Pivotal Change (01-30-2025) AI and Business Growth: Unlocking Smarter Strategies

[00:00:00] Speaker A: SA hello all you wonderful people out there and welcome to another episode of Pivotal Change. I'm your host, Ryan Kahn from CS Business Consulting. And we are here to help all of the influential people, all of the entrepreneurs, the business executives, and anyone that wants more influence and be able to affect change to find those pieces of information and resources that can help you reach that pivotal change to success. I want to welcome you tonight on the episode, Brad Pinser. He is a wonderful, wonderful, highly intelligent man that I've recently become friends with. He is into software development, AI solutions, and he also does a lot of this to help expand the bandwidth of a brand. Marketing, client profiles, prospecting, and just helping people grow their business by leveraging technology, software, and ultimately AI. So, Brad of Kajabra, welcome aboard and thank you for coming on Pivotal Change. [00:01:22] Speaker B: Thank you, Ryan. So happy to be here. [00:01:25] Speaker A: Well, good deal. But what I like to do is everyone in the audience knows two things. One, they're supposed to be watching the show with a pen and paper to take notes, and two, that we're always, always up against hard breaks, commercials, and we do have time restrictions. So what I want to do is just jump straight into the questions and I want to start off in the AI category. So one of the things that I get questioned about in our advisory services and you and I have had conversations about is with AI coming full on into multiple industries and businesses, a lot of companies, a lot of people are worried about the strategy of implementing AI. If they're going to give some AI driven solutions, how do they get this into their company, into their operations and workflow without overwhelming their teams and causing negative disruption to workflow. [00:02:10] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, that's a big challenge. I think the first step is really to identify what tasks could be automated or, and should be automated. And, you know, literally just like kind of listing that down and then, you know, using those tasks and addressing those tasks, you know, as a way to help, you know, kind of improve the lives of those that would be affected by it. So the employees, you know, you're not trying to replace them, you're just trying to make it easier for them to, you know, get stuff done and be able to focus on things that are. Require more, you know, brainpower. [00:02:59] Speaker A: Got that? I like that a lot. So what we want to do first is want to take a little bit of step back and we want to do an identification process. We want to scan our current workflow, scan the current demands and needs of our employees and say these are the areas where we do need software or AI solutions to help us become more efficient or more effective in different areas. Is that what I'm hearing? [00:03:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And then that helps you kind of identify, you know, what software would be a good match for you. If you're, if you're looking for different software, you're building out your own platform. [00:03:32] Speaker A: Okay, so I know, kind of in our world, and you guys are helping us with this too, is that, you know, we have a template. We've, you know, went the template route, so we can pretty much copy and paste, but we still have to physically enter addresses. We still have to physically shoot these templates out to our clients instead. There are software or even AI solutions that can identify, pre, identify their prompt list and they can take care of this burden as well. So all we kind of have to do is kind of monitor, kind of review what's happening and the actual AI and software is doing the work. Is that some of the solutions people are able to look for. [00:04:05] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. So what you'll have is you'll have, you know, whatever can be automated will be automated and it'll take time, but basically you'll have that. And then you'll have kind of steps in the process or stages where the human will come in and kind of, you know, put their, their, their eye on it to make sure, you know, it kind of checks all the boxes and the data is correct and all that kind of stuff. And then, you know, maybe it's, you know, some type of tagging function or some kind of trigger so that it moves on to the next stage. So you might have that depending on what business you're in, you know, you might need more of that. You know, that's essentially how, you know, it'll work. [00:04:52] Speaker A: I like that. Like you said, the tagging process, where basically the AI is doing something in the background and then it tags you or taps you on the shoulder saying, hey, I need you to check something out so I can move forward. [00:05:03] Speaker B: Yeah, and vice versa, you know, so like, you know, you'll be notified that, hey, the AI has done its thing, need you to go and check it. And then once you check it and it's good, you're going to go in there and you might manually, you know, tag it or some type of trigger for it to go on to the next stage in the process. [00:05:25] Speaker A: Okay, very cool. So a lot of people are also looking to not just internal processes like the random example I threw out, but for us, you know, I know this is across industries and of course in the accounting advisory world, but I'm looking for more clients, but I don't just want everybody, I don't necessarily want a message to everybody that's out there potentially. I don't want to be too negative, but get a bunch of garbage clients that don't fit my, my services, they don't fit my