Lifestyle Design & Early Career Hacks with Tony Wilson

Hello and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I'm joined today by Tony Wilson, founder of both Equip, a fractional CFO agency for digital agencies and TaxMinded, a community for tax professionals. Welcome to the pod, Tony. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate it. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks for sitting through my retake of that intro. You have the easiest to pronounce last name in the world and I just bungled it. Totally fumbled it. That's okay. I'll forgive you this one time. Perfect. Well, yeah. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm always kind of curious about, you know, as a starting point, what led you to kind of virtual CFO work? That's a great question. So my background is audit. It's where I started my career. Got my CPA that way. Didn't really do anything on the tax side. Didn't really have any interest in it at the time. I went into corporate America then thereafter, got a lot of experience in what I consider to be more managerial type of accounting. So really, what are we doing with the numbers that helps drive the business forward kind of stuff, right? So when it was time for me to move on and do my own thing, you kind of have a couple different avenues you can go if you want to try to start your own firm. And what I saw a lot of my friends doing was going the bookkeeping route, right? And that's like really low ticket offer. You know, typically you're going to be pressed, you're really going to be pressed into pretty low price points, talking somewhere in the ballpark of like 300 to 500. If you're really, really good and people really like you, maybe it's 600 to 700, but not, you can't really do much by way of like white glove service at that price point. I knew the types of people I wanted to work with were the types of people where I had maybe four or five, six clients, and I could give them that kind of white glove experience. And so actually fun, fun fact, I've resisted fractional CFO as a title for a long time and eventually gave up the fight because of this. I was listening to the people who were paying me money. And what they told me is they said, Tony, we look at you as a fractional CFO. So even though you and I both know, like CFOs do a whole heck of a lot more than what I'm doing, but it doesn't matter what we believe we should be called. What matters is what resonates with the people you're trying to serve and reach. So I kind of just went with the flow and here we are at fractional CFO services. Nice. And I mean, virtual FP&A senior manager, like does not roll off the tongue in the same way. So that's often what those services kind of are. Right. And my last role was an FP&A and just the nature of it, I was like, that'd be actually like really interesting to do is like agency type work where you get to roll on to a whole bunch of other clients. Because I mean, often it's, you know, a lot of your time goes into staying on top of things, staying on top of the latest trends and stuff like that. And like, you know, my, my biggest home run at the company I was at was when rates were skyrocketing and whatnot. And I was like, Hey, we're like a big series B company with a lot of cash in the bank. And like, we were not in treasuries. And I was like, you know, the amount of, of financial unlock that, like that one point and then, you know, following half day of work, uh, you know, I think if you went around and did that to kind of every company you could find, like, yeah, you could generate like tremendous amounts of value for what you're doing. So I think that that does make a lot of sense as a service. Yeah. Yeah. And I think especially as I get to know the digital agency space, and we'll talk about this in a minute, but as I get to know the digital agency space a lot more, there's very specific pain points that are unique to them, right? So we might say fractional CFO, but like, am I really getting involved in raising rounds? Never. Right. Because like digital agencies aren't really going to be sourcing funds from VCs or, you know, angel investors, unless there's a very extenuating circumstance, like they're developing IP and, you know, they want to spin off another company that happens occasionally. But by and large, the type of work that we're doing is really focused on the main pain point, which for a lot of digital agencies is dealing with the ebbs and flows and the, and the roller coaster cycle feast and famine cycle that comes with agency, agency work. And so providing things like cashflow forecasting is like pretty bread and butter when it comes to fractional CFO services. And yeah. So why, why the decision to niche down into digital agencies specifically? So obviously, like you mentioned, they do have certain unique problems, but was there like a, like a specific area of interest in there where you started off with some pretty good connections or? Yeah. A little bit of both. Right. So the very first, actually a really good friend of mine, while I was still employed, the very last couple of months of me being employed, he said, Hey, we really need your help to do some of our books. Right. And, and they were a software development agency. So that would kind of give me the foray. And I was like, okay, I'm digging this agency space. And what I, what I did first is I said, what's the type of person I want to work with? And then conversely, what's the type of person I don't want to work with people I don't really have interest in working with are super fast paced, like we're going to rip the, the, you know, paint off the walls with our speed in growth, you know, SaaS startup kind of thing. Like there's a time and place for it. My life does not jive with that. What I'm really looking for are the people who are growing intentionally. They're growing steadily. They're pretty level headed. They're also, they want to grow. It's not that they want to stagnate, but they're doing it in a way that's very measured. And what I found was, as I looked across