Launching an Accounting Firm with Logan Graf

Hello, and welcome to the Big 4 Transparency podcast. Today I'm joined by Logan Graff, founder of the Graff Tax Co. and creator of, honestly, some of the most exceptional online accounting content. Welcome to the pod, Logan. What's up? Thanks for having me. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for joining. It's very nice of you to say that. Appreciate that. Yeah, well, I mean, what that opinion is largely based on, I will say, is for anyone who considers launching a firm, Logan does these videos summarizing kind of how my accounting firm has gone this year, going into detail. This being Big 4 Transparency is a great match, going into detail about, you know, here's exactly how much I made. Here's how much each channel earned me. Here are all my expense numbers. You go down even into tracking like where all of your time was allocated, which I think is a great angle that not a lot of other people have. So I think it's a really great service to the community that you're even offering there. So thank you for doing that. Yeah. It's always a fun video to make at the end of the year. I get super excited and try to come up with new things to share during the year just so people can get better insight into what I'm doing and how I'm doing it and how it's working. Do you find yourself learning a lot when you're making those and putting those together? Because I think some of the insights you really would have to be very intentional about digging through, right? Like you wouldn't realize maybe, oh, I'm spending an inordinate amount of time doing, you know, these specific things. Absolutely. Yeah. So I tracked my time all 2023 with a software called Rise. And I was, you know, I look at it week by week just to see my hours. And I used to post every week like, hey, here's here's my hours. I just got tired of doing that. So maybe I need to create like an automation to do that for me. But I added up all the hours for my yearly video, 2023 video. And I was like, well, I actually didn't work as much as I thought I did, which is really cool. You know, my average hours, I think, only ended up being about 35 hours a week, which is legit for a business owner, let alone like an accountant that has busy seasons that works a ton during parts of the year. I couldn't say I probably couldn't say that when I was an employee. I was probably working way more than that, which is which is cool because I'm making I'm making way more than when I was an employee. So it's a great, great place to be right now. Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Because you've been so transparent. I don't I don't feel bad maybe asking this, but what was your what was your 2023 kind of net on on the firm work for for listeners? Yeah, my net was about 200 K. I pulled in, I took home about 200 K and I grossed about 280. So it was like I had last year or the year before that, 2022, I wasn't even expecting to make 200 K and hit 200 K gross netting that the year a year later. Which honestly, I'd never thought I would be making this amount of money ever. So it's it's pretty, pretty cool. And I can tell you, like for everybody listening, because I know everyone probably just thinks the more money, the better. But really, you know, more money just means can mean more time spent working and more stress. So I'm trying to find a balance now of how much money I want to make and how much time I want to spend working. And now that I've made a good amount of money, I know like, OK, maybe money isn't really the top goal anymore. Maybe it's more of like, hey, I actually want to just enjoy my work now and who I work with and the free time or the time that I could spend doing something like making content or spend working. A lot of options now. Yeah, I think I think eventually, inevitably, once you kind of love what you do and you find a way to make that true, right, make it so that you continue to love what you do. I think the money sort of inevitably comes like one thing that's really resonated for me. There's a quote out there. I forget who said it, but it's like once once your work time feels like playtime, then like that's when you're going to win. Right. Like that's when you've really figured it out. And a lot of like what I'm doing with Big Four Transparency to me feels like playtime. Like I'm like, OK, I need to wrap up this thing so I can go, you know, so I could go DM people on Twitter to come be on my podcast or something like that. So, you know, I really resonate with that. Like making sure that what you're doing is something that you're going to enjoy goes a really long way. So when you left being an employee at a firm, what level of seniority were you at? Because I would say what you're making now is probably equivalent to like a pretty good senior manager salary at a lot of places. But like I think the upside ahead of you and the autonomy you have is obviously like a huge advantage compared to being employed as a senior manager. Yeah, I was definitely not a senior manager when I left, when I was last employed by another firm. I was actually I mean, I actually had a I was a director. I called myself the director of tax, but it was a very small firm that I was at and they had a very small tax department. So it's not like it was anything