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Matthew Cohen, Founder of Nine Toe Five, joins Dawn! In this episode, Matthew shares his difficult beginnings as an entrepreneur, how he built his sock business to inspire others, and how he plans to use this success to build a platform that motivates his community.

Listen now to learn how Matthew plans to grow his business, and what advice he would give to prospective entrepreneurs!

Matthew's Beginnings

Matthew starts his conversation with Dawn by sharing how he got his start in business. Matt says that he began in college as an engineering major, but quickly learned it wasn’t for him. He graduated in 2017 with a business degree, and knew he wanted to start his own business, but wasn’t quite sure how to start. Having started a few businesses prior, Matt knew the basics of what he needed to get started but wanted to create something that would inspire people and help them achieve things they thought were impossible.

How Matthew Got His Start

Matthew talks about a few of his other businesses and how he worked in software engineering and real estate before he started Nine Toe Five. He says he began to read books that helped influence his career path and started to make a change in his life after reading the Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris. He was fascinated by the idea of being able to work from anywhere, and he said he did not want to follow the traditional 40-hour workweek.

What’s in Store for Nine Toe Five

Matthew says that all of the designs for the socks are drawn by his friend from junior high school. Matthew says that they plan on scaling the retail side of their business, but also shares that he wants to take his business in a different direction. He would like also to become a motivational speaker to help people achieve their dreams. He also would like to develop a community where people can connect and receive help from one another.

Matthew also shared that he would like to expand his business to offer custom jackets, t-shirts, and more additional apparel.

How Matthew Finds His Motivation

Matthew shares that he has an amazing group of friends and family who encourage and support him. He says he does not find motivation in one person, but rather in everyone around him. He also highlights how his wife, Sara, is a huge supporter of his business and has helped him achieve great success.

Matthew also adds that new business owners should seek out a mentor. This can be a tremendous help to your business and can save you from making small mistakes that could cost you time and money in the long run.

Check out Nine Toe Five Socks!

https://ninetoefive.com/

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Paul Hamann, the founder of RC Reports, joins Dawn to talk in-depth about reasonable compensation and how his business can help firms present accurate reasonable compensation figures to their clients.

Listen now to learn why Paul started RC Reports, the consequences of incorrect reporting, and how RC Reports can be an educational resource for you and your firm!

Episode Notes

RC Reports and their “Entity Planner”

Paul Hamann is the founder of RC Reports, a service that allows firms to give their clients reasonable compensation figures. Paul shares that he developed RC Reports because he struggled to find an efficient and accurate way to determine reasonable compensation, and wanted to solve the pain point for himself. Paul then sought to develop a solution for this problem and launched RC Reports in 2012

Dawn and Paul talk about RC Reports and their “entity planner”; a tool that practitioners can use to offer trusted advisor services. Dawn shares that she recently used this tool to discern whether or not one of her clients should classify their business as an S-Corp.

Consequences for Ignoring Reasonable Compensation

Paul also shares that when businesses get audited, they may be asked to prove how they achieved their reasonable compensation figures, especially if the IRS has flagged the amount you reported as above or below average. Paul also shared that the IRS just introduced the Compliance Initiative Project, which was formed specifically to check S-Corps and their reasonable compensation. 

It’s also important for the practitioners to remain compliant, and Paul talks about the penalties firms can receive if they don’t. Paul shares a frightening story about a practitioner who was fined $130,000 in paid preparer penalties due to reasonable compensation errors. 

Paul reiterates how important it is to properly determine reasonable compensation, and if your number was pulled out of thin air, it makes it much more difficult to prove and fight for.

Education Offerings from RC Reports

Paul also shares that RC Reports offers a wide range of education to help firms and practitioners understand reasonable compensation better. He shares that their core class is a two-hour deep dive into the basics of reasonable compensation, and helps to resolve many of the main points practitioners are struggling with. 

He also shares that they dive into fact vs myth, and that many practitioners believe incorrect information that could be hurting them and their clients. 

What Next Steps Should Firms Take?

Paul says that reasonable compensation should be revisited once a year. If an audit comes your way, you will be able to give the IRS a recent and accurate report of how you determined reasonable compensation for your client. 

Learn more about RC Reports!

Visit their website: https://rcreports.com/

Check out their classes: https://rcreports.com/classes/

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Liscio joins the DM Disruption! Join Dawn as she chats with Chris Farrell, the CEO of Liscio, and Alison Ball, the Director of Marketing and Influencer Strategy at Liscio. 

In this episode, you’ll learn the importance of maintaining proper cyber security in your firm, how Liscio can be the sole communication hub for your clients, and what new features are being released soon!

Listen now to learn why Dawn uses Liscio in her firm, and how their software can save both you and your client time! 

Why Security Needs to be Automatic

Chris, Alison, and Dawn start their conversation by noting how important it is to keep your firm’s data secure. Alison notes that many cyber attacks are now hitting smaller firms and that it’s crucial that everyone practices proper security measures. 

Chris notes that many firms leave clients’ EIN or Social Security numbers in their inboxes, and that can lead to a leak of your client’s data. Alison adds that implementing security measures needs to be automatic; if it’s too hard to put into practice or too inconvenient people will not do it.

How Liscio Keeps Communication Clear

Dawn expresses her admiration for Lisicio and says she loves how all of your client’s data can be found in one place. Not only that, but in case she is out of the office, her team members can easily access each client's string of data without needing her to forward any emails or text messages. Dawn even shares a story about how much time she saved by adding all of her clients to the Liscio app. 

Chris joins in and says he wanted to create Liscio for every sized firm. They don’t charge by the client, they are fairly priced, and they are easily accessible for clients and firm owners.

Why You Should Separate Your CRM from Your Project Management Software

Alison also notes that having all your clients on a separate CRM platform can be very beneficial. It can take a long time to get all your clients to start using certain software, and having to switch them to a new application can take even more time. If you utilize Liscio, you can change your project management software as often as you like without disrupting your client's relationship.

How Liscio Can Save You Time

Chris talks about how Liscio can save you time, especially while you are on vacation. Many practitioners find it difficult to turn their email off during vacation because they need to forward certain clients' information to their team members. With Liscio, all of your team members have access to each client's data, which allows them to access any information they need without emailing for support.

Dawn says she appreciates how Liscio functions like "texting" but she doesn't have to give her clients her personal phone number. She appreciates the ability to be able to close the app when she is out of the office, and it saves her time from answering "quick questions" when she takes time off.

Learn more about Liscio : https://liscio.me/

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Thomas Ruscitti & Emily Hedrick from Bookkeep join Dawn! Listen now to learn about Thomas and Emily, why Bookkeep is the go-to bookkeeping solution for accounting firms, and how automation is the future of this industry! 

Tom and Emily’s Beginnings

Tom begins the conversation by talking about his experience in accounting. He says that he received a call from an Inuit site leader in Tucson to teach them about point of sale—as  Quickbooks point of sale had just been released. Tom says this 10 day contracted position turned into a 10 year career at Intuit.

Emily also talks about how she started in accounting, and how it began with being hired as a project manager for Insightful Accountant. Emily then shares that she met Tom and the Bookkeep team at Scaling New Heights, and when she was looking for a new position, Tom reached out to her immediately.

Building Relationships Within the Accounting Community

Dawn brings up how everyone in the accounting industry is very supportive, and how there isn’t as much competition as you would expect. She highlights how important it is to be open to joining the accounting community and how it will lead to a better experience for both you and your business. 

Tom agrees and adds that it’s very important that everyone who chooses to join the accounting industry tbe passionate about what they do. He even goes on to share that the biggest influencers in the industry are people like Dawn, not the applications and products the industry uses.

Emily agrees and says that she recently spoke to someone new entering the accounting space, and they didn’t know how to approach “pitching themselves.” Emily says you can’t try to sell something to somebody; you have to build a relationship. You have to build trust with a client before they will be interested in your product.

How Bookkeep is “Selling Time”

Dawn brings up how automation is the future of the accounting industry, and she asks Tom about what Bookkeeping can do to help practitioners achieve this.

Tom brings up the point that at the end of the day, Bookkeep is ultimately “selling time.” He says that they are giving the community their time back. Tom says there is a shortage of Bookkeepers in the industry and they are using their application to solve that. Bookkeep allows practitioners to efficiently and effectively run their firms, which allows them time to focus on  what’s most important to them. 

How Great Customer Service is the Key to Client Retention

Tom and Dawn also talk about how important it is to maintain a good report between you and your client. Tom says that many other applications promise big things to practitioners, but often fail to deliver when it comes to customer service. 

Tom brings up how they have a chat support open Monday-Friday, but that their CEO, Jason Richelson is often answering questions that come in on the weekend. Tom and Emily both agree that having stellar customer service is the best way to support your clients, and they will support you in return.

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John Coleman, the owner of Commonwealth Business services, joins the DM Disruption! Listen now to learn how John uses SmartVault in his business, and how proper file management can save your firm time!

How John Found SmartVault

John begins his conversation with Dawn by talking about how he first saw Dawn in a CPE training course that discussed proper file management and storage. He said that he was looking for a new file storage system at the time, as their current program discontinued that service.

He discovered SmartVault through Dawn’s presentation, and was also intrigued by her teachings because of her admiration for softball. In the training, Dawn talked about how proper file management allowed her to leave the office early and attend softball practice. 

He learned that SmartVault seemed to have exactly what they needed, and he says it is a wonderful program. 

How John Uses SmartVault

Johns talks about the features of SmartVaults that he appreciates, and especially highlights SmarVaults drag-and-drop capability. He loves the feature of being able to seamlessly drag documents from emails directly into SmartVault.

John also talks about how you can print a client’s tax return directly to SmartVault to a specific client. This saved his admin a lot of time, and saved them from having to manually and separately send the forms.

John finishes by saying that they were able to complete more returns than they did in previous years, and they were able to save time when doing so.

Managing Work Life Balance

John shares with Dawn that he was able to attend every softball game and practice for his children while in the midst of tax season. Even though tax season can be a busy and stressful time for his firm, because of the software and technology they implement, they were able to complete more returns than they ever had that year.

John even shares that he was able to take a 5 day vacation after tax season, and he says that was the longest he’d been out of the office in years.

Importance of Succession Planning

John also talks about how one of his employees suddenly passed away, and how losing him was very hard on the firm. He said he was very integral to their business and it proved to be more of a hardship than they expected. 

He also said that this was one of things that encouraged him to seek out software and technology to assist with many of the tasks they need to get done. While no one is glad to see good co-workers leave, it’s important to have procedures in place to ensure the business can continue to operate smoothly.

Want to learn more about John and his business? 

Check him out here: https://www.teamcommonwealth.com/index.php 

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Arun talks about having over 10 years of experience as a CPA. He has experience working in both large and small firms, and says his focus has been to specialize in improving governance in all types of entities, and sharing knowledge through addressing CPAs across the country.

Teaching Young CPAs and Succession Planning

Arun also talks about how important it is to train the new generation of CPAs to not only do accounting work, but get them familiar with how new automation will disrupt their workflow. Automation is becoming more prevalent in many firms, and jobs that used to take hours can now be completed by software. It is more important now that accountants are able to expand the services they can offer their clients. 

Arun also talks about how important it is for all firms, both new and well established, to keep up with the changing technologies around them. The disruption that COVID-19 caused revealed pain points in many firms, and those who chose not to adapt to new technology post-COVID had a difficult time staying afloat.

Dawn also adds how important succession planning is, and that many firms have not created an easy way to transition their workflow to another person when they choose to retire or sell their firm.

Where Arun Finds Motivation

Arun shares a story of when he was really struggling in life, and said that one of his good friends that he had known since high school offered him a job. This allowed Arun to get back on his feet and he credits this person for giving him the motivation to achieve the success he has today. Currently, the friend is now a partner at Arun’s accounting firm.

How Arun Gets CPAs Out of Their Comfort Zone

Arun is very passionate about helping CPAs and he is currently designing a course for CPAs that will help them get out of their comfort zone. He often sees many CPAs unwilling to attend networking events or converse with other colleagues, and this can greatly inhibit firms from progressing. He strives to help CPAs build more confidence in themselves, and wants to help them do so in a fun way!

Learn more about Arun and UltimQuest Knowledge!

https://www.ultimquest.com/

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Scott and Dawn discuss how this post-covid season is affecting their firms. Dawn brings up how the tax atmosphere has now changed, and CPA’s are expected to be doing more than ever before. Scott agrees and says that trying to get a hold of the IRS is even more challenging than it used to be, and how waiting for the IRS to respond is taking up a lot of their firm’s time. 

Scott brings up how he no longer has the notifications turned on on his phone, as he found that his time off work was still spent doing work related tasks. Dawn adds that she now uses Liscio to converse with her clients and never gives out her personal phone number to her clients; this has helped her spend more quality time with her children. 

The Sons of CPAs Podcast

Scott is the host of the Sons of CPAs podcast. Scott says that he and his colleagues are the next generation of CPAs, and that they are focused on presenting new ideas and new ways to run a successful firm. He remarks that many accounting firms may not see issues that are causing them to lack in productivity, and his podcast can help firm owners and CPAs be exposed to new ideas that may help the performance of their firm.