profile, my culture real well. So now I'm having to manually weed through people. Are AI solutions out there to where if I want to enhance my market reach and specifically the research on this, is a person that is primed and ready to be a good profile based client for you? Are those tools out there? Is that some type of method to where a growing role in the content generation that sends out information to who we are to the right type of person can be done? [00:06:20] Speaker B: Absolutely. So you probably have all experienced this. I mean, I know that I have been receiving emails that seem to know a lot more about me and what, what I'm interested in. So what that is, it's called data enrichment. So there's companies out there that basically have all this data, you know, based on an email address or some piece of, you know, phone number, business name, whatever, and they're able to, you know, integrate that with your, with your software, your email platform and you know, add context and you know, important pieces to, you know, to your message so that when you send it out you're, you know, you're targeting, you're, you know, you're doing a better job in, in your communication and what you're saying and that's, that's out there. There's plenty of companies out there that are doing that. [00:07:21] Speaker A: Gotcha. So with that, what type of metrics should maybe a person in charge or a business owner be looking for? Where if I'm using this market reach, I'm trying to enhance this through AI. How can I put in some type of metrics to know that I'm getting the right type of clients, the right type of product and things to sent my way? Is there a way that we can evaluate its effectiveness? [00:07:45] Speaker B: I mean, I think the, I think the best way is really just by doing it right. So like, you know, by, you know, if you have a list and you send it out and, and, and you know, you, you, you know, it's always been this way where you're testing, you know, it's testing, testing, testing. It's not like there's one way to do it and it's going to work for you. It's like you have to test, test, test and you know, you send out a, you know, A hundred emails or a hundred thousand emails, you know, and you, you have to, you have to record the data, you have to, you know, put it somewhere and then you have to, you know, there's a manual process there. I don't, it's not something that's like completely automated. So that's pretty much how you'd have to do it. [00:08:34] Speaker A: Gotcha. So, so there are going to be huge benefits. Like you're saying, we can get the outreach and we can get the data collection much, much more powerfully than ever before. But when we receive that data, there's not necessarily an automation that is built specifically to you to filter your data. That would be things that have to grow over time probably and a little bit of manual review to say, hey, this is exactly what I'm looking for. [00:08:57] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I think, I think, I thought, I think the question was really like measuring the effectiveness of like a campaign that you're, you're sending out. And I think the way to really do that is to just by doing it and just, you know, knowing whether, you know, did, did they call you, did they respond, did they reply to you, did they book an appointment with you? Whatever your KPIs are, you'd have to record that. There are probably ways to, to definitely ways to automate that. It just depends on how sophisticated your system is. But those are going to be, you'd have to identify what the KPIs are important to you and you know, you'll know, you know, kind of from, from there whether you know, the enriched data and what you paid for that was worth it compared to maybe what you did previously, you know. [00:09:49] Speaker A: Gotcha. So that, that's pretty good. And that kind of leads me to some of my other conversations about specifically content creation and the power of AI to produce content, whether that's blanket content or personalized content. You know, how can I scale adapt my business model to utilize that content creation and not losing the personal side of things, but also getting that mass good quality of material out there. [00:10:17] Speaker B: So that's a great question. And it's something that we're really passionate about, that we're working on. You know, when it comes to content, I mean, the first thing is really, you know, understanding, you know, your business and, and, and what's important to your customers and, and, and you know, having being able to tell that story and you know, generating like a playbook, right? And so you have this playbook that pretty much, you know, it's what your company is about, it's the story, it's your, your tone create, whether it's an email, a blog post or social media video, all that kind of stuff, it can use that to generate the content automatically. And I think the key really is to have software and a system that allows you to create these workflows because ChatGPT and Google Gemini and all these tools are great. But if you're going over here to generate your content and then you have to like cut and paste it over into another system to do like that, that's just too cumbersome. And I think that's where we were maybe in 2022 and part of 2023, but more and more. So you're seeing systems that are being built and also the price of these systems are going down and it's becoming much, much. And the level of sophistication and what's possible that normally might have been more on like the enterprise level is super affordable for small businesses. So I think the key is really to have a platform and invest in a platform that allows you to have this kind of like, you know, AI integrated with it into that whole, you