Create opportunities for others by getting out of the way.
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
By age 35, Jason Deshayes, CPA/PFS, CFP, CKA, was already co-owner of a CPA firm in Albuquerque. He “hit the magic Shangri La that we’re all working for.” But it wasn’t right for him. He was bored with the long hours and felt he wasn’t growing. He wasn’t able to think about his firm the way he wanted to. So he and his partner sold their firm.
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Today, he’s COO at Cook Wealth, a hybrid wealth management and tax firm. Providing both types of services means that they don’t deal with “this weird thing, where the client’s in the middle, and they have to be the conduit for information going both ways.” He says that getting his CFP has “been so enriching.” Deshayes added, “I love what I do, and it’s because I was willing to drop stuff so other people could learn the stuff I learned, and so I could do fun stuff.”
Click “Play” to see: What Jason Deshayes talks about when he’s talking about a “forward-thinking enterprise.” (via wordclouds.com)
Deshayes’ role as COO came about as they worked out their remote post-COVID strategy, with team members spread between three states and split between tax and wealth management. Even though the firm had grown from five people to 16, everyone still reported to a managing partner in Massachusetts. “We needed someone to take the strategy that our managing partner had crafted and bring it down in a tangible fashion to the various teams” so that everyone works together in concert. “That is helping us at Cook Wealth really operate like a forward-thinking enterprise, like a business,” he said.
Besides keeping everything moving in sync together, for Deshayes, building a business means creating something that will live past him, and creating opportunities for the people below him. “As leaders, as business owners, our job is to make life so good for those people below us that they want to be there, and they want to keep moving forward,” he explained.
Part of creating opportunities for future generations is developing succession plans. Deshayes’ firm has a succession plan in place for his firm and for everyone in it. While the AICPA has a toolkit for succession planning that includes a practice continuity agreement, only 7% of sole practitioners have put one in place. “I think a sole proprietor who does not have a plan is doing a horrible disservice to their clients, and to their families,” he said. Without a plan, a practice “that could be worth half a million bucks turns to nothing” after the owner’s death, Deshayes added.
13 More Takeaways from Jason Deshayes
- Consider looking beyond the usual colleges to find great team members. One of Jason’s best hires was a restaurant manager. She could work under pressure, she understood budgeting, and she knew how to work with people, which are all the kinds of skills you want in accounting.
- Find out what someone’s natural inclinations are. Not everyone wants or should be on the partner track. Some can be excellent technicians, while others are great at business development. These people will be miserable if you force them to do what they don’t enjoy.
- People who have taken a break from work to be stay-at-home parents have powerful life skills: experience in crisis management, resource consumption, scheduling, and time management.
- Find ways to compensate your people and create pathways for everyone. Many people leave the profession because we either push them too hard and expect too much or won’t give them enough flexibility.
- Most CPA firms are not businesses. They’re more like silo practices that happen to be co-sharing locations and some systems.
- Firms should be intentional about the end they seek when they grow. However, most firms grow accidentally. Growth isn’t just about getting more clients, but also about the tactics of getting new experiences. Growth can also be negative, where you shed clients or entire practice areas to focus growth is a specific area.
- Adaptability will be a key skill for the future. The old mindset of “it works, don’t change it” has to go out the window at this point. Clients and employees will gladly switch to a system that makes their life easier.
- Spend time with your peers and talk to them about their experiences. No one is a competitor. There is a blue ocean of work.
- An abundant mindset means you create a welcoming and happy environment for your employees, so you’re not worried about them leaving for a competitor. You get to know other accountants and help each other out. A scarcity mindset means your employees aren’t encouraged to talk to colleagues at other firms out of fear they will leave your firm.
- Drop the pyramid structure and treat your firm like a business. Key people do not need to be owners to be well-compensated.
- Accountants don’t need to limit themselves to just the basic services at public accounting firms. There are many more opportunities to use your accounting skills in completely new areas.
- Our clients are not as change-phobic as we are. Many may be quite willing to adapt to working with remote team members or switching to paperless delivery if we just ask them. For some clients, a Zoom meeting may be easier to fit in than driving 30 minutes to an office for an in-person meeting and back home.
- No one ever has time to make changes unless you make the hard choice to give up something you’re doing.
About Jason Deshayes 
Jason Deshayes is a seasoned CPA and CFP® with nearly 20 years of experience providing tax accounting and consulting services to individuals, dental and medical practices, and closely held businesses. Jason is the Chief Operating Officer for Cook Wealth in Raleigh, NC.? His areas of specialty include personal financial and tax planning, business accounting and financial consulting, succession planning, individual financial consulting, charitable gift planning, and personal and business income tax. Prior to joining Cook Wealth, Deshayes was a senior manager in the firm services team for the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants. He also previously served as vice president and partner of Butler and Company CPAs, an Albuquerque, New Mexico-based accounting firm.
Transcript
(Transcripts are made available as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.)
Liz Farr 0:04
Welcome to Accounting Disrupter Conversations. I’m your host, Liz Farr from CPA Trendlines. My guest today is Jason Deshayes, Chief Tax Officer and Chief Operations Officer at Cook Wealth. Welcome to the show, Jason.
Jason Deshayes 0:22
Thanks, Liz. I really appreciate you having me.
Liz Farr 0:25
Yeah, it’s great to have you, you know, and Jason and I go way back. We were classmates at the Anderson School of Management at UNM back in the early 2000s. So it’s really cool to have one of my old classmates on the podcast.
Jason Deshayes 0:43
We’ll be reminiscing about those days and be like, Wow, remember, we were hobbling over Anderson School that’s like, Oh, yeah. That’s just forensic accounting class. All that fun stuff.
Liz Farr 0:54
Yeah, good stuff. Yeah. That was a fun class. Well, let’s get into the meat of our discussion. Now, accounting, talent has been scarce for years, and COVID made it worse. What are some of your ideas on how to make things better?
