Build A Focused Firm with Hector Garcia, CPA

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Hector Garcia: [00:00:00] And my favorite quote ever. This is my favorite quote, the quote of all quotes. This is the quote that that I used to think about life. And this is the quote that I tell to my children all the time. This is a quote that I use for business and parenting, which is Wayne Dyer's quote, which is when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And there's no more innovative spirit than that, quote change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:33] Hello, everyone, and welcome to our series Building a Focused Firm with Hector Garcia, CPA. I'm Blake Oliver, CPA, your moderator for today's episode. This is the seventh installment in an eight part series, all about how to build an accounting and bookkeeping firm that gives you joy by focusing on what matters. This is our last live stream. Our final session will be a webinar on March 28th. Subscribe to our email list to get an invite to that. You can subscribe if you have not at earmark Cpcomm slash focus. You'll get notified of the webinar, you'll get an invite, you'll get a calendar invite and you'll get a link to the CPE course for each episode when it is available on the Earmark CPE app. Thanks to our sponsor Avalara for making this series possible. Avalara is award winning tax Automation Solutions Help Accounting Practitioner of all sizes, from sole proprietors to top 100 firms. Avalara simplifies sales tax compliance with real time rates, automated return filings, registrations, tax research and automated tax solutions for specialized tax areas. We live and breathe tax so you don't have to. Learn more at aba-liga.com Slash accountants. Thanks, everyone, who has joined us live. You can chat with us. You'll need to subscribe to the YouTube channel to chat. Let us know your thoughts.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:03] Let us know your opinions. Go ahead and ask questions. I'll put those to Hector as we go through the presentation. Now let's talk about CPE. I mentioned that you can earn CPE for joining us today. This is a live stream, not a traditional webinar, so it works a bit differently. You'll get an email next week with a link to the course on the earmark CPE app. Sign up for the app, click the link to the course and you'll be able to take a quick quiz and get your free CPE certificate. Again, sign up for our email list so that you get notified when that course is available and get a link to go directly to the course. All right. With that out of the way, let's get to our topic today, which is part seven Innovation Thought Experiment. I'm eager for this one, Hector. I understand that we're going to ask a question which is near and dear to my heart because I have an eight year old son. We're going to ask, what if Disney created an accounting firm and I'm going to Disney later this year? So and I'm addicted to it. So everything they do is incredible. I want to know what can we learn from Disney about how to run a firm?

Hector Garcia: [00:03:10] Absolutely. And welcome, everybody. Thank you, Avalara Thank you for everybody joining us live. And thank you for people watching the live streams and listening to the podcast afterwards. So first of all, this concept of what if Disney were to open an accounting firm or where to acquire an accounting firm or start an accounting firm, whichever way you want to put it together comes from or the inspiration comes from Ron Baker, a mutual friend of ours, and a person that truly inspires and continues to inspire us practitioners to think differently and kind of try to swim against the current and work at it. Just try to break the status quo. And I think the reason why that's a good question to ask and you should not be limited to just that question. You could also ask, you know, what if Walmart were to open golf courses or what if Rolex were to open a sandwich shop? Like you could take two completely seemingly unrelated things and try to put them together. And it will require you to really, really think deeply and creatively and in some cases get a partner to brainstorm with. And so Blake will be my partner today. And that's really the idea of of innovation. Innovation really just starts with conversation, conversation, definition, imagining, imagining things, riffing off each other, saying silly things, saying crazy things. And at some point in time, maybe on your first session, maybe on your 100th session, innovation will catch you by surprise, that's for sure.

Hector Garcia: [00:04:40] You know, there will be a eureka moment where you'll say, Oh yeah, that is what we need, that's what we need to implement. So before we get started with that and that that's definitely going to be the fun part, we'll just improv. I want to break it, break it down a little bit and talk about innovation. Like what is innovation and, and how did I get inspired to start innovating and, and, and transforming my firm and adding new things, new services, new ways of thinking to my firm. So we're going to break this down into three areas. So we're going to have where I get the inspiration from this. So this is where Hector gets his inspiration from. Then we'll define what innovation is. I'll give you the textbook definition. I'll give you my own definition, and I'll give you some quotes to inspire you. Because innovation, for the most part, is inspiration, not so much perspiration because you can't you. You can't innovate on purpose. You almost always happens by accident. Right? So. So you almost have to be in a continuous state of inspiration and and, and create an environment where innovation is always welcomed but never forced. Okay, So, so, so we'll discuss that. And then lastly, we'll talk about what actually ask the question and Blake and I will ask each other questions about, you know, how would we brainstorm a, a thought experiment like this? And this is an exercise that I think everyone could take to their firm with your partner, with an employee, with a fellow practitioner.

Hector Garcia: [00:06:08] If you're a solo person and start really, really thinking through some of these possibilities. And then we'll we'll have Q and A sort of sprinkled through the session. So let's start with inspiration. So I'm going to give you what I think is the Innovators bookshelf. And by the way, there's plenty of other books that I think I should have mentioned here, but I'm going to tell you the few that I think that if I were to carry with me and teach people innovation or tell people this is what I learned, what I know it would be from these books. So I'm going to list them. And some people are watching on the on the live webinar, you know, or through through video on YouTube. They can see this slide for for the for the folks that are only doing audio. Let's go through it. So number one is going to be Ron Baker and Paul Dunn's book Time's Up subscription business model for professionals. Second one is a book called Win Without Pitching by the author Blair Enz. One of my favorite books has nothing to do with accounting, but it's amazing. Another book that I love is Rory Sutherland's book, Alchemy. I think this was about three years old, and it's actually an amazing book.

Hector Garcia: [00:07:13] Another one is Every book by Peter Drucker. But the problem is that he's got like 40 or 50 books. So we're just going to I'm just going to mention the top seller, the probably the best one to get started with, which is called the Effective Executive. The next book, which I love, is Peter Thiel's book, 0 to 1. This one introduced a very important concept that drives almost everything that I do, which is. You can compete with others or you can be your own monopoly. And what does that mean? It means that if you are unique enough, if you're different enough, if you create your own category simply just by innovating or reframing and we'll get into reframing, you will have a monopoly and no one else has, you know, can offer what Hector Garcia, CPA, the YouTuber, can offer. I have a monopoly on that, and that's a really important piece that every single one of us being us different, having a separate, you know, thumbprint, a fingerprint, we can be a monopoly of our own. And I just absolutely love when he introduced that concept. It blew my mind. Another great one, a great book, is Clayton Christensen's Innovator's Dilemma. I believe he passed away last year. He was a Harvard professor. He introduced the concept of jobs to be done where he says every product and service is hired to do a job. Every product or service is hired to do a job.

Hector Garcia: [00:08:36] So you almost have to give the product that you sell, the personality that that product is being hired to do a job. And you have to think of it from that perspective. And of course, I'm not doing the book any, any, any, any justice by just saying that. And that's it. But Innovator's Dilemma, an amazing book. Another one is Oldie but Goodie Classic is called Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. You know, there's there's like 20 different versions of that. I bought my teenage daughter, the one that says Seven Habits for Highly Effective Teens. And I'm making her read it. I'm making her present it back to me. So it's actually really fun way of of connecting the things that we do to be effective business people and then see how, you know, your kids or family members or individuals, non-business people can do similar things, similar themes, and they can also be effective as human beings. So I think that's awesome too. Simon Sinek has tons of books that are inspiring leader leaders eat last Start with the Why, but I'm just going to allude to the latest one, The Infinite Game, which is really, really awesome. Old concept, new spin to it. Trust me, you'll be inspired by it. And then there's W-2 Chan, Kim and Renée Moberg. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly. Blue Ocean strategy, which talks about basically niching, right? Like why would you want to be in a red ocean where everybody is, you know, fighting for the same customer? You know, blue ocean means pick another place where no one else is is swimming or or or floating or whatever you want to call it, and go there, go there, don't go where Everybody is fighting for each other.