the landscape, looked at the people I was already working with, I'm like, agencies pretty well fit that mold because they recognize that there's a limitation to the extent of their growth. They're not going to scale. You can't scale an agency's model business. You can grow it. You can't scale it. And so I'm like, I think that best aligns to the persona that I want to serve. Love that from a lifestyle design perspective, it sounds like you kind of like worked backwards from there, which I think too many people kind of like stumble into whatever it is they're doing. I've gotten like really obsessed with the idea of like lifestyle design lately where it's like, okay, like start at where you want to end up and then kind of you, you can work backwards from there and make decisions accordingly. Right. And I think for me, after, you know, getting fed up with job after job after job, like that kind of ended up looking like, you know what, I think I owe myself this foray into entrepreneurship because in every vision of like my happiest future, it looks like I'm kind of doing my own thing. And also there is a possibility of these higher in like outcomes that like are not, you know, are not really going to be available for you in the kind of corporate world, especially after having, you know, my second discussion of like, listen, yeah, like your teams ultimately is a cost center. So like they're, you know, when things are the way they are, like raises are probably not going to be tremendous. And so that like really forced me to kind of think critically about like the path that I'm on. And I was like, that's a discussion I'm going to have to have time and time and time again. So how do I kind of move past that and not have that be the case? Right. So yeah. Picking up on that, that theme of lifestyle design, you know, I think we all, I don't know, one thing I've noticed as, as we have discussions about niching and finding your niche is I think if we're honest, like probably 95% of people are like, I work with service businesses. I'm like, first of all, that's not a niche. That's like most of the businesses that are in America, be real. Second of all, the reason why you want to do service businesses is because you don't have to deal with inventory, right? And so I think like the whole lifestyle design, you know, part of the reason why we don't necessarily want to work with inventory is there's added complexity, added like headache that comes with that, you know, so that rules out like e-comm or, you know, any, anything of that nature, it's most common business model. But also sometimes we think to ourselves, yeah, maybe that would be nice to work with like construction company or like something like a, like a hometown, like a, like a plumber or something like that, like a, you know, these people seem like their lifestyle business owners. And it's like, they are, but then the problem with, with trying to reach them is they don't have money, right? Like the only people who have money are the ones that have grown substantially. And those people, they're a slightly different demographic than, you know, your mom and pop, you know, five truck plumber business. And so I think the, the, the beauty of the agency space is that they're typically very well compensated professionals. You know, we're talking billable rates, effective hourly rates of anywhere on the ballpark of 160, $170 an hour up to 250, 300 an hour. So you're usually working with a highly compensated individual or agency group of people. So they, they can tend to afford the richer services that you have to offer. Yeah. And, and I mean, it's finding who you're going to be able to relate to really well too, right? Like, you know, maybe, maybe a bold assumption, you're given city boy vibes as am I, I just had a discussion this morning in a group chat where, you know, one of my friends was asking about the best ride, you know, ride on mowers, cause he moved out to the country and I got tagged in the group chat, Hey Dom, anything to add on this topic and you know, whatever. So there's, there's a certain type of, you know, advantage that you will do a lot better if you actually like relate to the people that you're working with. And like for some people, like I think a blue collar worker distinction is a great niche, honestly, to, to follow it's just, yeah, you're going to have to be ready for different challenges, maybe more like paper, less, you know, less digital copies and things like that. And, um, I think increasingly those businesses can be pretty good, uh, financial financially, but, um, yeah, you're going to have a whole set of challenges and when you can relate to the people, that's fantastic. So, um, so a little bit of a different question is, uh, just based off how I noticed that your setup is incredible, um, your video quality, your audio quality and all of that. How important has content creation been for generating like business leads for you? Yeah. Well, I'll say the same thing that I've been told from other people that I've actually experienced myself too, is typically, uh, I, I can't draw a one for one of the leads that come in the door to the content I produced, but time and time again, what I'm noticing is I'm having, I'm able to have conversations with people that are richer, that are better qualified, uh, and people that, you know, if they do come into my orbit, they're typically more much more ready to buy than if, uh, than if I didn't do content. So I look at content as a way, I think somebody, somebody said, you know, content is not a game at lead generation content as a lead at, uh, or as a, uh, game at authority building. And I've definitely seen that to be the case, you know, for example, tomorrow, by the time this episode airs, it'll probably be in the past, but for the, when we're recording this tomorrow, I'm going to be, I have been invited to be a presenter on, uh, an agency summit. It's an all day webinar. Uh, they've got two stages and I mean, some of the people I'm sharing the stage with, they're, they're pretty well known in