Success and Succession with Mike Sylvester

Hello, and welcome to the Big Four Transparency podcast. I'm joined today by Mike Sylvester, partner at SBS CPA Group Incorporated, and most recently the founder of The Collaboration Room. Welcome to the pod, Mike. Hey, thanks. I'm glad to be here. Yeah, my pleasure. It's cool seeing your face in person. I've seen that one avatar of you a whole lot on Twitter. Better looking in person than on Twitter, so hats off to you. I try to make at least a similar picture, right? Very true. Very true. Well, yeah. So thanks for joining, Mike. For people who are maybe not already following you on Twitter, or honestly people who already are, like I've been following you for a while and I didn't know about your background, but can you talk to us about your journey to becoming a CPA firm owner? Because you kind of shared a little while ago that you were actually a career changer and you have quite a different background than the typical. Yeah. So I started my career in the United States Navy. I was a reactor operator on the USS Ventata, which is a nuclear attack submarine stationed out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. I used to kind of do the Homer Simpsons thing in a nuclear power plant and control the rods. I met my wife in Hawaii. I'm from Fort Wayne. She's from Indianapolis. So we're both from Indiana, but we met in Honolulu in a dance club. And after I got out of the Navy, we moved to Nebraska. I worked in a civilian nuclear power plant. While I worked there, I actually moved to radiated fuel rods. They do glow. I don't know why they train nuclear operators to run cranes instead of train crane operators, but that's the way they do it. My wife actually took a job with a CPA firm and she took an auditing job. And then we moved to Kansas City and I worked as a general electrician in a steel mill. My wife worked at kind of a boutique CPA firm in Kansas City. My dad died. We moved back to Fort Wayne. My wife worked at another CPA firm. And when we bought our house, she decided she wanted to run a business out of it. So we bought a house with an office by the front door. Our filing system used to be the staircase up to the loft with a Christmas tree up top. And our old clients still remember that because we would line their tax returns up the stairs. And while she was doing that, I was the maintenance manager at a factory. And I helped her part time. I liked doing tax returns. Don't judge me. I like doing tax returns. And I went back to college. When I was 37 years old, when I went back to college, everyone in my family thought I was insane. I made good money as a maintenance manager. Like, Mike, what are you doing, man? And I actually left my job. I went to school full time. I worked for my wife part time. After I graduated, I worked for her full time. I became a CPA a year after I graduated. And kind of the rest is history. What really thought we were nuts was in December of 07, a year later, we bought a commercial building. We moved in. We were the only two employees. We had five empty offices. We had a conference room. And there was two people. And they're like, what are you doing? And we're like, I have faith. We're going to do well. And we did. Planning for growth, essentially, at the very, very beginning, which is nice. I like that. Big bet on yourself, which is cool. And at the time, what compelled you to be like, accounting is the avenue for me? Was it just that you were really sick of what you were doing and you were kind of exposed to that through your wife? Or was it that you got some exposure to her and realized that you truly loved it? So my wife wanted to run a business out of the house when our daughter was born. So she started our business five months after our daughter was born. Our son was born a year and a half later. So we always led very separate professional lives. I had the benefits. I made the money. She kind of worked on the side at home. But man, her business grew fast. And she needed some help. And I really liked doing tax returns. So what happened is when I was basically 36 years old, I had to go to China. And I went to China in 2003. And the hotel I was staying at was four miles away from that hotel. They kept picturing in China where COVID broke out. And I was in China during shock and awe when we went into Iraq. And the rest of my team got flown home. My team, I had basically gone there to build a machine over there. There are probably very few CPAs who have went somewhere to build a machine and teach their Chinese counterparts how to operate it. But I have. And I was actually on contract to go back and fix it for five years. Wow. And two of those, I was a CPA and a tax broker. And when I got evacuated, I actually left through the Hong Kong airport. Everyone was wearing masks except for me because I didn't have a mask. And Wolf Blitzer was on CNN talking about shock and awe. And when I got back, my wife and I had a talk. And she didn't like that I had to travel. And, you know, I left with little kids at home. And we decided to make a change. Okay. So kind of the safety, the stability of the profession, plus you realize that you really liked it. Yeah. That's a combination of the two. And so I imagine for your first few years, that was probably a pretty big revenue hit. The earning potential in accounting, I find, for a CPA is tremendous, just not right away, right? Sorry, go ahead. So my wife and I