241 ⎸ The State of Virtual Bookkeeping Industry with Alyssa

I'm joined in person by my biz bestie Alyssa Lang of Workflow Queen, and we are SO pumped to talk about the return of the Virtual Bookkeeper Industry Survey round two, baby! We're going bigger, better, and more intentional this time around, with a goal of 2,500 responses, a charity donation tied to Make-A-Wish Foundation, and a brand new interactive data bot that lets you dig into the results yourself. Oh, and we may have gone down a rabbit hole or two about AI, pricing, and what it actually means for running a boutique firm. You're welcome.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• A breakdown of the survey format, what questions changed from last year, how this data compounds over time, and why your honest answers help the whole industry
• How AI should actually be affecting your pricing
• How people are (and aren't) implementing AI in their firms, and the offshoring and automation data we're dying to dig into
• The trust recession around AI, what it means for your client relationships

Resources mentioned in this episode:

• TAKE the Survey: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/survey
• Or take it Here: https://www.workflowqueen.com/survey
• Last Year’s Results: https://youtu.be/L0nwFo5A7xM

Connect with Alyssa

🌐 Website: workflowqueen.com

📱 IG: @workflowqueen

🎙️ Podcast: Conquering Workflows & Systems with the Workflow Queen

Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me @ambitiousbookkeeper

For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:

• Visit our website: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com
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• Connect on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/serenashoupcpa

Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.

Podcast Publishing Tools we use:

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Respond to The State of the Virtual Bookkeeping Industry Survey: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/survey

Opt in to get the report or just skip straight to the survey! Either way, we appreciate your support. 