Hector Garcia: [00:10:12] So sort of create your own category in each. Another book that I love, and there's many books about Disney or Walt Disney, but this one is one of the most recent ones is Bob Iger's Ride of a Lifetime great book about leadership and just kind of taking you through his story with with Disney. He's not sure if he's a current CEO, but he was the CEO until a while ago. And then another most recent book is by a young fellow. His name is Chris Doerr, and his book is called A Pocket Full of Dough. And he's a graphic designer by by trade that started a YouTube channel to educate the world and his his and his model. His his his slogan is, I want to help a billion people make money doing what they love. And he has an amazing YouTube channel. You definitely want to research him. He's amazing, inspires me every day and many other people. So this is the innovator's bookshelf, right? So you go back, rewind, listen to it again, see which ones you have, which ones you don't have.

Hector Garcia: [00:11:14] I guarantee you that this will help you build an innovator's mindset. Okay, so let's talk about what is innovation. So we started with where we get inspiration from. Now let's talk about some definitions so we can all be in the same page. So the first six episodes of this series, let's do a quick recap. We talked about positioning, which is branding marketing. Let's talk about let's just say that's where it is. We talked about business model, which is about, you know, how to structure your business strategy. Then we talked about technology, which is the tools that we use to work and deliver the the deliverables of our work. Then we talked about sales process and onboarding, how to how to get the right client, how to how to continuously get the client in with the right expectations. Then we talked about value pricing and offering guarantees. How do we align the value you create with the price you charge and make the customer feel good about what they're paying, even if they're paying more than the competition? And then episode six, we talked about attracting and retaining talent because without talented employees you can sell services all day long, but who's going to do the work? Right? So that's what we talked about in this six episodes. And really what's missing here is innovation and innovation can happen in any of these stages. Most people think innovation is only a technology thing and true.

Hector Garcia: [00:12:30] I mean, that's really where innovation gets manifested in a very acute way, which is very obvious that there's innovation there with technology. But most. Innovation happens in your mind? Especially innovation. Innovation in terms of changing your business model, innovation about reframing what you do, innovation and how you approach selling to your customers innovation and how you price and how you offer guarantees, innovation and how you attract and retain talent. So innovation is sprinkled through any of these sort of deep topics that we talked about. Now, one of my favorite, one of my favorite topics or quotes, and it really does encompass everything we've talked about so far is Peter Drucker's quote, which is because the purpose of a business is to create a customer. The business enterprise has two and only two basic functions marketing and innovation, marketing and innovation produce results. All the rest are costs. That's Peter Drucker's quote. This is from the 70 seconds possibly or the 60s maybe. I don't know how far back this quote goes, but that's what we talked about. Everything that we've talked about so far is marketing and innovation or the catalyst to change it or improve it is within the eyes of marketing and innovation. So absolutely love that quote. And if you actually start believing that quote, you start changing where you're going to spend the most amount of energy. This quote is not very popular amongst accountants because most accountants think, wait, wait, there should be three functions.

Hector Garcia: [00:14:02] Add accounting in there. Add finance in there. No, no, no. You have to understand accounting and finance our costs, their compliance. These are costs. Okay. None of these things add to the purpose of the business, which is to create a customer. You cannot create a new customer through great accounting methods. Okay? Maybe you maintain them, you know, by not pestering them with open invoices that already paid or something like that. I get that. But most of the time you don't create customers, you don't create products, you don't create markets through accounting and finance. These are costs. So you have to understand that you know, for for most of us, for most of our customers anyway, that's how they see us, right? So you can always reframe yourself as, Hey, I am going to take over the market. I mean, the accounting function, I'm going to take over the finance function. You're going to outsource the entire thing to me so you can focus on marketing and innovation. So just use the same concept to to to empower your customer, your your small business client to refocus their energy in innovating and branding and marketing and all those things. Okay. I'm going to give you a couple more quotes, but before we do that, do you have any comments on this or any questions so far on what we talked about?

Blake Oliver: [00:15:15] Uh, no. I just love it. And I love that quote. I think it's really challenging for firms to get that the marketing and innovation or the core activities. We all think it's the accounting, it's the returns. And when you actually look into it, it's not. But you can do a whole webinar just on this quote.

Hector Garcia: [00:15:33] Yeah, you're absolutely right. Yeah. Well, we are almost doing that, almost a whole webinar on this quote, that's for sure. That's for sure.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:39] That's right. Would now be a good time to take a little break?

Hector Garcia: [00:15:42] Yeah, go ahead. Let's do it.

Speaker3: [00:15:43] Okay. Let's do this.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:45] Yeah, Let's give a shout out to Avalara. Thank you to our sponsor, Avalara for their financial support that makes this series possible. Did you know that 52% of accounting practitioners from small to large still rely on spreadsheets and manual processes for sales tax compliance? It's time to stop and focus on automation. The Avalara for Accountants Suite empowers even the smallest practitioner to support clients tax compliance needs. All firms can benefit from their referral program. Simply refer clients to avalara and let them assist on your behalf for practices that offer direct compliance services. Use Avalara for accountants award winning tools to help you start or grow a tax compliance or CAS service expressly designed for accounting service providers with multiple clients. Solutions include real time rates, automated returns, filing registrations, tax research and automated tax solutions for specialized tax areas. Partner with avalara and grow your practice with efficient and accurate sales tax compliance while reducing risks for you and your clients. To learn more, contact Avalara at accountants at aba-liga.com or visit them at avalara.com/accountants. All right, back to you, Hector.

Hector Garcia: [00:16:58] Perfect. All right. So let's talk about a couple of other quotes. Again, we're in the thick of inspiration. So, Blake, my job right now as a facilitator of this is to get you turned on into this sort of innovation mindset. So then when we start brainstorming about, you know, the big question, you know, what if Disney were to open an accounting firm, your neurons are sort of opened up for that. So I'm going to give you another quote that I love, which is the value of a product or service can increase or decrease depending on the context in which it is presented. What do you think about that?

Blake Oliver: [00:17:38] I think of bottled water at the airport, so it might cost me $0.69 at the grocery store. It'll cost me $6.90 at the Phoenix Airport. And that's all because of where I am. And. What my other options are when I'm there. I'm a captive audience.

Hector Garcia: [00:17:59] Absolutely. There's a funny video on YouTube I recommend you watch. I think it's called $2 ed Sheeran Peep Show. Have you seen that one? $2. Ed Sheeran Peep show.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:12] Is this where he's anonymous and people don't know who he is and they're trying to get people.

Speaker3: [00:18:17] Okay, So what.

Hector Garcia: [00:18:17] They do is that they actually put him I think this is like Australia or New Zealand or something like that. They put him in a little in they're in like this peep show district and whatever city they're in a place that's known to have a lot of sort of peep shows and strip clubs and that sort of thing. And they rented one of the rooms. And then Ed Sheeran, the art, the international superstar, was there and there was a you know, he was he was covered up. And then there were a guy out in the street, a super shady looking guy, was saying, hey, $2 for 30 seconds for a peep of Ed Sheeran. He's there. And no one no one would no one would say yes for like 2.5 hours, one after tons of convincing, they goes, okay, whatever. $2. Let's see what what you got. And people sit down. They go, Peep show started. You know, the it's really him. It's really Ed Sheeran. He's singing one on one to this person. This person is like just like stuck mummified And then, you know, the 30 seconds later, curtain goes. He's like, Can I do more? He's like, No, no, just 30 seconds. That's it. Goodbye. You know, and just the lesson here is that, first of all, I mean, $2 per 30 seconds. I mean, I think I would pay $200 to get 100 minutes straight with him or whatever the math is. But it's the context. Like it's Peep Show Superstar $2. It just doesn't make any sense to the user. So the user is not going to believe the value is there, so why would they even bother?

