Private Equity, Partner Alignment, and the Rise of CAS with Matthew May

This week's episode of the Big 4 Transparency podcast is sponsored by Forwardly. Huge thank you to Forwardly for sponsoring the podcast, but also a huge thank you for what they do in terms of helping firms improve your operating margins. So if you are in firm operations, I would encourage you to take a look at how much your payment processing fees might be costing you currently. It may just be a couple percent here and there, but once your firm scales, we may be talking many tens or even maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars that are not going to your firm's bottom line and are not available for reinvestment in your firm. Forwardly helps you not only smooth all of these processes out with seamless AP and AR, but they also do so using ACH payments in an automated fashion, helping you save on payment processing fees. So make sure you check out forwardly.com for your business payment solution. Hello and welcome to the Big 4 Transparency podcast. I am joined today by Matthew May, former founder of Acuity. I guess, I mean, you remain the founder of Acuity. Yeah, you can't take that away from me. You can't take that away. Can't take that away. However, now in a new title as the CAAS leader of Sorin. Welcome to the pod, Matthew. Oh, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. Yeah. My pleasure. I got the pleasure of seeing you speak at Bridging the Gap last year, and you've been definitely a name I've written down since then. I really like your style. You're a fun, very fun speaker as well, and I'm going to get the pleasure to see you there again this year. So I'm looking forward to that. And whoever edits the pod will have to bleep me every once in a while. Sorry if you don't allow for language. My mom's working on me to like, hey, can you like clean up your language, at least on the podcast? That'd be great. No stipulations from any of the sponsors we work with, and my fiance edits it. I apologize in advance. I'll try to be good. All right. Well, sorry, Sabina, then. So let's kick this off with kind of the elephant in the room here. So Acuity, as well as a bunch of other firms, just got merged into Sorin a couple months ago. And I'm kind of curious to understand how that came to be, because this is, you know, you hear of that this had been in the works for a really long time with a lot of the member firms of the BDO Alliance who kind of ended up forming Sorin. Was this a bunch of conversations between you and the other firm owners who wanted to do this? And then you went and found an equity partner, or was this kind of presented to you all as an option? Well, there's kind of two paths to that question. So of the 14 to date firms that have joined, six of the firms were in a roundtable group together in the BDO Alliance and had talked, you know, like joking around about like, if we could take over the world kind of joking, you know, like, oh, we could come together and get a financial partner. The way the financial partner and their name is DFW Capital. So DFW had a thesis and they wanted to put $100 million to work on in like in the space. But the way that kind of unfolded is starting in January of 24, they did the first firm, then kind of like two firms a quarter, basically, they negotiated with and figured out all the details on how that would work on a firm by firm basis. When you're talking about the acuity journey, those are people we had never met in our entire lives. One of those firm owners we had actually met previously. And so our journey started in, I guess, March or April of 2024, sorry. And we were at a point where we're getting approached constantly. We had passed the $10 million in revenue threshold and we were getting literally weekly barrages from private equity and other people that are interested in us joining forces with them. So we did what we thought was responsible, kind of took a proactive approach and hired an investment banker and explored like literally 250 possibilities. We narrowed that down, can talk about that if you want, but that was our process. And then that culminated in January of this year of us joining, I think we were the 10th or 11th of the 14 firms to join. Okay. Wow. And what was it about this deal or DFW specifically that brought you in? Because again, I've spoken with a lot of private equity leaders and groups who are either already doing this or trying to do this. And again, like something made them stand out or this deal stand out for them to be the chosen ones. Right? Yeah, that's fair. And so we started the first part of our process. So from say March, April through July, we were getting our house in order. So we did a bunch of diligence and sell side diligence, including a quality of our aims and like understanding where our cashflow was and what we could take to market. Then in July, our investment bankers talked to over 250 people in the universe, just letting them know what our profile was, what we were thinking about from an