got married in 95. There are exactly two years where we pulled money out of savings. I went back to college in August of 04. We had to take money out of our savings in 04 and 05. We took a significant earnings hit between us. But within five years, I was making twice what I made before. And now I make, I don't know, four times what I probably would have had I stayed in that field. Yeah. But you're right. There was two tough years. And I think that's why my family and friends are like, what are you guys buying a building for? What are you doing? Well, we had faith in ourselves. Awesome. And it worked. It was a gamble that paid off. Yeah. And where was that kind of early growth coming from? Was it just very underserved? Or did you tap into some market or some new method of advertising that really, really worked? So we have always specialized in small businesses. Now, there's a lot of people now who run firms that niche down a lot smaller than that. But we've always specialized in small businesses. This year, we'll do maybe 1,350 returns. 400 will be S-Corps and Partnerships. And then the rest are 1040s. And most of them are the owners, their parents, their kids, their next door neighbor, that kind of thing. We've always done a fair amount of payroll and bookkeeping as well. I used to value businesses. I do a lot of tax consulting. I do a lot of tax advisory. I do a lot of different consulting engagements. My partners don't, but I do. I kind of like what in my realm is considered the more complicated stuff. But where did our growth come from? It was hard in the beginning. I mean, I know a lot about advertising. I've tracked our advertising going back since inception. It's taken me a long time to build up a funnel of over 500 people who call us a year with $0 spent. But in the beginning, my success was really with blue-collar people. Because people would come in. They'd be an electrician. They'd be a plumber. They'd run a factory. And them and I would have a very different conversation, I think, than maybe a lot. I cared tools for 15 years. I'm a licensed electrician. I have a little different look. I mean, the way I'm dressed today is the way I dressed 20 years ago. The only time I wear a suit and tie is if I have to testify in court. Other than that, it's this. This is what you see is what you get. And we've been like that our whole careers. So in the beginning, we didn't have as many lawyers and bankers, but we had a whole lot of blue-collar people. And then over time, it wasn't purposeful. I do a ton of financial plans. I do eight different financial planning firms. Not on purpose. It just happened. We do so many financial planners, and each of my partners do a big firm, too, that there's going to be a ton of referrals if you do the tax returns for 10 different financial planning firms. A lot of our early growth came from some of them. And so is that one of the big keys to those 500 inbound leads you get a year now is a big chunk of that through the financial planners? So roughly speaking, 150 of our leads are referrals. I turned a lot of the financial planner leads off. I actually called them during COVID and said, you have to stop sending me small 1040s. I don't want them anymore. And so they have. I mean, you know, I actually had to tell one of them we wouldn't take any more of their clients because they just would not listen. But we get about 150 referrals a year and then we get about 300 people find us on the Internet and about 50 people find me on Twitter. Yeah, I was going to ask how how Twitter has helped, because there's a lot of collaboration right on there and people who are at capacity are just super happy to share a lead via Twitter like. Oh, yeah. I just put up a post in my new room about do you are you looking for clients because I can't onboard everyone I have. If you tell me what you want, some of the ones I say no to, maybe I can send you. And I believe the last poll that I looked at, roughly 65 percent of firms are not taking on new clients. I met with a person a month ago who said I was the 18th person whose office they called in Fort Wayne. And we're the only one that talked to them. Wow, that's that's something else. Yeah. And you've been around. Some of it is geographical. I have some friends who live in other places and say it's still competitive there. It's not where I am. And I think some of it's geographical, but I feel like half of the people who get college degrees leave Fort Wayne. So there's a shortage of accountants here. So firm struggle. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's interesting. Speaking of competition, I'm probably going to open a whole can of worms here. But with your experience of, you know, there being way too much demand for your services and not enough supply. Let's talk about this kind of new development from QBO where they're sort of directly competing for clientele from tax firms. What's your take on all of that? Do you think that those are clients that you wouldn't want to work with anyways? Or is this kind of QBO starting to eat their their own audiences lunch? Or sorry, Intuit is starting to eat their own audience. Intuit has honked a bunch of people off with this TV commercial. I can tell you that. Yeah. I'm actually giving a seminar on this next month. And I've watched roughly half of their investor day presentation. And man, they say some pretty hostile things about accountants. This is their CEO. Do I