Thomas Ruscitti & Emily Hedrick from Bookkeep join Dawn!

This episode is sponsored by Bookkeep. Learn more at https://www.bookkeep.com/

 

Episode Summary

Thomas Ruscitti & Emily Hedrick from Bookkeep join Dawn! Listen now to learn about Thomas and Emily, why Bookkeep is the go-to bookkeeping solution for accounting firms, and how automation is the future of this industry!

Episode Notes

Tom and Emily’s Beginnings

Tom begins the conversation by talking about his experience in accounting. He says that he received a call from an Inuit site leader in Tucson to teach them about point of sale—as  Quickbooks point of sale had just been released. Tom says this 10 day contracted position turned into a 10 year career at Intuit.

Emily also talks about how she started in accounting, and how it began with being hired as a project manager for Insightful Accountant. Emily then shares that she met Tom and the Bookkeep team at Scaling New Heights, and when she was looking for a new position, Tom reached out to her immediately.

Building Relationships Within the Accounting Community

Dawn brings up how everyone in the accounting industry is very supportive, and how there isn’t as much competition as you would expect. She highlights how important it is to be open to joining the accounting community and how it will lead to a better experience for both you and your business. 

Tom agrees and adds that it’s very important that everyone who chooses to join the accounting industry tbe passionate about what they do. He even goes on to share that the biggest influencers in the industry are people like Dawn, not the applications and products the industry uses.

Emily agrees and says that she recently spoke to someone new entering the accounting space, and they didn’t know how to approach “pitching themselves.” Emily says you can’t try to sell something to somebody; you have to build a relationship. You have to build trust with a client before they will be interested in your product.

How Bookkeep is “Selling Time”

Dawn brings up how automation is the future of the accounting industry, and she asks Tom about what Bookkeeping can do to help practitioners achieve this.

Tom brings up the point that at the end of the day, Bookkeep is ultimately “selling time.” He says that they are giving the community their time back. Tom says there is a shortage of Bookkeepers in the industry and they are using their application to solve that. Bookkeep allows practitioners to efficiently and effectively run their firms, which allows them time to focus on  what’s most important to them. 

How Great Customer Service is the Key to Client Retention

Tom and Dawn also talk about how important it is to maintain a good report between you and your client. Tom says that many other applications promise big things to practitioners, but often fail to deliver when it comes to customer service. 

Tom brings up how they have a chat support open Monday-Friday, but that their CEO, Jason Richelson is often answering questions that come in on the weekend. Tom and Emily both agree that having stellar customer service is the best way to support your clients, and they will support you in return.

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Transcript

Dawn Brolin
Hi everyone, my name is Dawn Brolin, I’m a certified public accountant, a Certified Fraud Examiner, the president of powerful accounting, Inc, and the author of the designated motivator for accounting professionals. And I’m here to tell you, if you are not searching for applications that eliminate data entry, you are missing the mark. Now I found an app, it is called Bookkeep. Bookeep solves for integrations between apps such as PayPal, or actually, really payment methods or ordering systems like GrubHub, things like that Shopify WooCommerce, the list is never ending, and they’re always adding on more applications. what is awesome about bookkeeping is that you simply connect your data file, whatever it may be, to bookkeeping, and it syncs just use GrubHub, for instance, it puts in GrubHub income at the gross amount, then it has expense accounts for GrubHub fees, and so on. And so it allows you to not be data entering or hand keying journal entries for these types of systems. And it does it correct every single time. When I found that application, this is a conversation that I’ve had with my, with my staff for years and years, we don’t want to enter data. When I found Bookkeep, we implemented it immediately for every client who has either PayPal, or Shopify, or GrubHub, or whatever it may be, so that those transactions can go in on a daily basis, magically while you’re sleeping. And you have accounting that is accurate, so you can make decisions. Are you selling enough? GrubHub? Are the fees worth it? How much are you paying? And so many people were using these applications have no idea what it really cost them to run through those systems. And so bookkeepers solve for that as accounting as an accounting professional, I always tell my staff, I want books to be correct. And I don’t do not want your hand keeping a journal entry. If you find yourself hand keying and transaction, then you need to stop and find the solution. And I can tell you right now, bookkeepers, solving that for all of our GrubHub Pay Pal, again, Shopify, there’s many different apps that they sync with. It’s awesome. I recommend that you go take a demo today, because it’s so easy, and it’s super affordable. So go get your designated motivator here. Go check out Bookkeep. Thank you so much for listening.

Hello everybody and welcome to the DM Disruption. Dawn Brolin here at a Wyndham, Connecticut. I’m super excited today to have two of my absolute favorite people just in general and in life. I think we have those people we love. And we’re here today with Tom Ruscitti… I tried every version. Okay, you say it.

Thomas Ruscitti
Ruscitti

Dawn Brolin
Ruscitti. I got it. Pronunciation thing that your brother…

Thomas Ruscitti
That’s okay. Yeah, I mean, it took me 20 years to learn how to say it. So you’re okay.

Dawn Brolin
I can’t even imagine how long it took to spell it. Because there’s c in there.

Thomas Ruscitti
Right. Yeah, yeah.

Dawn Brolin
See? And then of course, we have the wonderful beautiful, amazing Emily Hedrick, which saying the name right? And my these are my people from bookkeeper. We’re not just going to sit here and talk about bookkeeper. We’re going to talk about some really cool industry wide thought leadership. Because that’s fancy for we’re just going to talk about stuff that we love to talk about. And so Tom and I have known each other for well, since we’re like two so it’s probably been three years. I think that’s…

Thomas Ruscitti
Yes.