the agency space. And so I would not have the opportunity to have those types of conversations if I wasn't putting out content on a regular basis. Yeah. That's a fantastic way to put it. Um, I think that, yeah, I agree with that a hundred percent. And I think that there's a little bit less of like having to sell your expertise once you do get on the call with the person they go, oh, okay. Like I already see. And I've heard of you and whatever. I've seen, I've seen some of the stuff you produce, like I already have kind of trust in you, which is great. Um, so on the front of content creation as well, uh, I really like that you aren't afraid to kind of like get silly with it. So you recently did like a deck the halls, uh, you know, song, you know, remake for your own businesses purposes. Um, very well executed first of all. Thank you. But second of all, like, is, is that like a key to kind of like generating more, you know, more leads, more impressions from these, like, are those usually your most successful posts? It's a great question. It's actually something that I've recently been inspired to do. Um, because like most of the content I've been putting out as of the last few months has been a lot more kind of like even keeled, a little bit more educational oriented. And I'm seeing some of the people that I'm following on LinkedIn, people that I, I look up to and I respect a ton and I'm seeing a trend in their content, which is a lot more, you know, a lot more personable, a lot more showing their personality. And I'm like, as a consumer of their content, I feel so much more engaged with them. Cause I'm like, Oh, you're a human being. Oh wow. That's actually really appealing. That's, it's enticing. And so I will say I'm in the stage right now of, I want to try more of it. Uh, I don't think I have like a ton of background. And I think the personal stuff that I'll share a lot of, you know, written posts are going to be, you know, pictures of my kids talking about like life experiences and that kind of stuff. But I would like to get into more just like, here's my quirky personality because, and this is true to the equip brand, uh, one of our core values is to death with dull. Uh, this, this idea that life is too short to be boring. And uh, I think that's a really important thing in the type of work that we do because we're talking about numbers and does anybody really like talking about numbers? No. So you have to do it. You have to be like a little bit more engaging and quirky. And are there good ways that you can actually like introduce that into client deliverables or is it just kind of more in like the client relationship and management type of side? That is a wonderful question. And I have a couple thoughts on that. A couple examples of that. I think one of the ways that I do that, especially with the video production setup that I have, you know, most of the time I'm sitting here when I'm, when I'm working on my client at work, I do everything I can to almost look at it from like a production standpoint. Like all the interactions that I have, whether it's a live call or oftentimes it's like pre recorded videos, I try to do it where it's video content. So it's not just an email being written, it's not just a Slack message, but I'm actually doing some, some video stuff, especially when we have like important things to talk about. I try to do that over video because you get more of the nuanced convert in the nuance of the conversation than, than just the written post. So I do think there is something to be said about trying to, you know, incorporate that into the conversations you're having. It's a fine balance to walk because you know, we're having conversations about your runway is, is shortening and we might need to lay off some people like, you know, obviously I'm not going to be in that post. But like at the right time, like for sure you can, you can be subtle. It's like 90% really professional and, and, and kept well together. And then like 10% just like lean into some jokes. Remember that you're people, you're human beings and, and have a fun time. And then over at equip, are you, you have one employee, right? I think. Correct. Right now. And we're actually in the process right now of hiring overseas as well. Okay. And when did you make that jump on the first hire? Really early on, really early on. No, I benefited a lot because first of all, I already knew her, like we were friends for over 10 years. She actually went to my church and her husband is like a really good friend of mine. So like it was, it was a no brainer for us. She was in the process of going back to school to get her accounting degree because she'd been a stay at home mom, her whole working career. And she had expressed an interest to getting into the accounting field and I'm like, come work for me, like come work with me. And at the time it was like maybe a couple hours a month. So it was a, it was a really low barrier to entry for both of us. And then as time progressed, we've got more clients, client work. We just continue to kind of increase it, increase it to now, you know, she's, she's probably at capacity at about 20 hours a week, hence the reason why we're hiring overseas to kind of take some of that, some more of those lower level tasks off her plate so she can elevate her work. But I'd say, yeah, early on we, we made that hire. Okay. And I think it's nice that you got to kind of scale that up because where I was leading with this is like, how, how did you cope mentally with like making that jump? Right. Because I've got no one on payroll and you know, this has happened with big fortune transparency already. I, you know, I messaged the guy who helps me with the accounting and payroll and I was like, Hey, uh, we've got to push payroll this week because you know, whatever, I haven't been good at collection. And so as soon as you have that other person on staff, like you are kind of now responsible for this person's livelihood, right? And at the same time, you now have this pretty large, especially if they're a full-time