think it's going to impact me? Not at all. If a couple of my clients go there because they think it's going to be cheaper, that might happen. If so, it's OK. I have 500 people inbound without trying. I mean, I don't even put out a monthly newsletter. If I want more to come in, they will. But do I think it will affect some people? I do. I think I think it will have some effect. I think we'll have some positive and negative effect, to be honest. But I think you're going to see a lot of people like me look at ways of getting out of Intuit products because, you know, it's probably legal. But Intuit data mines, they make job offers to our employees all the time. They, you know, they have all of our data. They have all of our clients' data. So they have a database of the tax returns I do in the software I get from them. They have a database from QBO. They know who my employees are. I mean, they have all the data. Probably there's something in the fine print that allows them to use it. I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, but they've honked people off. Will they succeed in the beginning? They probably will fail massively. I mean, they can't do the tax returns that I generally do. I mean, I'm trying to picture a person who does their own QBO file, doesn't know what they're doing, turning it into a person who's been doing tax returns for two years and hoping for a good result. Garbage in is garbage out. You know, I spent a lot of time fixing my clients' books. I spent a lot of time asking them questions. Are they going to do that? I don't think so. No. And, like, there's a lack of continuity, right, in that relationship, too, where it's going to be like a one-off, here's your deliverable, thanks, bye, see you next year, right? Whereas there's no one getting to know each other there, which I think is going to be a bit of an issue. I think that's a great point, and I think it's very true. I think our profession is very relationship-oriented. I have people who have been my client for 20 years. I know a lot about them. They know a lot about me. You're not going to get that into it. Yeah. And what do you think about their pricing? Because that's where I do think that there's some positives. Same. Yeah, where I think Intuit's going to do a really good job of sensitizing people to the benefits of getting your taxes prepared and the importance of getting help, right? And so now all these kind of like mom-and-shop firms or even larger firms are instead going to have this huge behemoth, multibillion-dollar company advertising the need for an accounting professional in the loop, whereas they could easily be that accounting professional and very likely offer a much better service in terms of the cost, right? I think it probably has a chance of benefiting firms that don't charge enough. I mean, I think we've all got to look at what Intuit charges and say that's the floor. If I've been a CPA for 20 years and I can't put out a better product than Intuit in a video chat, something is badly wrong, right? I am not very good at what I do. But there are a lot of firms that are cheaper than Intuit. And what I hope those firms do is raise their prices and say, I've got to charge what Intuit does. Now, do I think there's a chance that some bigger businesses that go to big firms that pay a whole lot of money and don't answer the phone and don't have customer service might lose some to Intuit? Yeah, I think they might. I think they might. I've gained more clients from big firms in the last eight months than I have in the last 20 years before that. Interesting. I mean, a ton. And I'm not going to say who, it's one specific firm. I mean, I'm gaining a ton of people from them. And they're not even doing good work. But my goodness, they charge for it. Yeah. And then so you have this client who's excited about this new level of service. Meanwhile, you might be super excited at what you're able to charge them and still give them a discount, right? Which I think that's a very nice relationship on all sides, right? They're happy with my price and they're happy I answer their questions and explain things. They like that, right? Now, what's interesting is what most of them say is, Mike, nobody's ever asked me this many questions. Why are you asking me this many questions? And I'm like, because I don't know what you're doing. You have to tell me. And if somebody is not asking you questions as they're doing your tax returns, they're just taking your word for it. Yeah. And you're not an accountant. You don't know how to self-repair your books. I've got to go look, right? I've got to go fix them. I've got to say, hey, you haven't reconciled. I did one from a big firm that hadn't reconciled their banks in eight years. And the big firm just took them and did the tax returns. They just garbage in, garbage out. I had millions of dollars of adjustments just to fix the books. Yeah. I mean, I worked at a big, poor firm in tax. And I tried to stay away from the individual and corporate tax prep. I really like the international tax advisory and M&A stuff. But I still had to do some degree of my fair share of it. And we had some clients sometimes who would just give you a number on a napkin, send it in a blurry text message over the phone. And they say, all right, that's the number. File it. Yeah. Yeah, no questions asked. Yeah. And I think our office was pretty thorough. There was a lot of pride in the work that