In this Ask-Me-Anything episode of The Unsexy Entrepreneurship Podcast, Charles Harris and Seth Jenson tackle the most common (and most confusing) questions new founders face. Whether you’re starting a bookkeeping business, a marketing agency, or any professional service, this episode is your tactical crash course.

We answer:

1. Should I be an LLC or an S-Corp?
2. When is the right time to start paying myself?
3. What percentage of revenue should go toward salary?
4. When should I hire someone—and when should I contract instead?
5. What’s the best tech stack for a service-based business?

Charles also shares insider tips on accounting platforms, invoicing tools (like Anchor), and why Google Workspace is still underrated. Seth gets real about the opportunity cost of your time and how to think like a founder when it comes to delegation and growth.

Whether you’re freelancing, scaling, or just figuring out what to do next, this episode is packed with unfiltered, practical advice to help you make smarter decisions, avoid costly mistakes, and grow with confidence.

📦 Plus: A sneak peek at a new business launch—Postcards from the Parks!

Got questions for Charles and Seth? Submit them HERE.

Welcome to the Unsexy Entrepreneurship Podcast. I am your host, Charles Harris, and as always, I am joined by Seth Jensen. How are you today, Seth?

Doing great, we're at Hop Skipping a Jump from the holidays and so it's already feeling cheery around here.

Yeah, I've noticed a huge drop off in client communication. And not on my side, I think people just don't want to reach out to their accountant right now, which is A-okay with me.

Hahaha

Yeah.

Are you ⁓ a Christmas champion? are you a, like everyone's got their favorite holidays, right? And then you get the people that are like, no, it's Halloween for me. But I feel like the bread and butter is Christmas. Are you on that train as well?

sending

You

Yeah, I'm basic. Christmas for me, maybe Thanksgiving? don't know. October through December is just awesome.

Yeah, yeah, it's true. Christmas, it's such a long extended holiday that it's hard to compete with because Thanksgiving is like a week. Halloween, you start getting vibes beginning of October, but it's really kind of the second half of October. like December, I mean, it's all, you might as well rename December just Christmas month, because it's going hard from the first.

Well, and I

can't speak to every accounting firm either, but I think a lot of them, if not all, basically shut down from Christmas through New Year's. Clients don't want to talk to us. Taxes aren't ready to go yet. We can't do year end. We're like just at this like precipice of jumping off into the abyss of tax season. So I'm shutting down from the 19th through the 31st. I mean...

Right.

sending my employee home, I think I'll probably jump on to do payroll for one client, maybe two, and that's pretty much it. So it's a good, good fun period of time. Yeah, no, it's a fun period of time, and it's one of the reasons why accounting is awesome.

Yeah, yeah.

Hooray! Thank you, Santa!

Yeah, right before the battle begins in January.

All right, so.

Yeah, yeah, and then we hate our lives up until about April 15th and then we can start having fun again. Most of the time, accounting is a great field. I absolutely love it. But yeah, it's not not always sunshine and roses like it is during Christmas. So today, Seth, we reached out and we got some questions. And

Boy, I even got one question that was just, can you solve all of my problems for me without listing their problems? So we're not gonna include that question. And I think she was being facetious, but. Yeah, exactly. But we got some questions. And if any listeners have any questions, feel free to reach out to us, email us or send us a message.

haha

That's a letter to Santa situation.

We would love to respond to them, if not in a Q &A episode, just in general. But yeah, so I'm pretty excited for today. It'll be fun.

Yeah, definitely. I'm going in mostly blind here. I just barely pulled the document up, but I have not done any research. But it looks like these are a nice mix between your expertise and mine. So I'm excited to sink our teeth into them.

Yeah, it'll be fun. Do you want to start us off with the first question?

All right. I'd love to. Okay. So question number one of the first Ask Me Anything episode of the Unsexy Entrepreneurship podcast. This is, this is our coming out as an established force in the podcasting industry here, because this is a necessary, it's a prerequisite at this point. Yeah. ⁓ All right. Question number one, for someone starting their own bookkeeping and accounting services firm,

Yeah, we've made it.

You

like the one you run, what business entity do you recommend and why?

And I guess I'd love to hear, I'm gonna even add part two to the question, Charlie, and I'm gonna make you answer this question, specific to bookkeeping and accounting, and then also just other professional services, right? So maybe if you're a marketing agency or going to build a law firm, is there a different entity or is it kind of the same path for all service providers?

Yeah, so, yeah.

Yeah, so let's differentiate business entities. So there are business entities and then tax entities. I think what he's asking here is about tax entities, but let's break it down from both sides. So legally speaking, there's basically a...

just a business that you just open up a lemonade stand on the corner and just start selling lemonade, right? There's no legal protections. Sole proprietor is what it's considered, I think, majority of the time, although for, again, this is legal entities. We're not talking about tax entities here. And then LLC is kind of the first jump, and this is a limited liability company. And there are variations inside of that, actually quite a few.