Dawn also talks about how she partners with other accounting firms to split certain costs and save on business expenses. She also says that it gives her a sounding board to bounce ideas off of, and it allows her to learn new ways to improve her practice.

Succession Planning for your Firm

Dawn and Scott also discuss the important step of devising a succession plan for when you choose to retire from your firm. Scott says that he sees a lot of single entrepreneurs who own their own accounting practice fail to create an easy transition for the person that either buys or takes over their firm. Many accounting firms also use old or outdated technology and refuse to update their practices, which can lead to issues when trying to grow or expand the productivity of your practice.

Scott’s Motivation

Scott also shares the story of meeting his wife while working at the same restaurant in college. He shares that she is the biggest motivation in her life, and credits her for giving him the motivation to pursue his current career path.

Check out Scott's Podcast, Sons of CPAs

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/sons-of-cpas/id1571747680

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With Caren’s father being a CPA and an attorney, it was no surprise that Caren chose to follow in his footsteps and become a CPA herself. She says she has always had a love for working with numbers, and knew from a young age that this was the path for her.

Caren also talks about her time working at IBM, and while she liked what she did, she knew it was not what she wanted to do for the rest of her life. She started to think of things she liked, and knew that she was always very good with numbers. She then started a bookkeeping service to work with small businesses, and over time she evolved into doing more consulting work. Now, Caren works specifically with law firms, and says it’s probably because of her father’s work in the law field that encouraged her to do so.

Caren also talks about how she’s always enjoyed working with numbers. She recalls spending time working at her fathers accounting firm and assisting with the bookkeep, and even helping her friends balance their books while she was in college.

How Caren Grew Her Business

Caren talks about how she gained her first client by sending out letters to local accountants and even followed up with phone calls. She shares that she got one phone call back from someone who took a chance from her, and was able to gain more clients through word of mouth. Dawn also adds that it is very important to “shout from the rooftops” about any new business venture you are starting, because you will not gain any new clients if no one knows you are in business.

Caren also shares how important it is to give away information to your clients for free. She recalls that many people helped her for free when she was first starting out, and she wants to do the same. She also says that people are more likely to trust and want to work with you when they inevitably run into a complex problem, and you’ll be the first person they call to fix it.

Finding Work Life Balance

Caren works full time from home, and she talks about how COVID-19 has made it more difficult for her to achieve a healthy work life balance, and finds that she tends to gravitate towards work even when she’s supposed to be out of the office. Since partnering with 3535 Consulting, she has been able to take more time off for vacation, but would like to implement regular vacations moving forward.

Dawn also talks about how important a work life balance is and says that she intentionally schedules time during the week to do things she loves, even if that means she has to work for a few hours that evening. 

Connect with Caren!

Visit her website: https://timeandcents.com/

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Kathy’s Beginnings

Kathy has been in the accounting industry since 2005, and worked part time from home while also being a stay at home mom. Then in 2012, Kathy decided to pursue freelance work and had success gaining her own clients. But as the years went by, she still felt like she wanted to expand her skill set and offer different services to her clients. 

She decided she wanted to become a trainer for accounting software programs, and attend QB Connect and Scaling New Heights for the first time in 2016. She recalls how nervous she was to attend and was concerned she would be treated like a third wheel, but that couldn’t be further from the truth! She met many people she had looked up to over the years, and that solidified the fact that she knew she was heading in the right direction for her career.

Immediately after leaving Scaling New Heights, Kathy says she gained a new motivation and a want to teach others. Kathy talks about the decision to start her own Facebook group for people in the accounting industry and in her area to connect together, and the group is still active today!

How Kathy Found a Love for Accounting

Kathy describes that a two year junior accounting course is what sparked her love for accounting, and she used that love of accounting to eventually start her own accounting software. Her and Dawn talk about teaching young accounts, and they highlight how important it is that the incoming CPA’s be well versed in how proper accounting is executed.

Connect with Kathy

Visit her website: https://www.bookkeepingcleanandsimple.com/

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Justin’s Beginnings

Justin grew up in Canada, and was always fascinated by business and entrepreneurship. He started his first company at just 21, and then went on to develop a software company. He was able to be a part of some amazing opportunities, but said that he still didn’t feel as though he’d found his calling yet. At this point he relocated to the US, and sought the opportunity to solve a true pain point that he felt would help many business owners like himself. Because of his experience running his own company, he learned that data processing was a huge pain point for many businesses, and he wanted to develop an easier way for SMB’s to understand their numbers.

The Start of Reach Reporting

While other applications existed at the time Justin was developing Reach Reporting, he still felt that all of them were missing a piece of the puzzle that could solve a lot of data processing issues these companies were experiencing. Justin then realized that partnering with accountants would help them truly understand the financials of each business and would also help them interpret important data points to their clients.

We All Need Data Distilled 

Justin describes a time when he was working at NASDAQ and had to prepare a presentation for the Board of Directors. Amongst the board of directors, there was even a former CFO of NASA, and Justin says he was very nervous. He made sure he had all of his terminology down pat, as he knew the people he was presenting to were very intelligent. However, during the presentation, the former NASA CFO asked if he could simplify the data points he was discussing, and himself and his colleagues were having trouble understanding the complexities of what he was explaining. It was at this point that Justin realized that everyone, including NASA employees, need someone to translate complicated data to them—they need it distilled.

Justin and Dawn also discuss how, as a business owner, you don’t need to do everything. In order to make the most of your time, it’s important to automate many factors of your business, and Reach Report can help with that.

Denise started working at one of the big four CPA firms, but quickly realized that she loved helping people. She shifted her career to being a money coach, and found joy in helping businesses achieve the success they’ve always dreamed of. 

She listened to Mike Michalowicz’s book “Profit First” and while she questioned its business method at first, she realized that this was the solution that was going to help more of her clients succeed. She then became a certified “Profit First” coach, and has been helping her client’s with Mike’s method ever since!

How Denise Helps Clients

Denise talks about how she also acts as an accountability coach for her clients, and gives them a plan to commit to. Denise describes how she also begins by making sure the owner starts paying themselves, as oftentimes she finds the owners don’t give themselves a paycheck. She then looks at their cash flow to see what areas  the business is spending money on, and sees if there is an area they can diminish or cancel completely. 

She also shares that, because of her time as a CPA, she can aid in interpreting what their tax return is doing, and assist her clients come tax time with organizing their documents. 

Denise then talks about times when she sees her clients succeed, and how that is the part of her job that brings her the most joy.

Where Denise Finds Motivation

Denise talks about how she found a lot of motivation in both her Mom and Dad, and although their parenting styles differed, they both helped her tremendously to get her where she is today. She also talks about her husband being a huge motivator in her life, and how she will often bounce ideas off of him to gain a new perspective on a problem.

Denise also credits one of her accounting professors in college for giving her life changing advice. She was close to graduating and had offers from the big eight firm, but was overwhelmed by what decision she should make. She sought out advice from her professor, and he said to go to sleep, and the first firm you think of when you wake up is the firm you should accept the offer from. Denise did just that, and says that was the best advice anyone could have given her; she still uses that method to this day when she is faced with a hard decision.

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Episode Notes

Ian’s Beginnings

Ian describes the time when he was the head of a company in the late ‘90s, but talks about how he was not as well versed in finance as he should have been. He went back to grad school, and recognized there was a need to develop a software that could power and integrate all the other applications everyone already uses. After he left Intuit, he realized there was a huge need for this kind of software in the accounting industry, and he sought out to develop what became Karbon.

He talks about how, back in the day, if accounting professionals wanted applications to integrate, they had to do it manually. He also saw that there was no easy way to view all the tasks each of your team members were working on. After seeing all these issues, he knew a dedicated software to manage all these integrations and tasks would help accounting professionals tremendously. 

Karbon’s Solution for Communication

The driving force behind the development of Karbon was the need to implement better systems of communication within each firm. Ian says that one of the biggest pain points he saw in accounting firms was the lack of effective communication, not only within each accounting firm, but also between them and their clients. Ian says that Karbon strives to marry each form of communication so you can spend more time giving quality service to your clients, rather than spending hours figuring out what tasks need to be completed.

Karbon’s Passion for Integration

Dawn expresses her love for Karbon by praising its use of integration. Karbon integrates with many popular applications such as QuickBooks, Lisico, Ignition, and more! Ian says that Karbon is always striving to be at the forefront of technology, and is constantly moving forward to integrate with new applications that will solve pain points in many firms.

Seth’s Introduction and What’s New in Accounting

Seth Fineberg is the Editorial Manager and US Team Lead for AccountingWeb. Seth briefly talks about his role, and explains that AccountingWeb is a brand dedicated to accounting professionals, specifically small to mid sized firms. Seth also remarks that behind every successful business is always a great accountant. 

Dawn asks Seth about new changes he has seen in the industry, and how the pandemic really disrupted the way many accounting firms flowed. The pandemic reminded people they should be better connected and to focus on maintaining better work life balance.

Importance of Implementing New Technology

Seth also talks about how many accountants tend to be understandably hesitant when it comes to implementing new technology and applications in their firm. However, many of these applications can help save accounting firms time and money, and help them achieve the desired level of work life balance they are looking for.

Dawn agrees and says she only implements applications that have proper integration, and through using these programs, she has been able to expand the revenue of her firm, and maintain work life balance.

Pain Points

Dawn asks Seth what pain points he currently sees in the industry, and he begins by talking about how hard it is for firms to maintain compliance. He has seen accountants at their breaking point; they are having to deal with new procedures due to the pandemic. He shares that many of these headaches can be solved by implementing the proper technology in your firm.

Seth also talks about the difficulties he’s seen when it comes to hiring new staff. Many practitioners are leaving their practice or retiring, and he says that it’s very important to make sure you hire the right staff to set your firm up for success.

Seth’s Motivation

Seth also talks about his experience as a baseball coach, and how he has found joy from coaching his two sons, and is glad baseball is something his whole family can enjoy together.

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Jason begins his conversation with Dawn by expressing the importance of implementing automation to execute your bookkeeping properly. He talks about all the payment and eCommerce apps on the market now, like Shopify, Amazon, Square, Sezzle, etc.., and says it’s impossible to keep track of all your deposits manually—with bookkeep™, you don’t have to. Jason also explains how automation is the future; more and more applications are going to implement payment processing features, and bookkeep™ is constantly improving their products to offer more integrations with new applications.

Sales Tax Audit? bookkeep™ has you covered.

Dawn also expresses her concern with other apps on the market, and how many of them lack functionality to properly account for and manage sales tax, and how these can set business owners up for failure in the event of a sales tax audit. Jason agrees and says he didn’t even know about sales tax audits until he met Dawn. Jason discusses how difficult it is to keep track of all the different fees and rules that each payment product possesses, and how bookkeep™ will keep your balances in sync and ensure you are recording your sales taxes properly. 

bookkeep™ and Their Plan for the Future

Jason also talks about bookkeep’s™' plans to integrate apps like UberEats and DoorDash into their automation software, and how many of these apps make it difficult for bookkeepers and accountants to access their client’s data. Jason says he encourages other accountants and bookkeepers to reach out to these applications, and express the need to access these records. bookkeep™ is alwayways looking for new ways to integrate with new products, and strives to move forward with new technology so that you and your clients can run your businesses easily and efficiently.

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Tyler’s Introduction

Tyler Hickman is the Team Lead of the accounting channels at Veem, and sits down with Dawn to discuss the benefits of switching over to a digital payment platform. Tyler expresses that Veem is committed to helping small and medium sized organizations manage their bills and invoices more easily, and how converting to an online payment service can save business owners hours of time every week. 

The Benefits of Veem

Dawn says that she first learned about Veem at Scaling New Heights last fall, and talks about how excited she was when she learned about all the products and services that Veem had to offer—especially for accountants. Oftentimes, vendors can request specific forms of payment—such as an ACH transfer, check, or card payment—and it can be difficult to keep track of your client’s preferred payment method. With Veem, Dawn can securely send a payment directly through email and vendors or contractors can choose exactly how they want to get paid. Dawn also shares that Veem has integrations with QuickBooks, and how this makes managing her payments and invoices much easier. 

Tyler agrees, and says they have seen a huge increase of businesses switching to an online payment platform since the start of the pandemic. However, Tyler also talks about how many small business owners don’t want to adopt an online payment system because of the fees associated with many of them. Tyler points out though that although sending a check may seem cheaper up front, the actual cost to send a check can be close to $18.00, and how switching to an online platform can save them time and money in the long run.

The Importance of Getting Off Paper + How Veem Keeps Your Information Safe

Tyler also discusses the security risk of sending paper checks through the mail, and how this can lead to a client’s account information ending up in the wrong hands. Dawn agrees and says she rarely sends or accepts checks, as she does not want to be responsible for keeping a client’s data safe. 

Tyler also discusses how important it is to not send ACH or banking details over email. He shares that he’s personally seen over a half a dozen account takeovers happen to clients who shared their credentials through email, as opposed to using a secure payment portal like Veem.

Tyler says that Veem has multiple levels of security and verification, and that they verify all parties of the transaction. Not only do they verify the sender of the transaction, but they also verify the receiver to ensure that your payment is being delivered to the correct recipient.

