Practice Success Podcast

Reza Hooda: Unlocking Freedom in Accounting

• Canopy • Season 3 • Episode 12

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In this episode, KC Brothers interviews Reza Hooda, an accounting firm owner and author of 'The Four Pillars'. They discuss the journey of accounting professionals towards achieving freedom through their practices, the challenges of traditional billing methods, and the importance of positioning and specialization in the industry. Reza shares insights on how to leverage AI for content marketing and the shift in client expectations post-pandemic, emphasizing the need for accountants to adapt to a digital-first approach.

KC Brothers (00:01.13)
Welcome to an episode of Canopy Practice Success. I'm your host, KC Brothers, and I am here with Reza Hooda, the author of a wonderful book called The Four Pillars, the owner of an accounting firm, and a consultant. And I'm sure you could tell us even more about yourself, Reza.

Reza (00:18.133)
I would love to, it's great to be here KC.

KC Brothers (00:19.662)
Yeah, great. Yeah, give us a little introduction. What are your highlights?

Reza (00:24.92)
Okay, right. I am a practice owner. I've been running my own practice for the last 17 years now. That makes me sound old. And I also coach and mentor other practice owners on how to build an accounting firm that gives them time, money and freedom.

KC Brothers (00:34.422)
Not even.

KC Brothers (00:48.984)
Okay, those are three big things. Do you like one of them better than the other? Time, money, or freedom?

Reza (00:55.8)
Ooh, good question. Yeah. I guess we all want, we all start a practice to get freedom of some kind because generally as a practice, you start life as an accountant, you work for a firm, you get your qualifications, your CPA, et cetera. And then you think, I don't want to stay here to get to partner in 10 years time. I can do things differently. I want freedom. my time back. I want to be able to do the things that I love.

and therefore you go off and either you buy a small firm or you set up on your own. So I think every practice owner has that vision of using the business as a vehicle to create the life they want, to give them the time, money and freedom that they want.

KC Brothers (01:34.904)
for freedom.

KC Brothers (01:39.192)
So what do you say to those who...

who don't realize that the structure of the industry that they're in can afford them more freedom than what they have.

Reza (01:53.856)
Yeah, where do we start? There's lots we could say on this because unfortunately the professional services model that a lot of people are used to is broken in a way. So what I'm referring to is like the billable hour and just because that's the way it's done in the big firms, even myself. When I started off in PwC, so I was used to tracking time, doing time sheets, selling time, all that kind of stuff.

So when I started my firm, thought this is the thing to do. But what that ended up doing is me working crazy hours, 60 plus hours in the practice, burning out, not actually having the profit at the end of the day to be able to hire people that I could bring in to take the work off me, to give me that freedom. I ended up being chained to a glorified job. So all those dreams and visions of being able to...

travel the world, take off to school holidays, enjoy time with the kids. It didn't happen because the business model that I was accustomed to was flawed. And I had to rewire myself. had to learn a new way, a better way of actually running a firm that ultimately did give me that freedom. Like now I run my firm on less than three hours a week. I'm able to run a separate business at the same time and have all the freedom.

KC Brothers (03:14.146)
You're beating Tim Ferriss. You said the four hour work week and you're at three. Go Reza.

Reza (03:20.02)
Well, it's not bad, right? For the accounting practice. I obviously work more than that because I have the coaching, the mentoring business, but I love doing that. It's like, you know, when work feels like play and you're working in your zone of genius, you could do it all day long. So yeah, I'm in a fortunate position now, but it wasn't always like that. There was a time when I really struggled and I was working crazy. I was not making enough money, not seeing my family, not seeing my kids grow up until I, in, it was 2014. I remember the year where...

KC Brothers (03:24.546)
Right. Right.

Reza (03:47.552)
Everything was going wrong, not making enough money. I nearly faced the embarrassment of having to close shop and go back groveling to my employees to get my job back until a challenge webinar brought me in front of my first mentor who, where I realized there was a different way of doing things. And there was an alternative to trading time for money and ultimately realizing that

KC Brothers (04:11.604)
Amen. Yeah.

