Smart Hiring for Legal Accounting Firms: Build the Team That Builds Your Firm

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 it's been a moment with lots of life things happening, and Sarah just came back from vacation, which is although she. I don't call it a vacation when you do a webinar in the middle, but that's okay.

My snap.

Yeah. Oh, that was your fault.

I was like, I totally— what are you doing? Yeah, I know. I, I missed that.

Um, but you seem to really be— you did well because you had like 400 people signed up for it and you had over 200 show up for it. Hello, CLEs. But I think it'd be— if you're an attorney and you want to make the best of your CLEs, you want to pick something that you're going to learn. And I guess they all learn from you for sure.

Yeah, it was honestly, as you know, I get really nervous when you tell me the number of people.

I know. I'm surprised you asked.

I actually, it was, I didn't even, it was brought up, but we had, you know, like 200 and something show up, and Steve was so kind in supporting us in helping me kind of give us the overall architecture form of how to design demystifying accounting. And the need is, is so— there's so much out there. So many firm owners really do need to understand that, you know, when you're, you're doing accounting, it's not just for you doing it yourself and like doing it late at night, as you say, Linda. You're doing accounting for your business, and your business ultimately affects your personal, and all of that information is all in one. And it also laid into kind of what we're going to be talking about Which is accounting. I'm sorry, which is hiring for law firms. So yeah, what does that mean?

That is our topic du jour. It's smart hiring for your firm. And for sure, you know, I was going to ask you too on that note on the webinar, did you get a lot of people that asked you questions at all at the end or you had no time?

Oh no, we took them thankfully. As they went, presenters that were with me, we took them as they went. We did try to address as many. I do actually thank you for the reminder. There's a few I do need to answer.

They sent you messages.

Yeah, there was a— there was actually quite a bit of questions that centered around accounting for merchant fees and credit card fees, which—

That comes up a lot in those classes. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, I thought that was— and also one thing we did note in the class, which we can talk about further today, is, you know, you have a great paralegal who does great work. Should that paralegal be your accounting person as well? Double-hatting the The role like this is also detrimental, just as it is for a business owner to do it. So, yeah.

Yeah, I was just going to say that when you have an attorney that is doing paralegal work because it's just easier and quicker for me to do it than go to the person who should be doing it, you're actually overcharging the client. And really, why would you want to give up your resources when you could be better suited to do something else? But we see that sometimes with firms that they, they tend to do. That's one of the places we can help them with their workflow and help them kind of move it along where they They can start to get their office working in a better way and take some of those things. And nobody likes to, you know, Sarah and I used to laugh in the very beginning, like when we were just the 2 of us, and then we started and we added Nicole and we started adding people. And I remember at one point, like, we have to delegate. And it was hard for us to even say the word delegate. That was one of those kind of got stuck in your throat kind of words, like, because you want to do it the certain way, right? You want to do it the certain way. It's true. Remember I said, Sarah, we gotta delegate. We can't keep taking over. And yeah, I think it was, um, somebody said to us that if you can get somebody to do the task at least 85% as well as you could do it, or as well as you think you do it, you're good. You're golden. So—

Exactly. You know, I've been teaching at our bar association for about 14 years, and I like to go— this will tie into today's subject, but I like to go And sit in. I always ask, can I sit in on some of the other classes?

Yeah.

And they're like, sure, no problem. And I like to go to the ones about hiring. I like to go to the ones about trust accounting, you know, where, where we give them the basics in the class that, that I teach, and then somebody from the regulatory agency comes in and, you know, puts the frosting on the cake. So it's really, you know, to your point, Linda, um, go to your CLEs, get involved. Your bar probably has classes on hiring, and we'll talk about a lot of the things— they'll touch on a lot of the things we're going talk about today. Um, so, you know, they're very, they're very useful. Don't just join the bar and then don't do anything, you know, really get involved.

That's true. That's true.

Do you feel, um, my, my personal opinion, hiring today is just as hard as applying because of all the AI tools that are in there?

Absolutely.

Because how do you know it? I think looking at an application, how do you know that it— I, I guess there's tells, right? How you can tell, just like with a blog post. Like Google knows how to tell whether it's been generated from AI. And I think that that's a whole nother level to add to the generic stuff that we've seen in the past where we're like, that's the best effort you can make. Remember, Sarah, when we hired?

Yes.