Dawn Brolin
And so Tom has been in the accounting industry for many years. Many again, like I said since he was two and Emily, who is just the backup of all backups you know, she’s actually in charge of Tom, Laney of courses to Emily really, at the end of the day on a day to day basis. Emily’s in charge so, I want each of you calm once you start just introduce yourself or why do you love the accounting industry and just say whatever you want my guy?

Thomas Ruscitti
Well, let me let me start by saying My name’s Tom Resetti or rachet. The that’s the Italian pronunciation and actually means small roses in Italian. Gosh, I’ve been working with QuickBooks ProAdvisor and in community for roughly 20 years maybe a little bit more and started I don’t know over 20 years ago, I got a call from Intuit site leader in Tucson who asked me if I could come and teach them a little bit about point of sale, because QuickBooks point of sale had just been released. And they didn’t realize they couldn’t sell it for like Chinese buffet restaurants and things like that. So I went down there on a 10 day contract and and ended up lasting 10 years. And the, you know, it’s funny because the everybody goes to these great huge conferences, and they’re, you know, like Oprah Winfrey and all kinds of famous people. But if you talk to some of the the original back then we used to come the input retail solution providers. You know, we started with six, we could have had our first conference in a car that our second, our first actual RSP retail solution provider conference was at a place called westward look in Tucson, Arizona, and we basically did it all ourselves. So Maria, and I and Marie’s two sons were, were putting the little pages in a binder for the agenda, Bill Bergen and I were, were banging a little brass tacks into the certificate. Gina was trying to keep me square, which was a full time job that no Emily does. Which I literally, I mean, let’s admit, if you’ve got to try to keep me on track, you should get hazard pay. Yeah, I’m not even gonna I can’t even deny it. Right. I mean, um, but, you know, it was, and still is. And if we want to, maybe chat about community, we can do that in a minute. But I’ve been in this in this marketplace, especially in the Intuit marketplace. Now we’re getting into the Xero marketplace and, and that ecosystem for 20 years. And honestly, I would say I’ve made more great friends in the Intuit community than I have my whole life. And I’m talking about through college and high school and, you know, a couple, a couple stints in prison. And yeah, you know, those were quick. Yeah, yeah. So, and that’s me.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah. Well, so Marie Archuleta, right, that was talking about wonderful woman when I thought I saw her in an airport last week, and it wasn’t her. But…

Thomas Ruscitti
Well, I will tell you, I don’t know if you’ve seen Marie recently. She looks like a movie star. She looks like a movie star.

Dawn Brolin
One of the most kind people you’ll ever meet.

Thomas Ruscitti
You want me to tell you a quick story about Maria, Maria and I go back, we go back a long time. She was one of the first RSP team members, solution provider team members, you know, I left Gina really took over Simon passed. And and But Marie and Gina were one of the two first. I mean, when when we first started this, it was myself, Marie Gina, no bargain. And then Craig Baker came a little bit later. And we did everything together. And we were going to work a show in San Francisco. And I was already there. And Marie was flying in. And it was a little bit later at night. So instead of making her take a taxi, I ordered her car service. Now, the difference between a car service and a taxi in San Francisco and you know, in the late 80s was probably 30 bucks, right?

Dawn Brolin
Back in the day. Yeah.

Thomas Ruscitti
To this to this day. Marie Archuleta later will tell that story about how special she felt. Because there she wouldn’t get in the cab. There was a guy standing there with a sign. And she got the feel important. And those are the kinds of things and I have hundreds of those 1000s of those where you just gotta make people feel special. And Marie was a very special human. She and so anything I could do to make her life easier. I was willing to do often at the expense of what into a closure P card. Yep. Which is your company purchasing car. Right? You know, and honestly, 20 years later, we do the same thing. And Emily can attest to it. Right? I’m not having I’m not gonna have Emily walking through a parking garage in New Orleans. No, valet parked the car. I don’t really care how much it costs, right. I mean, it’s not like we’re staying in a penthouse with caviar and champagne. Just valet? I don’t you know, something happens. Emily, we’re done.

Dawn Brolin
So that’s all backup.

Thomas Ruscitti
Yeah, I’m losing no Orleans, only, you know? Yeah, think about just a second think about that. Yeah. Anyway, that’s me.

Dawn Brolin
So speaking of Emily, Emily, tell us about yourself. What’s your best name in the world? Emily?