Reza (04:14.452)
I had to invest in myself to become a better business owner, to learn the business skills that don't teach you when you do your accountancy training. So nobody teaches you how to price your services. Nobody teaches you how to win work. Nobody teaches you how to lead and manage a team when you do your accountancy training. And so we ended up just winging it and not getting very far. And that's exactly what I did for the first five or six years until I found a

KC Brothers (04:42.604)
Yeah. You've said so many things, one of which you made a comment about, how did you say it? Playing, having fun, sitting in your zone of genius. Did you say it that way? I want to talk about that a little bit more because I see this a lot in accountants where there's that passion, whether it's passion for numbers, organization. And I hear people talk about it being a puzzle.

and how much they love that. I also hear passion for the client relationships. No one, no one is passionate about tracking time. No one is passionate about, I've got to hit my 60 hours guys or else I don't feel fulfilled. No one is passionate about these things. And it reminds me of a quote from James Clear who wrote Atomic Habits where he says, you don't rise to the level of goals.

to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. And I think about, especially as you said, okay, going from PWC, opening up your firm, I thought of muscle memory. You're like, well, this is the way I did it. I needed to do it this way. But then you saw the flawedness in the systems and the systems were holding you back from the goals that you had. And I see that all the time.

And I feel like people, it's the muscle memory, how can I challenge this? This is the way it's done. What is your biggest point of advice for people breaking out of that muscle memory and challenging the systems?

Reza (06:24.056)
Yeah, it's the status quo and you don't realize that there is a better way until you get to the point like I did where you're feeling the pain, that the pain of...

inaction is greater than the pain of action. So the pain of not doing anything is greater than the pain of doing something. So if you're feeling the pain at the moment, if you're feeling that you can't carry on working 60, 70 hours a week, you're feeling the pain of not having the money and the cash flow to be able to hire people or do the things that you want to do, or even have as much that you earned when you were employed, that should cause you to start thinking of and exploring are there better ways? there alternative ways to doing this? Because there absolutely are.

There are better ways of trading time for money. We don't sell time. We sell a result, we sell an outcome, we sell a solution, we sell peace of mind. That's what we sell. And that's what we need to, that's how we need to price our services, not based upon the time that we spend. So that's the first point, the realization that there is a better way. Once you make that realization, then there is a lot there. It's all there. There are people that, you know, have done it.

KC Brothers (07:17.602)
Yes.

Reza (07:37.814)
have written about it, have done podcasts and videos and webinars and have courses and coaching that you can go and get to be able to learn a better way of doing things rather than stuck doing the things that have always been done, which is giving you the results that you have now, which you're not happy with.

KC Brothers (07:55.692)
Yeah. Okay, you said a few things in there, one of them being also the way you price. We've already talked a little bit about time and I liked how you just put it about we're not selling time. How often do you, do you say it that bluntly all the time and do people push back on you?

Reza (08:03.48)
Mm.

Reza (08:17.08)
I've been saying it for a long time, yeah, I get less and less pushback, but I appreciate that the problem and the prevalence of still selling time.

in the US and Canada is still a thing as opposed to the UK have since the cloud revolution software has been happening over the last decade, more and more firms have moved to the fixed fee model. So it's less of a problem now. I get it less in the UK, but I still hear it in the US and Canada. So I guess we can start there in terms of, yeah, if...

If, if you're thinking, if someone's listened to this and thinking, okay, so what do we sell then? Well, if you think about it, nobody, what are we, what are we trying to do? The way we are, although you think you're selling time, you're, the way this, this pans out is you clock hours on a timesheet and then you look at your timesheet and you think about, what, what can I charge the client? And usually you look at that figure on the clock.

and you write off an amount and then you'll charge the client what you think they're to pay. Or you'll think this is too cheap and I'm going to add a bit on and then send a client an invoice for that amount. So if we are just making this all up and if we're only ever going to charge the client what they're willing to pay, what's the point of all these shenanigans of recording time, writing off time, charging time? It's all a waste of time. Ultimately, agree with the client.

what they're willing to pay before you do the work and then start the work. And actually you can get paid faster because if you can agree in advance, there's no issues about having to wait 30, 60, 90 days to get paid because you can actually get paid at least half of it upfront. And also, I mean, now we get paid in advance for any new project. If you're not paying monthly.

