[00:00:00] Speaker A: Once you get good, clean financials and you can start agreeing on goals and looking at KPIs, then it's a different vision of what your business could be. And once you start to grow and scale and hit those goals and set new goals, then you really can focus on what you want to do in your daily life for work and then make business decisions based on good data.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Foreign, Most firms survive. The best ones scale.
Welcome to the Managing Partners podcast, where law firm leaders learn to think bigger. I'm Kevin. Daisy. Let's jump in. What's up, my managing partners family? Thank you so much for tuning in and listening to me. Hopefully you tune in to listen to my guest and just deal with me, but I appreciate you listening. As always, I'm here to learn just like you and apply what I learned from my guests, create great relationships and connect people. So anything you all need, new topics you want to hear. If you want to meet my guests as they come on the show, if you want to be a guest yourself, you know, please let me know. Reach out. Happy to assist however I can. Today I got John Scott, who's a familiar face. Me and John have been, I guess, chatting back and forth for. For a little while now and just wanted to have him come share some more here on the show. So, John Scott, welcome back to the show.
[00:01:31] Speaker A: Thank you so much, Kevin. It's great to be here.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Good to have you. What John does is very important, and as I get more mature in business, you know, it becomes even more important. So as we're growing and scaling, you know what he does, and I'll let him kind of talk about that, but we're going to cool conversation today. Again, I'm learning right along the way as we get more sophisticated with our books, financials, things like that. So, John, tell everyone out there what you do and how you help law firm owners. Specifically.
[00:02:00] Speaker A: Thank you. Will do. I started with Anders in the early 90s, and we got most of our referrals from attorneys. And we always loved attorney referrals because these were clients that were used to paying bills, and the attorney bills were typically larger than ours. So they were really good clients. And I was very fortunate to meet an entrepreneurial attorney in the early 90s who I spent about 17 years working with and for to help him grow and scale his business. Now he was a serial entrepreneur, and he really had great vision. He was very driven, but he did everything based on data. And so from that, I learned from him that if you have good data and you pay attention to it, you can then grow and scale in a smart manner rather than meandering along the way trying to achieve your goals. So what we do as a group at Anders Virtual CFO services for law firms is help lawyers run their firms like businesses. And let's face it, most attorneys didn't go to undergrad to learn accounting and finance. That's not their strength. For some, it is, but many of them just want to do their craft. So what we do is help them on an outsourced basis, which is generally about 80% of what it would cost to hire the internal team. And we can work with internal teams because the way we work is on a subscription model. You pick what you want to keep, you pick what you want to offload, and then our price adjusts accordingly. So we help them get good current financial data, and then from that, help them forecast and make good business decisions.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: Super important. Anyway, I think there's a time where a company's large enough, makes much sense to maybe have a CFO internal, but it's usually quite a long time, and you're got to be a pretty good size to make sense of that. I think before that, you know, you're how much money we got in the bank. And then, you know, especially for attorneys that maybe are winning big cases and now they got flush with cash, you know, there's tax implications. How do they reinvest it? They can easily blow it or do dumb things with it. So I think it's important for law firms early on to get as educated as possible and then bring in people that can help them get a handle on it, because, you know, you can get you into trouble real quick.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: I completely agree. In fact, we help firms set cash targets for what they need to hold onto within the firm to grow, go and pay their bills going forward. And it's a risk proposition, right? If. If I'm an hourly billing firm with recurring revenue and clients that pay by return mail, I don't need as much cash. But if I'm a PI firm with contingent cases that have a long tail, then I need to keep a little more cash on hand. And if I can get that discipline installed, then that next big check that comes in is available for full distribution. The problem they run into is, is they see that $100,000 come into the operating account, and they go, oh, let's make a distribution. When in reality, they. They owe some fee splits, they have a couple of payrolls that they need to hold on to, and maybe only 60 of that is available for distribution.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: That's good to know.
