AI Is Rewriting Accounting, So Build Two Plans Now

Charlie (00:03): we just met with a firm owner, you know, running his own business and we want to jump straight into that because he said a lot of interesting things that I feel like is shared kind of across the board with a lot of people we talk to, whether it’s in ALFA or TCR or just ones that we’re talking to across the board. And, you know, one of the things that’s top of mind for him is that he’s trying to figure out, you know, what his next service offering could be. Right. He’s trying to think about like this is what he does today, which is primarily tax. he does a lot of a lot of 1040 work. And you know he’s keeping up with AI and seeing how things are changing and progressing and these models are getting better and better. And he you know he’s kind of seeing the writing on the wall and he was asking us you know, what could his firm look like in a year from now, in three years from now, and what should he be doing about that today? And so we chatted about that and, one interesting point that he made was that, he is focused on what his firm will look like next tax season and then he’s thinking about what his firm will look like you know, two tax seasons from now, three tax seasons from now, and trying to figure out what does he need today this coming tax season and then what could he potentially replace in the future. And so I thought it was really

Rebecca (01:19): Yeah.

Charlie (01:19): interesting to hear him think like that.

Rebecca (01:21): Because it’s you know, to say like, okay, it’s October, I’m going to wipe my entire tech stack and just have Claude, run my entire accounting firm, like that’s pretty aggressive, right? Like I I don’t know about that for January one to to have that, you know, locked and loaded. so but we are kind of getting a glimpse at a world where, well, at some point maybe that could be real. But for now, you know, for this coming tax season, what’s my AI plan, you

Charlie (01:52): Mm-hmm.

Rebecca (01:52): know, to help support me, as an accountant this tax season? And then also I’m forward thinking and and looking at the big picture in the future. So I never thought about that we could have two plans, like short-term, long-term

Charlie (02:04): Yeah.

Rebecca (02:05): basically.

Charlie (02:05): Yeah, and we mentioned this I think on the last one of this long term goal. You know, what’s your your

Rebecca (02:09): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (02:11): vision for your firm long term, but still keeping reality, top of mind because we have tax season people are still doing taxes right now. They’re doing these extension and then before you know it’s gonna be January and then you know, things are gonna start ramping up. And so it’s like, okay, I can’t lose sight of that. I have to do that work. And it’s gonna be here in six months from now. And so what does that look like? What do I want it to look like? What can you do between October 15th and February 15th, January 15th, whatever it is for you? And then a little pause, right? Because we’re gonna be busy until April. But then like let’s think ahead, let’s think two years from now, three years from now, same

Rebecca (02:49): Yeah.

Charlie (02:50): type of work, right? How would in your mind that work be done? and it may be hard for some people to even think about what it could look

Rebecca (02:58): Yeah.

Charlie (02:59): like because it’s changing so rapidly. it’s impossible to know where these models will be at in two or three years. But I still think you could look at it you know globally and say, okay, well I have ten different software, a couple of them do the exact same thing. I’d love to get this down to five. Right. Okay,

Rebecca (03:17): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (03:17): what are your top five? he has his top five in his head and then mentioned he had some that he he’s paying for and he doesn’t use. Or he uses

Rebecca (03:25): Yeah.

Charlie (03:26): very, rarely. like as needed, ad hoc, and so So I would target those, right? If I were him, I’d be okay. I purchased this software. I really only use it, at these times or for these reasons. What would it look like if I didn’t have to pay for it and I could just kind of build a lightweight maybe version of that software and then just kind of start chipping away. And then if

Rebecca (03:49): Or do you even need a software? could you just have a conversation like with ChatGPT or Claude when you need to have that particular thing done?

Charlie (03:59): Yeah, I that’s a good point. When I say software, in that point I kind of meant Claude or Chat GPT. Like how

Rebecca (04:04): Okay.

Charlie (04:04): could you basically use that software being Claude and ChatGPT

Rebecca (04:07): Hmm, I see.

Charlie (04:09): to do whatever it was you’re doing? Or if you use them to build again a super basic app

Rebecca (04:14): Right.

Charlie (04:15): to replace that software that you were paying for, what would that look like and how would that work? and I think this goes back to like planning. Like I think people need to start doing a good bit more planning. of here’s where I’m at today and then here’s what could happen and you know how could I prepare myself. I mean you did a good exercise kind of before this call of asking Chat GPT what’s gonna happen to this industry, right? I mean you just ask

Rebecca (04:41): Yeah.

Charlie (04:42): it based on how things are progressing, how things are changing, what’s accounting and tax gonna look like in five years from now, three years from now? And it it spat out all these things. Some of you can push back on, some of you may say, you know, I don’t fully agree with that or tell me more about that part, right? Like, okay, you mentioned

Rebecca (04:58): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (04:59): I think yours responded about this concept of of infrastructure. and I’d

Rebecca (05:03): Yes.

Charlie (05:04): love to hear you kinda expand on that a little bit.