But I think that's kind of the first step for most businesses, right? And we're used to seeing LLC next to stuff. It helps protect you in case of lawsuits, still keep separate bank accounts and everything like this to establish it as a separate entity. But I think like legal Zoom will walk you through it I don't think they cost much.

So it depends on the state too because LLC is a state driven entity, not a federal entity.

And I'll just chime in here too. We mentioned this in a previous episode, but remember that, again, the reason you establish an entity first and foremost is to protect yourself legally, right? It's so that they can't sue you for your house when someone slips and falls on your pavement or whatever. So that's why they're that distinction of legal and tax. A lot of people assume it's all for taxes, but really that first step is really protecting yourself. The other thing we've mentioned before is, hey,

Yeah.

Right.

Be careful when you go through the process of signing up online through your state for your LLC, because there will be a lot of links for paid services that are basically paying a premium to do what you can do very simply on your government website. So just be aware that there's some kind of sleazy money grabs happening. And it's actually very simple to set up an LLC in most states. It's something you can do on a weekend. It's relatively inexpensive in most states.

100%.

Yeah.

So just be aware, go to the official government website when you're establishing your entity so that you don't kind of pay unnecessarily overhead.

Yeah,

yeah, in Texas, boy, if you're an entrepreneur or a serial entrepreneur, get an LLC, it's $300 one time fee. You have to file yearly, but just an informational report that's saying, yes, I still own the business. So there's no like taxes to own a business unless you're making a significant amount. So in Texas, I strongly, strongly encourage it.

On top of that, there are other things that you should do too when you form an LLC, like formation of business type structures, other legal documents, and I'm not an expert in there, but if I didn't mention it, my legal clients would get mad at me, my law clients. So there are those things too. So technically, yes, it's just $300. Yeah, no, I'm not gonna talk to a lawyer, but I think generally speaking, forming an LLC is pretty cheap. If you're in...

Okay. Either legal or accounting advice.

California I think they make you pay yearly for that LLC and it's not crazy amount but it's significantly more than in Texas so you might want to hold off on that a little bit but it makes sense usually to get an LLC pretty quickly especially if your business is up and running and then beyond that there's a partnership and then C corporation yeah

And

sorry. ⁓

I'm curious,

you mentioned some of these reporting responsibilities that come with the legal formation. I'm curious, do accounting services like yourselves or others handle some of that reporting process built into the service or is that always gonna be on the founder to make sure those documents happen?

Boy, I think if you're one of my clients, I make sure that yearly filing is done. And I will connect with the state comptroller, for lack of a better term, and just make sure that those filings are kept up to date and filings are done and paid for. Generally, it's just with the yearly tax filing. That's generally when most of them happen.

Texas is funny because it's due a month after tax season. So in Texas, it feels like we're done with tax season and then we have to do this like little extra paperwork. then at least personally, I always want to push it off because I'm like, I'm so tired from tax season. I don't want to look at this. And then it always sneaks up on me. But yeah, it just depends on your state. I think most accountants will take care of it for you.

So that's a perk of working with a professional service provider.

⁓ So that's an LLC's sole proprietor.

Exactly. Too many people forget it. And boy, even some professional service advisors, right? I had a client who got a hate mail from the Texas comptroller saying, we're going to shut down your business. They always make it sound really extreme. And it's never actually that extreme. They just, it gets your attention. That's really the purpose. And I filed this form, right? And there was no tax was due because it was under the limit. And so

Yeah, yeah.

Wow.

Really it was penalty free, it was just file it. He just hadn't filed it because his previous provider didn't pay attention I guess. But just happens. All right, so we talked about sole proprietor LLC and then there's partnership and C corporation. Partnership is exactly what it sounds like. It's when you're bringing in multiple people to start a business.

And then a C corporation, this is your Amazons, your Walmarts. They're really big conglomerates. Okay, so those are the business entity types. Now, if we're talking about taxes, it's slightly different. There's also something called an S corporation, which I'm sure everyone has heard on TikTok before, because it's gonna save you money on taxes. And according to TikTok, it's gonna save you hundreds of thousands and.

There's nothing wrong with it ever. And it's perfect. Why aren't you an S Corp? Don't do that. S Corps are great in the right situation. So for our friend here, he's saying they're owning a bookkeeping or accounting service firm. So in that situation, start with an LLC, get an LLC, get professional insurance. And professional insurance is really cheap to.

So I highly recommend doing that, getting an LLC, getting some insurance. I wouldn't change to an S-corp though, not yet. So an S-corp, basically the reason why we do this is because it avoids payroll taxes is what it comes down to. Payroll taxes are 15.3 % for business owners, which is a ton of money.