employee of this pretty large fixed expense on your books where like, you know, you, you've just got to make that work and your fixed expenses excluding your own salaries at that point probably go from like $15,000 of tech and advertising or whatever to a hundred thousand dollars all of a sudden. Right. Um, good on you for, I mean, having that, you know, opportunity first of all, but I think that the people who are changing professions or looking to reenter the workforce after being stay at home moms and things like that, I think that's a hugely undertapped market. And I've had that conversation with some people before of like, listen, like you're looking for talent, like look in some of maybe these alternative markets as well, I think is a really, really good place. Yeah. I think it also speaks to something that we ascribe to at equip as well, which is a insatiable curiosity. Like we're always learning. Uh, and so because of us always being learners, we also recognize that like, we also want to be teachers, right? Like we want that to be a part of our culture. And so the way I look at it is it's like a perfect win-win, right? Stay at home mom wants to enter the workforce, wants to reenter the workforce. And I have a lot of, uh, desire to, to educate and to, to build up. And I'm like, well, why not marry those two together? Like I'm not going to be able to pay the best, right? I just had a conversation with a gal, we were trying to decide whether she would be the right fit for this particular role. And um, you know, she's in a higher cost of living area. And so I said, you know, I hate to break it to you. Like, I don't have a lot to work with here and we're talking like $20 an hour to be an apprentice with us. And she's like, yeah, that's a little on the light side. I'm like, I get it. I don't judge you, but also that's the best we can do. So it's, it's recognizing that sometimes it's a win for them, even if they're not able to get paid at the rate that they want to be paid, knowing that there's something else that they're getting from the experience with you. Yeah. And if you can get them there in a reasonable timeline, great. And if not, then, okay, cool. Like they got that first nine month ramp back into the workforce. It is what it is. You understand that they move on because again, there's better paid opportunities and that's great. Right? Like that kind of works out for everyone. So I'm happy to hear that. Um, I think that that's like a really underrated market and it's, again, it's hard to fit within the traditional firm model, but now there's so many kind of like smaller scale firms and businesses kind of in the surrounding areas that I think like there's no reason not to be tapping that talent market. And like, again, like these people are perfectly competent, it's just get a little bit of rust off and they might need some sort of like, you know, changed work arrangement or it could be someone who was like in some other field, got injured, whatever, and has now moved on to accounting or something like that. Right. So, um, yeah. Kudos to you on that. I love that. Well, one other, one other thought I was going to introduce on, on that topic as well is, you know, for people who are listening, who are like considering this as an option, I would just say, first of all, do it. Like I think it's a great, great step. And the second thing I would say is make sure that when you take that leap, that you really reorient your thinking away from this person is a cog in the wheel to get more of my stuff done and more, Oh, my job went from, I'm doing client client delivery to now I am like building this person up. I'm educating them. I'm giving them review notes. I'm helping them, helping them be successful. Like make your, your main primary focus to be about supporting them. And what you'll find is like, you know, and this is the case for, for my accountant too. I've told her so many times, I'm like, you have my complete blessing and support to leave whenever it makes sense. Like I, I wanted this to be a launchpad for you. Um, and what you find is like, you treat people like that. And she's like, no, I might, I want to stay. I want to stay for as long as I can. And it's, it's, I'm not like manipulating her. Like she's staying on the court, but, but she's staying because she's the way she's treated and the flexibility that I'm trying to give her. Um, and I would just say like, do that. Like you don't have to, you know, not in all circumstances, you don't have to pay this exorbitant amount, but what you can do is you can really focus on the things that they actually care about. Yeah. Yeah. Not bossing them around and, you know, saying, Oh, you got to go to the office now five days a week and things like that will go a long way. So, um, okay. So speaking about ramping up, um, to kind of professional experience, we had a topic that we talked about kind of previously, you talked about underrated jobs to take during school. Uh, can you kind of share that opinion and a little bit more about that? Yes. So my experience in college, all of the popular kids were getting all the sexy internships at all the sexy places. And I never really fit the mold for like the traditional student. I didn't live on campus. I didn't come in as a freshman, like all the stuff I was not traditional in any, in any way, shape or form. I didn't fit the mold and that extended to internships as well. And I felt really discouraged because of that, because I didn't hear the only thing I had heard from my professors and from my, my academic advisors was get an internship because internships are the thing that really secure your job future in whatever company. And so when I didn't get those internships, I was like, man, what's wrong with me? So what I did is I'm just like, well, I am a non-traditional student and I have capacity to work somewhere. Where am I going to work? And it started off with me working in a coffee shop and then I'm like, but I want to work doing something that I am actually is in my field that I'm studying to do. And