Steve Perpich:   0:05

Hello everyone. This is Accountants 2.0, and I'm Steve Perpich with me today, with the president and founder of Accountants 2.0, ted Williamson. I'm laughing a little bit because this is our first podcast, and we're doing a few starts, takes and retakes, but this is the one that's going to stick. So, Ted, why are we here today?

Ted Williamson: 0:23

So why are we here? Why are we at this podcast? Well, basically we wanted a place where we would go, just like when we would go to QBO, connect or Xero, something like that. We want to have a community of accountants and the podcast is a way for us to bring thought leaders and bring all these people you would see at a conference into our world, into the accounting world. You can see them on a daily basis or a weekly basis. We can connect with other podcasters. You can get some more information. So basically, we want to make your experience in the accounting industry to be fun. We want you to have that experience of going to XeroCon, QBO Connect every time you engage with us, and for you to enjoy your life with different things we want to talk about. We can talk about podcasting, we can talk about the accounting industry in general. We can talk about remote working and how do we retain employees. So basically, we want to have fun. We want to have fun in accounting and just enjoy our lives and bring that joy to others.

Steve Perpich: 1:42

So, ted, when you see fun like you mentioned the conferences and things like that what do you mean by fun? Is it fun through success? Is it fun just the interaction? Is it all the above? I mean we're all in this together. It's a huge market and accounting is always going to be there, so what's so fun about it?

Ted Williamson: 2:03

What's so fun about it? Well, so another podcast that we're going to have, or episode that I was just talking to you about, is I want to do a podcast about accounting being sexy, because so many people think about accounting just crunching the numbers. So really, we just all the things that go around accounting the industry, going to conferences, finding different entrepreneurs that you can talk to, learning from them and then helping them along the way. It's exciting, it's a lot of fun and there's a ton of things that we can really bring to each other as a community, not just as bringing to you, but enjoying our community. We can all help each other have that. So not just crunching the numbers, but doing the conferences, having fun with your fellow community members at like ZeroCon. I'll give you an example. When I went to ZeroCon in New Orleans last year, I was like I'm going to do a podcast. We had a blast. We met so many vendors and some of them are now partners of Accountants 2.0 and you're gonna see them throughout the weeks and months and we met them. We had drinks, we danced, especially with the zero people. They're awesome and it was just a great time. Then again, there's fun in just doing your job. You can do it, you can work remotely, you can have a great relationship with your coworkers. It's just there's so much things that we can do, so many things.

Steve Perpich: 3:41

So you're talking about lifestyle, like the lifestyle that are around accounting and helping businesses with their bottom line from the basics, tax planning and stuff, but also, like I said, the networking, because these events definitely are networking. I recall, actually we're getting on a year or half ago, the Elevate Fest on Toronto. We all went as a team and the well, I mean even off of the conference area in the surrounding area in Toronto. I actually found a client just by sitting and talking and they saw the conference badge and the way we went. We had the discussion and there you go. So it's not just trying to have a lifestyle and a balance. With that comes the I guess, the attraction of opportunity, wouldn't you say? Like, I mean, that's kind of what we.

Ted Williamson: 4:35

Oh, absolutely. I mean opportunity is a lot of fun yeahs.

Steve Perpich: 4:39

Right.

Ted Williamson: 4:40

Well, opportunity is fun, getting to know people is a ton of fun, and so a little bit of context. He was talking about getting a client at Elevate Festival. So back then we actually had, so we actually exited from an accounting firm and now we started Accountants 2.0. So that's kind of how it all started here, and when we went to the Elevate Festival we were starting the, we were building the concept of Accountants 2.0 to get it out there, and so when he's talking about a client, it's actually an accounting client for our old accounting firm. So that's kind of a little bit of context to that. So it's a lot of fun. You can go to these things, you can go to trade shows and you can have a ton of fun doing that. Finding clients. Steve was pretty much able to just kind of hang out and have a few drinks with people and just talk and then a client comes out of it or we learn a ton of stuff.

Steve Perpich: 5:36

So yeah, Some will say I'm more lifestyle than accounting. I can't go.