Blake Oliver: [00:19:39] I got one like that for you. So Joshua Bell did an experiment where he went into a subway station in New York and he busked he just took out his violin and started playing, opened the case for money. And people are walking by for like a whole hour. And only 1 or 2 people recognized him and understood the artistry of what he was doing. Everybody else totally missed it because he wasn't in the same context. He wasn't in the concert hall, he wasn't wearing his suit.

Hector Garcia: [00:20:07] And then down the street at the Lincoln Center, people would pay 200 bucks, you know, to oh, yeah.

Speaker3: [00:20:13] To go see him.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:13] Much more than $500 for a seat, you know, to see Joshua Bell at one of those concerts. It's amazing.

Speaker3: [00:20:19] Yeah, it's.

Hector Garcia: [00:20:20] Incredible. The context is everything. Pretty much that's what that that quote that quote is telling us. Another really cool quote is from Albert Einstein, which is, you cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them. But basically, this is a riff on your definition of insanity, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. All you're saying is that the problem that was created using old thinking cannot be solved with the old thinking we have. We need new thinking, right? So we need to completely change that. Next one is Peter Thiel's quote, author of 0 to 1, which is The most valuable businesses of the coming decades, will be built by the entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than to make them obsolete. And this is before the whole AI craze, before Chatgpt. Think about this. Okay, so Peter Thiel is just thinking way ahead of his time. This book is from 2007, I believe, or 2017. Actually, the most valuable businesses of the upcoming decades will be built by the entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than try to make them obsolete and think about what all these technologies are trying to do, or at least the context in which people are viewing these new technologies.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:42] When do you know when he said that, Hector? Because that is very prescient given the development.

Speaker3: [00:21:46] Not recent. It's not recent.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:48] Like with with Chatgpt.

Speaker3: [00:21:50] Like.

Hector Garcia: [00:21:50] Prior to Chatgpt.

Speaker3: [00:21:51] Yeah. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:52] So like generative AI just makes me already so much more productive. It's incredible how it's augmented my abilities and like so this is just totally spot on, right?

Hector Garcia: [00:22:01] And the context is we can see these technologies. Some people you could choose to see these technologies as trying to make people obsolete or replace people with technology or the folks that say, you know what, I'm going to use this tool to empower me to make me better rather than trying to replace someone else or make my team better rather than trying to replace them. So I think that's the other challenge that people are having, especially with Chatgpt type of technologies, is they're saying, well, you know, how is this going to save me money? And that's code word for who can I fire and use this instead? You know, like people are not thinking of using this to empower individuals. So it's a great quote. I love it. Very important and pertinent to today's time. Another great quote from Blair ends is he actually came up with this concept called the inefficiency principle, inefficiency, principle. That's not a real word. It's his made up word and is. Innovation and efficiency are mutually opposing goals. You cannot increase without decreasing the other, which means you must be inefficient to bring on innovation. It's the very difficult to to be mired in efficiency and somehow innovate.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:16] And this is why accounting firms, traditional accounting firms struggle to innovate because they say we're going to give our staff 10% innovation time and innovation is a lot more inefficient than 10%. You need to give them 20, 30, 40, even 50% of their time to innovate.

Hector Garcia: [00:23:36] Well, I mean, if you're if you're measuring the innovation time, that means that you're that you're focused on efficiency. Right, Right, right.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:44] Oh, that's a good point. I never thought of it that way.

Hector Garcia: [00:23:47] Yeah, you're measuring innovation and then you're trying to get your innovation output per hour, you know, in a spreadsheet or something like that. Right. Of course, you're not going to get anything out of it. This is why accounting firms don't innovate, because did you ever watch efficiency?

Blake Oliver: [00:24:01] Did you ever watch that show Mad Men?

Speaker3: [00:24:02] Hector Yes, absolutely. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:03] So like, when I think of innovation, I think of Don Draper, like lying on his couch in his office, doing nothing for like two days until he has a moment of genius. And then that becomes the ad campaign that propels the agency to its next level. It's not. You can't measure him with a timesheet.

Hector Garcia: [00:24:22] Yeah, yeah. No, it's one of the awesome scenes from it is when Conrad Hilton, who is the the owner founder of Hilton Hotels, is showing him in a social setting, is showing him, I guess an advert, an advertising poster where they have the new slogan or the new mascot of Hilton, which is the little lovable character that customers would fall in love with, is a little Mickey Mouse looking mouse. It's a little Mickey Mouse looking mouse, you know, talking about the hotel or whatever. So he asked them to give him a free one. He's like, Hey man, this is my profession. What do you mean? He's like, you know, just give me a free one. And then and then he takes out a cigaret takes a long puff, he's looking at it and he goes, I don't think that in the context of hotels, people want to think about a mouse.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:09] Oh, I forgot about that scene, but that's a really good one.

Speaker3: [00:25:12] Yeah, but.

Hector Garcia: [00:25:13] But if you're thinking like efficiency. Efficient mindset will never drive you to that particular thought. Yeah. Okay. Like, efficient mindset will think about the size of the of the lettering, the size of this and the picture. You're not using it like just like the really big picture stuff, the simple things. And, you know, innovators think differently. I believe they just see the problems in different perspectives. Another quote that I like and again, Blake, I'm trying to inspire you, okay? I'm trying to get you into this innovative mindset. So Bob Iger, the Disney CEO, is he said the riskiest thing we can do is just to maintain the status quo or the riskiest thing is not to take any risks. So basically what he's saying is you've got to take a risk. You got to take a risk, got to do something different. Another awesome quote is creativity and innovation always comes to us as a surprise. Otherwise central planning would work. This is from George Gilder, author of Wealth and Poverty. Obviously, his big, big, big into capitalism and free markets. And this is where, you know, innovation comes from. It's letting people solve problems for other people, don't you know, not just getting the government and central planning out of the way in order to foment innovation.

Hector Garcia: [00:26:31] Another really good one, and this is this last one from George Gilder. I asked our friend at Class A from the Soul of Enterprise Podcast, a podcast that we love. I asked him for a quote on innovation that you like. He gave me this one. Okay, so quick shout out to our friend at class and then ask our friend Ron Baker for his favorite quote on on innovation. And he gave me this one. This is from Ed Catmull, who's a CEO of Pixar. And you can see there's some there's a lot of Disney themes here in a fear based, failure averse culture, fear based people fearing for their jobs, failure averse culture. This is people that really don't want to screw things up. People will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk. Their work will be derivative and not innovative. And how how much of accounting work is simply just derivative? Because we are fear based. We don't want to screw it up because the customer will get a penalty, right? Failure adverse, You know, that's what we measure. We track time so we can always go back and tell, Well, I spent 30 hours on the project then, you know, it doesn't matter. You know, I can justify or see myself into any possible mistakes because we put enough resources or people or time into it.

Hector Garcia: [00:27:47] So again, when people are avoiding risk, they're just going to do more of the same and not ever innovate or bring new thinking. Another one awesome quote from Michael Dell, founder of Dell Computers is efficiency is the foundation of survival. But innovation is the foundation of success. We have to have efficiency, but innovation is more important. And one of one, a quote I like from Ron Baker don't have it in the slides here, which is effectiveness trumps efficiency. Effectiveness is more important. And I think innovation is effectiveness because innovation means creating something new for your customers, which is effective at getting your customers to come in to buy your products and services. So how we innovate, we innovate in three ways, actually three and a half ways. Okay, We can innovate by creating a new thing. We can innovate by improving an existing thing, but not just a small improvement, a noticeable improvement, and that's very difficult. I don't have a number, but it needs to be noticeable so we can create a new thing. One, we can noticeably improve an existing thing. Or three, we can reframe an existing thing without changing it or improving it. Okay. And we're going to go back and talk about that reframing because that's probably the bulk of all the low hanging fruit type of innovation that we can create immediately.