very, you know, fancy and actually meant something. So but basically what that meant was I I was in charge of all the tax returns. I was part of creating all the processes, all of the I didn't bill, but, you know, bringing in clients, meeting with new clients and servicing them, paying the returns, reviewing them, delivering them, meeting with new clients. So basically everything involved with running your own business, I was I was doing it for this firm because they were the guys I was working with weren't really tax tax professionals. They were more on the accounting side, audit side, and they brought me on to take over the taxes. And so I wasn't making much money. Yeah, yeah. A lot of those small places, I think, you know, titles, you know, I left as a tax analyst to go be a controller. But like. Was I really a controller? I don't know. Yeah, yeah. Right on. Do you think being at a small firm made it significantly easier for you to transition into being kind of your own, you know, your own boss and running your own firm? Versus if you were at a big four or so big for or sorry that I started off at a big a big like regional level CPA firm right out of college and I was a very small. Gear cog. Very small piece of this giant wheel, and so I did like one little thing and I was, of course, I was I was only there for about two and a half years. And so, I mean, as your position goes up, the more you're responsible for. But I was you know, I was just like prepare tax returns. That's all I did, essentially. And I have no client contact. They didn't let me really talk to clients and I completely understand that I wouldn't let me talk to clients either during those first few years. And so really, my skills were just preparing tax returns, so getting a lot of technical skills down. And then I went to a smaller firm and the first day on the job, there was about so there's like seven to 10 people at this firm. And so first day on the job, like, hey, you know, can you call up this client and talk to them about information that we need for their tax return? I was like, what? I've never like all the client or like what? So I immediately got to experience like actually interfacing with the client and how to handle that. And you learn like the more personable skills, the client side is client facing skills and actually how to manage emotions now that you're interacting with clients. You know, hey, you got a big tax due or, you know, this is wrong, you know, be able to tell them negative, negative news. And then, you know, when I went to even smaller firm after that, where I had where I was like the director, then I gained all the skills of basically that I needed to run a business. So I was creating all the processes needed for that firm. And, you know, I helped onboard an admin and help give the admin their duties on on what to do and how to do it. And, you know, I had read the E-Myth, so I was all up in the E-Myth trying to, you know, process my way, systematize my way through that job. And basically I got all the experience I needed to make me then feel comfortable with starting my own firm. So I basically got to take a lot of what I did at that small firm and basically plunk it down into my own firm and almost restart in a way, do things a little bit differently. But pretty much, you know, I had the blueprint going from the start. So it wasn't like, I don't know what to do. It was it was already kind of rolling already. It was awesome. Nice. So you seem to be someone who obviously really values systems, which I would kind of qualify myself as as well. Like I would rather spend 10 hours fixing a process than, you know, deal with the 20 minutes of inefficiency with the current process. So what are some of the best systems that you think you've kind of carried over and brought into your own firm that are really like enabling you to be efficient? I use I use a bunch of software now to help me with that. So I'm always trying to create the best. Experience for myself and for my clients, so it's it's a really tough thing to do both, especially in the tax world, if you're real tax heavy. You have so many different softwares that you have to kind of stitch together and, you know, I there's. You know, I'm really big into using the software called Keeper, so I'm doing a lot more business accounting now. And Keeper is a great way to systematize your monthly accounting work. And I if I like I couldn't imagine not having Keeper and having an employee and figuring out how to like create a road map for them on on how to do each client's account accounting every month. So. With Keeper, I could each client has their own essentially space with their own designated tasks that you can customize, and it makes. That makes it amazing that they can just stick stick to the outline every month versus kind of just running on their own, trying to figure out what to do next. They already know what to do next. It's a there's a tech box right there. And then I systemize my onboarding or engagement process through Ignition. I'm a big Ignition. User, I'm on their council advisory council as well, so but I use Ignition from the start from when I launched my firm and basically what. What really sealed the deal for me is, you know, giving clients options to choose from when they work with me, so instead of just preparing a tax return, you can add on different services and charge for money. So it really helped open up the possibilities of really making more money for for the one time client, you know, once a year client. So now I can upsell all my services. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a problem with a lot of accounting professionals on Blake Oliver's podcast. I was listening to this, but like a lot of people basically end up most like offering services for free a lot of the time because maybe it wasn't defined in the initial scope and then they're too shy to kind of go back and tell this person like, hey, we're going to have to do some billing for out of scope work. So it's cool to know that you're doing that right from the get go. Is there any kind of like habit that you built and maybe your client onboarding or is it really like part of like the software when using ignition to like really properly define that scope? And like you said, like get more revenue where you are offering kind of those additional services? Yeah, I pretty much say, hey, like, you know, if we're just preparing a tax return, it's going to say so in the engagement and the proposal. So, you know, if you want something more, you're going to have to pay more essentially. So it helps helps you properly define what you're doing from the start on those onboarding meetings for potential client meetings. I go over the packages briefly. So it really helps. Ignition really helps me standardize what I offer and keeps it keeps it true for every client essentially. And then, yeah, then then I don't have to like, OK, this client has is doing this and this client is doing this. And it's just like a whole mess of, all right, what what am I providing for these clients? But now I can know, like, OK, they they're in this package and I that's exactly what I need to offer them and set up my project for. Yeah, awesome. And how do you how did you figure out kind of pricing in the early days as well? Like, I think it's a really unique opportunity talking to you because I think you're a lot more fresh on your new firm journey than a lot of kind of the other people who might be a couple of years further along. So when you're kind of launching this firm and you might be like offering some services for the first time, what was your what was your like model in determining pricing? Yeah, at first it was like, all right, I'm going to kind of carry over the pricing that I was using at the the firm that I was just working at. So I was like, OK, this seems to be working well. I'm going to just continue it. And then all of a sudden. There's there's a lot of work in front of me now that I need to do. I was like, oh, shoot, like. I need to raise my rates because too many people are meeting with me to work with me at this price rate, so I'm going to raise the rate because I advertise my my tax return minimum on my website and not many firms do that. And so I would raise the rate and then that would slow down the amount of people meeting with me, new client meetings. And so that's good. And then like. I would raise it again when too many people were meeting with me and I'd raise it again and again and again and again. So I started around 450 for a minimum tax return as a basic tax. It just happened to be two. Now it's twelve hundred dollars. And so as you as you get more clients and you fill up your capacity. You start to really realize that you can't work. All the time anymore, like there's no space or you just want to work less and you need less clients, so now I use pricing as a way to. Throttle the demand, and I'm actually working with less clients now than twenty, twenty one, I think so. But I'm making double the amount of money. So, yeah, that goes to show you how price increase price increases really helps manage you manage the demand. The only thing is the mistake that I made that I would do over from the beginning is not raised by rates more methodically. So it's more just like I'm dying and I just want people to stop scheduling meetings with me. I still want to add new clients, but I just I just need to have less new client meetings versus I think I would be more methodical and be like, OK. I've signed on ten clients, I'm going to raise the price this much, I've signed on another ten client, I'm going to raise it this much, because up until or in twenty, twenty two, I started to really crack down on, OK, my my rates now this and I have all these clients paying this amount. Which is a lot lower. And I was like. I this is not fair for my family if I am working with these clients, spending this much more time, you know, a set amount of time with them when I could have less clients and making the same amount of money and spending more time with my family. And so I I basically sent out 30 to 40 emails to all of these clients. I sent out 30 to 40 emails to clients to be like, hey, here's the new rate for you. And it was, you know, anywhere between like a 40, 40 to 200 percent increase for a lot of these clients. And a lot of people left, which was which was the goal. You know, it stinks that they left, but a lot of people left. And I ended up making more money the following year still, even though, you half of those clients and then 2023 this last year, I did the same thing with a less