So in S-Corp, we set up a reasonable compensation, a reasonable salary, and we make that as minimal as possible, as legally possible, as reasonably possible according to the IRS. And then the rest we take as distributions. And those distributions don't have self-employment tax. So they don't have the 15.3%. So that's really the advantage of an S-Corporation. There are some big, big issues.

with S corporations though, you don't want to hold any assets because withdrawing them creates a taxable event. So if you put a car in an S Corp and then withdrew the car, that would create a taxable event for you. And so real estate, don't do an S corporation. If you're a real estate professional, S corporation should never be what you look at. Or even if you own your own building, be very careful what you can

Mm.

There are workarounds, but talk to a professional. So for a bookkeeping accounting service firm, I do recommend S-Corp at a certain point. They're beneficial once you're making enough money. There are added costs to it. There's an extra tax form. And your accountant is going to charge you a lot for that one. So it's just something to bear in mind. If your savings aren't above $0.00,

five to 10,000 for an S-Corp, it's not worth switching. So I usually say, don't even think about it until you're making 100K. But a book you made in accounting service firm, oftentimes an S-Corp is the right path going forward long-term. Short-term starting out, no, don't do it.

Well, that tracks

well with kind of what I'm glad to hear you confirm what I've been telling hundreds of people I mentor because again, I'm not an accountant and again, this is not accounting or legal advice, but yeah, for the vast majority of small businesses that LLC is just really, really handy to pull up. then when you're at a scale where it makes sense to be hiring an accountant anyway, that's, you know, they can have those conversations with you about kind of more complex.

You

Yeah.

tax strategies and things like that. that's helpful. And it sounds to me like that's gonna be the appropriate path for most service businesses.

Yeah, yeah and

Most service businesses, so a lot of my law firm clients are that way, marketing clients are that way. They're all these S-corp. So it's LLC designated as an S-corp for tax purposes is kind of how it's viewed. And that's what majority of my clients are. But I deal mostly with service based clients, right? And so again, there are some extra costs, the extra tax form you have to pay for payroll service.

just so you're aware too. So I think QuickBooks is an extra 50 bucks a month. So again, it comes down to, hey, we can save money, but is it enough to make it worth it? And so that's why I usually say you need to be making at least 100,000 and then at that point we can maybe save you five to 10 grand, which is great.

We definitely want to do it if we can. And there are other long-term impacts too that I think people don't often talk about. And so if your accountant won't walk you through those, find a new accountant. If they just try and push you into being an S-Corp, be careful, because they need to walk you through it, because you get less social security, because you have less payroll taxes. You're also able to contribute less to a SEP IRA, which again is long-term financial planning.

So just be aware there are downsides to an S-Corp. Personally, I think it's worth it for a lot of people, but not for everyone.

Great. Well, that's a, again, I love these in-depth answers because they kind of provide, even just learning the language of all this stuff is so valuable for a first-time founder, right? Just so they can ask the right questions.

Well, that's good.

I'm worried. I just scared someone away because I went through maybe too in depth for that. But it is a really interesting question and I think a good one. yeah, and last tax season, I felt so bad. We had a friend who reached out and was like, I need to file my taxes. She had been running a small shop on the side and she had just been told to be an S corporation. And so

No, I think that's valuable.

You know, I had to turn to her and say, hey, this is how much it would cost to file. And it was cost prohibitive. And then I said, hey, have you been running payroll for the last year? It was a no, right? Like there's, can work around these things a little bit. But I think, you know, it was a surprise cost and not a fun one when it came down to it. just be aware and don't just take.

Yeah.

blanket advice from online.

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, Seth, think this question's a little more up your alley. So people tend, so I'm just gonna read the whole question. People tend to put their money into their business when they start, advertising, technology, et cetera. They end up paying themselves very little, if anything. What's your viewpoint on when they should start paying themselves and what percentage of revenue profits make sense?

Yeah. Okay. So this is a great question. And unfortunately, the answer is going to be very specific to your situation, your needs, your goals for the business, right? Because there, I think it's important for people to understand there isn't a path in those early moments for your business creation, right? You can have a business and have one client for years and before you get two or three or four, right? Like you can go at whatever pace you want to go out.

and be at whatever scale you want to be at. And so it really depends on what your goals as a founder are and what thresholds your business needs to be considered successful and healthy. Because in some businesses there is a critical mass, right? Like you need a certain amount of revenue so that you can pay for all the costs of running your business, right? And for others, there's high margins and you can kind of just slow burn and just stack clients on each other depending on what you want and the speed you're willing to go out there and hustle.

So there's not a clear answer to this question because it's so specific both to the founder's needs and the business's needs. And it's at that intersection that this choice needs to be made. But what I will say is, and this actually, think in a glance down, I think this might lead into one of our further questions a little bit, but there's an opportunity cost, right? And so I was working with a young entrepreneur who was working multiple jobs while building up

this incredible business in the spice industry. She had kind of a cool take on spice blends and kind of premium kind of culinary experiences. And she was working these jobs and then, and it was pulling away from her business. And she's like, I can grow so much faster if I was just able to devote more time to my business. I had to just kind of state the obvious.

of, you know what, can pay yourself, you can quit those jobs, take this profit, pay yourself, and then be working on your business full time, right? And that transition had never occurred to her because she was so used to hustling. And so just remember there is an opportunity cost. so make that transition when you can, if it's going to give yourself the bandwidth to go all in on your business, right?