know, workflow and system. [00:12:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I like that. So that's a good spot for me to jump in. I want to stick a pin in the conversation right here. What we're going to do is cut to commercial break. Everyone else sit tight. We're gonna be back with more Brad and more pivotal change right after this commercial break. Welcome back. And we have some more exciting episode to come. We have Brad Pinser back with us from Kajabra furthering the first segments conversation about AI technology and the development and what it can do for you with implementation. We just started crossing our conversation over into content creation and the effectiveness of that and where it has come from and where it is going both in affordability and capability. And so, Brad, I kind of want to push back along those lines and start talking about. We've had branding experts on the show. In fact, your partner Janelle has been on here to help us with marketing and branding. And we know you've got a little bit of that tech savvy side as well. But in that arena, if I really want to go into trusting AI and adopting AI to help content creation, marketing and pushing my brand, what are some of the things I really need to focus on and what are some of the hazards I may want to pay attention to? [00:14:02] Speaker B: Yeah, that's a great question. I think that, you know, traditionally, you know, it's been more like the SEO and the ppc and we've always had the Social media thing. And I've always been more, you know, social media, you know, it's kind of like a lot of work and I don't see as much of a benefit from it. Right. But that's always been the case and I've been, I've been doing this since the mid-90s and so. But now what I'm seeing with the changes in, you know, with Google and the search results and the answers being right, right, right there, I'm seeing like less effectiveness with kind of the traditional SEO and ppc. And I think that, you know, the social media is, is becoming more and more important. And I think particularly, you know, as we have this AI and it's like artificial and all this kind of stuff, you know, that human element is really, really important. And I think, you know, establishing yourself as, as a thought leader and really focusing on that and pushing that out there into the world on social media in a very authentic way is really the way to move forward with content. And AI can certainly facilitate all that stuff when you teach it your brand and your voice and focus on, on, on that part of that. [00:15:40] Speaker A: I, I really like what you said. How to a lot of people it may sound like an oxymoron, but really it makes so much sense considering the world we're in. You said you're going to take something artificial and teach it to promote your authentic self. And I think that that might spin in somebody's head real quick. But if we realize the how to leverage the tools in front of us, this is a non existing entity that doesn't have a real brain, so to speak. So it's artificial, but you can teach it to think and sound like you. And I can remember playing with chat GDP when it first came out and I was trying to write a speech and write a Bible lesson and things like that and it came back and it didn't sound like me. And so based on my own life experience, I said, well, mix the genre of this speech to sound like these three speakers and authors and kind of a combination of those three blends really sounded like me. And I know what we can do is we can also put a lot more stuff into chat TP or various AI technologies that says, you know, blend this, consider that, reference these materials and then start to promote our authentic self like you said. So I really just wanted to emphasize that to the, that kind of struck a chord with me the way you said that. Yeah, just a very clever way of thinking. [00:16:57] Speaker B: Yeah. And I think, you know this, the AI is really helpful Like, I always like to say that, you know, you really need to always go back to the fundamentals, you know, because, like, I like to use golf as a comparison, you know, like, if I'm playing golf and, and, you know, and I'm struggling, I'll just go back to the fundamentals, like my stance and my grip and those kinds of things. And I think it's important to, to do that, especially with AI because it's so powerful. And if you, you can use it to help you figure out, you know, the essence of what you're doing and what you're, you know, providing to, to create that story and, you know, once you kind of establish what those are, then you can use the AI. The AI is just this tool that's going to help you, you know, communicate better and, you know, learn about things in, in ways that you might not have thought about before as well. So, you know, I, I think that that is, you know, critical and understanding, you know, that it's important to, you know, always go to the fundamentals. [00:18:13] Speaker A: I really like that a lot. And, and you said, you know, thinking of things you haven't thought of before, and that kind of gets me to think about the future a little bit. You know, I think about the future, but I can't pre. And so with AI coming more predominantly on scene and taking over more and more roles and more and more activity inside of certain industries and definitely across the board at this point, what are some ways we can use AI or use ourselves to help future proof our strategies? If I implement AI in a certain capacity worth a certain set of boundaries and workflow, how can I future proof myself to make sure AI doesn't get too far out of bounds? I don't replace the workers that I know and love and actually need. It's gonna be pretty rapid evolution as we've seen. But business leaders need