Emily Hedrick
Yes, of course. So I just started with bookkeeper earlier this year. And my experience in the accounting industry started when I was at insightful accountant. And I was there for about two years, I was the webinar host, and kind of like the project manager for all of the webinar type contracts. So I was really lucky to interact with a lot of different apps, a lot of different people in the apps, a lot of presenters. And I do I love the accounting community, I had previously worked with some corporate and higher ed clients. And it’s a lot different. The accounting industry is very, very welcoming. Everybody I feel like is really super nice and wants to help everybody else succeed. And so I really do like that about this industry. And it’s so great to go to these conferences, you know, we’ve been online for the last couple years. So going out to these conferences, and being able to shake people’s hands and see them in person has been really awesome. Really awesome experience.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah, it’s interesting. And I love what Tom said too, about, like, you make these friends in this industry, and people are so welcoming. They everybody kind of wants to help each other. You know, it’s not, you know, I just don’t think there’s competition. Honestly, I think most people have their like, what they’re really good at what they’re not really good at. But I just found, you don’t get those emails, you get those things and emails from people like, hey, why don’t you know, join, we’ll guarantee you five new clients, I’m like, I don’t want anymore. Good. I’m so good. And the reason why I like the way I look at it is, you know, just want to back up a second, making friends. I just went to Deb ephors birthday party a few weeks ago, Deb has been a friend of mine for a long, long time. She’s a great person, great human. And, you know, that’s what these relationships do by by building up and you you know who the good people are. And I’m not fine. I’ve not found a lot of crappy people within the accounting industry. There’s some that are a little, maybe a little bit more headstrong than others. And you just got to know where to fit in, when it comes to that kind of a thing. But you know, that conferences, going to conferences is great. That’s how you like, face to face. And right, Emily, like we’ve been online for so long. And that’s been really tough, right? And it’s, it’s a whole different experience when you wrap your arms around somebody or just, you know, be able to sit and have a coffee or whatever. And that’s like, so great. And so, you know, thinking back Tom to, you know, the 20 years plus that you’ve been involved in the industry, what the heck is going on? Now, we were talking 20 years ago about nobody even dreamed of an online platform, maybe? I think 10 years ago, 12, maybe even 13? We were like, Oh, I see, I remember when I was in I was in this partnership. And I want to work remote because I have young kids and they were having nothing to do with remote working? No, you need to be in the office, your buttons be in the seat, and are still companies like that right now. Which I think those guys might find themselves in a little bit of trouble, because of the way things are moving. And you’ve got your young professionals coming up. But, you know, back back in the day, Tom, why don’t you tell us about back in the day? What was it like?

Thomas Ruscitti
Well, you know, before we had electricity and running water, and no, you know, but the thing is, if you really look at what’s gone on, and, you know, in my illustrious professional careers, and you know, I’m old now, let’s, let’s just be serious, right? I’m old, and I’m okay with that. Right. But I was in the point of sale business, I installed more hospitality point of sale terminals, and then probably any three people in America. And it was always a local network. They had a server in the back they did you know, you had to cable you had to do all this kind of stuff. And you had to run cabling in the kitchen and you put a printer in the kitchen and then three days later, it’s full of grease and you know, all that kind of stuff. But nobody would ever back then even consider like a cloud, but companies come on. Seriously, right? Let’s not even talk about right now. And honestly, our founder and CEO Jason Nicholson was really one of the pioneers of this cloud based and then he he’s really lost his mind and said he was going to put it on an iPad. But if you remember 15 years ago, the only people used iPads for the kids and they were playing Candy Crush or whatever they do. Right? And and he’s out Nope, I’m gonna put it in the cloud my POS in the cloud, and I’m gonna have it on an iPad and everybody in the POS community went, Yeah, right. Yes. Yeah. Look at it shopkeep, one of the most successful startups of the day, you know, and it does that with 40 or 50,000. Margins. Cloud based on an iPad. Crazy Talk. Now not looking at what we do now. I mean, there is more, there’s more technology in my phone, in the near phone, then NASA had when they went to the moon, for real, that’s crazy talk. Yeah. Crazy. And, and so technology wise. I can’t even say the sky’s the limit, because we’ve already passed that. Right. So where do we go next? But I think that I really think that the the art community, right, is well served by people who actually care about what we do, honestly. I mean, you know, when you said, I met lots of people, most of them are good people, the majority of them, there might be some that are headstrong, the vendor side of that is exactly the opposite. Right? Everybody wants to be in the Intuit community. Why? Because they’re like, 160,000, pro advisors. Right? Right. I don’t know, there’s some ridiculous number, right. So everybody sees that as as fertile ground. Right. And so they, they sweep in, and they’re the new kid on the block. And you know, they might be a little better looking. And they might be have a nicer car, if you go back and look at high school, and, but they’re not willing to commit to the community. And if you think you’re gonna be successful in the Intuit community in two years, then you You’re crazy, right? This is a long term play. And people in this community, it’s funny, because I tell people coming into this community all the time, you’re gonna shake a lot of hands and kiss a lot of babies, long before you see any revenue. 100%. Right. And the people that are the greatest influencers in our community, the people that everybody else listens to, right, typically don’t do the most business. Because the people that are doing the most business, are busy doing business, and not really that concerned about helping the community. Right. Yeah. So, you know, the big influencers are helping your your brand or product, right, but we’re not getting that business from them. Right? No, I mean, you’re a great example. Everybody, everybody in the world wants to be associated with Don, bro. Everybody. Right? Yeah, I’m telling you. Yeah. When when we started setting up the first thing that the guys from whatever their name was, I can remember their booth. He said, Oh, so you know, who do you work with? Right? Guy said, do you work with the umbrella? And I said, Oh, yeah, I’m then going for 2000 years. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, that’s because only the good die young. You know, you know, that movie Highlander where they hack off his head and it grows back. But the moment I mentioned Dawn Brolin, they’re, they’re like in reverence like, oh, well, you know, you and I don’t work together, because it’s just something that we do, right? I mean, it takes work, especially, especially on your guy’s part. I mean, for Emily? Oh, you know, I mean, you know, you get a reprieve. Right? You know, cuz you don’t talk to me every day. That’s right. You know,