Again, I think opportunity cost is really the big question here, right? Like where are you going to spend your time and what is your time worth and what does your family need? So that, if there's a, if you know that you can put an extra 10, 15, 20 hours into, sales and that's going to double your sales and it means backing off other projects or your full-time work or whatever, then that might very well make sense. ⁓ now there's some people out there that are like,

I've got about two years worth of savings and I'm just going to burn through them and build my businesses as far and fast and as big as I possibly can in those two years. And I'm not going to take a salary until two years. And for them, that might be exactly the right move, right? Like just by going in and plugging revenue directly into marketing spend or their sales team or whatever it might be, that might a hundred percent make sense. so again, unfortunately there's not a clear cut path here because on both extremes,

There's reasons why it might be the right path for you. But do the math. I guess that's my takeaway for you is do the math and put your effort and your time where you're going to get the biggest ROI, right? So that you're not spending your time on things where you're getting paid an hourly wage or a small base salary when your business is providing so much more upside.

Yeah.

So I'm going to argue an actual percentage here a little bit. Not for paying yourself. But I personally view, and this is again my opinion, I've seen a lot of businesses thrive and not thrive. But at the end goal, if you can't be making a profit of 20 % or more, I worry about if the business is viable.

Great.

And what this means is if you include your salary and distributions and everything like that, that should be at least 20 % of the business that's bringing that in. If, that's a big if, if you're marketing and you're trying to push really hard over the next little bit,

if you're trying to scale quickly, right, more might be going to marketing or more might be going to technology upfront and that is okay. And so I think kind of your goal long-term is where you should be thinking about where you want your salary. But I think to run a profitable business, if 20 %...

can't be there once it's scaled, I think there's something fundamentally wrong with your business. And again, that's my personal opinion and maybe not perfect in every situation, but.

Yeah. So.

No, I think that tracks with my experience as well. And again, I think the takeaway here, whatever that number is, in those early stages, you're taking the ambiguous and the unformed and you're trying to turn it into controllable processes, right? Like you have this idea, okay, I'm gonna have a marketing firm, we're gonna specialize in this type of asset production for these types of companies. And it's just this idea. And you go and you try to get those clients and you try to work with them and find out what the processes of.

onboarding a client is and producing the materials. The beginning is all about building processes. And once you've started to see those processes, you can start adding math to the processes and say, okay, I have this, can get this many clients through this type of process. Like, you know, I'm going to do LinkedIn ads. And if I spend $5,000 on LinkedIn ads, I'm going to get two clients of this size. They're going to pay me this much. It's going to cost me this much to do the project. And I'm going end up with this much revenue at the end. You're trying to build processes that are just

rinse and repeat. So it's not just you as a founder, just trying to kind of create value every day, but rather just rinse and repeat, copy and paste these same processes in your business. And then you're going to start understanding what your margins are as those processes take shape. You're going to start understanding how much give you have. And basically you're trying to figure out the math of your particular business and do that as soon as possible, right? So that you can start making these choices about

where you can insert yourself in that math and start paying yourself. So again, every business is different. There's going to be some businesses where you're making six figures in a matter of months. And I worked with a young team who built a, they do kind of the picks and shovels for blockchain. They're not like a cryptocurrency or anything like that. They're just providing services to help host blockchain. And they've been hugely successful. had, you

250,000 ARR within four months of launch. And it was a relatively light touch business. And they were able to pay themselves relatively soon because their margins were really good. And they've just kind of been life styling that business and using that income. And now they're just paying themselves to go find the next thing, right? Where they're gonna build this next business, right?

Right.

And so there are those situations where within months you've got the math works out. You you've got the process down. You see the fundamentals of your business and what it looks like to be healthy. And that 20 % number is a good indicator of health. I like that a lot. But, or it could be, Hey, you know what? Like the math does not look good for a few years, right? Like, but I know I can see how the math's going to slowly change and my margins are going to increase as I'm able to add this and this or move into this clientele.

And so maybe it's, you you're living lean on and ramen for a few years to land that big client or whatever that kind of opens up the flood gate. So I think the takeaway here is know the math of your company and do what it takes to understand kind of those, those foundational principles and processes so that you can feel good about paying yourself. And it's not just a prayer like, all right, I'm going to give myself.

Yeah.

you know, this $50,000 salary and I hope there's still money in the bank come tax season.

