Learning Leverage & Podcasting with Jason Blumer

Hello and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I'm joined today by Jason Blummer, the CEO of Thrival and of Blummer and Associates. Welcome to the pod, Jason. Cool. Thank you, Dom. And thank you for everything you're doing to bring transparency to the profession. We need some of that, don't we? Yeah, well, thank you very much. I appreciate you saying that. And this feels like quite a, you know, crossover episode because I've been listening to your podcast since I think the first month that I had started doing mine. Someone pointed out like, hey, Jason does, you know, a little bit of a format. You should check it out. He's a really good host. And so I've been following you since and counting down the days until I felt the courage to ask you to come on this one. Well, you say that to all your guests, Dom. No, I don't. Thank you so much. It's all recorded. Thank you so much. Yeah, my pleasure. So to start off, for those who might not be as kind of familiar with your work, can you kind of talk us through your, you know, really quickly through your public accounting experience that has kind of led you to where you ended up with Blummer and Associates? Yeah, for sure. So I've been in the profession 30, over 30 years now. So getting up there. So I've made a lot of mistakes. Have been in, I was in private accounting for a while. And so have been in public since 98. So that's when I entered public as a CPA and been running my firm. Our firm is 25 years old. My dad started it. And so I've been running it a little over 21 years now. So I've been leading our own firm for over 21 years, Blummer and Associates at BlummerCPAs.com. And in 2010, the fall of 2010, just, you know, saw that and I had been blogging at a URL called Thrival.com, which is a word we, you know, an old partner of mine in another business that I flushed down the toilet. He and I started a business. He was, we were always going, why are we in survival mode? So we need to be in thrival mode. So I stole that word, found a URL for it. I wish it didn't have an E in it, but you know, the URL wasn't available without the E. So everybody says trivial, but it's actually thrival. So I don't know, probably 2007 started really blogging about my thoughts about the profession, things I had learned. There's a lot I didn't know at that time, but I was trying to learn through writing. And I've always loved to do that. So that became a community as more and more people needed a community at that time. So ramped up the Thrival community in 2010. Here we are. It just has changed so many times and as you find the value of what people need. So Thrival now we run alongside the firm. And so we learn a lot in our firm, obviously, because there's a lot of ups and downs through running a firm. We have 15 people in our firm. We're fully virtual. We've been virtual since 2012, I think. And so there's just a lot to learn. So we teach a lot of the, the community and care for them and, you know, through structuring organizations that can scale, specifically service organizations, firms. So that's how they're married together. It's what they do. They're separate entities though. And they run different business models, but you know, they really our firm is really a guinea pig for a lot of what we teach in Thrival. Yeah, I love that model. And, you know, kind of like eating your own dog food. And I talk about them a lot. Like I have this like huge business crush on Beehive. Yeah, they're like the newsletter platform. And, and, you know, they started a super successful newsletter just now to be able to feel, you know, be able to feel what the product feels like and see if their advice is actually good advice. And I think that immediately makes you 10 times more credible, right? So no, I love the model of what you do. And the content you produce is all wonderful. So yeah. Yeah. So hats off to that. And thank you. Yeah, my pleasure. And so being, you know, very successful in those businesses now, I'm actually always curious to ask, what was that other business before that you mentioned was struggling? It was, it was a digital signage business. Okay. So that was, it was a long time ago, we had this idea where motion graphics on large monitors could be put in like local malls. And we could run ads. And so we had these large machines shipped over from Korea. And my partner was a digital advertising guy. He knew how to create that stuff. He was a designer. And we thought, well, I mean, we're going to get rich, you know, doing this. It was way before digital signage is a thing now. That's just how you order food at restaurants, you know, walk up places. And so we were trying to create a lot of that. And so yeah, we, um, so it was a lot of equipment, you know, so I was doing taxes and at night I would, you know, stupid kids would cut the thing off in the mall and I'd have to go reboot it. And I mean, that's the crazy stuff you do. You think this is going to be awesome. But the sales side, I did all the sales too. The sales side was really trying to convince a market about the value of this new thing. And they didn't know what it