Rebecca (05:06): Yeah, the analogy it was giving was like electricity. we don’t have someone who comes to our house every day and turns on our electricity. we just plug in and we’re good to go. It’s has an infrastructure around. it’s possible that at some point a taxpayer just plugs in all the moving parts of their financial life into something, maybe Claude or Chat GPT and in real time on a daily basis or a minute by minute basis, you know, their tax projections, their tax implications, their tax strategies are all being updated and they have a dashboard that’s telling them what’s going on. if they they own a business, or you know, that’s also the bookkeeping’s being done, and the bank account balances are being tracked, and cash flow, you know, forecasting for the future, it’s all just happening because everything is connected and plugged in, and these AI brains are really powerful and they can you know do these things for us. So, what does our profession look like? You know, if that happens. So, this isn’t a problem. problem to solve for this coming tax season, right? Like this coming tax season, it might just be like, maybe I’ll ask Claude, here’s my tech stack, here’s what I use each thing for. Is there any low-hanging fruit here of something that you recommend that we, build together or start using you for just for this tax season? Or is there anything you can streamline about my workflow for this tax season that wouldn’t be too you know heavy of a lift for me, given that I have only have a few months to get the team you know comfortable with this or something. but looking at the future, you know, now we have to do a little soul searching of, you know, how how much longer do I want to be in this profession? Is there another profession I want to be in? Or if I want to hang out in this profession for a while, if I worked really hard to get here and I’m nowhere near ready to retire, then you know what can I do to serve taxpayers if the tax and bookkeeping part is all set? And of, I mean we can this is kind of a hot take. Like I mean of course like someone still has to sign it and review and represent and you know like I’m not I’m it’s just an interesting exercise to to think about what doors that opens. And it kind of brings me to sitting at a coffee shop the other day with a new mom friend and you know we did the whole like are you a stay at home mom or do you work? And you know she said yeah I own this company. And it was like this massive company I felt like I needed her autograph. Like it was she blew me away with this. and so I started asking her some questions, like, tell me about you know, who do you use for bookkeeping? It like I’m like trying to get her as a client, even though I don’t have an accounting firm anymore. But I’m just so used to like if I meet a business owner, like they gotta become my client, right? that’s just still like that muscle is still you know strong in me. so I started asking those questions and you You know, what keeps you up at night as a business owner? And what you know, tell me about the the flow of like how does ops work? How does money move through your business? Like, is it seasonal, like the income, and you know, all these questions just like poured out of me and business owners love to talk about their businesses, right? So it instantly becomes business therapy for her because then she’s like, wait, you’re a CPA? I’ve been wondering, like, you know, it’s so hard to forecast in our industry because we take deposits. for some people and not for everyone and it’s in the wedding business so it’s seasonal and we’ve always tried to work on our financial model and we heard that claude has like a excel extension but we’re just not sure and we don’t know if we like if our CFO if we should still have a CFO and you know I just wonder sometimes are we gonna have enough money to pay everyone like every payroll and I’ve spent So much time thinking about how AI is going to make an accounting firm more efficient and give us more work-life balance and hopefully positively impact our mental and physical health because we’re not going to have to, you know, work crazy hours and maybe we’ll get some more capacity back in our lives, and instead of filling it with more clients, maybe we’ll go home and have dinner with our families. You know, that’s where my mind has been at in trying to help accounting firm owners, you know, get from point A to point B. But I didn’t really think about just regular business owners. And they, you know, they’re pretty busy. I mean, she knew what Claude was. it’s not that they don’t some of them do know about AI, but she’s got a lot more things to think about with how she wants to run her business and all the moving parts that, she’s getting, raising capital, she’s doing crazy stuff. So she doesn’t have time to just think of like, the account. Accounting part of her business and how she’s going to use Claude to like do a financial model. Like that’s just not even though she probably

Charlie (09:54): Mm-hmm.

Rebecca (09:55): could, if she asked Claude the right questions, it’s just not a good use of her time and it’s not her strength. But as accountants, we’ve seen so many businesses, right? We’ve seen many industries, we’ve seen many PLs, we know the tech stack of a lot of these different industries because we’ve had to plug them into QBO. Like we’re pretty technologically savvy at this point. Like I think accountants have really had to learn tech and learn software and learn our clients’ software to be able to extract out what we need. So I don’t feel like it’s that far of a reach for us to get a little bit comfortable with AI and then kind of get curious with our business. clients and ask them questions about like what do you wish you could have an answer for? What do you wish like you could wake up in the morning and know about your business? Like what are what are your goals for the business? And then have a chat with our Claude or Chat GPT to see how we could solve those problems for them. That could be a great service line to add in, you know, to to keep adding value. And I don’t think our prices would go down in that case. I think our prices would go up, I think we’d be such a strong advisor to these business owners.

Charlie (11:03): Yeah, there’s a lot of good that you said in there. I mean

Rebecca (11:07): Thank you.

Charlie (11:08): I did a very similar thing last week, I think it was last week,

Rebecca (11:12): Yeah.

Charlie (11:12): with one of my clients. Like I went to lunch with them. we were talking about They’re August financials, and we were talking about the rest of the year. they’re a new client for me this year. we started working back in June, I think. and they just got their returns done from their now prior CPA, right? And so, like they sent

Rebecca (11:28): Maybe.

Charlie (11:29): me those, I reviewed them, you know, got their books up to date for this year, got the month they closed for for August, and then we basically just went to lunch and we were chatting, right, about the return, about their operations, and I was just probing them. With questions of like, what do you wish you could see? Like what’s important to you? how do things work in your business? Because in my head, I’m like you. I’m thinking of where’s the opportunity at? Like right now, you know, they’re paying me for their monthly financials, for their tax planning, tax strategy, tax filing. and then I’m you know constantly thinking, well, where’s the other opportunity? And I

Rebecca (12:02): Yeah.

Charlie (12:03): they’re definitely AI forward, they’re using AI, but they’re not using it to the level that I am because they’re super busy. I mean they have a successful

Rebecca (12:08): Right.

Charlie (12:09): business. They have multiple businesses and they are spending you know all their time running their businesses and they’re basically telling me well I’d love just be able to see you know all of my Cash position across all my various businesses because they have related entities and they transfer money around and and they have to transfer for payroll. One of the businesses is a cash cow and you know so they that’s what’s top of mind for him. And I was like okay

Rebecca (12:30): Sure.

Charlie (12:31): cool I’ll just build it for you. And he was like, you know, what do you what do you mean? I was like, Well I’ll just you know, I can just build you kind of real time dashboard that you can go in and see, you know, your cash position across all your various businesses, and you know, it’ll just you just see it. And he was like, Okay.

Rebecca (12:45): Now you look like a superhero. Like it’s like, you know, you’ve gone from like a smart accountant that’s already like amazing, but now you’re adding this extra layer that’s like superhuman, you know?

Charlie (12:57): Yeah, and and I mean and I did. So I built it and I built it over the weekend.

Rebecca (13:00): How long did it take to build?

Charlie (13:03): I mean I just built it kinda passively in the background. not I mean y

Rebecca (13:06): Like how long could that take someone to build, like if they wanted to do that?

Charlie (13:09): I mean, not long, right? If you I mean I already had kind of the infrastructure in place, right? There I already had access to to the information I needed and I already built my own platform and things like this. So to build it from scratch, I mean still I mean you could do this you know, in a weekend probably, depending on what your usage is like on your AI and how much time you can commit to it. But I mean again, if you give the model a goal, this is the goal, I want you to work at it. You kind of clearly define that goal, the steps, what you’re trying to do, the purpose, where the information flows from, etc. You can just have

Rebecca (13:41): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (13:42): these models run for a period of time to where they can ping you whenever they’re at a stopping point or or they’ve reached this goal. and so I did and then I emailed them, you know, on Monday and was like, hey Hey, you know, log in, you should now be able to see this new revamp dashboard. Let me know what you think. And he and he loved it. He was like, Can you build a cash projection? You know, a projection for the rest of the year based on the cash, remaining obligations, how the money flows, etc. And I was like, Yeah. and then you know, so now in his head, he’s just like, well, Charlie can just kind of build whatever I want to see, that’s amazing. and kind of you know, take some of that stress off of him. And you know, I told him I was like, yeah, I’m gonna have to charge you more for this, right? If we’re gonna go down this route of me now kind of providing AI advisory to my clients. And he like Yeah.