to ensure that we're staying ahead of these industry trends. Can I use AI to help me keep ahead of AI and industry trends and keep my people working proactively in my company? [00:19:13] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, there's certainly going to be tremendous change and none of us can predict what's going to happen. But I mean, I like to use AI to, you know, you can ask the AI like, you know, give it, like, context and scenarios and, you know, what are, what are some ways that this might play out, you know, and it gives you ideas and then you can dig further into that. I think as far as, you know, having employees that you love and the AI changing like, like the Roles are going to change, there's no doubt about it. I mean, but the fundamentals won't change. You know, that's why it's important to really understand the fundamentals of your business and then how AI can help you do that better, more efficiently. And then it might mean that, you know, your small company of 10 only really needs, you know, six of you or something. And that's just business, you know, I mean, that's the way it is. But, you know, knowing that and understanding that, you know, could prepare you on how to, you know, manage that culturally and, you know, on a, on a human level, you know, I think that it'll be some time before, you know, it's always like, you know, we're 10 years ahead of ourselves always, it seems like, you know, with this stuff. But it is going to happen. And it's really just a matter of recognizing that and, you know, just preparing yourself for that and, and kind of getting a sense for what, what could happen and how, you know, and, and, you know, like I said, business is business, you know, like if, if, if you're not going to keep somebody around, if it's just costing you money, you know, so, you know, but I don't think it's all, I don't think it's like doom and gloom. I think there's a lot of, you know, I think there's way more positive stuff that's going to come from it. [00:21:21] Speaker A: Yeah, I tend to agree with you that the positives are certainly going to outweigh the negatives. And I believe in very rare circumstances, will AI just replace the human worker? Yeah, I just, I just don't. Again, hey, maybe 20, 30 years from now, I don't know. But the, the thing for me is that, you know, if I change the work role like you just said, and I say, hey, employee, I'm not looking to replace you, but I'm looking to change your role. You still have this basic fundamental level of understanding that I need from you. Let AI do all the grunt work. You maximize your output of this basic function that is the human component, and you learn to think differently, speak differently, and interact differently with what is now technology and software. So instead of just having a regular old data entry program, we now have something that's helping work with and for you, and your role is going to change. Do you see that as a possible way to get people to start trusting and adopting AI technology on the employer side, the people that are receiving the directives that we're going to start using this type of technology. [00:22:23] Speaker B: I think there's definitely going to be, you know, a lot of fear, you know, within an organization where, you know, people are, you know, employees are going to feel like they're going to lose their job or something like that. So it's very delicate. And I think that, you know, you. I think just being aware of that kind of dynamic is, you know, half the battle. And, you know, I think it's. It's definitely something that's going to be playing out across the board, like these conversations. And there's going to be people that their value to the business is going to, you know, go towards, you know, certainly diminish, you know, whether it goes to zero or not. Like, that's going to happen, you know, and those people are going to have to, you know, find another way to, you know, to. To contribute. And it's definitely, you know, depends on your particular situation in your business about, you know, and your relationship with them. But I think the idea is really to find, you know, whatever it is that a person does and what their role is, how can AI allow them to perform it more efficiently. And I think that a lot of businesses owners, especially if it's somebody that, you know, you value as a. As a person and all that kind of stuff, like, you'll find other roles and other things for them to do because the AI will create new opportunities within the business. And so it's just a matter of, you know, having that conversation with that person. Hey, I want you to learn this. I want you to maybe even teach me what you're learning so we can talk about it and figure out how, you know, their role could. Can evolve and change. So you'll have a lot of that as well. You know, I'm gonna jump in real quick. [00:24:36] Speaker A: Brad, you said something just a second ago. So you're talking about the overall fit and the overall change. So here's a real big question I have for you. Kind of last question tonight as we roll into the commercial break for you, but Kajabras roll, where is Cajabra's role in. We bring a certain fit and a certain component to the AI world into this expansion world on tonight's conversation. And will you answer that question in. If we like the role that Kajabra provides, how the heck do we get a hold of you so we can get that role into our company and our business? [00:25:09] Speaker B: Yeah. So really, what we're, you know, there's two things here. One is, is you know, how to. How do you. How do you save time? How do you create these efficiencies, right? How do you leverage the AI in the entire business? So Kajabra our software is an all in one suite. It has all