Jason Deshayes 1:16
Well, you know what, historically, in the accounting space we’ve done, we just go to colleges, right? We just now it’s high schools, but we were trying to tap people who have naturally inclined or were born elected you. And I honestly don’t think that’s the best place to find people as much a more, I do think there’s fantastic students there. And we’ve hired a number of them, and I’ve hired them or them in the past, and they’re great. But you got to pick the right person. And I think depending on your firm, certain people fit really well and some don’t. And I do think there’s some really good opportunities with people who have more industry experience who are in vet jobs before, maybe they’re trying to look at doing something different. One of the best hires I’ve ever had was a restaurant manager. And she understood how to work under pressure. Because that was her life. She understands budgeting, she can understand, love and make money because you actually look at labor costs and food cost and occupancy and seats, and all that stuff. And she knew how to work with people, because that was your job. And she had to take care of people in the restaurant and they enjoy they’re happy with their experience, and she could communicate and she was calm under pressure. Me All that sounds great, don’t you think? I mean, like, that’s the kind of person I will with me, especially if you have a thing like a tax department, or maybe you’re you have to You’re in private company, and you’ve got a lot and the cycle kind of things, those again, people who know how to do that, and they can do it well. And so I find that, the more you can think of people as listening to their overall picture, the see what their natural inclinations are. And let’s find those people, and they may not be the traditional crew of folks. I also think and this is just looking at them all. I mean, I’ve been in this industry since I graduate college so you know 20 some years now, and it’s it’s was interesting is still like, eventually everyone’s gonna raise the partner, or should raise the partner if they’re doing it right. And I’m not sure that’s the right solution, either. I think there’s a lot of people who could be excellent technicians, and they love to get in the meat and potatoes of tax law and auditing regulations. And they can be there. And you should be able to reward those people with being harder, harder situations, and they can become subject matter experts and firms and not feel this push the suddenly have to be an owner, because if they don’t, they’ve failed in their career, in that a kind of up and out kind of model. Likewise, there are people who come in and you do not have the core business develop, they have all the core business development, leadership skills, and they’re not great technicians. And they just happen to have accounting degrees, because that’s what they slipped into. But that was probably not really where they should have been.
And they get told, Hey, guys, yep, put your time in, can be really good technician. That’s what people care about. And then you make them grind through this process, and they’re miserable, and they hate what they’re doing. And instead of going, Hey, let’s create a track that lets you do the things you’re good at. And so I think that’s one of those things that as firms as companies, we really have to look at the kind of roles we want and place people that fit the role. Not look at this blanket job of staff accountant or senior or manager and say, well, here’s a vanilla-y kind of thing. And now I can also have comp ranges that go from the people order Well, we pay the technicians because that will make us as much money. And then we’re going to really pay well for the business development people because they go to work and figure out ways to like compensate people also create pathways for everybody. I think that’s a lot of what the we see people leave the profession, because we either push them too hard, expected too much, wouldn’t give enough flexibility you’ll receive, especially mothers, and my wife is a mom of three kids. And, man, those little darlings are amazing. And they take a lot out people. And if they need, we have to be better about looking at families, amen, say dads to a point. Because sometimes you got situations where that makes more sense for them for either parents to work because maybe not always mom, that is stay at home. We can make that flexible and not not judge them for it. Actually, anytime I see someone comes with a resume gap, and I was taking care of the kids like dude, you have had more experience and crisis management, and resource consumption and scheduling, you have life skills that are very powerful. And also speaking as a parent of three. Prior to having kids, I was not the best use of time. Now with three kids, I can clean a house really fast, picky a lot things done in a quick succession, which made me a better worker, because homie ain’t got time for this kind of stuff to mess around. Oh, we had so much hours in the day. So I think there’s a lot of things we can do not hard things, just things, we just have to like, drop some stuff that will help us find different people, but keep the ones we got to.
Liz Farr 6:41
Absolutely, I mean, a lot of what you’re saying is what drove me out of public accounting, you know, it was there looking up. And I didn’t really like any of the jobs that the people above me in the firms were doing, I didn’t really want those positions. Yep. And if they could have carved out some kind of new position, you know, maybe Client Success concierge or something like that I would have stayed on.
Jason Deshayes 7:16
Let’s see, that’s different. The model, the pyramid is built a certain way. And everyone’s got the same construction manual. And so they just keep referring to it. It’s kind of like this probably dating where I am in my life, The Lego Movie, right? There’s a character in Emmet, who is a very rigid, you know, you must follow the instructions, you have to do it exactly this way. And then there’s the master builders who just make as they go, and they change on the fly. And I think we as accountants have been trained to be Emmet, execute, the thing that you’ve been given, don’t deviate from it. And so because it could deviation scary, it’s doesn’t always work. I would argue what we’re doing now, it doesn’t work. A lot of times. Most of the people we have hired who have come out public accounting, and someone who are, which is a hybrid type of firm. Have we kind of joke, like, you’re all recovering accountants that we’re trying to rehab and like counsel, through the traumatic experience you had in public accounting firms? And we’re not going to repeat that experience here.
Liz Farr 8:24
Yeah, and firms like yours would have been great places for me to land. But I’m not arguing with the path that I’ve found myself.
Jason Deshayes 8:37
But that got you where you need to be. Maybe it’s not direct, or what you thought it was gonna be. But it was your path and your path got you where you need me.
Liz Farr 8:47
That’s right. Now, for a long time, the organizational structure in business model firms haven’t really changed. But a few firms like like yours, for instance, are developing some new leadership roles. For example, you are recently promoted to Chief Operating Officer. What can you tell me about this new role in the way that your firm operates?