Rebecca (14:23): Yeah, and like kind of CFO vibes too, right?

Charlie (14:26): And I was like, I can build all these financial modelings and things for you that you can just have access to. And he didn’t blink at it. He was like, okay, like tell me Yeah.

Rebecca (14:35): You’re solving a problem, like you know, that’s a pain point that you found.

Charlie (14:39): Yeah, and I think like this is where we’re gonna have to start shifting our mindset. Right. Right now, I mean if you’re someone that has a bunch of let’s say a bunch of ten forty work.

Rebecca (14:48): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (14:48): Right. And you’re you’re seeing you know, the news, maybe you live in an AI bubble like like me and you do. but these models are just getting better and better. And this kind of straightforward ten forty work is gonna be able to be done by AI. Now, would the client want to do it with AI? It’s different question. You know, but

Rebecca (15:04): Sure.

Charlie (15:04): if I if if it were me and I had a ten forty shop and I did a thousand ten forty returns, I would be trying to put them in buckets and I would say, Okay.

Rebecca (15:12): Tell me about these buckets.

Charlie (15:14): Well, I would say like, okay, who is likely to not use AI regardless of how good it is in the next five years? Maybe this is an older client that you have, maybe it’s someone who’s been with you for twenty, thirty years. Like those are probably pretty safe bets that they’re gonna you’re gonna do their return no matter how well the models are able to do tax returns So you’re like, okay, they’re in this bucket. Middle bucket’s more like, well, these clients could probably go either way. I’m not sure. It’s kind of a fifty fifty bet. And then this last

Rebecca (15:39): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (15:40): bucket would be I could definitely see them leaving. they already not the best type of clients like they are just I only talk to them once a year and you know

Rebecca (15:47): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (15:48): pretty straightforward situation you could see them you know saying Sarinara

Rebecca (15:52): Yeah.

Charlie (15:53): and using AI and then I would

Rebecca (15:54): Right.

Charlie (15:55): try to I would try to quantify that. I’d be like okay if 80 90% of this one bucket does in fact stay that makes up X amount of my of my If fifty percent of this middle bucket stays, that’s this amount. If eighty percent of this bucket does in fact leave, then that’s amount. And I try to quantify it and then I’ve be trying to figure out, okay, how do I make up this diff now that it has occurred or could occur.

Rebecca (16:18): Cool.

Charlie (16:19): Yeah, it could. And again, we’re just planning. Like to me, I’m just always trying to plan for both bet

Rebecca (16:24): Sure.

Charlie (16:25): better and worse and figure out, make sure that I’m prepared no matter what. And I’m like, okay, well, you know, these clients, if I’m a 10 to 40 shop, I maybe talk to one week a year, right? February sometime February and April, or past that they extend, and I’m like, Well, how can I go to two touch points, three touch points? You know, how what

Rebecca (16:43): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (16:43): would it look like if I started offering tax? tax planning, tax strategy, twice a year, once a year, you know, what would that look like? How much could I charge? You know, who would be interested in that?

Rebecca (16:52): Or even like budgeting, like, you know, helping them with their household budget. I don’t I mean you might not be interested in doing that kind of work, but if it is a little bit interesting to you, like that’s another let’s say they don’t need tax planning. You know, they’re not in a situation like that, but they they really could use someone to help them just figure out their spend every month and and what decisions to make based on those numbers.

Charlie (17:15): There’s a lot of people in our industry that are going down kind of financial planning route. And I think it makes complete

Rebecca (17:20): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (17:21): sense. I mean, taxes are a part of financial planning. You cannot do financial planning without taxes. Hard

Rebecca (17:24): Yeah. Yes.

Charlie (17:27): to do taxes without financial planning. so it makes sense. And, you know, I work closely right now with existing financial advisors. I mean, I get a lot of leads from financial advisors,

Rebecca (17:34): Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Charlie (17:36): because, you know, they’re obviously focused on the financial side of things, whether it’s the investments,

Rebecca (17:40): Yeah.

Charlie (17:41): portfolio, whatever it may be, and they’re

Rebecca (17:42): Right.

Charlie (17:43): not as deep into the taxes as you know, we are. And so that that’s a good partnership, but you know, in my mind, if you were to somehow combine personal finances, financial planning with taxes, I think that could be a a huge differentiator. And again, you know, I think it’s key to, not try and force it, but try and figure out, okay,

Rebecca (18:02): Yeah.

Charlie (18:03): for me it’s it’s businesses. So if I was a 1040 shop and I was in this position, I would say, well I want more business clients. How do I get more business clients? I would probably you know, I don’t want to say neglect my 1040 clients, but I would like, look I’ve now shifted my focus. I’m going to start going after more business clients and I’m gonna kind of cater more towards that market and try to, shift my firm, my practices,

Rebecca (18:25): Thank you.

Charlie (18:26): my operations to be able to handle more business clients. and that’s even like

Rebecca (18:29): Yeah. What about bookkeepers? Like if you just have a bookkeeping firm, like should they be worried too about bookkeeping being able to be kind of automated?

Charlie (18:39): Yeah, I don’t think any of us should be losing sleep at night. you know, don’t don’t be that worried about it. Yeah, but I do

Rebecca (18:43): Yeah. That’s good to know.

Charlie (18:45): think we should be thinking about this. I don’t think we

Rebecca (18:48): Yeah.

Charlie (18:48): should be ignorant to the fact that AI is getting very very good and there’s already

Rebecca (18:52): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (18:53): people that are using it for their bookkeeping. There’s already people that are using it to do their taxes. And there are people, whether we want to believe it or not, that are doing it accurately and right and correctly. Okay, it is happening. Yeah, it is it is

Rebecca (19:04): No they’re not. There’s no way.

Charlie (19:07): happening. but I do think like we should be just not just dismissing it and we should be thinking you know we should be thinking about it and we should I mean we’re smart we can figure this out and if I’m

Rebecca (19:16): Yeah.

Charlie (19:17): a bookkeeper and I’m I have all I do is bookkeeping for clients. I would again be thinking, okay, how can I go upticket? Right? I

Rebecca (19:23): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (19:24): do your bookkeeping, I just do your books. Well, let’s start layering in some projections, some analysis, you know, throw in some ratio analysis, throw in some like CFO type work. And don’t just I wouldn’t just do it for free, but I would again try and identify the clients that could be a good fit for this and

Rebecca (19:46): Yeah.