so I ended up getting a recruiter call from account temps, which is a part of Robert half. And I came and did stuff like full charge bookkeeping and an AR clerk and an AP clerk and you know, like very simple tasks. I think at the time I was being paid maybe $18 an hour or $20 an hour, I think was the highest I ever got paid, uh, working with account temps. But I'm like, I could do it on a very flexible schedule. Um, you know, I, I would work in the morning and then the afternoon I'd go to my class and it was totally fine. And I'm like, why don't more students do something like this? Why are they working in coffee shops or in fast food restaurants or serving? Like why not work doing something like account temps? Yeah. I think that's interesting. I beat, I beef Robert half a lot just because, I mean, first of all, I think their comp data is embarrassing, but then also, um, I do find that kind of temp agency type situation to be, I find maybe a little bit exploitative. I mean, I don't know about theirs. I know nothing about theirs. Um, I just find like, I was incredibly paid all through university, um, doing the, like I was working at bars, I did credit card sales, I was like, uh, you know, unlicensed forklift operator. Let's not talk about that one too much. Like, you know, stuff like that. I was doing all kinds of stuff. Um, and then on the flip side, like I was able to kind of just get my practical experience through the firm model. And I think like, yeah, I think, you know, they're shoving down our throats at the university. Like if you're not at a big four, you're a loser, um, which I definitely disagree with now that I actually understand the industry and whatnot. But I do think that like a lot of small places are kind of like pretty hungry for talent that I think at the very least, like approaching them directly, um, and kind of like putting yourself out in the market might be like a better Avenue, but I do, I do like the thought of like, you know, AR, AP bookkeeping type roles still being like very valuable. Let me, let me pitch why I think it can be really valuable. So again, for me, um, my, my career then after I graduated college was an audit. I worked at Grant Thornton for two years and I remember going through audit walkthroughs and I remember because I had had experience in AR, in AP, in bookkeeping, I understood things in a much more nuanced way where like they were taking me through screens. I'm like, oh yeah, I got that. That makes sense. Makes sense. Makes sense. And I remember some of my peers who would sit with me on the walkers and they're just like eyes glaze over. And it's not because they're not smart. A lot of these people, quite frankly, are way smarter than I am, but it has to do with the fact that they didn't have that context. So I'm a big fan of like, while you're still, you know, a young kid, you're still in college. you don't know anything, go get the putsy job. Don't go do some of those finance putsy jobs so that when you graduate, you can be like, Oh, I've been there. I have an appreciation for the type of work that you're doing or these people are doing. Yeah. What I will certainly add kind of in support of that point is like I left and I'm, you know, I'm putting this in air quotes, but I left straight from tax at Deloitte into a air quotes controller job. Um, and I was, I was so deeply lost for so long on like ARAP kind of like bookkeeping stuff, which I was like, again, I understand the concept of like, no problem. I got an A in that class. And, you know, but in, in reality, it's a lot messier and it's a lot more about the systems than people think. It's a lot less about the theoretical knowledge and understanding. It's a lot more about like being able to put pen to paper or whatever mouse to computer screen and like make it happen. Um, I think that that's way harder than people think until they've actually done it. Um, even though a lot of these roles are very simple on the surface, it's just, they're hard to do well. Right? Yeah. It's like, until you are an AP clerk or until you're actually running the AP process, you never really think about like, Oh, somebody didn't send me an invoice. They send me a payment link, but I need to get double approval because of the dollar amount on this. Like you don't think about it the same way when you're actually the one doing it and you realize, Oh, we have roadblock after roadblock at a roadblock. So somebody who's actually at the ground level can much better troubleshoot. This is the thing we have to do versus somebody who's just come in and I've only ever audited this thing. They have no, no ability to kind of troubleshoot through that. They'll have to dive into the weeds like somebody else who has the experience. One thing you had said earlier though, is you were talking about, um, going to some of these firms and I'm, I'm actually a huge fan of that. When you, when you told me about that, I was like, actually, I think that's actually a better solution than going with the account temps route. The only pushback I have on that is we are still in the middle of a transition, a generational transition. And so if I tell, broadly speaking, I tell college students, go in and try to talk to some of these smaller firms to see if they would be open for something like that. I think what you'll find is you're going to get a lot of really discouraged accounting students who are like, I tried it, but these people are sticks in the mud and they think that this, yeah, things have to look exactly this one way. They're not thinking about things, you know, kind of forward looking. So I almost wish that there was a repository of like forward looking, smaller firms that you could reach out to that would be a little bit more open to something like that. Interesting. I like that. It's true that there does need to be some filtering. Cause you don't want to be like, you know, Hey, can you digitize these 12 years of paper for us interns? Um, so yeah, that's, that's very true. And then you also talked to me about some sort of like rotational program