the features that you could need. It's really a sales and marketing engine heavily on content, production, automation, all the things that we really talked about on, you know, today. And it's, it's, you know, it, it's something that really is custom, can be customized for your particular business. Even if we're working just with an accounting firm, each, each company has its own way of doing business and all that kind of stuff. And every piece of it can be customized, can be integrated with other software. It's really kind of, you know, a fluid platform. It's not like locked into, you know, this is how we do it and you're either in or you're out kind of thing. It's more like, you know, something that's evolving. And because the AI is evolving so quickly, the new features and new capabilities are being added. So where we are today with the AI and where it could be even just next month, you know, it could be like, you know, miles apart. Miles apart. And so we're super excited about, you know, what we're working on and what we're able to, you know, help our clients and their clients in turn and the impact that we can have. [00:27:01] Speaker A: So get really quick, we got about 10 seconds left. How do people find you? [00:27:05] Speaker B: Yeah, so kajaba.com c-a j-a b r a.com and you know, I'm bradjabra.com. you can email me with questions and you can book a call with us. Me and Janelle, my co founder will love to sit down and have a strategy session with you. [00:27:25] Speaker A: Brad, thank you so much for coming on the show tonight. We're going to cut to a commercial break and we're going to be back with a new guest. We're going to keep this conversation rolling. Sit tight for more pivotal change. Sa we have passed the halfway point but we are still going strong. I have a familiar guest with us, one of my favorite people, one of the smartest, best tax minded people I've ever met or could think of. Wayne Shelton from Shelton Associates cpa. And my partner is back on the show tonight for some seriously good conversation. Wayne, welcome back. [00:28:26] Speaker C: Thank you. Thanks for having me. [00:28:28] Speaker A: So I appreciate you taking the time out of what is a ramping up tax season, but I know that you've got things well under control in your world over there. So I want to take some of the things that you do well and those practical ideas, practical operations, and get those out there so that other people can use them as well. And one of the things that you do very well at Shelton Associates is that you've become proactive in your mindset. So it used to be a reactive tax factory where you just did compliance work and every once in a while somebody asked you a clever question and of course you have the knowledge to answer it to now proactively going out and hunting out solutions for pain points for your clients. So what I want to ask you is in the world of what seems like ever changing tax laws, how do you as a business leader or you as a tax planner find the balance between planning and looking to the future, saying, hey, this might change, hey, beware, and offering cautions and stuff, but not getting distracted with unnecessary speculation and what if scenarios that can detract from the core business operations? [00:29:32] Speaker C: It's a great question and the timing is also perfect because there are a lot of changes coming down the pipe. To give you a little history, you know, there were many, many years. I've been doing this for 50 years and probably the first 35 years that I did it, there were hardly any changes. There were some depreciation changes maybe, but that's the bulk of it. But in the last five years, even 10 probably, but particularly five, there have been so many changes and they're just coming rapid fire. Give you an example. You know, we, we've got this BOI thing, beneficial ownership information that has changed four times in the last month. It's just, you know, they set it up, a court knocks it down, another appeals court brings it back. It's just back and forth, back and forth. And also now what we're getting ready to go into is a new administration where they're going to be some significant changes. Now there's been a lot of talk about the things that are going to happen and you know, such as Social Security not being taxable, tips not being taxable, overtime not being taxable, some things like that and several others. All this is talk at this point. Okay? I think that a lot of things will change, but I think what we've got to watch out for is not get overly excited about the rhetoric. And that's what we, I have that all the time. I have clients that call me and say, hey, you know, I see they're going to make, you know, the tips are not good. How are we going to figure that? You know, we don't have a clue. We don't even know if that's going to be the law. So what we try to tell people is don't get too excited. You know, keep an eye on it. But we're going to let you know when things substantially change. And one of the things that we do, and I think this is really important, and you should have, whoever works with you should be doing this for you. They should be getting on periodically and doing a little short video and say, okay, here's where we are on this situation. This situation, in this situation. And those can be very short, one or two, three minutes max. And we do that all the time. For example, Ryan, you just did one the other day about the Department of Revenue in Kentucky is shutting down for two weeks. They, in their great wisdom, they picked the last two weeks of corporate tax season, February 28 to March 15, one of the worst times in the whole year to shut down, to rig up their system, which means they'll have a lot of bugs, they'll come in, it's going