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Katie’s Beginnings

Katie begins her conversation with Dawn by sharing her background in accounting, and shares her experience as a CPA and a public accountant. She shares that although she doesn’t practice accounting now, the skills she gained as an accountant have been invaluable to her.

“I didn't realize that, with an accounting degree, you could really do a lot…those skills are really transferable and they also give you a lot of credibility.”

Katie started her career in accounting at Ernst & Young, but quickly learned she wasn’t finding the fulfillment she was looking for. She knew she had a love for marketing, and was hoping she could pursue that at EY, but unfortunately was not offered the position.

It wasn’t until she experienced a health scare where she really began to reevaluate what she wanted her career path to look like.

Katie also encourages listeners to take that leap of faith if they want to make that career adjustment or change, adding that there is no “right time” to make one.

“And then I realized that there's no, really, ‘signal’. It's like, it's got to be up to you.”

Katie’s Motivation and Developing Leaders Online

Katie eventually left EY, and pursued a career in marketing—specifically in the accounting/business industry. She also shared that shortly after she quit EY, her husband ended up needing a major surgery, and that served as a huge motivation to get her business off the ground. 

Katie also shares that she's always had a passion for marketing. She even helped market her father’s business when she was just 16 years old, and talks about how that experience helped bolster the trajectory of her business. 

While she loves the accounting industry, she did not find joy in tax returns and bookkeeping, but knew there was a market for the services she could provide to practitioners, which ultimately led to the creation of Leaders Online.

Why Your Firm Need to Get Online

Katie’s business, Leaders Online, is a marketing and consulting service that can help businesses increase their online presence. She can help with developmenting a social media presence, creating a new website, branding, and much more. 

Katie says she often finds that accounting firms are hesitant to share their achievements online, and prefer to rely on references to gain new clients. The problem with only relying on references is that your pool of clients can remain quite small. By putting yourself and your firm online, you are able to reach a wide range of clients, and you are able to choose exactly who you want to work with. Even if your firm is not looking for new clients, putting your firm online can even attract new staff who may want to work for your business.

Importance of Work Life Balance

While it is important to find joy in the work you do, Dawn and Katie both agree that it’s important to have goals outside of your work life.

Dawn shares that even though softball season is during tax season, she always makes time for it because it gives her something to look forward to, and ensures that her work hours are productive.

Katie agrees, and shares that she started scheduling horseback riding lessons, and that it’s important to find other activities that you can define yourself by, rather than just your career.

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Business owner, QBO Rockstar, and bass player extraordinar, Alicia Pollock begins her conversation with Dawn by talking about her experience as a 7th grade substitute teacher. Alicia says she’s always had a love for teaching, but quickly learned that teaching middle was not for her. She then moved over to teaching GED classes at her local community college, and took pride in knowing she was helping people reach their goals.

Alicia also talks about how she's always had a love for technology and was always keen on learning what new gadgets had to offer. She recounts a story where, at the age of 13, she learned how to use AppleWorks and created a patient database for her father’s Dentistry business.

Alicia’s Introduction to QuickBooks

Alicia owned her own jewelry company early on in her career and started to learn QuickBooks as a way to help manage her business. She found she had quite the knack for it, and became the go-to person in her area to help other business owners understand QuickBooks. This small interest in QuickBooks eventually led her to creating her own software teaching business, RoyalWise, and runs the business with her husband Jaime. She became so successful that she ended up selling her jewelry business in 2015.

Alicia’s Accomplishments

Alicia is also a member of the Intuit trainer-writer network, and is even on the national training team. If you take any QB Training Events or Intuit’s training sessions, there’s a good chance that Alicia will be one of your teachers!

In addition to training, Alicia is also an accomplished writer and has several QBO training books available to purchase on Amazon.

Alicia also talks about the success of her business, RoyalWise—a company devoted to teaching QuickBooks, Microsoft, and more to a variety of individuals. 

How Alicia Finds Motivation

Dawn asks Alicia where she finds her motivation, and Alicia shares that she was very inspired by the book “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz. 

 “It's kind of both our family Bible, and we give a copy to all of our employees,” says Alicia.

Alicia also shares that she finds motivation through her work, and knowing she is helping people achieve their business and personal goals makes her very happy.

Alicia also shares that she initially found much of her motivation from Dawn, as Dawn was the first speaker she saw when she first attended QuickBooks Connect.

We hope you enjoyed Alicia’s episode on the DM Disruption! 

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Scott Cytron discusses his early beginnings as a Journalism major at the University of Missouri, and how he struggled to find work shortly after graduating. Scott talks about how difficult the job market was at the time, and how even after countless interviews, he was not finding any work. He then started working as a volunteer writer for United Way, and how even though he was not making any money, this allowed him to gain the networking skills that he would use in the future. Because of his work with United Way, he eventually landed a job with the American Red Cross.

“And yeah, I mean, it was like, joke pay, but it was a job and I was glad to have it.” Scott says in reference to how much he made at his first job. 

Scott also shares how he found his way into the accounting industry; he was recruited for a position at the Texas Society of CPAs, a position he held for 9 years. 

Being Laid off and Starting His Own Company

Scott shares that he was laid off from his position, and talks about the grief he struggled with following the lay off.

Shortly thereafter, he was contacted by a few vendors he worked with while he was at the CPA society. He was asked to teach the sales people how non-profits thought and operated so they could sell more affinity cards. With Scott’s experience working with nonprofits, this ended up being a great gig for him, and with more vendors starting to contact him, this eventually led him to start his own business.

Importance of Networking

Scott then shares how important networking was when he started his business.

“And one thing led to another and I networked. I really, I let absolutely everybody I know, I told everybody, I know what I wanted to do, and what I was doing.” Scott shares. 

Dawn agrees and says networking is key when trying to gain clients and being “loud and proud” about what you do will help you reach more people who are in need of your services.

Scott also shares how as a business owner or accounting professional, you can always be doing something to increase your reach with new clients. He encourages people to take their clients out to lunch, schedule “coffee talks,” and how developing these relationships can lead to not only more work in general, but meaningful work as well.

Keeping The Client and Yourself Happy 

Scott and Dawn also share how important it is to maintain a good relationship with your clients, and while it’s important to make them happy, it’s also important that they make you happy.

“And I at this point, if I'm not having fun, or Brian isn't having fun working…I'd rather go do something else. Yeah, because life is too short,” shares Scott. 

Scott then shares about how important it is to maintain integrity and honesty with your clients, and says,

“My best day is when a client will call me up… and say, ‘I've got a problem. Can you help me fix it?’ Because to me that says you totally believe in my integrity.”

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Alison describes Liscio as “a collaborative environment for you and your team to work together along with your clients.” 

Liscio is an all in one communication platform for tax practitioners that makes communication between them and their clients incredibly easy. With both an app and browser based software, Liscio provides you with a messaging platform to communicate with your clients, and helps keep all the information they share with you in one place. They also make it easy for clients to share their tax documents with you, and even send reminders to your clients when they are behind on sending you important tax information.

Why Email Communication is Not Serving You

Alison and Dawn share their frustration when having to use email to communicate with their clients, and share how they have both been stuck digging through their inboxes to find the one piece of important information. 

When Liscio is implemented, you can completely avoid this, shares Alison. Liscio keeps all your messages and client documents in one portal, so you can access them from any place at any time! No more lost messages, and no more digging or sorting your inbox!

Liscio also offers integrations with your favorite apps such as QuickBooks Online, SmartVault, Adobe Sign, and more!

A Better Work Life Balance

Dawn and Alison share how many clients prefer to text their practitioners for information, rather than through email. Alison talks about how this can be a problem, and how texting can feel very invasive on the practitioner's end, and make them feel rushed to answer their clients' questions. 

With Liscio, clients can still have the convenience of contacting their practitioner directly through their phone, and practitioners can know that all of their client’s messages are already sorted, and will be easily accessible during working hours, rather than having to track the messages they receive while at the dinner table.

Learn more at www.Liscio.me

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Mike Milan of Truly Financial joins Dawn Brolin to discuss how digital banking can be beneficial for small businesses, and how Truly Financial helps save their clients hundreds of dollars in wire transfer fees and account minimum fees.

Truly Financial is a digital banking service that allows companies to have international purchasing power, even if they can’t compete with larger businesses around them. Truly Financial solves the currency exchange problem, and keeps the transaction local, rather than across borders. 

Mike even compares the ease of their wire transfers to using Venmo—transactions are made quick and easy.

Implemented Truly Financial in Your Business

Opening up an accountant with Truly Financial is easy, and can be done online! You provide them with basic identifying documents of you and your business, and they do the rest. 

Truly Financial Spend Management Cards

Truly Financial also provides you with spend management cards that you can distribute amongst your employees, rather than having to reimburse them. You are able to set the spending limits, see all the transitions that are taking place, and these cards can even be used for employees who work overseas. 

Mike highlights how you as the business owner are given up to 2.5% cash back on most purchases, even on the purchases made by your employees; they also have no minimum account fees! 

“We’re trying to bring the perks of the big bank down to everyone.” says Mike.

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In this session you will learn:

• How to identify, structure, and implement the transformational shifts you need to create the practice you want and your clients need.    
• How Dawn Brolin transformed her practice from a bookkeeping business to a full-fledged, comprehensive tax and accounting practice generating significant profits, productivity, and more work-life balance.
• Learn about the client advisory practice model that Sean Duncan created that allowed him to shift his practice from a predominately tax firm to a comprehensive client advisory practice that allows him to spend more time devoted to his family and things he loves to do.
• Take away specific technologies and partner programs you can leverage to achieve powerSHIFTs in your own practice. 
• Understand how to implement the strategies and tactics in your own practice.

Daniel begins the conversion by sharing his experiences as a new graduate, and how his first boss, Nancy Ward, was the catalyst to help him actively pursue his personal and professional goals. He talks about his current professional goals being improving his team and scalability. He also shares that he finds joy when those around him also achieve success, and love what they do. 

SmartVault and Going Paperless

Dawn discusses her admiration for SmartsVaults ability to secure and hold important tax documents, and how many accountants operate completely paperless now.

Daniel also talks about how SmartVault’s goal is to go completely paperless, and how they are on the cusp of doing so. Daniel shares that over 1.5 million CPAs use SmartVault’s services, and how they had over 13,000,000 documents that were uploaded and processed through their service.

Dawn also expresses her appreciation for SmartVault, as they are alway striving to integrate with new programs and software, and their growth as a company has never been static.

SmartVault’s Integration, Current Changes, and Company Growth

Daniel begins by talking about how SmartVault has completely redesigned their entire billing system to allow them to bill in local currency. He also talks about DocuSign’s new subscription based model that is more affordable than their DocuSign counterparts. And lastly, he discusses revamping their UI in their web portal and other programs.

Dawn also shares how SmartVault makes communication between her and client easy, and makes sure she can do her job efficiently and efficiently as a practitioner.

Daniel adds how SmartVault becomes your central document depository; practitioners and clients are able to access all of their documents quickly and securely. 

Importance of Outsourcing and SmartVault’s Flexibility

Dawn also talks about how important it is to outsource tasks to companies who specialize in them; you can’t do everything in accounting, so stick to the things you like doing, and outsource the ones you don’t.

Daniel talks about the flexibility of SmartVault, and how they take into account what their clients want and need. They also keep in mind that accountants aren’t the only clients they serve, and are always striving to make their program more accessible to businesses of all types and sizes.

Today Not Tomorrow

Daniel talks about his experience as a salesman, and how many relationships he established back then, he still has today. He also shared another former boss’s valuable advice of TNT, today not tomorrow, and shares that SmartVault strives to maintain that value as well.

Dawn agrees with Daniel, and expresses how important it is to implement knowledge you learn in your firm today! Not only will this allow you to help your clients gain success, it will also help you achieve your personal goals.

SmartVault and Their New Developments

Daniel talks about SmartVault’s past operations, and how they needed someone on the inside to directly oversee new product development. They onboarded Daniel to try and implement these changes, and he shares how they have scaled their team from just 2 developers, to now 7 developers, and a team of 15 people. He talks about how they made small changes at the beginning of 2020 to cut ambiguity and increase efficiency.

He talks about how they are so close to developing a well-oiled machine, and now they are focused on slowing down, taking their time, and implementing more automation to make their workflow more streamlined.

Daniel’s Personal Motivation

Daniel credits his wife for his personal motivation, and shares how her intellectual guidance has been crucial for his success. He also talks about being inspired by his Dad’s work ethic, but also the devotion to his family. 

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Robin Hall is the Owner & Principal of VARC Solutions, an Intuit centric firm that handles all aspects of the software, including training and purchasing software. Robin talks about how the motto of her company is “helping companies get back to their business.”

Robin shares that her designated motivator is everyone who said she couldn’t do something. Robin also shares that Dawn is also one of her designated motivors, and shares her admiration for Dawn’s enthusiasm about accounting. But most of all, Robin credits a lot of her motivation from seeing her clients succeed, and knowing she had a hand is making that happen. 

How Does Robin Support Her Team?

Robin not only tries to implement team building events, but makes sure she’s taking action everyday in the office to make sure all of her team members feel heard and appreciated. Robin also remembers having negative experience at previous work environments, and actively tools steps to push against those office practices, even if they were considered the norm. 