interest level. And that got us 11, what they call indications of interest. The bankers call it an IOI. So we got 11 IOIs in kind of that August, September timeframe. And we narrowed it down to seven who we wanted to meet in person. And at that point we were like, show us something from everything. So we had a strategic come in that was kind of way off, like completely random. We had firms with financial backers. We had private equity firms. We had just kind of all over the map, like coming in to Atlanta for these four to six hour meetings. So we pitched kind of what we wanted to do to them. And that was an interesting, you know, kind of running through the same story for like seven groups in a 10 to 10 business day period was just, it was just mentally and physically exhausted. But then at the end of that, we got five LOIs or yeah, we got five of the seven submitted letters of intent or LOIs. And then amongst those, it's easier to answer, that's gets me to answering your question. So there were a couple of things that were really interesting, like the two, it came down to kind of two business models, two of the, two of the, two of the groups were private equity groups that were in the process of bringing firms together to create a new one firm concept to go to market, right? So we would be on the planning end of things, like we would be able to have input, influence culture and all that kind of stuff. On the other side, you had these mega firms that had already take private equity and we're kind of like getting plugged in to a, to a path. And then there were a couple like rando scenarios in there, but the two ones we really thought about a lot, but we were like, Oh, that would be nice for somebody to just tell us how to do stuff. And we could like plug in to this thing and maximize value. We toured what I call the torture path. And then it's like, Oh, we'll build the plane while we're flying it. And that's just how we've rolled. But there were two groups doing that. I thought that were interesting. One was called Springline and one was Sorin and we ended up picking Sorin. And then a lot of things come into play in that, like management team, structured deal, like all those kinds of things. Interesting. And when you say in there, you say we told them kind of what we wanted to do. What was it that you wanted to do? Because it's not like, you know, it doesn't seem like acuity got picked up as like a distressed asset and you were like, Oh my God, this is needs to exchange hands. Like it seems like you're doing super well, but then there was some next step that you were after. Well, there were four of us that were kind of equity owners, right? So the first step was like, do you want to stay or do you want to go for what we were calling acuity 3.0? So we had, for those of you that aren't familiar with acuity, acuity had been in business 20 years. So like we have been through decade one, which was, we called acuity 1.0, then decade two, acuity 2.0. And we were planning for what was 3.0, which we ended up choosing as Sorin. But amongst that, we got some great advice from our bankers. Like we were all in our fifties at the time. And so we have different horizons, um, kind of from an age perspective on at least equity owners were all in our fifties. So we all, they're just like, look, you got to go into this thing and say, not what are the roles that you have and I can be flexible and do whatever they say, go into these meetings and say, I'm in, this is what I am is my superpower. I'm in, this is my superpower. And then we had two people saying like, we're going to leave, like, yeah, we're going to leave. And that's the business we built sustains without us. And this is what makes sense. Um, that was the most significant, best piece of advice we got from our bankers was like, tell people what you want and just have the faith that like the people are, and two of the groups opted out because they were like, oh, if Kenji leaves, like, like, well, I don't know if that was it, but that was probably one of the factors of Kenny, if Kenji and Patty are leaving, they were like, Hey, maybe this is too big of a risk for them. Right. Yeah. And that just ended up being okay. And we just had to be comfortable with that. Right. Yeah. No, I think that's a tremendous exercise because the last thing you want is, you know, two people being caught in a whatever, two year earn out when, you know, all they want to do is kind of move on and either retire or maybe they have some other passion project they want to move to. Right. Yeah. No, that's really cool. And as part of that different optionality of different people wanting different things out of this deal, was there flexibility in, you know, the proportion of maybe rolled equity versus, um, just kind of cash payout for it. And, and did people opt for kind of different, different directions of that? Yeah. Some of the structures, so we had five offers, so some allowed for, you know, everybody had kind of like, there's a percentage that they're trying to get