Dawn Brolin
the day you’re so right, like, it’s not, this isn’t a short term play. This is the part of a family that lives forever, this is dumb. And you see the apps that come in, quick sweep in, and then they’re gone. And understanding, first of all, the foundation of the apps partners, that you want to work with the foundation of what they believe in their, you know, their moral compass, just there to sell you a product or are they there to help you improve your business and the lives of your customer, your clients? Right? And that is something you have to you know, I always believe that about Intuit right? So when I that was like my, I’ll say that’s my first app that I started dealing with, right? Because I went into staples. I’m like, green box. I like that color was from my high school. I’m like, All right, I’m gonna go with the green one, I don’t even know if anything else was there as little Running Man, you know. And as I started to get to know them joining the Intuit accountant Council and then getting to know Tom through the IRP, well, whatever they want to call it now, that reseller program and all of that, you just I didn’t know there was such great people in the accounting industry, I just, I mean, I’m sitting my desk and that’s all I ever knew. But then when I started, I’m like, this is a company that really does care about their customers people like Alison ball, you’re like, that’s I met Alison through there and invasin and you know, Andy, and Shana all those guys who were the fountain Maria Marcela, and their name is the list is endless, really, of great people I’ve met and got to know through time Mark Dean is also another one of my favorites. I had Mark, you’ll love this little story about Mark being mark the, his voice, I’m like, bro, you need to be an announcer or something or, or even like maybe like a really a beautiful love song radio show. I had him record a voicemail, like a morning, wake up. On this is your day, you got this and whatever, I play it every once in a while. Like, that’s what it’s all about. You need the longevity, I can’t be introducing apps to my clients, and then they’re gone in two years. So that’s my responsibility to vet them. And I think that for those that are listening, that is a really important point that you have to take home. Right. And Emily, you’ve seen it what, obviously working with an Insightful Accountant, you came across a lot of app partners, with a lot of people. So you saw that firsthand. Oh, yeah. And like you just, you know, you just kind of knew probably after the first 10 minutes of a conversation,

Emily Hedrick
Well and it takes a little bit of time to we had a conversation this past week with somebody who’s very new in the space. And, you know, I think they were they didn’t really know how to approach it. And I was, you know, I was like, Look, I’ve been in here about to a little over two years. Now, you can’t just go in and try to sell something to somebody, you have got to build a relationship with them. They have to trust you to be even interested in your product. Right?

Dawn Brolin
Yeah. And again, you’re just getting the first five minutes you get that? Yeah. So you know what, as we look back, and we say, okay, back in the day, whenever the cloud was like, What are you nuts? You know, what are you smoking today? Like, that was kind of like, you know, all right, are we back in the set in the 60s, where we’re gonna go back to, you know, doing drugs and stuff? I don’t know, and go back. But it’s like, that’s the thing. And so the industry is changing. And here’s where I think it’s so important. As we look forward to the future, we look at the back the past and like, we didn’t believe this would we would be here? Well, some of us did. Right? As time went on, we knew this was coming. And we knew changes were going to be made. And so the industry itself is in an interesting shift right now. We need a lot of young, professional, we need people we need people in the industry, people are phasing out fashion they’re coming in. And that’s really important for us to pay attention to. And if you think about that, whether they’re doesn’t matter what their age is, they’re new in the industry, like you were saying, Emily, whether that was a vendor or an attendee either way, as you’re trying to maneuver in here it is, it is hard. It’s hard to figure out who to commit to and who not to commit to. And that’s probably the biggest challenge. Now, technology is replacing in some cases, and it should, it should, I should never be taping this keyboard, right as a keyboard. Can you see it? Yep, there we go. The keyboard and doing things like this to create transactions in a data file. We should be solving for that. And at the same time, not decreasing our prices, because we feel like we’ve automated things. So there’s this interesting conversation about where are we going and where am I going to fit in? Tom, you are seeing that right now. People just

Thomas Ruscitti
Yeah, and the thing is, you know, and I’m sure Emily can speak much more eloquently on this, but we’re really selling time. Right? I don’t know if you’re a big fan of home COMM And I don’t know if I’m allowed to say that or I have to have some kind of copywriter hometown is a home improvement show where these to this young couple, Ben and Erin Napier in Laurel, Mississippi. They go around and they rebuild these old houses in Laurel. Now Morrow is a small town, so And this week, they did uh, I don’t know what media it was on. He had given his wife the gift of time for her birthday. They have two young kids now. So You know, they’re always running around, and he’s playing at lunch for her with her mom a day that you can work in the art studio. He’s taken care. And we’re not as romantically, but we’re doing the same thing. Right, what we’re doing for our community is giving them their time back. Okay, we’re, we’re solving for the aggravation that is leading to a shortage of of bookkeepers and accountants in our community. Because, you know, after the 10,000, manual reconciliation you’re trying to do you say to yourself, there has got to be a better way, right? I should just go drive Uber, so that I’m not frustrated, like I am putting his data in. Yeah. And if we can save you two hours a week, five hours a week, 12 hours a month. The question that Emily will ask is, what are you going to do with that time? Are you going to find more clients? Are you going to help more clients and do more consulting work? Are you going to make your kids baseball games? Are you going to be at your, your kids dance recital? Or any if you look at as a vendor, how I can help you? Right? The my client, right now, people talk about clients, and they’re really, they have in their head? The clients are the end users. My clients, are you. Exactly. Yeah, that’s, and you know, the guy who started Southwest Airlines, I can’t remember his name, um, said, my mission is to take care of the employees, because if I take care of the employees, they’re going to take care of my customers. Exactly. My job. My mission every day when I wake up, is to make sure that you know, no matter who else is your partner with that bookkeepers got your back? Yep.

