Speaker 1
One of those acquisitions we did last year were actually beginning to train up one of the individuals who's actually pretty tech savvy. She kind of seems to geek out to customer facing troubleshooting. Every bookkeeping is kind of like something she can do and help on the accounting onboarding team. But we're excited to have her help us with access points and essentially bring those access points back into the accounting onboarding team. And so why am I talking about this? Because one of the things that we rarely ever talk about with friends and peers in the industry is how much of a slog actually bringing on new customers can be. Because customers are very like enthusiastic, right? They've just signed this engagement agreement. They're probably getting charged $5,000, $10,000 to bring prior months up to snuff, setting up new systems and processes, right? All that costs money. And then within 30 days, maybe 45 days, we're flipping on the switch for the monthly recurring accounting services, which is obviously the Holy Grail in our business because who doesn't love recurring revenue. But to get there, it needs to be systematized. You can't just bring in a customer. Now I know a lot of our peers do this, right? You sign a new customer and you just find a reviewer or a controller, find a bookkeeper and just give it to them. Well we found that that does not create a beautiful homogeneous, cohesive experience, right? So if you can control that experience with a good enough tighter tolerance and have it go through one process. But again, it's sometimes that ugly word expedite, right? Expedite. Expedite kills processes and actually ultimately ends up ruining efficiencies. So expediting is another one. Secondly is like not following the process, right? Things fall through the cracks because at the end of the day, there is still human beings kind of controlling the narrative for better or for worse. But you still, I don't believe we can have automation without a level of relationship, right? Customization. And that's something, a drum beat that I'm always like hitting here. You can't just be sending out automated emails to new customers because something's going to go wrong. And anyways, I'm actually recording this on a Thursday, which is kind of cool. Normally, it's on a Monday that I do this or that me and Steve do this. But today, it's a Thursday. And why is that a little different? Because I've got all this crap in my head just over the last three days, whereas over the weekend, I tend to disconnect and really focus on the more important issues.