Ted Williamson: 5:41

Oh yeah, definitely. Oh well, I am too. So basically, I'm more of an entrepreneur than an accountant. I own an accounting firm and but I love building and I love the connection between accounting and the business world and entrepreneurism. So that's why I wanted to create Accountants 2.0 to connect the two Eventually. That is a lot of. Our goal is to help accountants connect with their clients and grow.

Steve Perpich: 6:13

The balance now, because since COVID, people got used to being remote working and that's really been consolidated. But there is a balance. Being remote and connecting virtually is great, but part of that is actually getting out there and, whether you're a regional accounting firm or you go further afield, taking the opportunity as part of the accounts 2.0 lifestyle, getting in front of people both virtually and in real life, to really consolidate your brand. Also, when you're out there live, you get more material for your marketing. Anyways, I can tell everyone who's going to be watching this podcast video-wise. We're not just listening in, we're going to be doing it in different locations. We're not always going to be sitting in our offices shoving our laptops in front of each other. We're going to get out there, we'll do stuff, but today it's our first one and we're getting our C legs with what we're talking about. But we wanted to share that enthusiasm with everybody. That's why we're being a little informal, but at the same time, ted, you're hitting it right on the head there, I believe. But it is this community for best practice community to talk about what's going on. Then we all see collaborative opportunities where we can all help each other, because it's a big industry, and we're only better together.

Ted Williamson: 7:45

Absolutely. There's too many times where an accountant or somebody in the accounting industry is trying to be a generalist, where you can just connect to a community of people and they can offer something that you can offer them your claim. We're going to talk about all this. We actually have a bunch of steps in how to be a new age accountant. That's in our community. Check it out, or you can check it on blog posts and stuff as well, but I'd rather you go to the community because that's where you're going to connect with people.

Steve Perpich: 8:15

When you mentioned that you're talking, about meeting a challenge, right, Ted, Some of the challenges. If you're too much of a generalist and you say yes to everything, that's a really difficult way to manage your business and you're just going to get a lot of you'll have a hard time responding to clients. We want to make sure that in this community, what we're trying to get across is focus, best practice and being that new age accountant which is responsive, cutting-edge technology and really, really geared for growth.

Ted Williamson: 8:50

Absolutely. Doing your research is super important. Being a generalist is tough because that means you need to be a specialist in all these different areas. You can't, and so you're going to have poor quality in some areas. I mean, this is a topic for another time, but we can touch on it. Using the community of people that are specialists, you're able to be a generalist in the eyes of your client by getting the help of others. I guess, paying forward the profits, helping and then being able to first of all help your client, help a fellow accountant and you're able to also benefit with increasing your margins or not increasing your margins, but increasing your profits, overall profits. Those are profits you wouldn't have had and if you did that yourself not actually being a specialist you would have lost some money, you wouldn't have nearly as much and you would have do a whole bunch of extra training. Part of the fun also is finding new opportunities and new services that you can do and researching them specifically. What's big right now? Cfo services. That's huge. A lot of people are looking at that and we're looking at different ways of offering that service. It's attractive because there's a high margin. There's high margins there and it's using. It's more sexy because it's using information rather than compiling it. So we all like to use reports and make conclusions and assumptions and figure things out rather than just crunching numbers. Crunching numbers. There's a place for it. People love it, like some people love it, some people don't, and that's great. But we want to make sure that there's opportunities there and that you're learning and all of these things are coming by being in a community and researching and knowing what's out there. You can either offer it through somebody else or you can start to dig in and learn if you want that to be a core competency of your own firm. So that part's fun all that research and building it.

Steve Perpich: 11:11

I agree. What I'm finding in the market today is people want more than just the bookkeeping. And you're filing my tax return and then you're only getting back to me once a quarter at best. By offering a little bit more advisory and that comes from being cutting edge yourself as an accounting firm you can have that best practice as an example to your clients so they'll start, they can take advantage of what you're doing in your excellence. Maybe then it opens the conversation for other opportunity with your client because you're now excellent. You're helping them be excellent with Garth's infrastructure, technology, communications and things by being that yourself. The next step is to have that virtual CFO function and to really talk about growth for your client. Then you're going to have better retention, smoother operations and then both your client and yourself can scale.