to overall and cash a percentage they're trying to get to enrolled equity. Um, some of them had earn out, some of them had seller notes, like they had all different kind of components to the, to the deal. Um, the unique thing about having a banker is like, they're talking to all these people about not just the value of the firm, but also the structure of the deals that have been proposed because we have a different input on that. Yeah. So because two of the partners wanted to leave, like they were disproportionately wanting cash. So like that favored and the decision process, those kind of offers that allowed us to mix and match like personally, what we each individually did to make it work on their side, cumulatively. So that ruled some people out like of the five kind of right away. Right. Um, the ultimate one that we pick Soren allowed, you know, one of the partners to take all cash at the, at the beginning of the deal, like a hundred percent, um, one to disproportionately take a ton of cash and a little bit of equity. And then the other two of us to make that up the role, um, the ones that were staying, we made up the role and took less cash in the, in the front end of the deal. So it, it created a disalignment for the first time in our partnership, which was really super interesting from, uh, just personal struggle, decision-making perspective, because like previously for the previous 12 years, I was there out of the 20, cause I came in eight years into the QT journey. Um, um, the, that was the first time I had been disaligned from my business partner, Kenji, who he, who you've met too. So that was, that was interesting because we were talking apples and oranges. Right. Yeah. And was that not already present maybe to a degree in terms of deciding what to do with, you know, additional cash flows in terms of either partner distributions or reinvestment into growth and the firm? No. One of our secret weapons was that like, we had always been really aligned on that. Our kids were kind of the same ages. We needed money at the same time for, um, for like college. We needed, like, we, we had all stayed at, we had stayed in our same homes the whole time, like we hadn't done anything crazy to disalign from each other in 12 years. So it was kind of a real interesting change for us from a personal relationship perspective. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's interesting. And was kind of the openness to the deal, a result of some people maybe wanting to retire and, and, or move on, or was this like, you really wanted to be able to make more strategic investments or just, you know, we've been doing this for so long. Let's, let's take a different spin on things. Yeah. I think, I think Patty kind of sensed that like in the initial, like when you go back, rewind all the way to when we started the journey, Patty was leaning towards, I think, retiring, um, at least for a period of time, um, she wanted to take a break. Um, she had been running, catching clouds, you know, for a decade before she joined Acuity too, like decades. So she's, and she was, um, you know, thinking about doing something different and wanting to take a break. I think she was the one that probably was most likely to like leave when we started the process. But that wasn't the point of the process. The point of the process was we were being reactive to the largest decision that we would make for our employees and ourselves and probably our lives. Right. And we, we weren't okay with that. Um, we wanted to go look at the whole ecosystem, do what was right for people, for us, like, and, and, and make a really proactive run at it. Um, so the process at the end of it, like we had no doubts that that was the right thing at the end because we had taken, we had looked at literally 205, 250, I guess, different options. Right. And so like, we really had a sense for, like, we weren't walking away from money. Like we had value assessed because seven different people said, this is kind of what you're worth, right? And the range is huge. Like of what people thought, oh, the different, the different things we were worth was, were, um, it was just super interesting. Um, so, um, no, like if we had just dealt with one of those people, like we wouldn't have that sense for value, I think, and there's a lot of misinformation I think out there right now on how much firms can get, um, uh, I think people relatively, you know, relatively unreasonable expectations sometimes for, for what the value of the firm they built is. So at the end of the day, like these financial buyers are buying my cashflow. Like if you don't have EBITDA, like you don't like it's, it's really tough to say you're worth whatever. So. Yeah. Yeah, that's for sure. And these are like more developed, established businesses, right? Like you're a little bit further along in the journey where it's probably relatively predictable where things are going. And so I find that interesting that there was a big span in, in difference. Like, are we talking about, you know, 