we were doing. But there were some clients where it was like, listen, we're not going to get anything better out of this person. Just file it. Right? And so that is what it is. For sure. And I've hired three people from big firms, including a top four. And one of the first things I do is sit them down and say, this is different. We ask questions. We don't assume it's right. Our clients don't all have a controller and audited financial state. You can't act like they do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of hiring from big firms, we kind of talked about your talent model a little bit before this. I'm always curious about places who are not having too much trouble hiring. What are you doing? Obviously, on the one side, I help firms with that from the comp perspective. But I do really like hearing of different initiatives that people are doing that aren't necessarily just plain old salary based. And so your biggest thing at your firm in terms of like the benefit to employees really seems to be work life balance. Right. It is. And I would love to hear not only like what that actually looks like from the employee perspective, but also how you are kind of balancing that and how you're reconciling that in your head. Versus why so many other firms seem to just not be able to make that a reality. So I'll tell you what our what our schedule is. But first, I'll tell you why it works for us. We know what the word no means. If we're at capacity, I capacity plan every year right now. And the deadline is next Tuesday. I believe we have two tax returns left to do. Not 20, not 200 to. Right. We are going to do eight more tax returns than I projected in April. Right. Well, I said no to everybody else. Right. Because you have to make a decision. How much do you want to work? How much do your employees want? We set what our employees are going to work. They generally come within 50 hours of the annual goal. They don't even know how many hours they work once a year. I tell them, I say, hey, you were 40 hours under. You did great. Hey, you were 60 hours over. You did great. Remember, if you're within 50 or 100, we're happy. You know, there's not this weekly shame check of how many hours you've worked compared to your team or how many hours you build. My staff doesn't even know how many other hours I've built. They have no idea. And this when you talk about once a year. Yeah. And when you talk about staff hours here, you're talking about total hours, right? Not billable. Right. So at my firm, when we hire people, we tell them we expect you to work roughly plus or minus 100, 1,904 hours a year. How do we get to 1,904 hours a year? They are expected to work 60 hours a week for 15 weeks. Then on April 15th, including April 15th, we switch down to a schedule where they all have either Monday or Friday off, half have Monday off, half have Friday off. So they have 37 three-day weekends a year. We do not have a second tax season ever. We don't allow it. We say no instead. So currently, my employees, if they don't take time off, are working 32-hour weeks for 37 consecutive weeks. It is extremely popular. I've heard a lot of people say, well, wouldn't 40 be more popular? I don't think with my staff. I live up pretty far north. Our winters can be a bit hard. People seem to think that they get in our firm. People seem to think they get in a groove. They work hard for 15 weeks. Then they're done for 37 weeks. Then we do it again. This week in my office, we're an 11-person firm. Five of us were in. This week on Friday, I think six of us will be in. This is the week before October 15th. Nobody will be in on Saturday. Nobody will be in on Sunday. We just don't do it. It's not necessary. I have a person taking vacation next week. I had a person take vacation last week. I have a person taking three days off this week. Since we don't have that much to do, it's not a problem. Now, I'm turning away clients instead of working everybody to death. It's a conscious decision. You pay overtime, right? I think that that makes a difference where when you just have people on salary, then it just becomes a question of corporate greed. Do I just want to make more money for the same cost base? Yeah, sure. What's another 20 returns, right? I think so. Versus once you've set up an incentive structure where you… First of all, I think you just out of principle don't want to do that. But even if, let's say, you did really want to take on the extra returns, just by having this incentive structure in place, you're probably doing the mental math of like, well, these are really not going to be that profitable in theory. Presumably, you're kind of like, I make enough where I don't feel a need to squeeze everyone more, squeeze myself more for more hours and just go out and enjoy life, right? I don't. My firm has three partners. My wife is one of them. She's the founding partner. I'm an empty nester. I'm worth a lot of money. I don't need to make more. I want to share with my staff. It's important to me. One of the things I'm most proud of in my firm is there's 11 of us. Every single person puts at least 5% into their 401k, and we match 4%. We have a safe harbor plan. Everybody does. If they didn't, if I was going to shame people, it wouldn't be about the hours they work. It'd be that they're not putting in the plan because they're flushing 4% of their salary down the toilet that I will match. Right? That's more my passion. We