I was going to say, yeah, I've, I've known of some firms, friends and, and things like that and clients, you know, going after some of these larger, like mass torque cases or truck cases that can be three years out, like spend than they have to, to try to fund these, these contingency cases and getting in some situations. So yeah, so you gotta know what you can take, know what you need to keep. And you. And also I think, you know, the biggest thing with business, you need to be able to take and, and not be like, is this too much? You know, you need to know what you can take and go celebrate and take that, you know, profit first. I don't know your views on, on that book or that system, but that's kind of how we started out with profit first. Meaning I know I need to at least take 10%.
I'm just making up a number here, kind of doing it backwards. Like take the 10% and then figure out how you run your company with what's left.
Unless you put in a defer, at least a mindset of, you know, if I can't run off 90%, then there's probably an issue.
[00:06:01] Speaker A: Right. I love the profit first approach. In fact, we take it a step further. I want to forecast your taxes as well and put that to the side so that when your quarterly estimates or your balance due comes up, that money's there. And you're not saying, hey, I need another distribution. I've already set that aside and your taxes are covered.
But it just takes some discipline. I call it getting behind or, you know, in line with the cash flow cycle. If I just take the next hour that comes in, when in reality I need it. The worst thing I can ever say to an owner is, hey, you got to put some money back in the business.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: And I've been there many times. We actually do the tax set aside now. But yeah, when you're like, wait, I got to write a check for how much, it's like, you know, it just catches up with you and, you know, or you didn't do your quarterly and now you got one big one to make, you know, Right. First quarter of the next year. And that can upset some things. So, yeah, it's just planning ahead. Right. You know, you should be planning for, you know, taxes, not just meeting to get your taxes done right now. And you should be already planning for how you're going to operate this year to have the best tax situation for the next year.
[00:07:04] Speaker A: Right, right. You always want to be in Sync with that cash flow. Hey, one of the other things that we developed a few years ago and it's not unique business. A lot of really large companies do this, it's called a maturity model assessment. And we focus on the finance function of a law firm where there's five areas and we with them self grade themselves in these five areas. And what it does is it tells us where they're really kind of rocking it or where they need some help. And then we take the areas that they need help on and we set six to 12 month goals to get incrementally better in those areas. I was talking to a firm today, their collection rate on current work last year was 76% which meant their accounts receivable was going up. Not necessarily a good thing. They also have a ton of old AR that's more than 180 days old. So it really wasn't even from the current year. So we set collection targets for next year, which I think we're going to beat because what we did was we halved the difference between 76 and 100. So we got to 86%.
But we have the ability to create a process to go back and get some of this old AR too. So I think our collection rate for next year will exceed the 86% goal that we set.
[00:08:18] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, yeah, collecting more efficiently, getting rid of, you know, getting that ar.
I've seen firms and businesses like mine do a lot of different things. There's always a work in progress to try to increase performance, you know, be more optimal, whether it's not spending more. I've seen one firm I had on the show a while back, they spent no more in marketing, but they fixed a lot of intake problems and were able to triple the amount of cases within a two year period with the same marketing dollars going out the doors.
[00:08:48] Speaker A: Right. So they didn't have, they didn't have more coming in. They just converted it and made what they had better.
[00:08:53] Speaker B: They already had that same flow coming. They just were dropping the ball. There was holes in the net. Right. Like fishing, you know, so it's just plugging those holes. And so yeah, it's with financials and this, this is not my strong suit. I have my partner and some people in my company that, that's their, their deal. But I watch it, I look at it, I'm in the meetings, I look at the P Ls and it gets more sophisticated and tweaks almost every month to get, you know, more granular, get better data to optimize and so yeah, if anyone listening you think you got your stuff together, you know, you should be constantly looking to see how you can improve it. And having this data like what John's saying allows you to make decisions. Hey, you have this extra to go invest in marketing or sales, hire new people and not be concerned or just shooting in the dark, right? I think that's the biggest thing.