Well, and I think we've mentioned it before too, but I'm a huge fan of giving yourself a fixed amount every month, making it consistent, working that into the budget of the business. Because I do think you should be paying yourself as soon as possible. And sometimes that means, my salary for the next two years is going to be $2,000 and I'm gonna live on ramen and live in a very...

humble situation, right? And then some times that might mean, hey, I've got to like in my situation, I have a family I have to be able to provide for them. So my salary is going to be a little bit higher than that. Because I want to make sure that they're taken care of, but I'm definitely taking a smaller amount than I will in three years, right? And just so there is some balance to it. I am a huge fan of giving yourself money, even if that's 20 bucks a month, right? Like, just

Kind of set that up early and make it consistent But yeah long term I kind of view 20 % as as the minimum and there are some businesses where They they make 80 % right like it just depends on the business

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, next question. So this is getting in the nitty gritty here. This is also kind of an accounting based question, but I think a lot of this will apply certainly across service industries. Any software recommendations to run the business? So what's your tech stack for a services firm? And again, if there's

I don't think either of us would consider ourselves CPG experts, so we're not going to give you inventory warehousing software. There's a lot of great 3PL companies that will have insights on that. We're going to focus this a little bit more towards services, but some of these basic accounting software and things like that will probably be pretty applicable. With that in mind, Charlie, what's your tech stack?

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm gonna push Google Workspace. I think it's great value for what you're getting, because you get the word processor, the spreadsheets, right? You get Google Sheets, and it's pretty shareable. So I've actually found that I use that more than Excel now. I have Excel just because I'm an accountant, but I find myself in Google Sheets more than I do elsewhere. So personally, I recommend Google Workspace. I've heard from security people that,

Microsoft is a little bit more secure than Google Workspace, so maybe that's a concern for people. I figure people already have all my information at this point. ⁓ So that's kind of like a general, from an accounting standpoint, I'm gonna push QuickBooks. It's the worst of, or it's the best of the terrible options.

You

There's no good accounting software in my opinion, except for maybe like SAP or maybe Workday. But those are going to be huge, huge implementations that cost hundreds of, well, yeah, probably hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it's not going to be for your average small business. So for most small businesses, I push QuickBooks mainly because it connects to everything else. So I run everything through QuickBooks, but then

I use Uncat, I've mentioned that before, and other add-ons. And I find that those are the best with QuickBooks because it's the most utilized platform. Boy, beyond that, I think you can make do with a lot. Loom, I think, is a necessary software these days for service-based businesses. I don't know, have you used Loom, Seth? But you can record.

I haven't,

but if I...

Yeah, you record yourself in your screen and then you can send it to clients. Absolutely love Loom. That's how I try and do majority of my client communication, although that's probably still email is the majority, but any technical or insightful things that I do, I usually use Loom.

What about getting signatures and authorizations? you use DocuSign or are you just sending PDFs back and forth?

Yeah, so I use my client portal and that's gonna be more specific for accounting. I use Canopy, which is accounting software. it's got a secure portal for people to come into and out of. And then what I really like about it is it does knowledge-based authorization signatures, which you are required to use for tax returns.

So if I did DocuSign, would be, boy, I've had them quote me originally when I first came into the market. I think it was like over $1,000 and my portal software is like the same price and it has that. So I just went with that instead of using DocuSign. But it also does normal signatures for free. And so it's really a pretty good platform for me, but I would recommend.

some sort of signature component. There are a few different ones, but DocuSign's well known.

How about a pimp?

How about payment processing and invoicing?

payment.

Ooh, this is a great question. So it just depends. I think a lot of people use Stripe and Square. Those are probably the most common. I use a service called Anchor. And if you're a service-based business, look this up. It's worth your time. Reach out to me for a code, because we both get 50 bucks, which isn't the end of the, not the biggest deal in the world, but it's worth it. And it's an awesome platform. It charges a flat fee.

Ha!

⁓ but it also is a contract platform. So I send them the contract. It forces them to sign and then it forces them to include banking information before they signed. That way I can charge them, consistently flat rates every month. the nice part about that is I don't have an AR which, or accounts receivable for

for non-accounting people. But that is game changing. I don't chase down money. It just shows up in my account. And if there's an issue, a bank issue, obviously I reach out. But it just makes it a lot easier.

And I'll just

break that down even further for the non-accounting people. Accounts receivable is basically money people owe you that they haven't paid yet, essentially. So you've done work for them and you've sent them an invoice and they're waiting to pay you for that. And it's important to keep track of that from an accounting perspective, but it's the bane of most companies existence in the service world because you're just waiting for money that you should have, but is not actually accessible in your bank yet.

Yes.

Yes.

And so you've got to account for it, but you can't spend it. And I will also say on a lot of these ones that we listed, whether it's Stripe, I'm currently using Stripe for my consulting practice, just because it was low-hanging fruit. A lot of the times you really want to have your entity set up and your bank account set up before establishing these. So if you're like in the really early stages, and this is like your very first client, sometimes you have to get a little bit creative.

