same.

Yeah, my best case and my client to this day that I absolutely adore.

I love her so much.

She came to me after... two or three years of getting her taxes done by someone else.

I won't name him, but I definitely looked him up.

I was like, who is this person? Because she had consistently made more and more money.

Like she had made $200,000 and then she had made, you know, 400.

Right,

And Marit, I know that you have had some experiences that made you start asking yourself, is accepting this opportunity actually worth it or not?

Yeah, and I think for me, it's really...

Obviously, the opportunities and what is good for you at some point might not be good for you a little bit later down the road.

And I kind of learned that the hard way because when I was... trying to expand who I was in the industry, right? So come out of just sitting at my desk, doing taxes, accounting, advising for clients all the time and kind of start using my expertise to help other tax professionals.

Like you said, we speak at a lot of the same conferences, sharing that knowledge.

I mean, I am a CPA.

I got my enrolled agent.

What do you want your life to look like? And do this time audit and see how am I actually spending my time? And will you actually recommend ranking them in order of importance, right?

And once you meet with clients and you kind of get their financial picture and they're getting cash, they're freeing it up, how do you help them decide what to do with that money? Because I know some clients are going to come to you and say, hey, should I buy equipment? Should I invest more in my business? What should I do with this money right now?

Yeah, I have to be careful with that.

And because I'm not a financial advisor, I'm a CPA and I have my ethical obligations and my everything that I have to follow my guidelines from the ASCPA to stay within my limitations.

A lot of my clients have financial advisors also.

And so I will work together with the financial advisor, right? We have meetings where we're working together regularly.

Because we have very different goals, right? The financial advisor is give us everything, draw everything out of your business, let us invest it.

And my goals are, hold on, we need to look at basis.

So a client sends you an AI-generated tax strategy that they came up with or someone, however they got it, and asks you, why haven't you ever recommended this to me? How do you respond to that or how do you start the conversation from there? Because sometimes that strategy may be something that you can't do and they're just assuming, hey, if AI created it or someone gave it to me, that it has to be right.

What were the kind of gross revenue and some of the struggles that you've incurred in those steps?

Well, I know exactly.

I know exactly when the pivot point was.

I know exactly what it was.

I've actually written a three-part article for OnPay and the OnPay ledger about building a CAS practice.

And for me, it was building a CAS practice.

So before I had some bookkeeping and accounting clients, I would do taxes once a year.

So like for you, I know you're kind of, you know, somewhat similar boat, but what is your kind of goal that you have now? Do you have a goal on Instagram and just playing around and exploring creativity?

So what would be that actionable piece of advice that you would tell the listener, you're looking to charge more and you need to believe in yourself? What is the thing they need to go and do?

I got lots of stuff for that.

I think one thing that I found to be a game changer, so we're talking about building accounting firms that are really successful.

And I realized during this time that one of my biggest blocks was around the fact that I equated, and a lot of people equate this, this is a reason why there are not as many young people getting into becoming CPAs.

I just spoke at AICPA Engage, and we talked a lot about the young potential professionals.

And they hear, oh, it's an 80-hour workweek.

I don't want to be a CPA, right? And business owners never have any life.

What is the number one actionable piece of advice you would give the listener when this episode is done? They need to go and implement to better their firm, better themselves, better their overall being.