Stop Doing Everything | Zee Barfoot | Growing Money with Sean Trace

In this episode, I sat down with Zee Barfoot to unpack one of the toughest lessons in entrepreneurship: just because you can do everything doesn’t mean you should. We get into the real difference between owning a business and just owning a high-stress job, and why so many skilled technicians struggle when they step into the founder role without the systems or support to match. 

We talk about how tracking your time can expose the low-value tasks quietly draining your energy, and how replacing those tasks with the right people can completely change your growth trajectory. We also dive into hiring the right way, why paying great people more is often the smarter move, how to build structure when no one else is creating it for you, and the power of niching down so you can serve the right clients at a higher level. There’s a big focus on shifting from doing everything yourself to building something that can actually run and scale without burning you out. 

If you’re in that stage where you feel busy all the time but not moving forward, this conversation is going to feel very real. What’s one thing you need to let go of so you can finally focus on what actually moves the needle?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Whenever, again, I'm reading books about entrepreneurship and things, they talk about a lot of the money. You know, like this is how you manage your money, this is how you do this. But like one of the things is that they don't follow this next level of math, that most founders do everything. And the problem with that is that it caps income because you can't do everything and you you hit the ceiling. But like what you're saying, if you start tracking your time and identifying those, you know, those those tasks that are not worth your time, and then you can replace those with a who and then reinvest your time into revenue driving activities, that that's a secret sauce, man. You know, it's like that's a circle that helps you start scaling. You don't scale by grinding harder. You scale by making sure that your time is going into the right things.

SPEAKER_01 0:53

I'm glad you said that because a lot of people do think, oh, if I just work the extra 10 hours, I can get there, get where I want to go. But to maintain the lifestyle you want to have and get where you want to go, that means you have to work that 10 hours forever. Um also, a lot of people in my industry specifically uh are really, really um scared of raising prices. We had a firm sale, or it was a failed sale in in Arkansas. So the seller uh signed like a non-compete. The buyer was like, oh, it's not coming with employees, I don't want it anymore. So all the employees, all the clients were just caught in the middle, neither person would service them. So they're having to find other accountants elsewhere. And so like 300 clients just came into the uh the market, and a lot of accountants in my area aren't even taking clients. So the best thing to do is to go and drop them off pizza on Friday, like today, and say, hey, I know you're not taking clients. Here's a card. If they need somebody, we're able to at least get them in the right direction if we can't help them.

SPEAKER_00 2:09

Welcome everybody back to the Great Money with Sean Trace Podcast. I have an awesome return guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and what you do? Sure.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

My name is Z Barfoot. I run a CPA firm out of Arkansas. Um, I don't see many other CPAs on LinkedIn in my area, so I'm one of the leading posters for um CPA firms on LinkedIn, and that's how actually me and Sean connected.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

That is. It's awesome. And I I I'm really excited because we had talked before about all things CPA, but I we I was asking if you wanted to come back on because I I you're actually just really fun to talk to for one. But the other thing was like you have a really cool perspective on business. And I wanted to have you, because I, you know, I know that there's a lot of people out there that are or have looked at the idea of what would it be like to to take a shot at starting a business. But you know, people get hung up on one like some of the things. Like, like, first of all, like this is my first question for you. Like, what's the difference between owning a business and like just having a job? You know, what frames, you know, why would you want one over the other?

SPEAKER_01 3:17

Yeah, there's a lot of people who say they don't want a job and go self-employed that really shouldn't have, in my opinion. Right. Um, a lot there's a book called The E-Myth. I think it's tailored towards account, it's more than just general business, but the e-myth kind of focuses on there's three different types of people. You have the manager who's good at managing other people managing the work, you have the technician who's really, really good at doing the work, and then you have the entrepreneur who's good at building, scaling, and getting the work in the door. And a lot of people are good technicians. They're really good at doing the work, and they're like, man, if my boss would just get off my bank, I could do this. And those are the people who typically go out on their own to start a business. And those are also typically the people who I don't think should, because the other two aspects are so, so crucial and important. I've actually seen accountants go out on their own to start a firm and it not work out because they can't sell, they can't communicate, they can't market. In an art industry, that's not the the issue. The work is plentiful. Um, it's more about how do I filter my leads and get to working with the people I want to work with and that I can help best, not necessarily get in the work. So a lot of a lot of technicians out there, um, that's not necessarily a bad thing, but typically those are the people who think, oh, I can just go and and do this on my own and start my own firm. Um but a lot of people do start a business and have a really high-paying job that demands a lot of hours. And until you're able to get systems in place or employees in place, it's just going to be that a job, just like your other job, but you're your own boss, so you're mad at you instead of at uh at somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Right. Well, it's interesting that you know, one of the things that when I talk to friends who've started their own businesses, there's a lot of people that it was I I I really like that differentiation though, by the way. Like the some people that should be and some people it shouldn't. I am getting used to running my own business, but honestly, I'm gonna tell you the truth, I miss the structure sometimes. And I have to create that structure for myself, you know, that that structure of like the the patterns, the routines. Um, but it it took some getting used to and it's getting easier. But you know, some people really thrive in a you know, in an organization. And when they suddenly are in their own place, especially for small businesses that people are starting, and you're like it's you and an office at home, that can be intimidating, you know?