Hector Garcia: [00:29:10] And that's what the exercise of what if Disney were to create an accounting firm because we would reframe what we think an accounting firm does and we will reframe what we think the Disney brand does into this new sort of merged concept. And the half the three and a half one is we can combine a whole bunch of existing things that are not necessarily new, but the combination and sometimes a unique combination would feel like something new. This is this is what we call bundling. And in in the accounting world, this is what we call the, quote, tech stack. And people are obsessed. What's your tech stack? What's your tech stack? Because your tech stack is your combination of technologies that you put together, integrate and use in a particular order and try to use it across all your customers to create a new, unique, different feeling experience without really reinventing the wheel. You didn't develop any of the apps. All you did was choose the right combination of apps, bundle them to give the customer the feel of something new, something unique. Okay. Any comments or questions so far?

Speaker3: [00:30:16] Like?

Blake Oliver: [00:30:16] No, the bundling thing I think also applies to, you know, the way we sell the existing services. We have just bundling tax and bookkeeping together into a new offering that's subscription based, right? Like that's yeah.

Hector Garcia: [00:30:31] Yeah. So I mean, so just combine, you have to create something new, just combine them and, and the combination could be that's why I call it three and a half because that one is almost not really necessarily innovation, but it can feel and it's a very simple, easy way to to go about it. Okay. Now, what is the textbook definition of innovation? It's a new idea, a new method, a new device, a novelty, the introduction of something new. I think we all knew this, but I'm going to give you my breakdown on the word innovation. And the nice thing is this works in Spanish and it works in English because it comes from the Latin roots of these words. So we start with in from innovation, which means in or inside I think of that of inside your head. Nova comes from new right? Nova is Latin. The Latin root for new and ation is action. So if you break this down is to make something internal new or to think differently about something. That's what innovation is. Make something internal new. So make your head think differently. That's to me, the definition of of innovation. Now, there's tons of subjectivity on innovation because whether something is whether something is new or old, it's a it's a subjective concept. Right? So, Blake, I know you live in Arizona. I've never been to to Arizona. Right? So if I go to Arizona, I'm going to see a bunch of things that are new. You drive around and see that thing every day of your life. Okay? So. So tons of subjectivity. So that means that nothing is intrinsically nothing is intrinsically new or intrinsically intrinsically old. Does that make sense? So nothing is natural, new or natural old only to the person that perceives it that way, correct?

Blake Oliver: [00:32:27] Yes. And objectively, you know, when we when we repackage services in an accounting firm, when we rework how an team members are incentivized, often they're really still doing the same things. They were doing before. We're just thinking about it in a different way and that changes everything.

Hector Garcia: [00:32:46] Absolutely right.

Speaker3: [00:32:47] Okay. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:47] You're you're still filing a tax return. You're still reconciling accounts. You know, you're still talking with clients. But it's the way you think about it, the way you present it, that makes the big difference.

Hector Garcia: [00:32:59] Okay. Can you share my screen again just one more time? Think on share my mistake.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:03] And if you don't mind me sort of going on a little rant here. Yeah. Like if you think about it, like this is where people get get innovation wrong in accounting is that we think that in order to change our firms, we have to add new services, that we have to do new things, but we don't. We can do exactly what we were doing before, but do it in a slightly different way and it changes the whole experience.

Speaker3: [00:33:27] Or.

Hector Garcia: [00:33:27] Reframe it.

Speaker3: [00:33:28] Yes. Yeah.

Hector Garcia: [00:33:29] So one of the things I reframe it and this is a transformation that I've been going through inspired by Ron's book Time's Up, is I'm not only moving to a subscription based model, I'm also reframing what we do. So most people would think of most of our colleagues, fellow CPAs would think that what we do is we do accurately we do accurate financial statements, right? We state accuracy, we create accuracy in financial statements. But in reality, that's that's just that's that's our profession. That's what we got taught to do. But customers don't buy that. Customers don't buy accurate financial statements. What customers buy is confidence in their numbers, confidence in their numbers. So so they can trust their gut feelings because everyone wants to trust the gut feeling. Any time your gut feeling betrays you, it feels like a stab in the heart, right? And any time that you know you're supposed to do something, but you just don't want to trust the gut feeling because you have no backup, you have no A proof, you have no documentation or you don't have you have no confidence in your financial statements. You don't execute that gut feeling action and that slows you down. And then you allow the competition to eat you alive. Because if you think that our competition is another CPA firm, you're dead wrong. Our competition is going to be the Intuit's of the world doing, you know, making their software automate. Our work is going to be Amazon somehow getting into our profession is going to be Shopify. Somehow getting into our profession is going to be Walmart somehow getting into our profession.

Hector Garcia: [00:35:19] It could even be Disney getting into a profession. That's our real competition. So when our services are now being measured against the speed of Amazon delivery or the or the efficiency of, of, of Netflix, of outputting new new shows, you know, when our services are being pinned and compared against that, we have no time to waste. That means that we need to use every one of our every single part of our bodies to make decisions. And that gut feeling is the single most powerful one. And if we don't have confidence in our financial statements, we cannot use it correctly or use it timely. So what I do for a living, my goal in life is to give my customers confidence in their numbers. And I'm reframing the entire my entire firm around that. Okay. So when people in my firm ask me or when ask somebody in my firm, Hey, what are you doing? Their answer should be I'm helping X, Y, Z customer have more confidence in their numbers. And that needs to be culturally how we reframe everything that we do. We're not changing what we're doing. We're still doing debits and credits. We're still using QuickBooks, we're still reconciling bank accounts. None of this stuff is changing what we're just reframing what it means to do what we do, what it means to our customers and what why we do what we do. That's reframing and that's powerful. The most powerful tool you can think of if you go look for the definition of reframing is it's a cognitive technique of looking at a situation or problem from a new perspective in order to change the way it is perceived now.

Hector Garcia: [00:37:00] One of the books I read from Peter Block talked about he he was talking about a different author, Werner Erhard. And the part of the quote which is really, really important is all transformation is linguistic. All transformation is linguistic. That means that every change you want to make in your life or in your business needs to have a word, a set of words, and it needs to go through your head first. You got to be able to label what you want to do or change or create before you can transform into it all. Transformation is linguistic. That means change your words, change your world, change your words, change your world. And I'll give you a perfect example of this. And Blake, I don't know if you're a fan of apples, apples, the food and the apples, the technology, apples, the food for 50 years up until a couple of years ago and I was doing some went deep into Apple. Research on this. Not Apple. The technology. Apple the food. The number one most sold Apple in America was called the Red Delicious Apple. And and it was called Red Delicious. And do you think that has something to do with why people were buying it? Absolutely, because they did a study once Red Delicious stopped being the number one apple in America for 50 years. They did a blind test study where they took they took the ten most sold apples, Granny Smith, Fuji or Fiji, whatever it's called. I don't know if you know the names on the Fuji.

Blake Oliver: [00:38:38] I like the Fuji apples a lot, but they don't. I know where you're going with this, right, Hector? They don't look as pretty, right?

Hector Garcia: [00:38:43] Not just that. They did a blind taste test. And you know which one was dead last in every single one.

Speaker3: [00:38:49] The red. Delicious. Delicious. Yes.