50% difference between the higher end and the lower end or like, it was, it was extreme. I can't remember the exact percentages, but it's at least 50% difference in the 11 IOIs, like it was just night and day from like, like when one was double. The lowest, like the highest was double the lowest for sure. Wow. So, but the lowest was like, like it was so out of market low. You're like, what are you doing? You know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some people are just going to be fishing for whoever is kind of desperate to leave and that'll happen all the time. Right? Like I get approached for big fortune and transparency people were like, Oh, would you take this for it? I'm like, no, like, are you like, are you kidding me? But you know, people will take shots for sure. Um, yeah, no. I find that super interesting. And then for yourself personally, like what, what excited you about kind of taking on a CAS leader role here? Because certainly you, you know, presumably weren't in a position where that's something you had to do. Um, and maybe along with that, are there any big ambitions and plans for the CAS function at Sorin? Well, I mean, it's super exciting, right? Um, I'm, I'm looking at running this year. Like I was, we were about a $12 million business. Like the consolidated CAS practices somewhere around $27 million practice with about 225 people strong. So like just, you know, just having more resources, um, there's 10 different CAS practices, uh, around the country. Um, that are, that are there that I kind of can help put together and support. And really, you know, a lot of them were, you know, small teams really like five to 20 people teams, right. That we've already been through all the pitfalls of growing those teams past five, 20, like when I started the QA was 10 people, right? So like we've been through the pitfalls of going from 10 to 20, 20 to 30, 30 to 50. Right. So I can help them regionally, like help them break through those barriers and like bring some insights on kind of one of the, some of the problems we're going to solve. Um, but I guess I'm, I'm 50. So my grandfather lived 105. Like I got, I got a, I got a, I got a 104. I got to live for, I got to work for a while to like, uh, to like keep busy. My kids are leaving time to be, my kids are, I'm an empty nester this year. Um, so like kind of pouring myself into something fun and different. Um, even historically every four to five years, try to change our roles up. Kenji and I have. And so, um, this was kind of, we were all kind of in like ready for some kind of change. Uh, so this is super interesting. It's not boring. So that's cool. Yeah. You know, if, if, if your, your father made it to 105, 55 years along or sorry, grandfather, it's a, it's a long time to be, uh, yeah, that wouldn't have mapped out. That's a long time to be doing, you know, Sudoku on the front porch for sure. If you retire at 50. So, um, yeah, that's cool. And you seem like you've kind of taken some big leaps in your career too, right? Like, so you were, um, you were a partner at, at Cherry Beckert beforehand, right? Yeah. I was an audit partner at Cherry Beckert. So I'm like, I think almost 15 years recovered from that. I just like 15 years recovered from audit almost. Uh, I can't remember what year I left, uh, probably 12 or 13 years recovered. I think 12 or 13 was last year I was there. Um, yeah, yeah. I started my career in audit. Um, you know, in my, uh, I started at Arthur Anderson. Um, I, I had the good fortune to, um, follow my wife down to graduate school. So moved to Ernst & Young and then avoided all the Arthur Anderson employees closure because Arthur Anderson didn't have an Austin office and I, so just looked out there and then early in my career, I left to be a controller during the.com days at a, at a startup ended up selling that startup, you know, that was the stupid multiple days. So we had like a million in revenue sold for a hundred million. And then I learned, Oh, I'm not going to make a lot of money as an employee, uh, places, you know, at these, uh, startups and stuff like that. So, but I stayed on at a fortune at 50 at the time and, and, uh, joined their corporate accounting group. And we had, I learned about shirt services and that's kind of how my entree into CAS, I guess, came with a fortune 50 where we had 10,000 business units and I was managing 150 of the audits that we had to do. Um, but they had, that was when everybody leveraged the crap out of everything. Right. Yeah. Cause we had, we had nine sec registrants within the, within, within the global entity, but I was doing the non public stuff. Um, then when my wife got back into her PhD program, um, me being the glutton for punishment, went back to public accounting, uh, and, uh, ended up, uh, then, uh, when she graduated that brought us to Atlanta and that's when I made the switch to cherry, um, to, to kind of stay in the mid market. The, when I transferred to Ernst here, you know, that was all upmarket stuff. So I came back to the mid