SPEAKER_01 5:53

Yeah, working at home was actually one of the hardest things ever. Everybody talks about how great it is for remote work and working at home. Um I did it for like six months, seven months, and it was hard because you're never fully off and you're never fully on. Even I had a separate office too that I could shut the door on. Yep. But you're still gonna hear the baby, you're still gonna hear the dryer, uh, you're still gonna know when dishes are in the sink, and you can't really turn that off. So that's that's one of those those cons. Um, I had a membership to a co-working place uh here in Conway, Arkansas, and it's great. I love it here. Uh you meet a lot of entrepreneurs here as well because it's co-working, a cheaper place to be instead of having a full office. And I was like, man, I get a lot more work done here than anywhere else. But there's like no office dividing space here, so I'm always talking to somebody, it seems, anyway. And that's also my job. My job is to bring the money in, right? That's as an entrepreneur, that's one of your jobs. But uh an office space opened up. I didn't have the money for it, but I got it anyway. And with the office space came time to actually do the work, time to actually be able to hire and have an employee in an office with me. And that all paid for itself rather fast. Now, I'm not gonna recommend everybody in every industry to do that because this industry is a lot easier to scale and grow really fast. It's more of management, that's the hard part. But um, that's the the route that I chose. I could not do the work from home thing whatsoever. It was really hard. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:34

Well, it's interesting too because um when when people start trying to uh you know shift from that into that entrepreneur mode, um there can be a lot of noise, you know. I mean, I know that I was overwhelmed when I was trying to figure out well, how do I do these basic steps, step A, step B, step C, and still, I'm still trying to get the right people and teams and elements in place. And, you know, like I remember one of the big things is my wife and I, um, she was starting a company as well under her father, who owns the company, but they needed an HR person. And like, we didn't know, hang on, what do you mean this hiring thing? What do you mean all this things that we have to do to get people in the door? And then like we were just like, I come on in, work for us. And I and it was not going well because there were not the place the pieces in place. But you don't know what you don't know, you know what I mean? And so there's some of those steps too, right? You don't know what you don't know.

SPEAKER_01 8:34

Yeah, the faster you can find out what you don't know, the faster you can find somebody to help you. I I'm a big believer in who, not how. Um, if I try to do everything like if I edited the clips from my podcast and then I scheduled everything and I decided what the podcast should be over, instead of just showing up and trying to be as present and provide as much value as I can, all of it's gonna be horrible. And I believe in who, not how uh for sure. But not knowing what you don't know is really scary. Um, there's a lot of uh uh influencers out there that can really help. I'm a big advocate of Alex Ramosi. He talks about a lot of stuff that is probably a little too intense for the majority of people, like blackout curtains, ca caffeine, nicotine headphones that are sound canceling in a dark room so you can focus. Uh I've never done that.

SPEAKER_00 9:26

I don't think uh noise canceling headphones right here, man. They made I had to some components work good, but not all of them. I had to, though. I had to because we had construction going next door, and it was so hard to focus. So, yeah, man, you're preaching to the choir on that one, Alex Ramosy stuff. But blackout curtains, I can't handle that though.

SPEAKER_01 9:47

Yeah, there's there's components that are really, really great. And um, I advocate for for entrepreneurs probably is to step into it uh at least one foot before you leave your your main job. That's not the route I chose. It would have been a much less much simpler, less stressful event if I if I would have done that. But I jumped in with both feet, which it there's benefits and cons, but um structure is the number one thing if you're trying to to grow and scale and and have something that's worth doing in the in the next couple years or so.