[00:09:38] Speaker A: You know, the other area that, that we can really help with is automation and automating the check writing process or disbursement process. Automating the way bills come into your firm get approved. If you can do that electronically with an online platform, which is, I'm going to say the old name bill.com but now it's got a different name. They, they acquired Divi. But the point is if you train your vendors to email the bills and then whoever is the approver in your organization gets a prompt with a copy of the bill and they can say yay or nay, they can ask questions, they can postpone it, but once they approve it, they can schedule payment so that it's automatically done. And the better part is it syncs with your accounting system in most cases.
So you're taking out the human element, fat fingering an invoice, you're taking out all kind, you're creating all kinds of efficiency within your internal staff so they can do higher level things. And that's the thing about AI and automation. We don't want to create capacity for people to do more work. We want to make their life better. We want to move them upstream so they can do better things for our organization.
[00:10:43] Speaker B: A hundred percent. You know, our, you know, I'm in marketing and websites and stuff like that, right? It's like, oh, AI could really hurt us, right? Should we, you know, let's get rid of all our people and we can AI and implement all this stuff. We're completely the opposite. So for us it's, we want all A players, an A player. You're not here. And how do we give them the best tools, use AI to get rid of the crap and mundane stuff they don't need to be doing and let them really focus on what they're best at. So that's how we're using AI. And you know, we used to have these kind of like lower levels, we call them like specialists or people like that were kind of supporting the A players. We've been able to remove those and have just all A players and then now we're hiring left and right to bring in more A players. And so for us, that's been the advantage. The people don't go anywhere. We just get more invested in people still bringing on new people. But AI has allowed us to have those folks do what they need to do best and still scale, you know?
[00:11:41] Speaker A: Right. And you said it really well. As you add people, you're adding additional A players and you get better over time, knowing what going to work in your organization and culture, who's going to fit and who's not going to fit.
[00:11:52] Speaker B: Yeah, I talk about culture way too much, probably. But yeah, once you have a culture of A players, you don't see B's and C's very. They don't come through the door because they don't make it through the door because my A player teams and managers do the interviewing. And you got to get past them. I have friends all the time. Hey, Kevin, I saw you hiring. You think, you know, say something good or can I interview? And like, you got to go through them, not me. So, you know, I can't. I can say something nice about you, but that has no weight.
You know, they have to want to work with you. And I think that's just a good place to be at.
So, yeah, it's definitely been a good shift from where we've been in the past, I guess.
[00:12:34] Speaker A: You know, with respect to AI, I see two camps of attorneys. There's the one camp that thinks it's going to be the ruination of the profession, and the other, the other side is embracing it and they're trying to use it ethically and be very guarded. But they're. They're diving in to use it now, realizing every three months it's going to change an update. But those folks that use it and use it wisely are going to be able to compete with much bigger organizations. I mean, you see, and I don't know if you work with Morgan and
[00:13:04] Speaker B: Morgan, but we have their own marketing company.
I'm sure they don't really reach out to me at some point, you know, when he's ready.
[00:13:11] Speaker A: I'm sure they have their own marketing organization. But they can either be a threat when they come to town, or they will make you step up your game to compete. And it's happened here in St. Louis, 100%. Morgan and Morgan came to town, I don't know, maybe 18 months ago. And the quality of ads that have come out from other law firms is phenomenal. And one in particular is Brown and Croup. And they have a podcast where they. It's the three of them sitting around Eating sandwiches and they talk about outrageous things. But their ads almost went head to head with Morgan and Morgan and, you know, it's just refreshing to see people step up and say, I'm going to, I'm not going to compete directly with them, but I'm going to be better. And I think AI is going to allow those smaller firms to compete up without any more effort. It just makes you more efficient. I liken it to the accounting profession, where we used to do everything by hand with a pencil on green bar columnar paper, and then we got Visicalc and Lotus 1, 2, 3. Well, today we have, you know, all kinds of better Excel sheets and Power Bi. And it's just the next wave of the revolution.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: And those tools didn't hurt you. They helped you, they helped you be more efficient for your clients. More accurate data, faster time turnarounds. Yeah, I agree. And then, and the person, the firm, the lawyer inputting to AI, Right? So you still have that creativity, that ability. You're the one using the AI, telling it what to do. And so that's powerful. Right? So, and anyone listening out there for like a Morgan and Morgan, I've had lawyers, oh, they're coming to town, we're done. I've heard that before. That's ridiculous. I mean, for one, you got some people that might be attracted to Morgan, to Morgan because of their size or whatever, but you're local, you're your own brand. They have that lunch hour podcast thing that people might, you know, relate with and just don't want to work with the big, you know, gorilla in the room. So, yeah, so I think that's bull crap. You can stand out, you can do your thing. Some clients will come to you. They're going to get some of them, without a doubt, but doesn't mean you can't, you know, win in your market. So, yeah, but you got to know your numbers. You have to have cash so you can, you can spend the money to, to come back and fight them and put out your own creative and, and do all those things. So.