market, helped run the tech practice at cherry. And then 13 years ago, 12 years ago, I got the opportunity to buy half of acuity and took the plunge and I haven't looked back since. And then we made a dent in the earth. So, um, going back to that industry experience, do you think that made you a better partner and then firm owner having seen kind of the client perspective? Yeah. Oh my gosh. Like a hundred times better auditor. Like I was like a hundred times better. Like I totally knew, I knew, I knew what I was half-ass and on the journal entry side and estimate side, I knew what I would do like, and then especially once I got into this big corporate blob, I was like, like, it's a real thing. The CFO calls you and be like, Hey, what, anything, you know, move EPS a penny this quarter in your group. Like, is there any accruals we need to like, like really think about? Like, you're just like, Oh, then you start learning about pennies on EPS and you're like, Oh, this is a real thing. Uh, that was super crazy. Interesting. That's a perspective I like hearing from people. Cause again, people kind of more, you know, my age or younger as well in the profession, they view everything with such a sense of finality, right? Like when I left Deloitte, like, Oh, you know, what a crazy move or whatever. Right. And it's like, well, I mean, I could probably come back and I'm going to have a lot more perspective or whatever that might be. Right. And I do think, you know, this crazy journey of life, like a lot of these things do actually kind of pay off and come full circle. So I like, I like asking that of people who've done a stint and then found success in, uh, in accounting as well. Yeah. Well, I mean, the irony for me was in my career arc, like 12 years after I left Cherry Becker, Cherry Becker was one of the seven firms that came in to talk to us about, you know, come and join their CAS practice. So that was really super interesting too. So you like, everything's kind of full circle and it really emphasizes why you always try to leave without brand bridges and a good term, which luckily I had at Cherry Becker. So, um, yeah, but there's, I mean, phenomenal people there. So like that was not surprising. Yeah. Um, and then when you chose to leave Cherry Becker, like what was it that you were pursuing in, in this kind of new practice, new endeavor? Like what, what was different in your experience as a partner? Because for a lot of people, like that's end game, right? Like I'm partner, I made it. This is awesome. Yeah. I mean, one of the epiphanies I had when I made partner was that I was starting my career. That was not a culmination point. It was almost like a new beginning, which was super non-intuitive to me before that point. And then when you just look at like, what was that, um, I can't remember what year that was, but I was early thirties, right? Like, so you're like making partner in your thirties and you're like, I'm going to work till 60. Like, I got like, I'm just, I'm starting a career right now. Um, so that was super interesting. Um, you know, the, nobody ever talks about income partner versus equity partner when you're making partner. So I had just made income partner and not equity partner. And then there was this other, so I kind of had this window between income partner and equity partner where I had just realized that making equity partner was going to be a different decision. Right. And then, um, when I started looking like I had this opportunity, Kenji was pretty much my best friend at the time and, uh, his business partner had left to pursue some other endeavors. And, you know, at that time I was signing PCOB audits as a partner, right. As an income partner, signing PCOB audits as an income partner. I was also having trouble seeing how my group was going to scale. Like I was already, um, and my second year partner, I was already kind of like at that two, two and a half million dollar book of business. Um, and just like if my book of business grows, I just do more work. Like it was just, and, um, so the opportunity came up, it was a 10% shop with controllers and CFOs. Um, it was going to put me back into the today as opposed to in the past, uh, with clients. And so I just, I, I decided to do something crazy and not make any money for a while. And, uh, that was kind of crazy, but, uh, yeah, I don't know how to explain it. It was, it seemed like it seemed crazy, but I knew I would never regret it. And I knew after I made equity partner, it was going to be much harder to make any kind of career decision change. So, yeah, I've had that conversation with some people before who are kind of at that cusp and are like, Hmm, I think it's time to move because it, yeah, again, it's way harder to unwind later on for sure. Um, and so when you talk about, you know, not making money for a couple of years, that's actually a question I have for people who kind of jump out, like was there, and, and I mean, I'm talking super rough, rough timelines, but was there a kind of a tipping point where