Dawn Brolin
Period. Great example, Tom. I think it was Thursday or Friday, last week, that I, I think I emailed you, or I text you. And I said, you know, we’re using bookkeeper for client, any client that has that can integrate with your tool, whether it be square or whatever, Pay Pal, all the bazillion ones that you guys work with? Then I’m awesome. I’ve got that up and running, I get so excited when we get a new client or even an existing client who’s starting to do sales to another venue. And we’re like, oh, we could sell for this. This isn’t going to take us more time. And I text you and said do you do posting by class? And that’s because my one of my bookkeepers, Nicole, she was like, we have this client we’ve had I’ve been just doing their tax return, we’re not been doing a lot of consulting with them. But they’re growing like crazy. And she’s like, they have this reporting requirement where they need the sales to come in blah, blah, blah, do they do my class, and I’m like, it doesn’t by class right time, because I’m not needed to use class. So I don’t ask about unless I need it. And I was like, You do classes and I sent that to Nicole, I could see that I could feel the relief from 20 miles away where she lives. Because she is the bookkeeper is exactly what you’re talking about. She wants to solve for the client, that’s her thing. Her job is to make the client’s life better to give them the time back. So you’re giving us the to connect our goal is to give them the time back and have them actually reporting accurately and all the rest of that stuff. But you’re so right on that time. 100%. And Emily, I want you to jump in on that.

Emily Hedrick
I mean, I’ll just echo Tom is it’s I mean, you’d have to put in care you have to care for whether that is your accountant, or where the whether that’s the end user, that you have to provide value. You can’t just sell something and think, Oh, well, everything’s great. And they should use it just because like, there has got to be that we’re saving you time. And whether that is adding more clients to your business, taking a day off only working four days a week, go in to see your kids, you know, activities. Those are important things and I hear it from from users, you know that they are saving time they are able to go pick their kids up from school, and that’s a really nice thing to hear. Because we’re not just selling something just to sell it. Right.

Thomas Ruscitti
Yeah. And I mean, you could monetize that all you want. I mean, we we have research studies and you know, you’re gonna save X amount of dollars, X amount of hours, but that’s, that doesn’t hit home. Until you say, you know, wouldn’t it be nice to actually have dinner with your family three times a week instead of once, right? And then people start to realize, but it’s the it’s, it’s that type of relationship. You know? And, you know, again, if you want to see the opposite, go go run it restaurant for a couple of months. And and you could buy tomatoes from a guy, the produce vendor for 20 years. And then somebody comes in and offers you those same tomatoes, or what they say the same tomatoes for 20 cents cheaper upon, and you’re buying tomatoes from that because of tomatoes, that tomato, tomato, right, and you get the first shipment and not all of them are firm. And some of them may be broken or whatever. And the first thing you say is I should have never left my 20 year guy. Yeah. Right. But you did it. Right. Yeah, we’re the same way. Our booking is not the cheapest solution. We were especially when we were younger, we probably were because that’s how you get business. But we’re not the cheapest solution. Right? And and if you want the cheaper solution, go get the cheaper solution. And then when it breaks, or when you know, the two guys in the garage, don’t answer the phone, when you call for support, then you can come back to us.

Dawn Brolin
Well, and I think that’s another great conversation because support, right? support is critical. And when you’re working with some kind of a solution provider, and you can’t get somebody pretty darn quickly, you’re gonna be frustrated, and you’re gonna, you’re gonna waste that time that you thought you were gaining back by the way, you just lost more time than you were doing. So now you’re you’re at the negative, we’re in the negative now and nobody wants to be in the negative like I don’t think anybody does. And so that’s another big consideration. So How available are they? And you know what, at the end of the day, you’re not going to know until you’re in a jam. That’s when you know how good support is, is when you’re like oh crap, I’m in trouble. I need help. And then that’s when the truth starts to come about. And so you know, definitely one of the things and I’m you know, we’re we are talking about bookkeeper today, because why wouldn’t we? bookkeeper for us, my biggest thing was I can get in the chat and get somebody like almost right away, like pretty much right away. And it Listen, can you you know, I don’t have I don’t want to email. I don’t want to freaking email another person who stabbed myself on emails, right? You guys have that support? Not every app has chat support, and chat support where they actually get on to chat and answer you like a human. I can tell you real quick, because I know you’ve got something on your head in your head there. I had an app. No, it wasn’t an app. It was always something I was trying to get solved for a client. I can’t remember exactly what’s but it was a there was chat support. And it was a bot like one of those bot things. It’s like, hey, what do you need? And I’m like, I need a customer service representative will and then it just the can thing and I’m like ready to kill someone. It was one of my restaurant clients actually. And so I’m on there. And she’s watching me because I’m sharing the screen. And then they said something like, oh, no, no one’s available at this time. And I typed it I go, of course, there’s no one available because that would be convenient for me. And then the guy jumps back out. He’s like, No, this is actually a real person. I’m like, Well, you were pretty good disguise because you sounded like a bot. And it was just funny. When I was just like, Yeah, of course you don’t have anybody available. But of course, it’s a huge deal. Support is a huge deal.

Thomas Ruscitti
Yeah. So it’s funny, you talk about our chat, um, especially on the weekends. So we’re our chat support. Our support team works Monday through Friday, right? The chat is on over the weekend. And you know, who’s monitoring that over the weekend? Jason, our founder and CEO, Jason Richelson. And he was answering chats while he was on vacation in Spain. Yeah, and, and that, first of all, that just shows the kind of person he is. But that’s also for me. Kind of sad. Right? This poor guy can’t even take a vacation. Now, somebody else would have answered it. I’m sure. I mean, I answered chats all weekend. But if you have the level of commitment, and again, I go back to commitment to the community, right? That person who chatted over the weekend was probably going to be okay, if we waited till Monday. Sure. But now they’re never going anywhere. Right? I mean,

Dawn Brolin
You know, I think part of it too, is I know as a practitioner, and this you guys are smart, because obviously Tom you know everything and Emily knows everything soon, Jason’s got it all figured out. So you guys like I have a solid team. But at the end of the day, a lot of practitioners find the time to be able to work on those integrations and do those types of things on the weekend. You know why? Because the frickin phone isn’t ringing, and the people aren’t coming in the door. It’s that ability on the weekend, to be able to focus and I find myself like, during the week, I’m a 10 to four girl, if I can help it at most, I want to be no more than tend to four. Sometimes on Friday. I’ll just work in the morning and then I know I’m going to work on Saturday for three or four hours, because I know it’s gonna be quiet and I know I’ll be productive. And so you know, who wants to work on the weekends? Nobody but who wants to work during the week? Nobody. So like, it’s just like pick your battle, right when it comes to when you’re working. But having that support time, those people will never go away.

