It Takes a Village

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

Welcome to the Accountants Law Pod. This week we're going to discuss, as a bookkeeper or an accountant, how can you grow as a human, grow your firm, grow and expand your horizons through working in maybe a group setting, group participation, maybe in a Facebook group. We're just gonna kind of dial into those things and share some of the ones that we know are really fantastic. So I'm gonna toss this over to Steve because I know he has a very, a very probably kind of sub-famous group for a law firm, uh, bookkeepers. And, uh, I think, Steve, you can fill us in on why you love that group.

Well, thanks, Linda. I think you're talking about the Bookkeepers Business Launch, BBL.

Mm-hmm.

Ben Robinson's group. It's great for people who want to explore and jump into bookkeeping. And he's got excellent courses, lots of subgroups. As an example, in the state I live in, we have a Colorado BBL group and we were meeting regularly before COVID We haven't since COVID but we have lots of spinoff groups where we do Zoom meetings and things and talk about specific problems and, and all of that. And so I really recommend BBL and there's a lot of people in our legal community who have gone through BBL and really like it. And they have the Digital Bookkeeper Association. You can earn certification in that. It's a great group. Also, I like to network through Alignable. If anybody has worked with Alignable, it's a great platform for local networking electronically through the internet. And also, you know, since we're all in the legal niche, don't forget your bar associations. And, you know, here in Colorado, I built my business through the Bar Association, and we— I've never counted, but we must have 15, 20, 30, I don't know how many subgroups. So, you know, you obviously can't join every subgroup at the bar, but you can join ones that appeal to you, like women-owned law firms, Hispanic law firms, immigration law firms, lawyers over 40. Subgroup. I mean, there's just everything you can imagine, and you can pick and choose the ones you want to belong to. And then you get on their listservs, and then you start attending meetings, and, you know, you can pick up new business, you can learn things, you can present problems in these meetings and get feedback from actual attorneys, which is really nice. So those are—

It is.

I love, I love a good challenge from an attorney. So, but those are the 3 that I really like to subscribe to.

And the BBL, that one is more or less, it's really directed to law firm bookkeepers and accountants, right? So it's really, do they share a lot of things that you learn about or is it mostly—

It's huge. It's broad. It's very broad. It's every industry.

Oh, okay. Yeah.

But we do have a subgroup of just legal in there.

Oh, okay. So it's that big.

Yeah. Oh, it's huge. Yeah.

Yeah.

All right, Sarah, I know you better answer this question, right? What is your favorite Facebook group?

None.

I'm kidding.

Well, thanks, Sarah.

Well, obviously, I'm a co-host of one, so naturally, the Accountants Law Lab. But my start would be— yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry. I know you're sharing the love, my friend. But the start, Linda, our start— well, mine has always been Seth's group.

Yes. Which is not a Facebook group. It's 97 and up. Yeah.

But that's where my— well, they have its own— it has its own—

It has. That's changed a few times.

Like the nerd thing or something.

Yeah. But you pay to play. You get a lot more if you pay for it.

Yeah. But that's where my, like, heart of hearts have always been, just because he—

It's where we met, Sarah.

That's where we met. My journey. It's the reason why I sit here today. He is a huge portion of that, like a big thing of that in my life.

And an incredible human being.

Yes.

He's just amazing.

Like, I don't care.

Yeah. I don't care what you have going on as a business owner. It could be anything. And you're in his group and you can reach— he's reachable. He's not like the king and everything. Just people handle his stuff. He's one-on-one with you. Like, he's right on everything. And he's got a pretty large group. And he still provides this amazing value. Even if you think you know everything, you don't. If you haven't been in Seth's group, you have no clue what you don't know.

You'd be amazed what you learn. And it's okay to, like, there's times to agree and disagree. There are certain things that he likes where it's like, oh, I like it a little different. But it's always met with and it's always agreed upon. Work what's going to work for you, what's going to get you excited, all of that stuff. So do what's right for you. I really—

what's his last name?

Seth David.

David.