KC Brothers (10:11.608)
Okay, see.

Reza (10:16.439)
I can get a fee now and all I need to do is say to the client, look, if you pay in advance now, you get a 5 % discount, or you could spread it across your financial year. So either you're paying in line with your financial year or you pay in advance and you get a little bit of discount. And then they have a choice. When we're given choice as a customer, we're feeling control of the buying process. And you as a seller are more likely to get a better result when you give choice to customers.

KC Brothers (10:42.078)
you just said a lot of really great things. and I love that how you wrap that up with giving them a choice again, because to your point earlier, even while I'm trying to connect all of the dots, I apologize. but this is something we talk a lot about on the podcast is like, just because you've gone into accounting, you understand this big element of business.

Reza (10:58.41)
I don't know.

KC Brothers (11:09.474)
doesn't mean that you're trained on sales, on marketing, on operations, on pricing strategies, on all of these things that still make up business acumen, running a healthy, strong, profitable business. And one of those being selling. And to your point about giving choices, there's just so much more... Okay, let me put it this way. Accountants don't exist in a...

a reality by themselves. We all exist in what is today where we have subscription service television, right? We've got HBO, Netflix, whatever. We have all of these things around us with all of these different pricing models that follow what you're saying about given choices and people like to choose as opposed to being, let's say surprised by the bill of power approach, and to your point too.

Reza (12:06.646)
Yeah, absolutely.

KC Brothers (12:09.344)
about the writing up, writing down, like missing that target. It doesn't work and you're just ultimately, you're wasting time on those efforts that are largely getting you a flat fee anyway. So it's like, why did you track that time? Why did you spend the time building that invoice? Why not just look at your data, make an educated decision on your pricing and then just, and be bold and confident. I wonder if that's part of it too though, if the industry's.

with like imposter syndrome and that fear of asking for what they're worth.

Reza (12:43.832)
Yeah, absolutely. And I think most accountants, are by their nature, most accountants are analytically brain and also quite risk averse. So the whole idea of I need to make sure that all my costs are covered. And that's where the time based billing model came from that I need to make sure that all my costs are covered. But here is like, the thing that I heard this first was prices

don't come from costs. I'll say that again. Prices don't come from costs. We don't care about the costs or time expended by any supplier that we buy from. Let's take a very simple example. When we go into Starbucks, we don't stand there thinking the cost of the coffee beans is 30 cents.

The cost of the milk for my flat white is 10 cents. The direct cost attributed to the labor making my coffee is another 10 cents. The overhead is probably another five cents. And an acceptable profit markup is 20 cents. And therefore I'm only going to pay a dollar 40 for my latte. We don't do that. We look at the price that's presented to us. We look at the choice and we make a decision that is the price being asked less

than the value I perceive I am getting. And if it is, I buy. If not, I walk out. So there is only a correlation between price and value, not between price and time or price and costs. Nobody cares about your costs, whether you're buying a cup of coffee, whether you're buying an iPhone, whether you're buying a t-shirt, whether you're buying a car, or whether you're buying accountancy services. Nobody cares about costs.

And in fact, if you can do something faster, people are willing to pay more. Why is it that to skip queues, to go to VIP, we pay more to get things done faster. So it doesn't make sense the whole model of you charge more, you get paid more when you spend more time on something. In actual fact, what you're doing is you're rewarding potential inadequacy, laziness, being slow and inefficient. Which if you explain that to a client,

Reza (15:10.696)
would run a mile and say, of course not. The whole bill-a-hour model is just a crazy way to price. the sooner people hear that it is and move away, the better it be for you and for your clients.