Thomas Ruscitti
Yeah. And you know, I say all the time, man, if I hit the Powerball, I’m calling in rich, right? I gotta, Hey, boss, I can’t I can’t come to work today. I got a vision problem. Well, what’s matter? I can’t see myself working anymore. I just hit the Powerball. You know, but, you know, the other thing is, again, not wanting to give away any trade secrets here. But if I send an email on Saturday, so I get twice the open rates, as I do, if I send it Monday through Friday, sometimes even higher than that. And I know, I know for a fact that if I emailed Dawn Brolin Saturday morning, I’m going to get an immediate response now, Monday through Friday, it might be an hour or two. Yeah. Saturday morning, she’s when she sees it. She’s answered, bang, right.

Dawn Brolin
Commitment. That’s the two way commitment.

Thomas Ruscitti
Again, I think that if if you really want to see the true colors of the vendors that you want to work with, call support or chat support and see see what the results are right now. We do. I don’t I don’t think I know for sure. I don’t know everything Emily may. But I don’t know everything. I do know this, that once you have a relationship with a Intuit, member of community member, you have got to cherish that, because you’re only two scrubs away from everybody in the community known your screw up. Yeah. And I can list them. Yeah, I mean, there are hundreds of people who have flown into this community and screwed us up. And then we all have to recover. Right? And, and, frankly, and I’m sure you have to beat this out. It pisses me off that they think they can come in here so cavalierly. And work within this community. Yeah, it really does.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah, yeah, I think that, you know, I find for myself, you know, oh, that looks like a good app. And I’ll go look and see what they’re doing whatever my biggest thing is, I, I want to I want to evaluate how they’re approaching me. Right? are they sticking a pamphlet my face and whatever? Like, what are they actually like, Hey, so what is your what is your firm like, like, actually having that conversation, of course, conferences are the great place to do that. And at the same time, I think conferences sometimes do a disservice. They do a little service, because they don’t do necessarily don’t do their due diligence to, to, you know, vet out the apps that are that want to come and sponsor their show, instead of just being Oh, yeah, come on in, we want your 7500 bucks or your $15,000 or whatever, because we’re trying to fill the show floor, we want to make a lot of stuff there. And that’s not always the best decision.

Thomas Ruscitti
Well, a good example where you were at scaling new heights this year, there was a company that was making a lot of noise about how great they were and what a great partner they were going to be for whatever group and scaling new heights and the night before setup, they were putting up the big banners on the on the columns way into the show. And that was the big buzz, this company was going to give away this giveaway that that night, they went bankrupt, turn the lights off. And that morning, we were going to set up and they were pulling things off the columns. And that’s because you know, $75,000 for a sponsorship. That’s That’s good. That’s a that’s a big win. But only if they show up. Yeah. And my advice to them when it was going on, was quite simply get paid up front. Yep. 100%. Right. So the moral of that story is just because they have the big, flashy new car doesn’t make them the best transportation to the fair.

Emily Hedrick
And I feel like a lot of people in the accounting industry, I mean, as from my experience alone, like, nobody sees an app and just goes and jumps into it. Like it takes time. It takes all of that going to see about customer care and really understanding the business and getting a little bit of background about the people that are running it for them to make a decision to go for it.

Dawn Brolin
Well, I think the vendors, the app partners that choose the right people, so like bringing Jason’s no dummy brought Tom on that he brought Emily on.

Emily Hedrick
Tom found me at Scaling New Heights last year. So that’s how we, that’s how we connected.

Thomas Ruscitti
Because because Emily, Emily and her girlfriend were trying to play pool. And it was really sad. It was actually it was it Yeah, shout and shout out to Molly near the two of them actually knew how to hold a full stick but they wanted to they wanted to do something. I mean, you know, we did a thing where come on by we had Jason’s Amex card and we run up the bill. And, you know, but yeah, and honestly, whatever happened where she was working before I happen to be on LinkedIn when she posted and 10 minutes after she posted she was looking for a job. She was talking to Jason. Yeah. Because we needed Emily. We every day, I tried to tell him how much I appreciate what she does, because we were just getting crushed. Otherwise. But I mean, you know, and again, I think this, this becomes kind of a kind of a, a more emotional conversation as you as you go deeper into it. Because, you know, if you’re going to look at an application, I want to know what else that company does, right? If they’re selling cars, and they have an app, pretty certain your app is falling below the line when it comes to how am I going to help? You know, and if there’s a, you know, if somebody screws up in this community, and a year later, two years later shows up with another app or another company and thinks that we’re all not going to remember. They get what they deserve. Yeah, they really do. I mean, and you know, there is there is so much good. That happens in our community, that the bad actors, the bad actors should get called out and they should get drummed out of our community. Right. And just like just like trek, right, which a lot of people say, you know, I looked like a cross between Shrek and Sean Connery. Shrek lives outside the village, because he’s grumpy, and he’s this and he’s out in this other. But the end of the day, you saved the day. And that day, right? Those people get drummed out of our community because they don’t deserve an opportunity to serve you. All right, honestly, I mean, you know, what would I do if I wasn’t doing this? I don’t know. I often say I wish I was born rich instead of good looking. But, you know, I mean, there’s something about having lifelong friends. I mean, yeah, you know, I’m Don, it’s, they’re the same cast of characters, you know, and, and some of them retire, some of them go on to do other things, but they’re going to be friends forever. And, you know, hopefully, when I croak. It’s not going to be how much business I brought to you. It’s going to be that, you know, he was a good guy, and he helped and he made a difference. Because we’re all going sometime right now. evitable. I never seen on a gravestone. He was a great employee. Or, you know, or, you know, he should have been one more cold call. You know…