[00:15:18] Speaker A: Yeah, and speaking of that, I mean, our, our ideal client profile is 3 to 50 billers. And you can extrapolate how much revenue they would bring in. They might have someone on the inside. They typically would have maybe an office manager doing the books, or maybe they even have a controller or a cfo. In fact, I've got an opportunity right now. They have a CFO. It's a good sized firm, about 15 million in annual revenue. But the CFO does not have a financial background, so that person has a handle on everything that's going on. We're going to help with KPIs, we're going to help with some reconciliations to relieve that some from their staff, and we're not going to be that much of an additional expense to them. And I actually like CFOs that don't necessarily have a professional service background or a financial background because they look at things differently than every other accountant. And that's how we're different from the typical accountant. Your grandfather CPA was historical in nature. He looked back and told you what happened. We want to tell you what's happening right now and what's going to happen. And our dynamic forecasts help do that. We also visit those dynamic forecasts on a regular cadence so that if we're veering off that trend line to get us to that destination, we can suggest levers to pull so that we can get back on track.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think that's the biggest thing is, you know, a cpa, right, they do your tax, they can tell you what happened in the past, you know, and it's like what we really need to get to is what where are we at now and what does the future look like? And as far out as we can project, that's where you can make some really good decisions. And to your point too, you know, this happens with a lot of companies. I know tons of business owners in this boat where, you know, people just have roles. Someone comes as an admin or a partner and then just they, they kind of become that CFO or they become the CIO or CTO just over time from being there. But they don't really have the classic training or the background for it. They were just the best person at the time to handle that. So, yeah, I'm sure there's lots of firms out there that if office manager becomes, you know, maybe they get some training, maybe they get some, some things, but they just become that financial person within the company, but they don't really maybe have what it takes to kind of take it to that next level.
[00:17:29] Speaker A: Yeah, when, when I started at Anders, we had about 40 people and maybe five partners. And we had one partner who was the marketing partner. Right. So that meant he put together an annual presentation of tax law that we would present for our clients and a brochure that we would mail out. And then he had another partner who took care of technology. So he would, I guess, deal with the vendors and the software. Well, in reality, as you grow the highest and best Use for those people is not doing those things. You want to hire really good people or outsource it to someone like you for marketing, and then you can really take off, because then your billers, the partners, can focus on client work instead of putting together the brochure and the. And the program.