Jason Deshayes 9:16
Well, so we’re a little different because our firm has about 15-16 employees given the day. We have some seasonal people in everything. We are crossing three different states, we have employees in Massachusetts, the core of our employee base is in North Carolina, we have a couple people in Florida. And what we noticed is a lot our organizational structure had grown a lot had not changed a lot, even though the staff had grown a lot over the last five or so years. And so we go from a five person office to a 16 person office. And because of that, there’s just more stuff, right? You gotta manage more stuff. And unfortunately, the org chart was pretty flat. So yeah, everybody reported up to our managing partner who happens to be in Massachusetts. Well, It makes it harder to operate. And there’s still a local presence necessary. And in our case is really not a fully digital firm, we did spend a period of time after COVID, from about March 2020, to August of 2022, that we were fully remote. And we kind of made a strategic choice that we go back in some fashion because of the collaboration we felt was really powerful desire for clients and other people to come and meet and spend time together. But we wanted to be have the flexibility to allow people come and go, or have a hybrid environment, because we did find that that worked really well for some people, they’re also allowed to keep our remote employees connected. So previously, we had like, these sub like team leaders still do have team leaders of which I represent the tax team. But it was one of those things that we needed someone to be the integrator of this. And really bring these people together and own it. Everybody had stuff to do. We had tax stuff to do and wealth management stuff to do and communications and marketing. But we needed someone to kind of take the strategy that our managing partner had has crafted, bring it down in a tangible fashion to the various teams. And so we can all work in concert with each other rather than I did this so and so does this and then we all get to some point at the end. And over the last three years, being at the firm, I’ve really enjoy the we’ve made some big changes from a technology perspective, process perspective. And I really enjoy that. But one of the things I really enjoyed my time when I was a firm owner was the bringing together of people and helping encourage them to be connected to a mission. And so I have to craft the vision, like I want to get people on board with the mission. And I also like getting stuff done. And that helps too. So it’s been great because what I’ve my kind of goals as a COO, is to really just knock out a few things, create clarity with our processes or structure. Get some clear goals of what we will hit together. So we can work together rather than Oh, tax geek do your thing. And then wealth advisor Do your thing is why we all work kind of in concert will work. Okay. And really own that process, and I think that is helping us at Cook Wealth really operate like a forward-thinking enterprise, like a business, right? I think most CPA firms at the core are not businesses. And that sounds kind of weird to say, but they’re like weird silo practices that happen to be co-sharing locations, and maybe a few systems as an admin, but they don’t really think of themselves as businesses. And I think that’s actually one of the things that a lot of clients are. Well, we all know where I’m talking about your firm, you know, your business owner. Yeah, every one of those partners in those firms are generally business owners, but they view themselves that it’s more of like, oh, yeah, no, I’m a partner in this firm. But it’s not business owner. And yes, we have owner, you know, there’s two of us it was I own half and Robert half. But it’s like, yeah, I remember the pain of taking payroll, and when your tax renewal came up, and you had to pay for that that’s not a small charge, and thinking about the thing, keep the firm moving forward, keep people connected, that’s a business owner. And that’s been the thing I loved being at Cook Wealth, is that I’ve been able to take my my business owner background, and my finance skills and CPA, my client skills as CPA and as CFP and merge them in a way of saying how can I get this where this business moves together and also lives well past any of us being here. So it out to get creates opportunity for people behind me creates opportunity behind our other C suite type people and and we all kind of keep moving forward, which means eventually we need to move out of the way too. And that was one thing I did learn as part of this is as I’m taking on more operational roles with the COO position is I had to be really clear that I couldn’t always be the contact for clients. And so I was already making those transitions that are before like trying to empower my team to really service a client and no I’m still as for clients though I’m so resource. I’m not out of the loop. I’m just not the one that has to talk to him every single time and and letting the client and that I think it helps the client know Hey, I got my team here. Jason does. He’s guys things. I really like Zack, or like Aaron or Kim. And and they’re empowered to be strong and meaningful in the client relationship. And I knew that pretty much from day one, like, there’s no like three year window you got pass some tests, and then suddenly now you are anointed to speak to clients. It’s like, welcome to the team, I got meeting this afternoon, you’re gonna come join me because you need to start meeting these people. And I’m not there. But really has said, I have to do that. I mean, I have to be very selective on who we take on, I take on as a client, I have to be very selective of what I’m doing with my time. But it also means I’ve needed leverage people really well. And that’s been cool. It also is going great. I creates opportunities for people to move up now, because I’m moving up. So maybe someone behind me, and that creates opportunities for the next couple generations of people. And then I’m not going to work forever. I actually, having sold a firm relatively early in my life. I was 35. We sold the firm. I didn’t, I didn’t really want to be the one who said yeah, I did 50 tax seasons, or 40 tax seasons, I go out for good behavior, when I went our early, but I don’t think I want there to be a really good succession plan. And that’s my family hat mill, where as a COO is that we have a succession plan for this firm and for everyone in it. Which means I eventually will go with a plan on going will tell everyone I’m going and when I go is not a surprise anybody. And do that for everybody.
Liz Farr 16:34
Yeah, I think succession planning is so overlooked in CPA firms it is. So you know, you know, there’s a horrible story of my neighbor across the street had a CPA, he had a small business that he ran, his CPA died. Oh, and then he came to me and said, Well, you know, my CPA died, I need somebody else to do my taxes. So I gave him my card. Never heard from him. I figured that he had found somebody else. Because I never ever heard back from him. Then 10 years later, he passed away. And his widow, at that point, discovered that he hadn’t filed a tax return, oh, in 10 years. So it’s not just the people who are impacted. But it is also the clients if there isn’t a clear successor or a plan to go forward?
Jason Deshayes 17:42
Well, when I was at the AICPA, it was that was the area that I was working with on the firm’s Services section that, you know, they we have a whole toolkit, basically as to how to, if you’re a sole practitioner, there’s a practice practice continuity agreement. And you’re like, look, here’s the core, I may have a whole like, walk you through, here’s how you do it. Here’s all the stuff. And you’re going Oh, good, the roadmaps done, that should be easy, right? But no one still wants to do it only 7% of time of sole practitioners had any continuity plan. And where I say, and I tend to be a direct speaker, they tend to be probably as my wife will say, a little harsher than I need to be, they do have some reverse dramatic player because I want to get the point across. I think a sole proprietor who does not have a plan is doing a horrible disservice to their clients, and to their families. It’s doing no one. Because if your ego is blocking you from having an open conversation that you could die, like all of us will, or you could get sick, like some of us do, or you get hit by a car and you’re disabled for a while happens. Then you’re just, you’re just being egotistical, and you need to get off yourself. Because those clients are who suffers, and I’ve seen it with death, disability, random business failures in CPA firms, which you think could be pretty hard. Yet, the only person who suffers really the most people suffer are all the clients who now have to go find new CPAs which are not just hanging out, like, with sign saying, looking for clients, everyone’s super busy. So if you can’t take care of them, and you can position where someone else can take care of them. Why are you doing that to your clients just close shop or tell them to go before you get to that point and start scaling your practice down so you right out with a handful of people who are gonna probably just right out with you anyway. I just I think there’s been a lot of like, well, hey, guys, it’s a good thing to do. Well, it is. But if you want to watch something that could be worth half a million bucks turns nothing. Don’t have a continuity play and just wait till everyone knows you’re dead, and then all the clients will wander off. And there’s nothing to sell and your widow is now. And that’s, that’s a hard thing to see. And I really wish that more firms would look as like, this is like life insurance is just to protect things. It’s not like you’re selling your firm, you’re not merging up into a big firm is saying the plan so that when something happens is good for some people, it may never happen. And then they just sell like the more traditional route or they find a partner and that person takes over it. But it’s, it hurts me, because I think this profession does so much good. But we won’t get out of our way to like, leave. That’s why we have a brand hate client agent, CPA base, and we’ll just stop working at some point. Or they just don’t know how to build up their practice to work and be sustainable. So they get burnt out, they just leave, even though they’re alive. It’s disappointing.