you became better off? you know, maybe financially speaking for the, for the, uh, move of, of jumping to acuity. Like, are we talking three, four years? It was like January, 12 years later, like, uh, no, I mean, so my first K-1, um, that year was negative $8,000, just so you guys know. And that included no salary, like, salary included, like I negative, I was a negative seven, negative seven or $8,000. I can't remember what it is, but it was like, I literally got a negative K-1. So that was kind of, that was kind of crazy. Um, thank God I had my home equity line of credit, you know, set up. So we use my home equity line of credit and Kenji's home equity line of credit the first probably six years. Um, so it took us about six years to get, well, I was paying off his partner, basically how we structured the deal. So I was paying off the debt for his partner. Um, that didn't include, that wasn't even counted in that negative $8,000. So I was paying payments. I was making negative cashflow. So I was shifting money from a seller note to a, uh, line of credit on my house, um, for the first probably three years. And then I started like, like we got from the first year we did 850 K or something in revenue. The second year we did like a million five. Then we did like two, seven and then three, five. So we had some like rapid growth, which like actually hurts cashflow, which is weird. Um, so even though we were going great, like I have a presentation I did, I think it was last year bridging the gap about like, okay, here's what it looked like to the outside world. And like here's what my cashflow look like. And here's where we almost went bankrupt in year six together. Like it's where, like I literally had in year six, I had tapped out my line of credit, like or five or six. I can't remember when I was, I think it was 2017, 2018, something like that. Like where I was just like, I'm, I'm host like, or can't remember. I actually can't remember what year it was, but it was like, I haven't go back and look at the pretty far into the journey though. Yeah. So January is probably the tipping point. Like you said of where, it's like, Hey, this was probably from a strictly financial perspective worthwhile. Um, which is, it's crazy. Cause Trey Becker took private equity too. So I would have been on that journey, you know, I had, I stayed. So like apples to apples, I don't know which one have been better financially. I know this one was probably better for my family for sure. Um, it's probably a pusher or slightly better doing the cutie path financially. Um, so, um, it, it, it works out. So. Interesting. Yeah, no, that's super cool. And I guess I probably know the answer, but like were there times in the acuity journey where you're kind of like, Oh my God, have I made a mistake in, in leaving that behind? Or. Oh, I mean, when you're just going into the, when you're just going into that, like, yeah, like you, like you always ask yourself questions like, Hey, you know, cause everybody like the months that are the hardest is like, you're literally writing checks to make payroll. Like, like it was different for whatever reason to like not take payroll personally. And then to also then not take payroll and write a check. So everybody else can make payroll. Like those are probably, those are probably the hardest days emotionally. Yeah. Um, that's like, what am I doing? But I don't, I, even in those days, um, I mean, except for when we like had a, like that one really bad run where we had to fire a bunch of our sales people, we fired like eight people in one day. And, um, just cause we were like getting over our skis and we've never had that big of a sales group at that run rate anyway. But like, that was like, that was the worst probably was when we had kind of overhired in, cause you can't really overhire how we built the business on the production side, but on the back office side as you can. And we had made that mistake and that affected at least eight people's lives. So, um, that was the worst, probably that was a low point of my acuity career that day. So. Interesting. Um, yeah, that's pretty common. I hear from people who've had to do layoffs like as their, their business where pretty universally people are like, wow, that feels, yeah, super low. Um, changing gears a little bit though to something maybe more positive. So Kaz has had and continues to have, I would say like quite a, quite a, um, you know, an evolution. Um, so even looking back, not that far ago, you know, I was in big four, seven years ago or something like that. And it felt like the teams who were doing type of Kaz style work were very much kind of like the, the B team, like, and, and that's not a dig on the people at all, but it just felt the way it was regarded by the firm that was kind of the lesser priority. And that was just like, well, just do that, I guess, to make people happy. Um, now Kaz seems to be at least in the circles I run, like a lot more in the spotlight, getting a lot more attention and respect and recognition. What