for like when you're a little bit further ahead, was it this called compass, right? I believe. Yeah, that's right. Can you talk to me about your experience with that and why you think that that's brilliant? Cause that to me, I was like, Oh, that's cool. It's so good. It's so good. I'm surprised. It's not more of a thing, but this is the great thing about having, you know, very niche podcasts like yours and also Blake Oliver's podcast. You know, you're speaking to a much more niche audience so we can, we can talk about more niche topics, but a shout out to my friends at formerly known as Salo. It's now a corn ferry company. Cause it was acquired, I want to say like two years ago maybe. Um, I loved Salo. Uh, there's a lot of really great things about that team and I learned a lot from them. They're the ones that spearheaded this compass program. I'm sure there's other companies that do it too, but here in the twin cities, uh, Minneapolis, uh, St. Paul, um, they, they're headquartered or they were headquartered and their whole premise of the program is that it was a pretty small program at the time when I was going through, I think we had like maybe 20 or 30, um, rotational members, but what they do is they target people coming out of public accounting and they set you on a salaried rotational kind of, kind of timeframe. You know, at a minimum, you're going to be on an engagement for three months at a maximum. It might be a year or more where you're with one, with one company. And it's brilliant from so many perspectives, right? So for people who are in public accounting right now, listening to my voice, uh, one of the things that you're probably thinking about is you come up to busy season. You're like, Oh, is now the time I'm going to jump before it's busy season? Um, which the answer is probably, yeah, yeah, probably. Um, but one of the problems with that jump, if we're being honest is I don't love the idea of leaving all the learning, right? Because public accounting is an excellent place to learn. I loved the learning. I don't have anything against the learning that happened. Right. I mean, you would agree, right? Oh yeah. It was the resources that they have, the focus on learning, even just the learning budgets they throw at you is fantastic. Yeah. Oh, totally. And it was like CPE for days and you're, you're fine. You're totally fine. Anyway. And then review notes, we, we hate them, but we love them at the same time. Right. Um, so, so one of the things that's hard is to leave that it's hard to leave that learning environment. Um, it's also really hard when you don't know anything else, it's hard to be like, yeah, I'm going to go and commit to this one long-term job where it might not be a right fit, not even close to a right fit. I just don't even know what I don't know at this point. Right. And so you've got a lot of really great foundational skills, especially if you're an audit, no, no knock on tax, but typically audit is going to set you up for more success in the corporate world than tax will just quite frankly, tax is great for a very specialized knowledge set, but it's not as well-rounded as audit fight me on that. If you want to, I'll let you have that one. Okay. Okay. Um, but you've got this really, really good foundational knowledge, but it's like, well, how can I continue to learn and not be overly committed to one particular role? Here comes the compass program. Right? So like my first rotation, I was out doing internal audit at a large, very large publicly traded bank. Uh, and then I went to a smaller SAS publicly traded company and I was helping them with their external reporting and some of their socks. I was touching everything because it was a very small finance team. And then I went out to a large publicly traded three PL. Um, so I got a lot of experience and the beautiful thing was for two and a half years on my resume, all that I had was one finance consultant, uh, for say low. Yeah. Yeah. I think that that's huge. It's like you kind of get maybe not the salary benefits of like the job hopping, but you get the learning benefits. Yes. And I think like the first three to six months everywhere I've been is like the most accelerated learning phase. Um, and then you just kind of get to learn it time and time again. Yeah. Well, and one other thing I'll say that is too, and I think a lot of people will be able to relate to this if they're coming out of public accounting is you almost need a detox period. Cause like something you will find is even if you go to a full-time job, you're going to still almost, you're almost going to feel bad for not working that 60 hours during busy season. And so there's, there's going to be this constant pull, but for something like the compass program I loved is I'm paid a salary, but the clients that I'm put on are paying the staffing company hourly. So it's incumbent on the, uh, the people who are, who I'm working for to make sure I don't work any more than 40 hours. Cause they don't want to pay time and a half. Cause that's part of the contract. That's such a good incentive structure and your benefit. Yeah. So great. Yeah. So I was working pretty consistently like 36, 38 hours and this is during busy season. It was a great time to detox and just take a deep breath and catch up on the life that I missed for the last two years. Nice. Yeah. I think that's fantastic program for people. If you're saying like, this isn't it for me, but like, I haven't found quite the right thing yet. I think this is a fantastic, like in the meantime type of thing and who knows, maybe you love it and you end up being whatever a corn fairy senior manager one day or whatever that like, you know, whatever that structure is, but like, I'm sure there is, there are avenues there for you to grow into that. But like, I think this is a fantastic, at the very least in the meantime of like, let me get out of here. Let me see the world and kind of like, go check it out. I think there's like this big almost like a, I don't know, like a myth that like your career in accounting needs