amount of clients because I didn't have as many that, you know, the the market rate versus what they were paying wasn't, you know, that list got smaller because of what I did in twenty two. And then all the clients that. I. That were kind of problem clients that caused the most pain for me. They left because of those price increases, though it was like a win win all around. And now I have I have more capacity to to add on new clients and people are still scheduling meetings with me at twelve hundred dollar price rate. Like, yeah, it's wild. I mean, it is tax season, so there's more demand right now. But. Like, I think prepares get stuck and never raising their rates or, you know, firm owners get stuck for some reason, I don't know, they just there's something inside of them that they can't raise rate. It's a big emotional toll on you to do it. It's it's weird. It's easy to say, oh, just raise your rates. But to actually send that email telling someone and like fearing the response is like, oh, it's hard to do depending on the type of person you are. So you have to go through that over and over again. Sorry, I'm on a big rant, but. No, I think this is fantastic. Like, I think, again, behaviorally, I think a lot of accountants are very conflict diverse and it's really hard to do this. And I think a different avenue a lot of people would have gone in your shoes is, oh, my God, I'm so swamped. I guess this taps out at one hundred and twenty K of gross revenue, and I now take on no new clients because I'm so swamped. Right. Whereas you've doubled from there just by having these proper business practices in place. And it's time wise is probably not a lot to actually have these conversations, but it is very, very difficult. So similarly, like I had kind of when I was at Deloitte, I was on the crypto tax team. So after I left, I took on a bunch of crypto clients and without really growing my client list that went from like a six or seven thousand dollar a year business to like, I forget what exactly, 13 or 14. And I'm handing it off this year, but like it doubled without really taking on new clients or without actually growing client numbers. And actually like one client turned out and someone else came through and I didn't really want to add more work because it was a side hustle and I had this website going. And so I quoted him something where I was like, what am I willing to give up my Sunday evenings for? And he said, yeah, no problem. This is great. I'm looking forward to working with you. And so I was like, you know what? Fine. Cool. Right. So instead of turning people around, you could actually just have that conversation with yourself of like, what will I work through a weekend with a smile for? Like, that's that's your rate, because I don't really have time for this. And and it, you know, it worked out tremendously because that was now my new favorite client. Right. Yeah. And sure, you keep you know, I had the one legacy client who was my first one who I was under billing pretty significantly. But like other than that, like I was having those conversations every year with them, like, hey, like, you know, I'd love to keep working with you. Unfortunately, I can't keep up with the man. Therefore, this is where that's going to land. And and it's it's good for people to hear these conversations where you're saying, yeah, I raised my rates on everyone and like it didn't still work for me. Yeah. Yeah. It's really hard to do that when you first start. So it takes a lot of guts to be able to do that if you're not on a good financial footing. But once you do hit that mark of like, OK, I I've hit a set revenue where set amount of revenue is going to come back every year and you can cover all the expenses that you need to live and support your family if you have a family. And once you hit that point, you can start being a little more reckless with. Who you work with and what you charge, because now it's you're you're kind of you're set almost and you can't but you can't really do that in the beginning because there's too much unknown. You're like, OK, I don't even know who's going to work with me or am I going to get enough clients for this year to live off or there's so much unknown. You you you can't operate that way, even if you have someone like me saying, no, it's going to be OK. It's still really hard to be able to do that. So I think more like methodical price increases after a set amount of clients would probably work really well. And and you you really just have to keep refining your pricing and your pricing with your clients. And you really have to set that expectation up front to make that conversation easier to have that expectation with one client joining like I'm growing prices now might not be the same in a couple of years. And so just know when I hit you with a double price increase, it's it's not not you. It's it's me. And that's just the way it is. Supply and demand and keep it rolling. Do you have a timing where you usually have those conversations? Is it like right after you filed or or like during the slow time? I've been doing it in like October time frame. So after all, you know, after all the returns are done during, you know, during tax season, I make a note. I have a spreadsheet basically where like, OK, this is what they're paying now. This