to be a big mess. But what you did is you sent that out to all of our clients so that they'll understand that when things get slowed down in that last two weeks, here's the reason for it. So we'll try to do that on a lot of these type things. [00:32:07] Speaker A: Let me jump in and emphasize a point that you made about a minute ago, is we were talking about not getting caught up kind of in the, in the what if scenarios types. And I think if I'm pulling a message out because I want people to be able to write this down, they're supposed to be watching with a pen and paper, is that it's okay to be aware of, to be watching and tracking the progress of something. But you don't need to be running and jumping the gun and altering your business operations and altering your mindset and of course, causing undue anxiety with the what ifs of or if this changes. And I'm gonna have to do all of these crazy things, and I need to brace for this, embrace for that. Allow it to pass the House, pass the Senate, get put into law. They're gonna have to release rules, precedents, and instructions on it. And in that time period, almost always there's some type of grace period. If they pass something in March, they'll usually say, effective July 1st. Right. You know, so there's usually some type of buildup of grace period. Then you just said, rely on your people. That would be your accountants, your advisors, your experts to say, hey, let us guide you through the situation and tell you what's going to change. And so be aware, have some of that communication. And then of course, you're kind of getting into the next question I wanted you about with communication. You know, you talked about sending out some videos and just dripping content into these people's situation. But you know, we of course know that tax planning is not just about compliance work. Not at all. It's about strategic decision making. It's about where are the best practices for you and your business and your industry so that you can maintain frequent high level communication with your experts and then down the chain to your employees and subordinates. So how do we help people stay in step with that high level decision making and the communication to our staff, ourselves, and then to our clients. And you mentioned some of the videos. Are there any other regular type of meetings, regular type of press releases or content that gets shot out there? [00:34:03] Speaker C: Yes, and what we'll do is we'll meet, we meet once a week with our staff. And one of the things we always talk about is the changes coming down the pipe. And there we know there will be a lot of them. I mean, there's even talk about doing away with individual income tax. How awesome would that be? That would be wonderful for everybody. But if you go too far down that, that road, you know, you're going to make some decisions that are not correct. So what we try to do is make sure our staff understands what's going on. Then we try to get it out to the clients so that they will be aware of what's going on and at least what's being talked about. But one of the, one of the worst places you can get your information is off the Internet and off of all the articles that are put out there. Because those things a lot of times are just written to get your attention now, you know, so that you'll be in their advertising and look at that type of thing. So you just got to be careful what you watch for. There are so many firms that are still in the old tax factory mode that they don't attempt to even tell their people, their clients, what's going on. They need to be doing that. And if that's, if you're working with somebody that is in that mode, you're, you're probably not going to have a great avenue for getting your information. But we try to be very proactive and let our people know what's going on. When, when we know what's going on. And the videos are a great way to do it. Sometimes we'll send out an email, a mass Email to everybody, but those are well received. And back during COVID when the law was changing almost sometimes three times a day, we were actually putting out some. Some videos. We put out a video one time. We said, we will. This will probably change very quickly. By the time we got off of doing the video and sent it out, the law had changed again. That's how things work this way. Tom, just to kind of give you guys an overall look, you know, there'll be some significant depreciation changes, I think this year. I think, I think those we can count on. But there'll be a lot of other ones too. But just don't get too excited yet. Just be, you know, stay calm. Don't try to make any decisions based on things that are being talked about. I think you mentioned that, that that can really be disastrous because, you know, if you make a change based on think you're going to buy a piece of equipment and they're going to change the depreciation to get 100% and they don't, you know, that's going to be a problem. Then last year we waited a little longer than normal and filed extensions on a few people that had some significant depreciation because we thought that the law was going to be changed. We were told that the law was going to be changed. Actually there was a bill in Congress that would have changed it. They just totally ignored it, never did anything about it. Now this year could be different. I think in the middle of the year we're going to know some things and we'll be able to. Actually most of those things will probably go back and make it retroactive to the first of 25. That's typically the way they do it. That's what I'm expecting this year. [00:36:55] Speaker A: Gotcha. And Wayne, I really want to drive your point home real quick because you said it looks like it was ordinary sentence, but it really