KC Brothers (15:13.334)
or pass, I'll go find the next-

KC Brothers (15:26.478)
Okay, so you make it sound super simple. We all know it's not that simple. Especially if a firm, if a firm has any sense of, we've talked a little bit about risk aversion, maybe a little bit of, I feel like a lot of firms have, especially firm owners, maybe a little bit of fear of like, am I gonna have, when's the next client coming in and am I gonna have enough to keep the lights on? I don't know that they think about it that.

dramatically, but do they need to offer everything under the sun and reprice everything or do they need to serve everyone under the sun? I feel like those are elements too that contribute to a larger pricing discussion.

Reza (16:13.78)
Absolutely. Yeah. So I talk about four pillars, as you know, in my four pillar book and pricing and positioning are two of those, two of the most important ones. Pricing follows positioning. Positioning is all to do with who you are going to be providing services to, who is your target audience and being really crystal clear on that. Because not every business owner in the country

KC Brothers (16:19.33)
Yeah.

Reza (16:42.208)
is your potential client. But we try and appeal to everyone. The problem we're trying to appeal to everyone is that we actually appeal to no one because we're a generalist. And therefore what happens is we fall into this sea of sameness like every other CPA out there. And if a client can't see you as different from the next accountant down the road, then the only thing differentiating you is price. And that's never a good thing unless you want to be the cheapest in the marketplace.

because there's no strategic benefit being the second cheapest. So rule number one is you've got to get your positioning right. You've got to get really specific as to who you want to Niche down, specialise, laser focus, talk to a very specific group of people because that makes your marketing easier, your targeting easier, your content easier, easier to position yourself as an expert to very small group of people.

And when you do that, when you your positioning right, pricing follows. So if you're positioned as an expert, you can charge a premium. Who gets paid more? Brains surgeon or general practitioner, right? Positioning yourself as an expert as a specialist, you get paid more. Pricing follows positioning. So you get your positioning right, you have to charge more. And then what happens at the other end, which are the other two bullets, processing people.

KC Brothers (17:41.528)
Yes.

Reza (18:02.346)
is that if you're dealing with the same sort of clients, if you're niche down and you're just doing real estate investors, you can charge a premium. On the other end, you have the same sort of clients coming in and therefore you have all the answers to the typical tax questions they ask at the tip of your tongue.

You know exactly how to set up the bookkeeping. You know exactly how to do the accounts because you've done it before. You're with the same clients. So you and your team get a lot more efficient. Your team can handle more clients per team member. So what happens is you're getting more in at the top end because your positioning and pricing is on point. Internally, you can handle more per team member and therefore the rate at which you have to take on additional cost reduces. So what happens? What's that gap?

That's your nice lovely healthy profit. And that is a secret to a highly profitable firm. Yep, they're all peas.

KC Brothers (18:52.174)
It's another piece.

I want to say to being a daughter of an entrepreneur, having talked to a lot of people like yourself who are consulting firms, the thread I'm seeing with people like my mom and anybody who goes into entrepreneurship is this lack of understanding of the true value that they have. I mentioned imposter syndrome maybe a little bit. You have every right.

to charge what you're gonna charge, especially as you double down and become an expert. And don't feel bad about becoming an expert, about being able to do things faster, about, because all of these things compound on one another. It's not just like a multiplicative effect, it's an exponential effect. And you shouldn't feel bad that your price reflects that, that you are then able to do things faster and better because your knowledge is so deep in real estate, in...

salons in whatever the niches are you're going to serve. Because again, it's the outcome that you're selling and you can drive a better outcome the more of an expert you are.

Reza (20:10.666)
Absolutely and at the end of the day the world rewards you for the value you bring and the value you you bring is in the problem you solve. The bigger the problem you solve the more value you bring and therefore the more you can charge. So focus on what are the problems you can solve for a very specific group of people.

And once you've specialized and niched down, it's much easier for you to pick out what those problems are and to become everything to someone rather than something to everyone. When you're a generalist, you're just a little bit of something to a lot of people. When you're a specialist, you are everything to that person. They feel you understand their business.