Robin also talks about one of the initiatives she implemented is “Summer Hours,” where employees work 9 hours Monday-Thursday, and then only work a half day on Friday. Another thing she did was take her team on a sailboating retreat, in order to further develop their relationship with their team members. 

“The more that they have fun together, the more interpersonal communication becomes stronger,” says Robin.

Accountants Aren't Doormats

Dawn shares an unfortunate experience she had with a client, and talks about her decision to fire the client in the end. “We need to realize as practitioners, we are not doormats,” says Dawn.

Robin and Dawn share their current frustrations with the IRS, and how this is causing strained relationships with current clients.

Robin also adds on to Dawn’s previous comment, and shares that clients need to realize that their practitioners are doing so much behind the scenes, and that they are often solving problems the client was never aware of. She shares that it is unfair for the client to unload their frustrations onto them, and that respect should always be upheld.

Robin also shares that many times, accountants bend over backwards for clients and overextend themselves, which then in turn lead to the client taking advantage of their time.

Maintaining a Work Life Balance

Robin talks about how COVID-19 actually helped her manage her work-life balance better by forcing her to delegate tasks. She shares that she was able to scale down the amount of hours she was working, and shares how our biggest resource is having access to our own time.

Dawn agrees and shares similar sentiments about taking time to reevaluate what’s important in her life, and where she wants to spend her time. 

“I’ve stopped being busy...and I’ve started being productive,” shares Dawn.

Robin adds how she stopped just tracking her billable hours, and now tracks all aspects of her work. This allows her to see areas where she may not have been as productive as she could’ve been. She shares that even if you are on salary, you need to be tracking where you are spending your time to show the areas of the day you could be more productive.

Dawn adds how important it is to set your boundaries with clients so they know what to expect and how to treat you. She adds that when you as a practitioner always make yourself available, it sends the message to the client that they have full access to you.

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Have you considered outsourcing your clients payroll? Well, I did and I went with ADP. The resources they provide, along with their partner program make them the premier outsourcing payroll solution. We as practitioners already deal with a ton of compliance. Keeping up with payroll isn't a value added solution that I should be focused on. If you've considered outsourcing before, reconsider it today. Choose ADP to be part of your starting lineup.

Alright, so everyone, thank you so much. You're welcome to the DM disruption. Super excited today to have Aaron Stark from ADP on the show today. He's just a great guy. We had a really good time at one dinner one time is now our best friends. And that's just how it works, right? But Aaron, welcome to the podcast today. Introduce yourself. Tell us what you do and what you love. Go for it. Yeah, so first of all, thank you for having me Dong. It's a It's a pleasure. By the way last week is been a year and a half of being not impressed with you is like the culmination of some good things to come. Right. So great seeing you last week. As you mentioned, my name is Aaron Stark, division vice president of channel strategy for ADP is a lot of words. And ultimately, what that means is myself, my team, we are responsible for putting together the programs, the products, different processes, and how we can provide value to specifically the accounting community. There are other channels, you know, we're responsible for some of our executive thank relationships, we work with brokers alike, but over 60% of our business comes in through the accountant, community like people like yourself on so I think my number one responsibility as I came into this role about four years ago was Do not mess that up. This is such an important community to ADP, you know the value that we provide the service that we provide the products that we you know, offer to you and your clients, you know, our team's responsibility is to keep that at a very high level, if not always exceeding expectations. So happy to be here happy to talk about what we're hearing and seeing and feeling, you know, within this profession today. and go from there, you never know with our conversations which direction I'm looking forward to. I know you know, we'll we're always entertaining Aaron, I haven't have a blast all the time. That's how we roll. And so ADP is part of Team rolling team role and having our full All Star tech stack of, you know, these are all the positions we have in our firm to run our firm. These are all the applications that we recommend to our clients. And of course, so ADP is number one, I'm disappointed a little bit the fact that when I asked ADP what they want, I'm not surprised by any stretch of imagination, but which is your favorite baseball team. And of course, Aaron and Amy, they're all i don't i don't know what kind of drugs they take on a regular basis. But they're all about the Yankees, right? Yankee Spanky. So we'll just get that out of them. If you could just ground yourselves in team rolling, I think that, you know, it gives us a pretty good start. So let's not get into that, because he put us in a dark place right now.

It's so fun. No, you know, and that's one of the things like we just are trying to make this whole program, the podcast, all of the all star lineup. And that because we will we want to do is help my fellow accounting colleagues, my professionals realize that we have the ability to teach our clients how to run their businesses in a way that we run our businesses. And with that, we want to make sure that we're implementing best practices, the most value add that we can provide to the client. And that's one of the reasons why ADP is just a home run. They're, you know, they're the home run team, a home run player on my team. I mean, they give me the ability to service my clients monitor activity within my clients to analyze and things like that. And so I just for me, it's not there's just no comparison to what ADP provides my firm and my clients for service. But Aaron, okay, we already engaged right. And we were it was wonderful to see people that was like, so important to get around each other, to learn from each other to be able to look in each other's eyes again, you know, and so tell me a little bit about your experience at engage and what did you see from the practitioners and what's the what's the hype? Yes.

Getting

in person was amazing. I think it's, it's interesting to see since the last time that we're in person and obviously many, many conversations, virtual conversations over the last, you know, 1618 months, however long it's been losing track, but the reality is everybody's been talking about and like two different paths, right? You have this thing on top of

legislative changes path, which you just have to as the front line, you know, the front line for every SMB client that's out there, and where they're looking for advice and guidance on how to navigate through that. So you have that piece which you don't necessarily control, which is very taxing and time consuming. And all the regulations regulatory compliance on this report, and then you have, you know, this continuous evolution of advisory services, and I put air quotes in here, because I feel like everybody's got it like a different definition of it, or no matter how you define it, right, it's a combination of leveraging technology, leveraging data, being able to present it in articulate form to your clients that will help enable them to grow. And hopefully, this is a, you know, a cocktail of all the different definitions that exist out there. But I think one of the things that I learned, and I've heard this in a couple of different, you know, conversations, not just an engaged but leading up to engages, Yes, I understand it's right. And yes, I've started to see and learn more about, you know, what's available to me. But I still don't know how to actually capitalize on it, like, there still seems to be a certain level of hesitation on because people are in the sensitive state, like, how do I profit from it? How do I productize it? How do I monetize it. Um, and I think that's something that, you know, the firm's that we're working with, some have figured out the, you know, definitely on the more progressive side, because they understand the value to it, and how it differentiates them from, you know, the accountant, the adviser, the practitioner down the block, and then there are a lot that just don't understand how their clients are going to react to it. And it's giving them a little bit of pause. So, you know, from an ADP standpoint, I think that, you know, we help definitely with some of the technology elements and the tech stack that we can provide to give that data that intelligence, but we're we're looking to continuously evolve based on the feedback that we're hearing is, how can we either develop or partner with, you know, those entities, and that that can actually help a firm understand how I can monetize this, how I can introduce it to my clients, where they don't feel threatened by it, where I'm trying to gouge them during a very sensitive time, versus this is a valued service that is going to enhance your business. And as you are trying to grow your practice. So my, and we're in this together, right? Like, I think that it's something that we're still trying to figure out, I don't know if I have it fully laid out just yet. But hopefully, that's a good summary of overseeing what we're hearing. And you know, when I talk a lot, and I spoke with her the other day, we were talking about, you know, the whole concept of the benchmarks of what, what are other and we use restaurants as an example. We know right now that employers are really struggling, finding employees, finding people who want to work, we won't get political about it, but it just is what it is, right? So with saying that, what the solution or a resource that ADP is able to provide you as a practitioner through the accountant Connect portal, is that benchmarking? What are people getting paid in Boston, Massachusetts as a server? What are they getting paid in, you know, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, wherever, wherever your clients are, what I love is that ADP has data from everywhere. And I think that that's one of the things right now, when you listen to your client say, Hey, listen, I'm struggling with hiring employees, I can't get people. What do I do? Well, one of the first things you can do is take, go into your account and connect resource and go check and see what the comparatives across the country or wherever your clients located for the similar for a similar type of business, and figure out maybe you're way under paying people, it's totally possible, but you don't know if you don't have the resources. And that's, I think the most important thing to me are the resources that I can tap into the PPP loan, you guys crushed, that, you know, the reporting and the things that we needed to report in for forgiveness and things like that. And guess what people that's still going on today's PPP loan close with it was end of May the second round, there's still reporting requirements that you're going to be required to provide. And if you're just not able to pop those reports out, you know, I'm sorry, but you got to you've got to look at something and do something different. And so, you know, talk about if you can era just talk a little bit about what you're seeing from a hiring perspective because you guys obviously see all of the industry statistics and the reporting that comes out about that. What are what are you seeing out there with regards to employee retention or even hiring you want to be on media medium without hearing and seeing some of the statistics and the sensitivity around

you know, having to retain employees and the taxing exercise that that includes and listen to the bits that are most important asset our people, but you people are calling this current time the great resignation. 40% of employees are considering leaving their current employer because there's a there's a premium out there. 

The amount of jobs that continue to stay open 9 million jobs, right that they're open right now in the economy. And as good as the jobs reports have been as far as filling them, like there's an attrition that's taking place, it's opening up more, and then there's just been this big void, and they can see that has built over the past year and a half, that is going to take some time for us to get back to. So employers are taking extreme measures to offer hiring bonuses, premium benefits, different experiences, whether that's,

you know, hiring bonuses or equity within their firms, like there's a variety of different tactics that they need to differentiate themselves from the competition or attract them away from their current employer. So everybody's playing this offense defense game. And to your point, that comp benchmarking is what really does differentiated versus some of the other datasets that are out there is that it's, it's built off a real time intelligence, where you can go and look at some of the job boards, and you can go and look at some of the other data sets, but they are an aggregation of information that took place last month, last quarter, or last year, based on those different dots, or potentially what people are being offered in a job board. Right, like what's on the actual adopters. But that doesn't necessarily correlate to what people are getting paid and offered at the end state. So what our information does is we're aggregating and anonymizing 30 million plus employees across the domestic us. And then we're pulling that in by industry, by geography, by job type by tenure. And that's what people are getting paid right now, right this second. And if you take that, and you start to expand it with this, you know, another piece of attracting and hiring talent right now, is the flexibility optionality, when it comes to where you're going to work, and how often you're going to work, right? Like you've seen many companies instituting four day workweeks, or your instance being you only have to come to the office two days a week, or not ever come to the office at all. So people have relocated, you know, from New York, or Florida, from Florida to California, from Texas to wherever I just heard about somebody moving to Montana sounds glorious. Like the reality is, I'm like, what what you're paying for talent that used to live in New York City, the cost of living is not the same in Montana, right, and being able to have the tools to pivot quickly are, I mean, you could say that that's important, right? And a differentiator for not just us at the firm, but the firm to the client, right to be able to, you know, identify that. And then the last piece to get off this model up here, I guess, is also taking a look at the clients that are reaching out to you or one cohort, right? Like that's one group of people that are proactively reaching out to their advisors, and asking them for a level of consultation and how to navigate this is that every client, I promise you, it's probably not right. It's not like you have 100 clients, maybe 50 are doing that can be too, right. But the other 50 and the other 98, you have to assume that some of this is taking place within their organizations as well. And if they're not a chance to you, it's either a, they don't know, the questions to ask me, they don't know that you have services or solutions to help me or see the worst answer. They're going somewhere else for it. Right. And it's that somewhere else that should be this something top of mind for the accounting profession, because everybody's trying to create these robust suites, where I offer this, and this, this and this, right. And some of those other this is, we hope and fingers crossed that they're not going to be accounting services. So right. So and what we've done to take offense to that with our accounting partners, and Accountant Connect is the new insights application, which actually shows you which clients are adding employees, which clients might have attrition, which clients are opening up or have multiple jurisdictions that they're adding to their payroll, who should be leading indicators. And you can take a proactive measure with your clients pick up the phone and say, I just saw that you added 35 employees over the last 90 days, that's awesome. But are you putting in the infrastructure to help support them to help retain them, right? So you can stabilize this growth if not accelerated, moving forward? Or the adverse which is, hey, I've seen that you lost him people over the last week or two, what's causing that? Maybe it's the compensation piece to your point where I'm overpaying, which, you know, maybe that's not the worst thing, but what if you're underpaid? And now they're flipping them off left and right, because you were going off of a different model that 18 months ago made sense, but today is not to say,

Yeah, and I think that that again, like we always talk about adding value, which everybody always talks about adding value and I think in our accounting profession, now we've got to do that more than we ever need.