Blake Oliver: [00:38:51] They're disgusting. They're horrible.

Speaker3: [00:38:52] Yeah. They taste.

Hector Garcia: [00:38:53] Like nothing. So. Yeah. So is it because it's a beautiful blood red color and the wax that they put on it, it has a really nice combination and it stands out to the person. Yes, but I think the name is what did it. The name is what did it. Because when you give when you give the food a name and that name becomes its thing, if you're if you're faced between one called the ambrosia apple, which is delicious and red delicious and you're trying to trying to, in your head figure out which is going to taste better automatically, You're going to say, well, this one is called delicious. It might as well. It's probably is. So in the in the absence of being an expert in apples specific apples, you're going to go with Red Delicious. And I think that's what drove people to buy this disgusting apple.

Speaker3: [00:39:43] All right.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:44] Apologies to all the Red delicious lovers out there.

Speaker3: [00:39:46] Yeah, no, for sure. Sorry.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:48] Send your send your emails to Hector.

Hector Garcia: [00:39:50] Your angry email and my favorite quote ever. This is my favorite quote, the quote of all quotes. This is the quote that that I used to think about life. And this is the quote that I tell to my children all the time. This is a quote that I use for business and parenting, which is Wayne Dyer's quote, which is when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. And there's no more innovative spirit than that, quote change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. So in summary, before we get into now the brainstorming session, this is a summary that we talked about. We talked about in order to have an innovative mindset, I'm going to give you six key points. So we're going to summarize the entire 40 minutes that we've talked so far into these six key points. And just take this and print it, put it in your desk and say, okay, I'm going to follow these things and trust me, you're going to be more innovative. One is create an environment and culture that foments innovation. You essentially have to give people this is for people that have teams a free range to think, play and test things. Okay. This is not there's no coincidence that in companies like Apple and Google and all these things in Silicon Valley, they have board games in the in the in the cafeteria and ping pong tables and arcades. This is not a coincidence. The letting people play and think a little bit because it's in that thought in that play state that you're that you're innovative part is turned on okay you're not when you're when you're coding or entering data in a computer or data entry.

Hector Garcia: [00:41:33] No innovation is happening because we are in the efficiency side of our brain. The creative side of our brain is only sort of opened up. And creating when you're thinking and playing and testing things. The second one is innovation can never be forced and can never be planned. It should take you by surprise. So just be patient. Be patient. It will happen as long as the environment, innovative environment is there, it will happen. Third one is never. The never ending pursuit of efficiency will make it harder to reach innovation. So you have to you kind of let loose a little bit about just stop being so, so, so anal about everything having to be so efficient. The fourth one is a change in context can change the meaning of an unchanged content. A change in context can change the meaning of an unchanged content. Fifth is take risks. Systematically Take risks. Not enough to bring your firm down, but take enough risks that you can that you could foment change. And last one is, if in fact transformation is linguistic, then you have to change your words first. Change your words first. That's why I said I'm changing the words of my firm to we create. We we help people have confidence in their numbers. So the minute you change the wording that everything else changes with that. Okay, so let's go into improv mode. Blake Innovation Thought Experiment. What if Disney started an accounting firm? And I started with a couple of questions that we can start asking each other. But first, do you have any media thoughts in your mind, maybe something you thought about before coming in in terms of what would happen if Disney were to start an accounting firm?

Blake Oliver: [00:43:29] Sorry, Hector, did you say did you have a question there?

Hector Garcia: [00:43:32] You say, do you have any initial thoughts or you want to go?

Speaker3: [00:43:35] Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:43:35] Yeah. No. So, okay, so my experience with Disney is that my son is eight. We started going we went to Disneyland when he was six or was it seven? And I hadn't been in, gosh, you know, 20 years. And I was blown away at how clean, efficient, Beautiful. Friendly fun. Good tasting. Everything is at Disney. Everything is five stars, including the hotels, and they just do everything like I would want like I would want to live at Disney. Like, that's how good it is, right? It's like the perfect Main Street USA is like the imaginary perfect town. And so and I know they do a lot of really innovative things at Disney to make that happen. So that's my question is like, what are they doing as a company that allows them to create that consistently amazing experience for their guests?

Speaker3: [00:44:37] And Well, one.

Hector Garcia: [00:44:38] Of the things I think just starting off the bat is the customers are called guests, right? So the minute you change the word right, they're not customers. They're not clients. They're guests. Right? Right. Yeah.

Speaker3: [00:44:50] Yeah, that's true. Guests.

Hector Garcia: [00:44:52] Meaning you said it. You said it. You didn't even notice.

Blake Oliver: [00:44:54] Well, that's what they call you, right? When you're there, you're a guest.

Speaker3: [00:44:57] You go to guest services. But what what does.

Hector Garcia: [00:44:59] What what do you do for a guest? Right. First of all, you make them feel comfortable. You make sure they have towels. So a house guest, right. You make sure you give them appetizers. You offer them a drink. Right. You make sure they get the most comfortable chair. You clean the house before they come. You know, you get on your best attire, you try to cook them something nice to impress them. So imagine if every one of your customers is a guest and then basically and you're not allowed to call them customers, you only call them guests. Yeah, I would say that's one, too. You know, what they call their you know what the team members are called inside Disney.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:34] They call them cast members.

Speaker3: [00:45:35] Right. Cast members? Yeah. Why?

Blake Oliver: [00:45:38] I it's I've heard this. It's because the whole. The whole park is a show.

Hector Garcia: [00:45:46] It's a performance. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The whole performance.

Speaker3: [00:45:50] Absolutely right.

Hector Garcia: [00:45:51] And you want to know what you know what you want to know what the purpose statement of the Disney parks is that?

Blake Oliver: [00:45:58] I don't know.

Speaker3: [00:45:58] Tell me to create memories.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:01] What a great purpose statement.

Speaker3: [00:46:03] Right. So.

Hector Garcia: [00:46:04] So, so your customers, our guests. The employees are cast members. And the purpose is to create memories.

Speaker3: [00:46:11] And that's one of the best. Keeps people coming back.

Hector Garcia: [00:46:13] Yeah, absolutely. And one of the best anecdotes that I heard about this, I heard it from Joe Woodard, the the creator of the Scaling New Heights Conference. And I think he he learned this at the Disney Institute. And Ron Baker is also from he also went to the Disney Institute. That's why they draw a lot of inspiration from this. One of the anecdotes that he that he discusses is there's a custodian, you know, the person that just cleans the park is there, you know, picking up trash or whatever. And, um, a family walks up to the custodian and says, Hey, where's the ice cream shop? Okay. So the custodian that that person's job is to clean the park. And you said the park is super clean and super efficient at maintaining the clean park. So that's clearly important that you and I recognize that keeping the park clean is its utmost importance so that person can stay on task and continue to clean and can say, Yep, you see right over there and just point, just go straight over there, make a right. That's where the ice cream shop is. So. In any business that we would go to like A, Walmart type of business, even target type of business. That's how people would do it. But that person, that custodian knows that their purpose is to create memories. So any opportunity they have to create a memory, they're going to do things differently so that person can kick it up a notch and say, Hey, you know what? Let me just walk you there. And many five star type businesses do that. They walk you there or that person can kick it up a notch even more and can line up the family sort of like in a, you know, sort of like like a, you know, sort of army style. And then you can start and you can start what do you call it when you when you walk like this, when you start pacing.

Speaker3: [00:48:00] March.

Hector Garcia: [00:48:00] March. They're marching, right. And start marching towards it and singing. Maybe, you know, a Disney song. What are you doing? And all the way through the ice cream shop. So that custodian is off task. That's not their job, but they're on purpose and that that story, that anecdote to me just exemplifies why Disney answers your question. How did they do it? Why did they do it? Because every single employee is empowered to think like that. Now, how is this relevant to us? Okay. All right. So that's fun. That's cool. But what does it have to do with accounting?