to be so linear. Right. And I think these linear careers can actually be really, really limiting where like, if you're like, I've gone in tax, the highest paid opportunity for me is now to go into like some industry tax role. And you're never going to kind of see the world where like, again, like the best job opportunities I've gotten. I've talked about this one too much. The recruiter is probably going to end up hearing this one day, but the best, like the best paid job opportunity I ever got was like, I kind of had a left field because they're like, we love the variety of your experience. And we think that like all of this together, you have a really good view of the overall process. And so we want you to be in a process improvement role at like this huge company. And from that, like these generalist type opportunities would never come across your radar if you're just following this linear path. And yeah, like when I left from being a glorified controller at FDNA, like that was a linear move for me. Like there's one year I didn't really take like a big bump in pay, whereas I could have had I just followed that path. But then kind of four years later, that led to way higher paid opportunities than if I had just stayed on a linear path. Right. And I think people are very, very risk averse to like trying something funky in their career. And I think that like a lot of people are kind of missing out on even maybe eventually just finding their passion. Right. Like totally. I kind of stumbled into tax because I was like, I'm going to get the better manager. Like, you know, this guy is going to be my mentor if I go to this firm and tax. It's probably the way to go. And you know what, like tax was actually a pretty good fit for me. But like, I knew I was always for the rest of my life going to kind of be like, what was that like, you know, the client that I interfaced with, like, what's their job like? And so I kind of like owed it to myself to try and like, you can always boomerang, right? So, and I think that's that specific point, you can always boomerang. That's something that we miss out on, because we think so we can think so fixated. I mean, I was I was having a conversation with a friend of mine about a year ago. And, and she was open to I introduced her to somebody that I knew that was in the recruiting space. And I remember telling her, I'm like, you know what, I think your competencies and what you want to grow in, really lends itself well to something of a sales orientation. And guess what, recruiting is sales. It's just who you're selling to or who you're selling for. And so I would just kind of like was, you know, as a friend, not like a formal coach, but like just coaching her in that. And I remember kind of this like aha moment for her where she realized, you know what, even if this doesn't work out, I can still go make bank in some other role. And I think that's the thing that we need. That's like the superpower that I wish more accountants had, like as a, as a backdrop, is like, at any given moment, if I really needed to, I could suck it back up, head back to corporate America, and get a really decently paying job. You know, like, that's, that's the worst case scenario. So why not venture out? Why not try this and see if I fail? Yeah. Yeah. And like, that that understanding and that confidence in yourself, I think does actually kind of come from actively networking and kind of keeping yourself relevant, keeping yourself out there. Because I think if you do let all of those connections go super stale, it becomes really hard. But yeah, that was like a full blown discussion I had with my now fiance. We've been, we've covered this. I need to really stop calling her girlfriend. And family, like when I kind of left to do big four transparency full time, I was like, Hey, like worst case scenario here is like, I've got probably get like some partnerships role at like a firm, like a company selling into firms. And like, I'll be making 50% more than I'm making today. Right? So I was like, it was very interesting to kind of see like, there doesn't need to be that like huge, feared downside where it's like, the more you've kind of explored, the more you're a generalist. Yeah, the more you can kind of move on and do whatever, which is fantastic. So I'm into that. Yeah. Okay, so last topic I wanted to cover with you before I let you go, we're a little over time already here is tax minded. So you are not only working on equip, you're also working on tax minded, paid community for small firm solo accountants who are looking for camaraderie and support in their fields. I'm kind of curious to learn more about that. Like, how'd you identify the need for that? How'd you kind of get that started? And you know, what's next for it? Well, it's it's the it's the perfect origin story of I made it because I needed it. And it really, I promise people it was not it has never been about me trying to make money. In fact, in fact, within the last six months, I had formed like an advisory council or ambassador council. And they were the ones who said, Tony, we get so much value out of this group, we we need to pay you something, please let us pay you something. I'm like, good place to be. All right, I guess we'll make this happen. So it was actually under their advice that I'm like, okay, we'll move forward towards a paid model. But it started because as an actively licensed CPA, also doing my own thing, recognizing that most of my clients and people I was having conversations with needed a good CPA, somebody who was going to do their taxes. I'm like, why not try this new thing. So I started it because I'm like, I am kind of flying blind here. I wish I knew more about this. And I wish I had somebody to talk to and ask questions for that audit background coming back to bite you. I know. It's like, well, this is where I'm like, this is the one time where I'm like, shoot, I wish I had tax background. So I'm like, well, I'll do what I do, which is have conversations with people that I've never met before. And we'll invite