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Transcript

0:00

(Music) Thankly. Thank you.(Laughter) How did I get that off? How did I fall off? All right, welcome to the Ambitious Bookkeeper podcast. Here we are in my home studio and I've got a special guest today, Alyssa Lang, the workflow queen who if you haven't been around for very long, you may not know, but she's my biz bestie. And if you have been around for any amount of time, you already know and hopefully you're super excited for this episode. Yeah, we're super pumped. I mean, we just took way too long to set up this whole entire in-home studio, but it's actually really cute. So if you're tuning in on the podcast, you can go check out the episode on YouTube. You can see also my cute dog because he's the star of the show. Let's be real. Yeah, heck yeah. Good boy. What a good boy. So just a little like background, Alyssa is here visiting and as per usual, when she's here we end up creating more ideas to action and to support this community. And last year around this time, I put out a survey to get information about the smaller firms within our space, like you listening most likely. There has never been anyone that's done a survey of the virtual bookkeeping industry with the types of men acting in big ways. Yeah, for the little guys. I don't want to say y'all are little, but I have a smaller firm and I'm totally fine with that. We're not corporate. Yeah, we're not corporate. I've built my firm in a way that supports my family. I feel like the surveys that are out there are more geared toward larger firms. And they're run by large software companies that some of us don't even use in our firms. So we're not even privy to being a part of that survey because we don't use the ignitions and the big carbon softwares of the industry. And so I felt like we were lacking in transparency on some of the stuff that smaller firm owners are facing that are going outside, thinking outside of the box like we do. We used Dupsado, which was not a software that was built for bookkeepers. And there's so much of that in these smaller firms where we have thought out of the box and used other softwares that are more affordable. They are more customizable to give that boutique firm feel to our clients. So that's what I formed this survey around pretty much. We're not just talking about tech, but anyway, put that survey out last year. It was the first year I put it out. So it's definitely like the first one is always like the shitty pancake. It's like we just now we're on round two of the pancakes. And when I put that survey out, Alyssa was like, "Oh my gosh, can I be involved somehow, at least through the results and everything?" Which we did put out the results podcast. You can, I'll link it in the show notes so that you can go listen to the results from last year. And this year I was like, "I definitely want to loop you in because I know you're going to bring different ideas that I didn't think about and it's just going to be so much better. So here we are." Yep. Now we're on to round two, the non-s making better decisions and understanding what everybody else does. Because sometimes when you feel like you're just sitting in this like normal, normally a virtual your home setting and you're doing all this work on a day to day, you wish you knew that other people could tell you like what's your revenue range and at that revenue range. How many team members do you have in like, what's this sort of software you're using? And I think that that's where me and Serena are coming together to bring different perspectives. I'm coming in from like, I want to know the systems that people are using. What type of tools are they, are they working with the type of team are they going and you're coming in with like what sort of knowledge and what sort of background do you come from? Like, and we're coming together with like, what can we ask the community in this space so that they can understand a little bit more about what everybody else is doing so they don't feel so siloed? Because I also think that's the overwhelming. Yeah, the silo piece and then the context of understanding. Like when you see people posting in a Facebook group and they're like, I'm hiring my third account manager and blah, blah, blah, or I have 100 clients and this structure or this much revenue, but then like you're lacking context to understand. What's their profit margin? Yeah, A, what's their profit margins? Like B, like does this even, am I comparing my apples to their oranges? Like it's, there's so many things that we will make decisions on based on like what we see on the general population, the surface level of what people are willing to share. And then we feel behind because we're not getting the same results or our structure is different and our profit margins are different and our service base, like service levels are different. So like, or when you see like gurus, no offense to all the gurus, because we are some of those, but those gurus who ran like fortune 500 accounting firms and you're like, why can't my firm grow so fast and why can't I have this all this stuff at this level? It's like you're learning from someone who's 20 steps ahead of you. So sometimes like being able to kind of come back down to earth and say, where can I meet myself where I'm currently at in my position? Plus where do I want to go without creating this outlandish idea of where my firm can go in like a matter of two months from someone who told me online, like, which is the reality. The other thing too, that I think is really important for context is there are some people in our industry that, and I've, I think I've talked about this before on the podcast and if not, here we go. Welcome to the Serena and Alyssa Jeff. There are people in our space that are like helping firm owners grow and do things. However A, they weren't doing it while raising little ones at home on their own or whatever the situation. They had a partner at home that was managing all of that side. B, they stepped into leadership in an accounting firm that was already established. So already you're not on the same playing field. We don't have the same luxuries as someone who has a partner. Bought into a firm. Bought into a firm, was mentored through the leadership in that firm and inherited systems and people. They're doing is, it's way easier to button up the back end of someone's systems that already laid the 80% of the foundations and now you're buckling, you're buckling everything down to then get it to the last 20%. Yeah. So just a little perspective for you and like to just consider when you're taking advice from anyone. In the beginning I listened to way different people and then I do now, like there's also people that I've outgrown, which like, there's a lot of people I say like, you should outgrow your coaches. You should outgrow or they should be growing with you. You know what I mean? Yeah. And also you change seasons of life where what mattered to you at the beginning may not be what matters to you. Mine was money for a really long time. It was like money was a big goal and now it's like just straight freedom. But now the survey, what it's going to do is allow you guys to see like, well, if someone's only working X number of hours, where's their true revenue at? And also how many team members do they have? Because we get that a lot inside my breakthrough program. It's like, you know, how many hours are you guys working if you have this many team members? It's like, well, where's your revenue at? Like so a lot of people want to know, I'd love to know. I want to only work 10 hours a week, but let's just say you're listening right now. You're like, I want to work 10 hours a week, but I want to make 100K. Then it's like, what does that actually take? What sort of software does someone at 100K need to be using? Or 300K, it could be 500K, whatever that number is. How many team members do they have? And that's not just from one other person that you're reading on a Facebook post and like hearing their one perspective. Now you're actually being compared against a lot of people. Our anticipation, what was our goal? Our goal was like at least a thousand this time. What was the last time we had almost 650, it was like 640 something respondents to our survey. This year, our goal is to get over a thousand. I think that's the threshold for which we'll talk about in a minute, the charity side of things, right? Because once we hit the thousands, what we're donating towards everything for each person who submits, right? Each person who answers the survey, which by the way, will be anonymous. However, in order to access the survey, we are asking you to share your email and information, but they are not tied