Okay. He's the chief nerd. He goes by Nerd Enterprises too. He had a ton of content on Facebook, on YouTube years ago. That was his thing that led into, I mean, amazing stuff that he shared and helped other people learn. And then he had his group and, you know, this kind of where I came up with the idea of for us to do this same kind of an offshoot in the niche, niching down to just legal stuff, which our group is more than legal. The Accountants Law Lab is definitely more than just the legal side of it. We talk about business. It's really what a legal bookkeeper or an accountant would want to be in to know things about software, things about billing software and what works best with clients and all of that. But it also talks about— we talk about marketing your firm, and there's a lot more there than just trust accounting, which I think That was the thing I had to think about when we started to formulate the idea of this was, how are we gonna work it through? And I'm talking about really more the paid group. The Facebook group is there. It's free. Anybody can join, and it's private. We're almost at 500 members, probably will be by the time this airs, which seems like a lot. But I had this other Facebook group prior to this that was QB Community Live, and that was kind of an open to everybody, and it was really about teaching QuickBooks to bookkeepers just starting. So a much broader audience. And I remember hitting 2,000 and how big a deal that was. And that climbed into the same, probably equal right now to us getting 500 that it was to turning 2,000. And it's just—

Yeah, because it's so broad.

It was so broad. It was easier to pull people in. Like, if you're gonna say, I'm gonna teach people how to be a bookkeeper, you are gonna get way larger audience than if you say, I'm gonna teach people how to do legal bookkeeping. So it's just niched down. But I really love it because it lets me and Sarah— it gives us an avenue. We were getting, before we had the group, because we had talked about making the group, and we were getting people, oh, we know you, the Legal Ladies. How do I do this? And how do I do that? We were constantly getting messaged on how do you do this? And we're like, we gotta— it was really overwhelming when we're trying to work as well. So we figured, let's create something that gives us an avenue to be able to help a lot of people at once. And that's really how the paid group was born. But also the Facebook group goes along with it. So maybe you're not sure if you wanna join, so you can jump, jump into the Facebook group where we still share content, where they're monitoring questions. So it's not like— and I try to let the questions in the Facebook group be answered by members. I try not to jump in unless nobody's answered, because—

There's other groups too, like Like, I could name off a couple legal—

Veronica's.

Legal ones too. Yeah, Veronica. Of course I like Veronica. There's other ones too. Um, there's also just kind of jumping into the broader horizon, there are groups, um, that I'm in that are maybe more aligned with maybe certain things, hobbies I'm interested in or things like that. And I tend to find Some people will touch on a health and wellness moment or something that draws me in, and I'm like, oh, that's kind of interesting, or I like that, or— and it helps the growth of it. But in this specific industry of accounting, there are so many out there.

Right.

And we see the cross kind of connection of that through different podcasts, through different mediums, all of these things. There's like, you know, app-specific. There's different apps that you could join their groups and then learn some more from on that.

Well, Kajabi has a pretty phenomenal group.

Yeah, that's another one.

See what people are doing. So it's not so much the people that are trying to teach you how to use Kajabi, but it's an offshoot of people that are using it that have figured out like ways around things. I'll tag Tierra sometimes because You know, our assistant, because she, she does a lot of our stuff behind the scenes, and I'll see something that somebody does, and I'll tag both of you, and I'm like, yo, look what this person figured out how to do with a different software but worked with Kajabi. And those are—

That's what I love about the app ones too, Linda, to your point. It is really nice to be able to see somebody ask a question like, I never quite thought about it, or I've had that question. I guess I just assumed somebody knew the answer to it, and then there, there it is. So It kind of goes to the no question is a dumb question kind of thing. I know Steve, he's been so kind to share with us, oh, I hear this hot topic happening over here, maybe in the BDL group or some other group. And then conferences also have a little bit of a side shoot sometimes depending on what they're doing or internal.

Steve is not allowed to talk to you about any more apps or software.

Uh-huh. Yeah.

Okay.

He's smiling.

For anybody who's listening, Steve's smiling because these two get together and they're like, oh, squirrel, let's go look at this software. And I'm like, all right.

I'm like, no more squirrels.

Yeah, but, um, so, and there's like, and then the other thing too is like, I'm, I'm obviously huge in my ethnic community. I'm also huge in like the women's community. I find a lot of like girl boss and those types of things on different Medium platforms to follow. Um, followed this, um, pretty educated, uh, couple on PPP and EIDL and a whole bunch of stuff, and they're very fascinating. And I watch them, they kind of just crack me up more than anything, but, um, their knowledge is interesting. And that's on YouTube. Um, so they're the way to pull in and, and, and submerge yourself into a community. It's really driven by you as an individual. You have to want to seek this out. You have to want to do this. And you would have to want to allow yourself the time. Now, some people look at it in a negative way, like, I don't have the time. But really, it's a reminder to me that if I say that, am I allowing myself to grow? Am I allowing myself to entertain— may— I may not agree with a position, or I may, may liken to a position, or I might warm up to something that I never quite thought all the way through. So I feel like that's like the premise of allowing yourself to do this. There will— I will say this because I feel this a lot. I am the type of person, just for me personally, and I know Linda feels this way, if I'm going to ask a lot of questions and I have the expectation that I'm gonna get something for free, I'm either gonna do one of two things. I'm either gonna subscribe to your thing for a month as a giveback to you for your time. Or I'm gonna pay.

