull up the screen and see where are our staff on their work, and maybe they don't come to us, they're falling behind, they don't come to us, we can see it. We'll hop on a call and say, what's going on? Why are you behind? And find out maybe a really valid reason, and then we'll get somebody else in to help catch you up. Because something else got in the way. And sometimes they don't tell you, and you want to be able to see where you're at with the files. Yeah. You know, and that's the important piece of this. And I think that's— it's going to allow you to grow. So as you start to get bigger and bigger and pile it on, the more you have your processes in place, the better.

Yeah.

I have a couple of questions for Sharam. One, if you could speak a little bit to security, how your platform keeps all these clients' data secure. and how, what we can share with them when they know that we're using it and we're asking them to communicate with us in that platform. And my brain just went blank.

Ah, welcome to the club.

Oh, AI. Let's talk about AI a little. Look at him. Yeah.

Smiling.

Just a little bit.

I think you piqued an interest there.

I have my opinions on it.

That's fine.

But in terms of security, so I'm not the technical co-founder, so I don't know like all like the details, but Abdullah, he helped co-found the company with me. He's got a cybersecurity background, but we, we, we've gone through a lot of tests to keep everything secure. So we actually get reviewed by Google, do a security test.

You do? Okay.

A certification. But like, I think one balance we found was like, how can we keep it secure but still easy for the client?

Right, right.

A lot of these portals, they, they layer on the security, but they don't think about, hey, it's secure, but now the client has to go through like 15 clicks just to get to the portal. And 90% of the time the client doesn't make it through the 15 clicks. They just give up halfway through. And that's why you never get your documents or the response from the client. And that's why we chose the Magic Link security, which is a newer technology. But it allows the client to quickly get in but not have to have a username or password, because that is not— instead, the username and password is built based on the email. Because they get the email or 2FA, like if they have their phone, right, they can get the—

Right.

So it's still just as secure as username or password, but it's piggybacking basically off the email or their phone. So they can get access but don't have to remember, create a whole new account for a portal and remember everything. And that's been really great on the client side. And I feel like why we get such good adoption, like you're talking about, my clients haven't pushed back. A lot of times some of the clients don't even realize they're using a different portal because it's so simple.

Yeah, right, right.

And then only for the firm side, you know, in, in the portal, like encrypting everything, keeping everything secure, having 2FA built in on the firm side as well, doing those security tests, having been great. I actually have a— if you go to our website, there's a— at the bottom, security, and it details everything about like the actual like The security jargon that I don't know.

The stuff that Antola has worked on.

Yeah.

Like put together.

I love that.

In terms of AI, what do you like? So what like that could go in a million different directions. Like what about specifically though? Like in the accounting space? Hmm.

What did you?

I just want to know what somebody like you who has a company like yours with the app. You're, you're an app for all of us. What, what impact is AI having on you? What are you thinking? You know, it's interesting.

I think AI, in my opinion, is a little overhyped. I think there's a lot of great things you can do with it, right? And I think someone gave it an analogy to me one time that I think really stuck with me. It was like, AI is, it's not gonna like, so let's say, I don't know if you golf or anything, but AI is not going to replace the golfer. It's going to be like a caddy for the golfer to be more effective in the game. So a lot of people are talking about how AI is going to disrupt everything. There's not going to be any more support. Yeah, yeah. They're going to replace all the accountants out there. I don't think that's going to happen. I think you will always need a human. I mean, people have been saying—

You need human touch.

You do. Yeah. I mean, every time new technology comes out, everyone's like, it's going to— we're all going to lose our jobs. I think it's gonna allow accountants to be effective. Like now, like someone with, could be more effective at maybe offering more advisory services because they have AI analyzing.

Exactly. Exactly.

Like for us, I think there's a lot of ways we can use it in our business, like in terms of like helping our marketing or dev team or support team be more efficient. But I don't think it's gonna replace everyone. And then in terms of on our product, I think there's ways we can use it. Like we've used it already to help create checklists because like people struggle to document their processes. So using AI to create checklists for your processes, but using it to also find information, like more like we talked about, one of the biggest challenges firms have is finding the information. So making the search more powerful so you can find the— I saw something really cool that a company actually released. It's not in our space, it's a different space, but they actually in their search with AI, They can now search integrations. So let's say if it's integrated with Slack or Teams or Google Docs, if you search in their app, they'll search in all those and bring it in.

Oh, nice.

Which is pretty cool.

So if you can't remember where you put it.

Yeah. Yeah. So even if you're using multiple apps, it makes it easier to find it as if it was in one app. So I think it's gonna be very powerful and it's gonna make, I think it's like if you don't adopt it, you're gonna fall behind. You're gonna lose.

