Accounting Chats with Jason Staats

Hello, and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I'm joined today by a man who needs no introduction, but I will introduce anyways, Jason Statz, the host of Statz Daily and the founder of Realize. Welcome to the pod, Jason. Thanks for having me. Yeah, my pleasure. I, uh, I really appreciate you joining on. I'm going to, uh, address the, uh, the elephant in the room here is, uh, hopefully you're not fanning out too hard. I saw, I saw you tweet out that this was one of your favorite podcasts lately. And uh, I think I'm, I think I'm still blushing to this day. So, you know, I really appreciate you, uh, I really appreciate you saying that first of all. And I really appreciate you coming on. You bet. All good. Yeah. Um, so to start off, I've obviously been consuming your content for, for quite a long time. Uh, primarily Statz Daily. I find that is just like an incredible resource just for understanding kind of where firms are at, what the questions are. Um, but with a daily cadence, like I'm, I'm really curious to know, like, what is your creative process look like particularly around ideation for that podcast? Um, I have so many conversations with firm owners that that's generally what's driving new ideas and new talking points. And um, I don't run a firm anymore. And so there's that, that sort of limiting belief of, well, you don't run a firm anymore. And are you really going to be able to talk about it confidently? The reality is because I don't have a job, I can actually spend a huge amount of time just talking with other people where this is all that they get to do. And to me, the value of that is like sort of breaking down those silos and being able to share across firms, what's working, what's not working. So most of ideation is like just a product of building those conversations into my schedule every single week so that I'm always connecting with firm owners. Interesting. And how did you settle on like a daily cadence? Was it always daily or, or did you end up moving to that later on? Uh, so it was always daily from the beginning. Um, not necessarily with the intent that I would literally publish every single day, but there's just always been an abundance to talk about. Um, I did it a few months after selling my firm as a way for like the people that had a big appetite to go deeper to do just that, to go deeper. I think a lot of the content in our space is very surface level and the same concepts rehashed over and over again, but I didn't see people talking about the very nitty gritty aspects of like day to day of running a firm, like, um, the smaller, more technical things that the content that your software vendors are putting out, isn't going to dig into. And those were, those were the reality of my day to day running a firm was like, it was very tactical, like kind of a small fiddly little things. So it was really more just to dig into that and also give a place where people who want to more content could go deeper. Definitely not for everybody like who, there's not many people in my life that I would want to hear from every single day, uh, but was a way for the folks who did, uh, to be able to go deeper. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's nice too, where once you have this form, like this level of library behind you, like if I'm curious about a topic, you've probably spoken about it too, right? So even if people aren't looking for a daily podcast, they can probably actually tune in for like very good insights on this one topic that is probably too in the weeds for most other places to have covered. So yeah, so this was all stuff that when I was running a firm, I was trying to find answers to and they just didn't exist. So like building that library, that is a resource to the next generation of firm owners and how they navigate like blockers with legacy firm ownership and just all these little aspects that make being an accountant challenging. Yeah. Just trying to like lay down that breadcrumb trail that would have been really helpful to me. Yeah. I love that. Um, and despite all the content I've consumed about you, I haven't heard a ton about, you know, your origin story. Um, so I'm kind of curious, the firm that you ended up selling, you were not the founder of. Um, and so I'm very curious kind of how that journey played out, um, and you know, a little bit of the behind the scenes on that. Yeah. It was an 80 year old tax firm and like had all the trappings you would expect, like full hourly billing, uh, partners that were, you know, somebody's grandpa, like it was exactly what you would think when your mind thinks of what an old firm like that looks like. I put in, I think, eight years there before eventually buying out a couple of the partners and then I owned it with a partner, um, and it eventually got to the point where I realized my strengths were going to be more around like, uh, strategy for the firm as a whole and talent acquisition and, and positioning and that sort of thing. Um, almost out of necessity because I wasn't very good at actually doing the work, uh, but that was what I learned. I enjoyed the most and like people development and those were all the things that were bottlenecks for our, our firm is finding the next person and retaining talent. And um, so that was only realistic for me to be able to double down on that if, if