is what I want them to pay next year. And I get like, you know, I'll write some notes like, hey, this client is, you know, driving me nuts or this client's super unorganized. Even though they're paying a lot, I don't know if it's worth it because it takes a whole day for this project. You know, sometimes you have to you have to. Get rid of a client because their project is just too complex for the pricing that you're at, and, you know, you could have a project throw you off really bad that takes up so much of your capacity and you didn't price. right. And it's just not a good fit anymore. Yeah. Well, good on you for doing all of that. I wanted to touch on something you mentioned kind of earlier about your first employee. So I mean, congratulations on making that jump. That's huge. What was that like? Like, what's, you know, what's Can you walk me through like what that whole process is like, you know, I've just started my firm. A few years ago, I'm now overwhelmed. And I think that I can scale a little bit more time for an employee, like, what's kind of going through your mind at that point? And what is it you're looking for in an employee number one, like what level of experience what kind of like personality traits? Yeah, yeah. So 2023. After, you know, April, May, I was like, Alright, something needs to change again, because I'm always I'm never satisfied with busy season, it seems like, you know, take a while, I guess. But I was like, Alright, I worked, I worked a lot, I worked less than the prior year. But I still worked a lot. And I still stress a lot. And I have a growing family. I don't want to be unavailable. Or I don't want to feel like I'm unavailable between January and April. So I have to cut, cut my client list, or I need to hire somebody. And so that's probably the decision where you get to is like, Alright, do I reduce my client list? Or do I cut somebody? And then I realized, okay, you know, if I cut my client list, I'm still doing a lot of work that I that I want to eventually kind of get out of. So I'm doing a lot of tax prep that I don't want to keep doing. I would love to be more of a reviewer of the tax work. Because there's, there's that grind that I'm ready to just level up from. And so if I cut my client work, I'm still doing a ton of tax return. And then I realized, okay, if I hire somebody, I'm still doing a lot of returns, but I'm not doing as much of the work, I'm doing more of a reviewing role, which is a little, it's just, it's just easier on the brain, and easier during easier to do during tax season. And so I was like, I, you know, I don't, I was like, I think the way I went ahead, I don't think cutting clients would make me any happier. So I think if I get someone on board to help me with the tax prep, I think that would make my life better. And then I had to think, okay, you know, where am I? Where am I? financially? Can I afford an employee if I were to pay someone to work for me? You know, do I mind this much of a pay cut on my end? And so that that part is really tricky. Because if you, depending on who you hire, you may have to pay a lot of money, because tax preparers are becoming more rare these days, especially experienced ones. And so, you know, for me, it was like the best case scenario that happened. And I'm sorry, like, it's the situation will probably not happen for you if you're looking for a first employee, but it just happened for me. And so I, I reached out to Twitter and LinkedIn, I was like, Hey, I'm, I want to hire somebody, here's my requirements. Here's what I'm looking for this much experience. And so basically, I was just needing someone to help me with basically a lot of 1040s and potential business tax return. And so that's what they're experiencing to be and bonus if you can do monthly accounting, help me with monthly accounting. Because I'm growing that that side of my services. And so I didn't list my price or my, my, you know, here's how much I'll pay you. I and I got kind of roasted for that. But I've seen people like Brandon Hall, he did this last summer, some point, he's like, Hey, we're gonna pay this much for I'm looking for this position, this much pain, he just got roasted for the pay. And it wasn't really wasn't that bad. But I think that's what I I think that's right when I started working with Brandon, because with big for transparency, we do some like, like compensation data solutions and whatever. And I think I think I had seen that on Twitter. And I got in the DMs. I was like, Hey, Brandon, is this something? Yeah. And yeah, he's been he's been just the best to work with ever since, like, he's been so supportive. It was funny, because at the time, I was just like, Oh, this is a good customer to get. And it actually turned into a lot more like I've gotten a lot of mentorship and whatnot from but sorry, anyways, tangent, but yeah, yeah. I'm going on a tangent too. But so I in my application, I was like, list how much you want to make? How much do you want to make per hour? The only thing is like, I had a very special case because I could only afford part time between June and the end of the year. So I don't have much work for you for this person. And so it has to be a very specific case of how much money do you need? And how much can you work for how much? Yeah, basically how