Liz Farr 21:02
It really is. And I’m really happy to hear that you’re, you have a very different vision for cook. Well. I’m really happy to hear that. Now. Now, what about growing? You know, everybody’s kind of psyched about growing? You know, I mean, of course, you do have to replace clients who lead, of course. But do firms really even need to grow?
Jason Deshayes 21:31
I think it depends on what you want out of it, right. So if you have a happy little lifestyle practice, and all you want to do is basically get get the same outcome each time, maybe your growth is like a slight increase a fee every year. And you replace one someone goes, but you’re gonna keep it manageable. So you’ll have to increase staff, that kind of stuff, that’s totally fine. If you’re trying to create something that’s got some legs to it, this could last a while past you, you will have to grow, because you’ve got to create bandwidth for the people behind you. So if you are hired unless you’re gonna take it in the lawn. And so if you want to hire someone to help take some of that work off, and then they can grow up in something else. Well, you got to get new clients gotta grow a little bit, not just client wise, but you got to grow tactically a little bit. Yeah, experience a few things maybe do something other than just doing tax work or just audits. Because that’s how you’re going to create opportunities for other people. If the firm gets to like, Well, I think most firms do they do accidental growth, which is somehow they keep getting clients or they somehow have merger because to be I don’t know, that happens, but people just somehow merge. And you’re like, oh, right now you have eight people are you gonna do about now? I don’t know. They keep working. And they just keep working and keep working. They have nowhere they’re gonna go so that the firm become went from this little shrub. A cute little dainty shrub, tennis unkept mess, that is just like, where’s the party? It looks now gnarly, doesn’t work, right? It’s on growing right? You have to have a plan for it. And then the growth has support that. So I do think it’s important to have that first the intentionality of where your end is going to be. And then growth follows that. I also don’t think there’s a need to like grow for growing sake, because there’s an old phrase, Mo Money, Mo Problems. And if you’re just gonna get more revenue, you just get more headaches. If you’re not building the infrastructure accordingly, you’ll just have, you’ll be miserable in your firm. So that’s where I think you can have your time and strategy first. And then you figure out what growth goes to support that strategy. Growth may be negative, too. If your strategy isn’t well roll this thing down the hill or up a hill, and then go to the plateau and stop. Well, then the growth should be shedding clients either intentionally by selling them, or letting go of a few every year, or something of that effect. I know some firms who decide their growth was the focus in a specific area and they have sold chunks of their book. So they wanted to go into the client accounting space. And they sold the whole tax practice, or they wanted to get out and sold the practice and they focused on tax and other advisory services.
Liz Farr 24:31
Yeah, there are so many different ways to view growth. I talked to somebody the other day who said she knew somebody who had grown with transition from doing 1000 tax returns a year to working with 30 clients and making more money, but getting a very deep relationship with each one of those 30 clients, but when
Jason Deshayes 25:01
we’re selling the firm way to do all this work to get, you know, for the profile and everything, and one of the things I noticed that I don’t know why they ever thought this before, is I made a poll like concentrations of clients like top 100 clients or top 10, top 50, top 100. And why kept going down? And I figured out there was this like, huge quartile of like, 150 clients that when you totaled up the revenue was maybe $50,000 95% of that 5% of our revenue. And I was like, man, was that the right thing to do to have me? I love the people. There were great people there in that 100 returns. But it was always like, Is that the right thing for them? Is it the right thing for us? That was our model supporting that? Can we provide that service? Are we doing a good job with it, just because they’re attached to us does not mean we’re going to be doing a good job all the time. And so I could have done say, Well, what if I had five clients that represent $10,000 in fees a year, that would be easier to manage more in line with the the kind of service we’re doing more whole services. So you’re spraying the love across the firm, and found a way for those 150 people have a really good experience with somebody else. That that came to mind. I was like, Man, that’s an option as you can grow by shrink by contracting. That’s what a lot of marketing people do. Say there is a part you want to they use term cull the client list, you kind of shave off the bottom part every year, and just kind of keep refining it and sanding it down till you get exactly what you want. Because there are people Yeah, you’re going to WIRIS person a client. I mean, no one knows the story. They don’t really know what we’re doing him we’re really not doing anything that h&r Block couldn’t do. Or basic. Charles Schwab Advisor could do it that’s like, so what are we doing that’s helping this person, we’re really can’t bring the resources we want to. We’re also not really built to handle someone who doesn’t have much to do with. And so yeah, maybe that’s not the right fit for us. Maybe it’s okay, if I then purchase a new home. So we can focus on people who we can serve excellently.
Liz Farr 27:15
I think that’s a really good point to find the people that you’ve been served really, really well and focus on now. I’ve heard that from many, many people I’ve talked to, doesn’t always have to
Jason Deshayes 27:28
write like knits like oh, look with dentists that have at least five operatories and doesn’t meet that niche. But it needs to be people who have kind of this feeling that that does fit your client base, whether it’s be service mindset, lines of service, wherever the case might be.
Liz Farr 27:49
Yeah, and you bring up a good point that a niche doesn’t have to be an industry vertical, but that it can be something much more holistic in and, and that can be a really good way to look at developing your firm. Now, when you and I got started to do well, as an accountant, we had to keep the tax code in our head, we had to keep the FASB regs in our head because they were largely on paper, you know, they were sort of searchable online. But yeah, it was kind of a pain to access them. And we also had to be really good with the 10 key. But a lot of that stuff is taken over by technology today. So what skills do accountants need today to be successful?