have a great team. I haven't lost a person in four and a half years. I don't have turnover. The person we just hired from a top 10 firm makes significantly more for me than she made there, and she told us that she thinks our benefits are better. Right? You treat people well, they'll treat you well. Since I don't have turnover, I don't have to constantly retrain people. Right? It's a win-win. Now, you're right. I'm not greedy. I've made my money. I like to make money. Making money is good, but I make enough money. I don't have to make more. I would rather share with them. We're not a firm where the partners make 7, 8, 10, 20 times what the employees do. We're a firm where the partners might make three times what the employees do, and we're good with that. Right? We share. Everybody's happy. Now, we all have bad days, but we're a good place to work, and word of that has spread. Now, there's a big firm in town that has two people that want to jump ship, and they both have credentials. They're like, well, can you fit me in? I'm like, just hire a person. Give me a few months. You know? Yeah. It's all because they don't want to be worked to death. Yeah. Right? It's only that. It's not that we're cooler. It's not that we're nicer. It's that they don't have to work as hard. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then from that employee-first kind of perspective. Yeah. You've talked a lot about succession planning as opposed to the easy path out of seeking you know a private equity or a larger firm. I will never sell to private equity, that would disgust me. I don't like private equity. So we have a succession plan. My wife and I plan on retiring in four and a half years, April 15th, 2029, May 15th, 2029. I misspoke. We have four people who we think are interested, who we have talked to. We're getting ready to make a two-page checklist for each one and say, hey, here's a checklist. Go down the checklist, check them all off. You get to the bottom, you want to buy in, you're in. And that's our goal. They're all relatively young, they're all a little bit shy, but I keep saying you don't have to go out and do anything. They come here, right? All you have to do is take over and be able to onboard people to call. You know, at my firm, you don't have to be on a board. You don't have to go play golf. You don't have to do any of that garbage. We've never done any of that garbage. You don't have to show up and volunteer. You don't have to go out and do a trash cleaning. You just do your own thing, do your work, come in and go home. And then what does that look like from a structure perspective? Would you be looking to earn an annuity from this firm in retirement or would it truly just be like, here's some valuation we've arrived in, here's what we think in terms of buyout, and then you could sellers finance it to them? We're going to seller finance it over five to seven years. We're going to pick a much lower multiple than PE charges because we want them to succeed. I have my money. I can retire without what I sell it for. Yes, I'm bragging, but I can't. And so can my wife. No, I mean, that's awesome. Will we sell it for something? Sure. We'll sell it for something. It's worth good money. We do quite well, but I don't need to sell it for what PE is selling it for. And to me, it goes back to your point about greed. I don't need to be greedy. I would rather set two or three, even four other people up to succeed like I did. I made more money today than I thought I ever would make 20 years ago, even 10 years ago. And with the accountant shortage, there's no end in sight. This is a great field to go into. You know, if you're young or unhappy at a big firm, you can jump ship, man. You can start your own and you can do better because you don't have people above you skimming it away. And so like what's happening now, you know, where we're maybe five or four and a half years from the planned retirement date, like to prepare these staff, like how are you know, how are those four people being kind of like prepared to take over? And what do you think has changed since you've had those conversations with them to tell them that like, hey, you are kind of among the chosen ones, essentially who we want to take over this firm? Sure. So what's happened is it made it a little bit easier to hire. It's made it a little easier to convince people to want to stay. It's made it a little easier to get people to agree to become experts in things so that they take it over. I think they're pretty excited about the checklists that I'm about to make. Like I said, there's going to be, here's what you need to do to be a tax manager. Here's what you need to do to be a partner. You go down the list and as you complete each thing, get a partner to initial it, right? So I think when we present a very specific path, I think it's going to be popular. I'm going to also project revenue. They already know what I make and they've known what I make since I hired them. Believe it or not, it's part of my interview process when I'm hiring a person. I tell them what I make. I tell them how many hours I work. I tell them that if they can get their credential, it could be an EA, it could be a CPA, and if they want to do what I do and they want to make X, they can make X. It can be done in five to 10 years and not more than that, and let's go. My staff knows what I make. They know what all the partners make. They know within 10,000 