We went through 400 applicants. And I can remember looking through them. It was— I just, I started looking through every single detail. And then I got to the point where it was just the COVID letter because everything looked the same. But the COVID letter to me got rid of a lot of them because that was a little 1 or 2 paragraph moment that you got to wow me. And if you didn't wow me, you were gone. And that narrowed it down to like 100. And then Nicole and I and Sarah kind of like, you know, really leaned in and got it filtered down and put it in order who we actually want to talk to. Because you— it's just like KPIs. You don't need to look at 50 KPIs in your file.

You just only need to look at a good point.

Yeah.

Where you're going, right?

So I think— True.

Yeah. The hardest part though is like, when do you know when is a good time to hire? So Let's just do the scenario of an accounting firm like we just talked about. How do you know what you need to hire? How do you know? I mean, for us, right, we got to look at what's it going to cost us. That's the first thing. All right, we want to hire for this position. What does that position go for in the market? I think it's the first place to look. What is the going rate? What are you probably going to have to pay for that? You want to factor in too, like, if you're going to go to a headhunt, that's the easiest place to do it is to— We found a site to do it, but there's also— you can pay somebody to find them for you. And then if you do that, you got to factor that into the fee. So I think that's a part of it that is for cost. Then you got to look at the cost, not only just the cost for the rate of pay. Let's just say they get paid $65,000 a year, then what does the benefit package cost? Because that's constantly going up.

Yeah. So I do— to walk through this kind of bucketed scenario, I do this on the Mintage side quite a bit with all businesses, but specifically law firms, because law firms, when you're— to your point, Linda, law firms, um, to be competitive, you need a benefit package. Um, in our state, you need a 401 regardless. Um, states are going to start probably flowing into some sort of mandate depending on requirements.

So that's a requirement in your state?

In our state, yeah.

It's in a few states already.

It's in a few states already.

It's still pretty new.

It makes sense. You should be saving. I mean, there should be a mechanism to be easier than there was when I started working, you know, and yourselves. Like, we, we didn't have these tools, so it's very smart to do. But what I do is I look at, okay, here are different scenarios. Salary versus alary, it doesn't matter. We can compute it out. What does it mean for the monthly or, you know, twice a month at minimum? What does that look like? Some states are required to pay weekly, so what does that look like? So cash flow planning. Our analogy is, Linda and I have always been kind of true to this. Uh, you need to make sure your operating expenses, you have within your own savings, second checking account, something equivalent to at least 2 months worth of salary runway. Uh, Steve, I don't know if you feel any differently, but I do this.

No, I do. I think that's perfect. Yeah.

Okay. So I do this situation, this scenario, and I lay this out on a Google Sheet, and then I show them what it costs with the burden of taxes. Employer taxes, roughly, Are about 10%. Then from there, we add on the piece that you just brought, Linda, which is look at the benefits, roughly how much is, if you're going to do a stipend or not, phone stipend. Sometimes I often see a phone stipend go into that as well.

Especially on the law firm side.

Yeah. And then 401. And I tend to just lean into the safe harbor style 401 just because that seems to meet the middle mark. What does it mean for employer side? There are tax credits when you set up an employer side safe harbor or a 401 plan. I shouldn't just specifically say that, but there are things out there to offset this type of fee. What does that look like? There are overhead fees to it. Like, we like using integrated platforms, but if you lay all of this out, this is applicable to any role. It could be a paralegal, it could be a receptionist, another attorney. Now, attorneys are different, of course, because you have different—

It's not overhead.

They're not. Yeah, it's just a different—

But you also got to look at the— with the attorney, you got to look at the fact that they're going to— all right, you got to attorney, they're going to start working. Well, first of all, they need to learn the law firm's workflow, how everything works. So there's training involved, and then they start doing their work. They don't bill that until another month down the road. So you're looking at, like you said, at least 2 months, right? You have to learn how things flow, and that's being on the bright side of perspective, right? I'd go for 3, and because there is an offset if they're earning income. But yeah, that doesn't happen overnight, and I think that that's one of the things that's important.

Eve, what What do you feel that, based on what we've talked about, is there anything different, or what do you feel it, it could be added to the thought process of hiring?