is, is all from solicitation and feedback we get from the accounting community, like so our advisory board, which you are obviously an esteemed member of, but just the general accounting profession, you know, we continuously reach out to ask what are the things we can continue to do in order for not just pray to you to be to be the preferred provider, but also to add value, right? Like to help this profession man, he saw that in what was done during the height of the pandemic and the PPP that you mentioned before. So you know, we have those tools and resources, feedback through accountant connected, if you see something, say something, right, like we're always keeping our eyes and ears open. But I think where we're focused on right now is, again, making sure that we have some of those tools and resources readily available to help navigate the regulatory compliance because we don't see that going down. Unfortunately, or fortunately, anytime soon, like, some people do benefit from this ever changing landscape, right? You know, it sometimes leads to profitability. But then on the flip side is what and what we really are excited about how do we take this data? How do we take this intelligence and make it actionable, right, where we can actually take that information as opposed to you looking at it and looking for it, which is step number one, and we're there, which is super exciting. But imagine a world where we can take that and proactively provide it to you to them proactively and provide it to your client and I'll use just a quick example. Employer hires an employee in a state that has a required mandate for a retirement vehicle and they do not have one in place today. Imagine that a notification goes off which again, you can look and find this data today but you're gonna have to search a little bit but imagine it just with the snap of a finger ADP is notifying you to say you have a client out of compliance you be the hero and by the way, here's a solution set that you can easily tap into whether or not you want to use it or not doesn't matter like here's what's happening, what they should be doing and solutions if you're not looking to scour the internet Yeah, and you know, honestly that's that's the type of thing that you know, I complained one time I had a client who didn't have workers comp, they were in New York City and if you are from New York, and you don't have workers comp, you know, I got a bill comes through the New York State kind of like goes right at you right for your juggler, but it was like she added one employee and I wasn't really thinking like, I'm not their insurance agent, right? And so later down

Line, they get the notice they're like, you know, you set up payroll, why didn't you set up workers comp? But I'm like, oh, like it was like a light bulb came on in my head that oh, I do have to be the insurance agent. Not really. But I have to be the one who says, Hey, you know, do you have workers comp in New York City for New York for this employee? Because New York's pretty, pretty rough about workers comp. And so really, it was at the end of the day, it was my failure in a way that I wasn't paying enough attention. But, but having ADP say to me, oh, hey, so and so just add an employee in New York? And hey, do they have workers comp? Do they have you know, do they have a withholding number set up? Are they registered in New York be able to pay in New York employee? Things like that, that we need to be that person who is thinking forward for the client? And not just be the person? Oh, yeah, they're on Okay, they got somebody on payroll looks like their payroll went up, and oh, that, you know, it's in the accounting, who cares? Because really, the clients need us for more than that. And so the more that we can, again, not set them up on insurance necessarily unless you're doing a worker's comp pay as you go. But even just liability insurance or things like that, that the client has no clue they need this stuff. They don't have any idea. They go to an attorney, typically, the attorney sets up the entity and then the attorney is all done well the attorney didn't think about that they have liability insurance Do they have this all their job was to register their you know, entity, and get them an Ei n? They think that's where it ends? Well, that's where it begins. And so the more tools and things like that when it comes to the payroll regulations that ADP can provide to the practitioner and that's what ADP has been doing and I think from a motivation perspective to take action which is really what this whole podcast is about motivation turning into action and that's what we want I don't want to motivate you and then you go and you're like, oh, that was great. No, it's like okay, what am I going to do with the information I learned I'm going to go do something about it. And so I think that you know, what ADP has in the pipeline is exactly what we need but I want to I want to go a little bit to your personal side Aaron a little bit over here which is fair, but I want to hear about what motivates Aaron Stark what what motivates you to get up every day and do what you do and I know you're going to tell me it's because of people like me and you love us and I get all that but I've thought about Aaron start like Tell me a little bit about that yeah, so there's there's two sides of me Give me up every day and push me probably more more than anything so it's one is obvious is my family right? So Father three my wife love going out and was 12 years come September

You know, there's really nothing that I wouldn't do to put them in a better positioned than I ever had growing up.

And you know, so that's, that's first and foremost, but I'm also a very competitive individual right growing up in a sales organization put myself through college doing sales.

Like I am always looking at ways in which you know, myself My team is exceeding expectations like when I put on my GPS in the morning and it says when we get to the office at 730 I kind of look at it and I dropped the next student and I say I'm going to be there as I'm 15 right like that that's either by competitive nature or my psychosis will let you choose but you know, it's just that drive of you know, never been content with you know, what it is that we're doing and I think part of what attracts me lady is that I think it's built into our DNA and the fabric of organization but it's only five years in the business of you know, always looking to theater expectations and outperform you know, what our partners our clients, you know, are looking for an ADP are we always perfect No, right not nor am I as a as a human being but I think when you balance those two sides of the equation, right have they suddenly ground you in my family, but then this this, this desire to always be getting better, right? Like no matter what that is, those are my motivational factors. And I love that that's you know, that's for me it's my big motivation right now at least in my in my professional world is to help other practitioners but also my clients I got an errand This is actually kind of like a timing thing. But I had a client email me this morning, you know, I finished their tax return and they're like, can you please split split the cost of the tax or into payments? And I'm like, not a problem. I've been client for many, many years. I know, you know, I know they're good for it type of thing. And I, you know, I make very, very few exceptions to that to the rule of getting paid. But she emailed me and she said, I've not told anybody this, but I can't tell you how much I'm struggling with my family doesn't know nobody knows. My family has been depending on me for 20 years to provide for the family. And I'm just burned out I don't even I can't sleep at night. And so from a motivation perspective, immediately going into the DM mode mindset mode. That's where I go immediately when I hear something like that. It's like whoa, stop everything.

Have you considered outsourcing your client's payroll? Well, I did. And I went with ADP. The resources they provide along with their partner program became the premier outsourcing payroll solution. We as practitioners already deal with a ton of compliance, keeping up with payroll. It's an, a value added solution that I should be focused on.

You've considered outsourcing before. Reconsider it today. Choose ADP to be part of your starting. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the BM disruption. You know, I love to talk to all of my fellow colleagues and accountants out there and just try to help improve processes, make great recommendations and do whatever I can to just push out some information, to help everybody in the community.

We're all in this together. We're all going to survive together. And today's episode is sponsored by fishbowl. Fishbowl part of the starting lineup, because fishbowl for me is a great solution for my clients who have inventory needs, obviously. Right? And so today we have Nate flake on the show today to talk to us about an upcoming summit and all the good things that are happening at fishbowl, but also in the accounting industry in general.

So, Nate, hello. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. I don't want them to be on this for awhile. So this. It's gold. Are you kidding fishbowl? So it was really fun cause I was just out there a couple of weeks ago or a few weeks ago, whatever timing it is at this point, but, um, and love to see the operation that was so fun.

And we went, had a great dinner so much. Uh, but it was so amazing. And then I got to ride in your really cool, awesome. I don't want to, you call it a truck car. It's not car.

No. Yeah. That was fun. Thanks for coming out. Yeah, we, we had, uh, we had, yeah, we for the, for the filming of, um, our upcoming summit and you're kind of a local celebrity here, everybody here in the office knows you and the sort of stories, you know, everyone's bombed, they weren't in Vegas. For the, for that conference with us.

And I'm like, you know, she did beat me in corner. I did legitimately. So, which is most important thing is about winning. It's about the fun. Oh, so Nate, so tell me when, when you I'll tell the audience, I guess people who are listening, when is the summit? Tell me about it. What motivated you? Like tell me everything.

Why are you doing it? It's cetera. And then obviously we'll have post the links to be able to yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, like I mentioned, Don was one of our awesome speakers for the summit. So we have a virtual summit coming up and, uh, September, uh, September 28th and we'll have we'll, we'll give Don some registration information once we're going to start marketing for that, but essentially end of September, it comes out.

So this is the inventory management and growth summit. Uh, It's going to be completely virtual. So it'll have like a live launch date is September 28th that you can kind of watch it and what would be a live fail. Right. And then you'll, you'll be able to access it for 30 days. So we obviously know that nobody wants to sit and watch a full straight day of videos and speaker.

So we're going to make it kind of a easy to digest a little bit, you know, people can go through. Pick a topic, pick the speaker, we'll have headshots bios of everybody. Um, but yeah, kind of the motivation behind it. We, we just, there's no one really doing, um, anything inventory management related in our space right now, as far as like virtual events and even like in person, I can't wait till we can do, you know, a core in person event it's focused strictly on SMB inventory management fishbowl tends to join all these.

Conferences, you know, we have scaling new Heights comes up, that's coming up. We have QuickBooks connect every year, of course, with our friends at, into it. But there's no conference that's like focused on inventory management. Um, and so we're trying to really give everybody the tools in the SMB space to grow.

And this conference is kind of unique because it's going to cover. Kind of everything and like an SMB tool kit, right. Marketing, um, you know, your, your section that speaks to, you know, how, if you're, if you're in a calendar and you're running a small business, like how do you grow that? How do you, how do you get out of the rut and how do you, especially after these last 18 months to kind of get out of that space a little bit, that Headspace, um, we have speakers that are like from the.

Awesome. E-commerce Amazon sellers that know how to grow there. We have food and beverage companies that have scaled their business, you know, to their best numbers, to date during COVID. So we're just trying to really give everyone tools to say, Hey, we realize that's kind of a weird time and it's different time, but like, there are still people out there killing it.

So let's figure out how you can do that. And so it's going to be free. Um, we have some awesome speakers. We have, we have Damon John, um, you know, FUBU and from shark tank. Everyone knows him from shark tank as well. We've got MLB players, Dell Murphy from Atlanta Braves, which is the colors you're wearing right now.

You're repping the brave scholars that, yeah. And so we have some, um, people from like experts in the industry, right? Uh, a chief, um, or sorry, a click click rate optimization company called spiralize, like, how do you make your website? Optimize for cooking. Like people don't tend to think about that when you're starting a business, it's kind of last on your list.

Right. Um, you know, how do you supply inventory? How do you get your e-commerce shop set up? So we're going to kind of be covering all sorts of topics in this thing, and it's going to be fun. There's a QuickBooks panel. Um, there's a marketing panel. So, um, anyway, so there's a lot of, I kind of went online, but there's a lot of stuff to digest there.

It's going to be. Yeah. You know, and I think that certainly in the inventory space, you've got your offset. Small is relative when it comes to inventory, because you can have a client who has, you know, maybe only 10 products, but they sell them, you know, the millions of volume-wise. Right. Um, and so I, I know that one of the things that I've seen before and in the past, I've seen where people are just trying to like always do these little shortcuts or work arounds to try to.

Uh, business manage their inventory. And really when you're doing, I'm just going to say it, Nate, if you're gonna do things, half-assed, don't do them at all. It's just, it's just inventory is like the biggest asset for most small and mid size businesses and their inventory based. Right. And so they are the manufacturing and they're doing, you know, retail inventory that is their baby.

Like. That asset in and of itself is so valuable. I mean, think of the purchase prices and things like that, that inventory asset has got to be managed and utilized in a way and tracked in a way that the client still sees that value on the balance sheet. You know, the health of the balance sheets, the most important thing.

And right now most people feel kind of unhealthy on their balance sheet. Right? Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy too. Cause it's kinda goes like it's kind of like counter intuitive to. Well, I'm like a scrappy business. I'm trying to cut costs where I can, I can't afford a software like fishbowl. Right. I'm not trying to like, just shamelessly promote fishable here, but like any, any, any software QuickBooks.

Right. But it's, it's counter, it's kind of counterintuitive because you're, you're doing actually, you're wasting a ton of money on scrap on inventory, on. When I was started, I've been official for eight years now. I started in the training and implementation team where I would go out to warehouses and train them, Hey, this is how you use fishbowl and we're going to download it.

We're going to train the whole team. And it was always like shocking to me, how little companies knew about what was actually going on in their own warehouses, you know? And you have story control guy or, or girl, or whoever's, whoever's out there running the shop, but they like have a, they say they have an idea.

And then you're like, okay, let's do a physical count. Like. 12 months ago, you're like, oh, okay, well that's for problem. Number one. But like the amount of money you're wasting on scrap and just stuff expire, especially in stuff that's perishable. Right. You could have paid for a software like fishbowl 10 times this year.

Right now it's kind of, it's kind of. Yeah, you're scrappy, but you have to be smart with your investments. Like, imagine that this was your own money and you're investing it. You want just like pray that it would work, you know, like you have to be on top of it. And so the people that have really gone ahead this last, you know, two years are people that are implementing systems or people like your starting lineup, you know, and things like that as well.

And that's, you know, the, the message at the end of the day. DM disruption episodes is really to just give more information on how we, as the practitioner can improve, whether it's internally in our own infrastructure and our own apps that we're using. And of course integrated, this is the way to go. But also those apps that we may not use internally, like fishbowl, I don't have inventory at my, in powerful accounting, but I have clients who.

And so I need to make sure that I am up on the applications that not only solve for maybe the immediate problem, but have the room to grow as the, as the businesses grow. And I think that that's something, sometimes we think short-sighted, we don't think of the end game first where we sit at about, let me put the bandaid on it right now.

And that's, that's the worst way to think about it because you're, you know, what's going on. I sell them some crap there, say, oh yeah, that looks really easy. We can enter a bunch of inventory items. Oh. But that doesn't sync with anything. Oh, sorry. You know, you manually do that for awhile. You'll save a hundred dollars, you know, like that's a big deal.

So yeah. So tell me, so I know that, um, you know, you guys are really out there. You're doing, and you also have a. Solution called Quarium connected with fishbowl, which I think of course, if you didn't get the pond. Cause I don't think I got it. I'm usually pretty darn we thought that's a super, super clever.

It is clever each of the aquarium basketball, but just Quarium take off. The, a aquarium was very, very hard to fight with SEL. So we decided to drop the, just get rid of one letter. Yeah, we have enough people out calling us right now, already asking how, what size of fishbowls they can buy. And so we're like, we don't want to do that mess again.