Speaker3: [00:48:37] Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:48:37] Hector, my accounting firm is not Disneyland. Come on, let's get real.

Hector Garcia: [00:48:41] But the reason why we have these type of thoughts experiments is because the best thought experiments are when you take two or more completely seemingly unrelated things and you start mashing them together. So let's do that now. So now you know. So now we know both of us and the audience knows enough about Disney, or at least from this perspective, to start thinking about, okay, how do we translate that? So the first question I'll ask to you, Blake, and then just brainstorm some names. What would they call the accounting firm? What would they call the accounting firm?

Blake Oliver: [00:49:14] Well, it wouldn't be the last names of the three partners, right?

Speaker3: [00:49:19] Absolutely not. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:49:20] Or wouldn't be the initials of those partners?

Speaker3: [00:49:24] No, no, no, no.

Blake Oliver: [00:49:26] I'm trying to. I'm trying to imagine it right now.

Speaker3: [00:49:29] Right.

Hector Garcia: [00:49:30] Well, let's talk about some of the words that that Disney uses, because remember, transformation is linguistic. And then I'll start throwing some words and then we'll start brainstorming. So they use the word magic a lot. Yeah, they use the word dream a lot. They use the word creative a lot, right? Yeah, right. They use the word entertainment a lot. Entertain memories. Right. So, like, does that get us a little closer to a firm name?

Blake Oliver: [00:49:56] Wish upon a tax return.

Speaker3: [00:49:59] What about. Well, what about the dream builders?

Blake Oliver: [00:50:02] Yeah, that's. And that would be a firm that wouldn't just, you know, do my tax return, but would also help me achieve my financial goals. Dream builders. Right. My financial dreams. I like that.

Speaker3: [00:50:13] Yeah. So that's. That's dream builders.

Hector Garcia: [00:50:15] Dream builders? Yeah.

Speaker3: [00:50:17] Real. That's actually a great.

Blake Oliver: [00:50:19] That's a great name for a firm. Somebody should go out there and grab that domain. Dream builders, CPA.

Speaker3: [00:50:24] Go get it.

Hector Garcia: [00:50:25] Yeah. Yeah. So now they use the word creativity a lot. But the problem is creative accounting is one of those things that get a little bit, a little bit, uh, frowned upon. But, but it could be. I mean, it could be something like. You know, we said. We said the dream builders. Yeah, but it could also be called the future build. Like, you know how there's Tomorrowland, you know, like in Disney World, there's an area called Tomorrowland. So it could also be tomorrow. Builders, right? Yeah. Yeah. Or. Or, or. Or tomorrow. Or tomorrow. Business or tomorrow. Business Advisors or. Or Tomorrowland Business advisors or business advisors of tomorrow. Again, using a lot of the words that they use. So, I mean, that's that's enough for you to start thinking about. Okay, you know what? If we would use a different example, right? What if Rolex were to make a sandwich shop? Right? And then we start thinking about, you know, precision sandwiches or something like that, you know, so you can use these examples. But again, the idea is to just to just play with this. Another question we can discuss is how would they charge or what would their business model be like? And this might be an easier question. Oh, yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:33] This this one I can do better on. Well, so Disney, you know, they at one point all the theme parks in the country charged for each ride that you went on and you had to buy tickets for every ride. And Disney started that way too. But they realized that it's a better experience for customers or guests, rather just to pay one fee to enter the park. They've they've since added different tiers, right, with their whole Disney genie, you know, ride skipping kind of service. But still you get 90% of Disney land just by one fee.

Hector Garcia: [00:52:06] Yeah. So so based on the one fee to go to Disneyland or Disney World and the single fee to access Disney Plus to watch all the movies, then you could probably infer that a Disney inspired accounting firm would have a single charge to have access to everything that they can offer that the firm can offer. Okay. And, you know, can you do everything for everyone yesterday? No. I mean, then there's a fastpass, right? Or a genie pass or.

Speaker3: [00:52:33] Whatever it's called. I mean.

Blake Oliver: [00:52:34] And they have the expensive add ons, right? You want to build a lightsaber, you're going to pay an extra $300 for that. Right? So it's not like you have to give that up. But most people get into the park probably 80%. Right. Just pay that fee. That one cost or the subscription and there's a subscription for when they go home too.

Speaker3: [00:52:53] Right.

Hector Garcia: [00:52:53] So so for, for 80% of customers, that would be a single price and they would have access for everything. And for the 20% premium customers, that would be like a fast pass where they cannot get access to you quicker or they can get their financial statements done faster. Or maybe it also involves some additional services. I know Disney has even a super VIP thing called D23 or something like that where people pay a whole bunch of money and they have access to like hidden restaurants and hidden clubs inside Disney. And have you heard about those? Yeah. So there will be.

Speaker3: [00:53:24] Access to those too.

Blake Oliver: [00:53:26] Yeah, You can pay like $200 an hour and get a personalized tour of Disneyland. It costs you a few thousand dollars, but you don't wait in any lines. Right. And your firm could have that, too, right?

Hector Garcia: [00:53:36] Not for all your customers, for the customers that have a lot more time than money. I mean, a lot more. A lot more.

Speaker3: [00:53:41] Money than time. Money and time. Yeah.

Hector Garcia: [00:53:43] Um, so that's how. That's how that's how they would charge. Now the other question is, compared to the average firm, would they be average, would they be lower price or would they be higher price.

Blake Oliver: [00:53:54] Oh yeah. No, they'd be premium. Absolutely top priced.

Speaker3: [00:53:58] Yeah, exactly.

Blake Oliver: [00:54:00] So everyone who everyone who's taking their family to Disney knows just how expensive it is these days.

Speaker3: [00:54:04] Exactly.

Hector Garcia: [00:54:05] And. And. And, um. And.

Speaker3: [00:54:11] Usually if you.

Hector Garcia: [00:54:13] Spend a lot of money to do something in an event, like you are just more vested into it and you know you're going to pay more attention to it and you know you're going to force yourself to enjoy it more. And and that's the type of customer they want, right? But the nice thing about it, too, is. You don't need to spend five grand to have a great interaction with with Disney Disney. You could just buy a $24 movie in Target. So yeah, so so I think that Disney accounting firm would also have a very low cost sort of do it yourself work your first work on your own type product. So I think a Disney firm would also have maybe an eBook or a video or something that says, Hey, how do you how do you run your own business? How do you do your own accounting or something? I think I think absolutely Disney would do something like that.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:08] It'd be high quality, it wouldn't be super cheap, it would.

Speaker3: [00:55:12] Be highly produced.

Hector Garcia: [00:55:13] But it could sell to the masses. So they'll make it up in in a few hundred sales anyway.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:19] Absolutely.

Hector Garcia: [00:55:21] What about is it an interesting one? What about merch? You know, like, you know, after every ride you go into the the gift shop and then there's merch almost for every ride. So I've never been in an accounting firm that gives out a merch, right? Like I don't, you know, so like, I think definitely their customers would have Disney accounting firm merch.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:43] Okay here's an idea, Hector. This is an idea I had years ago. Um, tell me what you think about this. I think this fits in. So one of the big problems we have in cloud accounting in client accounting services is getting our clients to use the apps that we set up for them, getting them to use the practice management, the portal, the all that stuff. And I said, Well, what if we just made it super easy for them and we loaded all that stuff onto an iPad and gave them the iPad and just told them, Hey, you need to send documents to us, like use the iPad to take a picture of it and you can send it securely. Everything's already set up. We've already installed all the apps. You're already logged in and we'll manage it from a security perspective through our IT like that would be an experience that nobody has ever created before.