Charlie (19:47): you know like right now it’s October second You gotta do month in close. I would say, hey, here’s kind of a new package I’m you know or offering that I’m rolling out for a select number of clients where instead of just giving you here’s your your financials, I’m also providing X, Y, and Z now. And you know, it’s gonna be $500 more, you know, whatever it may be, $200 more, whatever you decide.

Rebecca (20:10): And if you’re thinking like how could I ever think of what that would be, could you just point, you know, ChatGPT or Claude at that client and let them come up with some ideas or or like give them some transcripts as well from conversations you’ve had with them and say like, you know, what are you hearing that I could solve for them or you know what opportunities do you see? And then of course you have to like be interested in offering that service. If you if you

Charlie (20:34): Mm-hmm.

Rebecca (20:35): ask yourself like do I want to do this and it’s like, well no, I don’t really want to do like personal budgeting for this person, that’s okay. Like you you shouldn’t do something you don’t want to do. But if it does sound interesting, you know, even just looking at you know the their business and the way the ops work and the work flows and and seeing if there’s things you could streamline there for them, like that could be a new service that isn’t necessarily about accounting or bookkeeping, but it’s just about you know making the whole operation run more efficiently,

Charlie (21:06): there seems to be kind of two paths you can take when it comes to AI. How to do

Rebecca (21:10): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (21:11): less of what you dislike doing and how to do more of what you do like doing. Right? And so

Rebecca (21:17): Mm mm, interesting.

Charlie (21:18): you can kind of choose where you spend your time. I think probably for a lot of people it’s like how can I spend less time doing these things that I hate? Yeah, I think that’s probably the best place to start. But like I wouldn’t stay there, you know? I would say, hey, what’s the thing I hate doing the most? Or what’s the thing that takes the most time? and how can we make that better? okay, now that we got that solved I don’t know if I would continue down that list of like let me just get rid of everything that I hate doing. I would pick like what’s the eighty twenty and I’d say what’s the thing I the the eighty percent larsing that

Rebecca (21:51): Mm.

Charlie (21:51): I can tackle and like let’s get that out the way and then let’s start thinking again thinking forward. Like how can we better the business in the sense of how do we start offering maybe some of these potential new offering? I do like personal financial planning. should I look into you know what would that look like? I’m sure people have Have one person in their head. If they’re like, hey, I actually would be interested in doing financial planning, I’m sure they can think of one person. That they could say, hey, I’m now starting to do this. This is what this would look like. And so I wouldn’t worry about trying to apply it broadly because I think it’ll happen naturally.

Rebecca (22:25): Right.

Charlie (22:26): If you’re able to like, I can do this with AI. Let me try it with a client that’s willing and interested. We’ll see how it goes. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? They say, No, no thanks. Well, if they say that, then is that on you? You know, like well how can you make what you tried 10x better keep iterating and things like that and

Rebecca (22:44): Hmm. There’s that 10x thing again.

Charlie (22:48): yeah I mean that’s how I think all the time and I think it’s because now AI is really really good at expanding on that thought with me like it really

Rebecca (22:56): Yeah.

Charlie (22:56): does come up with some great ideas sometimes

Rebecca (22:58): It’s so crazy. we have the the firm exchange in TCR where if you’re a member of TCR, you can look at this board of people who are buying and selling accounting firms or just like a a chunk of their book of business and you can, ask to get connected to those people and it’s just like a membership perk and people from outside of TCR can list there but only TCR members can see it. And I feel like just nobody’s using it. And it could be Because it’s not the best time of year for that, but I don’t know. I sold my firm November 1st. Like, so we’re about to approach kind of like your last chance, maybe before the next tax season, to do something like that. And I I was like, maybe it’s just not that good. Like maybe it needs to be better. And so actually this morning I asked Codex, I said, can we 10X this? Like, what would 10Xing this look like? And it just like immediately gives you like the best ideas ever. So I said, okay, please do all of those things. And so all day it’s been doing those things. Every meeting I’ve been in, it’s do it’s making it 10x better just because I asked and said, okay, go do that. So maybe people

Charlie (24:05): Yeah. I mean it

Rebecca (24:06): will use it now.

Charlie (24:07): It’s a great you know thought exercise to do of like here and the key is Codex has access to this, right? It has access to the code,

Rebecca (24:14): Yeah.

Charlie (24:15): it’s a site, like it knows how it’s set up, it knows the purpose of it, you’ve told it some of your

Rebecca (24:21): Yeah.

Charlie (24:21): frustrations, you’ve told it what’s maybe or you feel, you know, this fallen short with it and it’s like, okay, it has that information and then it tries to deduce why that could be and then also later on top, well How could it be better? If this is the goal that you have for this,

Rebecca (24:33): Yeah. Right.

Charlie (24:35): you know, here’s where it is today, like where’s that gap? And it’s pretty good at identifying that gap and coming up with some solutions.

Rebecca (24:40): And like, you know how we’ve all had that like one client where we feel like we’re we’re they’re giving us a lot of money but like we’re not really delivering a lot. Like we you just feel like I could do more for that person. It’s like now you have the opportunity to just like always at like 10x it and always find a way to add more value. And like I think about that with like the members of our communities. Like if we want to keep them there and keep them happy, we gotta keep thinking of ways to add more value and ways to you know give them new experiences and new things and you know with the help of AI to talk through Like and brainstorm what those types of value ads could be. Like now it’s gonna be a lot more realistic for me to actually add more value to members or clients. Where in the past it was just kind of this like thing where I’m like, I know I should really figure out a way, but now it’s like no, I have like a thinking partner that will help me figure it out.

Charlie (25:35): Wait, so you sold your firm last November? Was it this past it? Okay,

Rebecca (25:38): No, twenty twenty four.

Charlie (25:41): twenty twenty four. And so now you’re fixing to start another firm two years later? You talking about getting getting clients again?

Rebecca (25:47): yeah, my my new mom friend. She’s just gonna be my client and I’m just gonna, you know, start a low key CPA firm and I’m gonna call it Driscoll and Barmore. yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Charlie (25:58): well so I’m involved now. Okay. Yeah. we’ll merge. We’ll do a little merger action.

Rebecca (26:03): Yeah. I you know, I think I think we should just start a CPA firm.