to the survey answers in any way. I feel like we should just like set a number while we're here because I think it'd be really fun for everyone to hear like us actually setting that goal and why we chose it. I like the idea. I mean, I'm crazy because you know, I like to do crazy big goals. I'm like, let's go for 5K people responding to this. But like, what's a realistic goal for us here? Yeah, well, I would say like, this is my, this is my thought process. Like my analytical brain is I'm like, okay, last time I we got 640 people to respond. I only sent a few emails. I had a few. Yeah, I sent three emails. I had maybe a couple social posts, but I also had people who affiliate for me sharing the survey, but I don't think anyone shared it more than two or three times. Yeah, totally. So it's like with that knowledge and knowing some of the other things we're going to do in the background to push this survey and make sure that more people are seeing it. And more people are included into it so we can have a bigger pool of everyone's information. Yes. Yeah. Which we are going to be able to compare apples to apples because we're going to be getting metrics from people that, you know, like what's their revenue? How much, how many hours are they as the firm owner spending and things like that? The more data, just the more rich, like we're going to be able to like expand upon it. So I would say, I would say double what we did last year. So at least like 1400. So let's say 2500. Okay. Because you always want to do a number that feels a little scary. So I'm going to write that. So everyone listening, you're probably listening to this before the survey results are out before this is even live, right? Or about right about the time that it's going to be live. So just know that you guys are all part of like one bigger picture to be able to have the more data we can have, the more you guys can know what the comparison is against other people that are also like swimming in the same lake as you. Like we want to make sure that we're all kind of like getting you whatever information. So if you're listening to this and you want to take the survey and you know another bookkeeper and accountant and you're curious about their stats, their results, obviously it's anonymous. So you won't know who stats or what. Please let everybody know in the accounting space. We'll make sure that you guys get all the links linked in the show notes, whether you're on YouTube or on listening to the podcast. That way you guys can be able to push it out to your friends in the industry. That way you can get as much data as possible. Yeah. And if you do, I mean, it's not that we're excluding the larger firms. We still want that information, but we're gathering it within context. So if it makes it out to larger firms, great. But yeah, so. We want anyone and everyone. Yeah. And so let's talk about, because we've kind of hinted at the charity thing. Last year I donated a dollar towards one of my favorite charities called Charity. Yeah. Per each person who responded to the survey, I donated a dollar up to $500 to a charity. This year we're doubling that. So we are, you know, up to a thousand responses, we're going to donate a dollar. So Alyssa, I had her pick the charity this time since I picked it last time. I was like, why don't you pick a charity? So I was like, which one should we do? So we actually chose Make-A-Wish Foundation. And if you guys are unaware of what Make-A-Wish Foundation is, I'm probably going to butcher it because that's just my life. You can totally Google it. But from what I understand, only because I've actually been on the receiving end of Make-A-Wish Foundation. If you guys don't know a little bit about my story, I had a brother who passed away from leukemia. When I was 15, he was 16 when it happened. So he was really young. He actually had an adult version of leukemia. So that meant that it actually got him on a level that like adults can usually handle a little bit better as a child though. And when he got diagnosed with cancer, he went through all the treatments, went through everything. And because of his level, I always forget how they explained it. I mean, this was like, I'm 35 now. It was like 20 years ago, which is crazy. But even before that, when he was diagnosed, I think I was in seventh or eighth grade when he got the diagnosis. And anyways, so in the conversation, they found out that because of his level of cancer and the likelihood that he could pass because of cancer, they offered my family. And I don't remember all of this because I was so young, like when it all happened, but they offered my family Make-A-Wish Foundation. And I remember they came to our house and they were such a cool foundation. I know that there are big... I think a lot of people are always skeptical about donating to larger charities because they think that there isn't really any personable... Yeah, they can't track where the money is actually going. Yeah. And I think that Make-A-Wish Foundation is one of those ones that I will always deeply trust because I've also been on the other side of it, not just seeing it. But anyway, so I remember they came to our house and it was actually firefighters. I remember this only because I was little and women with firefighters, if you know what I'm saying. This is probably when the firefighter thing started happening in my life. Anyways, so I remember they came to the house and they sat us down and we were us as the whole family. And they were like, "You're going to get this wish because you know, your cancer and all the things." And they were so sweet about it. They made it so fun for my brother. They weren't weird and technical with a lot of stuff. And they're like, "Well, what do you want to do?" My brother was like, "Well, I want to go on a shopping spree and spend..." I can't remember what he said. It was a really ridiculous number. And they're like, "We can give that to you." They were like, "We can give that to you." My mom was like, "Wait, wait, wait. Doing a shopping spree for you. Let's do something as a family." And so it ended up settling on let's all kind of vote situation because we wanted it to be something that was a memory. And so Make-A-Wish, they ended up sending our family to Florida. We went for, I think it was two and a half weeks. We stayed at Give Kids the World. We got to do a cool little star that was engraved my brother's name that was put on this building. It was really cool. If they pass, I can actually go back there and actually gain his star. I was supposed to go two years ago to Florida for BKX and my plan was to get that star. You have to bring a death certificate. It's a whole thing. My brother, sad part of the story is my brother passed, but this whole situation with Make-A-Wish was incredible. But they sent us to Disney World and we got to go to every single Disney World for two weeks. We also got to do behind the scenes everything. We got to see how the rides were built. We got to go like we had this little button that my brother would wear around and he would totally show it off and be like, "You see that? I've got cancer. You got to let me in the front." He would totally play this so hard. He'd be like, "Make it." They'd know that we get to go, but he was weak so he actually had to get pushed around in his wheelchair. We did two weeks Give Kids the World and we stayed there and we also did Universal Studios and I forgot what else we did, but we got everything. We didn't pay for anything. We would get pictures, gift things at the gift shop. They took such good care of us. We stayed at this place that was super cartoonish. It was such a cool experience, but my brother ended up passing one month later. When he passed, but it was just crazy that we literally went on this trip. They took our whole family. There's five of us. Well, one of my oldest brother didn't get to go because he was in the Navy at the time. Seven of us. When I say that I love what Make-A-Wish has to put in place, those memories, I'll never be able to relive, but being able to look back at them and say it was also right before my brother had passed, they just treat people so like they've had people do heroes of a city where they shut down San Francisco and they have a kid be a superhero for a day. I think it's the most incredible foundation. When we decided on what foundation, I was like, "I'd love to do this because as someone who has lost someone and most people have been affected by cancer in some way, whether yourself or you know someone or someone very close to you." Our plan is to match a thousand of our first survey takers into donating to Make-A-Wish Foundation. Yeah. So a dollar for each response just like last year. Yeah, but we're doubling