had some weight is we had about a dozen or so clients last year. So that's the year 24 for the 23 tax return that were really asset and depreciation heavy clients of ours. And with this huge potential change to depreciation and what happens with capitalized assets, we proactively went to these 12 and 15 people and said, hey, if this law changes, it will have this significant impact to your situation. You do what you want. It's your tax return ultimately and it's your company. But if you wait and we file an extension, which we normally wouldn't do, this is the potential benefit. But it may happen and it may not happen. So you're going to have to wait to see what happens. If it works out, it's a huge thumbs up. If it doesn't work out, it's business as usual. But we want to professionally put the pause button on you. So that took some high level communication and in some instances, we had to remind those business owners two months, three months down the road why we were doing that. Again, as the marketing patient in this not normal circumstance. So let me ask you one final question before we cut out to a commercial. So you have these changes, you have this communication and things are going on. You talked about client communication. Tell me about the internal workings. How do you get your team to stay in alignment when change is happening? Because life is throwing it at us and we just want to show up and do a regular job well. [00:38:22] Speaker C: And you know, one of the cool things about that is we have a outstanding staff and we'll have somebody that said, hey, have you seen this? We just got an email from the Department of Revenue that they're shutting down for two weeks. That was actually one of our staff said, have you seen this? And we had not. He saw the very. Just as soon as it came out, he saw it. So all of our staff is watching for those things all the time and helping us stay up to date on that. And that is pretty awesome. Because what we'll do a lot of times is we'll say, okay, here's going to be a major change. And Josh, you're the guy that figured this out. You're the guy that's done the research on it. We're going to let you train the rest of our staff as to how to implement this. So we don't just. I just don't sit there and preach it, people, and say, okay, here's the way it's going to be. We use everybody here. [00:39:08] Speaker A: And Wayne, let me jump in right here because you're about to make some really good, detailed, serious points. And I want to bring these points back right after the break because we're hard up against the wall. So let's put a pin right there about how you get the staff to execute these changes. And we'll be right back with our final segment of Pivotal Change. More Rain Shelton right after. Here we go. With the final push on tonight's episode, we have Wayne Shelton back with us from the break and he was getting ready to really drive some detailed points home. So get your ears ready and write down and pay attention to what he is about to say. Wayne, you were just moving into Talking about how you get with the levels of communications and all the changes that come up, how you get your staff to take initiative and proactively deal with the changes, help train and cross train each other, and of course, help move that information into the client's lab. So tell us what you're getting ready to say right before the break. [00:40:30] Speaker C: Okay. One of the things we're different, you know, our firm is different because we work very closely with our clients. We don't just do one off tax returns. So one of the things that we are attempting to do is. Well, let me back up what a lot of the firms that are just tax factories do is they think that the main partners are the only ones that contact clients, meet with clients and that know all the current information. They try to kind of keep that in there because that is, you know, that information. They feel like information is power, so if they don't share it, they're not sharing their power. We have a totally opposite view of this. We want everybody in our firm to know everything that's going on. We want them to meet with clients, we want them to interact with clients. And that has worked out very, very well. One of the ways we do that is we will have a client or we'll have a client in and I'll have a meeting with them and we'll have one of the staff members just sit there and take notes and then learn and what we'll do after they've done that two or three times, they can probably conduct one of these meetings. So that works out very, very nicely. And we let all of the staff participate in training. We'll assign a topic that they're interested in, let them research it, learn about it. We have good tax research and materials that we can use and hand out. And we try to use those very extensively. [00:41:50] Speaker A: Got it. I like that a lot. So you're training your people by witnessing the actions, gaining familiarity, then participating in the actions, and then full on doing it on their own. So that's, that's a really good step by step process. And then of course with the training model, you're saying, hey, you take charge. We just found out a new piece of information. You be the one that research it and then you teach it back to us. And of course, we send some of our staff to trainings every year and they have to do coach back sessions. When they get back, even if it's a 15, 20 minute section or two hour session, they're going to coach back what they learned about our software, our product, the you know, AI or whatever is on the cutting edge. So Wayne, that, that is a really good strategy and I know we both witnessed success and you've been able to execute that very well. So here's kind of my big and final