I own a firm and where I was at, which isn't where everybody, I don't know, not everyone's going to be wired this way, but I got to the point where I'm, I was like, I'm no longer willing to build cool stuff for somebody else. I've already built a bunch of cool stuff that I'm now going to have to go back and buy. And so going forward, like if I'm going to make cool stuff, it's going to be stuff that I own. Uh, and it was kind of at this, I don't know, turning point in my career where I was like, I'm going to go do something else. I'm going to keep doing this. Um, so yeah, eventually I, I bought out a couple of partners and tried to steer that ship in a way that was hopefully ever so slightly better than it was before. Nice. I love that for, for partner buyouts, you don't hear about that a lot. Like I'm curious what that looks like. Are valuations on that kind of similar to if you were buying a firm or are they a little bit different? And, um, I'm kind of curious how you even approach those discussions. Is funny. This firm actually had a very nailed down process for how it had been done for the last like 60 years. And that was good in some ways, bad in other ways. Like part of the agreement was, um, if you want to exit before you're 65, you just walk away from your equity because this was written in an age when, uh, like that was the norm and you'd go into business ownership and you're going to be there until you are old and, and honestly probably shouldn't be doing, uh, accounting work anymore, but interesting, there were all these different things. Uh, obviously that wasn't going to, that wasn't going to be the deal for me. So we kind of had to figure something else out, but this firm, which I think there's, there's actually some smart aspects of it to, to draw from. They basically had a discounted, uh, way of people buying in, but then there was a pretty big earn in component with like some, some restrictions so that it wasn't hugely cost prohibitive for people. And it was actually a great approach. I think if you're trying to build something that like has decades long relevance, there were definitely some things in there that don't hold up current day. Um, but yeah, in our case it was like a, it was basically like a, a discounted, um, approach that wasn't too different than what you would get from a third party sale. Um, there's a different set of challenges when it's internal and you still have some of those same issues of, yeah, you're really explicit about when the old people are going out and like what the rules around that are and whether you have clawbacks and, and, uh, another challenge with internal buyouts is if that person goes out and build something new. So in my case, I built a, a cast practice from scratch. It had just been a tax firm for the longest time. Built a, you know, one and a half million dollar cast practice from scratch before buying in. So then what does that look like? And like, how do you make that fair for everyone? So it was basically, yeah, it was a discounted version of what you would expect from a third party sale with, with quite a bit of nuance sprinkled in. Okay. Interesting. And why cast practice? Like why was that something you had built? Cause I feel like Cass is really having a moment right now as well. Um, like I've just been kind of flooded with requests from people saying like, Hey, please like include this as a field in big for transparency because I'm having to like piece bits together. And so I did that about a month ago, but I noticed like out of the blue, it seemed like for three months, all I was hearing was Cass, Cass, Cass. Um, so I'm curious why that's what you kind of decided to build internally. It's a, um, really hard thing for our, I mean, it's a hard thing for us to build, let alone for our clients to build, uh, they can't, I mean, we think it's hard to find account are, you know, small business clients, mid-sized businesses, like, boy, they're having a heck of a time finding accountants too, but just how accounting the back office increasingly is like a, a sort of tech platform. Like it's, there's so many moving pieces there that nobody's going to do that for the first time and get it right. I mean, we have a hard enough time where we support and we had something like 800 business clients. It's hard enough for us to come in and build something that works together nicely. You can hardly expect a business owner with no expertise to be able to do that. So the result was it could actually be extremely profitable if you put it alongside what they were capable of doing in house. So those engagements, the way they usually started was they have a few people on the accounting team and we can come in and get some quick wins for them. The client already has in their head a notion of what it should cost to get the accounting problem done, but with better systems, I mean, we can cut that way down. But what is it? The Walmart guys quote, your margin is my opportunity. Like it's, it's a degree of that where they're used to this big inefficient machine and we can come in and charge top dollar for it because it's something that's been a really expensive for them in the past. And the way things are trending, the tech keeps getting better, the people keep getting more scarce. And so the value of that keeps going up. It's just like the way everything's trending. It seems like that's