We're going to start ordering aquariums from you guys. We should partner with someone now honestly, and send them leads and do something, but someone could benefit from it or just start our own actual fishbowl company on the side. That would be awesome. So yeah, you guys started querying them, which is a great hosting solution and we actually just got somebody on board and, and we're, we're working with that.

And, um, and so did that just stem from, you know, just common sense that it was. Yeah, so we we've been offering, so like Fishbowl's a desktop solution. We have an online solution. That's six months old, very recent fishbowl online. Um, fishbowl itself is a, it's a. You know, it's an install software. You install on a server locally, usually in the warehouse.

Um, and you know, I've seen some of these server rooms. They're bad news. I have. I've been to these warehouses where. Yeah, it's in the closet over there and you open it up, just binder worms, you know, there's just a little red light blinking in the corner. You're like, there is the server, you know, often here for a couple hours, you know, barely any internet connection.

And so we have companies that were in that situation that were like, Hey, we don't want to go fully cloud because that scares us. We also want the security of being local. So we kind of, we kind of have been doing hosting on the fishbowl side for probably three or four years now. Um, and essentially what that is is people we host your fishbowl and QuickBook.

On a remote server and you get in through the remote desktop connection, you know, that's just a little shortcut on your desktop. You clicking it, it opens up as if you're on a whole new computer. You got a fish bowl on QuickBooks. We've been doing that for four years. It's been an awesome product and people love it.

We manage it. It's a, it's a, it's a pretty low monthly cost for them. And they buy a fish bowl as a package. And then they paid just for this hosting. We've only been doing that for fishbowl and QuickBooks. And so we kind of started getting into more of the QuickBooks space, fishbowls sales, QuickBooks now directly work USP.

And, and we started sending, you know, people would buy QuickBooks from us and then they're like, okay, Hosting. And we're like, well, we have hosting, but you have to be a fishable customer. Then we realized like, why are we doing that? We already have under structure. Like, we'll just create a separate thing.

That's for QuickBooks only. Right. And so there's tons of people out there. Um, I'm not going to promote them and say their names, but you know who they are. So we're like, we're going to do this. And, and so we've been selling now hosting under the aquarium brand, um, for almost a year now. And it's been awesome.

Right. And so. Some of the, some of the things we we did too, which is kind of the advantage of being like, not the first movers you get to learn from people's mistakes. Once you kind of get the train rolling, it's hard to dissect it, but we were able to kind of build off of missteps. And so, you know, one of the cool things, and we spoke about this in Las Vegas, Don, but we have a partner portal that lets a CPA or accountant go in and see all of their clients' machines are virtual machines.

And click into them instead of having to call the company and say, Hey, can I get on company ABC's QuickBooks today? And they're like, okay, wait for about 30 minutes and then make sure you have them on the phone. And then you get into work. And then five minutes later, you hang up and they call you back and say, Hey, I forgot to do one thing, QuickBooks.

Okay, let's start this train again. You know? So we have those partner portal that allows you a one-time permission from the client. Just say, Hey. Yeah, of course. You know, Don does my books for sure. She can get into my thing. Here's my written permission on file. And then from then on you have access to get into their remote server anytime you want.

Right. Yeah. That's so awesome for the accountants. It really is. I think that, you know, obviously. I said this I'll say the 7 million times. And I'll say it every time. Is it when you are making a decision that you should be going into the cloud with a hosting solution, which everybody should be doing FYI, I don't care if you're using QBO.

I don't care if you're using, you know, online subscription services, which, uh, many people are doing. That's awesome. But how secure is your computer? That's been sitting in your office and you know, you've got all your passwords, memorize, all this stuff, and somebody comes and sits at your desk. Like, hello?

It's worth the security and we there's, there's a lot of rules around, um, security, and we actually had a great conversation with secure ex, um, a couple of weeks ago. I think it was. Yeah. And talking about the liability for tax practitioners and people with a P 10, you've got a P 10 or your tax practitioner and you, um, you know, you're going in and doing that kind of.

You have to have a security plan laid out and you know, so being able to rely on your security plan, we'll be able to say, Hey, I've got a hosting solution that has all the protocols in place to protect the client date. Credit cards. You know, if you're an accountant, you have access to everybody's financial life, you are their doctor.

You've got it all. So that's when the, we've got to think about it as practitioners and I love and I, and I've seen, you know, I love it. I've got my own profile, all set up and I can see my clients. I can see, I, I don't have to wait to get in. I can just go in and do my work and I don't need to wait for a data file or.

Oh crap. Like I can just go in and do my job. And I think that, that, you know, I just, I had a great conversation with Seth Feinberg, just in general about what's going on out there. And we are all looking for solutions to make us more efficient, but also I don't have a problem jumping onto somebody's books while I'm sitting on the beach.

Right. But I can't be tied to what the guy always been saying. It was kind of giggling about last five years that the computer is now the new volunteer. Yeah, right. It used to be your spouse or your partner was volunteering, but now it's the computer. And so how are you setting yourself up for success?

And that's what corium can solve for people. And that's, and that's what we're here to do. Doesn't need a motivator. DM disruption is here to help solve the pain points that you're living in here and now. And so, and make changes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was crazy. We were, I mean, at dinner you had brought up that whole QBO thing.

Like we're huge advocates of QBO, Cuba, advanced. Obviously people want to move to the cloud, which, and they should, if they can, you know, and if the capability's there, hell yeah. Do it. Right. But I didn't realize even, and you had brought that up like people, a lot of times people are like, oh, I have QBO. I don't need query.

You actually don't have that security, like logging in just straight up from Google Chrome or from edge or whatever. Firefox, not, that's not NSA level security. You know what I'm saying? Like, You need to get behind some type of security metrics and some uptick time. And our, and I can talk nerdy specs. I can't talk nerdy specs, but I have someone who can, if you have questions at all, but we have all that stuff on our website to our aquariums website.

So it's something you don't really think about. Well, I have QBO, so I'm good. Well, not really like get the social server, then you can get onto Chrome from the hosted server because your IP address. Uh, you know, it's, it's not static. It's always changing. Yeah. You know, and that's really, that's another hard thing where a lot of it and, you know, we're all busy, busy practitioners.

We're all. I mean, we're overworked, everybody's overworked. We get that, you know, we're having trouble finding additional staff. We're having trouble with getting through the IRS. I mean, all these things that are just like EV you're like, feel like you just get whacked in the face with a board every five seconds.

Right. And so the more that we can stop and say, okay, Number one, we better take care of the things that are number one in our practice, which is protecting our clients. That's our job as the accounting professionals. So if you're like, oh, bah humbug on the whole local computer going on to Chrome, I don't need that.

I don't need a host for that. I can just talk myself to late. And then you're like, oh crap. And your whole practice is gone, man. You get half local level. You're done just, yeah. Uh, and then at that point you're like, I'll spend any amount of money to get that bag, but it's too late by then. Right? Like we need to be proactive, not reactive to things.

And so that's what we're that, we're trying to message that now. And even with fishbowl too. And I, and I'm, I know, I keep saying fishbowl inquiry I'm cause obviously I work here, but this is with any solution. Like you need to be way you need to be, oops, sorry. That was probably super loud. I just have not walked on the mic call, so, but you need to be proactive with their solutions.

I mean, especially with how fast everything's moving now. You know, we, we see e-commerce companies that go from Kickstarter to, you know, 20 million in the first year because they're making all the right moves. And it's crazy me, you know, like we have local, one of our, one of our customers is dots pretzels, which started down just tiny gas stations.

And I don't know if you've had thoughts and this is, they did not want me to say this, but you need to get on their website and order something in Walmart. Like there. And that was like a six month, six month, like from no one knowing who they were too big box stores. And we kind of were there to be that, be that kind of supplier to help them get with our software and get everything lined up and forecasted.

And, and that's not just, that's not a unique story. There's like hundreds of companies that are making the right steps and investing in the right. And they're blowing up. It's, it's crazy. And it's hard to, it's hard to tell someone when you work for company, Hey, you need to spend this money, but it's like, I'm almost like want to take a step back as a consultant and be like, you need to spend this money.

Like, this is what you're going to, like, I love your product. I eat them every day or I, I, you know, I used PopSocket or whatever it is. Like some people drink it that turns out to be really, really cool product that blow up. Yeah, most people then blow up by accident and then blow out by luck right there.

Right. That's and that's it. And when in the book that as a motivator for accounting professionals, I talk about that, the fact that we need a foundation. So we, as the practitioners need these foundations, we need, we need to know what we need to know, and we need to mostly be compliant. That's our number one mission is to protect our clients and be compliant.

And in order to do that, we have to take steps and we have to invest. And it's just like anything else. And so with a client, like a warehouse or a restaurant or anybody that's trying to maintain or track that those inventory figures. Yeah. If they don't have, they've got some of them, they got brick and mortar, they got to stay up storefronts, but they also sell online with e-commerce.

If you don't have. All of those stores connected and the, you know, the cloud is its own store. If you don't have all that stuff, connected people are ordering things or things going backward, or you don't people do as soon as I go to cause I'm like, oh, I really want this. Oh, it's on backorder, close that website.

I'm going to go to a different one, buy it somewhere else. You know? And that is a, that is an epic failure for those of us who are consulting like you and myself, Nate and we're telling clients is what you should be doing. We can literally put them out of business on our own. I mean, that's just. Yeah, right.

So be careful. You've got to be careful when you're making those. Yeah. You have to be in alignment and it's not just, I mean, I like what, when, when Don and I first met as like all three years ago, four years ago. Yeah. I liked that. She, I mean, I'm going to tell your horn to your own a little bit for you here.

I liked that you just don't like sell yourself to the highest bidder, right? Like you're. Hey promote our company and then we'll give you 50 grand, you know, and then see you later. And you're like, oh, I haven't vetted you. Like, you don't do that because you it's a reflection directly on you. Right. And so I think like, as the practitioner, too, or as a CPA or a CFO consultant or whatever you are, it's crazy how much, at least to me.

Cause I'm not one of those things. It's crazy how much the client trusts you. Like, Hey, here's my baby that I made. This is my company. Will you hold this? And try not to drop it like, right. And so there they give you so much trust. Like you don't want to just, oh yeah, go Google it, like go Google inventory management.

Like hopefully it works. Or like, yeah, quick quick is pretty good, but like go like good luck with that. Like tax software, just like any of them will work. Like yeah. Like it's not like you go to jail, but no big deal. So yeah. So it's hard. It's hard to like. Portray that message without seeming self-serving, but like this reflects directly on me, this direct reflects directly on you Don like as a practitioner, it's almost like your reputation as your most valuable asset, right.

A hundred percent your integrity. And it's like, well, this reflects on me. Am I going to tell you to go use some Joe Schmo software? Just because they gave me, wrote me a check, like, you know, that's crazy. Yeah. You know, and that's one of the things that I put that I put in the book, of course. The conversation of not only vetting what you don't know, ask your.

There are so many Facebook groups I've joined more of Facebook groups in the last month, just going out there and want to see what the conversation really is happening out there. And you'll see that people who have used fishbowl or use, I use assert tax software or I've used carbon for their, for their practice management.

We'll be able to tell you if it works, doesn't work, um, you know, vetting some tax planning software right now, and I'm going through that process to see. Cause I just want something more than what Lil cert offers. So I want to go find something maybe even just a little bit better. And there, I know Intuit's developing their own product right now.

I just got the email this morning. I don't know if it's in beta. I'm waiting to hear back from them. You know, it's about those of us. We're going to go out there. Cause we want to find the best solution that works best for me. Like I want it to be best for me because if this, if this butt is in that seat in there, it better be making money.

Oh yeah, for sure. Better be getting work, done it better. Be making sure I file stuff on time. I don't have time to play games. Right. Except for softball games. And Cornel, right? Portal's better. Cause you have one hand for a drink, play softball. You're just, you're gonna have to get one of those hats with the straws.

You're going to have a cocktail or you're playing softball, but you know, at the end of the day that. That's the mission. The mission is to give you all the listeners whoever's listening. I hope it's if it's one person and it helps you in your practice and then this was all worth it, how can we make sure we establish a foundation for ourselves first?

Cause it's just like the whole thing of putting your mask on before you help the person next to you type of thing. And that's what we need to do as practitioners to make sure our house is in order. And our foundation is solid so that we can help our clients build their own founding. Yeah. And so you're right.

I mean, going through making sure that the, whatever you are recommending is successful, a successful recommendation of sex, successful implementation, which is a whole nother ball game. And I say to my clients, listen, I can do this for you, but why not let the people who develop the product and know it way better than I do do the implementations.

That's what I love about it. It's like I can hand you cause you know what, just like you said about your. Yeah, our small business clients, that's their baby, their businesses, their baby. And I get that because this is my baby. Right. But if I can say. I'm going to, Hey, Nate, I'm going to give you one of my babies to hold and I need you to implement the software.

It needs to be a really great experience or this hosting solution or whatever it may be. I know they're going to get the best service from fishbowl. They, I don't, I don't even deal with, I always tell people, well, I do QuickBooks. Okay. I don't need to be an expert at 80 other accounting softwares. I don't want to be just like inventory management for me.