SPEAKER_00 10:21

I love that. And one of the things too is like um there was a great book that I read before about called the 10 the 10% entrepreneur. And it was about a lot of people have this this there's this belief that you gotta go all in. You know, dive in and do it. Like you'll learn, you'll learn on the go. But like what this book was saying was like actually don't do it that way. Start building out, start scaling and figuring out what you need to learn, and then you still have some of that income and that structure and that network to kind of tap in. But I want to come back to the like the like the who. Um, I love that statement. I was a ha who not how. Because that is I love that so much because, like, all right, shifting examples away from finance for a second. My daughter is a talented little artist. She drew all the stuff around the room. She loves making things. She's just like her mom and her grandma. My wife is a singer, and my wife used to design her own dresses with her mom. And my mother-in-law used to have her own wedding shop that she made these beautiful, beautiful wedding dresses. My wife's wedding dress was made by my mother-in-law. Uh she shut that business down. It's awesome, right? Highly competitive industry. I didn't realize that, but like highly competitive where we're at. But the ability to do that. So my daughter was like, Dad, she was watching these YouTube videos and um the who, the, the how, right? She was watching these YouTube videos. I I need to borrow, give me one of your old white t-shirts. And I was like, what are you gonna do with my white t-shirt right now? I don't have many of them. I I like the ones I've got, they fit well. She's like, just one. I was like, all right. And I was like, what are you gonna do with it? Nothing. I just want to look at it. Not it was not just look at it. She had a pair of scissors out, it was cut into the shape of a of a dress. But she messed it up. And it was really like she didn't know how to cut. And I she was like, I'm watching this video and I'm doing everything they're doing. And I said, Okay, you need to back up. I went online and I I bought her um, and it was in my for all the people listening, it was in my my bucket for for for wants. And I bought my daughter a um sewing machine, like a little cheap entry-level sewing machine. It's like by brother, cute little thing. And I did the research, she'll be able to use it for a couple years. And then again, not the how, the who. Because I knew there was one person upstairs that had all the information she needed. And so I connected my daughter. I said, go with this sewing machine up to grandma. Grandma was like, welcome to my world. And I mean, and like they've been just sewing everything and making everything. And I mean, my daughter's making her own like pants and shirts and stuff. No matter, no amount of how-to videos could get her to where she wanted to be because she needed someone to be able to come in and and get their fingers in and actually help, you know. So I love that. I've never heard that who not how, but I'm so about it.

SPEAKER_01 13:20

I think it's a book. Um, I'm fairly certain who not how is a book. And uh that's my belief on everything, maybe to like um an unhealthy sense. But uh that's that's how I try to live my life.

SPEAKER_00 13:33

That's awesome. Well, one of the things I wanted to ask you too, because you you said something earlier that I I thought was really interesting and also very true, that an entrepreneur, one of the things that people don't realize is that there's two sides, right? So when you're scaling, you have two things that are interesting that I I've started to bump up against this. Number one, how do you scale operations? Because if the founder or the the the person gets pulled into all of the day-to-day operations, it's kind of hard to get like that off of you. Because on the other side, you're right, the founder's job is to really get clients. Getting clients is the lifeblood of a business. Like, shh, how do you balance those two? Because you know, you got to make sure this is Turing, but you also have to make sure that you're bringing people into the system.