something that just gets more valuable and more automatable down the road. Okay. That's super interesting. And while you were building that, did you have like, you know, inspirations or people that you really followed or went to for kind of advice or tactical insights? Because a lot of the people I asked today point to you. And so I'm really curious, kind of what, what you were looking at before Realize existed. Man, there wasn't much like internet think boy culture a few years ago, five, seven years ago was not what it is now where everybody's getting into the game, which is, which is good because like, there's such an appetite for education. Um, Los Angeles, Ryan, Los Angeles was doing some stuff. You had like your Ron Bakers of the world that we're talking value pricing, but honestly not much. Uh, what I found like going to, going to my first accounting conference, just like kind of expanded my universe in a, in a way that like immediately changed everything and going to a conference and seeing smart speakers, all that's great. But what I learned was actually who I really wanted to talk to were all the other people there who are like me, who are in my circumstances and I could learn from what was working and what wasn't working from them. Like I, in my opinion, you can keep 80% of your gurus, like still the most useful room for me is the room of people still in my business now is the room of people who do what I do and just being able to share that experience. Um, you know, we all get home, no, we all, I get home at the end of the day and my wife's like, you're, you're doing great. You're doing, you're so, you're so good at this stuff. Great job. And I'm like, thanks. But like, does she really know if I'm any good at this stuff or not? She doesn't like, I appreciate the support, but at the end of the day, she has no idea. Uh, but to then like sit in a room with the people who have a very intimate understanding of everything that you're going through and they're going through the same thing. That's just so energizing and genuinely shaves like years off of your learning process, whether you are a firm owner or an accountant at a big firm or a manager, whatever it is, that was super powerful for me. So I used, I leveraged that kind of in lieu of, uh, think boy culture. Uh, and I, I still think that ought to be part of every accountant's sort of like growth plan is how do I, how do I network with a bunch of people who are in a similar spot to myself? I love it. As a, as a new think boy myself, the, uh, the thread, the thread emojis meteoric rise like needs to be studied, you know? Um, yeah, awesome. I love that. Um, and so you, you talked about conferences. I have my first accounting conference coming up, actually, I'm going to bridging the gap soon. I'm pumped about it. Uh, when I was in accounting, I never got brought to the technical conferences cause I think I was very much pegged as like, this guy will do business development for us. So I got brought to other random conferences. Okay. Um, but, uh, yeah, I'm really looking forward to my first kind of accounting conference, but I'm curious kind of like what your advice is for people who want to have that experience you had. Like what should you be doing? What should you be thinking about to make the most out of a conference? My favorite conferences are always the ones that are the best hangs where the people like me are hanging out. Um, if you've already been hanging out online, odds are you already know some people that are going to be there. And if possible, it's good to make contact with those folks beforehand to be like, Hey, let's make sure to connect while we're there. Cause it'll be a whirlwind and you'll be bummed if it doesn't happen. The first one's always the hardest, uh, cause you haven't made all those relationships yet. After that, it's just like a family reunion. It's like, you got your people, your squad that you hang with. Uh, and so it's much like for most accountants, it is an emotionally taxing thing to go into an environment like that with a bunch of people they don't know. Um, so it gets better, but yeah, if you're going to, if you're going to hit one, go to the one where there's going to be the folks that you enjoy hanging with, which frankly oftentimes isn't the nitty gritty technical ones. Like we love to focus on technical development when most of our blockers have nothing to do with the technical stuff. It's the other things. Uh, but I look for the ones where, where the fun people are going to be hanging out. And at what point during the conference do you hit that bad angle selfie for all social media? Is that a, is that a start of the conference thing or halfway through? That's a start of the day when my face is at its puffiest. So usually, uh, in the hotel you try to get, yeah, like the, the up chin, um, the worst possible angle that you can, uh, just so that when people do see you in the wild, they're like, wow, this is, this is actually exceeding expectations. Oh, I see that. That's good. That's good. Good tactic for all involved. Nice. Um, and on the topic of conferences, I'm curious. I mean, everyone has a different, um, purpose for going to a conference, um, for, you know, just that person who's trying to find their way in the world of accounting. Like they want to figure out what they like, what's going to really make this profession