Charlie (26:07): down I’m down. I mean you know this mentality though like 10xing I’m doing this with my clients right now like even this client where I built this cash dashboard in my mind like this is V0 this is the worst it’ll ever be you know like now I want to take it and really 10x that and then also address everything else he said in that lunch That I came home and I just like, you know, word vomited to Claude and ChatGPT and was like, hey, here’s like what’s top of mind for him. Here’s what keeps them up at night or what he spends his time thinking about. I want to solve that for him. Right. And like this is just kind of my mentality when it comes to to my clients is you know, I want to be seen as a partner with them. Like I do not want it

Rebecca (26:46): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (26:47): to feel transactional. I knew when I set out to open my firm and get my clients, I want a smaller number of business owners and I wanted to do everything for them, right? I wanted to do their business accounting, business taxes, I wanted to do the personal taxes. I wanted to do everything for them this like white glove service.

Rebecca (27:04): It is.

Charlie (27:04): and I knew that if I did that I could charge you know a higher ticket and I didn’t have to have that many clients and I can really really tailor the services that I provide to that client and so

Rebecca (27:14): Which is not the traditional model that, you know, a lot of us are kind of not stuck, but we’re existing in a firm that that is not the model, right? Like they’ve got thousands and thousands of clients. and it’s kind of fun to to reimagine, you know, like what if I could just start fresh, like a blank slate. Maybe I start a little side firm project, like of like maybe I have two going at the same time. I get like one client that I’m gonna try. new way with and the re and you know I’ll keep my thousand other clients but I just want to see what what I could do you know because I think like also not to generalize but a lot of accountants we have like kind of imposter syndrome like there’s a lot of tax code to remember and we kind of we’re very afraid to make a mistake the stakes are high so to feel like you know I I can’t do CFO services I can’t forward look I I just know how to look at the past like that’s kind of what I’ve always said like I don’t want to do stuff where I to guess about the future I just want to work with what I know happened. That’s like where I’m more comfortable. But now if I have this like thinking partner that can support me you know giving me ideas, get tell me how to do things, show me different ways of what things could look like, it’s kind of exciting like to build our confidence and feel like you know because your client’s not going to ask you every time you deliver something like how much of this was Claude and how much of it is you Like you had the conversation with Claude and you told Claude what your goal was and what the end result, what you want it to be. And then you use your you know the context and professionalism that you have being an accountant, you know, to add that more value. And I wonder if that could help increase our confidence like as a profession.

Charlie (28:56): I mean, I think it definitely can. I mean, I feel like a superhuman when I work with Claude. Like it’s just it’s it’s so much fun. I get such great results. clients really, really enjoy, you know, the the service that I provide. And I do think that’s kind of what it takes. And that approach of what you said of like just picking one client. And whatever it

Rebecca (29:15): Yeah.

Charlie (29:16): is, like it’s something you’ve always dreamed of your firm being, try it on one client. One who’s willing, right? And say, hey, again, I mean you have this friend that you met who’s like, I’m down, like, you know, we’re paying so much money.

Rebecca (29:26): Yeah. Even a friend. Yeah.

Charlie (29:29): Yeah, you’re we’re paying so much money for this bookkeeper to do this, for this CPA to do this, we had a CFO that does

Rebecca (29:33): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (29:33): this, like, and I don’t, you know, I don’t like one of those. And we’ll just ask them, say, hey. I’m interested in doing this. I’d love your support. I’d love for you to try and help me, you know, give me feedback on it. Like, this is my idea. I’d love if you’re willing to try it on you and you give me raw feedback and like just help me help you. Right? That’s all I’m trying to do for my clients. Like, help me help you. Yeah, I mean

Rebecca (29:56): Who would say no to that? Like that sounds amazing.

Charlie (29:59): right. And then, you know, it can snowball, right? Like once you get that, you gain confidence, you gain belief. and then you start rolling it out maybe to more and more clients. This frees you up to say, you know what, I haven’t wanted to been known as a 1040 shop. It just kinda happened. Now,

Rebecca (30:17): Right.

Charlie (30:18): you know, I have this idea. I can actually act on this idea, and have good results by that action. Clients are starting to see the value and I can charge more. And now I can start, you know, transforming this firm slowly it doesn’t happen overnight, you know.

Rebecca (30:35): Right.

Charlie (30:35): It’s slowly, slowly, slowly, then it’s all at once. and

Rebecca (30:38): Yeah.

Charlie (30:38): just again start with, someone that’s opening and willing and then, you know, try it out and kind of put your own flare on your work. you know, that’s been my frustrating

Rebecca (30:47): What does that do?

Charlie (30:48): with with this industry. I mean I don’t wanna put it on the industry as a whole, but you know, I started out working for my dad. He did things a certain way. He had

Rebecca (30:56): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (30:58): done them the same way for forty years. And, you know, what I heard the most when I worked for him was prior year. You know, just same as

Rebecca (31:04): yeah, same as last year, SALY

Charlie (31:06): prior year, just do it the same way as prior year. And I just I hated that ’cause there’s just no creativity in it. And I’m like, well you know, it’s not the same as prior year. This year is not the same as prior year. There’s just it’s impossible. but now like you really have not only the freedom but the capability to really just make your firm into whatever you want it to be with AI. If you really go deep with AI, you start small, you don’t think about it, just this grandiose, huge, all-encompassing task, you just start small and you start saying, hey This is my vision, my dream. I’d love to just start chipping away at it. And what would that look like? And the thing is with these

Rebecca (31:45): And if you don’t know what your vision or dream is, could you just ask ChatGBT or Claude to help you figure that out? Like interview

Charlie (31:53): yeah. I mean this is

Rebecca (31:54): me, ask me questions and help me think this through.

Charlie (31:58): Yeah, I mean this is what at least what I have found that it’s great for because it’s interesting, you know, we’re not great at putting feelings into words, right? I mean it’s a human biology thing. The the part of our brain that’s responsible for feelings and the part of our brain that’s responsible for speaking are just two two separate parts of our brain and they don’t communicate well with each other. It’s a fun fact for everyone out there.

Rebecca (32:21): Especially if you’re an accountant, I feel

Charlie (32:23): so yeah, so like if you have this thought, even if it’s rough and raw and you can’t really explain it, you know, just try work through it with AI and see if it can kinda explain it for you. And that’s what it’s really good at and I think you could just start there and And try to figure out, okay, now I have a clearer vision of kind of like this feeling that I’ve always had or this thought that I’ve always had. Now that I have this clear vision, hand it back to AI and say, okay, we’re aligned now. What would this look like in practice? If I wanted to start it on one client, I have someone

Rebecca (32:52): Right.