much money you need is, as I was saying, like, I can only pay you hourly up to 10 hours a week, between now and December. And then I can pay you, you know, more of a 40 hour a week salary in 2024. When, you know, we have tax season is where most of the work is. And so, you know, a lot of the applicants that I got, were, you know, like, requesting like $90 an hour $60 an hour. And I was like, that's just that just doesn't work. The numbers wise, it doesn't work for me. And so not that they wouldn't have been a good fit. But my employee that came along very, very new to the industry, had spent like about one tax season, year half a year at a firm and an accounting firm. And so he got his feet wet and was studying for the EA. And he wouldn't mind me sharing this, because I've shared in my videos, but, you know, very new to the scene. So, you know, any, he didn't need to work that much, because he was studying for the EA. And it was, it was like the best case scenario, because he could slowly get familiar with working with me, and onboarding with me. And, you know, he didn't have much experience, but he had a little bit of experience, he didn't actually meet my requirements to apply. But he applied anyways. And so really, what what I hired him off of was, was like his initiative that he showed, and his character during the interview, and he's just very well spoken, like I was flabbering during the interview, I was just like, nervous. I don't know what to do. But he was able to like communicate really well. And I was like, man, this kid's got it. Like, I just had a great feeling about him in my, in my gut. And it's a cliche. But it's like, I think, I think I can make this work, because he seems to have a great work ethic. You know, he's, he seems loyal, and his character was great. And so I was like, it's really hard to train those things. But you can train somebody to to make journal entries, or, you know, do bank reconciliations, or, you know, learn tax code stuff. And technically, he probably wasn't the best fit. But he had everything else that I really admired. And so and, you know, the pay that he wanted lined up with what with what I could afford, and his hours that he wanted to work. And so is it was like, the best case scenario. And so, you know, I think Brandon Hall is really good advice on on hiring and like what your first hire should be. And he would, I think he says to hire some very technical, get your, you know, to get the owner out of the technical work. And more of like the management work sales work. Yeah, and I agree with that completely. But, you know, my first hire, Gary, I think, I think he's, he's been a great fit so far. And I don't mind taking the I don't mind investing my time, training him up and getting him ready. So I don't have too much advice experience with that first hire. But I do say I do think they need to have some experience. Because unless you have a lot of time on your hands, it's going to take a lot of time to get them from zero to one. And learning, I didn't really have to do that with Gary, because he already had a little bit of a base of his knowledge. So I couldn't imagine training someone from the, you know, from the very start. So I think they need to be experienced. Yeah, yeah. And you mentioned kind of your videos and some of the work you do. And you are extremely transparent in the work you do, which I think is a great compliment to kind of what I'm trying to accomplish, right? Like I really aim for like salary transparency, but you're like, entrepreneur transparency, and all that and talking about the journey, which is fantastic. But like, what what was your driver to do so? Because for sure, a lot of work goes into that, right? Like the value and and the degree of precision that you share in some of those videos is it's kind of unheard of, honestly. Yeah, so I've always so I think it started with Twitter. And I from the get go, even at my last job, I, I created this professional account, tax telegraph, because my name is Logan graph, tax telegraph, I don't know, I thought it was neat, good name. And, and so I was like, I'm going to be like this, tax pro on Twitter, and talk about taxes and stuff. And as I'm going to network with other professionals, and, you know, maybe get clients out of it, then it turned into just like, all right, I'm not going to get clients from this Twitter, I'm going to network other tax professionals, other accountants, and maybe it's just people are randomly interested in that stuff. When I was tweeting, so from the get go, I was I was kind of tweeting about busy season, about just like the work that we do, the conditions that we are in, like, why do we have deadlines? Why is there a 315 deadline? Why is it like this, basically, you know, a typical millennial thing to do is just to question everything. And like, this is, why are we? Why are we doing this? Why is it like this? And so I would, I basically tweet all that. And then I would, you know, I would start to be like, okay, this is how I operate a little bit, even as like, someone that didn't have my own firm yet. Like, this is how I think it should be done. And I do a lot of memes. And it just started to build traction, more traction, where I just started getting more followers. And, and all of a sudden, I have 1000s of Twitter