work for them. What conference would you recommend for them? Good question. Um, I can speak to my own experience. You know, the, the things that I was really cranking on at, you know, the last five years of running a firm was building that cast practice. And so for me, it was very tech driven, um, very, you know, somewhat bookkeeping driven. So for me, that was QuickBooks connect. That was zero con. They were, they were putting on the best ecosystem shows where you would get to meet the tech vendors, find some new cool stuff. And that was just where the people running those accounting practices were hanging out scaling new heights as well, to a degree. Um, so yeah, I would say it probably depends on, on either the type of firm that you run or the type of work that you do. Another thing to look out for is like the exhibit hall, a huge part of the value of conferences to me are who are the exhibitors that are there. Um, and that's actually also a good signal of how progressive a given conferences. If the programming isn't very progressive, it doesn't attract sponsors who are like, yeah, we'll actually find progressive accountants here. So getting a peek at who's going to be there exhibiting is also a good signal. Interesting. I like that. AKA don't go to a Thompson Reuters conference. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, if it's, if it's software that everyone's working on making obsolete, um, and frustrated with that make, that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. Let's, let's throw to the, throw to the Thompson Reuters ad read now. Okay. And then on, on the, uh, on the flip side, the person who is a vendor sort of like myself, but like, I'm just, uh, looking to make like good relationships, see who's like cool in the industry. Like, I'm really interested in like the people who are going to be there and like who I can form relationships with. I'm curious what conferences you might recommend for that. Hmm. Probably depends on the type of people you're trying to find. Um, and probably follows kind of the same trend. Like if you're looking for accountants, bookkeepers, that sort of thing, look for the accounting bookkeeping conferences. If you're looking for tax folks, follow the kind of the bigger industry tax shows. Um, and I do think one thing exhibitors get wrong is they're like, well, I'm only going to go if I can buy a booth when that totally misses the point. Like the whole accounting space is about relationships and just getting to know people. And it's most important that you're just there. So if, if you have the option of exhibiting at one or just turning up as an attendee to three, turn up to three, you're going to learn a bunch about the conferences and the process and just meet people. Don't be, don't be like slimy about it. Like there's definitely good and bad ways to turn up and like shill your wares. Uh, but it's mainly about how do I learn more about like the problems these people have so that I can support them in whatever way I can. Yeah. Yeah. Relationship building has really like, it's become really, really obvious that that's the way to do sales. Uh, you know, people tweet very angrily about kind of cold outreach to them and stuff like that. Cause I think a lot of people, first of all, aren't doing the research and they're just like, they're pitching whoever on whatever. Right. Um, and I have really found that like not selling has kind of been the best way to sell has sort of been what I've realized. Yeah. Accountants are, accountants will punish you more than the average buyer. I think if you come across as tone deaf, uh, and nobody these days, like nobody likes being sold to anyways. So just finding a not slimy way to do it. Yeah. Um, shifting gears a little bit, um, for more kind of general industry talk. I'm curious, what are you most excited about for the accounting industry? Small boutique firms working for rad clients, creating a killer place to work. Yeah, I agree. Um, I think that very soon being non PE backed will be like a huge competitive advantage. Um, and I think it'll play out in an interesting way where like, it will be just, yeah, not being able to find talent on top talent. We'll all funnel out. Yeah. Yeah. I, I may be a, I'm an ignorant internet think boy, but to me, PE money is almost like the death rattle of an accounting firm that can't generate its own cash. Um, yeah, the, the fact that like everything is getting more contextual. So not only in the types of clients that firms serve, but in the type of accountant, they are a great person for like, that's a two sided thing. Like you're not going to build an accounting firm that is great for every type of accountant to come work for. So firms are like starting to latch onto specializing on the client side a little more because it's just a more profitable way to run a practice. The same thing applies to the type of people that come and work in your firm. Like if I want to make a rad firm for, you know, uh, moms who are at home with their kids, like there's so many different versions of this and we've got legacy accounting, running people out of the profession every day, legacy leakage, as I like to call it. And it's just because they haven't found the right firm for them yet. Like there's so many cool small firms and bigger firms, I'm sure, uh, but so many cool firms that are creating an awesome place