dollars what I make. I think they should know. I think this whole secrecy around partner comp has actually been negative for the industry because again, as the almost senior accountant who's like, this doesn't pay off, I may have done the calculus a little bit differently had I known, okay, if you hang on, you're definitely going to make senior manager or would have a shot at partner. I was being groomed as more of the business development type person within the firm, so that increases your odds a little bit and stuff. Because of all this secrecy, I was just doing the calculus and I was like, this never pays off and it does pay off. Now I know myself a little bit better than I did then and I think that the very rigid structure of a big four firm was never going to work for me, but at the time, it was very much a financial decision where I was like, wow, this sucks and that's not actually true. Even at small firms, a lot of people have this notion like, the money's just not there. That's not true. I have a lot of firm owners who've entered on big four transparency. As the firm owner, here's how much I'm making. They're doing great, right? As I'm sure you are. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I have no worries, but my staff knows what I make and I think they should, but realize I was in the military, you knew how much everybody made. I was a member of three unions. I grew up in a mentality, I mean, I worked a lot of hours at a nuclear power plant, steel mill, and I made a lot of money and I banked. I let my staff do the same thing. I think it's pretty important. I've always felt that way. And I oftentimes tell people this, people are like, Hey Mike, your management style is different. I'm like, well, you know what? My biggest advantage, and I believe this to the bottom of my soul, is I never worked for another accounting firm. My biggest disadvantage, I never worked for another accounting firm. Right? Yeah. We do things differently. Different can be good. Probably there's some things that, that we should have done differently, more like other accounting firms, but we're just not set up. Yeah. Well, I mean, when an industry is kind of in turmoil, that's your sign that if, you know, if you're going to do things a little bit differently, that might be a good thing. Right? I think so. Yeah. I think so. Yeah. No, I, I, uh, I love that. And so, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, uh, I love that. And so for people who are kind of listening who might be, you know, curious to strike out on their own, figure out entrepreneurship and all that, I think we should talk a little bit more about this, this new initiative of yours, the collaboration room. And you know, there's, there's a ton of accounting communities out there and I would love to know what makes this one unique and who should kind of be considering it. So the collaboration room just launched. We already have more members than our goal. People are kind of flocking in. It's going very well. We actually are working with two other communities pretty actively right now. And in fact, one is going to send us a person today and another one, I'm helping them for their launch because we all think we can help each other because there's so many people available who need some guidance. And I have two people who have communities who are actually putting an advertisement for us, not a paid advertisement, but they're actually advertising for us in their newsletters going out. And that tells you that it's not really a competition, right? But what's different about us is Rebecca Driscoll is a CPA. She's much younger than I am. She's much tech savvy than I am. She's kind of a nice, friendly coach who likes to listen. And I'm more like the grumpy uncle that looks at you and says, look, man, you are not doing this right. You should listen to me and you should stop doing that garbage, right? So we kind of complement each other personality wise. We bounce things off of each other. But what's different about our community is we are focused on people who want to grow their firm, improve their firm. Start a firm is a more minor area, but we are doing a fair amount of that. And we are also doing a fair amount of helping people with taxes, because there's a lot of people that are going out on their own, starting a firm. Maybe they come from E&Y and they were siloed in one place. And they're like, well, Mike, how do you do partnership basis? I only did S-Corps. So we've done a lot of that. But I think if there's something that's going to set us apart is we already have two people who we are going to announce as coaches next month. So we're going to have a crew of coaches, probably a dozen outside of us by the end of next year. So we're choosing people who have an expertise in a field that we don't. And then within our community, those coaches run live events and we do free live events. We do paid live events. We're going to have, for example, an expert on outsourcing work overseas. We're going to have an expert on scheduling tax returns. We're going to have a couple of people outside of myself who are tax experts. We're going to have an AI expert down the road, an automation expert. But one person cannot be an expert on everything. So we're building a team of coaches that are going to work together. And we actually pay them. We actually share the revenue from their sessions with them evenly. So we pay them for their