at this time, which is cool. Yeah. So we really appreciate you taking the survey and please be honest about things as well. We're not... We can't see it. Yeah. We can't see who says what, but... The more you give, the more you help, not just us to help give the data to other people and help change the industry with this. But every time you're taking this and you're answering these questions as much as we want to wish we could say we have more team or wish we weren't so chaotic, because I know we're all kind of chaotic, be as honest as possible because the more honesty you give, the more it's actually going to help all... If we get 2,500 people, you're going to help 25 other hundred people with your responses. Totally. So the survey should only take about 10 to 15 minutes. Yeah. So it's multiple choice election, couple of sprinkled in, like write out your... Yeah, like long form answers. If you want to give more detail, obviously that's not required. That's just going to help give us more information and more context around it. And we have a surprise of how that's going to help you guys even more, but we'll talk about that in a minute. So I do have a question though, because I have it on my little notes. What is changing in comparison to what... I know we just went through the questions the other day, but what's changing in comparison of last year versus this year and why some of the changes happened? Yeah. So last year, the survey really was like a five minute survey. There wasn't as many questions. We're going a little bit deeper this time. Some of the questions I didn't know until people were answering that they were actually written in a kind of confusing way. And we didn't know until we were recording a podcast the second time, because we didn't hit record on the first time. And we were reading them. I was like, "This is kind of confusing." And so we went back and forth and decided on how we were going to switch the language to make things make more sense. Yeah. So for example, one of the questions was around client revenue. And it was kind of confusing because it could have been construed as like... What's your point? Yeah. What's your point? But that's kind of what I was trying to figure out is what size clients people are working with versus not the revenue of the firm. And I think some people answered it as far as revenue of the firm or whatever. So yes, we have both. So we're getting that kind of data where we're asking, "Okay, what's the size client you're working with? What's your revenue?" And we're trying to find what's correlated. Yeah. If you're making a half a million in your firm and you're working with less than 100K clients, and then... So I'm assuming you most likely are working with a lot higher number of clients. Yeah. Versus if you're at a half a million, but you're working with clients at 3 million plus, that can help you guys correlate between why you sometimes want to have thresholds and requirements of the level. Like for us, it was 250K for the firm before we shut down the bookkeeping side was a 250K requirement. And before it was 100K, then we moved the threshold up because we had more opportunity. Plus they can afford more of what we could do. So this is the type of data that's a great example of the decisions that you guys can help make for yourself that like, "Wow, if I move into this," but take it with face value because you want to make sure to test these things too. Yeah. Absolutely. So that's one of the things that we're changing. Yeah. We're still asking questions about... One of the other things that we changed is how we asked a question around what you call yourself versus what you want to call yourself. So those are two separate questions now of like, "Am I calling myself a bookkeeper? Is that actually what I want to be calling myself?" So we're asking both of those questions. The other thing too is,"What's your role in the company?" Because anyone can take this. You can take this survey if you are a bookkeeper within another firm or an employee because that's just going to give us more information. Obviously, if you take that survey and you are an employee in a corporation, a lot of the questions aren't really going to be applicable to you, but we'll know based on being able to tie that on. Really quickly to clarify. So what if someone just started their firm and they're also an employee of a firm? How would you want them to approach this survey? Would you prefer that they just approach it from the business perspective? That would be the version we want everybody to... Yeah, because if they are working for another firm, likely they're not going to have access to the rest of the information that we want from this survey. So I want you to answer it for your own business. Put your business hat on, even if you're just getting started. If you just started your firm, whether you've been in business for 10 years, zero years, you're just getting started. We have those as options. So it's very clear there shouldn't be any questions about how do we answer this? But if there are, just honestly, just do your best. Yeah. It's not one... It's not life or death. Yeah, life or death. No one's going to die. So that's pretty much what's going to be changing is just a couple of the questions. I think also the way we explained when we went through it, like explain the questions, because Serena laid the groundwork. Let's be real. She just happened to pull me in and I'm like, "Yeah, sure. You did 80% of the work. I'll join you." Just kidding. We're reworking a lot. We are reworking a lot of the ways that we're doing things on this. So let's talk about comparison against last year. So how is this going to benefit in each year we do this from here on out? Not just in this year, but how is this all going to help build on to the years to come? One thing that I'm really excited about is there is still going to be data that we can compare to last year, because we're not completely changing the survey. There's going to be some questions that we can compare to show trends over the years of the industry and where it's going. That's what I'm really excited about because we do this for our clients. We compare over time trends and you can actually make predictions when you see stuff dipping or going up. You can make predictions based off of that. So this is one of the areas that I'm super excited about in the comparison side of things, being able to see. And also overall, as an industry, are we charging more? Are we charging less? Are people not raising prices because they're afraid of what's happening in the economy? I will admit to that one where I'm like, I don't want to raise prices on my clients because they're not all struggling, but some of them are struggling. Some industries are having to reset. It's all of our resetting. It's not the means I just think. Yeah. So it's like whatever you're feeling, I can guarantee you, other people are also feeling it too. So those are the things that I want to know. And then it's like whenever you look at when there's a dip in the stock market and a lot of people freak out all at once and then pull their money out, it makes the problem even worse. I don't want that to happen to our industry. I don't want everyone to be like, "Oh, I'm scared. I'm going to retract." And then we all start feeling it and doing the same thing. And that just makes the problem worse. It just makes it more stressful. Yeah. Yeah, over time. I really want to talk about what are we most excited to hear about because you just kind of got me going on something. What you had just mentioned is around AI and prices dropping. I'd be really curious to see if actually... I think we talked about this. I can't remember if we have because we talk about 50 million things every time we're together in person and even on the phone. I know that we talked about right now in this day and age with everything being automated a lot faster and AI actually being here, I do believe that people should be backtracking on their pricing, which usually I... You mean reducing their pricing. Yeah, but not in a way where it's ridiculously low. But what I mean is if there are accessibility... I also will argue the other side of that coin to say that sometimes because you put in the work to automate all that stuff, then you shouldn't decrease your rate because you put in that work in the years of experience. However, when there are things that are innately built into the software that we use, like for example, QuickBooks, and let's just say it does 80% of your work now rather than before or 50% and not saying it's the best, but let's just say for whatever this thing that we're using and it takes you down to only barely having to do a little bit of time that