followers and just tweeting about sometimes taxes, sometimes how I run a firm. And just like my thoughts on how I run a firm, because I actually owe it to Twitter for launching my firm, actually, because I sent out a tweet, like, I was faced with this decision, do I start my own firm? Or do I work for another firm? I was at this crossroads. And I just got this huge support from encouragement from Twitter, community, X community. And they're like, do it. And I got like a random call, someone called me up, or I gave him his number, he DMed me, but I called him up. And he's like, yeah, this is what you need to do and everything. And it was like this amazing time where the community responded. And they're like, Yes, you should, you should do this. And I was like, I'm going to go for it. After all that encouragement, hearing from everybody. So like, and then, and then, okay, Jason stats comes on in the scene. And he starts to create video content for accountants and all about like tech and how to use tech and why accountants need to use this tech account, accountants, accounting firm owners, and he starts creating YouTube content. He's like the only one doing this for in the accounting space, like very little content creators in the accounting space that I know of there could be I'm sorry, I just haven't found you yet. So he kind of opened the door of like, oh, this is really cool. And you know, I actually have some video experience. And I love to entertain people. And so the desire to entertain people, and to also share my experiences and help people where we're like, align perfectly as like, I think I'm just going to go for it. So I'm going to basically extend my Twitter, what I do on Twitter to be video content. And I was also thinking that the future is video content, you know, our generation, and the next generation, and the next generation, they're going to be just so ingrained with video, whether we like it or not. And I was like, this is a way to future proof myself, I think, where if I'm, if I'm online, it's like, people are going to find me, I don't know what they're going to find me for. But it's just going to be a good outlet, I think in the future. And so it does take time. This last, this last year, I really focused on pushing content. So every Friday, I would try to spend, I would try to record on Friday and edit on Friday. And so Fridays was my content day after tax season, to where, you know, from basically from May to the fall, I was trying to make a video every week, as much as I could. And it worked really well, because I gained a ton of followers and, or subscribers and got monetized by the end of the year. And so now it's starting to just be more of like, okay, people are really benefiting from this now. And I'm getting a lot of LinkedIn messages, and Twitter messages just asking, you know, how, you know, for advice, or, you know, can we have a talk? And can we talk about me launching a firm? Can I get some advice from you? And I have to say no, a lot, because if I say yes to someone, I have to say yes to everyone in my head. And so I have to turn down a lot of people, unfortunately, which is kind of helping me think about, you know, do I want to start a community to help these people out, that maybe wants to start a firm one day. And, you know, I owe it to a lot of other professionals that helped me out from the very beginning, when I started my firm, I was, I was interviewing other firm owners that said yes to me. In the very beginning, they they shared their thoughts on on running a firm. And so now I want to do the same. But I can't do that to everybody individually. But maybe I can do that in a community setting. So it's kind of just just me being me and enjoying what I'm doing. I love making content, I love tweeting, and being outspoken. And so I'm not afraid to share my opinion about stuff. And I can be rough with my opinion, especially around deadlines, like there should not be a 14 proof deadline, we should not be working this much between January and April. Those that say they prefer it versus a year long deadline situation, they're wrong. And I don't believe them. Like I tweet that out every, every year is like, if you say you prefer working more between January and April than spreading out the work over the year, then I don't believe you. I don't like no one wants to do this for, you know, quarter, like a, basically a third of your life is in busy season if you're in public accounting, which is, it's a lot. Yeah. So speaking of communities, are you able to, like, concretely define some of the things from Jason's realized community that were, you know, important to you with starting your firm? Yeah. So I would highly recommend if you are going to start your own firm or want to start your own firm is don't do it alone. Find a community. And it could be Jason's community, it could be Jason's community. There's other communities out there. There's Thrival, there's Ryan Lozanis' future firm community. And hopefully I'm going to be starting a community this year. And basically is like, you can leverage the wisdom and experiences of other people in a community. And so I've been able to reach out to Jason Stats. I've been in Jason Stats realized community from the start. And before I embark on something big, like a new service