was. And so you had to, you know, you had to say, no, you can, you know, you can put your ad at Christmas in the location where everybody will see it. You got tens of thousands of people walking by and, you know, it just can't, you can't ramp it up fast enough. And we had some debt with that company. Um, and we kind of, we run debt free now. So we had debt with that company just early on. And you had to, so you have more to support, you have some cash, cash outflow, you got to support. And so the sales just couldn't do it. So you start giving free ads away. It's like, let me show it to you. And they go, ah, it's pretty good. And then they don't buy it. And you're like, well, I just built the thing. So anyway, it didn't work. Yeah. Do you think that laid a really good foundation though, for you now, especially working with digital and creative agencies? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think, I think, you know, running your own business, doing your own thing like you do. I mean, you just, you learn so much, you know, you learn what you're capable of. You learn what to do when you're really pressed for time, when you're pressed for creativity, when it's all on you, you know, when you're facing a wall and you're like, what do I do? And you actually have nobody to ask. And you have to go figure stuff out. So those are some, sometimes those can be very dark times for people because they can be really hard. But those are the times you grow the most. And so, oh man, yeah, that laid the groundwork to, to, to run Thrival and Blummer. These are two full-time companies together. And we, you know, we make a lot of mistakes. You know, we do a lot of things well. We've learned a lot, you know, in 30 years with experience. But you still, you know, you're pushing into new places, making new mistakes. And you understand them more. You know what to let get you upset. What you know is just part of a market or an economic dip or downturn. It'll come back. You've gone through a lot of these. So a lot of that foundation is very helpful to not freaking flip out when things don't go the way they're supposed to, because they never will. And so, yeah, I'd probably still do all those things the same way. And they laid the groundwork, really taught me a lot, big time. Nice. Yeah, I love hearing about, you know, when people's former business failures somehow kind of like tie into what they're doing now. Totally does. Where you say you learn quickly and whatever, I'm about to find out, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's inspirational for me as well to hear kind of, oh, you know, this thing didn't work out, but here's where we're at. Or, you know, even more inspirational for people who have worked out on the first try, but we'll see. That's right. Yeah. Well, you know, well, the thing is, but you know, you're so creative. You'll figure out how to pivot and you'll figure out what it takes to do stuff. We still, everybody still has to do that. Everybody, hopefully we're creative enough to keep trying new things that don't work. And we hit walls and we got to go around them. And it just challenges us to keep figuring that out. Or, you know, we've got now tons of podcasts. We've got a lot of communities that can help us, you know, work our way through that stuff together, which is very, very cool. Yeah. Yeah. The access to communities today, like I imagine when you started in accounting, like you were probably very happy, first of all, and fortunate to have family who had done that. But other than that, like, did you really have access to anyone who would be able to help you with kind of like running the firm? Yeah. Yeah, my dad, you know, he helped me run the firm, but he was really a technical guy. He was a CPA. I'm a CPA. So we were both technical in nature and had that background. But he did just, he wanted to run a firm and do that work, you know, because that work's valuable work. I wanted to grow it and scale it and create new services. I wanted to try things. I had read some books. I'm like, well, I want to try those things, you know. And so I did those things and really broke a lot of stuff, you know, but again, learned so much about, you know, because I was pushing into consultative and coaching related type advisory work. And so I had to learn how to pitch that. What is the value of that? What is the value you think that the market doesn't think is valuable? So aligning your perceived value with what your market perceives as valuable is key to price it. You can't price it unless they think what you think, right? Like you're pitching value, they have to believe it's valuable too. So I was pushing into those places and got, you know, a lot of that wrong. But then you do figure it out and you go, oh, this lands, I'm going to push into this. And then you start raising the price of that value thing you've discovered. So the firm was that way. The thrival, I didn't really have anybody. Community businesses were not a thing. I did start bumping into Darren Root a lot. Darren Root ran his own firm and ran Rootworks, which was a consultative instructional business at the time. And so he did befriend me. He's about 10 years older than me. So he did befriend me and would talk to me about things. But, you know, not deeply because he was kind of would have been a competitor, you know, at that point. But yeah, you learn your way through that too. Yeah. Yeah, I love that in kind of today's market. Like, you know, there's sufficient abundance that it feels like the competitors can still work together, can help mentor each other. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And of course, we know all the other community, all the larger community operators and just, you know, great people. We all want the same thing, which is really to help people. That's what a community is about. A place to gather, to have concentrated effect with education and teaching. And that's, that's a valuable thing for our profession really is. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, a lot of these communities are like maxed out on members, right? So it's not even like you're like, oh, you're fighting over it. Like I know Jason had just talked about, realizes like, yeah, we're at our cap, right? And a lot of these communities want to keep it to a couple hundred at most because, you know, then the quality of the service might go down. Yeah. Well, that does happen because if you start a community, you've got to, you've got to provide things into it. You've got to produce courses and writing and content and teaching and services. And so it is a pretty, it's a, and it lands a lot on the founder too, because that's, that's the person that's meant to provide a lot of that education. So yeah, capping those really becomes important because you just can't take all of that. You can't coach everybody individually one-on-one. So anyway, there's a lot of balance and all that, that I don't guess anybody gets right, but that's what we're always trying to do. Nice. And so speaking of communities and speaking of thrival, what is kind of the unique angle of thrival? Like what, what is kind of different in this community versus some of the others in terms of focus? Yeah, I think, I think it's probably similar to a lot of what you'll find with a lot of community-led leaders is a lot of the focus comes out of their own experience. A lot of times, like Jason Statz, you know, on the, on the technology side is just pretty, pretty crazy. You know, what, what he's done, and just the depth of what he does on that side, that becomes a focus of a community, the realized community. For us, my journey has always been very entrepreneurial. I'm just one of those serial entrepreneurs. I've always wanted to work for myself, start things, fail things. Now we have two full-time growing businesses, and it takes a lot, you know, so the balance of that is, takes a lot. I have a partner that, that really helps me define a lot of that value and how we work. So a lot of what you're going to find in Thrival is, we are entrepreneurially focused on that, that firm owner. You know, how to, how to manage being a leader, how to, you know, scale a business, how to grow it. So we have a lot of, you know, construct around the structure of building a services organization that will help you grow. So it's, you know, it's, it's process is team, you know, and so our community says, Hey, share your job description with me. And we build accountability charts. We show them how to build those. We coach people through it. We consult with firms who have built their firms in poor ways that are overwhelming them. And so we unravel a lot of misordered growth, we say. We have business models that help firms fit into, I'm writing a book now. So there's, so it's really focused on the entrepreneur building a better business in a way that helps them manage themselves well, too. So there's a ton of leadership we talk about, and how as leaders, a lot of times, we're actually in our own way. So helping people figure out and become more aware, What am I like as a leader? Where do I struggle? And so we'll coach them, too. We'll coach them through the mental weight that it is to run your own deal. So it's very entrepreneurially focused. And a lot of the things we do, like our Deeper Weekend Conference, that's for firm owners. We want firm owners coming. That's the key. And they just come together and really just help each other with their stories and what they're trying. Because, you know, we'll teach some, but all the firm owners are so brilliant to all the things they've gone through, and all the things they teach each other when we do breakouts at tables and things like that. So it's an entrepreneurial focus of thrival. That's what you'll get there. Interesting. Yeah. And I hear you talk a lot about like mindset and things like that. Like, speaking of Deeper Weekend, you just released a segment talking about strategic owner rest. Yeah. And I thought that was really interesting. So to give like a really quick high level summary, but basically, sometimes you just need to be off and turn your brain off and relax. But other times you need to refocus and kind of recharge your battery by doing something where you're going to be inspired and learn from others. Right. Is that kind of a good way to