sometimes I do think it's important to re-evaluate. Some of the savings. Yeah, and then like, please pack on the savings or pass it on to the client when it's different when it's advisory work because I feel like advisory work, you are charging for your brain and your knowledge. But bookkeeping transactional work has shifted in the way and it will continue to shift with what is being adopted into the world right now. And so this is what I'm excited to see is like, have people been dropping their rates? But I'm also curious, maybe this is something we add to our questions, is it because of the fact that if you have dropped, I think we asked the question, if you dropped your rates or your rates have changed, what was the reason that they have? So if anyone here is listening and you're about to take the survey, if you have dropped your rates because you have automated quicker and things are a lot faster and you have adopted AI and things like that, let us know because we're genuinely curious in that intake piece of the survey. Yeah, I think that's definitely an important discussion because if you keep everything the same, so like say you add AI into your bookkeeping process and you get the time that it takes down a lot, so you're saving money and labor or whatever it is, and you don't replace that time with more value, then yes, you should probably be reducing your price totally because that's kind of... But this is where like, this is totally getting a little bit... I don't know, it's debatable. ...to go beyond just even the discussion around the survey right now, but I definitely think that this is something we're already open up the can of work, so we'll go there. I definitely think that if we're taking a step back, for me, we both know because we've gotten really good at marketing because these companies, Ambitious Bookkeeper and Workflow Queen really taught us how to actually market because when we did it before, it's a very referral based industry, which most people listening, you guys are in a very heavy referral based business. We were forced into learning sequences, automations as far as marketing and all these different things. When you take a step at it and we take a step back, we understand that sometimes you lower the price of something to get them in. You get a buyer once, you get a buyer forever. And so if you hear what we're saying right now, what if you guys got to a point where you're like, "Your stuff was so automated on the transactional work, the easy ... It's just the bookkeeping stuff." You get it down to a T, where now all of a sudden instead of charging people, let's just say your minimum is 600, now you're like, "You know what? We're actually bringing them down to 400." It doesn't mean that we're not good at what we do. It just means that we've done so much behind the scenes to get it to a point where it's more cost effective for you. But guess what? I would be really putting in my dollars towards my upsell system, which means once they're in, because that's just me getting in a buyer, that's not where we're going to make our money. Now if your whole focus of your firm is just to do bookkeeping, then you don't maybe not want that. You know what I mean? But if your firm is also wanting to grow into advisory, then sometimes you want to lower your rate of your entry level point, which is usually the bookkeeping, to eventually have the intention of long-term growth into higher level services. So that's where I think that does come into advantage and into place. Here's where I see the pitfall with that. Is someone's listening and they're like,"Oh, that's a really good idea. That's what I'm going to start doing." But then they fail to do the upsell piece or they don't have the skills. Yeah, or you don't have the skills to upsell. You should never start changing something with a hopeful outcome. If you've never tested the outcome, let's already start with that. So please don't go lower your prices and be like, "I'm going to get them in and then I'm going to upsell them to advisory." Get your upsell system down first. Right. Then you go change the entry level point. Yes. 100%. Then just see that happening as thinking that you're going to put that in place later on. And then later on never happens. You don't A, build the sales skills to be able to do that or B, the systems or whatever because now you're dealing with more clients. You have to build backwards. You have to build what is the end result of what you're trying to create and then work it down to the last little piece of your first, I always call it the domino effect. So your first domino that you should drop, you don't start with the first domino. You start with the last domino to understand what's the end result and then you work the dominoes backwards to like, what's the first domino that needs to fall to have every other chain reaction happen, but you have to fix the backend. Does that make sense? Yeah. So like when people are doing it. So speaking of what you're most excited to hear, I know that just opened up like a little bit for us to talk about, but what are some of the results that you're looking forward to kind of seeing, especially in comparison to what you saw last year? I'm looking forward to the results on like the questions that we fine tuned. So that we have better information. We gave more, giving more options in certain like revenue thresholds and years of experience. The other thing that I'm really excited about is we have a question that asks about how long you've been doing this on your own as your own business or a freelancer, whatever you identify as like a business owner or a freelancer. That's whatever, but how long you've been doing this on your own versus how much accounting experience you have in total, because I want to see if there's a correlation between the, how successful someone is based on how much prior experience they had in corporate before starting their firm, selfishly, because sometimes I kick myself for waiting as long as I did for starting my firm. But at the same time, I gained so much valuable experience in those years where I didn't. Things I never got, I never got to be in a corporate body and understand and have someone to turn around to real quick in an office to ask him a question. Yeah, exactly. And so I'm just, that one's one of my like selfish curiosities of like, does that affect people's success and the amount of money they're making or whatever? Like that's one of the things I'm looking forward to. I think for me, I always am looking forward to like what systems are people using? So I know we like refine some of the systems and also AI. Like I think AI is just a big, it's just a part of what we're having to deal with right now in the industry as it's currently shifting. And I think for me, I'm excited to see like what is some of the people's thoughts around it. I think we also asked them about how you feel. Yeah. If I remember correctly, we asked people how you feel about AI. Like what is it making you experience? What are the softwares that you're using? Are you using AI within softwares and tools? Are you using external ones? Like, yeah, so I'm excited. That's not like the majority of what we're asking, but I'm curious to see what those results are. I am too, especially because recently I recorded a podcast with Joe Woodard and he cited a survey done by someone else in the industry, probably one of the softwares that we kind of talked about earlier. And I'm really interested, and he said that only 14% of accountants are using AI in their workflow. In an actual productive way, right? I think that was just in general. I don't know how the question was asked. That's the other thing too. We'll eventually be able to put the data together now that we see it. Because for me, there's a difference between a lot of people are using AI, but they're using it as helping me respond to back to an email to clients or like, that does count. But however, what I want to know is how are people using it? Because there's a difference between you just using it to respond to emails than you actually building out things like I've been building in the past couple of days, like with complex dashboards that people can go into and grab data and knowing future payments. And like, those are a little bit more complex as far as like not just being like the day to day, like your sidekick, your new Google. You know what I mean? Like, are you going to be on the Google capacity? I guess is the right way to say that. The other thing too is like, this is where those kinds of surveys kind of fall short. Because what is the context of that 14%? And if that was a survey that went out to larger firms, we already know this about large firms. They are slower to adopt