Jason Deshayes 28:44
It’s funny, you mentioned the 10 key because our 79 year old man or senior partner is who still comes in, he’s got a 10 key because no one uses that. He was very, very upset, no one use take anymore. I said, Man, I used to be really good with one of those. The last time I used one was 2017. I just use the keyboard one now. And he’s like, I just can’t imagine doing that. And it was really a funny, like, you know, yeah, you know, we have P employees who’ve never used one. And you’re like, oh, wow, that’s kind of weird. But in terms of things that would they need to do to be successful? Now, I think there’s certain skills like you have to be able to communicate. And I think that means you have to be a good written communicator, you have to be a good verbal communicator. And it doesn’t mean in person, the verb all the time. But I think there’s a lot more asynchronous video. From commentary that goes back between the slides we use loom a lot to send debriefs on plans on returns and things like that to give them something more human than here’s my novel of trying to explain this 700 Page tax return. And I found that clients really enjoy way, because Oh, cool, and there’s my voice there, right and not my voice Jason Deshayes’ voice. But I get to sound like me, just like my other team members sound like them. And so they get the human touch. But it’s kind of like how I used to do in practice where when the client would come inside, I flipped through the right page and chatted through as in Oh, that’s what it is right there. This is the number you’re worried about. Yeah, that’s the number I’m worried about. Because I could do that much easier. That type of three paragraph email. And so I think it’d be able to communicate super important. I think the other part is adaptability. What used to be a mindset, of it work, don’t break it, like it was working, don’t touch it, don’t fuck with it don’t change the system is kind of has to go out the window at this point. Because technology is speeding up so fast. It has been for a lot of time that software and programs you use get replaced three years later with something better, and can’t let it sit there. Like I’m still using this thing. Because I know how I use it. Sometimes it gets bumped. And that’s okay. But you got to be adaptive to those things and like stay ahead of what is coming. And also be willing to leave the things that you’ve got comfort with, to find the best solution for your team and for your clients. I mean, we’ve gone through, effectively, internally, the guys in three different CRMs. In the last five years, we’ve gone through three practice management systems. And we’ll say one was Excel, but to others on the tax side in the last three years. And it’s because we saw pain points. We didn’t like what was going on with the last practice management system because it was a bad portal software, we couldn’t get the organizer look right. It was clunky, and expensive. So we switched. And we’ve had something that was much more flexible, and we could customize a bit more and am I married to it know that our Zack and my team spent a lot of time researching multiple options, angles right now, this is the best one that we can get for what we do. Great, we’ll do it and you want two or three years now we’re gonna probably were make some changes we go every two or three years out, we’re going working change again. It’s okay. Clients, I don’t think ever will argue that we have been trying to we’ve been monitoring your experience. And we feel like this is not the best thing for you, dear client, and they’re not gonna go, Oh, but I like my old 1997 Ultra tax portal software that never worked, right? I’m used to it. I’ve got my password memorized, like, Okay, well, it’s time to move up. And this will you like it better. And usually people are creative with that. And same with employees. If you ultimately give them something that’s gonna make their life easier, they’ll probably be okay with switching systems, because their life is easier. No one loves anything that much more. They’re saying I know this is miserable. Because why No. So I’m just gonna stick with it. Even though I’m terrible, I hate it every day. So adaptability. We talked about the communication style. And ultimately, I think flexibility to and I don’t mean that in the sense of like, agile mindset, although that’s important. I think it’s a flexibility of how you interact with people, internally, externally, how you handle yourself, and be able to just be like, hey, things are different, and I got changed up a little bit. Could be that you have a life circumstances different. I’ve got some folks who I know are very rigid in their skin very schedule based. And then they have a kid that blows up their mind. And they’re out to do it’s for their real sick, they’ve been single forever. And then they get married. And then they have been personally involved with or them apparently gets sick. And I gotta change how to do things or COVID happens or all these things are just different. And that’s okay, but we got to just all be okay with things are going to be different. And they’re things outside of our control. I think one good lesson COVID taught us is there is really bad stuff that can happen with no one’s fault, completely outside of our control. And we have to be able to adapt to
Liz Farr 34:13
things. Absolutely. And now no going back to technology. How? How do accountants find the time to see what is out there to find out all the options. The ones do you have to just do you have to just carve time out to do that?
Jason Deshayes 34:39
Well, you can I’m not sure how effective that is. I do think that you know if you’re a conference goer like I am, I go to conferences and I meet people I talk to vendors, and I know that this trade show is like in some people’s eyes, schmoozer Palooza, right. Everyone wants your card there’s volume in some something Well, yeah, that’s why they’re there. But same time, they’re often eight different solutions for somebody out there. If you take a little time to talk to him, maybe you do actually want to hear from two of those vendors. And you can always unsubscribe and tell him, No, I’m not interested. But if you don’t take a little time when you’re at a conference, and actually you walk the floor, talk to the vendors get sense of it. And we’re talking to your peers. So if you’re gonna go, go, don’t go to conferences, he got talked to your peers. And that can be in a local setting where you go and chat with folks, you know, in other offices, hey, what’s going on? Where do you guys use it for this? How’s it working? Or maybe it’s online, Twitter and LinkedIn are great places for people to share what they’re doing. And most people are willing to tell you, Oh, yeah, I use ignition for my practice management, or I use taxdome, or I use blah, blah, blah, and everyone’s got their thing. And they’ll tell you why they like and don’t like it, which is way more valuable than hearing the salesperson tell you why you should like it and not like it, because those are the people in the trenches using it. And I’m bet yet someone will even walk you through how they set it up. We were looking at CRMs for Cook, and I call on a bunch of RA people I knew and said, Would you mind just walking me through your CRM? And they said, Sure. So I got the real demo, not the sales demo with like Seinfeld names, and, or whatever. It’s like, you know, I decided in the air to say, I’m not gonna disclose anything, but it was like, Oh, here’s what it looks like. Here’s the you know, this is how the interface looks. Yeah, this, this is kind of weird. To tell you, it’s fine. It’s not fine. From a practical perspective, and that was super powerful and eliminates things really quickly, or move people up with the ranks really fast. Oh, they didn’t tell us that in the the demo. But that’d be really cool if I do that. So I think that’s how I would go about, you know, it does require you to get out your own little world. And I’m a big advocate for spending time with people or peers. I would argue no one is a competitor. I think all firms can offer different things different people be there’s a blue ocean of work, there is no it’s not Red Sea, that we’re all fighting the same 10 clients, there are more clients and we know service. So if we can spend that time building relationships that we can go talk to. That’d be pretty cool. We joined the Aprio. Alliance, which is the former flattery Alliance, that Aprio acquired, it gives us some tools and meet other firms, things apples got just keeps us connected with other people and seeing what can we do to move the needle here that someone else has already done there.
Liz Farr 37:53
And that’s the great thing. I like your your discussion about community, because I think community is really something that can help us weather storms and whether it’s COVID, or, you know, challenges with technology or figuring out tax law changes. And I saw a lot of that on Twitter with all the PPP stuff. And everybody was trying to figure out how to do this. And there was so much generosity in sharing.