Um, well, I'm glad you brought up the taxes because a lot of people miss that boat when they're doing the calculations. And I think, um, looking at, you know, the subtle and not so subtle signs— that's in our notes today for the podcast— and, you know, it— a lot of that depends on if you're a startup or if you're established. Whether it's an accounting firm or a law firm, you know, how is the staff reacting to the work? Are they overloaded? Are there, are those signs there? Or is there a lot of extra time? Is it a right time to hire? You know, as the owner, you know, how stressed out are you? How much of the workflow are you having to take on yourself?

Yeah.

You know, there's a lot of different signs that tell you when to hire. And also hopping over to the law firm side again. Let's pretend like it's a newer attorney and they're, they're struggling to build their business and they're struggling to build their staff. You know, is it right to hire now or is it right to bring in a contract, let's say, paralegal at this, at this point in time with a goal of using that contractor to help set up all the procedures and things that you need to do in the paralegal realm of the law firm and then bring somebody in when you can afford it, yet all that footwork is already done. Same thing on the other side, you know, with, with AI and all of the offshoring in the accounting world that we see, you know, is it a good time to bring in the offshore team scenario or the contract labor in the US market or go ahead and hire somebody? How detailed are you in describing everything that needs to be done so you attract the right person? You know, the workflow, the SOPs, all those sorts of things. What are— what's in place now that helps you be successful in the hiring process?

Can I play devil's advocate?

Yes.

2 scenarios I have. One scenario is it's, it's you, solo accounting owner and/or attorney, and you have an occasional part-time paralegal that helps, and you're definitely getting more work. So where— what's the best thing, is to decide to offer more to the contract subcontractor paralegal to support you so that you can free up more time? Or scenario— the other scenario would be you have, uh, you have, um, a candidate, you have a contract or an opportunity to do a direct hire. What would be the best way to go? So first scenario is you're solo, you're trying to figure out that first hire. You have this occasional part-time person. Do you go ahead and offer them a full-time job or a full-time subcontractor work? And then the other situation is you want to move into a direct hire or a full contract work. Which way do you go? Which scenario would you—

I think starting with the contractor.

Okay.

It's like, you know, you get to test drive not only them, sometimes the contractors looking for permanent work on down the line. But there are so many people in today's job market that want to be solo and want to work their hours, their time, work remotely, those sort of things. So, you know, that, that plays into it a lot.

Yep.

But it also will help you get the work done and help you build the business and then create that cushion that you were talking about a while ago. of cash flow. Okay, to cover, to cover all those things. And then once you have that built, you could go ahead and bring somebody in and sure as heck be a lot more comfortable.

Yeah. What about, what if the person that you're working part-time with is a contractor, like the first scenario, and they really do want to be that direct hire?

It's a good way to test them.

Okay. Yeah.

What, what's your answer?

We see both. Yeah, we've tried We've tried both.

When you work, if you're the accounting firm and you're working through, um, the working through hiring somebody that is on an offshore team or outsourced or global, whatever you want to label, you want to put on it, there's still, it's the same thing as hiring an employee. They don't know your workflow. They maybe not know your software. They don't know how you, your practice management software. There's a learning curve. There's a learning curve to all of that. So, You have to remember that because sometimes you think out of the box they can just hit the ground running. They've already been—

Plug and play. Yeah.

But they're not. And you have to make sure— I mean, how long has it been, Sarah? We've been over a year now working with our newer one. And it's been great. No, I can't say enough about them. It was— it is just— we're moving in the right direction. They do great work. I wish we had done this 5 years ago because they're so Much better, but it does take time. It's not a, it's not a real plug and play. It really does take a lot of time. And I think that's something to remember if you do the offshoring. And I know a lot of attorneys are doing it now that they're hiring out of the country.

Yeah.

To get this work done. And then you have to worry about the other issue is, are you hiring them as a contractor? Is it through something through the United States like Indeed, or are you hiring them direct? That leaves a whole nother Level of what you have to look out for there too, because when you're working, you're dealing with another country. It's just like when you leave and go travel to another country. Different rules, different everything.

I'm sorry, you're saying like an employer representative that's based in the US that's acting as your— Yeah.

So if they're working for like, I mean, a lot of them, Indeed, and I'm trying to think of the other one that, I think it's Deed is what you're—

I'm trying to remember the name.