Hector Garcia: [00:56:30] Absolutely right. I mean, like Disney has this thing called the Something Band or the one band or the Magic band or Magic band that and the Magic band has entrance to the hotel, has your credit card so you can buy anything you want, has your fastpass. So you can go into the rides. Essentially all of these situations where you have to go take something out from your pocket to interact with Disney. You no longer need it because you have a magic band. I think this iPad loaded with our tech stack that we manage remotely, that we can connect with, is our it would be the accounting firm version of the Magic band, wouldn't it?

Speaker3: [00:57:10] Yeah, I agree. Yeah.

Hector Garcia: [00:57:12] All right. So that's awesome. I think that was a great brainstorming there. Now, what would they call their employees?

Blake Oliver: [00:57:17] They wouldn't call them staff.

Speaker3: [00:57:19] Yeah, that's for sure, right? Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:57:22] Team. I call my team just like team members. Right.

Speaker3: [00:57:27] I think Disney.

Hector Garcia: [00:57:27] Would take it up a.

Speaker3: [00:57:28] Notch. I think, yeah, they.

Blake Oliver: [00:57:29] They call them cast members. What would the accounting firm call their their team.

Hector Garcia: [00:57:34] Um, so you want you want to laugh.

Speaker3: [00:57:36] Yeah, sure.

Hector Garcia: [00:57:37] I, I built this entire presentation. I pasted it into chatgpt and I said, look, this is what I'm building. Help me come up with some names for staff members that or for team members that would be in this Disney inspired practice. So he gave me.

Speaker3: [00:57:59] Some.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:00] You got to tell.

Speaker3: [00:58:01] Us.

Hector Garcia: [00:58:02] So one was Dream Builders, and that's really what that came from. So one was Dream builders and that's.

Speaker3: [00:58:07] Like, that's.

Blake Oliver: [00:58:07] That's great. Chatgpt came up with that.

Speaker3: [00:58:10] They came up with that particular.

Hector Garcia: [00:58:12] I did prompt, I did prompt, you know, I told them what the books that I read. I told them, you know, we talked. Yeah, yeah. But, but, but they came up with that and there's an explanation behind it. Listen to the explanation this term would emphasize on the firm's role helping clients achieve their financial dreams and goals. It would also encourage employees to approach their work with a sense and purpose and meaning, similar to the way the way Disney theme park employees arrive to create unforgettable memories for guests. How important is that?

Speaker3: [00:58:43] That's the point, is that there's more. There's more, more options.

Hector Garcia: [00:58:47] We got financial storytellers. This term will highlight the firm's commitment to creating financial experiences that not that are not only accurate and reliable, but also engaging and memorable. This would encourage employees to think about their work as a way of telling a story and to use storytelling storytelling techniques to help clients understand and connect with their financial data.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:13] Financial Storyteller.

Hector Garcia: [00:59:15] All right. There's one more Financial Alchemist.

Speaker3: [00:59:19] Financial Alchemist Oh, that's good. Okay.

Hector Garcia: [00:59:22] This term would emphasize the term's ability to turn financial data into something valuable and transformative. That's what alchemy is, right? Yeah. Transforming things. It would also tie into the theme of magic and transformation, encouraging employees to approach their work as a form of financial alchemy, turning mundane tasks into gold for your clients.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:46] Financial Alchemist. I love it.

Speaker3: [00:59:48] I love it, too.

Hector Garcia: [00:59:49] And you know what the cool thing is? Chatgpt? You could like if you don't have somebody to brainstorm with now, you can brainstorm with chatgpt.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:56] Yeah, it's really. It's really good.

Speaker3: [00:59:58] It is good.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:59] I hadn't thought about using it for this kind of purpose, but that's great. Yeah. If you're, if you're, if you're rebranding your accounting firm or starting one, brainstorm that with chatgpt. Find a company that you admire and and ask what would, what would what would that accounting firm look like if Rolex started an accounting firm or Delta started an accounting firm or I don't know if people like Delta, but, you know, definitely not Southwest, right?

Hector Garcia: [01:00:23] Yeah, right. Now, what would they call their customers? What would they call their customers?

Blake Oliver: [01:00:30] Well, Disney calls their customers guests. Yeah. This firm would call their customers.

Speaker3: [01:00:38] You got to tell me what the.

[01:00:39] What the. I said I didn't ask for this one. I didn't cheat for the whole thing. So what? The one thing I was thinking is, uh, customers are here. Like, sort of the hero of the story. You think about that. So I would take components from, um, from Disney, like characters, Disney like heroes, and, uh, and, and, and use something like that. I mean, most heroes are dreamers. And again, we're, I know we're repeating the theme, but if, if we're the dream builders and the customers are the dreamers are the dreamers. Yeah. Right, right. Or the economic dreamers. Right. Or the business dreamers. Right. Or the future dreamers or whatever it is. Or if you're in the US, the American dreamers. The American dreamers. That's really cool too. Now, think now I went really deep into like, asking Chatgpt for ideation. I said. I asked him if.

Hector Garcia: [01:01:39] There was a Disney character that would represent the team members of this Disney like firm that guides the hero through their journey. Which characters would could we be? So one of them is Jiminy Cricket.

Speaker3: [01:01:54] I was going to.

Blake Oliver: [01:01:55] Say that first thing out of my mouth.

Hector Garcia: [01:01:56] Loyal, wise conscience of Pinocchio. We are our client's conscience, right? We're the ones telling them, Hey, make good decisions. Right? And it would be so easy for a Disney like firm to say, hey, remember, you're the dream Builders are going to be your Jiminy Cricket. And when you're asking questions, you're going to make a tough decisions. Count on us to be your conscience or to be your guide. Yep. Not interesting. Yeah. Another one is the R2-d2s. Right. We. We could plug into any technology. You know how R2D2 can plug into any technology and rewire the ship and stuff like that? The R2d2s. And there's a whole bunch. And know I'll give you access to this document because this document is really cool. Put this together based on that. But here's another one. What would Disney call the struggles that small business owners go through and ask Chatgpt.

Speaker3: [01:02:48] I got one reframe.

Hector Garcia: [01:02:50] The struggles as villains.

Blake Oliver: [01:02:53] Villains or a journey. Right.

Hector Garcia: [01:02:55] Yeah, absolutely. The journey. Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker3: [01:02:58] Yeah, yeah. Like the villains.

Hector Garcia: [01:03:00] So got a couple interesting ones, right? The. The cash flow crunch. This business villain might be represented as a menacing storm cloud, consistently threatening to rain down on the business owners financial stability. The cloud could be personified as a greedy character named Cashflow Crunch, who is always trying to drain the business of its resources and profits. How about this one? Texoceras. Wrex.

Speaker3: [01:03:29] Texoceras. Brex.

Hector Garcia: [01:03:30] This business villain is A is personified as a giant dinosaur like creature with ferocious appetite for taxes and regulations. The name it could be portrayed by as a powerful and unstoppable force that business owners have to learn how to control and tame. The regulation robot represented by a cold, calculating robot programed to enforce complex rules and regulations in small business owners that they struggle to keep up with. Competitive Cruella.

Speaker3: [01:04:04] Cruella.

Hector Garcia: [01:04:05] Represented by a cunning and conniving business owner trying to steal market share and undercut competition with lower prices mean this thing goes forever, by the way. It's just it's just really awesome to have Chatgpt brainstorm with you. All right. Let's just wrap this up because we're having way too much fun and we're probably not gonna get any real work done. How would they deliver the information? Blake And this is. This is to this one? Yeah. How would they deliver the information?