[00:18:08] Speaker B: Yeah, 100%. And I think, you know, when you're bootstrapping a company, you know, everybody jumps in and does lots of things, and you wear multiple hats. And, you know, I think that's a good way to get off the ground if you don't have the. The capability to just hire all those people. But at some point, you need to recognize when it's time to delegate that out and not just get stuck doing that. You know, it was me on the face of the business out there, talking to people, getting business, one podcast, all that stuff. That's the best use of my time. I used to build websites and I used to design stuff. I don't do that anymore at all. I mean, it would be okay to be able to do it sometimes, but it doesn't make any sense.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: You know, the other example of this I have is my doctor that I see, you know, once a year. He used to make rounds at the hospital, so if any of his patients were in the hospital, he would go visit them. And that was a part of almost every day of his life. We ended up going to a hospitalist model. And that model means that he doesn't physically make rounds anymore, but he pays another doctor group to go make rounds for him. Take notes, and he can read the notes. But what that did was it freed up another hour and a half to two hours a day for him to see patients so he could spend more time with his patients. And it created enough additional revenue for him to more than pay for the hospitalist. So that's the same value proposition we have here. If you've got a partner, maybe one of them is doing the accounting and finance piece and dealing with the banks and dealing with the vendors. If that person could be productive in what your core operations are, then it doesn't cost you to outsource or hire someone. It actually pays because your productivity goes up.
[00:19:42] Speaker B: Yeah. And their bill rate is probably worth more somewhere else.
[00:19:45] Speaker A: Yeah, I have that discussion with my wife all the time. She'll say, well, the garbage disposal is broken. I'm like, well, I could do it. It'll take about eight hours, and there'll be a lot of cursing and mashing of knuckles. I could do it. It might leak at the end or we could just call the guy and he'll do it in two hours and we'll write him a check.
[00:20:02] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm one of the guys that likes to do all the things. Actually, I installed, I got one of these smart calendars. It's like 32 inch, huge screen in the kitchen. And for my family calendars, chores, tasks.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Syncs up with your business and personal calendar. Yes, because she knows it'll get done. It'll get done right and won't have to wait for you and I'm already
[00:20:22] Speaker B: busy and she knows it'll just add more to my plate and be unavailable, so. So yeah, it makes sense. You know, you just have like I, I used to. I bought a brand new lawnmower riding tractor the beginning of last year.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: Is it a zero term?
[00:20:36] Speaker B: No, it's. It's a John Deere ride on tractor.
[00:20:40] Speaker A: Does it have a drink holder?
[00:20:41] Speaker B: It sure does.
[00:20:42] Speaker A: Oh heck yeah.
[00:20:43] Speaker B: I mean, is it even a lawnmower if it doesn't have a drink?
So I bought it. I was like, yeah, I got this brand new one. By the time spring hit, I decided myself just because I think I was probably doing a podcast with somebody and I was like, this doesn't make any sense. I spent all day Saturday mow because I got a pretty big yard and I've hired it all out. I didn't mow it all this year once. And when I come home on Friday and my yard's all done, it's actually the most peaceful moment. You know, it looks, looks great. Better than I would have done it.
[00:21:16] Speaker A: So are you gonna sell it?
[00:21:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I gotta figure that out. I mean, I use it for other things to haul stuff around, but it probably be better off with someone else at this point. But you gotta delegate stuff and it doesn't make any. If anyone listening, you know, I did this exercise one time, I forgot what book it was from. But just go through and make a list of all the stuff you do for like a week or two and then at home, at work, whatever, and just circle the crap that you're just like that. That's ridiculous. Like, why, why am I doing that? And you might have to do this once or twice a year sometimes because stuff will creep back in. And that's how we like to, you know, as leaders, as owners, we like to take off. You know, we like to do things sometimes. So it's a good exercise.
[00:21:54] Speaker A: Yeah, my wife did that exercise and she actually, I had to prod her to do it a little bit. We'd get four or five yards of mulch delivered in the springtime. And it's a big yard. She spends a lot of time on the yard, and she would end up spreading it around. I'd help her spread it around. And I finally said, you know, by the time we get this done, it might be 10 days later and we're worn out. And then you want to go work on the yard, the part that you really enjoy, like putting in new plants and making sure everything's healthy. I said, why don't we pay someone to do this part? And then you can just spend your time on what you enjoy.
[00:22:28] Speaker B: There you go.
[00:22:28] Speaker A: And she's like, this is awesome.