question for tonight because I know you're gonna answer well. So we've been talking about, you know, the proactive versus reactive planning, the high level communication both internally and externally, on advisory level, getting your team to align and things like that. So when a company successfully balances these things with the pre planning and the strong communication and they're working with their advisors and the internal team is aligned, what long term advantages does that actually gain in terms of like financial health, just operational flexibility and your overall business growth up into the right. [00:43:05] Speaker C: You know, I'll tell you one of the big things that I think it does is give the client peace of mind that they know what's going on. Because one of the big things that I've seen over the years is people are very afraid of what is going to where, where am I going to come out, Am I going to owe money, am I going to get money back? You know, I've had people that owed $50,000 before under our model. Now they'll know that in December and we can do something about it, you know, if we need to prepay taxes, if we need to buy equipment, things like that. But it's very important to know on the front end what's going on. Just for peace of mind, if nothing else, but just to be able to effectively run a business and to know which direction you're going. It's kind of amazing to me when I see people coming in as to how many people really don't know where they're going, don't know how to get there. And when they get there, they don't even know. They're. They're kind of like Columbus when he discovered America, you know what I mean? But it's, it's a great thing to have a client that listens to your advice, that listens to your, to your videos and your emails. And when they come in they kind of know what's going on and it just makes a huge difference to them. They feel like that they have a direction for their business. They have the understanding to be able to make decisions that are not just based on, well, I don't know, I think I'll just do this. We have people that do that still, but that's not the majority anymore. The majority really listens to our advice and that that makes all the difference to them and to us. [00:44:33] Speaker A: I like that a lot. And so the last little component to expand that, how do you see the ripple effect? So if we're able to do that ourselves, which causes a good ripple effect into, of course, the effectiveness and how we adjust the client situation. Have you seen clients also take a little bit of that example, a little bit of that model and put it into their companies? [00:44:54] Speaker C: Oh, absolutely. You know, I think particularly the idea of sharing information with your staff, you know, and trying to keep your staff, not just say, just go do that, because I said go do it. That's a different mindset, you know, and I think that a lot of people will appreciate the fact that we're all trying to do the same thing, which is just help them succeed in their business. And the employees, if you have the right kind of employees, will do the same thing. I feel like our employees are that way. They want our business to succeed and they want our clients. Businesses to succeed. This is not just a job to them, it's way more than that. And I think clients are seeing that with their employees as well when they. When they adopt this type model. [00:45:35] Speaker A: I like that a lot. So, Wayne, in kind of closing tonight, give us just one tiny tidbit of advice that universally every business owner could benefit from in relation to what we talked about. And when you're done with that little nugget of advice, that little piece of Wayne wisdom, go ahead and tell us where we can find Wayne Shelton. WAYNE Shelton, CPA and services like what you offer, in case anybody in the audience is curious on how to get a hold of you and actually sign up for your services. [00:46:01] Speaker C: Absolutely. One thing I would encourage people to do is find a firm that will work with you during the year. Now, we're not the only firm that does that. There are a number of firms across the United States. There are probably a thousand or two, you know, out of 60,000 accounting firms using the term loosely. But find somebody that will work with you on the same basis that we work with people that will keep you informed as to what changes are happening, what real changes are going to happen, what Congress has passed and the President has signed, you know, that's. That's what I would do, is find somebody that can help you do that. Because if you always are going to work with somebody that is a tax factory, they are not going to give you that information. That's just not their model. But a business to be effective, needs to be. And think about the large companies, IBM, do you think that they're just going off, you know, off the cuff with stuff. They have hundreds of people that plan and research and do all that stuff. Well, most of us small businesses don't have that, you know, ability to do that, but your advisors can do that. [00:47:05] Speaker A: And Wayne, how do we get a hold of you, sir? [00:47:07] Speaker C: Yep, we're, we have a website. Wayne Shelton and associate. Our Shelton & Associates, 270-442-6688 is our phone number. We're easy to find. Just call me anytime we can help. [00:47:18] Speaker A: Very good. Well, Wayne, thank you so much for being on the show tonight. For everyone else that that watched this episode, I want you to take what you've heard tonight, go out into the world and see the change and be the change. And we'll be right here next time for you on pivotal change. This has been a NOW Media networks feature presentation. 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