Ted Williamson: 12:13

Yeah, absolutely so. I didn't even mean that everybody should research and get into being a CFO, but being able to offer it is awesome. So you could find another somebody who is an expert CFO and they do expert services for people or they understand an industry in and out.

Steve Perpich: 12:31

And that's the reason you might want to go with them. And that's reason for the community.

Ted Williamson: 12:35

You can offer CFO services from this expert who understands your client even more than you do, and you're a star. You can make a profit from helping that CFO and white labeling that in your own services, or you can become a CFO. There's all kinds of options here. It's a lot of people think that you're in a vacuum and you have to create your own services and do all your own things. You don't. You go in a direction that you want to go in, but you can still bring in other people, which is amazing.

Steve Perpich: 13:09

So you bring in best in class services based on your criteria and for your clients' requirements.

Ted Williamson: 13:16

Absolutely, that's really.

Steve Perpich: 13:22

That's great. So, ted, we discussed talking with the community. We're talking about some of the benefits and some of the things that you can gain by participating in the community. And for those who don't know, just go to any of our social media sites, especially our website accounts. 2.0.com. There's a way of just fill out the form to join our community. There's links all over the place on the site to get there and then we'll be. But how are the community interface going to work? I mean, we have our Facebook group, we have a LinkedIn group. People will decide up and participate. Are we going to have events? Are we going to have kind of how should I put it like scheduled activity where we all just jump in and do more of a live stream thing, as opposed to our recorded podcast at the moment?

Ted Williamson: 14:11

Absolutely Well, but first I want to clarify one thing. So the website is accountants20.com right Not 2.0 because URL they don't like decimals, right, so but yeah, so so accounts20.com.

Steve Perpich: 14:27

I'm a Googler. I would just put accounts20.com in the search engine and it would probably it would find accounts20.com, but yes, yeah, we're all.

Ted Williamson: 14:34

it's all over the place. It's easy to find Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, but yes we're going to have If you're on this YouTube or on the Riverside platform.

Steve Perpich: 14:46

We're going to see, you'll see the our link right there, so we're good to go.

Ted Williamson: 14:51

Yep, absolutely. So. Yes, we're going to have a ton of events and we're going to engage with others at their events, so hopefully we get into. I mean, obviously we're still kind of a newer company bringing us all together. It's very thought out and we're systematically launching everything. So because we're newer, we're not going to be immediately in every conference or every convention, but you can expect to see us eventually in every one of them.

Steve Perpich: 15:26

So, for upcoming conversations.

Ted Williamson: 15:28

Webinars we're definitely going to have webinars and different events that we'd like to hold, especially in, like, certain areas like maybe New York or Detroit or Toronto or Dallas or something like that. Right, so we might just hold like a small event in one of these places just to get to know people, connect the community within these areas and get going. There's so many things that we can do. We haven't put an event schedule out yet, but, yes, lots of events.

Steve Perpich: 16:03

And upcoming conversations, we're getting into really the nuts and bolts of how we can benefit people's firms, as far as going beyond the community finding best in class specialist just through the networking but also other benefits by associating with accounts to them.

Ted Williamson: 16:26

Absolutely so. One thing that we like to do is bring in partners, associate our partners with us, and we don't do that necessarily by having sponsors on our, on our podcast or something like that. We actually want to. We don't want to make money off our podcast, we want to just get the community together, have some fun, entertaining or entertainment and some actual knowledge there. Sorry, was that? Sorry Was that you, steve? Okay.

Steve Perpich: 17:00

In the future. Ted, if I'm sending you a text message, don't announce it to the entire audience, but I think yeah so I think we've given everyone, I think we're giving everyone a nice taste of what we're all about and who we are, and I think we can close off today by telling everyone again join our community. Accountants20.com or Accounts 2.0, if you're searching for it on Bing or Google or YouTube or LinkedIn or you'll find it. I'm going to say, signing off for now and everybody, have a great day and thanks Ted for taking the time to talk to us.

Ted Williamson: 17:47

Absolutely Well. You'll see me every time, every time here with you, Steve, so all right you mean I'm stuck with you, oh man you're stuck All right, everyone have a great day. All right, have a good day.