time. We split the revenue from their sessions and we move on. So the idea is to build a team of coaches. And then a lot of the people within the community join the community because they want to help other firms, but they don't necessarily want to be a coach. So they just kind of chime in and say, oh, I do that. In fact, for example, somebody put up a post and said, hey, I need to fire some clients. Do you have a template? Well, there's already multiple templates that we use up there for freeing people to seek other tax professional opportunities, right? Nice. But you can save yourself a lot of work if you look at five, six, seven other form, you know, form letters that people write and then make your own. I'm doing a session on beneficial ownership report. I share my engagement letter. I said, don't use it. Use it as a base. You know, you don't have to do it, but you have to tell your clients about it. So when I do a session on that next week, I'm not going to tell you how to fill out the form. I'm going to tell you how your practice should handle it by either you're going to do it or you're not going to do it. If you're going to do it, what should you do and what shouldn't you do? And if you're not going to do it, how do you inform your, your clients and protect yourself from being sued if they get penalized? Right. Yeah. But we're not talking about how to fill out the form. Right. That, that, that's not the purpose of this. The purpose of this is this is how you run your practice and protect yourself. Does that make sense? Yeah. No, I love that. And I'm, I'm assuming the other communities I think, I think have been on here as well. I assume that's Brandon and Logan. I have certainly been talking to both of them in real and unclear, but yes. And there is no doubt that I am working with both of them. And in fact, I'm going to visit one of them in November and the other I spoke to today. So those are two of the communities that we are working with. And interestingly, Rebecca is working with two of the other ones. Okay. Right. So it's not a big competition and what you're going to find in the end is a lot of people are going to already, a lot of people are in two or three. Oh yeah. What I think is a problem is people who aren't in any, who are siloed in a firm, right? Yeah. And if you join one and don't like it, well then go try another one. They're all subscription based with a monthly fee, right? Yeah. So try it. You don't like it for three months, go try another one. And yes, we're going to advertise in each other's and send people to each other because we have, we are looking for to do different things. You know, if you have a firm of 40 people and want to learn how to grow, you don't necessarily want to come to a guy from of 11 and have him teach you, right? We're kind of focused for people with starting out up to maybe 25. Now I'm not saying somebody that has more can't learn. They can, but they're probably going to go, if they're bigger than that, they're probably going to go with Brandon Hall. It's very different. Right? Yeah. No, I talk a lot about the siloing that happens at these kinds of larger firms and how, just how much of a shame it is to be honest with you, where these firms have great resources, but you're just not taking in what's going on in the community, what's actually going on in the world of accounting. And like for me to even to start appreciating all of that, it took me hosting 20, 20 episodes of this podcast, you know, which, which not everyone's going to do. Yeah. I left a big four. Right. And I just, I had no idea what was going on. And to me, like my world was fishbowl Reddit and I was just saturating it with big four transparency stuff. And I had no idea. And then I was like, Oh, I listened to this podcast, the accounting podcast. And then I got on Twitter and then it takes a lot to get into. So my first victory was I went back to college as an adult. My best friend in college is Brent. He was, he was active duty army. He was in the national guard. He got activated and sent to Kuwait and hung out in a foxhole for a year. And when he got back from that, he went back to college. He was, he's 10 years younger than me, but we were still older than the average people there. And we kind of bonded. And then after college, he went and worked for Ernst and young. He did two years at Ernst and young, and then I hired him from Ernst and young. And he's been my partner since 2011. Right. So I purposely went and hired a person from the big four. Right. And people think, well, how many people did you have at your firm? When you did that? He was our third full-time employee, right. And I decided I was going to go hire him. And I paid him more than he did. He had to work less. And he had a partner that he fulfilled in less than three years. And that was probably terrifying to him, right? Because of this narrative of like, we are better than them kind of that goes on to tell you a funny story. So in our conference room, he asked me if he could have his family over and they were going to have a meeting about whether he should become a partner. And his brother is currently a CPA at a big firm. And his brother has worked at several firms. And his entire family told him he should not take our offer, but he did. They were unanimous. This is a bad idea. You should not do this. And now he'll tell you, I never thought I'd make this much money. He can do whatever he wants