put it? Yeah, no. Yeah, you got it right. And Julie, my partner, kind of came up with that. And we taught some of that in a, we have three levels in thrival. And the highest level venture owners, they have a little bit bigger firms. We do a summit, a private summit, a live summit for them in May. And we taught some of those concepts there, which was based, just like anything, we as humans, we have to label things. So when we, like nowadays, we talk a lot about, Hey, you need to rest or rest more. And so we broke that down a little bit more. It's like, what, what actually are we talking about? Sometimes you need to rest, rest is what we called it. Rest, rest is truly it's, it's, you know, it's checking out, right? It's not doing things that engage your mind. But owners specifically need something called owner rest. And, and again, we made the concepts up. So we're just trying to teach what does rest look like for you? What kind of rest do you need? And owner rest is where, no, you need to rest from this firm, be having the weight of this firm being on top of you. But you do need to go to conferences and be with other people like you. And that's a more strategic form of rest. That owner rest is still where you now are stepping away from the weeds of the operation of a firm and step into more of a strategic place where the owner now is being fed. Right. And so a lot of, because a lot of people when they leave, you know, you, you know, you've been to conferences, when you leave them, you feel inspired. You know, you met these people and you, you heard some concepts you've never heard before. And that's a form of rest that you need. And what you need to do is get away from the, the daily grind of producing tax returns and giving those to clients, you know. And so that was rest, rest is kind of step away from everything. And then owner rest was really a more of a strategic form of stepping away from the operations of the firm and stepping into feeding yourself as an owner and having people encourage you. That's basically kind of what we came up with. And I imagine you're probably heavily involved in the operations and putting on deeper weekend. So what is your strategic owner rest look like? Yeah. So our strategic owner rest is typically when Julie and I can step away to our, our weekly strategic time. So we have some strategic times to step away from the operations of the firm. I'm the CEO and she's the COO. So thankfully, a COO role really shields the CEO from a lot of the weight of the operations. So I'm not in, they, they want me to speak into the value of it, the messaging of it, the content of the design of it. Those are things that Julie has me in. But the operations of the conference, and it's funny, we do a private podcast for our community. We just did one on how we actually do the conference, which takes a year to pull off. And kind of we talked through, and the guts of the operations of that conference are so deep. You know, it's, it's stepping away from that. And then one thing Julie and I probably haven't done a good job of is we need to step away and go to our own conferences. So, you know, often when I'll go to Engage or somebody else's conferences, I'm still there, I'm speaking. And so, and that's, that's okay. But, you know, we, we need our own conferences in our own community. And we don't really have that. And we haven't invested in that as much. But that's something we need. And we're thinking about too. Interesting. I love the concept of it, by the way, too. I've never been able to identify it. Like, right, like, sometimes I need to go sit on a beach. Sometimes I need to be really into running and going to the gym. And other times I need to just consume and stop creating for just a minute, right? Like, that's it. Take a little beat. Yeah, yeah. And you know, Dom, when you're, especially podcast, you're, you're just, you're just outputting all the time. And that it does empty you. So you find doing this kind of creative work, you do need to be fed. And that's what that owner rest, that strategic rest is about is, you know, making sure you're topping off the creativity and really challenging your mind. So reading, obviously, is a huge key to being very creative, very creative. People also are, they have huge intakes of new disparate types of information that challenge them and what they think. So my partner, Julie, and I just love that. We love books, we're always reading books, four or five books at a time. And that that's what really sparks our thoughts and imagination. So, but it's also valuable to go away, leave sometimes an environment. An environment is really important. So when we consult with firms, we won't consult with them in the environment in which they typically work. So we'll require them to move outside of a known environment. And they, we have to move to a neutral environment, one that's neutral to us we've never been in, and one that is neutral to them and their team. And so environments sometimes get in our way. They hold us back a lot of times. And you just don't know that until you do it a lot. And then sometimes you're like, I got to leave my office. It's driving me bonkers. I