SPEAKER_01 14:22

Yes, that's the number one thing when you see these solo practitioners, and not just my industry, but all you spend 20 hours to get 20 hours worth of work, and then you do 20 hours worth of work, and then you have no lead flow, like the pipeline's empty. So now you got to spend 40 hours to get some more work, and then it's 40 hours of doing the work. And uh I kind of cheated. I got a partner, a business partner that uh really is a I've met maybe one other accountant that I would compare on a on a technical ability to him. He's he's very talented, and um so he does 90% of our our review work. We have a staff now who does who does preparation, he does review work on all the tax returns, and then I record a video to the client on a brief, brief overview summary of hey, this is what we did, this is why we did it. Maybe you want to change this next year because this is negatively affecting you. So before it was me getting in the work, and then I'm prepping at it, I'm prepping it, and then I'm waiting a couple days to review my own work because if you don't have fresh eyes, you're gonna miss the same mistake. And then then recording a video after that. Um but for a while he was being paid more than I was, um, because his ability to do the technical work is is just so great that um I survived off to what the business generated net profit, and he survived off of a salary. And so that that has since changed with scaling growth. That was a sacrifice I was willing to make um a a more risky one for sure. Uh no no other accountant is probably gonna do that. But I was wanting to to leverage and and grow the business faster, and which which it did. It's worked out, fortunately, but it could have also gone the other way. It was a it was a calculated risk. But with all that in mind one one person told me, and I thought this was very wise, that you should keep a log of everything that you do, like in 15-minute increments, whether that is replying to emails, doing admin tasks, like setting things up in your CRM, or setting things up in your workflow. Accountants have a workflow because there's like 11 different stages a tax return could be in, whether that's waiting on a client or you're prepping it, reviewing it, filing it, delivering it, you know, just a lot that a lot of people don't think about, at least on a professional level. People don't walk in and us do the return in front of them and hand them a piece of paper to sign. Uh, that's a quality control uh issue waiting to happen. So all that said, you keep this ledger of your time, and then you say, all right, out of all these things, what is the least profitable? Right? Which of these are like a$10 an hour task or a minimum wage task? And then you calculate all that time up, and you probably have a lot of time on a minimum wage task. That's your first hire, is you remove all of the low value work that you are doing and hire somebody in to do that work. Uh, for me, I did not follow that advice. I think um successful business owners do follow that advice. I needed somebody to do the actual technician work so that I could get even more business. Um that that was more of a leverage call on my end. But the safer conservative uh growth model, track that time, see where your low-value time is being spent, and then hire that employee to take over that time.

SPEAKER_00 18:10

I love that because that is just it, it's it's really like you're trying to remove those pain points, you know, and it's again focusing on the who, not how, you know, right can really help you move the need. It is, it is. And it's like, because the other day I had to I hire an After Effects kid, motion graphics kid, because my clients were asking for it. People wanted cool, like moving animations. And I was like, do I try to teach one of my current workers? Do I try to learn that? Or do I find someone who and like at the end of the day, I was like, I don't have time in the day to do that, man. And so it's you know, and I send someone else off. So we found this guy who's absolutely awesome. He is the coolest nerd you will ever meet, and he is obsessed with making graphics, and he's able to take a uh a role that would have been a huge time drain for me, and it it now helps my business. But you know, one of the reasons I'm talking about it is because figuring it out yourself can sometimes be really expensive, you know, it can stop you from being scrappy and start being expensive, especially when you're looking at um like skills that really require an expert. You know, there are certain things that really require it to be done right. Checking documents, you know, that is for me, like one of the things that I really have to do is I have to work on the quality control. So before anything comes out of my my pipeline, I have to watch it. I have to check it one last time. But that is also a huge time drain for me. But I just still haven't been able to find someone who can check at the quality that I can. But that is something down the road that I'm looking at going, that that right there definitely is something that if I want to scale my business, that is the area that is holding me back. And I mean, and it's interesting because uh every business hits two things that I think. Every business that's growing, the the founder will deal with two things. Number one, your ego, the belief that you can do everything, and number two, those growth ceilings that you run into for your business.

SPEAKER_01 20:24

Yeah, a couple of them I know a guy who runs a firm in Little Rock. He's he's the second youngest. Well, I know one guy who's about 28. He's a couple years older than me. He's at a hot springs. This guy's about four, thirty-five, forty. He'd be offended if I called him 40. Uh, he runs a bigger firm than me, quite quite bigger, but uh he has like 100% equity, right? He owns the whole thing. And trying to scale a firm that size is very difficult when you have 100% equity because your only other option is to pay somebody an absurd amount of money, um, salary-wise. So you get to this weird spot where do I want to continue growing at the stake or at the forfeiture of my own child, right? Like I have to split my ownership and give it to somebody, or am I gonna feel it on the wages side? Uh I'm a big component of paying people more than market value because hiring is gonna be expensive. You have to find somebody else that you can trust, which is not as hard in my field as maybe others, because a lot of people are are fair. Competency is not always a given, especially in this field. So there's a lot of things that you have to find a specific person for. I screened 150 admin applicants to find my current ops support specialist, and uh the metrics between his application and interview. Between everybody else's were dramatic. Um and so whenever we told him we were gonna hire him, I said, How much do you want? And he said, X? I'm like, okay, we'll pay you that. It's like I don't want there to be a concern of you wanting to go somewhere else. And since then, like, what ABI do you know is gonna implement your AI note taker and is gonna implement your business phone line and is gonna implement like helping you set up automations and sending out all your proposals, and he's killing it, absolutely killing it, and he's gonna get paid more because he's he's killing it. So that's uh I'd much rather hire um well there's there's a stat out there everybody talks about, or at least some people do. It's the 80-20 rule. Are you familiar with the 80 20 rule? I love it, but tell for my the people who haven't heard it, tell them what it is. Yes, essentially, uh 80-20 appears all over the place. 80% of your business revenue is probably generated by about 20% of your clients. This is true for us. Uh 80% of the work at a business is typically done by 20% of the employees. It's just there is a correlation in nature that there's high performers or uh really, really high ticket items or revenue or sales or whatever from certain people. I'd much rather pay 15% more and get a 20%er because you're gonna make more money. The math just works. So that's our our kind of methodology in hiring as well.