idea, or a new package, or, you know, pricing situation or, or hiring an employee, I actually, I reach out to the community and say, Hey, what is, what is y'all's experience been on this? Like, what are the pitfalls I should worry about? And I'll get all these very helpful answers to where in the beginning, I was, you know, you know, I was able to probably launch my firm advance my firm, like three to five years ahead with, with Jason's community, just learning everything, like what not to do, essentially, and what to do with my firm, I was able to advance three to five years, compared to me just going alone and learning the hard way through it. And so where I'm at now is all thanks to that community, basically, because they given me the ideas and on how to run my firm better, and systems and software on how to do that. And I would, I would be like, I don't know if I would have used ignition software, you know, different software that made my life way easier now, without that community. Yeah, one thing I've noticed, like consuming a lot of your content, and it has been for quite a while, but especially leading up to this, I obviously binged a little bit more, but like, it very much seems like your firm and processes are set up for future growth, should you choose to pursue that, right? Like, a lot of places are kind of busting at the seams where it's like, Hey, if we add on one more customer, this thing's gonna break. Whereas like, from a lot of what you speak about, like, that does not seem to be the case, like, it seems like a lot of what you have in place, could accommodate you being 10 times larger, right, which I think is a really good place to be, I'm sure it's probably a little bit more costly early on where, you know, do you need a full management system or whatever, at a certain scale, maybe not, but it does seem like those are huge headaches that you would otherwise have in a year or two, that you will now not have. So whether or not you want to scale and grow becomes more question of, do I want to manage more people? Do I want to work more on the business versus in the business? And and you kind of get to make that distinction rather than like, Hey, can any of my processes even handle this, right? It's really nice to see. So, you know, congratulations on that. That's awesome. Thanks. I try to make it the approach where I'm, I'm, I'm like a big firm, but I'm actually a little firm. So yeah, try to make it as as if I had big firm processes that are very streamlined, very scalable, in a small firm package. So I invest heavily on software to do that. And people just gawk at my software expenses. But yeah, yeah. But I mean, depending on where you had, like, a couple weeks ago, I interviewed Patrick Dichter from Appletree, and he he's actually acquired three firms. And we talked about what makes up revenue multiples. And kind of exactly what you described is what he describes as being the difference between a firm that sells for 0.9 x revenue and a firm that sells for 1.5 x revenue, right? Like, their representation of value from having those, like those processes in, you know, a trading value of a firm, regardless of whether or not that's your intention. Either way, know that there is like value and having those already in place, right? So it's not a lot, for sure. Awesome. Well, thank you very much for joining Logan. Before we kind of end this off, you did talk about an upcoming community. I think we should definitely talk about the, the, you know, where people can sign up for maybe the waitlist for that. I personally have a friend that I want to get onto this waitlist. Some people who are on the verge of making that jump themselves. So I think it'd be a really valuable thing to plug for the audience. Awesome. Yeah. So I'm gaining a waitlist, an email list, for those that are interested in a community that are thinking about starting a firm. So you don't even have to have a firm. You can be thinking about starting a firm or about to start a firm. You could be in the trenches and have just started a firm. You could be in, in it for three to five years. So someone that is, is looking for a community of support for new firm owners and, and just interested, you're interested in content that I make. And so I also ask in that form that you provide some feedback on what, what kind of content you want me to make that that'll help you out. So I can't tell you when this community will start, but there's definitely a lot of ideas in my head and, and membership, you know, how, how's the membership going to look like? Is it, you know, is it going to be a one-time payment? It's going to be a monthly payment, yearly payment. So there's a lot of things to think about, but I'm also a firm owner and I have to run my firm first. And so it's definitely probably going to be after April when, if I do launch it, but looking for any feedback and, and I, you know, I appreciate you subscribing to my YouTube channel, Logan and just watch some videos on how I run my firm. So we'll, I'll provide a link for the waitlist that you can join and sign up and look forward to reaching out to you about it in the future. Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Logan. I will make sure everything's linked in the podcast description and thank you for your time. Yeah. Thank you.