Charlie (32:52): in mind, you know, who I think would be willing, how would I even approach that? You know, how do I

Rebecca (32:56): Yeah.

Charlie (32:56): bring it up to them? Like, what’s like the first thing I could show to them? Like, what’s an MVP? that I could show to them to kinda like you know, help me show them my idea and see if they’d be willing to come on board with me on this journey and and just start there.

Rebecca (33:11): That’s a great idea. Yeah. It’s like maybe we don’t know what our vision is for the future of our firm because we didn’t know we were gonna have to figure that out. We thought we could just kind of same as last year, it f you know, because that’s just how it’s always been in our industry. but this new change that’s coming is scary and exciting. And it’s like, you know, you might just be able to dream up something totally different and really creative and like really unique that you that you offer or that you do. And it’s w nobody expects you to just already know exactly what that is. I mean some people might, but like it’s okay to use AI to help you even figure out ten options of what that could be. Like let’s go through a list and then let me think about Each one I’ve asked Claude before, you know, like what should I do with my life? like what should my career be? You know? And it’ll give me some ideas and then say which one do you like? It and then I’ll say like, well, how do I even know if I like it? I don’t know. And then it’ll say, like, well, three to five years from now, would you be happy that you’re still doing this? Or it gives you this week or this month what was like the best day and what was the worst day. Like it it gives you like

Charlie (34:21): Yeah.

Rebecca (34:22): interesting questions to help you figure out what you want. And I don’t think we’ve really had a chance to to have this opportunity to like pause and question in a philosophical way our accounting firm, you know. So it’s kind of cool to just take a moment to just like pause and and see, what the possibilities are for the future.

Charlie (34:42): Yeah, that’s a great point. and one of my favorite quotes is that, the future belongs to those that prepare for it today. and I

Rebecca (34:49): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (34:50): really think in the age of agents, you need agency. You know, you really need to to go out there and do it for yourself. You know, not let anybody tell you That’s not possible. It can’t be done. You shouldn’t do that. you should not let anything hold you back from going to where you want to go. You know, taking your firm to where you wanna take it. I think now, especially with AI, you have this, you know, superpower, this tool in

Rebecca (35:14): Yeah.

Charlie (35:14): your toolkit that you can use to, you know, kind of, accomplish anything that you want to accomplish. I mean, in my mind, I can accomplish anything I want to accomplish. That’s just my belief.

Rebecca (35:23): Yeah.

Charlie (35:24): could be disillusioned. It could be

Rebecca (35:26): Did you always feel that way before AI?

Charlie (35:28): I mean I’ve always tried to have high conviction in myself. yeah,

Rebecca (35:31): Yeah.

Charlie (35:32): but I think with AI, it really just maybe exaggerated that or accentuated that, whatever it may be. But I do think that once you really learn how to use these models well, it really does get you that confidence that you spoke about earlier. And it it

Rebecca (35:45): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (35:45): it’s a huge help. It’s a huge help.

Rebecca (35:47): Yeah. And I feel like, you know, the whole reason why Started, you know, the AI lab for accountants was because it did feel like a lot of people were saying no. Like, you know, like the government, like or like maybe they were saying no, we weren’t really sure. And I just thought it would be great if we could get a group of accountants together to just like talk about it and figure it out. And what’s been really special about it, and I feel like in T CR we have the same, we just it’s not as much of an AI focus. It’s like nobody’s ever been mean to someone

Charlie (36:17): Mm.

Rebecca (36:17): for asking like hey I want to replace the review process in my firm I don’t want a human to do it. I I don’t want to pay a salary for someone to do it. like nobody’s like, that’s problematic for this reason, that reason. They’re just like, cool, have you looked into this? Have you tried that? Like one way could be this, it you know, so it’s it’s not a place of no. it’s a place of yes, and like let’s figure it out together. so I do think that whether you join a community or you start watching more YouTube videos or following people or whatever. you don’t have to figure this out alone. You can talk to people who are also open-minded when it comes to this kind of stuff to see, you know, without being judged, like what they think of your idea and like how to get there.

Charlie (37:03): Yeah, that is why I really love both of these groups, T CR and ALFA. it seems to me it’s just a a lot of people with open minds, right? And they aren’t just kind of chained by the way things have always been done and they’re really interested in what’s now possible with AI and they’re trying to you know, everyone’s still approaching it like cautiously, carefully, ’cause we know

Rebecca (37:26): Course.

Charlie (37:27): the responsibility that we have, but we’re also like, okay, well, what can we do? What does that look like? What’s other people doing? How are other people getting around this fact or whatever it may be? Or like

Rebecca (37:38): Yeah.

Charlie (37:38): we’re using all these software, you know, how are people using AI with this software stack? And then nine

Rebecca (37:44): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (37:45): times out of ten someone has that exact software stack and they’re like, hey, this is what I’m

Rebecca (37:47): Yeah.

Charlie (37:49): doing and how I’m doing it and then just fosters this collaboration pun intended, especially at T Cr. But

Rebecca (37:53): Yeah.

Charlie (37:55): and yeah, so it’s just a great place and that’s why I think the exposure is big. And I know, you know, things like X can maybe not be reality sometimes. But for me I love it because

Rebecca (38:05): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (38:08): People are doing crazy things and I like to be at the edge and I

Rebecca (38:11): Yeah.

Charlie (38:12): like it gives me a lot of ideas. But I also live in a rural county in Georgia and I know nobody around here is thinking about AI like I am.

Rebecca (38:19): Band.

Charlie (38:20): and that’s fine. But you can find your exposure, find that exposure with what whatever level you want it to be. And you know, to me

Rebecca (38:26): Okay.

Charlie (38:27): it’s just about getting those ideas and seeing what other people are doing, how they’re doing it, and then trying to say, okay. How could I do that in the way I do it or in my firm

Rebecca (38:35): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (38:36): or for this engagement? I’m all tax. I’m all bookkeeping. I don’t, you know, I do a little bit of mix. Like just figuring that out. And having these like sounding board of others that

Rebecca (38:46): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (38:47): are in the same room in similar positions and they can kind of help, you know, help facilitate that.

Rebecca (38:52): Yeah, and it’s so cool when you see like in one of the chats, in one of these communities, two people say, look, can we meet and talk about this? And then I’m like, they’re meeting, like they’re they’re becoming friends, like outside of this, you know, it’s like we’re really connecting and we’re actually building relationships and meeting people and you know, we both use the same tech stack, let’s talk about this and let’s figure out this out together. it’s such a good feeling to get to watch. Yeah.