I don't need to be an expert in any other inventory software because of. No fishbowl. I trust fishbowl. I trust the people at fishbowl. And I think that, that the partner program, the relationship. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, you guys developed the partner program to support the accountant accounting professionals from a commission base.

Right. So. Can come and sign up for that. And what I try to tell people is when it comes to commissions, don't get yourself all hung up, that you're making money on a software and like the client, you know, it costs the client more. Cause you're getting commission as not at all, how it works. I don't know why hours, the way I look at it is when they do have a problem with fishbowl, if there's an issue or whatever they have question or there's a disconnection or something like that, I'll go in and do fix that for them.

Cause they know I'm still their mom. I'm their mother. I'm there. You know, there might be. And I'm still going to work with that, but I don't need to charge the clients was a matter of fact, think about partner programs in a very different way. Partner programs are there and meant to be a payment to you for you to help manage the relationship and manage these little onesy twosy, fix it ear.

And there's that you don't feel as bad about it cause you're taking it away from maybe billable work, right? Yeah. So I want people to shift their mindset on that. So tell us a little bit about your partner program. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you kind of hit right on it. Like we're, we're trying to. The accountant or the CPA build their practice.

Right? And so with, with kind of our partner program, we're doing that and saying, Hey, if you guys have somebody who has an inventory need or manufacturing need, like here are the couple of buzzwords of you hear them, or you look in their books and they're doing things, send them to us, we'll be on a call with you.

And so our partner program was kind of built like almost like a team, like, you know, the CPA or the, or the QuickBooks consultant calls us. We do a call with the client and. Which is good for the consultant. Cause then they can, they're like learning a little bit about fishbowl. Like they've sure, you know, seeing a demo, but they know just enough to be dangerous in the Senate to us.

And so basically we say, okay, yeah, let us do the demo. You kind of watch and make sure you're there because we want you there as well. But yeah, we, we basically take the, take the client all the way through the purchase of fishbowl. Um, Don kinda mentioned implementation official. I used to be one of those consultants where I would fly out to the company and work with them for two days onsite.

And then for another 60 days after I suppose unique because we, we, you get assigned a person with a name, right. You know, Hey, this is your guy. Nate's going to take care of you for the next 60 days. And after that, after you're live and using every day, then we have a support team that, that answers the call.

98% of the time life not live. They'll get back to you within 20 minutes. And that's our guarantee, which is not a lot of companies can say that. Well, the other cool thing about the partner is like we've helped QuickBooks consultants, Beverly lying. I'm going to give her a shout out DVX, right? Like she was our number one partner in 2020.

And, and we have these kinds of different commission breaks and stuff. And she kind of worked her way to the top tier and we helped explode her business and she helped fishbowl and it was kind of like a mutual relationship there. And. Mutually beneficial relationship. And I like Beverly so much that we ended up hiring her.

So she actually works for fishbowl now, but she's awesome. Yeah. I mean, we hired her old team and so, and so she now is like our QuickBooks. You know, with, with Casey, who's our other, we have a team of five now, and I'm not going to say if you do so I'll hire every everybody. But my point is like, you don't just go hire partners, right?

Like that's how well the relationship worked out and I've got, you know, 10, 15, just a, my channel alone, which was the QuickBooks consultants that I have great relationships with. Right. And I got, I got a client. You guys mind taking this? And let me know if it's a good fit. If not, no biggie, I'm not going.

You know, upset with them or give them, but it's awesome because we make the QuickBooks consultant look like the rockstar, right. This person knows everything, they know exactly their solution. And so we kind of have your one-on-one contact. So you get a channel manager assigned and we do cool promos and different, like, you know, we'll go to like conferences.

Like we sat and we'll do parties after parties for partners and things like that. And we have a lot of fun, but yeah, it's a cool time. And it's almost like a little. Yeah, we've kind of built of like this, this partnership program. So we don't know, it's like a two year old program where we've so far it's been great and we've really met a lot of awesome people.

So, yeah. And I would say just to kind of close on with that thought is. The solution providers are there to be an extension of your team. They're not there. You know, if there's anybody you should be afraid of as a solution providers to teal to steal your clients, which I don't know why people are worried about stealing clients anyway, just, that's never been, it's never even crossed my mind, but I know that the whole, you know, have that some people do have it in their minds, but the partner programs for all of the partner programs that are out there, they're all meant to be an extension of your team, which I think is awesome because I don't have to hire Nate to hang up.

Implementing inventory for my clients. I just go, Hey here, uh, implement, implement you, do your thing. And that's all great. And I think that that's that community that has been developed over time is that we're all in this together. We're all, you know, Nate's not trying to sell anybody. We're not here to sell fishbowl.

We're just here to talk about the concepts around partnering up with solution providers. Applications that can solve issues for your clients so that it doesn't, it's not something you're being burdened by, right? Because at the end of the day, if you're the accountant, you want the numbers, you want the figures, you don't want to necessarily know how to manage the inventory.

Do all of that. That's where you come up with a solution to do it. So. Nate, I just got to thank you so much. Um, do you have any final thoughts that you want to leave with the listeners at all? We try to keep it within 20 to 30 minutes. I don't want them to get bored with us, you know? Um, so I know I don't have any, really anything else to add.

I mean, thanks for having me on your. Awesome. And I know everyone kind of really respects you. And so I'm, I'm really happy that you have me on, and I'm excited to see you in our partnership grow and, and see how we can help people. You know, it's awesome. And there's, there's so many cool programs out there and cold tack that like, let's help each other, like you said, we're all on the same team.

So we're all on the same team, whatever we can do to help each other. But thank you so much, Nate, from fishbowl. My man, I've just loved it over the last three years. I still feel like, like I hadn't seen you in a while, but I felt. We just saw you together. So that means everything. And again, that's part of the relationships that you want to build with the vendors with the solution providers is, you know, Ooh, just get to know them.

Right? Yeah. Get out there, get to a conference, start to meet people. That's you want to grow your business, start partnering up and talking to people. Yeah. And that's the only way in really, we have people like you that, I mean, the partner program, like I said was two years old. I started the department. You know, like our signal took a chance and was like, yeah, go build it.

Like, I'm not giving you an instructions, do your own thing. And it was like three partners like you that were like, Hey, you know, let me introduce you to some people. And they kind of took us under their wing. And so like, we wanted to do that for everybody. And we want to build those personal relationships.

Like you go to conferences, you go to these events, like go to the after party. I know you're tired. Like. Those are worth in my opinion, more than the conference themselves. Right. You have an opportunity to go to dinner with 10 people and you don't know any of them. Absolutely. Yeah, go, don't go with the people you, I mean, I may love to hang with my circle.

Right. But you go and meet other people that you don't normally talk to and just approach people. If you're like, I want to talk to Stacy Kildow I want to talk to Maria Martinez. I want to talk to Hector Garcia. Heather's go people. We want to give you what we know, because we don't want you to have to go through the same pain we'd been through.

Um, and I think that that's one of the best things, but again, Nate, thank you so much. I know we'll have you on again. I'm excited for the summit. That's going to be awesome. We'll make sure we post out, get people registered and it's going to be an awesome event. I know a lot of people that were are part of it.

They're all great practitioners. Great people want you to be great. So, Nate, thank you again so much. Love my third, nothing like it. All right, Nate. Thank you so much. My friend we'll be talking soon. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks guys. I hope you enjoy this podcast. Feel free to visit DawnBrolin.com in order to motivate you to improve your practice, wishing you all the best.

Have a great day.

Hello, everyone and welcome to the DM Disruption. I'm the host Dawn Brolin. I'm a certified public accountant, certified fraud examiner, and the author of the designated motivator. We're here to help motivate you to take your practice to the next level. Have you considered outsourcing your clients payroll? Well, I did and I went with ADP. The resources they provide, along with their partner program become the premier outsourcing payroll solution. We as practitioners already deal with a ton of compliance. Keeping up with payroll isn't a value added solution that I should be focused on. you've considered outsourcing before reconsider it today. Choose ADP to be part of your starting lineup. Jody, tell us about yourself. Where are you from? What do you do? What do you like?

Jody Padar

Thanks, Dawn. So I'm Jody paid are the radical CPA, I'm one of probably the only few branded CPAs that's out there, right. I didn't know that. CPAs could have a brand, but I created one. But I'm a longtime practitioner who has recently joined kind of the other side, right. So I was one of the early cloud adopters, and really early social media enthusiasts and really kind of, I'll say, defined or pioneered what the new firm would look like in the cloud. And I did that for 14 years evolving my own firm and, you know, helping other people get to their firms. And to kind of like, I'll say, again, define what cloud firms look like. And last year, I joined bot keeper as Vice President of strategy to take it to the next level, because like, like, what's radical? Well, cloud isn't radical anymore. And next level radical is artificial intelligence and machine learning. So now, it's my job at bot keeper to help really firms make that transition and learn how machine learning and artificial intelligence is going to change their firms just like cloud did so many years ago. So it's couldn't be a more perfect job for me. So because I'm always out there teaching and, like sharing. So pretty stuff.

Unknown Speaker  2:04  

So we know definitely, and you're right. I mean, the artificial intelligence conversation wasn't even a thing 10 years ago, I mean, it was for you to smart people, you forward thinkers, of course, right. But you know, and that's probably one of the interesting things is trying to get this industry we're like, it's like push our rope sometimes with them. And, and the whole goal is, we're not telling them that because we want them to invest in more time and money into something else, we want them to be ahead of the curve. And that's what you're doing, you're doing that and do it very well,

Unknown Speaker  2:31  

for sure. And I think it's not even about like, everyone thinks that, oh, we're adopting tech for tech sake, or whatever, because we're supposed to, but ultimately, it's about building a lifestyle and having the ability to kind of put time back in your firm and actually get to go home early, or do whatever you want to do grow it to whatever else because I think so we we get so caught in that, oh, we have to work all these hours. But if we step back, and we automate a lot of stuff, a lot of times we don't have to work all the hours, and we can actually go home on time, which I think is kind of nice.

Unknown Speaker  3:03  

Getting your life back is key. And I think that that's you know, if we're talking about motivation to learn this stuff, whether it's technology, or the AI, the whole entire AI conversation, it's because we want you to be motivated, not because you're gonna make more money, like people aren't really out there saying, I want to make more money, what they want to do is I want to grab their life back. Yeah, if that's what's exciting. So with this podcast, my whole goal is to get great motivation messages out to people and it especially in the accounting industry, we really, we need it, we need to remember why we're doing this, and who we're doing it for and things like that, but really changing lives one person at a time, right, which is different than motivational speaking, where you're talking to a big 1000s of people, we're just trying to get to one person at a time, because that will multiply itself all in of itself. So give us you know, tell us about some motivational moments that you've had, that you know that you've gone out and help someone else

Unknown Speaker  4:00  

well, so I'm going to take it back to like my early days in social media, because a lot of people think that social media, like I just came up with 600,000 followers, because I didn't write like you don't get 600,000 followers overnight. And in my early days in Twitter, that's what I was doing. I mean, I truly was we were connecting with other professionals, but we were motivating each other and we were pushing each other to change and grow and adopt. And I think that's where like, I kind of got my my space that I really love. And it's because like I have the heart of a teacher, right? And so when I can motivate and teach that I'm happy, and what happens is is you don't realize that it has such a snowball and a multiplying effect, because like you teach someone else and then they teach someone else and then they teach someone else. And I think when you think about even an industry or you know a profession, when you start connecting to those motivators, then all of a sudden it starts to snowball. So like instead of just being snowflakes now, all of a sudden You're really a force to be reckoned with. And that's like how social really kind of evolved me and really helped me help move a profession. But I think, again, motivate the profession, right? Because it's not about selling, it's never been about selling, it's about how do I change my firm so I can have time back, right? And what can I do so that I like my job better. And I think if you, if you started from that perspective, then it's really easy to motivate and help people realize, yeah, we can get through it, if we're having a struggle on it. Because we know that there's something better at the end of it. And if you see someone who's gone before, and you're helping them, or like, they're helping you, you know, it just keeps going in. And it's funny, because, like you do it, you do it, you do it. And then all of a sudden, you start getting pings back saying, Oh my gosh, thank you, blah, blah, blah. And then it's people you don't even know who are like telling you that you change their lives. And you're like, I, you know, I don't believe it, right? Like cuz you cuz you didn't actually touch them, but because you touch someone who touched them. Now, all of a sudden, like you're making a difference. And, to me, that's kind of what keeps me going. Because everyone's like, well, especially in the early days, I didn't get paid for any of the social media stuff that I did. It was always just, it was a labor of love. And, and, and that's what it becomes. Because like when you start affecting people's lives, then they want to give it back. And then they tell you, and then you know, you've kind of feed your ego, and you're like, Oh my god, I got to help more people, because you're like, like, you have the heart of a teacher. And so then it just becomes a thing.

Unknown Speaker  6:35  

Right? Absolutely. And you know, and that's, that's one of the things that I find, you know, especially like, you teach a lot of conferences, you do a lot of webinars, you do these things, and you get in front of a lot of people at one time, and you don't realize the effect, I know that, you know, and I'm sure this happened to you too. But I've been at a conference and I've done a some kind of a course or a class. And you know, we put our heart, soul body, mind, you name it, we put it into what we're presenting and providing for education, right? And people will come up to you after the session is over. And they're crying. Like, why are you crying? Like because I needed to hear what you were saying to me. And it's like, I didn't even realize I'm just teaching some stuff about fraud. I mean, I don't know, you know.