Oh yeah. Yeah.

But I don't think it's going to replace everything and disrupt the world. Like everyone is—

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on it. It's— you're right. I mean, it's not going to replace all of us. People are still going to need to have a human interface with their business. It's just not—

We still need you, Steve.

What did we say? There was a quote at the conference.

I'm going to touch you, Sarah.

Quote at the conference that said, AI isn't going to replace you, but an accountant that knows how to use and implement AI will replace you.

Yeah, there you go.

I like that.

Yeah. Wow. Good job for remembering.

I know. I like that.

Right now, you know, stuck with me because it's true. There's a lot of fear around it. We— I mean, we talked to people in the hallway that people that have been my colleagues said, they're probably maybe 10 years older than me, maybe a little bit less, maybe 5. And they're all like, I'm retiring, I'm getting out of here before all this stuff. And they might be desktop people, you know, people that are still on desktop, and they're just like, I'm just done. I'm done with the industry. And I just—

I'm too—

we heard this, I'm too old to learn and I don't want to. And I'm like, wow, I really— I'm excited about it. I want to keep going.

A few weeks ago, you shared a story about how— because Linda and I are always comparing because we're both in the same age bubble.

27.

What's that?

27. Mm-hmm. But when you talk—

when you talked about— when you reminded all of us about when the cloud came along and we were all like, oh, the cloud, oh my God, and now it's just— it's second nature, you know? Same thing with AI.

Yeah, no, seriously, I live in Florida. How many times I had to explain what the cloud was when I first moved here? And then I was just— was just really getting to be— I'm like, I was in QBO and they're like, Can you explain to me what a cloud is? I'm like, oh God, if I have to have this conversation one more time, it's the big computer in the sky.

Why don't you just tell them equals big computer number?

No, it's so true though. I mean, you know, older generation down here in Florida, and it was just a conversation we had quite often as I started to get clients like, can you explain to me what the cloud is?

I'm like, okay, yeah, we'll do that.

Yeah.

Well, I think the thing with AI is being careful and double-checking it and Right.

That's, I think, our big thing that we have to really consider the most as we start to implement tools. Know where the software is from, know the people behind the software before you select one, know that it's been here for a while because you don't want to put all your effort into something that it's not around anymore, and that can happen with software. So yeah.

Sharam, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your Your journey, the importance of all of this.

It was fun hanging out with you at the conference too.

Yeah, it was a blast.

I got Sarah over there and she's got some— I got these ideas. And then she had like a little crowd around her, you know, what did she do?

Well, I was cracking up too because we had some great conversations with George and like just—

At least she didn't come with you. She came, went to one of the software that we use and she goes, I have a list.

I was like, oh, I would prefer to have— I would prefer you bring a list actually. I wanted to know.

Okay, don't you worry. I'll be sorry.

You regret that one?

Be careful what you ask for.

It will not be a regret. It's just these little things. But overall, I mean, ultimately, I think to the point of what we discussed, it's got to be the right fit for you. It's got to work for your whole team. It can't just be a top-down conversation, right? Implementation of, you know, find your superstars in your team that can help implement it with you alongside you and Like you said, address the feedback, look for new ways to work within it. Maybe somebody's got a superstar way that we don't know about. So yeah, I, I think that— and then I appreciate the candor, like the company culture and just knowing what's behind everything and, and how it— just understanding like what we see is validated by what you— I mean, you, you just told us. And so—

And you have a great team. Everybody we met, they're a lot of fun.

We had a lot of fun with them.

After party.

I've been lucky. We've been able to get amazing people. Um, and you have been too. And then now that I think something too, like just like advice for like any firm that's looking to hire someone, like their first person, make sure that first hire is good because that's gonna, that's gonna make or break your business. 'Cause what typically happens, your first hire is gonna be a reflection of the next 5 hires. Um, so if you hire someone that's not that great, like that's just kind of slacking, it's gonna typically bring in, especially if you lean on them to help find those people. But even if you bring in someone good and they see that person, they're gonna be like, this isn't the right— like it's gonna cause that friction that's gonna cause the team A players to leave. And I think we were lucky early on bringing in like some really good people.

Mm-hmm.

And I was really careful. I vetted a lot of people and that it's like it cascades throughout your organization. Like it affects everything. And it's the most important decision is your first hire, in my opinion.

Oh, great tip.

That's a beautiful point.

Yeah.

Well, Miss Kira, are you going to join us, my dear?

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Thank you, everyone.

Thank you. We'll see you all next week.

Thank you, Shiram.