Blake Oliver: [01:04:34] Uh, I they would be definitely doing videos, right? They would be telling a story through images, words, pictures. Right. Yeah, yeah, definitely a a narrative of some kind.

Hector Garcia: [01:04:50] Yeah, a narrative for sure. I mean, I can almost picture like, you get an email, you click and you get this, like, sound of like this, like fairy tale sound of you opening the books and opening the report's almost like, you know, like little stars and little sprinkles. A fairy dust opens right in your screen right before you look at your financial statements.

Speaker3: [01:05:09] Yep. Right. Yeah. I mean.

Blake Oliver: [01:05:11] You definitely have the, like, the whole paper book kind of thing, the paper ledgers that open up and that's your into your digital reports. Kind of.

Speaker3: [01:05:20] Like. Like an.

Hector Garcia: [01:05:20] Old school. Um, like an old school story book. Now, which details would they obsess about?

Speaker3: [01:05:28] Oh, well.

Blake Oliver: [01:05:31] I think the presentation of the of the numbers right. Simple. Very simple. Very clear. Easy to understand. Definitely not a lot of text on the page. Not a lot of numbers on the page. Just what matters. Yeah.

Hector Garcia: [01:05:44] You know what? I think they would obsess about that people actually use it, that people actually read it. I think that Disney would devise a way of making sure that when they open the financial statement, the user has to interact with it to have it like sort of like open like just kind of like like a curtain, you know, like you start looking at the revenue and then you start looking at the cost of goods sold. And then you look at the payroll cost and it's happening in such a way that they control the speed in which information is portrayed to you to make sure that you're going through it and following it in the exact sequence that they want you to follow it. And so you can follow it as a story. And your net income is the conclusion of the story.

Blake Oliver: [01:06:25] You know, the other thing about Disney that really is great is they make even the unpleasant parts of being in a theme park pleasant, like waiting in line. So all those things that you have to do as a client that are normally not very fun, like log into some portal or something like that, you could make that, you know, beautiful. You could make that, you know, not just like your logo slapped on some generic kind of thing, but something that looks completely unique.

Hector Garcia: [01:06:50] Which would probably also include because one of the challenges that we have is we are great at talking to the client and saying, we're going to deliver this and we're also great once we have time to sit down with them when it's done to explain it to them. But that in-between, you know, the emails back and forth is did you file an extension? What's the status? Did you get all the reports? Do you need anything else from me? You know, the organizer hasn't been filled out like the entire back and forth. This is the waiting in line equivalent. It's so uncomfortable for the customer. It's such a and it's uncomfortable for us, too.

Blake Oliver: [01:07:26] And you know why it's uncomfortable? Because a lot of times they don't know where they are in line. And the thing about Disney Lines is that they are all themed and they all have a progression where you go into a different room that has a different theme or a different object or different things to interact with. And so you get this feeling like even though you're waiting in line for an hour, you're moving forward. But most firms, when the client sends you their stuff, they just sit in a dark room until you get back to them. That's what it feels like anyway as a client most of the time, because firms don't have the time or ability to give status updates, right?

Hector Garcia: [01:07:58] And in Disney parks, they have a real time update to how long the lines are going to take. 55 minutes is 105 minutes. They're honest with you. If it's going to take three hours, they'll tell you this avatar ride will take, you know, three hours. So being very precise on how long they will wait is something that Disney obsesses about. And I think that a firm would do that. And this is probably the biggest opportunity we have, and I'm a culprit of that, too. My firm is horrible at not only giving accurate deadlines, but also, you know, giving this entertainment sort of, you know, storytelling experience to how we're doing with the work. And then and finally, you know, when they get there, that it's actually within the time that we told them it would. And the last one, Blake and I know because this is a topic that you've talked about quite a bit and I know and don't want to get into the politics of this, but this is a big thing has been diversity for for a long time. Okay. And the accounting profession's big thing has not been diversity for a very long time. So how do you think Disney's approach to diversity and again, well, without the specific race representation part, just diversity in general, right. How would you think this would change that?

Blake Oliver: [01:09:08] This doesn't even have to get political. This is just you can view this from a pure business decision. Okay? Demographics in this country are changing. And so if Disney Disney is a media company, they understand that if their characters do not look like the people who are consuming the media, then they will lose market share. And it's the same thing in your accounting firm if the people in your accounting firm. Don't look like your customers. You are going to lose market share to a firm where that is true. And so just that you need you need to build a firm that your your customers want to interact with and people like to interact with people who look like them. Let's just be honest about it. You know, they want to have they want to have representation on the other side of the table. So that's how I view it. And you can that's just that's just the pure business argument. I'm not saying the other ones aren't valid. Right. If you've got ethical arguments to it, that's great. But I try to make whenever I encounter people who are resistant to the whole diversity debate in the accounting world, I try to make the business argument because you can't argue with it.

Hector Garcia: [01:10:15] Absolutely. And that's it. That's that's that was the my brainstorming on that I wanted to bring in Blake really appreciate the, um, the, your feedback on that. Are there is any questions from the audience or anything else you would like to add to this? Maybe something you thought last minute?

Blake Oliver: [01:10:31] We had a ton of people joining during that discussion. That was great. I think since we're past the top of the hour, people had to go and get to their next meetings. So I don't have any questions for you right now. Thank you, everyone who joined us live. I think we can go ahead and wrap that right. Any final words, Hector?

Hector Garcia: [01:10:47] I would say an action item. An action item. So the action item is grab something that typically is a high production, high efficiency, um, high volume item or market or product. So let's say let's exemplify this with Walmart, right? And then grab something that's completely the opposite, that is sort of slow cooked, luxurious, um, brand name, expensive. And look at the intersection of these, of these two things, you know, like, so what if, what if Walmart were to get into the golf course business, You know, just brainstorm that with accounting, your brainstorm that and have someone that, that wants to do it with you, that wants to go through this with you and do this once a month, once a week even. So, if you have a fellow colleague that likes this experiment, meet with, meet with Zoom and just go over these things and just play, just play, be playful, play. And I'm telling you, I'm telling you, I mean, just this nugget of information, just this golden nugget that Blake gave me that I hadn't even thought about. And I've thought about this experiment quite a bit, which is the concept of how Disney, uh, obsesses about the lines and the lines being pleasant and the, and the lines just that just gave me a couple of ideas on how I could change my firm and I could bring changes and I don't have to make my firm Disney and my firm is never going to be Disney, will never be Disney. But are there components of Disney that I can learn from? Absolutely. And that could be a huge differentiator. You can just take one tiny little thing. So so I encourage you to to to get into the regular exercise of brainstorming and doing these type of thought experiments and even expand upon this one. I would love to, you know, if you DM me or email me or tweet me or whatever, what else did I miss? You know, what else in your mind you thought Disney would definitely nail in the accounting in the accounting world?

Blake Oliver: [01:12:44] I love it. It's a lot of fun. And we learn so much when we do it. Thank you, Hector. Dear listeners, don't forget that we've got one last segment or session or part of this eight part series. It's a capstone webinar that Hector will be doing in a couple weeks on, I believe it's What did I say? March 20th? Did I say March 28th?

Speaker3: [01:13:10] I hope it's March The last week of March, that's for sure.

Blake Oliver: [01:13:12] Yeah, it's in two weeks. So it's March 28th. And so we will be sending out a link to everyone on the email list to that webinar. Be sure to subscribe earmark slash focus and join us. Then ask your questions. It's going to be a summary of everything that we've learned in this entire series. So if you haven't caught all the videos, catch this last webinar and you'll get the most important takeaways and then you can go watch the individual parts if you want to dig in deep. Hector I'm looking forward to it. I'll see.

Speaker3: [01:13:45] You then. Likewise. Bye.