KC Brothers (20:43.917)
Yes.

Reza (21:01.592)
So we, for example, I, you I, I've been hearing for the last five years from accountants when I started my journey of then starting to help other accountants is how do we win new business? And so I've been teaching a course on exactly how to do that niche down and then create content, focus on the problem you solve, all that kind of stuff. And in 2021, I thought, let me do something radical and different here, rather than just teach you again.

I'm going to do it with you. I'm going to launch a brand new firm with a new name and new logo, a new audience and everything I do, I will share with you in real time. And the promise of the course was zero to a hundred K in 12 months. So if we didn't get there ourselves, it'd be a serious egg on my face. So 2021, I launched Capture Accounting. Accountants for content creators and influencers, your YouTubers, Instagrammers, TikTokers of this world. And everything I did, I shared with the audience.

Thankfully, we got to the required number in nine months. But now, Capture Accounting is the fastest growing brand in our practice. Why? Because we started off with getting clear on the who, getting really clear on who we serve, niching down, focusing our efforts, just speaking to that target audience, and then leading with value. And time and again, when people approach us, because we've put out so much content now, blog posts, et cetera, YouTube videos that people consume,

People are looking for answers. In every specific industry, there are about 5 % of people ready to buy now in any niche. And what they're doing is they're looking for solutions. They're going on to Google, they're going to YouTube, they're trying to find out answers because they're not getting it from their current accountant. So they're looking for answers. So if you appear in those places and you appear as the person who's generated content around solving specific problems for that particular sector,

they're automatically going to see you as the solution to their problems and then get in touch with you. And every time we get an inquiry, a call booked with us, one of the questions I ask is what motivated you to get in touch? And time and again, 90 % of those will be looking for a specialist, want to work with a specialist content creator or accountant. My accountant doesn't understand my industry. They have to research the questions when I ask them. They don't understand my business model.

Reza (23:19.394)
This is what prospects are telling you. This is what real clients are telling you. They want to work with specialists. They are not getting answers from generalists. So you become these specialists and people will seek you out to work with you. Experts get sought out. Wouldn't you rather be the expert than having to go and hunt every time you want the new client? You want people coming to you rather than having to go out and fish for clients every time you need a new client.

KC Brothers (23:45.538)
Yes. Okay, I kind of want to take a sharp left turn here because we're talking a lot high level. I do want to encourage everybody to read Reza's book. These four pillars are huge. I have never seen heard someone articulate it as clearly as you have Reza and I'm being very genuine when I say that. But I want to take a hard left and make turn to like

Reza (23:50.274)
Go for it.

Reza (24:07.064)
So well.

KC Brothers (24:15.37)
really specific application here. For the most part, I'm going to assume that listeners already have an accounting firm. They're not starting capture accounting today or tomorrow. They're not having to identify an industry or targeted client net new. In your accounting firm, I'm willing to bet that you have two or more of clients in an

a single industry or field or persona type. So you already have some base level of understanding of a certain industry. Scroll through your client list, figure that out, find that, make sure there are also people you like, make sure, you know, there are lots of things that you need to evaluate. But I will want, the left turn I wanted to take is into marketing. I of course am a marketer.

You're talking a lot about marketing and we've already said that these accountants don't know how to do a lot of this other business stuff around that outside of the skill that they actually have. And so I wanted to double down on this because of AI and the barrier to entry here is so low for people who know nothing about marketing.

And we talked a little bit about this before we actually hit record and how you feel like AI is really going to disrupt a whole bunch of things. How are you using AI in your content marketing? Or are you?

Reza (25:54.892)
Yes.

KC Brothers (25:55.958)
Okay, I figured. And I made an assumption, but then I was scared because you didn't answer right away.