got to get out of the freaking room I'm in. And it does. And then we all know it's like, oh, wow. I just take my laptop, go to a coffee shop. And it's like, wow, why is this different? Environments spark that too. So it's just really interesting to know your mind and to know yourself like that. Yeah, yeah, no, I wholeheartedly agree. And I moved a year ago, and I finally got to move out of a, an office bedroom into a small corner, you know, corner of the house office. And yeah, that I think is like an underrated thing of like, yeah, sure. COVID isolated people and like working from home and all that. But I think that like the rise of the in your bedroom home office where you were not meant to have a home office is just like devastating, like for your mental health, for your creativity, for your ability to even rest when you're in that bedroom, not trying to do work, right? Like just all the things like that. I think like that was that was horrific. And I feel the difference now that I've moved into this office, which again, it's not a great office, but it's so much better. But it's different. And it's a different location. And I go to I've gone, I'm in a co-work space, I have my own office in a co-work space. And I've done that for many, many years. You know, so just, you know, and again, we're virtual, you know, nobody can show up and drop off tax documents, because I wouldn't know what to do with them if they did. But I get up and shower and get dressed. And I drive, I commute 20, 20 minutes to do a co-work. And it, it just changes everything about my productivity. I'm, you know, I'm very, very highly productive person, only because I have to be. And so coming to an environment that is where I produce, and I just produce a lot, produce a lot of content, thought, and leadership. That's my job. So I have to do it. But yeah, so going back and forth with you, I will say I noticed there was a lot of what seemed like probably administrative assistants and or executive assistants and people who are looped in and doing all of that. And I'm curious to know, like, how crucial is that for being able to have like an uncluttered mind and be able to just create? And how did you get to that point? Yeah, no, it's pretty substantial. I don't have, I don't really manage my calendar at all. And I have about three or four people that do that. Even my partner leads the strategy of my calendar. I don't even do that. And I, you know, it, I guess that it took time, you know, to get through that there was a time I was doing it on my own. And then when you launch other companies, you're like, okay, just the, just the emailing, the back and forth is, is part of our work, right? It's so much a part of our work. And they're just over time, then my partner would start helping me with that. And then we would start having somebody else help us. And our work is so strategic, like who I spend time with or don't spend time with, sometimes is the definition of where we will be or will not be successful. So it's, which is true for everybody. And so it's so key. So it was hard on me really to give up really control of that. But I find I'm way more than more productive than most people, only because I've given up something that I would tend to run through my own personal lenses and preferences. You know, I'm tired, blah, blah, blah. You know, if, when I did struggle, I had full control, and I would just give up and walk out, you know. And, and sometimes you feel like doing that. But your calendar has been blocked. And so when you, when you get to that point, you find that other people, they can care more for you than you can care for yourself. Because you sometimes are the one person that's in your own way. Your own fear is what prohibits sometimes the productivity of how you even block your own calendar. And so you have this other person, my partner, Julie, goes, No, I actually know you can do this. And you start to trust that person. And then you start to lean in. And then you start to really dominate. You really start to do things that, and what you've done, when you've given that over to somebody else, you've pushed outside of what your own personal inhibitions and limitations, you didn't realize where they were holding you back. But when you give it up to somebody else, which is a truly a fearful thing, that's very scary. You should do that very slowly. You know, it, you start to find out it was very, very, it was the thing that was preventing me from being who I wanted to become. And so that, that took time. And you can walk your way through that. It's going to take time. might use Calendly or something at first, but even that was not strategic enough to get meetings placed into the blocks of the calendars that we've designed to be high-level thought, low-level weed thought, content writing. You know, our calendar is such a protected place that we couldn't give it over even to a piece of technology. I'm not saying everybody should do that because it's a tool that really makes things more efficient, but in our work, there was a time we passed a level of trying to be efficient, which we have to be. We're moving to more of a strategic