Jason Deshayes 38:35
Most people forget that not 30 year, four years ago, a lot of like in the CPA world, everyone worked together. And then oh, yeah, we all worked over here. And eventually those people left that do the big firms. And they either created smaller firms or they went to similar regional firms. And they got to know each other really well. And they knew everybody. So they knew the peers, and they did talk, they still do talk to each other. And then what happened is, they went from being like, oh, yeah, I’ve got colleagues in different offices and different things. I know, we’ve talked to over at Moss Adams or wherever Carr Rigs, and now it became, oh, don’t talk Don’t don’t talk to those people, you will get recruited away and became a scarcity mindset. So there was a standard of abundance where it’s like, yeah, there are competitive but hey, y’all knew each other from this and you had shared experience to no one should talk to anyone ever because they’ll leave here. What if someone goes to a happy hour event that’s hosted by a state society or or what whoever and they meet somebody who’s another person who lives comparable role, a different firm, and all it took was one slight interaction over a cocktail to spur them to leave. Then I don’t know you must have not had a good relationship with an employee because they wouldn’t leave over one thing. It It may be that they really realize there’s all their alternatives. But the idea is you should make your office such a welcoming, happy environment. That is that people want to stay there and meet other people as they want to tell them how great your firm is. And when sharing that and make your firm better, not just try and find the next way out. And again, abundance versus scarcity is a really big thing for me is if you go into the abundant void, sense, hits, people, people care, as people want to help each other out. They don’t want to go out there steal from, you know, wrap your employees left and right. Like, that’s what recruiters are for that those people do that, that it’s mostly like, hey, we want to get to know and help each other out as a community as a profession. And that’s what does this all better if we all work together?
Liz Farr 40:53
Absolutely. Yeah. And, you know, I gotta say, the firm’s that I worked at, didn’t ever really do a great job of creating a place that I wanted to stay because I left. Yep.
Jason Deshayes 41:11
And it’s, you know, if you can, I mean, I know expect our team here to be here forever. Something happens, life happens, we can’t meet a need they have. And it’s not within our bandwidth, it’s not a money thing. It’s like, I’m looking for this kind of experience. And I just can’t do that here. Because I will focus on nonprofits, I will focus on institutional investing, we will do that here. So I understand it, but I want it to be, there was no way to solve that gap. Because it’s outside of our business capabilities of doing so will we leave on really good tone, so that we saw the relationship, and if something changed, that’d be great. Or they tell their friends, how great a place this is to work here, or their friends to become clients here. That is neither relationship I want with EX employees. And I fully expect we’re going to have those. But that’s where change is becoming more prominent. And it’s like, it’s okay, if that happens. I, I don’t want it to be a fearful thing. It’s like, yeah, I want to applaud them. And finally, be happy for them or see your advisors leave recently. And it was because of that exact thing. He wants to really focus in on nonprofit and, and really working with, like endowments, you’ll have those, and he’s a good friend, this but you know, that was the best thing for him. It also creates an amazing opportunity for folks here, future employees. So it’s just like, it happens. And it’s okay. That’s okay.
Liz Farr 42:45
That’s a really good way to look at it. Now, what are some things that accountants should stop doing immediately?
Jason Deshayes 42:57
And we already decided the billable hour was terrible. Well, no one seems to be listening. But you know, that’s one.
Liz Farr 43:07
Absolutely, yeah.
Jason Deshayes 43:09
We haven’t tracked time cook well, never. And that when people came from a variety, how do we track our time. We don’t. then what are we supposed to do? You work. You do the things you need to do you work on the outcomes we have and the clients you have assigned to you and the projects we’ve gotten on there. And that was a surreal shift for a lot of people, because they were so trained to track every minute of their time and everything and they’re much happier, by the way there’s beyond shocked and happy. But I think that’s one. It’s too much. I understand managing clients and managing outcomes and stuff. I think there’s different ways of doing it. I haven’t figured that all out yet. But I do feel like there’s other metrics you can do that you can manage well, that isn’t time based, because expertise should not time based expertise should be based on experience base. So that’s one thing is dropped the billable hour to I think pyramid scheme has to go. I know Barry wants to talk about how the pyramids move into a diamond. And that’s because of technology and then outsourcing. But I do think that this like there’s like owners at the top are more important and more money and they get all the perks of the pyramid. That’s one thing is I think owners should be compensated for the risk they take. You know, they’re the ones who have to make payroll, a bit of a thing. No one understands that until you have to make payroll. And there’s always so many dollars in the account. You got to make a decision about who gets paid first. The payroll has to be and guess who doesn’t get paid is you and that is a real thing. I think you got dropped the pyramid structure and you gotta treat it like a business. I think if you get into that, you can have it operate differently, you have key people who are not owners who do excellent work, and you reward him as such, maybe you only always have one owner, that person is just there eventually sitting back collecting checks, I’m happy to give someone mailbox money, they just sit back and let people run the show. I do think that requires some adjustment at the state level, because now you got every state’s got different rules on who can own up CPA firms who can’t. And those kinds of things. But I do feel like moving to more of a true business model is probably stop treat it like a pyramid scheme that you got to get to the top to win and move into a business model would be good. And I think the last thing I would say is stop limiting yourself that you have to provide one of three services to be somehow good CPA and advisory people just not necessary. I think we limit ourselves way more, and you’d ever talked before we started recording this is there’s so many opportunities out there. As a CPA, you know what I had left one, one, the AICPA, actually, I was looking at roles, and there were roles that I’d never heard of. But I could totally do based on the makeup of my experience, which is I’ve taught many continuing ed classes. I understand technical things, I understand processes and cycles of business, I understand business. And I could be an executive director of a learning company, I could do things that were non accounting, but lean into those skill sets and do something super cool with it. So I think we need to stop we limit ourselves like, there’s no way I can do and look at well, what are some kind of what could I do? What do I want to do, where I want to serve and be helpful thing, whether you be connected your kids school, maybe you’d come like retro finance your kids school, maybe you go into like beer, every big brewery now has CFOs and maybe say an accounting field, but you’re in that part of it, maybe end up doing some sales or doing some other things and get tested beer, make sure it’s good. So you gotta do that too. But there’s just plenty of options out there. If you limit yourself, you’re limiting with all the opportunities that live out there.
Liz Farr 47:27
I agree, there are so many more opportunities out there. And I think there have always been opportunities. But there, they just weren’t as visible.
Jason Deshayes 47:42
Correct. And, and also, I will say COVID clearly said it didn’t have to be local. Right? And you were doing this way before this. But like writing didn’t make you have to be like, I can only write for firms in New Mexico, you write for. And so you can open up your window and then you can serve you can work for company, never go to the office. That’s okay, too. Like that’s that’s been kind of cool is that has really opened up the window of where you could look, because I think most people started go well, do I move somewhere look here or without you don’t even go there still? And then maybe that’s a little scary why people do it is it’s kind of chain is a big shift to how they look at jobs and such.