SPEAKER_00 23:37

I love that. And I I uh one of the things that you don't talk, I I don't hear people talking about, and there's not books out there, and maybe there are. I just have never seen them. Anytime I read an entrepreneurship book, it's talking about all of these different components, how to have the right mindset. Not a lot of books on how to hire people hire well, how to pick the team, you know, and it's like you think about any great team, it's the way they built it is so important, you know. You have to have personalities that complement. When I do interviews for people, I do like a vibe check in the first interview. And it's just it's always a really short, quick interview. I I don't want to waste people's time. I don't want to waste my time. We'll get together and we'll see how it is, you know. I it's always really fast, and I just am very respectful of their time and and but I know really quick if it's gonna be right, a right fit. And I'm pretty good. My wife pulled me aside the other day. She's like, you really are good at figuring out if someone's the right, a right mix, you know? And I said, Well, because I'm not going to a second interview for anyone who's just not we're not vibing with, you know, and I don't know how to explain that, but generally I watch people, I just see, are they happy to be here? Are they do they have a good attitude? Is there positivity? Are they able to bring some good energy? And it doesn't nothing about like I've had some people who have passed the vibe check who are horribly nervous. I had like the the nerdy guy that I hired, I love him. And he's the biggest nerd on the planet. He's 80 D. I had to give him a toy today. I I went down to my daughter's room and gave him one of the fidget toys because he's like he can't stop moving, and he sits right next to me. I was like, dude, Andrew, take this. And he's like, Woo, wow. I thought this fidget toy was gonna explode. In the first interview, he said all the wrong things. He did all the wrong things, but his attitude was great. And I was just like, and then and when he came in to show his work, his work was exceptional. And I said, Well, you gotta, and like my team was like, This dude is kind of worried, weird. I was like, but after everyone got to know him, his vibe was so spot on. But you had to like, I don't know. There's the vibe check, but at the same time, I I also have to figure out what are the other components to make it sure people hire. Well, I haven't figured it out, but I'm I'm I'm trying to.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

Yeah, that I'll agree. I haven't been able to find a bunch of things. Um I asked a lot of people I respect and I like the way their business runs on how they hired. And one of them was for the admin position specifically, uh, the co-working space that I work out of. Uh, we have a permanent office upstairs now. But um downstairs when I was working there, I got to meet the uh downstairs admin, her name's Savannah, very well. She's very great, she's an awesome hire. I said, why, how do they pick you? Why? Not like saying you're not worth it, like that was about hire, but I want to I want to hire somebody like you, uh, if not you, if I can't steal you, right? Because you do such a great job. What did what were their steps? And they would throw a um like a one line at the bottom of the the application. Umce you read this, go ahead and email your resume to this email address. And that was it. Because if you're applying for jobs, you're being detail oriented, which is a an aspect of an admin you want, well, they're gonna read it and then they're gonna get to the bottom and be like, oh, okay, yeah, let me let me send that email over. And it's not necessarily deceptive or a trick, it's in plain English on the on the application, but it's not gonna be done frequently because everybody's just clicking indeed apply, apply, apply, and they're not really worried about that job. The people who are the ones you want to hire are going to take the time to fill out the application for that position. That's that's one of the things I stole from them. Something I've come to, I think, is um if I couldn't see myself being friends with you outside of work, then I probably don't want to work with you.

SPEAKER_00 27:41

100%, man. 100%. I I love that. And I think that one of the things too that um I've been looking at is that when you bring in a team, I I I won't say, hey, my team, we're family, but man, I am friends with every single one of my, and I don't call them workers, they're colleagues. You know, there are people that choose to be here, and I choose to hang out with them, and we all choose to be in this, you know, working relationship together. And I think that that's something that's so important because I think one of the things that people do is whenever, again, I'm reading books about entrepreneurship and things, they talk about a lot of the money, you know, like this is how you manage your money, this is how you do this. But like one of the things is that they don't follow this this next level of math, that most founders do everything. And the problem with that is that it caps income because you can't do everything and you you hit the ceiling. But like what you're saying, if you start tracking your time and identifying those, you know, those those tasks that are not worth your time, and then you can replace those with a who and then reinvest your time into revenue-driving activities, that that's a secret sauce, man. You know, it's like that's a circle that helps you start scaling. You don't scale by grinding harder. You scale by making sure that your time is going into the right things.