to, right. And you know, I have went and pursued people from big firms and people think, oh, you can't do it. If you're a little guy in Fort Wayne. Yes, you can. And you should. Right. Yeah. Yeah. A hundred percent. And it's good to get that again, that diversity of like, like the big four, like people coming from there, like they're popular candidates for a reason, but then people coming from small firms too, like you have way more breadth of experience and you're probably more ready to, to take on, you know, whole client management, but like that specialization you get at those big firms. I'm a general. Right. I've always been a generalist. There's good and bad about that, but I'm a generalist. I know a little bit about a lot of things. There's a few things I know a lot about, and it just feels like to me, there's still a place for generalists. Do you know what the first thing I teach people I hire from big firms, how to do is what's that? How to talk to clients, how to ask clients questions. Generally, they come work for me after two, three, four years there. And they've never talked to a client and they're like, really? I can call your clients. I'm like, you must call my clients. You have to ask them questions. It is required. And they're like, really? I get to talk to them now? Yes. Not only do you get to, you must, you have to learn how to do this. And that's a skill all of its own. Not everybody can do it. A lot of them have been siloed and are maybe a little shy, but so far they've all enjoyed doing it. Might be a bit awkward at first because you've never done it right. But that's the work that I teach people how to do is how to talk to clients. Yeah. And the work feels better when you have some relationship with a client too, right? It's not just this faceless return. I think so. It's a little bit more rewarding. Well, I think the big firms are too worried about protecting the partner's relationship with clients. I want my clients to have a relationship with my staff so that I don't have to do everything. And it works for me. And I like it that way. And probably less churn upon your retirement too, right? Well, I think one of the things that partners at small firms have done wrong, I'm not talking about big firms, small firms, they don't have a succession plan. They don't teach people how to do things. They don't empower them. They don't. They don't. They kind of hoard the valuable relationships, right? And I think that's a problem. But there's so many things about my firm that are different. I'll give you another example. We have three partners. Do you know how we split the money? Three ways. We each get paid an hourly rate and we all get paid the same hourly rate depending on the hours we work. We work over 40, we get paid overtime, and then we split the profit seat. So we don't have these complicated spreadsheets of who brought which client in and who services which client. We don't have any of that crap, none of it. And so there's no competition, right? And that is a radically different model, right? That's awesome to hear. That's very unusual to me. I think that's a benefit of a very small firm because I do think at 10 partners, ah, you know, this one guy, he's a bit of a freeloader, he's clearly not working as hard as the rest of us. But for that to work is tremendous. And I mean, says a lot about the people involved, but at the same time, it's just, yeah, it's going to simplify it. And we don't want to be a 10 partner firm. Yeah. Yeah. We want to, at most, be five, right? I turn away 200 clients minimum a year, right? And I'm not trying to grow more. We've, we basically are what we want to be. Yeah. Now we're growing a little bit and we're always going to grow a little bit. I say no, because if I didn't say no, all of a sudden everybody would have to work more in September and October, right? But you know, at most firms you have to get permission and there's blackout dates of when you can take vacation. No, no, no, no. No, somebody just went and got a colonoscopy and missed a few days this week. That's fine. You don't just go do it, right? It's not a problem because we're not, we're working 32 hour weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for coming on, Mike. I really appreciate you kind of sharing your perspective on the industry, your story, all of that. I really enjoyed. And yeah, I'm going to make sure I include for anyone who is interested, a link to the collaboration room and the podcast notes. I think, you know, if you want to learn more about the kind of vibe of this, I would recommend you check out Mike on Twitter. I'm going to link that too, because I kind of knew what I was getting into and a lot of your philosophies from there. And I've been following you for quite a while and I really like the tone of what you share about the industry. Do I seem the same in person as I, as I project on Twitter? I would say so. Absolutely. Yeah. I would be disappointed if you didn't say that you kind of see what you get, right? I don't. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's, it's definitely kind of prepared me well. I knew what to expect, but I think that that tone will, will absolutely carry forward into the collaboration room, which is why I'm kind of like, oh, if you want a preview of it, it's probably a good place to check that. So I'll make sure I link that as well. But yeah. Thank you so much for joining me, Mike. Appreciate it.