Charlie (39:17): Yeah, I’m definitely jealous. There was that ALFA meetup in in Florida, right? some of the ALFA yeah, in person. Yeah.

Rebecca (39:21): in-person. Yeah. Fish tacos were had. I wasn’t there.

Charlie (39:26): ALFA R L. We gotta do more of those.

Rebecca (39:29): Yes, yes. We need like regional meetups and all sorts of stuff, you know. Or we could just have all our bots get together, you know, our

Charlie (39:37): Mm.

Rebecca (39:38): dots or speaking of dots, I feel like we need to talk a little bit about, you know, what ChatGPT announced this week. the first

Charlie (39:46): Yeah. Big

Rebecca (39:47): thing I want you to tell us about that, and we don’t have to go on and on, but just a little kind of like I’m sure people are curious like what it all means. this there was stuff about security.

Charlie (39:57): Mm.

Rebecca (39:57): And I was kind of like, does that mean like we’re good? like did that did they fit you know, did you gather anything about that? Like fr from, you know, an IRS tax, PI

Charlie (40:08): gone too deep on that the new privacy features they’re rolling out and I don’t think

Rebecca (40:11): Yeah.

Charlie (40:11): they’re rolled out I think they are kind of testing it but basically

Rebecca (40:14): Okay.

Charlie (40:15): you know super secure ZDR just much much higher level of security that they’re really testing out with these various fields that really need it but

Rebecca (40:23): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (40:23): you know the main takeaway that I got from open ai is that they are going towards this mega app which I said I think a couple calls ago about how I think based on what they’re doing It seems like that’s what their goal is. And I think it’s pretty clear that is their goal of being this this just mega app. You know, they came out with spaces, they came out with their personal agent, they improved their harness for codex and the in the terminal, their apps getting these new features. you know, they’re just making a lot of the moves where all people have to do is go into Chat GPT. I mean now they’re they’re going the plug-in route. You can now sign

Rebecca (40:58): We don’t have to do it.

Charlie (41:00): in with Chat GPT and use your own usage on various platforms

Rebecca (41:04): Yes.

Charlie (41:04): which is pretty crazy and so yeah they’re doing a lot of things

Rebecca (41:09): Yeah.

Charlie (41:10): and I think that’s their goal is to be like the place where people go to basically do anything.

Rebecca (41:15): Mm-hmm. Yeah, I do like that I really don’t have to leave. Like the website comes right up next to me and I can watch it doing computer use right there. You know, now I can log into multiple plugins multiple Slacks accountant and multiple Gmail accountant and just tell it which one I need it to go to. Like just more doors are opening. and and now I, you know, can do codecs on my phone a lot easier, which is great because that’s what I do during like bedtime.

Charlie (41:43): Yep. I mean you could probably run an entire firm through Codex, the app. I mean you can open up the browser to access a web app. You can access your email, you can do all this stuff within

Rebecca (41:54): Yeah.

Charlie (41:54): the app. and so yeah, they’re clearly going that route. and their models are just continuing to improve. And so it’s just it’s gonna be fun to watch where these things head, even by the end of this year.

Rebecca (42:04): Yeah.

Charlie (42:04): It’s gonna be crazy to even think. I mean, now they’re saying Fable 5-5 is coming out next week. And

Rebecca (42:10): wow.

Charlie (42:11): they’re saying it’s gonna be, crazy model. And so I know what that means, right? A Astra. Astra was

Rebecca (42:16): Yeah, like how could it be any crazier?

Charlie (42:19): crazy. Opus 5.5 was crazy. Fable 5-5’s gonna be crazy. They’re all crazy.

Rebecca (42:25): And I have a question, like you know, I feel like the super users in ALFA like they’ll all say like yeah this is crazy and then like some of the more normal people in ALFA are like how do you know it’s crazy? Like what do you mean? Like what so is there anything like you could do as a test to help make it feel a little more tangible to understand like should you just ask each model within Claude the same question and just see how fast it it answers it? I mean I see on X sometimes it’ll show like two next to each other or like with the open AI stuff it was showing how fast things were. is it the speed or is it just how much prettier the website it builds is or

Charlie (43:03): Yeah, there’s different like variations. I mean speed is just how fast it basically accomplishes the goal. There’s not a large differentiator between the output. It’s just how quickly it finishes that task. You know, they came out, OpenAI did with I don’t know what it’s called, super fast mode, whatever it is. Yeah, it but it goes like

Rebecca (43:21): See yeah, altern or no, that’s the bottom I’d

Charlie (43:25): eight times faster. And, I I don’t Like I don’t feel like I need things done super fast. You

Rebecca (43:31): Yeah.

Charlie (43:31): know, I think the models are fast enough based for the work that I do.

Rebecca (43:35): Right.

Charlie (43:36): but for some people, that’s gonna be very important.

Rebecca (43:38): Yeah.

Charlie (43:38): but one thing I did a while back was I basically created my own benchmarks. And so whenever

Rebecca (43:43): Okay.

Charlie (43:44): a new model comes out, I’ll run it on this benchmark set that I’ve created. Which is basically just made up of fake data. I have a fake month in close, with fake transactions.

Rebecca (43:54): Yeah.

Charlie (43:56): And, I have Easter eggs in there I have a test key, right? And then I have it build a basic financial dashboard and I have it build a tax return. Not like a full tax return, like a very basic tax return based on again, completely made up documents.

Rebecca (44:12): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (44:13): and then a tax planning item, I think. It’s supposed to do some tax research but yeah, so like whenever a new model will come out, I’ll just run it against this benchmark and it’ll give it a score. And you know, it’s my benchmark. It’s not I don’t put

Rebecca (44:25): Yeah.

Charlie (44:26): a whole lot of weight into it. But I do think it’s interesting to see, of how these models compare.

Rebecca (44:29): Yeah, that’s smart.

Charlie (44:31): And then I think also the more you use them, the range of like craziness or how do you know what’s crazy. It just it again it goes back and it’s kinda hard to explain. But there’s definitely things, yeah, it’s it’s a feeling. It’s just

Rebecca (44:42): It’s a feeling, right?

Charlie (44:45): a it’s just vibes. It’s all vibes. but no, like it will. I just but man, that’s that’s crazy that it did that just because I’ve been using these models for a while now and so I kinda know and I do a lot of the similar type things. I build a bunch of apps

Rebecca (44:58): Yeah.