SPEAKER_01 29:07

I'm glad you said that because a lot of people do think, oh, if I just work the extra 10 hours, I can get there, get where I want to go. But to maintain the lifestyle you want to have and get where you want to go, that means you have to work that 10 hours forever. Um also, a lot of people in my industry specifically uh are really, really um scared of raising prices. We had a firm sale, or it was a failed sale in in in Arkansas. So the seller uh signed like a non-compete. The buyer was like, oh, it's not coming with employees, I don't want it anymore. So all the employees, all the clients were just caught in the middle, neither person would service them. So they're having to find other accountants elsewhere. And so like 300 clients just came into the uh the market, and a lot of accountants in my area aren't even taking clients. So the best thing to do is to go and drop them off pizza on Friday, like today, and say, hey, I know you're not taking clients. Here's a card. If they need somebody, we're able to at least get them in the right direction if we can't help them. So that's that's really cool. But I I go back to pricing because I spoke with one of those clients that use the old accountant, and they were paying around$600 for their their S Corporation return and their$1040, which um S-corp is a bit more difficult. You have a lot of compliance things and and so forth. We are now billing them like$2,400 a year, and they are ecstatic, super excited to work with us. It's like, how can somebody go paying 400% for the same thing? But it's not the same thing. We guarantee response time, that's one of our big components, and we really have an emphasis on service. So we want your client experience to be the best, not okay, when I go to sign my return, they hand me a piece of paper to sign and they don't explain anything, and that's it. And I have to go in person because they don't use e-sign. And there's just a lot of like really, really small things that stack up on the client experience side that negate the experience. All that to say, if you can niche down and find a way to be the best at a certain thing, whether that's client experience or we serve attorneys, we're the best at serving attorneys in the state. You can charge more to serve attorneys than um an attorney that walks into a generic CPA practice because they're not specialized.

SPEAKER_02 31:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

Those are if I could help anybody that's in the service industry with this podcast, specialization and niching down is something I hated. I'm like, how am I going to get the business in the door if I don't just take everybody? I need to survive. And at a time, you do need to survive and take everything you can get. But the next spot to scaling and growing is systematic growth through standard operating procedures, having a set service you provide to a certain individual or set demographic of individuals. If I have a different service for all 300 of my clients, that's going to be impossible to maintain and grow and scale. But if I have three lines of service that I can do across 300 clients, I can have specialists in each line of service and grow very, very fast. So once you get to a spot where you can survive, the niche down, not saying fire all your all your current clients, um, but maybe raise prices. Some of them will want to leave, some of them will want to stay. Um but uh attrition, that's the fancy word for people who leave and stay after a year, at least in our industry.