technology. So is that 14% going to translate to us smaller boutique firms that are more agile, that can adopt things quicker? I don't know. What's your prediction on that? What's your hypothesis? I'm actually, this is why I'm so curious to see it because I'm like, in my brain, you know sometimes like because you do something, you think everyone does it too. So in my brain, I'm like 75% of y'all are for sure using AI. That's how I feel about package pricing. Maybe we really do need to analyze the way that we question the AI stuff. Because by the time it goes live, that we can actually get a little bit deeper to say like, and how are you using it if we didn't include that? Because I'm genuinely curious to see, I don't want to just know if you're using AI. Because a lot of you guys could be listening and being like, I do. In some sort of capacity, maybe I've Googled with it or like I call it my new Google, right? Like I've Googled with it or done something with it. But I want to know who's actually using it in an extremely productive way. And what does productive mean? Like in our eyes, like as far as how we're asking the question. And for me, what means productive is like, it's actually creating your workflow. It's actually making your workflow faster. And I'm not saying an email response. You know what I mean? Like you're creating dashboards, you're creating resources, you're creating the automation side of it. Like, you know, how are you utilizing it? Yeah. You know, the other thing too, that maybe you should write this down. We're just gonna have to re-listen to this episode before we can finalize publishing the episode. We need to listen to the transcripts. So that way we could pull out all the things we said. Make sure we add. I'm like, by the time this episode is over, we're gonna, the 10 to 15 minutes is gonna be a complete lie. It's gonna be like 30 minutes a day this damn survey. Just kidding. But what the other piece is, is like, have you used AI to actually replace a position or add a position? Kind of the way that we, because we asked an offshoring question. Yeah, we did ask offshoring. And that's, I forgot we asked that. That's another thing I'm really excited to hear about. Because guys, we have, me and Serena were discussing this the other day and we won't go into a whole spiel of why we've chosen whether offshore or not offshore. And episode for another day. Yeah. And like our thoughts around it is like our own prerogative and like not anybody else is. But I don't offshore. It's not my biggest, I'm not the biggest fan because when I've attempted, it's never gone the way I wanted it to. I wanted someone to be able to manage stuff. So we were really curious to ask the question around offshoring because we figured that we would love to not prove is not the right word because it's not always the case. There's always exceptions to the rule, but we wanted to see, okay, so let's just say that you're a hundred K firm and you, you have foreign team members, which your team members could be contractors or employees. That's the thing we updated in the survey. And let's just say that you say you have five team members, which might scare someone else who is a hundred K firm, but let's just say that the owner is working 60 hours, but they've got five team members are only making a hundred K. But then they answer the question that they offshore were like, you're probably working a lot more because you're having to pick up a lot of like that communication gap that they can't have with your team, your clients. Right. Like we were so curious about how people who do offshore, like maybe you guys are going to prove us wrong for all the people who love offshoring that you might have great profit margins, like, which could be true, but also I want to know how much what are you sacrificing? Yeah. Like how much of for that sacrificing and like, what are your hit? I'm just like really stoked about that one. So you said that we wanted to track how have you ever used it to replace a role? Mm hmm. Or even maybe not even like, I don't know how we're going to word this, but maybe not even a whole entire role, but like a portion of one. Yeah. We're like, you've eliminated. I mean, there's a lot of things that I would say could be technically eliminated, like even through automation. So like, I know this is totally an episode for another day conversation, but like we went on a walk the other day and I was, we were talking to me and Serena about automation. Like everybody was so scared about automation replacing them. This was like Zapier was introduced like what, five, six years ago? Cause I remember it was at the beginning of workflow queen. I remember like Zapier was just coming out or something like he was getting popular. And the reason I wanted to say this right now is because, which is one of our lists anyways is to talk about the trust recession, which is around AI. But I think there's a lot of fear around people thinking AI is going to fully replace stuff. It just, it's moving really, really fast. And I understand that, but at the end of the day too, everybody thought that automation was just going to replace everybody. But guess how many of you guys listening right now who have known about Zapier still are like, I have no idea how to set it up or it's too overwhelming or it's too complicated. And we're six years later and you still weren't replaced. Yeah. Like there's so much fear and that's why like it's so, I'm so curious. Like even the questions we asked around automation, like what are you automating, which is for anyone who's going to take the survey automation is different than AI unless you're actually automating your AI just to clarify. Yeah. Automation is like taking tasks and having triggers that... I thought you were going to say and making them automated. I'm like, you can't use the word inside the definition, but that's what I would do. But yes. Yeah. Anyway. Because automating is where you automate things. Automating is when you make something automatic. That's the first part. Okay. So, we have some ideas about some new things, some fun things. Oh, now that we're talking about AI, should we just go right into the talking about the trust recession and why we wanted to have that conversation today? Send it. Okay. So, all I have for my notes is... Hold on. I don't remember either. I don't remember either, but this is a smart point I made when you were starting. At the moment, it felt very smart. Talk about the trust recession, about fear around AI and how this survey will help you get answers. Yeah. I think we kind of touched on this of just providing more context around what else people are doing. Also, I think it's really important, speaking of surveys, to survey your customers and your clients about their thoughts. Because one of the things... Thank you for the charity thing just like this. It motivates people. It doesn't even have to be this crazy. It could literally be a one question email about, to your clients, asking them, "How do you feel about AI adoption when it comes to your bookkeeping?" Just like offshoring. You cannot do this without their permission. Totally. So, if you've turned on QuickBooks AI or any on your clients, I hope to God that you have gotten permission from your clients because I know myself... Well, to a lawyer. Yeah. Yes. And I know for myself, I don't want people feeding my information into AI. I know my shit's all over the internet. My face is all over the internet. People have probably done it. But if it were my personal financial information... I'd be pissed. Even your clients should know if you're connecting... Obviously, they're going to know if you're connecting your bank feeds. But it's kind of the same thing. I've had clients that... A client reports into chat GPT, stuff like that. I've had clients that didn't even want their bank feeds connected to a cloud software because they're that paranoid. So if they don't even want that connected to a software that doesn't even... This was pre-AI. There's going to be clients that are probably not okay with their information being fed through AI. So I hope you're just... Be careful. At least be transparent. And transparent. Careful, but also transparent because that way someone can make a decision. Just like if you're offshoring, your clients need to know that. Yeah. Your stuff is going across. You can't do that secretly. Yeah. But people do it all the time. Yeah. It's kind of scary. But anyways, make sure your agreements have AI clauses and things like that. If you are going to be using them. But back to the survey thing, if you want to be implementing this inside of your firm or understand what your actual clients feel. Because my clients feel differently about AI than