them into this free community. And it was on Slack. And, you know, as we went, one thing I discovered very quickly was I'm like, screw this, I am not interested in doing tax. But what I found was that I had a bunch of people who were absolutely incredible. They were so supportive of each other. They're very supportive of me. There's the types of people like I want to hang out with. And then I'm like, as as time went on, I'm like, this is the thing that I missed about public accounting. It's like we talked about earlier, I miss this about public accounting, because I miss the camaraderie, I miss the education, and being able to just like pop over to somebody's desk and just like, hey, I'm running into this issue, like, what do we do here? And I'm like, what if there's a way for us to create something that's essentially public accounting, without the drama and without the crazy long hours? Like, wouldn't that be kind of nice? And so that's been the thing that that we've just been working through, especially as we've transitioned to this paid model recently, is how can we turn this group into essentially public accounting just without all of that, you know, all the extra drama that comes with being a part of a public accounting firm? Okay, awesome. And so, yeah, like, what's what's next for this group? Like, where do you kind of see this evolving? And how many people are in it right now? So we had 50. And then as we transitioned to a paid model, I think it was like, I think as of today, we're at like 24 who've stayed. But all all 24 people are very, very active posting all the time. I have to turn my I shouldn't tell them this, but I've had to turn my notifications off, because there's so many, so many messages that come through, which is great. I love it. Yeah, that's kind of where we're headed. Where we're headed, though, is we've got a lot of things that we're working on things like, my big dreams for this is, I'd like for this to become something where when I have people come to me and say, Hey, I need a tax professional, I can go through my directory, and I'd be like, Alright, your unique circumstances, you are an S corp, and you have multi state and you know, whatever other filters we want. And I can go through and I can say here are the top three people I think would be best suited for you. And there can be a little bit more of a concierge type of, here's why I think. And then I also want to take my passion for like podcasting and video production. And I'm like, I want to just like, elevate the people in my group and and have them on podcast and like, show them as the experts that they are have like an intro video so that it's just a more immersive experience when people go to try to find a tax professional through our network. So those are those are a couple of the things in terms of like internally, what we want to do. I'd love I'd love to find like a CPE provider that I can partner with, where we can turn our members like what you had when you're at Deloitte, where your manager could just pull together a training. And that training could be CPE qualified because it's under Deloitte Spanner. I'd love to do that in tax minded so that you know, maybe we only get 30 credit hours, you know, for our total 40 every year that we need. And then you can go by the other 10 that you need that are specialized, but we can still cover the bulk of of your needs within the community by just self teaching. Nice. I love that. I think making more things count for CPE and there's a, you know, well, unpaid shout out to earmark, but I think what they're doing is fantastic. Like I would love to one day be able to have some of like the big fortune transparency stuff count for CPE. There's so many things where we're like, providing learnings to people. And we're just, it's just not counting. It was funny, like my first year as a CPA, there was a there was a misunderstanding. I thought I was exempt because it was the year in which I got my letters, but because I'd written the exam early, I was actually not exempt. And I got audited. Yeah, I got audited. And I did not actually have my CPE hours. But I was like, you guys, are you guys kidding me? Like I in the year, what did I do? I built big for transparency, I, you know, pushed out like 101, you know, content pieces about this. I've done like 100 hours of like, in depth research about the industry and you know, reading everything. And like they eventually were like, okay, fine, don't let it happen again. But yeah, like I got caught my first year, but like my response was like, are you kidding me? Like, all I did was learn. But it's just so many of these avenues don't, you know, they don't jump through the hoops. And honestly, that this is another area where I'd love to see reform. I think we've got bigger, bigger fish to fry when it comes to reform in the CPA world. But I think I think how we handle CPE absolutely needs to evolve. And I would echo what you said. I think what earmark is doing is phenomenal. I think what CPA Academy is doing is really helpful as well. But I just wish we could get away from an old school mentality of how we quantify CPE because I think it's too rigid. Quite frankly, it's way too bureaucratic. I've got a friend of mine who became a CPE sponsor and as a sponsor, and he just, he talked about how absolutely how much work and how much money it costs to get it. And I'm like, well, no wonder that we only ever have old ideas circulated around the CPE because it's like, no, no new person's getting into that space. Yeah. That's a whole nother podcast. Yeah. Yeah. Entire new topic. Well, yeah. Thank you so much for joining me, Tony. I really appreciate it. And yeah, I'll make sure that I link the tax community in the show notes for anyone who thinks that might be of interest to them. One thing tax does well is communities with like tax Twitter and, you know, all those kind of places. So yeah, make sure you check that out. And yeah, once again, thank you so much for taking the time today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me on.