Emily Hedrick
No, I totally agree, Tom. Like, I mean, like I said, I go to these conferences, and, you know, people will come up and compliment me, but it’s like, they’re not, they’re not, they’re complimenting the job I do, but they’re complimenting me as a person. And like, it is so fulfilling to go and talk to these people and just have that response.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah, yeah. 100% is it’s interesting you say that way too. Because at the end of the day, you know, you go to a funeral and you you know, I’ve been to too many we all have been to MIT to too many in the last couple of years but just looking around and like when my line be this long, like you know, you look around here like would they would they would I would people be sad that I was gone would they be celebrating which is what I prefer them to do? You know, celebrating that that time. But at the end of the day, I always want to be remembered and I’m not saying I’m great at it. I’m just saying that i My goal is always to strive that people when they think about me, they smile. They don’t they’re not like Bruins here, wonder what wonder what painful story she’s going to tell today. This is like a happy time for me. Right and, and that’s what we want. And there’s in that those relationships that you’re building out there, that’s what life is about, you know, automating the The accounting is awesome, because you know why I can have my time back I can, I took Friday off, I went down to Scarborough and I bid up with Saratoga met up with my aunt, my uncle, and, you know, those are the things that we should be doing. And at the same time, my company is still running, I’m not coming in on Monday morning with this overflow of emails, because we’ve, we’re really working so hard to have things automated, and for people to be able to get their lives back. You know, I mean, only want to talk to us, they don’t want to talk to the stinking accountant, they just don’t, some do some do too much, in some ways, but it’s like, you know, that’s what you want for your business, you want to be able to get into your office at whatever time, you know, my standard is 10. Today, I had a, I had a call at 930. So I had to come in really early, you know, so, but being able to come in and not be like, Oh, my goodness, what happened over the weekend is all that what I’m going to run into on a Monday. And we’ve really worked hard to minimize that painful exposure, I failed somebody because that’s the last thing I ever want to do is to fail someone. So I think, you know, as we’re thinking in the future, and as we’re considering what what is going to happen as we continue to move forward. And it’s client satisfaction, because Tom, what you were saying about the apps where they swoop in, they screw about, you don’t want to be that accounting professional, either. Yeah, you bring a client on, and you’re the state standard, same old, same old accountant, like the other guy, you don’t want to do that. You want to set yourself up for success and for you to stand out. And in order for you to do that. You want to make sure your clients are saying, Oh, my goodness, my account is freaking awesome. And then they were burning up sorry. We’re not taking on any more clients. And boy, you got lucky, you’re on the list. And that’s what I’ve been telling clients recently. I’m like, Listen, I’m not taking on new clients, because I want to get better at those I have. And if that means later, you know, six months or a year from now, I can open back up to accepting new clients and cool. But, you know, and I think app partners think a little bit about that themselves, too, as you guys are almost interviewing us as the accounting professionals say, Do I want to work with person? So be your person!

Thomas Ruscitti
Sure, yeah, you’re exactly right. Because it’s kind of be it’s kind of be a more genuine relationship for it to be successful. Right. Now. Interestingly enough, you know, if we want to talk about where the industry is, is actually heading, I think you’re on the forefront of that because you introduce your tech stack, right? Here’s what I here’s what I use. Now, if you get a client and they say, Well, I don’t want to use bookkeeper, I want to use x, well, good, you go ahead and do that. Find somebody else to work with you. I don’t really want to be your account. Right? But not everybody does that. So then you have three people on this product and three people on this product and, you know, five cuts five clients on on truly and five clients on relay and, you know, three clients on melon, or whatever it is, you know, pick a name, you know, I want to I want a software application called prune. Right? You guys gotten a peach tree and you got this? Prune because nobody’s gonna mistake that right. Whatever it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be right, right. Right. Nobody else will steal that name. Right sauerkraut? I mean, come on. I mean, Dorian fruit, something that people are gonna go, wow. But anyway, but no, I mean, I think you’re seeing that now. And the other thing I think you’re seeing is you and I see it all the time. And I’m not really sure why but you know, Oh, get good training, become a virtual bookkeeper. And you can work 10 hours a week, and that could be your side gig. Yep. Right. Well, I don’t want my dentist to be a side gig, right. I prefer my, I prefer my cardiologist actually spent most of his time doing cardiologist stuff, but not soapbox derby. Yeah, I mean, seriously, right. So now it’s a side gig. And they think that they think that they have the process down where you don’t actually have to know bookkeeping to be a bookkeeper. And that’s just the most dangerous thing ever. Right? So we’ve just got to weed that kind of stuff out there. There are really great folks who do that too. Right? They create their own network, they create their own training and, and they’re very successful when they adopt a tech stack and their followers adopt that same tech stack. That’s great. But anybody thinks you can take six hours of training become a bookkeeper? I want them to do my competitors books.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s so true. Because at the end of the day, and that’s one of the things like for me, and a lot of my colleagues that are out, you know, Marriott Martinez, there’s a million other sites Literally all kinds of different people who are out there doing great things, right Hector Garcia just helping so many people learn. We are actually practitioners a difference between someone who’s trying to thought without owning a practice versus those that are owning a practice. And that’s one of the things for me. You know, people are like, Well, how long are you going to keep doing accounting? You should just go out and keep and do the speaking. I don’t know, the keeps me grounded. It’s not about it’s alright, I’m not doing it for free, right? I mean, it’s got to be a little bit about money. But I’m doing accounting, because I know I have to keep my head in the game. I have in order for me to help other people be successful, I have to prove that I can be successful. My own practice, otherwise, I wouldn’t talk it sideways out of my mouth. That’s not true. It just can’t be that.