A Stripe, for example, will let you kind of have an account that's not associated with a, like, I don't think you even need a tax number, maybe. But there's a lot of the times, you might, yeah, you might, but it's, you certainly don't need an LLC or something like that to establish a Stripe account. So you can be a sole proprietor, which remember,

Boy, I don't know.

Right.

sole proprietor, you don't have to set up either. You're just the sole proprietor if you haven't set something else up. So it's like people are like, I need to go register as a sole proprietor. It's like you already are one. It's done. Like it's if you're if you're submitting income, that's ⁓ yeah, you can just put that on your regular tax forms and everything without that. But just keep that in mind that you'll want to have your bank account set up. Some online, you know, banks and other bank services, you'll be able to have payment. ⁓

Yeah.

Yep. Go out and sell. Do it. Yeah. Yeah.

kind of processes there and invoicing built into the bank. For others, like Charlie mentioned, Anchor and other types of things that make it easy. Again, I invoice through Stripe right now. ⁓

Yeah, yeah,

I even really like Relay and Mercury for business banks because they're starting to do a lot of these things in-house. So it's more of an all-in-one platform. And what's nice about Relay and Mercury too is you can give accountant access to the bank, which you can do with other bank accounts. It just is a little bit more in-depth without giving them.

Yeah.

optimized.

Yeah, it's more optimized for accountants, which is why I push Relay and Mercury if I can and why I say it here, because I just find them to be very useful and user-friendly for accountants at least.

And I'll also throw in there, when we're talking about tech stacks, there's all of the ad platforms, right? So Google ads, LinkedIn ads, ⁓ meta ads, if you're using that, right? I suggest you go get familiar with them. It's not necessarily, you don't have to pay necessarily to be on the platforms. You just pay for the ads you spend. But familiarizing yourself with that is quite useful. The other one is nowadays you need,

Mm.

good AI in your processes, right? And that doesn't necessarily mean paying for a premium subscription. It depends on what your kind of, whether you're power user or not, but for many firms, it does make sense to pay for, you know, lots of tokens or kind of a premium. And I think right now,

Yeah, that's a good point.

Boy, I still don't put any

client information, but I pay 21 bucks a month for ChatGPT. Like that is beyond worth it, if nothing else, because I'm getting familiar with the software and so hopefully it won't replace me as quickly because I'm up to date. So I think it's worth the 20 bucks, personally.

Hahaha

yeah, well, the time saving alone, right? Even again, and Charlie brings up a really important point there, like do not consider these things secure. Any data you put in there, they're going to use in all the ways, right? And there are some, you know, there's variety, right? There's enterprise level AI that is more secure.

Yeah, you can pay, I think it's like 200

a month or something like that for chat GPT. So it's, it's SOC two certified and they won't use any of your information, which is great, but I'm not willing to pay that much for honestly, something that I just use for marketing at this point.

Exactly. So even if you're just using the base subscription and whether it's Claude, Grok, Gemini, like they're all pretty amazing right now and they can be pretty close, it's like saving, saving time on your emails that you're trying to draft, saving times on your marketing material. Like it'll just give you hours back very quickly in basically any type business type. Right. And so definitely include that in your tech stack. And if you're a sophisticated user, you can have it be, you know,

working through your data, like bases and things like that and kind of running your CRM and there's like the automation level of your business processes, right? So I'm just going to add that. Any other tech we need to include?

Yeah, I'm going through kind of what I use on a regular basis.

think that's it. If we're going more accounting specific, I use Stanford tax for tax organizers and uncat for reconciliation of uncategorized transactions. Fathom is my favorite financial reporting tool. And then I think, a meeting planner, which I think Google has a meeting planner involved or.

in now but I recommend that I use tidy cal but like calendly works too or something along those lines I think is pretty useful but yeah I think that's pretty much it yeah

Yeah. Yeah.

And there's a million other options. covering, we're covering,

you know, just a few like super human. mean, there's, there's so, so many different versions. And I guess the principles I'd have you take away is a pay attention so that you're not paying for things that you don't need, right? Like review your tech stack regularly and don't just have things weighing down your, your, your costs. And the other thing is do be sensitive to things like data security, especially if you're a professional services firm, if you've got sensitive data.

Yeah.

you've got to make sure whatever you sign up for is appropriate for the use of that data. So those are the two principles that make sure. But again, tech should be saving you time. If it's not, don't pay for it. But it's definitely worth investing in if it does because there's incredible options there.

and I'm going to mention one more to Google Voice. It's a free phone number. Don't use your personal phone. Just set it up. Again, Google Workspace is a great value for what you're getting, I think, personally. There are other options, too. But anyway, sorry. That was probably a longer answer than what they were hoping for. But hopefully that helps.

for a... Yeah. Yeah.