a lot of other people's clients because of just the business that they're in. They're entrepreneurs. They're adopting it, but maybe not a construction company. Oh, totally. Or a restaurant. Maybe they have a very firm stance about AI. And so you need to find out from your customer base, like potential customers, current customers, find out what they actually feel about AI before you get freaked out about it taking over your job. Yeah, exactly. Because some people just, I know so many people who are like, "I'm absolutely resisting AI." Which is totally fine. That's okay if you resist it. That's totally fine. Let's talk. We've got a couple more things we wanted to cover before we get into some of the fun things to kind of tease that. Number one, where can people take the survey? And number two, also what are the dates? Because I know you are the queen of remembering that. Oh, God. I knew I was going to have to pull up my notes out. The first shoulder that we said June 1st to June 15th is the opt-in dates of the survey. So it means that anybody could take the survey from June 1st to June 15th. We actually encourage you, if you can, we'd love for you as soon as you submit your results to just share the link. And maybe that's something that we put on the landing page when they do the results, so please share this with your fellow bookkeeper or account friends. And post it in a Facebook group if you're inside of any of them. Like, guys, the more people do this, the more data that we can have that can help you guys make better decisions to support you guys. So June 1st to June 15th will be the dates that you guys can fill out the survey. We will be releasing these survey results on June 30th. I thought it was July 1st. Either way. Either way, it's right around those couple of days. I thought it was right around that time. And that means that that's when we're going to actually present the survey results. We'll send them to you via email, if I remember correctly. Just like last year, if you've been a part of Serena's, and does it also include last year's? Did we decide that that was including last year's results? We're going to have some comparisons, but because we're changing the survey, so... It's going to be hard to, like, f**king white. You're not going to be able to use this. Yeah. So we're going to have some blurbs in there about, like, what it was last year and how things have changed. But yeah. And so go to ambitiousbookkeeper.com slash survey to take the survey. And yes, please share it wherever... And also be with LaQueen.com backslash survey too, since we'll have two different options. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. As far as fun things, so we definitely wanted to talk a little bit about this, and this will be kind of like our last thing that we'll talk about today. But what are some fun things that people can expect that's different? Not necessarily in the survey, but how we're going to deliver these results, because we're very amped up on it. And we talked a lot about this yesterday. Oh, I'm like, what are we doing? I don't remember. I remember blacked out. I feel like I blacked out a little bit when we were talking. Okay. So let me just get... Let me just tell you guys a little something that I'm so excited about for the survey. So this is something that no matter what, everybody who opts in to actually receive the survey results will receive the survey 100%. However, we are going to be doing a new layer to this, which is going to be where if you guys want to be able to, like, kind of interact with the survey, and what we mean by that is ask some further questions, be able to have it, like, kind of analyze the information. So maybe, for example, we were just talking about some of the things. Let's just say that you want to know of the people who offshore, how much revenue are they currently making? Where is the owner... How much time is the owner spending in the business? And also, what are the people who are offshoring saying are the problems they have with offshoring? You can actually ask it questions to kind of get the information that you want from it. So it's kind of like an interactive bot that you guys will be able to ask those questions. This will be paid since it is a bit more higher of a level than just the survey results, which anybody could take those survey results and be able to utilize them and understand them and dissect them. But this is just a bot that can help you almost, like, understand a little bit more about the survey results and be able to, like, kind of pick things apart to get information that you need. Yeah. Especially if, like, you have... My curiosity question was, like, does having a certain number of years of experience in the corporate world or elsewhere make a difference in your success? Success. Yeah. And, like, in how much money you're making. And, like, and it doesn't mean that just because that's what the survey says is going to be end result. Like, you guys can create whatever reality. But what we plan to do is create a very special bot that's very interactive, which, like I said, is not going to be included for the survey results. It will be a separate purchase. You guys will have more information about that when the results do go live, is when this will go live as well. And we're really excited about that because I believe we also said that we were going to have it attached to prior year data, right? Isn't that what we said we were going to have it attached to? And so that way, every year as well, we would resell this same bot built into the new plan every single year, which would be different purchases each year. But essentially that every year you can compile more and more data about how the industry has changed and being able to interact with it. It's almost like you're getting coached, but not really getting coached. Right. It's going to be like a data analyst bot of, like, pulling the facts out for you that you can then take and make decisions off of. We're going to just have to make sure we program it not to be a coach because AI likes to do that. Like, would you like me to pull this for you and do this for you? We're like, sit down. I literally don't. Yep. Call him Chad. That's what we call him, Chad. Our friend Ashley, shout out to Ashley. She's the one who called him Chad and now he's Chad to me. He's the only man in my life other than my dog. But anyway, so that's like the biggest thing we're really excited about is like, because we're going to be bringing someone in to help kind of customize this to be something that is heavily interactive that can help you guys to make that decision or whatever you guys are looking at, especially around like, you know, the firms that are using AI, where are they at? Like, it's just going to be so I think it's going to be great. Like the average number of people using software like AI software is how many numbers of softwares are they using? Yeah. I think a lot of people always strive for like, I just want to use one software, just do it all. And I'm like, that doesn't work very well. But to the same effect is like, we're going to be able to see, is there a correlation between more software and firms that are successful? And now we're seeing lower revenue or vice versa. Like is there a correlation? Is there a correlation between the success of a firm and the use of AI? Because I know there's in the in my niche, a guru, I would say, and maybe not, I wouldn't call him like a guru, but like, a thought leader in the niche that I work in with clients has done his own survey of how many of these types of entrepreneurs are using AI. And he's actually found that those those people that are the more people use AI, the less revenue they have. Oh, interesting. Which is really interesting. But it's a different industry. It's content creation because they're trying to use AI to context. Yeah, exactly. To understand like, what way are they using AI? Because are they like, are they using it to just replace copy? Or are they using it to like, build things? Because I think that there's a core, that's where like the correlation between like, are you building things is different than you just like, piddling through quick tasks to get quick things done, which obviously could feel like building, but it's not like if they're using AI to actually build out a like, like a full on service, like that might be different, I would have to say, like, right, but we don't know. So the context of that is like, there's only so much we can get. And that's where we're trying to give you guys a chance to have more context being taken. That's why your answers are so important in the way you answer them. Because it's only going to give more context. Because I'm curious to know