Liz Farr 48:30
Absolutely, you know, when some of my friends leave accounting firms here in Albuquerque, and they asked me for recommendations, I usually throw out half a dozen choices that are not in New Mexico that are fully remote. And I
Jason Deshayes 48:49
think that local firms in particular need to definitely, like break up that well. You know, our office is a real in-person office kind of place. When when when you know, we’re a local firm, we have most of our people in North Carolina, most of our clients actually come to the office, which was kind of surprising to me, given my firm in New Mexico was everyone in the office? Well, if I had a fantastic employee who had to interact with people via zoom, or maybe once a quarter came out with a bunch of beings at once. I’d rather have the employee and figure out change and that engagement with clients, because usually clients like having really good people that they work with. And honestly if you start just kind of not assuming your clients can’t do it, which their thing that we do as CPAs we assume clients are as equally change phobic as we are which is not the case. I remember having a 75 year old lady say Oh, I was wondering when you were going to start sending me PDF copies of this because I’ve been digital all paperless for three years. Am I oops And, you know, we said, well, we always handle the return. Well, Jane Jane didn’t want. And so Okay, cool. Like, guess what we should ask that question sooner. I think our clients are more willing to change than we are. So if we like, have you okay with maybe that client is totally fine. We found, I’m sure others firms of those is to even our local clients didn’t always work on the office. Now. There’s, they’re busy. If they’re still working, they got stuff to do. And even if they’re not working, if they’re watching grandkids, maybe they can do a call, while grandkids are an app. Or the kids are watching TV or something, they can do a quick call, but they can’t make it to the office in a reasonable time. Because you’re watching trade war, there’s so working, and they can’t just pop over for an hour long meeting with you to then drive 3020 30 minutes each way, as a big ask, but now they get 30 minutes mean with you very direct, get things done, and took 30 minutes, they can work that in whenever.
Liz Farr 51:02
Yeah, yeah, I think working the way that our clients want to work with us. And finding the people who want to work the way that the firm wants to, and also adapting the firm, to work with people the way that they want to work. It’s all flexibility.
Jason Deshayes 51:23
Yeah, we’re implementing some things this year, because well, when we last couple years, we have an office to go to because it was a ghost town, we said we got this to Officer lane, we’d love to talk with you. That’s your choice, though. If you want to engage with a zoom call or in person, like kind of intake meetings, we can go through a few things talk, we’d love to talk to you. We have not done that before. But we can do that now. And we give people the choice, they can schedule on Calendly. And they can just go take care of it. Or they can call Bill way call and talk to our office manager Marilyn she’ll schedule it for him. But it’s a letting them choose Do they just want to upload things, and then we’ll call them, they will have it in front up for engagement. We’re gonna let the people figure that out. We’re gonna be open for business either way. So we’re going to be able to manage that versus here is the rigid way we work and we’re not gonna change it. And that’s how we always do it. You always come in, you always dropped off. And you always come back three weeks later.
Liz Farr 52:22
Yeah. Yeah. And that is one of the silver linings of COVID. Yes. It taught us all to be flexible. Yeah. Now, what are the blocks to change?
Jason Deshayes 52:37
Fear? That’s a big one. Fear. The time comfort with what’s your no. And I was talking to someone, you know, our model, a cook wealth is that we are a hybrid wealth planning Wealth Management tax firm. So we have clients who we do wealth planning for and financial planning for their clients, we do tax and tax advisory and planning for. And then we have a lot clients, we do both. And when I tell people about our model, they’re like, Man, that sounds like that makes tons of sense. Does, because how many times have you had to talk to your financial advisor, and then like, I’ll give tax advice. So like advice, and then you go your tax advisor, or CPA or whoever they are, and they go, Well, I don’t give investment advice, I don’t give clients advice. I’m not licensed for that I’m not fill in the blank, I don’t really feel comfortable with it, and you didn’t give me the information. So I’m only reporting the news as the IRS your tax. And there’s like this weird thing where the clients down the middle. And they have to be the conduit for information on both ways. And normal, that’s not the case. We are I mean, I’m a CFP two of the other CPAs are CFPs we got one who’s on your path to get in that we have and we have a lot of CPAs and enrolled agents. It’s like that’s, we are equipped. But the fear for a lot, I think on the in that kind of model, if you will, why aren’t more people doing this? They’re afraid that someone won’t refer work to them. They’re afraid that they won’t really know how to do it right. But they won’t put the effort to learn it. They’re afraid they can’t, they won’t succeed and be a risk. And there’s just like, but what if it goes well, what is great right? Well if you’re happier, well if you make more money and you’re doing less work like Wow, guys, like think about that. So I think we get stuck and like no but this ya know, and it was I’ll tell you one of the things I found as a as a firm owner, they got really hired over doing the same thing over and over again. And I got really bored they felt I was stifled. Even though I was what people were 35 Right before we sold the firm out Was it whatever was thought, oh, you’re a partner at a firm and you own half of it, and you hit the you’ve hit the magic Shangri La. That we’re all working for it wasn’t right though. I felt like I stopped growing. Now just working overtime because I was notified and, and I want to serve people well, but I wasn’t getting better. I was just taking on more work. I wasn’t thinking about my visit the way I wanted to. And it was exhausting. And one of the things I’ve loved is I’ve gotten since coming to cook, and I’m not trying to make cook sound like this Shangri La that everyone needs to come work for. But like, I did change my mindset. So I’m going to go get some narrow skills. So I got my CFP, I got 65, I leaned into my Christian faith, and I’m a certified Kingdom advisor. And I’m learning more about investments in the market and everything. And it’s been so enriching, I love what I do as because I was willing to drop stuff, so that other people could learn and stuff either, and so I could do fun stuff. And that’s what he’s like, man, is that I can see the appeal of doing the same thing you know, so you can make it easier. Oh, it’s time to have time for this. No time for this. Yeah, you’ll never have time for it. No one ever has time for it unless you make a choice. And that choice is hard. Because it usually is giving up something and people don’t want to give up anything.