decision-making thing, which I do not need to do this, and I need somebody else to say no, so I don't even have to say that no. Even saying the no sometimes is a mental wrestling that can funnel through the minds of other people, and then you can be shielded and protected to really devote yourself to the yeses that you've said, and that's where the place is I'm most productive. And again, Julie knows the places I'm most productive sometimes more than I know those about myself, which is crazy to even come to realize that. Yeah, I love getting your thoughts on that, of someone who's executed that, because that, to me, is learning to leverage your time and focus on the things that you are really good at and that will have impact, and remove some of those other things. I mean, proof is in the pudding. Yeah, totally. That's truly just an idea that I've always, always, always been interested in. My dad actually laughs at me for this, but he was like, yeah, when you were young, sometimes I was like, hey, come learn how to change this muffler or whatever. And I was like, dad, I will never once in my life do that. I will hire someone to do that, I promise you. And he comes from a different generation, different mindset. He would get really mad at that, and then, you know what, it's played out. So I tell him, and I'm like, hey, man, it's crazy to me that I knew that as a 10-year-old, but somehow- Well, most 10-year-olds don't. But the yeses and the nos, that's where you're actually gonna win or lose in life. And sometimes it's hard to know what those are for yourself, but yeah, that's cool when you're like, muffler is a no, I need to say no to taking in that knowledge and turns out you were right. Yeah, it could have played out a completely different way, and now he's pointing his finger at me, but it's funny that even back then, I really had this inclination where I was like, I wanna get really, really, really good at what I'm doing, and then transition that towards higher and higher leverage actions and opportunities. And then the things that I'm not good at, and there's a lot of them, like I am a barely functional human being when it comes to managing a calendar or booking an appointment and things like that, but I'm like, you don't have to be. You don't. Yeah, so I love seeing that in action from folks like yourself and where you've managed to accomplish so much. I'm like, okay, I see that this is working. Yeah, well, and they have tons of processes built around my calendar that they didn't know that Julie created would teach them, they would not do it, and then they would meet together and go, no, it's gotta work this way for that calendar to operate at the level we all want it to operate, which is the CEO of both of these companies. But as a human, I had to give up some beliefs too. That is what's really hard. It's like having somebody make decisions on your behalf, that's a real, truly life-changing place to have somebody that you can trust enough to go, when you make the decision, sometimes it will be a better choice than when I made it, even if I don't like it. That's a mental battle that I really fought with my partner on pretty hard. And how did you overcome that? What was the breaking point on that? Probably just her getting pissed off a lot and was fighting about it. Well, she's a very direct person, but she's very caring too. So she's always been very direct about, you are inhibiting the very things you tell me you want. You voice things you want and your actions show me something different. Let me help you. And then you can have the thing you say you're wanting, as long as we're on the same page about what that is. So we really had to wrestle through that. And then one way we wrestled through it is through our calendar. So we block our calendar a year in advance. We block out our calendar a whole year in advance. And I know people are like, you can't do that. And we've been doing it for years. But there's a massive strategy to it. And there's so much teaching related to it because you can't just go block your calendar and expect you can predict the world to happen. So it's a strategic decision to say your yeses that you then manage through a year as the real realities come about. But what you find when you do things like that is you were more right than you knew you could be by defining a future you wanted to walk into. And a lot of times we don't believe that, but a future, we have a lot more power to decide what it is than we think we do. Now I've learned that. So if there's any launch of some new thing, Julie says, oh, we can do it. Yeah, it will happen. Because if she gets it on a calendar, the thing we launched will take place. That new course, that launch, that new website, that conference, it's not like it won't happen. We just have to really be good about saying the yeses it's gonna take and make sure we say the nos so that those don't get in the way of the yeses. And so probably it was through the calendar. She really started leaning into predefining some future. And I wrestled with that. I was giving up my freedom. Don't take my freedom away from me, all that stuff. But now we see that embedded