[00:22:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It's hard to see those things. Just, you know, again with the finance stuff, like, it's just you don't know what you don't know sometimes. And once you start to get that and get those financial reports on the. I think we do. Ours is like the third day of the month or something like that.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: So that's a pretty good cadence. I mean, that tells me you have some things off automated. And I will tell you that once you get good, clean financials and you can start agreeing on goals and looking at KPIs, then it's a different vision of what your business could be. And once you start to grow and scale and hit those goals and set new goals, then you really can focus on what you want to do in your daily life for work and then make business decisions based on good data. It's really enlightening when the light bulb goes on and clients, they're not dealing with three months stale statements or bank reconciliations anymore, it's just a huge weight,
[00:23:21] Speaker B: you know, like you're saying, it's just clarity, you know, what you can do, can't do. So it's. You have budgets, you know, so it's just for anyone as small as you can be solo, just having some financial information that you review every month, regardless of how much data you do have, because you'll get more sophisticated over time, and it's good for the owner. I think me is the worst of this. I still watch, I check everything out. I learn and listen. My partner might ask more questions and pick things apart than I do, but I'm. I'm there listening and I'm understanding it. So, yeah, it's just. It's super powerful to have that in place. So if you don't, you know, talk to someone like a John, ask him questions, I'm sure he'd be happy to answer. And Maybe they're, you know, good fit for you as well.
[00:24:08] Speaker A: Hey, I've written a book called Judicial Dollars and Cents. I also have a podcast by the same name.
I would love for folks to, if they get a chance, look me up on LinkedIn. Reach out. You can get a free copy of the book. Look at the podcast. We think that.
[00:24:23] Speaker B: Great podcast, by the way.
[00:24:24] Speaker A: Thank you. We think that if you pay a little bit of attention to your finance function and hire the right people, whether it's outsourced or internal, that it will help you grow in scale and help you run your business in a very thoughtful manner that will be productive for you. We do focus on the profit focused maturity model, which focuses on four areas. What levers we can pull into cash production, financial and capacity. And then we also work on the subscription model. So there's a whole list of services that you can do, you can keep. We can keep. It's kind of like the. I don't know if you saw that.
I don't know if you saw that. There's a clip that runs on Instagram or TikTok and it's this waitress in a South Texas restaurant. She says, what don't you want?
[00:25:06] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, that's. I forgot what movie that's from.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: And so really it is. It's. What do you want to do? What do you want to offload? And then at the end of those yes, no answers, we come up with a price. And that price is set until you change. You say, hey, I want to take back payroll. Okay, boom, the price changes going forward. Or I want to, I want to offload AP to you guys. Now we just recalculate the price and that's how it goes forward.
[00:25:30] Speaker B: Straightforward. I love it. I like that. Flexibility too, versus, oh, well, you have to do all this with us or nothing, you know, So I think that's because firms are going to be all, you know, have different situations, have different things in place. And, you know, I know that's how it's been for us too. It's just, you know, might just need this piece or, you know, all of it. So I think that's a great model that you guys have for that one thing too. I'll say, this is. This might not. This don't apply to all firms.
I know years ago we were looking at like our accounts receivable and it was an old account that I had, was not the best accountant, but he did say one good piece of advice, you know, for us. We're doing marketing websites and services, right?
If it takes you 30, 45 days, 60 days, 90 days to collect your fund, you're basically loaning them money. You're doing services for money you haven't collected. And you're trying to. Constantly trying to collect it, which holds you back from doing and investing in anything at this month, this moment. Right. So I kind of hit me like, oh, you know, we're basically, we're loaning them money.
[00:26:29] Speaker A: You're the bank.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: We're the bank, if you will. We switched to ach. Now again, law firms out there contingency and stuff like that. That's not a model for you. But ach, I have about 200 clients across the country. AR is like 1.5 days to. It takes us to collect, usually for all clients. So then we have the money. We can pay our staff, we can hire people, we can invest in technologies, and that's better for our clients because we're financially sound. We are not trying to collect money. And, you know, we can make good decisions. So you want your, your vendors to be financially well off. And so for anyone that wants to work with us, we do ach. That's it. We offer other methods, but we make it hard for you if you choose those other ways. You may.