All right, so for our final question, and we've kind of hinted at this one, how do you know if it's time to hire someone other than yourself and delegate work to them?

So I'm going to give a simple answer to something that I've spent a decent amount of time thinking about. Part of my dissertation research relates to this. But so yeah, the question is, all right, I've got my time. I've got people I could hire. In some cases, there's even things I can get for free through social capital. What's the right mix? when do I know whether I should?

kind of offload tasks. And again, there's a lot I could say here, but the big question, the big takeaway, the punchline right out the gates are where are you needed to add value in ways that only you can add value? And what are more generic tasks that anybody can do? And just sitting down and going through your business and making those two columns and say, okay, I can add value to these things and these things.

I'm just doing because I'm doing them, but they're really generic. And you'll know they're generic if you send them to three different people. Again, hypothetically, like do this thought experiment and you're to get basically the same results or equally good results. If that's true, then you have no business spending your time doing it most of the time, right? Because a generic task is usually done pretty cheaply in the marketplace, right? Like we pay premium for creative tasks. We don't pay a premium for, for kind of generic run of the mill things that anybody can do the same.

Yeah.

So there's typically speaking, your time is better spent elsewhere. And I'm curious, what are some examples in your workflow in those categories, Charlie? The ones that are like, okay, I really need to be doing this myself because that's important versus this is kind of generic.

Yeah, so I think the biggest...

value add I have for my clients is responding to emails and sending them monthly reports. I don't have to do anything on the back end, right? So I don't have to do the bookkeeping. I can just review it and use those numbers as long as I trust that those numbers are accurate, right? And then I don't even have to do the tax returns technically.

it there isn't a lot of variation when it comes to taxes there's really not creative accounting for taxes that doesn't really exist it shouldn't ⁓ but i think the the real value add is is almost in the consulting lane

It shouldn't be, right? It shouldn't be.

Unfortunately, it sometimes is, but...

and using my specific background to give...

Insights for my clients and so that's that's really what I've been trying to do, right? So my first employee she is a fantastic bookkeeper. Honestly, she does a better job than I do I think at this point And then I've started the process to hire someone to help me with taxes because again, I don't I don't have to be doing that Long-term I'd love to hire someone to do my email inbox. So I just answer the emails that are real questions instead of

hey, what is this or can you add this to my client, things like that. Those are all down the road and I'll definitely do that. for me, that's really where the value add is, is it's in the monthly videos I record and send to my clients and then it's answering the phone and talking to them. Because most CPAs are not doing that. So I think to me, that's a huge add.

And there's also, there's a spectrum here too. think those are great examples and there's, I'll even answer one for you too, like the production of this podcast, right? That's not someone you've hired, it's someone you've contracted, right? In certain ways, right? So it's not an employee. So there's even another layer here where there's things where according to your business and they're strategically very critical to the success of your business. Those are things you want to make sure you do yourself so that they're done right. Then there's the things that are,

Yeah.

Yeah.

You have a lot of volume of them and might make sense to hire someone to do those things that again are kind of generic. And then you can just add your expertise layer on top. Like you say, reviewing the documents after they've all been prepared. And then there's the things where it's like one offs or irregular work. And it's also kind of a generic situation. Then that's kind of a contracting relationship.

And what can be hired out and what can be contracted? It kind of depends again on what your business model is and again the quantity, whether the economics make more sense to just, mean, sometimes you have the solo founder and they're just contracting everything because they have a lot of generic tasks to do and that works, right?

Yeah.

Yeah, I talked

to a potential client this week or last week. I don't know. Recently. And she was making $750,000 by herself as a solo operator. And she's just like, I just don't want to do the accounting. And that's a great problem to have. And so I think sometimes we...

Yeah. Yeah.

We look at hiring and we say, we need to hire someone. And, know, at her point, why, why does she need to hire someone? Like, is it going to be marginally more money? Like I can't speak for her, but in my situation, I, I wouldn't care. I wouldn't need any more. Like it wouldn't be something I would actively pursue. Obviously there's the Elon Musk of the world who would actively pursue more. like everyone's different, but.

I just think that's important to realize too. And then one other thing kind of on this, I love Dan Martell's book, Bye, Back Your Time. I'm sure everyone's, or a lot of people have read it, but he mentions in there, if you can delegate and still get 80 % of the same quality as yourself, then it's worth it.

Yeah.

I really like that and something he says right afterwards to is usually it's more than 80 % You just you think it's going to be less than that. And so that's kind of why I that's his selling point and and I refer to my employee right she is amazing and I Honestly think she does more or a better job than I would I would say it's 110 % what I would do and so I think

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

haha

It's important to realize that we might get possessive of our own stuff, but if we're willing to release it, we're gonna be a lot more free and happy long term. ⁓ But yeah.

Mm-mm.

Yeah.