do you think led to that change? Uh, I think there are some great leaders in the space now. And, uh, so like most of my job is to shut that down now. Right. Because there is that little feel like, I still see some of that tension with the tax partners and the Kaz partners. And that's, um, I think the tensions created with how people are compensated, like disproportionately disproportionately compensating people who do business development over execution. Um, so Kaz tends to be a bunch of people working on execution and maintain like monthly, monthly cadences. I think Kaz is more valuable because it doesn't have the peaks and valleys of audit and tax. Right. So, um, so one of my challenges with tax partners, audit partners in particular is they don't, they don't understand the different business model. Um, and also just to give you like a perspective, like of, of the, in the 10 firms that we were looking at, two of the 10 firms had partners associated with Kaz that were focused on Kaz. The other ones, eight of them had tax partners or audit partners who were over Kaz trying to like play one foot in both camp. Right. Yeah. So from a leadership perspective, if you don't have somebody fully dedicated to it, like a, that's a self-fulfilling prophecy to me. Like you're not investing in the people. So I think the big difference that you'll see at these firms like is those with strong leaders shut that down. Right. Plus the, you know who they hire, they have understand the business. Like we know Kaz, the QAD, I've never used that term actually in 12 years. So it's kind of weird to use that term. Like we just ran, we weren't an accounting firm, so it was just our business. So like us coming in, like, and we joke around with like, I joke around the head audit all the time. It's like, Hey, enjoy it now because you're going to be the second, like I'm going to be the second largest practice over here. Our group accounting services is going to take over audit pretty quickly in the next three to five years. So like, sorry, but like they're going to have to get over that. And so as that starts happening, I think you'll start seeing a big shift in how people think about Kaz and accounting services and big firms. It's a huge market opportunity. It's getting bigger. Kaz increases as technology increases. So you like the market for increases. Cause like as technology improves, then it drives out hours of the process. So that makes it less likely you need a full-time person even as you go higher and higher in the market. So that started with, you know, million dollar companies, $2 million companies. Now it's going to get into with AI into the five and $10 million companies. If you just think about payroll practices in my career, like people payroll department, there used to be a thing, like people used to have a payroll department. Right. So like that, that is like way far in your progression now, like your growth trajectory before you need a payroll department. So that's starting to happen with accounting departments now. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, um, we're coming for you audit. We're coming. All of us are. The, the kind of salary and compensation differences, which is obviously like the angle I come from with big four transparency a little bit is super interesting with Kaz. So I launched it as its own category. I'm trying to like gather a little bit more Kaz specific data to serve that type of firm more. But when I speak with people, you know, sometimes cause I tend to work with the more traditional yet tax and audit type firms. But then sometimes when I speak with people, they want to benchmark their Kaz and audit salaries in line or sorry, Kaz salaries in line with audit or audit and tax even sometimes. But then other people are like, no, there's going to be this like discount to it. And so we don't want to include kind of tax and audit salaries in what we're doing for Kaz. Right. And it does feel like it's one of those things where it's just so in flux that there's no clear cut definition of it. And people are trying to figure out like, Hey, where is this going to land? Right. Cause I also think Kaz has many different definitions in many different places. So yeah. You ask 10 people what it is. They give you 10 different answers in the industry right now. So yeah, that's, that's we, I know what it is of our group. So ours, like I'm responsible for bookkeeper through CFO. So yeah. Anything an internal shop could do. And then for somehow sales tax got thrown into my group. So. Sales tax got thrown in. Interesting. Yeah, I know. I think I was just like the, everybody was like trying to figure out and I would think I was not at that meeting. And so they're like, okay, Kaz is going to run sales tax. No, if you think of sales tax, it's, it's more monthly recurring. Like those tax people like those once a year things. So. Yeah, no, it does make some sense from like a, you know, client relationship and, and yeah, like you said, monthly recurring cadence perspective. That is just, that's surprising to me, 1099s, 1099s in sales tax are my group this year. Huh. Interesting. Isn't it? Yeah, no, that, that is actually, yeah. Hmm. Now we'll see if that becomes more kind of broadly recognized. We'll find out to know though. I have some good salt people. I might talk to you about that later, but I'm looking. Okay, cool. Who wants to run a sales tax practice? It'd be great. So. Perfect. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's super interesting. I love that you have not been afraid to kind of make bold moves in your journey. And again, although at times, maybe financially speaking that didn't seem like the, like the play of it's cool to see that be rewarded now. And you know, I think, I think beyond the financial perspective though, I think this is going to be a very rewarding role as well. Yeah, I think so. I think, I think we undervalue kind of like our work, like what kind of work we do. So that's like when we're going through the process and the banker is telling us like, tell us what you want to have the outcome be like, what do you want your job to be? Like is it important that you're running the department or not running the department or just if you're just a role player, like that was a hugely impactful like piece of advice I got when we were thinking about this, but it really kind of, um, it's been consistent to my career. One of the best, um, business development coaches I've ever had was at, um, Cherry Becker and they had turned me into a business developer. And, um, they were like, you really got to understand your ideal client profile and who you want to work with. Cause if you're successful, that's what you're doing. And I always joke, like I always hated hospitals. So it's like, so like cause hospitals were easy to get at the time and they're like, Oh, we could go do this hospital, but then I have to go out at a hospital. And then I was like, I don't want to do that. Like I want to audit tech companies. So then, yeah. Then I ended up being the tech CPA and like, like that's how that came about. And it's like, I want to work with tech companies, you know? So, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think, I think developing a niche kind of early on and a preference of where you want to be is, is super underrated. And I see people do that all the time of like, listen, I'm just looking for work. Um, and I do think that's where we do tend to kind of devalue what we do a little bit. Yeah. I, I, yeah, if I could give one piece of recommendation to everybody, it's like, figure out what you want to do and say it. And so people, when that comes up, you get it. And then over time, it's, it's usually over time, but like over time that becomes what you do, you know? Yeah. A hundred percent. Um, and then in case there's anyone listening who's kind of like, Oh, like maybe, maybe we should be part of Sorin or something like that. I have a quick operational question as well. Is it, is it sort of like a platform model? Like firms come in and then they're kind of supported from a like head office perspective. Is, is that kind of a part of how this is working? No. Um, it's a little different. So everybody's changing their name to Sorin. So we're going to the, we're going to the one firm concept, uh, right now, cause we're doing 14 at once. Like we're migrating people slowly. Like my firm that we joined in January, like we're not even scheduled to do some of the technology integrations until maybe Q4, Q1 of next year. So like that part's slow. So like you kind of operate independently for the first year, like try not to, what we've been talking about is kind of like the do no harm mantra, like first do no harm. Right. And then if there's some better process to add to you, we'll add that as we go. Like we're just not, so we're going to have a lot of local autonomy for people that have local presence. So we don't mess up local relationships. Um, so, um, so they're going to a lot of local autonomy, but it's definitely people that want to work on best practices right now and, and, and adapt to what those are in each of the four kind of practice lines. So our practice lines are defined as tax audit, accounting and advisory. And our advisory is more like litigation support, like business valuation, like stuff that's not at the CFO level. I know some people have advisory and yeah, different places. It's all over the map, but, um, we kind of split it up a little differently. So that's cool. Awesome. Well, yeah. Thank you so much for joining me, Matthew. And I look forward to seeing you in a couple of weeks at bridging the gap as well. And, uh, yeah. And I, yeah, it's just, it's great to hear someone like you sharing your journey. I appreciate how open you are about kind of all of the things, all of the challenges. I think that means a lot for people who are maybe finding themselves in the same situation or considering making a jump like that. So, um, I think it's a great service to the industry. Appreciate it. That's nice of you to say.