[00:27:16] Speaker A: You make a great point about a PI firm not being able to do what you do, but there are things, and you'd be surprised at how many PI firms are sloppy with respect to prepaid case cost and settlement comes in. In theory, you want to get paid your prepaid case cost, you want to get your piece of the fee, maybe pay out any fee splits you have from a referring attorney, and then get a settlement check to the client. Well, if you didn't do a good job accounting for those prepaid case costs, which could be substantial, and you don't get reimbursed, it's like you lost the case with respect to that expense. So use your case management system. Get a great process in place for getting those cost into it by case matter. And then when the check comes in, you get to recoup all those costs, pay out any other fees. You need to recognize your fee and pay the client. But a lot of times when we get involved, we have to go back and retrain staff and make sure that we quit losing that money. It's just like losing a case. All those, all those case costs are just gone. They hit the income statement at that point.
[00:28:14] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a good point. I never looked at it like that. Well, good, good tips, good information.
You know, this is something I'M always again, excited to talk about where I'm, I'm the least knowledgeable. As far as doing the finances, I'd be terrible. But I, I like it more and more as I learn more, you know, that we can apply in our business. And the faster we get those numbers, see the data, the faster I can make decisions. Like, I was just at trial order Summit. I got 10 of the conferences. I got to pay for booths and spaces and stuff months in advance. Like, how to. How do I pull all that off? And better my finances, the better I can prepare a budget to say, hey, here's how much I'm going to spend and how much I can. I can do and when I can do it. It's very hard.
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Yeah, but it's not a surprise. You've already budgeted for it, you've set the money aside and you can spend it.
[00:29:00] Speaker B: Exactly. Otherwise. But for years, it's like, oh, let's look at the. Looks like we got a lot of money. Let's just go.
Let's get some energy. Partners, podcast hats, you know, and it's just. And honestly, I think you spend less sometimes. Like, because you, we all, me and my partner, conservative. Oh, we got $100,000 just sitting there. Let's cut it in half and then keep 50 in there. But if I had good data to be like, we'll take all of it. You can take it home.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Well, and you probably do spend less on those in conferences because if you went to one early on and it wasn't really productive, you're like, oh, I'm not going to repeat that. But you wouldn't really know that unless you paid attention to the results.
[00:29:33] Speaker B: Well, the other thing, too, and a lot of firms go to these things. You get early bird pricing. So if I could buy the booth or the tickets for like a CLE six months in advance, it might be half the price. That adds up. But if you, if you have to kind of spend as the month comes because you're not sure you're paying full price. So there's all kinds of advantages, obviously. So, yeah, good stuff. John, I appreciate you sharing and it sounds, I mean, I know you guys have a great model over there and help a lot of firms. The subscription model, the you know what don't you want? The model is really nice to see. So, yeah. Anyone out there listening? If you want to connect with John, ask me if you can't figuring out how to find him, I'll make an intro. But if you're not sure you can,
[00:30:11] Speaker A: you can also visit our
[email protected] or I'm on LinkedIn at John C. Scott, CPA I'm on TikTok as JDC, VCFO and Instagram. Same way.
[00:30:23] Speaker B: Look for his dances on there.
[00:30:25] Speaker A: There's no TikTok dancing yet.
[00:30:26] Speaker B: Okay. All right. Maybe. Maybe in 2026. We'll see.
John, thanks for joining me. And sharing is such an important piece of a business. And we covered a little bit, you know, we covered a players and some culture. We covered some AI. We cover financials in a lot of different ways. So all amazing stuff. And everyone that listens, you know, we're just out there trying to make our firms better, have a better life, have our team and our clients serve more clients and let's get it. So John, staying with me and everyone else, have a great day. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:31:01] Speaker A: Thanks, Kevin.
[00:31:02] Speaker B: Yes, sir.