Indeed. There's an Indeed, which is an outsourcing, like you can pick them up. What was the one I got the guy that did the Upwork. There's Upwork. So a lot of them work through those services. If you want to hire them, you're paying through that to get paid. So you're paying through them to pay them. Totally different than if you're having to pay somebody that's in another country where you got to look at international fees and how am I going to pay them. And then also, it's also a whole different thing, which we found out from talking to people that we work with, that you got to watch out if you start to hire many people in one country. But You're hiring them in your firm or you're hiring them— it's just, there's a lot of complexities that you really need to look into. And I know a lot of attorneys are starting to look towards doing that.

Yeah.

And, um, because it's a lot cheaper to hire, as it was for us to hire certain parts of the work, but you just gotta be careful what you do there. I think that's another part of when you're hiring. But the hard part too is when do you know when it's time to hire? Because every time you talk to anybody and they finally pull the trigger to hire somebody, they always go, oh, I should have done this 6 months ago. Why did I wait till the last minute? Why did I burden the whole staff? And it's so hard to know when it's time, whether it's time. I mean, you can do the math and figure out if you can afford it, but then how do you figure out when is the right time to pull? Because you don't want to put somebody on and then say, okay, I hired you for 40 hours, now I only have 30 for you.

Mm-hmm.

So then that's a fear, right, that you probably have as you're hiring, because you're responsible for a big part of this person's life. That you're taking into your company. I know I remember the first time I hired, that was such a big thing in my head. And I'm like, why, why does this bother me? But I just didn't want— I was unsure. I knew I was working too hard, but I was like, oh, what if somebody doesn't pay me? Now I don't have the money to pay them. You know, that kind of thing.

Yeah.

I think that's part of where you would worry. And I think culture. So culture is huge. We found that out when we hired. Like, they have to fit in. They have to fit with the crowd. We have— Sarah and I are very lucky to have a bunch of ladies that love each other to death, and we have an amazing culture. You don't want to throw a sour apple into that, right? Yeah, you have a bucket of sweet apples, you don't want to throw in one that's, you know, not going to fit in with everybody else.

Yeah.

And that's another piece of it that you're like, oh well, we'll see how it goes. Maybe it's just the beginning, maybe the person's shy, and they just don't fit into the crowd at all. And if that happens, then you really need to figure out— it's hard to tell though. How do you know when it's— how do you think you can tell, Sarah, when somebody has the right fit that fits your group?

So, so going back to my little scenario pieces, to be honest with you, and Steve, I'll help answer your question as well. I— we have found that it's easier to do a contract Uh, you know, for a duration of time with the idea of hiring full-time. Sometimes people don't want that as far as employees go. You found the right person, they want the direct hire, they want to be an employee. And the question then becomes, do you— you may not have all your workflows set up in place, you may not have everything in place.

It's a work in progress.

Yeah, it's setting the precedent, right? Then we have the extra layer of The contractor compliance level. So is it scheduled work, non-scheduled work, how all that works? And then for, like, to Linda's point, we have to deal with the personality and/or the culture fit. And we obviously as a firm are very busy and humming all the time, and it is— You have to be okay with not having your hand held at every turn of the corner. And you have to be a self-motivator. And I think it's learning from our experiences.

That's huge.

Yeah. It is hard to tell. You don't know if you're always going to get it. But you also have to basically find the best way to ask the questions. And we're hearing from colleagues that Our friends are finding that applicants are coming to them to try to beat the AI tool that might be in place, and/or applicants are saying, I can't get around this because I can't get to the interview process because I'm not fitting all the right criteria.

They're being filtered out before their personality even comes into play.

Yeah. And, you know, if you notice some of the big speakers out there, some people are like, look, Hire the person that's smiling and always happy versus hiring the person that's, you know, got the competent skills but potentially could— like, do you— and that's the risk. To Linda's point, you're taking on a risk of if you're going to hire somebody who has not enough experience, you have the opportunity to mold them, but are they willing to be molded? Vice versa, if you're going to hire an outside firm and hire a team to contract with, What does that engagement look like? You can't overlook that. That's just like another employee. That's, that's still the same level of engagement. And so when you're looking at the differences, because you can hire a firm to be that person, you can hire what Linda was referring to as an employer representative. So you're hiring outside in a different country. I believe the software you're thinking of is called Deal, is the name of the firm. So They can be the representative, help find those people, be that conduit. It's almost like leasing. It's almost like a PEO style. But it— there's a lot of different things that you can do. It's— I believe when you're at capacity or you're feeling like the burden of doing the work and you're a solo person and you need that extra help, most come in with a solo plus a part-time. And you're already at that level and you already feel like that person's at capacity at a part-time level, that conversation, what does that look like to you? Does it look like, hey, I'd like to keep you on, would you like to explore full-time contract work? Or does it look like, hey, I'd like to keep you on, hire you as an employee, but also let's find another contract worker to see if that's a good fit? It's hard to know. It's hard to understand and then culturally fit in. So, I mean, we've faced so much. I don't know what the right answer is here, but I feel like there's a lot to navigate. And I think you need to also wear the hat of what's the financial burden. And to your point, Steve, can you sustain that? Because nothing's worse than hiring someone and then don't have work to continue and you have to lay them off.