And you can spend more time on the higher level strategy of the business, right? Like there's so many opportunities to grow that you're not pursuing simply because your head's down doing things that anybody could be doing. Right. And that's the worst case scenario for a business. The one caveat I'll put here is in the very earliest stages of your business, I think there's a lot of value of doing a lot of it yourself. So for example, you could immediately hire out the marketing.

Yeah.

You could be like, okay, I'm gonna be an accountant and I'm immediately gonna hire a firm to do all my marketing for me. You're gonna not learn a bunch of lessons that are critical to your business if you don't at least try that first. Like give yourself the first six months and be like, I'm gonna do the marketing. Because otherwise, when you start working with that marketing firm, again, just as an example, it's gonna be hard for you to know what value they're adding because you haven't even tried it yourself, right? If they can't do it as well as you could do it, then they're.

Yeah.

They're a bad marketing firm. They better be providing more expertise than you can since they're specializing in that, right? But you'd never know if you had attempted it first, right? And they're basically every facet of your business. There's a lot to be learned in those early stages.

You

Yeah.

Well, even with accounting, yeah.

Yeah, even accounting, like I'm gonna shoot myself in the foot. The first month, you shouldn't hire an accountant. You should be doing at least some of it yourself, figuring out how it works. What is a debit? What is a credit? Why does it matter? How do you figure out net income? These are all things that, speaking as a business owner, I, well, the P &L and the net income I knew before becoming a business owner, but a lot of this stuff, if I didn't jump into it and have to figure it out,

I never would have. And now I can speak more intelligently to any contractor I hire, to any situation that I find myself in.

Yeah, absolutely. So in summary on that question, when do you know, when should you hire? Ask yourself, can anybody do this? And is it a hire or a contracting situation? Because if the contracting situation is just as good and it's cheaper and it's more tailored to the timing of when you need things done, do the contractor, right? Like it's a huge investment to hire somebody in. So you don't want to assume that risk unless you're 100 % sure that it's the right fit.

⁓ But don't spend your time doing things that are just generic. work on this. Reserve your bandwidth for the strategy of the business, the value creation part of the business, the creativity. so somebody, and actually I'll add one other caveat here too. It's okay to not be amazing at all of the parts of your business.

And sometimes there's a critical thing. You're like, man, my business really needs this and I can't do it. And it's not generic, right? Like this is, this is like a, you know, and that's when it's like, well, maybe you need a partner. Maybe you need to hire an employee that, that you can say, wow, you're expensive, but you can do this thing. That's going to five X our business. And I'm just not good at that. Right. So that's absolutely another time when it's like, I need to hire. So that's less about delegating the work and about seeing.

Yeah.

in the portfolio of work that needs to be done for your business to thrive, what holes there are that you can't fill and being humble enough to say, you know what, this is not my cup of tea. And it's worth paying someone really good to get this done in a permanent basis. remember, if you're hiring someone, that's a long-term relationship. Don't do it for a one-off. Don't do it for something that's generic. That's when you think about contracting relationships. But yeah.

Those are my two cents.

Awesome.

Well, thank you for everyone who submitted questions. We really do appreciate it. I'm going to give a shout out to my wife because this is my podcast. So I get to do whatever I want. But she opened up a business last week and I think we're officially up and running called Postcards from the Parks. And so it's really fun. And I'm just doing my spiel on it. But it's for

kids, probably specifically 6 to 12 would be kind of the range. But it's following around kids as they're exploring the US national parks. It's really fun and it's been really exciting. We got our first client or first customer. I guess it's called customer in that situation because it's a it's more retail company, not a client. But anyway, so it's been really fun. And if you're so inclined and listening to this, check it out. It's it's really, really a nice little

No.

fun little gift. that'll be my other little plug.

Yeah,

I will gladly plug that as well, because it's a really exciting business. The product's super cool. I'm not that first customer, but I will be because I don't know what number I'm now, but I'm going to join the list soon, because my nieces and nephews are going to be delighted by it.

No, no. Well, and well, I'm a terrible salesman because I'm like,

you're not required to buy it by any no one's required to buy it. But we think it's a really cool thing. And so if if people are interested, please check it out. It's basically like a a piece of mail that a kid gets in the mailbox once a month with their name addressed so that they can

feel special and important and thought of, and then they'll have a story to read and then things to do and then hopefully things to share and communicate with other kids. The goal is just to get kids out of the TV and doing things for fun. it has been a fun little project we've been working on for sponsorship. ⁓

We'll call that our first...

Our first sponsor of the podcast is postcardsfromtheparks.com.

Yeah. ⁓

No money was exchanged, but we're gonna consider them our first sponsors. But yeah, no, it's a delightful thing. And yeah, it's cool to see what she's been building.

Ugh.

Yeah, it's been fun. But anyway, thanks for listening to the Unsexy Entrepreneurship podcast, y'all. Have a wonderful holiday season and a wonderful new year. We'll come back in the new year with more episodes for you. Thanks, y'all.

Happy holidays.