to work. That's incredibly flexible where you'll feel valued and, and be well compensated. And, and I think a lot of the misnomers about small firms, we've also kind of overcome like the lack of resources and not being able to make as much money and all these things. Um, but I like it, it can't come soon enough because honestly, this profession is a crap job for 95% of people. It really is. Like we're lying to ourselves if we don't think that. And I find that as my content attracts progressive firms, 95% of the accountants that it attracts are like, man, this sounds good, but this ain't my reality. Like it's like not at all. Like they're stuck in kind of that legacy model. So the more we can talk about just the better ways to do this stuff and create good places for folks to work. Like it solves all that stuff. People, even the profession, the pipeline problem, all of it. What do you think the answer is for like those small, but awesome to work out places to kind of get the word out of like, you know, particularly to talent of like, Hey, like this is actually probably where you want to be. And it depends on your goals. Like for some people, the big four is honestly like the place for them to be. But for a lot of people who are leaving that and are discouraged and think that that's all there is for them. Like, how do these small places like properly get the word out? Brandon Hall doesn't have a hiring problem. You know, not everybody's Brandon Hall, but like, it's just a product of being visible. Like you think about all the internet has changed. Professional services firm, large firms largely operate the exact same that they did before the internet, which is just mind blowing to think about the fact that you and I could post something that millions of people can see. There's like this element of serendipity that we're not willing to trust because accountants are such ROI focused creatures. It all just comes down to being visible. Like, well, I didn't have problems hiring in my firm at the end because I could, I could post a tweet and I'd get, you know, 10 or 15 DMs of really good people and we could hire from there. So like, not everybody's going to be, you know, or even wants to be a think boy, an internet celebrity or something like that. But there's sometimes those people actually scare us away from doing our own version of that, which is something more humble and simple and not that level of effort. So, um, if nobody hears about you, if you're not like investing the time to be visible and be out there, then yeah, nobody's going to see you. But reality is we all have access to the same platforms these days. Like it's, it's, it's still far from a meritocracy, but it's a whole lot better than anything we've ever had before. Yeah. So come be guests on our podcasts. No, but I do think that that's, that's really true. Um, and I think part of the challenge with that might be like the, you know, the Venn diagram between people who make it a couple of years down the road into accounting and people who are destined to be content creators is probably relatively small. Um, and that's for sure an overgeneralization, but I think that's why like we see people who can do both, uh, are just crushing it to the extent that they are right. Like, I think that that is unfortunately like a very small population of people. Yeah. Can I take that thing you just said to shreds? Yeah, do it. Um, yeah. So the, the week, the fact that we call them influencers or the fact that we call them content creators puts them on a pedestal to give us permission to say, I'm not that right. I don't look at Kim Kardashian and think there it is. That's what I want to be. I've finally found it. Um. In my opinion, social media and like online communities and all of that, like that is just part of being like a professional these days. I think the more we build it up to say like, it's their job or it's the marketing team's job, we miss the opportunity because there's genuinely like, we try to control as much as we can. And so we will that future timeline into existence by planning it all out, right? There is no aspect of my life that I would have said five years ago is like, okay, yep, I'm gonna do A and then I'm gonna do B and then I'm gonna do C and I'm gonna be there. And the more we can divorce ourselves from that need of being able to like will every little step into existence, the more we can lean into the fact that the world is way bigger than we have like control of. And our access to that is social media. And it doesn't mean that you have to have anything novel to say or have a fancy editor or anything like that but it is literally just about sharing your journey and sharing the things that you needed to hear like two years ago, you know? Like that's what's useful. We're not all gonna be James Clear, Tim Ferriss, you know, whatever, Brene Brown. Like we're not all gonna be these kind of epic thought leaders but I actually heard this framing from Dickie Bush the other day, it's really good. Everybody needs to hear from the folks that are like two steps ahead of them. Like when they're too far ahead, they're out of touch. So the second grader is most impressed with the fourth grader. They're not impressed with the eighth grader because like they can't even get their head around what, you know, that reality looks like. And so everybody has something to