I love that.

And I wanna give, you know, and to be honest with you, I would never, even amongst our friends, I would never expect any of my professional colleagues to just give me something without me thinking of a way to give back. Because we all have retained this knowledge in a different way. We all have our blessings and our curses of how we wanna handle these things and do all this stuff. But just being recognized for that, I think, is really important. So thanks, Steve, for recognizing that.

Of course. And I have, I have a really fun story to share. As you know, I'm an avid Airstreamer, and one of the personal groups I belong to is the Airstream Forums. I've belonged to them since like 2004 or '05, somewhere in there. And every day with my coffee every morning, I have to go to the Air Forums and see what's going on out there. And lo and behold, a few years ago, I found 2, 2 different attorneys in 2 different states that practice law out of their Airstreams. And so recently I went to San Antonio with a friend to a concert, and while we were there, we drove up to Austin. And my big mission in Austin was to find this guy in his Airstream. Never did find him. We went on a mission. We were out in the city. We were— we had our maps going on our phone. We, you know, we even found the place where his Airstream used to be, and we had pictures of the building from way back, you know, 5, 6 years ago, and then now. And I never did find him. But I never would have had that adventure had I not gotten into law firm accounting.

I mean, there's a lot, you know, I don't care a lot about Facebook as it, as it is a company. But I have to say that when it comes to Facebook, like my daughter is in a group that's— this is how unique it can be. Um, mom, single moms with boys, because it's different than single moms with boys and girls or single moms with girls and Sometimes she just kind of snaps a picture and sends me like a, like it'll be a GIF that somebody put on. And she sent me one the other day that was a picture of moms making lunch in September. And it was like this lady made like a little house with the pretzels, and it was really creative. And then the one for now, moms making lunch in May, and it was like totally like just chucked a bunch of bags of things in the lunch. But these are the things that you can get from Facebook, though. I mean, those are the— and then you can get, maybe get some connections. And if you Have a knowledge and you're in a group. Like, for, like, for example, if you were in our group and you're in the Law Lab Facebook group and you have knowledge, which is one of the things I love, and people give back. I think my— comes to mind what you did, Steve. But Karen Schwartz always answers questions in there. And as an admin, we're able to make them experts because we know them personally. We know they have the knowledge. And then that helps when somebody asks a question, if somebody's answering. That way, then it has that people know that that person was now dubbed an expert. There's also law firm bookkeepers and accountants. That's another one that's in our industry that's around that was before us and a lot bigger than ours. I think, I don't know how many does Amanda have in that group? It was like 2,500. She's got a very large group, but it's been around for a while.

Great group going on in there.

Has anybody ever seen Amanda's recording that she did? Go to YouTube and look at her recording that she did at Clio.

Maybe Oh, yes, I have seen that.

It's 3 or 4 years ago. It's very impactful, very well done.

Yeah, she's an excellent speaker too, because I actually watched that because her cadence and her presence on stage was impactful. So I was like, wow, I need to be more like, slow things down and be more deliberate because she was really deliberate, which I really appreciated in that topic. When you're up on stage speaking to a bunch of accountants, you want to have that cadence.

Well, she Also, I really admire and appreciate that she is all like, she's, you know, being in the accounting salon and the innovation portion of it and asking the questions. I mean, maybe she knows the answers, but maybe it's just an insightful conversation. It just provokes more thought process. And it's really nice to—

Which the salon is another group. It's an invite-in-only group. But that's another group that you are— you get with some really high-level, serious, and you learn a lot from. And you went to Happy Camp last year. AppyCamp was another one that you, like, were just amazed at what you learned, and you were probably socializing with a lot of the same people. And like you said, you can also get this. In fact, somebody reached out to me recently, actually one of our members of our group, and said, I'm thinking of going to Scaling New Heights, but I've never been to a conference. Do you think it will benefit me? What I'm really looking for is not the education, but the meeting of the people, meeting people that are like-minded so I can collaborate. And I'm like, absolutely. That is a great reason to go. And told her that she should go, but then also said, make sure you let us know that you're going because then you can meet up with me and Sarah in person because we're going. So, yeah. So I think that that's, you know, that's a good, good thing.