Well, I think one of the important things Yeah, yeah. One of the important things that I like to think about is how do you cross that bridge as an owner of either a law firm or an accounting firm? And I'll tell you, I was so blessed working in some really cool law firms. And the ones that I really, the ones that I really liked, they treated all of us on the team as if we were their customers. In other words, the leaders, the leaders were treating the team as the customers. And that's a big transition that you have to make when you're stepping out of Yeah. That growth pattern of doing all the daily work and all of a sudden the business is viable and you've got some money saved and you're doing all those things right and you're stepping out of the day-to-day work and becoming more of the leader that you envisioned yourself to be, making that team feel like they are your customers and you're there to take care of them. Is huge. The retention alone is just huge. And you guys are good at that. You guys are really good at that.

Linda and I talk about this. Linda, you should talk about this. Like you said, firing Linda a little bit ago, and Steve, you just reminded me of it— the cost of replacement.

Oh my gosh, yes. Huge.

Sure, it's not cheap.

No. And I think that's part of, like, you want them— nobody wants to fire either. Nobody wants to fire. And sometimes you really don't know. I always think I'm such a great judge of character, but sometimes that can happen and you think it's so wonderful and then you step back and you're like, oh, that really wasn't wonderful.

Uh-oh.

Then when they leave, you can really discover that it really, really, really wasn't wonderful. And then you're sitting back going, Wow, where did the ball get dropped? And what can I do to mitigate this ever happening again? Because I don't want to go through this again.

Yeah.

And it's the same, like, even with if you're hiring globally, you have a global team and you have to assess. And I think that's another place, like, we didn't pull the trigger fast enough and we should have. But you get to know the people and you, you think you just get complacent because you get working. And you're so busy, you think once you've hired and trained that you don't have to go back and scrutinize the work all the time. And it's true with direct staff that are employees, we don't have to do that. And you make an assumption that there's another set of eyes, like there's a supervisor looking at the work as it happens. But you also don't know the inner workings of that company that you've hired.

Right.

And possibly that the person that you had working was doing a great job, and then 2 months later, without your knowledge, That person's gone, somebody else is doing the work. You only talk to the manager or the supervisor. You don't realize that you've got a new team. And then these new mistakes are happening that are, are mistakes that you should— a new person would have, which is what would happen if you hired somebody new.

Yeah.

But you're unaware of it, and you're unaware of it. And then you find out when you're in a meeting with a client or you happen to be reviewing, you're like, what is this? And then you're like, I am moving backwards. And when that happens, now it's costing you a lot of money because now you're fixing it or you're having another staff person fix the mistakes. And that can be infuriating, to be quite frank.

We've heard, um, we've had colleagues in that situation Linda's brought up. We've had colleagues that have been really fortunate. I think the number one thing, no matter what side of the coin you're going to hire, it's not set and release no matter what you do. It's also not micromanaging.

Yeah, right.

You have an adult coming in to work. Set the parameters. Even if you don't have a fleshed-out job description, if you have a job role that meets a criteria— these are the tasks that I need you to do to help me move forward— and roll up your sleeves and be open to— I think, Steve, you brought this up— is treating these treating your people not just as a labor pool of people. It's a representative of your company. It interacts with your client. They interact with your clients. This is a whole—

They really represent you and me. They represent us.

Represent us. And it means a lot to us when we see, we see within our, our personal team, we see things that go wrong, then, then they recoup and they have a win. Celebrating all the whole movement of that.

Yeah.