Unknown Speaker  7:17  

And I think too, because you put yourself out there, right? So you're opening yourself up, and you're sharing. And I think we do it on stage. And we do it in social. But I think when you take it back to if you're just sitting in your firm, and you do it to the kid sitting next to you or the like the younger professional sitting next to you, and you help them understand something, it's the exact same thing, but you're just doing it at a different level. So, you know, these, these principles can apply to everyone. It's not like you have to be a speaker or social media person or whatever, you could just be helping the person in the cube next to you. So are like, on the zoom across from you, right, and helping them understand what what's happening, because I think too often we get caught in all we got to get it done. And we don't spend the time to really teach anymore, which is it's a loss for both sides, because I think it hurts the people who don't get to receive the teaching. But you know, if you can teach something, it means you really know it too. So it hurts the person who hasn't had the opportunity to teach because when you learn how to teach, you learn your stuff so much better. You it's so totally true. And I love what you said about like the person next to you. So I see you always talking about the firm of the future. And we talk about the firm of the future and technology and AI and all this, which is important. Don't get me wrong. But to have a firm that has someone inside of that firm, even if it's two people, three people, one person that doesn't matter. Someone that can be that teacher, in every aspect, say less, I may not be the expert that that God is in AI. But I can certainly ask her how our weekend was and check in on her and say, Hey, how are you doing?

Unknown Speaker  8:55  

Right? And like really having that two, three minute conversation. They people are so thankful for that kind of attention. And that's where our technology has drawn us a little bit away from that. And I think that the people are suffering, right? They're suffering. So how can we cause a disruption, which is why we call this podcast, the damn disruption, because it's about doing something totally different that may be out of your comfort zone. Or you never even really realize or recognize that motivation comes from person to person. Right. Right. So tell me tell me what you go ahead.

Unknown Speaker  9:32  

No. So I think it starts with trust. And I think that's hard. Right. So I think, ultimately, you know, I think sometimes not everyone is programmed to go into the world trusting everybody else. And I think I'm kind of sometimes I'm at a fault because of it because I'm going to trust you unless you do something to show me that I shouldn't trust you. Whereas I think there are a lot more people who are more skeptical, right? Who who aren't so trusting, right? And so if you can Go into these relationships, work relationships, social relationships, trusting people before they kind of burn you, right? And they're not going to burn you. But you, because I think we sometimes have this feeling that, you know, if you meet 100, people 99 are going to burn you. And one is really going to be trusting. But I think in reality, 99 of them are going to be awesome to you, they're going to respect you, it's going to work, and only one of them is got a little bit of a sneakiness to them, right. And so I think if you can switch that mindset, and go into kind of your work relationships, these other relationships with a little bit more trust, that I think we've kind of guarded ourselves, maybe from the past or whatever, then you can be that designated motivator, and you can also receive it a lot more. So I think it's sometimes even goes deeper. Because, like, we don't, we don't have the trust. And so we don't share. And so how do you how do you kind of build that trust? And again, I think it starts with going into that conversation, assuming they have trust, and assuming both sides are trustworthy. And then you can kind of you can have those conversations, because if you don't, then you're never going to get beyond that, or to that motivation, because, like everyone's got their guard up. Right, you

Unknown Speaker  11:19  

won't have that opportunity because they're not letting it in. Right, right. That's a good point. That's a really good point. So on a trust factor thing real quick. I just got to tell you this weekend, I have a little Mazda Miata. It's my little fun car, you know, it gets like 7000 miles to the gallon and prices these days, like mice will use it. So I was driving down Main Street, and there was a man walking on the sidewalk, and I kind of pulled up as a result light. And he's like, Hey, nice car. And I just looked over at him. older gentleman. I could tell he wasn't he was I would say displaced. Should we say that way? Right? And I was like, Oh, thank you. I love Yeah, I do. I love this car. And he goes, are you going to Walmart, and I go, I'm not but I can for you get in. And so I gave the guy a ride to Walmart and I think back and he and I had a little conversation about you know, you're obviously you ask for rides and you're very, you're very trustworthy. Like how, like, how did how did you Why do you feel that way? And, you know, he's like, Oh, I hitchhiked across country back in the 60s and blah, blah, blah. I mean, this guy's name was john loved him. And so um, but you know, the, his trust in me to invite him into the car, and my trust in Him to invite him into my car as a woman. Right? So I was just like, you know what, I don't I don't care. Like I trust this. I don't. People might you know, people. Oh, my God, I can't believe you do that. Are you kidding me? Somebody gave birth to that guy. Like, that's what I always think in my mind. Somebody gave birth to that guy. And I just had this trust. trustful feeling. Come on, let's go for a ride. So it's kind of a similar thing to that. Right. Right. And,

Unknown Speaker  12:53  

and I think too, if, again, if you can go into work relationships, if we're talking about work, right? If you could go into work relationships, assuming trust, until they prove you differently, then you're going to be okay to give and receive these kind of dm things. If you go in with your guard up, you're never going to get there because you're not going to be able to receive it and you're not going to be able to give it and it's funny because like, again, I think that's starts with a mindset, right that I trust them until I until they've proven to me that I can't trust them. Right. And I think a lot of times, not everyone goes into into work relationships like that, right? That's like kind of a mindset. So I would start there. And for me, that's, that's that I'll say, that's one of my superpowers, right is like I trust them sometimes to fault, right. But that's where the authentic relationships begin. And that's where you can actually kind of get closer to them, right, a little bit more intimate with them in a professional sense. And kind of, you know, motivate them or really understand their point of view and where they're coming from and give them that motivation that actually applies to them, as opposed to the generic Great job, or that was amazing. Because, to me, if you just say that's amazing to everything, that's worse than saying nothing. Because maybe that's Um, and I don't want to go into Millennials are not millennials, but to me when I hear that's amazing with everything. It's like so it's like that participation award. It's like I've already like,

Unknown Speaker  14:23  

I just counted. Oh, yeah, participation certificates. No, no, no, no, no. Right. Right. You've got to be all in man.

Unknown Speaker  14:32  

Yeah. And so you have to be specific and you have to be and you have to be, it has to be really related to who they are and what they do as a person. And if you can do that, then I think, you know, that's, that's leadership, right? That's truly leadership, to have the ability to do that and influence them and to, to to have them understand how good they are and what they can bring to the table. Absolutely,

Unknown Speaker  14:59  

yeah. So tell us, tell us a story of you. Because you've done so much. I mean, you can't even, you know, you've taught you teach you, you know, all kinds of levels and things like that. Give us an example of a time where you felt like you really connected with somebody, and were able to give them that motivation to, you know, do something they never thought they could do, or whatever.

Unknown Speaker  15:18  

I think it comes back to a couple of stories. And again, it's where people reached out to me that I didn't know that I had an impact on them, right? And then they reached out to me after, right, so like, we've had this, I'll say, this ongoing, remote relationship, where I didn't think it was not to say it wasn't that big of a relationship, but it was like, I don't know, it was just a regular kind of relationship. I didn't think that I was having the impact, right. Like, I didn't think that I was having the impact. And then I got like, an E, I think it was through LinkedIn, a DM or whatever, telling me that they were quitting their firm, and they were starting a new firm. And it was all because of me, and that they had made the decision to go out on their own. Because the things that I had been talking about resonated with them. And now they were ready to make the leap instead of the jump. And that's, to me, that's cool, right? Because, again, it's one thing to talk about it. But it's another thing to have that person internalize it so much to know that now they can be successful, and start their own firm, and take the take the leap, right. And I like nobody was there for me when I did it. So it was kind of cool to be there and be like, Oh, I can help you. However, I can, blah, blah, blah. But I think that's, you know, that's the neat stuff when when you actually it goes beyond just the compliment, or it goes beyond just the receiving of it that now they're actually changing their life because of something you said or did, right? It's what's cool. And I would say the same thing has happened to me, where, you know, early on in my career, there were some supporters of kind of what I was doing on social and everything. And they had a lot of clout in the accounting industry. And they stood up for me, and they gave me a stage. And they said, Jodi, you go up here and you you talk right? And we'll make space for you. Right? And when they did that, it gave me an opportunity, right? And so to them, they were my motivation, because I would have been like, Oh, no, I don't like I can't do that my ideas aren't that great. They're like, right, but they were the ones who said, No, your ideas are going to make a difference. And we're going to make space for you on the stage to talk about him, right. And so for me, that was where I was motivated by and these were some pretty influential CPAs. They're still out there. But I would have never like, never thought my ideas were good enough. Other than like to be on the stage, right? Like, Oh, fine, I can talk about them on social, but I'm not going to be at a big conference and talk about them. And they were the ones who said, Yeah, no, the profession really needs to hear them. We're going to we're going to make a place for you on the stage. And that was like the motivation that I received. Because it was like, wow, like they actually they believed in me, right. And that was, that was the turning point. Because sometimes you need someone else to believe in you before you believe in yourself. And you can talk all you want, but it's your own self that holds you back. Because until someone else tells you, that's a really good idea and I support you, you you kind of shy away, right? Or you don't you don't make those bold moves, right. And then when they say that all of a sudden, it's like they're holding your hand, even though they're not on stage, but they're holding your hand on stage. So you know that you're not going to fall, right? Because they're behind you. And that's what it does from the other side. Like I'll say that's, that's who's motivated me, and given me that opportunity that, you know, because everyone thinks, I don't want to say they think that you just you're born like this, but you're not born like this. You have the same fears, the same, the same insecurities that everyone else does. And you need that motivator to stand behind you just as much as you're standing behind or helping you know, a professional as well, because that's how you grow in your career. And if you don't, like you're gonna stay stagnant,

Unknown Speaker  19:08  

right? Yeah. Well, it's as simple as like it always is. If you're not moving forward, you are moving backwards. You're not standing still. There is no such thing as standing still, right? Yeah, no, and I really appreciate that because I know for me, I watched people like you I watched Jeannie White House I was I mean, I could name off 7 million people. Well, listen, we're staying within our typically 1520 minutes we try to keep it short so people actually watch it and listen to us because it's fun stuff. But I can't thank you enough God for coming on as always have fun talking to you. We've been on some recent webinars together which has been super fun. And so yeah, so our next episode we're gonna have James Upton who has his firm and has been struggling. 

We're just gonna talk about some struggles through the COVID process and how the industry is just, you know, been affected by it, and see if we can go out there and solve problems for people that are out there struggling. But, Jody, thank you again so much for coming and spending time with me. And so we'll see everybody out there on social and everybody keep your heads up. We're gonna motivate you as much as weekend. Yep, keep motivated. Thank you. Go motivate. I hope you enjoy this podcast. Feel free to visit danbrolin.com to motivate you to improve your practice. wishing you all the best. Have a great day.

In fact maybe you have many good reasons that you want to give up your profession, your career, and I pray this is not your case, but I am real about the impact f the pressure the accounting profession can put on people like you, like me, like many of us: 

Perhaps your practice is not performing well, you are burned out, you are feeling stretched financially and physically to the point of wanting to give up and pursue something else.

First thing's first. I want you to know that as your DM I will NEVER try to diminish your pain. I really want to understand what is pushing you out of this industry.  There are definitely bumps in the road that you will encounter.  But are they so big that it throws you into a tailspin of no return?  We have to go back to your why.  We have to identify what are the things you love about accounting.  What are the reasons you have lasted this long?  What can you do to connect with that again?

As Mike says: "If you have an idea or an offering that you know can help others in business or otherwise, it’s your duty to get it out there. Critics will always be around, but they’re not the doers, they won’t be the helpers. You will. Whatever you do, don’t give up on yourself. Go for your dreams."

In addition, Mike shared his take on the impact of being a Designated Motivator as he did in the foreword to Dawn Brolin's The Designated Motivator book:

As a DM you will help define the highest purpose of your organization and align the entire team around it. The purpose won’t be “to achieve more shareholder profits” or “to provide proficient service,” although those will be natural outcomes. Your purpose will be something that resonates throughout the organization and motivates everyone.

As a DM you will increase the happiness, joy and positive energy of your organization and yourself. It won’t be through inauthentic “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and gosh darn it, people like me, ” Stuart Smalley affirmations. Instead, you will leverage the DM tools that bring natural happiness and positive energy, authentically.

As a DM you will experience great productivity and output from your work team and others in your community. You will not need to “whip people into shape” or “micro-manage employees.” Instead, you will channel the long lasting effects of self-motivation and aspiration that DMs bring out of the people around them (including themselves).

And as a DM, you will create transformational, life-altering experiences for yourself and others.

1. Tell me about your motivation success story

2. What are you struggling with, how can we help motivate you and take you to the next level?

3. Who are the motivators in your life? Who helps motivate you?

4. Where do you think you fall in the realm of being a motivator?

5. Want to know about their background, characteristics/tools you use to motivate people, what was an aha moment when you helped someone through something and you didn’t even realize you were the motivating factor?

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Dawn Brolin, CPA, CFE

The Designated Motivator for Accounting Professionals