Yeah, I feel it's probably the same of all of us. Like, it's a gratitude space to be in because we've met through our— like, thankfully, we've met Steve through our own group. I would have—

yeah.

I probably would have tripped over you at some point and fell in love with you no matter what, Steve. But the fact that, the fact that we get to meet and, and get to see each other on a regular cadence is awesome, especially the people in the group. I mean, we have some really amazing people in that group. But also, Linda and I would have never actually probably crossed paths per se. Like, we've been in a conference together, didn't know it. Been in the same room, didn't know it. But we probably wouldn't have never crossed paths had we not had the wonderful moment to be in the space. And, you know, and Seth, obviously, he always encourages people. Like, what we do is just cross-connect, support each other. And Linda had a moment, and I was just so grateful to be a part of that experience for her.

And I think Seth feels like he's our daddy in this because he's like, I put you two together.

I always refer to him as my older brother, a brother I never had, because he just has always been that.

But he's very proud, and he's proud that we've spun off a separate group, and it's very— it's kind of similar to what he does, um, in a different way. But yeah, he's really proud of that, that we've, you know, gone off onto this realm and we have this, um, group going.

And speaking of, too, the other person I forgot about is Richard Ropa has an amazing group.

He has a big group, right?

And a spinoff, the reason why it caught my mind too is Richard is an amazing person. But also, Tanya has done something.

Tanya Shelty. She has a group for contractors. And then there was Megan had one for nonprofits. And there's a lot of groups out there. I mean, there's so many when you start to look, if that's what you're looking for, especially like, I remember sending people, a lot of people to the nonprofit when a question would come up in QB Community Live about nonprofits. I would go in and say, you should really consider going in this group because it's Specialized, like law firm accounting, right? It's specialized to that industry where you have to write grants, and there's a lot more there in that industry that you really need to know. Or like e-commerce. Donna Reid has one for e-commerce, doesn't she? Or somebody does.

You know who has an amazing newsletter that I love reading is—

And Amanda Aguilar, because we forgot to say her last name.

Oh, yes, we did forget.

Amanda Aguilar, Law Firm Bookkeepers and Accountants.

Let me— oh my God, why is this?

But there's so many great groups out there. I'm really—

You know, the whole thing is finding your tribe.

That's your Google.

Yeah.

Finding your tribe.

Yeah. Where is your tribe? I mean, you know, we get really lonely out here in the bookkeeping and accounting world working from our home offices and, you know, remote locations and stuff. And when you have your tribe, they understand. You know, the person who wants to go meet people like her, you know. I mean, so a few weeks ago, Sarah and I recorded the podcast from a little vintage Airstream in a hotel in downtown Denver, and I've been mentioning it to friends and saw a friend yesterday was at that hotel. And I don't know if I can get it up here on the screen or not, but she sent me a picture of the Airstream.

She was there.

Oh, awesome. You know, it's all finding your tribe and your, your passion and what speaks to you. Like Seth speaks to you guys, and you know, the Law Lab totally speaks to me. To me, that's, that's one of my tribes. I love everybody in that group. I just look forward to every Friday when we meet and we share our challenges and problems and we fix them. And you know, it's a safe space, and the newbies can come in and they're like, whoa, what is this? And we're all just We're all just welcoming them and bringing them in and, and say, and like this Friday's episode, I think is just brilliant.

Oh my gosh, I know.

That you picked this, this episode, which is 1099s in June.

I selfishly picked it, my dear.

I think that's awesome.

Because I'm just so tired of talking about it and not having all the knowledge all the time.

Well, and then, you know, we always wait till November, December, and then we all panic. And, you know, this year our action plan in our company is to send a personal letter to every single client and giving them the roadmap of what to expect for 1099s this year. And I got this from Ben Day, you guys. He's another one to follow. Man, is he amazing. And I got this from him and we're going to have deadlines in there. So by, as an example, by November 5th, let's say, you've got to have this done, this done, and this done. If you want us to process your 1099s, you need to answer by November 15th.