SPEAKER_00 32:59

I had um I have a good example, but it has nothing to do with money, it has everything to do with food and a great business model, right? Um there's a lady that lives down the alley from us that has a duck noodle soup. Okay. Her restaurant is phenomenal. I promise you, if you come to Vietnam sometime, I'll take you there. It is phenomenal. No one has taken a Michelin, the Michelin people there, but I guarantee you they had her duck noodle soup. She's getting a Michelin star. Now, what does she serve? Duck noodle soup. That's it. That is it. Because she doesn't want to prepare 50 things and then she only sells three of them, and then she's got all of this leftover inventory. She's really good at duck noodle soup. And I know people from all over the city that come to her little shop, little in the alley, and she's always full of customers. She's not trying to scale. She's happy with where she's at, she's happy with the business she has. But if she was gonna scale, I'm sure she could because she knows what she's doing. She's really niche down. Now, how much demand is there for duck noodle soup? I don't know. Yeah, I know it's freaking delicious, but you know, that's the other part. But one of the things that's interesting is when you I had a friend uh that owned a restaurant and he was getting cleaned out. He could not like make any money. And he brought in a consultant, and they're like, he's like, What am I doing wrong? He's like, and the guy was running a Chinese food restaurant, and he had all of these different things on the menu. Huge menu. And though you go to a Chinese restaurant, it's big portions. People expect a giant thing of noodles with lots of food, lots of meat, lots of vegetables. And the guy shuttered his Chinese food restaurant and he opened up a uh a Japanese sushi restaurant, and he started crushing it because for the same amount, this much food, he was making so much more money. And he niche down and he was like, he really, and he didn't sell all types of sushi, he just sold like salmon sushi was the thing that he was really good at, and he made a lot of money. But it was like it took that mindset shift from trying to offer everything to everyone to knowing I'm gonna offer a few things to the people that you know really value that service. I had I it was painful still for me, and I'm not in survival right now. I'm doing okay with my business, but I still had someone who I know I could have got landed as a client. Could have. It would not be something that was something that was going to work for me and my team. And I I know that what we're offering is a higher quality product than what this person needed. And I had to sit there and go, you know what? I'm we're not a right fit, man, but I I love you to pieces. You're awesome. If you need help at some point in time, and it felt like I was like, I'm doing something wrong. But the reality is, I want to build up a team that can handle Mr. Beast type people that come in and go, hey, we've got some overflow and we're gonna funnel it to you guys in Vietnam. That's that's the goal I want. I don't want to be trying to pull up together one-offs and like fighting for this and there, this and that. And it's not to be mean, that's all I was saying. I'm just saying, know what you're good at, niche down, focus on it, build out the team that can do that, and then just be that guy. Right now, I've got four podcasts, and one of them I love, and it's like an interesting one because I just started it, and I always enjoy a good bottle of wine, a class of wine, sorry, not bottle. You know what you know, right? You know, I'll I'll have uh this the the the podcast is called Barrels and Roots. And one of the things that's really interesting is um, and that I'm I know I'm preaching niche down, but I've got four different types of podcasts, but I just like to talk to people. But the thing about barrels and roots that's special, no one's doing it. Like in that that area of the wine industry, like people are like, there's not really that many people that have podcasts. And so I'm just loving going and talking to all these winemakers and going, I'm talking from everyone to like super famous winemakers to people that are like, dude, yeah, I clean the cellar. I'm like, let's talk to you. Let's find out what you do and how it's part of the business. And people are like, this is horrible, like super interesting. But it was like tapping a new market and like that podcast is super niche and like not having not talking to food people, you know, and knowing what you're gonna get into and trying to find ways to tell those stories. So I don't know about the topic.

SPEAKER_01 37:26

We've actually uh launched one and it's not gonna be great as yours. I'm not gonna aspire to even get there because I'm sure yours are aspire. Aspire. I will okay, I'll aspire with not an expectation. I will not put that uh expectation on me. That way I don't get discouraged. But we have we have started one and we're gonna shift it towards uh business owners, which is still a huge demographic of people, but then we're going towards attorneys. That's our our niching down. That's who we're gonna go after. There are there's a software called Clio that attorneys use to track all their cases, and there's 144 partners with Clio. Uh several of them are out of the country, so they don't do US stuff. And then other ones don't even do the taxes, like they do um website consulting and things like that. So there's like 75 people in the United States that are partners with the software that a lot of attorneys use. And there's a lot of business. There's like so many attorneys that if all of them went to the 75, they would probably need 10x the capacity. So with this podcast, our goal is not really to speak to the masses, but if we can get 20 attorneys to watch, 20 of your ideal clients.

SPEAKER_02 38:49

20 clients.

unknown 38:50

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:50

20 of your ideal clients. That is a huge direct. That's better than a 10,000 monthly watch with five of your ideal clients.

SPEAKER_00 39:00

So that's that's kind of our idea. But it's interesting because you're speaking my language right there. And that's one of the things too. Like, I'm doing, I'm doing I'm a bit nuts. So I will say, don't try to be like me. I have a I have a screw loose up here when it comes to podcasting and talking to people because I'm doing like 17 interviews a week, and I just love talking to people. Like, dude, yeah. But I mean, like, you think about that. 17 interviews that could be reaching the people that I really want to be reaching in these different industries. Because I have I I'm kind of strategic about this. My four podcasts are in four different areas that I know people need content or that people I'm talking to people like in the podcasting area. Like my Sean Trey show is all like types of podcasters and self-help people. And you know, I've been talking to a bunch of Navy SEALs lately, which is super rad because those guys are cool, man. Those guys are so cool. Like the way they talk about stuff, I'm just like, damn. No matter how hard I try, I'm not that cool, you know, and like, and then like my growing money podcast, which I talk to all these really cool financial advisors, people also who need help and need guidance, and like there's niche stuff out there. I do full battery media, which is named after my company, but it's also I talk to all these people that create content. I'm talking to people at Mr. Beast, people at Mark Rober, all these really cool creators. And I'm asking, how do you guys go about creating content? And then finally, my barrels and roots, because went to the wine industry, my brother was like, We grew up in the Napa Valley, we both love wine. And I was like, he was like telling me because he was telling me that we works at this business. He's like, Do you know how this is our this is our our our our video budget? I was like, say what? Hello? Well, hello video budget. And you're like, you don't need a hundred clients, you don't need 200 clients, you need the right clients that are willing to pay the prices that reflect the value that you provide, you know? Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 40:56