Liz Farr 56:20
No, no. And I think that that fear of the unknown is very real. Yeah, what if you, it’s, it’s so much easier to just stay in a dead end job that you hate. Yep. Then to move into something that is completely unknown. That’s that’s how it was for me when I started writing
Jason Deshayes 56:44
was devil you know versus devil you don’t. Even when, you know, when I was thinking about when I moved out here about starting a firm again, as of last week, I know that I have a much better personal place, finding something that was like a hybrid of things I did in my past lives and things that were interesting to me and I was good at and kind of merge all together some of the awesome, that wasn’t straightforward. It was not like, oh, yeah, this job I used to have is now on a shelf over here that just go pull it off the shelf and go take it. Now a big thing for me is creating that same opportunity for the people. So it’s like, hey, what do you want? What can I help? What can you help you get where you want to go? And one of my employees told me I want your old job, when I was director of tax planning went for start. Great. Okay, get you there. So we’re gonna get really good here. This is the first step. Second step is this. Once you get there, then first step is probably that role that we’re going to get you I’m a I’m a so for me to get you things. So you’re like, doing fantastic in this. I gotta equip you coach, you. That’s my job. So we’re in it together for you to hit that new thing you want. I think that’s, that’s what a leader should do. That’s what we as leaders, as business owners, all the things, our job is to make life so good for those people below us. So that they want to be there and they want to keep moving forward. And they get us out of the way. Eventually we were obviously we get to like step out and go wow, look at this amazing thing I built in or what we built. And they only made more they I did everything I need to not go hang out. And if you’re a fish or fish, fish golf, I don’t care what you do, I would I got other stuff I would do. But probably if you’re playing pickleball buy more time and that you know the fastest growing sport in the US. But I think that’s what everything gets to do. If you do it right now, otherwise, you’re gonna work till you’re 78. And the walk into your office was 10 key in your cold dead hands. And you did get to the end just didn’t get to enjoy much of at the back bar.
Liz Farr 58:58
That’s very true. And I really wish that I’d had leaders like you and the firms that I worked at would have been a whole lot more fun. Yeah. Yeah. Now, right now, client accounting services, client advisory services, whatever you want to call cast is a big thing. Yeah. What do you think the next big thing will be?
Jason Deshayes 59:26
Well, I can tell you I don’t think it is. I don’t think personally, I’ll have the same blockchain fever that that people do. So that’s like, foreign territory. I actually am not a fan of cats. I say that because I made the change. When I left the AICPA after some practice, I was in a regional leader and the market leader for a large firm on the caste department. And you say, Oh, this is great. It was great, right? When fees were high, and you know, people didn’t want to do that stuff, but I’ll tell you, it was kind of drag, because like it never stopped, is just every month, you’re just doing more accounting, you know, then someone would change something or complain about someone from four months ago and what fix it, it was really hard to get to like a progressive part of the accounting. And even the advisory side was helpful. That was like, I wasn’t feeling it was really doing for me why I enjoyed it, even though I didn’t believe it had a lot of opportunity in the right person’s hands. So I do think that’s going to be as big now, I do think eventually, AI will catch up. There’s a lot of like, there’s a lot of human nature still in client accounting, or in accounting, and where, you know, Hey, I can’t do it all yet, by ligger report without happening. And I think the advisory part is really the piece that we’re doing as humans is coaching on what that means and how people do in their business. I do think that the big thing coming up is going to be transition and succession planning. Because I think there’s a lot of that coming. I mean, that in our industry is people’s businesses with wealth, there’s a lot of change, that’s within next 1015 years, and being able help navigate people through that. Whether it’s US EPA Trust Company was set up via trustee for hire, you want to be a closer help people close the states, why law firms? Do you want whatever the case may be? There’s so many things that could that are coming that they’re going to need a lot of. And there’s a lot, that’s an emotional time, too, because daggone people who are selling the businesses that have spent their entire lives working on that, even for someone who was not a lifelong partner in that firm, was a hard transition for me. Because where did I go after that? emotionally and physically? You all that stuff, and you get people who are transitioning money, or transitioning family stuff. I mean, there’s a lot that where I think there’s gonna be some massive need in the future. from a planning perspective, I think there’s gonna be opportunities where, especially because a lot of animals money and accounting, that CPAs can very well be well versed in that kind of next thing in my eyes. I claim in the future. I and I don’t really think that I’m sure there’s way surplus go, like, surprised me, because I wouldn’t have told you that, you know, Amazon was gonna be as big as it is. 20 years ago, it was schoolbooks from and that was bookstore.
Liz Farr 1:02:57
Yeah. Yep. That’s all it was. Yeah, you know, I think you really hit on something there with the transition and succession planning. Because we’ve got a whole generation that will be retiring or passing their estates on to the next generation, we’ve got all of that happening. And we just the society doesn’t have the resources, we don’t have the, the infrastructure to guide us through that.
Jason Deshayes 1:03:32
And there’s, but there’s like thinking of that, just on the firm side, you’re thinking about how you connect people to other firms, build a network, well, that, you know, all those opportunities there, that would be so cool for someone who really has a drive to make some change. That’s a place if someone can make a dent in succession planning, who give them a medal of honor from the AICPA or something like that, because that is such a, it’s been a hard thing to crack. And there’s a lot of consultants who have talked about the importance of succession and, and they post articles and articles, and everyone tells me that it’s not, I don’t feel like it’s moving the needle. So someone can come up with a better solution than like, here’s not only the needle, it has our neck, where we want the needle be, here’s how we’re going to do it. And we’re just going to get done, where it’s not this agonizing process for you, which is why you will do it, which is where like on the estate planning side, you’ll you you’ve seen all this rise of more technology driven estate planning, solutions that mean legals, way better versions of that. But it allows it to happen, where people are like, Ah, don’t want us and talk feature. Oh, it’s expensive. I’ll do it. I don’t need to spend that much for that. And they just talk themselves out of it. And then lo and behold, something happens and they don’t have a plan in place because they were too afraid. It’s too slow, too expensive. And technology’s got Winter, like, it’s come in and fix a lot of that. So I think that’s, we need some like, succession side. So maybe it makes it easy or easier, and kind of breaks up some of the biases of a wall. What should I do? What is my firm’s totally worth this? I think, is there part twos? I think there’s a overinflation of what firms are worth in people’s eyes because some friend of theirs 25 years ago got 1.1. And their firm is still using paper. They have a ag full of records. Their systems are ones no one’s ever heard of, but they’ve had for 20 years. And they’re like, Oh, yep, I get 1.2. No, you don’t you get point six. And if that, if that and is really what it is, I’ll give me a contingency, so you better hope they collect them all. But it’s I think that’s where we really have fallen short is that we haven’t been able to penetrate the bad expectations of people who are as close to retirement succession. We haven’t found a way to make the succession. Ie not easy, but a process a very clear process that can be executed in a relatively decent amount of time. Han. And then we have been bad at facilitating relationships between people who could vegetate those clients and people who need find those homes for those clients.
Liz Farr 1:06:23
That is a really good point. And I think that that’s probably a perfect note to end our conversation on right now. Thank you so much, Jason, for talking to me. It was great talking to you. Now if listeners want to connect with you, where is the best place to find you?
Jason Deshayes 1:06:46
Go our website, cookwealth.com You can see their ratio on me there’s a way to connect that way. You can call us at 197849100 Or you can email me. It’s just jdeshayes@cookwealth.com.