Yeah.

And if you don't, you go on our waiting list.

Oh, I love that. I love that. And, you know, if you're listening to this outside of when next week's meeting happens with the Law Lab, we record all our meetings. So if you do end up becoming a member of the lab, you get access to all of that. So we record them. They're all saved. And I know it's one of our members, which is a first for us besides you, Steve, obviously. Well, actually, it was not a first because you were the first, but He's kind of new and he offered to do this.

I think that's great.

He's a salesperson and he's looking forward to it. We hopped on a meeting with him today and he was like, he can't wait to do it. So I think it's great too. He's a great guy and I love that he's brand new and offered to do it and tackle a topic that is very— I told him when I saw him, I said, 1099s and lawyers hurt my head. He started laughing and he said, yeah, I totally understand that. And then we started talking about a few things I told them will probably come up because we've— 1099s. I think we've dragged Sarah into that. I don't know how many times we've got, how many versions of that in La La Lab. This is just a hot topic. It keeps getting requested like Cleo.

I was going to say too, the person I— Ledger Gurus, Brittany Brown.

Yes.

Brittany Brown.

Yes.

I love her very much. I'm so glad you even know her too, Steve. And she has a great newsletter and I love to look at it because it covers a wide variety sometimes of topics or current day. Just fun to read, but it's nice to know, even I might not be in that niche, it's just nice to know what colleagues are doing that I— speakers I've met in other places that I've enjoyed. So I think what we're saying is, in wrapping this whole thing up, is like, it's, it's perfectly fine to re-identify where you want to be. It may not be a specific niche exactly, but it might be a broad Like you said, tribe, which makes me think of a ranch sometimes. Like, I'm lonely on my ranch. I can't imagine what ranchers did back in the day.

You know, a long time ago, Intuit Community Forum was where I really got my legs with Intuit knowing who I was because I answered 28,000 questions on the Intuit Community Forum over like 10 years.

Wow.

And I used to do it at night. I would sit there. Well, I did it because I was competing. I was competing with Hector and Michelle Long and a couple of other people, and I just did it. And I would go up, but I learned so much there. And it's now, it's pretty much all Facebook if you want to learn that stuff, or a paid group. And like Seth's group, I mean, obviously everything that you need to know is in there. But the same thing you learn in finding your tribe, finding your people, however you want to frame it, it's totally doable because you'll learn even if you're not asking any questions. Just reading the questions and reading the answers is going to really enhance your knowledge base. And I think that's the biggest reason why you want to go.

Absolutely.

And if you absolutely participate, which is a word I had trouble saying earlier, participate in the group. And I think a lot of times people kind of hang back and they don't. But I'll tell you, you start to add your 2 cents in. And even if it's— we always say, well, somebody sometimes they'll send me private messages and say, can I ask this in the group or is it too low level? And I say, No question is too low level because you might not know the answer and 5 other people or 15 other people might not know the answer. And I'd rather have it out in the group. And you can, in our group, you can post anonymously. So I'll know who wrote the question. Sarah will know. Anybody who's an admin will know. But it's okay to post anonymously. So that opens up the door to be able to actually ask a question that you may be afraid to ask and not wanna look dumb.

Mm-hmm.

You know, nobody wants to feel that way. And, and if anybody ever answered in a way that made someone not feel good, they would be removed from the group.

So Well, how many times in that Law Lab group have you seen somebody sitting back and they're chomping at the bit because we've started talking about something that they've just experienced and they're like, oh my God. And they jump in and then other people have their big ahas and it feeds on itself.

It's awesome.

It's just awesome.

Well, this was a really good session, everybody. I think this was really a good topic. So if you enjoyed this, please subscribe to the podcast and also our YouTube channel. We'd love some social love there. Just search Accountants Law Pod or follow the links that are in the show notes here. If you have any questions or topic requests or guest suggestions, you can email us at info@accountantslawpod.com or send us a message through our website, www.accountantslawpod.com. And if you want to join us in the Accountants Law Lab, you can visit our website at www.accountantslawlab.com. So it's hard to say all these law things, but it's there and you can get that also in the show notes. Just to sign up, and if you want to follow along with Steve's Airstream adventures, just make sure you sign up with the LawPod updates, and you'll kind of follow where he is. Because even though he looks like he's in his office, he's probably not. So you can also follow us on Instagram as well. So until next week, everybody.

Thank you.

Bye.