Yeah, speaking on that, I've I've never become unglued or disrespectful in a prospective client uh consultation. But there was a time I was really close. Uh that was this week. And essentially I was like, Did you know that we could file this piece of paperwork to backdate what you're needing with like a certain election, a certain revenue procedure, and certain internal language that would save you like$7,500? Wouldn't that be nice? And they're like, Yeah. I'm like, okay, sweet. Uh and they asked me how much to charge. And I said, well,$300 is is what we charge to file that uh piece of paper. And they said, Why would I pay you that much to do that? I'm like, well, did you not forget the 20x rate of return that I just told you that we would give you on that? Anyway, I didn't say that directly, but my my uh I think my response was, well, the$300 comes with the advice I just saved you$7,500. So that that's how we we parse that. But that uh the non-respective value, that's a great indicator of maybe not a good client relationship.

SPEAKER_00 42:07

I I 100% agree. And one of the things that I think is that there's a couple things here that we're touching on. First of all, I love the fact that both of us see the value in podcasts and reaching the core audience that you're trying to reach. But one of the other things too is like if you're trying to sell, like, let me let me put it this way. Maybe I was watching Zootopia with my daughter, and like, you know, let's imagine that you're in Polar Bear town and you're trying to sell, you know, swimming trucks. It's not really the right place to be, and they're not gonna see the value in what you're selling. If you're around the wrong people, if you're around the wrong clients, there is not the ability to see the value versus one person who's like, I want to have that savings. Hello, hello, hello. And they come in and go, no problem to pay that 300 bucks, you know. I think that two, my dad once took me to a mechanic and the mechanic was more expensive. And I said, Dad, why don't we go to this expensive guy versus that guy over there who I know will do it for cheap? And you my dad looked at me, he says, Because the guy who does it for cheap, you're gonna be fixing that piece again in another year. You know, he says, This guy, it's fixed. It's fixed, you know, and you you gotta understand and and do the work. And I mean, and that guy, it was I know exactly where he's at. His shop was at this one spot in LA, this old Japanese guy from Japan, and he did all Toyota repair. That dude was booked out for months, you know? And I was like, I went in and I tried to get in. Luckily, my dad was able to get me in. But I went in like before my dad, and I was like, I can't get in with him. He's like, I I'm in with them, don't worry. The guy's like, Oh, how you doing? Brings the car in, and he fixes everything up. But he was more expensive, but he saved me money in the long run. It's an investment.

SPEAKER_01 44:01

It's an investment for sure. Yeah, which we have a um well, this wouldn't probably not be the worst thing to tell people. We have a intake form that kind of filters out who we speak with before we speak with them. So if you're speaking to everybody and anybody, you're not respecting your own calendar, then other people aren't going to respect it. So we we filter people out based on if they're paperless. You don't have to be completely, we'll help you transition to paperless. We'll give you education on that. If you're looking for the cheapest, HR block is going to beat us every time. Uh at least on the prep fee, maybe not on the refund, right? So there's there's a couple of different things in there we we sort our clients by, just people we don't like to work with. Um and also, uh, this is a bit of advice that that I've learned is when you see their name on your phone, if you are upset or not happy to talk to them, then there's probably maybe maybe they shouldn't be a client anymore. Maybe you should build them more to make yourself happy uh when they call. Like there's there's a component there that that's misfiring that probably in a case not a great relationship. Right. 100%. Where can people look to find out more about you and what you do, man? I have a Facebook page and never post on, so probably not there. I have a LinkedIn that people can follow and message me on. I reply to everybody who's not trying to sell me something. And then um, yeah, I have a website, but it just funnels to our to our type form, our uh intake. But yeah, if you want to see my actual ideas and content on paper or on your phone rather, LinkedIn is the place to be