share. Everybody has something they can teach someone. And the product of like consistently being out there and visible enables a whole bunch of opportunities that we could not otherwise ourselves will into existence. And until you lean into like trusting that, then kind of nobody ever sees you and you're stuck on the path that you're on. Yeah, I agree. And I think like for people who are in the process too, like you actually have a bit of an advantage in terms of like creating that content and kind of like helping people like, you know, helping people who are those two steps behind you because you can position yourself as, I think this is like a Sean Porry thing from another podcast I'm really into. But it's like, you can either position yourself as the expert. And then if you make a mistake, you're gonna be torn to shreds. Or you can position yourself as like the curious novice and say, hey, I'm gonna learn all about this and I want you to come along with me. And if you are the person who's in that process, who is that two steps ahead? Like you get the benefit of being that second person, right? Which I think is a lot easier. And people wanna help you and not instead just poke holes in everything you're saying. And along the way, other people see you, you're exposed to folks that you wouldn't otherwise meet. And like the world is just like bigger than we can comprehend. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I love that. One of the questions I've been kind of dying to ask you about, you know, having built a firm, having built like a SaaS practice, what do you think are like some of the key differences between the two that you should consider if like you're a very entrepreneurial CPA and you're trying to decide what's next, right? Like should I launch myself into this firm or should I pursue building kind of more what's been hot for the last little while, which would be like a SaaS practice or a SaaS business? Yeah, as soon as you step outside of firm stuff, you realize how like the fundamental limitations of a service business and how it just has a very linear level of scale that doesn't apply to many other types of businesses. Yeah. I mean, one thing that like kind of the way things are trending is people will buy on trust and SaaS is becoming increasingly saturated where overnight somebody will spin up a landing page that looks just like the other one and you don't really know the difference. Development, software dev is becoming commoditized. It's easier than ever, lower cost than ever. So when everything is saturated, we're already seeing this on social media when there's just an abundance of content and information and you can go anywhere you wanna go to get an answer, whatever answer you want. The same thing's gonna be true with software if it isn't already. Like you can, and with AI, you may literally be able to imagine your own software pretty soon and it just kind of makes itself. So in that reality, how do people make buying decisions? Like they will follow trust. Like if they have a relationship with you and you say like, this is the best way to get this done, that's how they make buying decisions. So yeah, on the pure product side, there are definitely higher leverage businesses to run than a firm, which is fundamentally a service business. But it's also a great opportunity for firms to augment what they do with something more akin to a product business. So if you're getting specific about the type of client that you serve and they all have a common pain, standing up an adjacent business that isn't subject to some of the same constraints as a service business to support those clients, like that's actually a really powerful combination where you have both the relationship and a more scalable offering. I talk about this a lot in kind of what the future of firm running looks like. You're either gonna refer your clients to somebody else's dog food or you're gonna start selling your own. And I think there's a hybrid approach there that's really interesting. Yeah, from a purely FP&A business standpoint too, your firm is a cash flowing business and your software development or product will be a cash negative business, which then has the larger upside. So it's interesting if you can get one to finance the other for sure. But it's a little bit tricky to do for sure. And you do one lap of an expo hall in any trade show anywhere and you see just how out of touch many of the software people are, where you have such a deeper understanding of the problem than most of the people in the space, making the tools for them. And you're like, I mean, there's so many times where I have a conversation and I'm like, why am I not doing this myself? So at a certain point, you get over that and you're like, well, I've got 20 people that I know would be customers day one. I've got an extremely intimate understanding of the problem. That's a massive competitive advantage compared to some random developer that wants to spin this up. So you're in a great spot to do it. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think that that's an incredible thing to consider. And I think a lot of people put these self-limiting beliefs up. Like, oh, well, I'm not a product builder. I still say that to people to this day. And I'm like, yeah, a quarter million people have used BigFour Transparency, but I don't know how to build a product. I don't know how to code. I don't know how to just use stuff to throw it together, right? But because I had such a deep understanding of the need and this was my own need as well, you end up building stuff that people want just by definition because you are the people at that point. Yeah, that's why you can do it well. And everything else around that is getting cheap. Software development's getting cheap. Content's getting easier to put out and all of that. At the end, what matters is the understanding that you have. Like, that's the hard part to replicate. Yeah, yeah. Okay, well, I had kind of one last question I wanted to make sure I asked you. If you were a young accounting professional or a person considering entering accounting today, what is kind of your advice to that person to just make sure that you're making the most out of the situation that you're in right now where you have quite a bit of leverage, you are a very hot asset to these firms. But at the same time, you want to make the profession work for you. We've seen people who have this wonderful life thanks to accounting and meanwhile, so many other people feel like they're kind of just butting their heads against the wall. What do you think is the difference between those people? What's your advice to be the person who's making the best of it? Consider if your boss's job is a job that you wanna have or if they have all the same problems that you do only worse because the pay bump doesn't cover up all those problems. In most cases, the partner, whatever that end goal is, they're sweating every bit as much as you are and that just, to get there and be like, oh, so I have the same kind of awful lifestyle, I just make more money, that doesn't solve those problems. It's really valuable to get exposed to as many things as possible because you don't know what you're gonna enjoy until you do it. So if there's a way to get exposed to more than just like pumping three or four years into audit or something like that, find a way where you can see into different things to know what you like. Different stuff's gonna stick with different people. But then don't get so sucked into the default path, the default path being just playing the game that everybody around me says is like the game I need to be playing, the success as defined by all the people around me. Don't get so sucked into the default path that you lose perspective of the whole rest of the world and cool things that other people are doing. Maybe on your first try, you landed on the very best possible thing in the universe for you but that seems exceptionally unlikely to me. So like being visible, being out there, finding other people to do what you do, it opens your mind to everything that the industry has to offer and the way that other firms are doing the same thing. It'll make you better at your job, like your current role, but will also give you a more healthy balance when the opposite is just like going heads down for a decade and getting to the end and being like, why the hell did I just do that, right? That was something that, that's probably the biggest mistake that I made and we probably all make it early on. It's just getting so sucked into the game that everybody around you tells to play that you just lose all perspective. I love that. That's incredible advice. I think for a few years, I was like that too, right? Where it's like, hey, if I leave here before being a partner, like I have failed. Right. Which again, now looking back and talking to all the people who've left that track and started their own practices because they realized, they looked up and realized like this is not a lifestyle I want. So yeah, you definitely don't wanna be 10 years down the road and realize you've been working towards something you don't want. And if you did, you know what? It's not all a waste. There are other opportunities for you out there. Absolutely. Like there's no need to be totally down and out and discouraged, but the sooner you can put your head up and actually take a look at that, the better. Yeah, I think that's a cool advice. That's another thing people do is they think they're too far down the line. They're like, oh, I'm gonna be throwing this all out. Like, you're not. As much as I hate to like quote a Gary Vee reel that I saw recently and how awfully on the nose that is, there's a lady that walked up to him. She's like, I'm 50 years old and I'm starting over from scratch. Like, what's your advice? And he's like, man, you're halfway there. Like, you've got so much left to go. And I'll hear from people that are like younger than me. I'm 35. And they're like, no, no, no, no. Like, I'm 10 years into this game, man. It's too late to pull the rip cord or go and change to do something else. Like, oh my gosh, no, it isn't. Like you've got so much more time to find something that you love. Yeah, I think that is a big time self-limiting belief. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you for the parting words of wisdom, Jason. I really appreciate it. I've been following you for a long time. You've been a major inspiration of just trying to sort of build things in the accounting space and just be authentic and have those conversations. So it's really awesome having you on. I really, really appreciate you taking the time. You bet. Thanks for having me. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.