what his results were like, how are people using? Yeah, well, I think based on the industry, because he's talked about it a lot is like, okay, based on the industry is people are starting to use AI to outsource more of their thinking to create content. And these people are in the business of creating content. So if you are like, outsourcing your personality to AI, like that would be like me having AI write all of my, my like, emails and my podcasts and stuff. And I don't like I don't even, I don't even I don't even use it to ideate or find bullet points to talk about. Like, I feel pretty strongly about that with you podcasts, but mine are usually from like, where I come into the picture with that is like, typically, as you know, I'm a rambler. So like, I have to ramble for 10 minutes before I understand even what I'm trying to say. And also I ping pong in 10 directions because ADHD life, like so for me sometimes, but AI is not giving me the idea, right? I'm giving it the idea and telling it by I'm telling them all my ideas, but now just organize my ideas and find the common theme because there's 20 million of them. You know what I mean? But some people relying on that. Yeah. And you know, and do you think that sometimes like people want to hear the rambling? They do. But I also like think that my ping ping took me to the survey. But I'm right. Because like there are times too, where I've listened to my own podcasts, like before even anything like AI just had helped me to organize my bullet points that I already knew I was going to say. And I still do ramble. I don't read a script. Like I'm always gone off the cuff, but it's like for me, if I don't have at least like, what do I at least want to talk about? I could talk about all of a sudden I'm talking about puppies. Like I go down rabbit holes, and I just like don't know where I'm at. I don't even know where I'm at anymore. And I'm like, what did I, what were you talking about? Well, you're in my living room. I am in a living room. I was like, what am I? I had like my face definitely showed like, wait, am I in the living room right now? Like it's a podcast studio. It's very professional. This is all of a sudden a podcast studio. It just got really like very professional for a second. I know it took us an hour to set this up and we haven't even been recording for an hour. Actually 59 minutes and 43. We also recorded us while we were setting up. It's true. So about that time. So yeah, that's the biggest fun thing that we're implementing on this round, I'd say is really the only thing other than you guys might be hearing us on other people's podcasts. Um, cause we're going to be doing some heavier promotion on this. That way we can make sure that more people get access to this. Yeah. We find, I don't want to say the word duty because it's not our responsibility to do anything for anybody, but it's our duty as people who are, I'd say gurus influencers of this space. But as people who are trying to help lead the space into like this next wave of whatever this industry is going to be, we find that it's kind of our duty to make sure that we get you guys the results that you can. So we do want to push for high numbers so that way you guys can get better results. So like, like I said, I'm going to highly encourage you, like my call to action to, to you and my ask for you today is number one, you're going towards charity, which we thank you so much for that, um, for us to be able to contribute to charity. Um, the second piece is that the more that you can tell your friends, I'm just going to encourage that you send it to, I'm going to challenge you guys. Just as much as we said, we put our number down. I, this girl loves KPIs. I want you to send the link to five other bookkeepers and accountants or just post it in one Facebook group. And if you want to share that you did that, come on Instagram to either at ambitious bookkeeper or at workflow queen and let us know that like, Hey, I just shared the survey results. We want, we love celebrating people. Like we'll say thank you. And you can also comment below the video if you're hopefully you're watching this on YouTube. Hopefully you caught that at the beginning that this is a video episode in my living room with my live from American Arizona. I have this whole thing I want to do to be like Saturday Night Live. It is Saturday. Yes, it is. Um, it's a Saturday day live Saturday day live. And our plan today is literally frolic around town filming videos for promo for this. Yes. So stoked. All right. What do you have left on your handy dandy iPad? We've got the dates, which we already let them know. So June 1st to June 15th is going to be the dates that you guys can all, um, submit for the survey. If you're catching this YouTube video late or even podcast episode late after the 15th, they could still get access to the survey, right? If they can still get the results. So please still sign up. They're going to be super valuable. Um, and if you're listening to this after the survey is already closed and the results have been released, um, there will be another video to watch after this one, um, with, or yeah, I guess it'll be, it's not gonna be as cool. It's not gonna be in person. Unfortunately, cause I'm gonna be rollicking around the house. It's gonna be a virtual interview, but there will still be another podcast where we talk about the results. So make sure you're subscribed to the podcast or the YouTube channel. Um, please. And thank you. And, um, yeah, you can go to ambitious bookkeeper.com slash survey or workflow queen.com slash survey. Same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. Um, all right. Thank you so much. You want to cheer? Yeah. Let's choose our coffee. Yeah. Kind of a big deal, dude. You are kind of a big deal. I prefer to hustle. I mean, a line literally says a line and you chose the word hustle. It's literally, if nobody is watching this, it's a coffee mug that literally says hustle and it's crossed down and says a line. And she literally went for the word hustle right now. Mine says kind of a big deal and it's got to pick a lot of, yeah, but I'm kind of in hustle mode right now. I'm not going to lie. Yeah, I am. But I'm kind of like, but I'm super also aligned and chill. I love how you just have to like finalize that for yourself, but I'm also kind of chill. She is chill. If you got to tell me, yeah, people tell you, people tell you that I tell you to people tell me that they like I caught it. They listen to my podcast and my voice is so soothing and that makes me so happy because I don't feel that way on the inside. You know, people tell me all the time. They're like, you sound like, well, Jennifer Lawrence, first of all, second of all, people tell me sometimes that like, I have a calming podcast voice, but I'm like, do you, but it's also very fast. I'm also psychotic. So there's that. So I just like, don't get it. I mean, well, hey, maybe next year when we have the survey by podcast, we'll finally be back. Yeah, maybe next year. We could publish it on your podcast and future Alyssa problems. If I don't, I'm going to come back doing real episodes. So I can't come back with one episode in one year. Yolo, Yolo, Yolo live. Well, thank you everyone for tuning in and listening. We're excited for you to hit the survey. Let us know if you guys do, like I said, I'm going to challenge you, set it to five other bookkeepers and accountants or post it in one Facebook group. Come celebrate that to us. Maybe one day we'll do a leaderboard for that. Not this year, but next year, maybe we'll do a leaderboard for who shares the most to other people, to get other people to submit on the survey. That'd be fun. So we love challenges. I love being competitive. You guys live your best life and thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. Bye. Okay. We're leaving it rolling. I think it would be really funny for me to do like, I can play my guitar. Oh wow. Okay. You're like, please no. Can I serenade you? No, I can't look at you in the eyes. I can't look at you in the eyes. I'm joking. But you want to come up here? This is going to be the cut to of like live from Prescott, Arizona. Oh wow. I don't have my guitar strap on. Your strap on, you don't have your strap(Music) Thankly. Thank you. Thank you to everyone who helps make this podcast possible. Content and interviews are produced by me, Serena Shue. Our intro and outro music is written and performed by my brother, Ian Gilliam. Editing is also by Ian using his awesome sound engineering skills along with Descript Software. Hosting and publishing is by Buzzsprout, and you can check out the show notes for links to all of these amazing resources and resources mentioned in the episode. Be Unbrushes!