Thomas Ruscitti
And there’s the difference on honestly, as we as we wrap this up, there’s a difference. You’re honest enough about the relationship that you’re building to say, hey, look, this is also about money. You’re not a nonprofit, nope. Or at least not by design. But you’re not a nonprofit, book gate is not a nonprofit. No, it there is a way to be successful, and still be profitable. And that is by actually doing the things that we do. Right. And it costs a lot of money. There’s a lot of resources behind what we do now. Four of us went to zero con New Orleans. How much did that cost bookie? I don’t know what the booth probably 20 $25,000. But like I told these, these folks who just showed up at zero con, half the people that are in this show today won’t be here next year? Well, honestly, I think including them, right? Because they don’t have the commitment. This is all about commitment. I’ll come in at the dawn Burleigh. Right. And Don Brolin knows that, right. Don Brolin knows that she can text me on a weekend and or in the middle of night with a question or concern, and she’s gonna get an answer. Absolutely. If if you don’t have that degree of confidence in your vendor, your technology provider, then you’re with the wrong technology provider. Yep. Right. I can tell you that 99% of the people in the community that that we do business with have my cell phone. Yep. That’s probably stupid on my part.

Dawn Brolin
But you don’t give it to just anybody either, right?

Thomas Ruscitti
I don’t. Wow. Yeah. That’s a whole different I was there. Yeah. Let’s slow down that train. But that’s honestly, I mean, you know, you have to be committed to each and every one of these, these partners you work with, because otherwise they’re gonna know. I mean, if I, if I have asked this 20 years ago, then you know, I’d be making spaghetti sauce it you know, Luigis, you know, pizzeria or you’d be selling revenue off the street? Well, yeah. And I do do that, too. If you look at my Facebook page now, um, I do make however, the best meat sauce in America.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah. So I know. I mean, this has been a great conversation. I think it’s the in there a lot of people who want to learn how to work with vendors, and how to work with the app partners. And, and so I think just even listening to this to get that guideline of what’s important. And that’s, that’s really to be true to yourself. So Emily, I’ll let you say your last words.

Emily Hedrick
Yeah, sure. I mean, what you just said, something I’ve been thinking about that, as we’ve been talking is just, you just have to be authentic, you have to be authentically you. And your company has to be authentic and committed to to the clients and to whatever the mission of the company is.

Dawn Brolin
Yeah, absolutely. Tom,

Thomas Ruscitti
My last word. You want my last words?

Dawn Brolin
Well, no, just go. Dot, dot, dot after whatever use

Thomas Ruscitti
Yeah, I mean, seriously, I agree. 100%. If you’re not committed, they’ll know you’re not committed to them, and you’ll be on your way. And if you’re in our space, you should find something else to do. Because we are we are committed, we are 100% committed. You know, I think we have 25 people that work for us and 19 of them development and support. Right. And so, you know, to those poor guys that were next to us. That’s just trying to find something else to do.

Dawn Brolin
Go make your own spaghetti sauce meat, so yeah, I mean, yeah. So I’ll wrap it up by saying the moment I met Jason last fall, so of course, I came over the bookie booth because of Tom. I’m like, oh my god, it’s Tom. But me too. Jason, I’m just having the conversation with him. He’s extremely intelligent. As a matter of fact, as a CEO, I owe him some reports out of a bowling alley. Sale system. Right. And he and I had that conversation a couple weeks ago. And then he actually emailed me I think it was Thursday or Friday and say Brolin, get me those bowling alley reports. He doesn’t have to do that. That says a lot about it to me, what he’s trying to accomplish for every small business owner in the world.

Thomas Ruscitti
He has to do that Dawn. Yeah, because he’s committed to doing it. Yep. And that’s the difference. Honestly, that’s the difference. We are our entire team is is so committed. I I mostly am committed because I don’t want to let him down. Yeah, I mean, yeah. And that’s what it’s about. We don’t want to let you down. He does, you know, I mean,

Dawn Brolin
let you down the road goes both ways. I think that once you can build that solid foundation, that relationship, that there’s a home run relationship right there that you will have forever. And so you know, and I think at the end of the day, as people that are listening, that’s that’s the message but I want to thank you both so much for coming on to the DEM disruption today. We’re just trying to shake up the industry, get people to be out there and actually doing something with the tools that they’re being given essentially, from our partners like bookkeepers to give you your life back to give you your time, and your team, your staff, and then hopefully at the end your clients and so that’s you know, that’s what we’re trying to help educate, teach people to do. But Emily and Tom Thank you guys so much for for joining me today and our future is forever. So we look forward to having you on again as we continue this conversation because it’s ongoing and forever, until we’re dead.

Thomas Ruscitti
And then I’ll come back and haunt you so you’re not even gonna get away from me like by the by that.

Dawn Brolin
Not possible. Alright, everybody. Thanks, everybody. Take care. We’ll talk soon.