in a lot of entrepreneurs' minds. When they come in, they're like, I'm an entrepreneur. I'm addicted to freedom, man. And I'm like, oh boy, we're gonna have to dismantle this belief system because I can probably tell you that's what's in your way because your prediction of freedom is actually not what it takes to commit to the thing you're telling me you want to commit to. And so a calendar was the battleground. We did this on and I gave in and she was right. Nice, well, good on you for being able to recognize that. Finally, it took a lot, but we're all thick-headed, so. Nice, so a question I've been wanting to ask you, even personally, from one person running a podcast to another who's been doing it for a lot longer, I would love to know how the podcast has influenced your career trajectory, as well as just how that network has really developed through the podcast. Yeah, yeah, podcasts are so cool, aren't they? Man, this was true. So we have one podcast we've been running for 13 years and another one we've been running for 12 years. So combined about 25 years of podcasting. And I think, yeah, it has expanded our network globally. So there's just no doubt about that. And Dom, you know this, you can ask anybody to be on a podcast. Oh yeah, it's incredible. It's like, wait, you said yes to me? Crazy, it is such an open door to invite anybody into the podcast. And some shows you're on, they're using you more for their benefit. But there are some shows like yours where, no, we're trying to learn stuff and we do learn stuff together. Those are the best shows. But you can invite anybody. So your network is really just completely expansive. You can touch on anybody. So I think if anything, what it's done is it's expanded our ability to be thought leaders, to speak into how firms should run, how the leaders of firms should operate, the things they should watch out for. So it does expand your voice and your message. And so it's hard to tie all of your growth directly to a podcast because it's just, you know this, there are some pretty good podcast metrics, but they're not as awesome as people think they are. You can get your downloads and things like that. And maybe the country IP address people are logging in from and things like that. But they go through so many different aggregators too that it's really hard to pinpoint a lot of that stuff. But we've done it for so long, just the expansive nature of being known, allowing that to grow our business has really been what's been a foundation to our growth. Because a lot of our companies are based upon thought leadership as a marketing tool. And that's not true for everybody. Some people run a business, they're just localized into that business. They want clients to bring them. But some people move out and go, well, I have to be a public face of something. I have to say something that can help people. And so that is kind of a marketing strategy to help people through the messaging that you give. And podcasting is just a platform to do that on. So yes, it has been a foundational part to what we do. And the more you do it, the more you have to develop a lot of processes around it, as you know, if people don't run a podcast. Yeah, it's a super process oriented job. I mean, it is just book guests, schedule, tell them the question, give them the links. It's just so much to it, follow-ups. And then there's a lot after a podcast, where it gets shared and there are clips and all of that takes post to edit work. And it's just a lot of work to a podcast, but it's very, very beneficial. And then of course, the people you meet and the things you learn. Yeah, that's just mind blowing. I mean, you get such an MBA degree out of the minds of so many smart people. Yeah, it's hilarious by doing this. I've been like, should I start a firm next? Because it's just like all I've been learning. Like it's crazy, right? And I'm like, oh man, I was like, that's not the direction I wanted to steer this ship in, but hey, we'll see, we'll see. Yeah, you're like now an awesome firm owner and you don't even run one. Yeah, come on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So after all this calendar talk, I want to be super respectful of your calendar, but I still have a couple of things I wanted to get to. So mind if I just kind of rapid fire just a couple of things at you? Let's do it. Let's do it. I'll try not to talk a lot. Don't. Perfect. Okay, how do you think you grew such a large following on LinkedIn? Probably time. Yeah, I think we have 600,000 followers or something like that. And I think that just accumulated over time. I think probably a lot of people can point to certain things. I think at one point LinkedIn said, we want to promote you as some kind of thought leader at some point. And then LinkedIn would start pushing me out. And then that dumped tens of thousands of people onto a follower list. So probably time. And then some really just key situations that caused that. Okay, interesting. And consistency over said time. Consistency has to be part of it, yeah. Do you think that the average firm is heavily under indexing on socials? Yeah, probably for sure. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I say that cautiously because then if they go, cool, let me just push all of my content out through all my socials. And they go, Jason, I don't have all the clients that I thought I was going to have. It may not be so directly tied to that as much as you think. It is a just huge marketing engine. So I think firms are probably under utilizing it for sure. Yeah. And I think a new generation might be a little bit more willing to make buying decisions based on that versus the old school, met him at a cigar lounge and played around a gulf. Yeah. Well, I think that is happening, right? So the younger generations are, that's just how they purchase. That's how I purchase now. But my kids do it differently than I did. And they're all grown than how I do it. So yeah, I think it is underutilized and different generations do things differently than previous generations. And you have to recognize that. So your content and podcast has been a great influence for me over the last four or five months. Who are your biggest influences? Oh, wow. But probably my partner does, Julie does have thoughts about business and how all these things work. Probably she is the most direct influential person. Probably a lot of the basis of the things I write, the deeper type ways that I write, cause I do a lot of long form content. I write a lot of eBooks for companies and things like that. Just some deeper thinkers are people like Peter Block is probably what I would call my mentor. He's just a philosophical business mentor. He's in his high eighties now. He doesn't do much anymore, but I've had him on our podcast a few times. And he's probably transformed my thoughts more foundationally about how humans do work together and what leadership is all about. Just always blew my mind the things that I would learn. And then, so a lot of writers too, David Baker, Blair Enns, Ron Baker, a lot of these people challenge who I am. And then there's some people in my network that are closer to me. And those people have a right to challenge me, to disagree with me. Our leadership team, they challenge how we think and things like that. So probably broadly writers, people even outside of our profession and books do most of that. Then more closely would be probably my partner. I love that. I think writing is criminally underrated as a skill, even in the accounting, even in the tech space, the best professional development dollars I ever spent were on this creative writing course by Sean Porry. And I did another one on copy work from Sampar. I just, I really think that being able to write like captivating copy and I'm not there yet, but I think it evolves the way things brew in your mind as well. And you're able to put it like that and it's incredibly valuable. Yeah, it is. And then when you're hired to do it for other people, they feel the freedom to critique it. And then of course you're learning even more. So yeah, you're right. Writing is just so underrated grief. Yeah, okay. And then my last question is, is there something that you're most excited for about the future of accounting? Yeah. Yeah, I've been through a lot of the changes, you know, the cloud and we all thought that was gonna flush us all down the toilet and we're gonna lose our jobs. So now AI, right? We're gonna all lose our jobs and things. All that, those are all lies. So I'm just really always excited about how this profession pivots into the future. And the cool thing is it's a profession that's so solidly part of our world and our work, entrepreneurial work, that there'll always be a place for what we do, which I'm very excited about. And if you believe that, then you don't have to fear a lot of the things that come. So I'm really excited the way new generations do things is gonna change and challenge us and make us all get better. So AI specifically is just mind-blowing. Every day we see some new Twitter post and we're like, oh my God, like you can just type that sentence and that's a movie is created out of AI. I mean, it's scary what it can do, but that tool I know is gonna be so life-changing for everybody. And it's gonna make our work so different in the profession, in good ways. And it's gonna challenge all of us to behave and act in different ways too. I'm excited to see what it does. So more than anything, it's very cool. I love that as a message. And yeah, I think we'll focus on higher value, higher leverage tasks that'll be more creative, be more interesting. And I think that's what it is, right? Yeah, I think so. Awesome. Well, I'm so excited to have had you on Jason. I really appreciate you taking the time. And yeah, thank you so much. And I'll make sure I link Deeper Weekend in the podcast notes. I'm not sure if it's too late to buy tickets by next week, but there's always next year. No, you can. Yeah, we'll be selling them into, some people are buying them in September sometimes. So all the way through September. So yeah. Awesome. And for firm owners most specifically, right? Yeah. Okay, perfect. Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jason. Really appreciate you taking the time. Thank you, Dom. I appreciate it. Bye. Bye bye. Ciao