Um, and I feel like—

Sarah, don't you think the biggest things when we talk to our staff— if you get a chance, talk to your staff and see how much they care about the work product. And yeah, that's the one thing we're so fortunate because the ladies care as much, sometimes I think more than we do sometimes, because they really care about helping the client. And making them feel supported and getting it right. And in our job, it's all about getting it right. And I think in any law firm, you're looking at the same thing. If you feel like that person does a great job— and they're not going to do perfect because none of us can do perfect.

No.

But if you can get that to be at a level that when you see and talk to them and they really care about your clients, you can't ask for more than that.

Exactly. Steve, thoughts, opinions on what we just like blew up just now with all this stuff?

Well, this is such a small nutshell in the amount of time we have for this podcast, but I think it's a great conversation to, to continue at some point as well. Like, where do we find these people? How do we retain them? How do we, you know, all the nuts and bolts of it? Because, you know, do we hire, you know, when somebody says, well, I've got a sister, a family member that could jump in and do this too, you know, what, what What does, what does that do in the culture? And, you know, it can be good, it can be bad, it can be neutral. You know, there's a lot of things that—

There's a lot of pluses and minuses.

Yeah, sure, sure.

So many places too that you can— I mean, I've talked to some people that go, I just go on LinkedIn and I get employees. And they have other people, I pay this headhunter, or I pay Robert Half, or I pay— or I go to myself and I do Upwork. And that way, if I don't like the work, I'm done and I'm out. And, you know, you've got to remember too, if you hire globally They're in a different time zone than you, so you have to be okay with that because that's a little bit of the weakness where the client can't contact you during the day. You have to have the other level there to be able to contact them.

Yeah, yeah. And then I highlighted what we also talked about was with freelancers versus full-time. There's obviously employment agreements that you need to have in place and/or protections for yourself. What does that look like? Um, and then as you're As you're growing into this, what does it look like for you in the future? Because one way over another is not— I mean, saying that this is our system and this is our protocol may not fit your future growth. So being open to being amenable to new things.

So, you know, a lot of people think when you get the global teams that, oh, I'm going to pay $2 an hour because that's way better than paying $35, $40 an hour, or $50 an hour in the US. But where is the server that they're working in? What equipment are they working on? You know, we got to really start to think very hard about protecting the client data. You can't just be willy-nilly and, I found this person in the Philippines. You don't know who that is. You don't know that person. So you have to be very, very careful. And I think— and not just in the Philippines, the great people out there. I'm just using it as an example.

It could be anywhere, right? I know you have to be careful what you say.

I know. Well, I don't mean it to— Pick on that area. Yeah, we hear that. So, um, it could be anywhere. Yeah, it could be any, any country. But you've got to make sure that if you're hiring, and if you're paying $2 an hour, I guarantee you your data is not protected. You need to be paying probably more than that. And if you go through another company, you need to look up that company and find out how, how they handle the data that is your company's data, that they have their hands on your clients, because you can't— well, that's something you can't drop the ball on.

Also, we haven't talked about this, but the reality of all these automations with AI and being honest about what does that look like, you testing out a free tool, hooking it up, what exposure have you just done? What value do you have with that with your potential staff and/or new hires? And then I think ultimately when you're looking at the process and it's a niche industry like what we serve in, Uh, for the accounting people, there's probably some specific criteria that you're going to want that are different that we thought we, we did well in one and we were wrong. Uh, so you, it's always a growth process. So I guess be okay with being okay with not doing well the first time around.

It's like anything else, right? You gotta learn to grow and all that. So yeah, I mean, sometimes you make bad mistakes.

Give yourself grace. You know, there's no perfect scenario.

Yeah, it's a learning moment.

It is a learning moment. And honestly, we've seen the ramifications of our own byproduct of certain decisions that we've made and had to deal with and constantly are cleaning up. But in the same token, we can't beat ourselves up for it either. We've learned from it. She and I said, okay, we're gonna do this. And I know, Steve, that privately we've talked about So many scenarios and, and there are things that you see in firms, you're like, oh, you see the writing on the wall, but you're that outside advisor and there's only so much you can say and do. So.

Right, right. Absolutely. Great conversation.

Yeah. Good topic. Yeah.

Thank you.

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You know, did we cover the not so subtle signs of when you need to hire? I don't remember if we did. Maybe we have to do a part 2.

I think we touched on it just a little bit.

A sprinkling of it.

A sprinkling. I like that.

Yeah, I think we sprinkled a lot in this one.

We did. Well, see you all next time.

Thank you. Bye-bye.