Reza (26:00.322)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, I am using AI big time. And it's something that I'm encouraging all members, practice owners in my community to start using because it is a superpower. And AI is not going to replace our jobs. It's not going to replace accountants, but people using AI will. So get onto AI as soon as possible. And for me, the biggest use case at the moment is in content generation, is in marketing. Now I am used to...

writing my own stuff, I have been writing my own stuff for a long time. wrote a book, I've been using my content, writing my content on LinkedIn. I've been posting daily for the last five years. So I've written a lot of content. And just recently, the last six to 12 months, we've been training an AI to write like me. And for a long time, my team generated stuff and I was like, no, still AI, still AI, center back, center back, center back. Now the table has turned. In the last few months, AI is generating stuff.

better than I can do it. So now it's coming to me and I'm like, wow, this is even better than I can do. And it's my words, my style, because if you can pump it with stuff that you've already done. So I've got lots of podcasts, lots of webinars, book. It can speak like me because you can just say, write in my style. And it's in its knowledge base. It's got stuff that I've already said, that I've already written.

KC Brothers (27:21.922)
Now again, I don't want people to feel discouraged that they can't do that, and that's okay.

Reza (27:25.718)
No, and here is one very practical example. I gave it earlier to my members as well, which I appreciate not everyone will have lots of podcasts and webinars like I may do, right? But this is one thing that you do have, right? So level one of AI use is this, Everybody can do this. Get an AI note taker. There's lots of them out there. There's Fathom, Alter, Five Lives, et cetera. Use that AI note taker when you're having Zoom calls, team calls with your clients and prospects. Take those transcripts.

And those transcripts will give you the ability to get AI to write in your style. So you plug those transcripts into Claude or into search GPT. And not only can it write in your style, but you can use those transcripts to generate content for you. Because within those transcripts, you will have prospects asking you questions. You will have prospects telling you what their problems are, what their pain points are.

So what you do is you just tell AI, these are transcripts from calls that I have received from my prospects. I am an accounting firm owner. Generate me five LinkedIn posts that I can put out to attract more prospects like this. Use my style of writing. And boom, suddenly you have content, LinkedIn posts, blog posts. Over a course of we have, another thing we do is we specialize in helping people move to Dubai from the UK.

and we do paid consultations. We've done about 60, 70 of them. We take those transcripts, we put it into ChatGPT. We tell ChatGPT to say, look through all these transcripts, because typically we get asked questions on these. Pull out the most common questions and convert that into a lead magnet. So now we have a lead magnet with the top 68 questions that are most commonly asked by anyone looking to move to Dubai as a business owner. That is a lead magnet. We can now put out

on LinkedIn, et cetera, to get email addresses in, nurture sequences. It is just blowing my mind what AI can do now with content generation marketing.

KC Brothers (29:30.221)
None.

Yeah, and with that, actually do want to take a step back and just call out that word of mouth is not how it happens anymore. And you probably don't know it. And a lot of, at least, accountants in the US, again, finding business isn't hard because there aren't enough accountants to go around. And so a lot of them aren't marketing. Even for quite some time, it was illegal to market. I don't know the entire history around there. Anyway.

There's a lot of things that I think accountants are still breaking down and tearing apart and then trying to rebuild when it comes to marketing or understanding marketing and all of that jazz. think this understanding your ideal client profile is a big one. It's something I've talked about a lot, but I just wanted to double down on the fact that like people aren't talking physically, organically, texting, emailing and saying, Hey, you should go find this accountant. They're not doing that anymore.

The internet is such a prolific tool in terms of finding exactly what you need, especially with what is now being called zero click search, where you can type into the bar and you see that AI summary of whatever it is that you're looking for. And the thing is you don't know just how many people are doing that. And that's why what Reza is talking about right here about building this content, answering questions is so

impactful because it gets them in front of the exact person that they want to be found by without you guys doing, to your point, the phishing. They're coming and finding you because of the content you're writing. And again, I that idea about using transcripts. If you haven't written a lot, there's still ways to help train it on your voice and the way you speak.