Charlie (44:58): and I do you know all kinds of things. And so once a new model comes out, you kind of run a similar task, whether you’re building a new feature of the app or whatever you’re doing, and you’re like, wow. Or like even like it’s great for when you’re trying to visualize something. I think that’s the easiest way

Rebecca (45:12): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (45:13): to see that something’s crazy. Because you just obviously this visual output’s better than anything you’ve seen. And but again, at our level or for most people’s level I think it’s gonna be really hard to see like a

Rebecca (45:24): Okay.

Charlie (45:25): huge difference between let’s say Opus five five and Astra GP six Astra. think heavy users though will will be able to see it more clear.

Rebecca (45:34): Mm-hmm. Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so the normal people, we shouldn’t worry too much about it.

Charlie (45:39): Why don’t I say don’t worry about it but I think you can still do a lot with I don’t even want to say lesser models because they’re all pretty good. But

Rebecca (45:47): Yeah.

Charlie (45:47): like, Sonnet five five just came out and it’s it’s cheaper and it’s still very good model. GPT six soul six, you know, they came out with six one this week, which is cheaper

Rebecca (45:57): yeah. Mm-hmm.

Charlie (45:59): astral level intelligence, allegedly, and it’s very good. And so I think, you know, the key is kind of playing around them for yourself and trying to see if you can notice the difference and then kind of like Like letting that dictate which model you use for which task.

Rebecca (46:14): Mm-hmm. Okay. Well, I feel like we’ve talked a lot about a lot of things. What kind of given everything we’ve talked about, like what’s something an accountant could do this week or a business owner could do this week, to just kind of move forward with this new world that we’re in.

Charlie (46:33): if I’m a C PA or an accountant and let’s say you’re doing a bunch of tax work, you know, the fifteenth’s coming up and you’re still working on returns, I mean the first thing I would do would be how do I not get to be in this point next October?

Rebecca (46:46): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (46:47): But even not going that broad with it, I would really try and think about okay, this is kind of how I’m doing things this year, and I would get really explicit with how I’m doing things. I mean, that’s another thing that that guy we met with right before this call, he had already done that

Rebecca (47:01): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (47:02): homework of I have these SOPs, this is my tech stack, here’s how the information flows,

Rebecca (47:06): Yes.

Charlie (47:07): here’s where information lives. he got really explicit, and yeah,

Rebecca (47:09): Got organized, yeah.

Charlie (47:11): he had a great foundation. That’s why I told them you have a great foundation. So now it’s just putting the puzzle pieces together. And so I would spend a lot of time getting really, really clear about how my business runs, how things are done, getting these sops, and really just for the agents. Not I mean for

Rebecca (47:26): Yeah.

Charlie (47:26): yourself, yeah. But even for these agents to know because the clearer they know your business and how it operates, the better that you can say how do I 10X this and it’ll actually give you good output.

Rebecca (47:37): And that’s for any industry, right? Like even like

Charlie (47:39): yeah.

Rebecca (47:40): not just an accounting firm, but any business owner listening to this could just like really get, you know, the workflows written down and exactly how things are, you know, currently happening in their business so that, potentially an agent could follow those instructions or look at them and give feedback on them and share ideas of how to make them better.

Charlie (48:01): Yep. I mean this is going back to my business client that I was talking about that I met with.

Rebecca (48:05): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (48:06): I was asking him so many questions about you know, again, how he runs his business and just trying to get this information to see, okay,

Rebecca (48:11): Yeah. Right.

Charlie (48:14): how could his business be ran better? Where could AI fit into it? And again, that context, that information is key, that’s what you need. And then going back to him with ideas. And even he, you know, it basically admitted like, hey, this is some big business, it’s pretty complex. There’s a lot of moving parts. I don’t fully fully understand how some of this works, you know. Like I have my ad man that does this, I don’t really know what exactly

Rebecca (48:36): Right.

Charlie (48:37): she does, you know. but he’s like, I want to, you know, that was what’s great about that client, is he’s like, I want to understand it more. I know we could be doing things from an operational standpoint better, and even from like a

Rebecca (48:48): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (48:48): financial standpoint better. But he was like, I’m just so busy, you know. I have so much going on, I’m he’s traveling a lot. he has clients out of state and he doesn’t have time to go deep and he was like basically

Rebecca (48:58): Mm-hmm.

Charlie (48:59): like well you go deep for me and I was like absolutely and let’s do it and

Rebecca (49:03): Yeah.

Charlie (49:03): you know be applied all across the board you know regardless of the business is getting getting clear well no getting that clarity and then being able

Rebecca (49:07): Yeah, and I feel like we’re used to doing that, like sorry, go ahead. Yeah.

Charlie (49:13): to to go from there

Rebecca (49:15): Right, totally. Yeah. I feel like when I would bring on a bookkeeping client, we already had to kind of go deep and ask a lot of questions with onboarding of, you know, what are all the possible ways money can come into the business? What are all the ways it goes out of the business? And what liabilities do we have on the books? tell me about how this part works. Like we’re already used to having to ask all those questions like during onboarding to make sure, you know, nothing slips through the cracks and the books are completely And you know, think someone who has investment properties. tell me like when there’s a new rental property and how many properties do we have? You know, it’s always keeping tabs on all these things. So then just to add a layer on it of like I’m also going to while I ask these questions, consider how AI could 10X this or make it better, keeping that in the back of your head while you do your next onboarding with a client, you know, that could be a great next step.

Charlie (50:07): Yep. You should definitely try it with your new clients.

Rebecca (50:09): Yes. My new clients.

Charlie (50:11): Yeah. I guess ours. We’ll let’s merge. We’ll go ahead and do it. And then we’ll

Rebecca (50:15): Yeah.

Charlie (50:15): just start turning these into live streams where we’re just showing people what we’re doing, how we’re doing it. Yeah. I like that.

Rebecca (50:17): Yeah. Just like document it all. Document the journey and let people see, you know, under the hood of like this all seems so abstract of how to be an AI native firm. Like we’ll just show them how. A real Firms.

Charlie (50:33): Yeah. And we’ll just you know yeah, real I’m real Firms. I mean It’s fitting. can just show like, hey, this is exactly how basically we did it and here’s what it would look like and here’s how you can do it too. So y’all like it.

Rebecca (50:45): Alright, next episode. One week to find our first client.

Charlie (50:47): Next episode. man. Alright, yeah. I’m gonna have Claude working all weekend on this. Outreach. Alright.

Rebecca (50:55): Yes, absolutely.

Charlie (50:58): Stay tuned. Alright, see ya.

Rebecca (50:59): All right, see you next week. Bye.

Charlie (51:03): Bye.