KC Brothers (31:30.006)
I do want to call out security too here. If you're purchasing, you're not using the free versions, you are just fine to upload those transcripts and train it. It's not going into the larger model and training the whole internet. It is something that is still serving you specifically. And with that, you use it to help you make these content plans. Write blog posts, write LinkedIn. You need to be wherever people are going to find you. And that could be...

all of these places. But you can do it in a way that isn't super time consuming. It might be a little bit upfront. Have you heard the slow is smooth and smooth is fast, or even slowing down to speed up? I think of that with this. You kind of have to make sure you have that mentality as you go into these activities, because it will have a long tail benefit.

Reza (32:14.508)
Hmm.

Reza (32:27.476)
Absolutely. No, couldn't agree with you more. And something I'm talking about more and more is exactly that in terms of how do you win clients? How do you get calls booked on autopilot without relying on referrals? Now, referrals are great, but you never know when the next one is coming around the corner.

And in this day and age, as you rightly pointed out, the advent of internet is here to stay. not in the early 2000s anymore. It's pretty much here to stay. Even those statistics that came out recently that says that one in two referrals don't make their way to you because when they receive the referral, they check you out online. And if you don't exist or they don't like what they see, or if it doesn't look great, they won't get in touch with you.

So you're even missing out on 50 % of referrals because you have zero online presence. You haven't positioned yourself as an expert. You have no social profiles. You put off potential customers from coming to you. So in this day and age, there's no excuse really. need, you need to be online, get positions and expert. And that will enable you to build this system that generates you leads on autopilot ultimately, so that you're not relying on referrals.

KC Brothers (33:26.946)
Yep.

KC Brothers (33:46.019)
Yeah.

Reza (33:48.278)
because they are few and far between. never know when the next one is coming around the corner, which makes it very difficult for you to plan for your business and growth and hiring and everything that you want to do to grow and scale your business. It's not a predictable, sustainable strategy. And therefore you do have to look at building a marketing system that's going to generate those leads for you and your enterprise.

KC Brothers (33:48.302)
Mm-hmm.

KC Brothers (34:07.512)
Yeah, yes. Yeah, this isn't, it's just not, how do I say what I wanna say? It's not only not Main Street USA anymore, like where you can have a business on Main Street, put your marquee out front, have your open clothes and have people drive to you. And because a website, which is like your new front door now, and maybe not actually, you can't just get by with just a website anymore either.

That's not enough. You do, you need these elements. You need the ability, because people are asking questions. They're not necessarily just typing in, accountant near me. Though that can still be something that people are doing. They're asking like what you found with launching your new firm. I want a specialized accountant in content creation or accountant for content creators and influencers.

You know, and who cares if it's near them? They don't care. Like we are here on a call. You're in England and I'm in Utah. It is 2025 where we can get things done and it doesn't matter where we physically are. Yeah, there's so much more to dive into here and I'm so glad you opened that door of marketing, utilizing AI, getting ahead of the technology and making sure that you're getting found.

Reza (35:24.374)
Yeah, absolutely.

Reza (35:37.42)
Hmm. Yeah, I often talk about the, now is the best time and the biggest opportunity for us in decades to grow because of exactly what you just said in terms of those barriers have fallen, particularly because of what the pandemic and COVID where

Suddenly now people became comfortable having Zoom conversations because we couldn't meet in person. Clients became comfortable sending you things electronically and they could because of cloud software, your offices were closed, which means that if you get your positioning right and your messaging right, then you can attract business from anywhere in the country. Because of this societal shift that took place in the pandemic,

which otherwise may have taken five, 10 or more years, but it happened in space of a year because of the pandemic. But that's a huge opportunity, it's a silver lining for us to grow our firms without having a physical presence, without, you we all used to have clients within a 20, 30, 40 mile radius of our office. No longer the case. There's so many practitioners setting up remote teams, remote and being able to build and scale their firm pretty rapidly because of this new opportunity.

KC Brothers (36:48.482)
Yeah, I love it. Well, thank you, Reza. Everyone go check out Reza's book, The Four Pillars. It was a delight talking to you.

Reza (36:58.392)
It's been a pleasure, KC. Time has gone so fast and think we could talk for another couple of hours on this, I'm sure.

KC Brothers (37:00.878)
We probably could.