We talked with Seth about:
- The power of content creation in business growth
- Key chapters in your accounting strategy you can’t afford to miss
- The importance of shifting your focus to the outcomes rather than on time spent or number of tasks completed
About Seth David:
Seth David, Chief Nerd at Nerd Enterprises, Inc., has a unique journey that combines creativity with analytical expertise. After majoring in computer science and dabbling in theater, Seth shifted his focus to finance, working as a stockbroker on Wall Street. He later earned an accounting degree and built a successful career as a senior revenue accountant. Driven by an entrepreneurial spirit, Seth went on to found Nerd Enterprises, where he helps accountants, bookkeepers, and financial professionals run their businesses more efficiently. Today, he thrives as a leader, blending technical skills with a passion for business.
Featured Resources
Full Audio Transcript:
Lauren (00:06):
Seth, thank you so much for being on the show today. I'm glad to have you here, and I feel like I kind of already know you because I've been checking out your website, watching your podcast, all kinds of stuff. But why don't you share with folks a little bit about your background. You've got a really interesting story and what you've created is very interesting as well. So I'll hand it over to you.
Seth (00:28):
Thank you. I'll try to give you the very short version of what feels like several lifetimes of a story. But yeah, real quick, I got out of high school and I majored in computer science. I was a total nerd. I liked learning how to write code. The code we wrote in those days was very, very different from now. The languages we wrote in don't even exist anymore, I don't think. At least not in their original forms. And at the same time, a friend of mine invited me to get involved in theater, so I started doing acting. But at least in my view I didn't have any talent for it but I enjoyed it and then I got better at it over time. So long story short, I got into that and then left that at one point because my interest in academics was declining and I didn't want to waste time and money on college that I wasn't really putting in the effort toward. So I left. And my goal at that point actually was to get a job, make enough money to travel across to California, and make it in the acting world. I had this grand master plan, the kind of plans 19-year-olds tend to have.
Lauren (01:39):
Totally. I love it.
Seth (01:39):
Very, very romantic. I was going to drive across the country in a Jeep with the top down and all the stuff you'd imagine that would go around us.
Lauren (01:46):
Totally can see the picture.
Seth (01:49):
And so that didn't happen. But along the way, as the means of making that money, I figured I needed to save up 10 grand to buy the Jeep or something like that. Again, we're talking many years ago.
Lauren (02:02):
Prices were a little different.
Seth (02:04):
But still you get the idea. I needed to save up. So I was already kind of becoming a planner, like, all right, I needed 10 grand for the Jeep and then enough money to get across the country, and then I'd figure it out from there. So as I'm looking for jobs, I was looking to work waiting tables at restaurants, and all of a sudden I noticed stockbroker trainee $10,000 a month. I'm like, done. I can be there in a month. I can have my Jeep in one month. So next thing I know, I'm in stockbroker trainee programs with a company and studying to take my Series 7 license, and I'm like, I don't know where this comes from. This totally didn't feel like me but the guy who I worked for, the first one, he was a very good salesman and he was very good at getting you to open up so he could figure out what to sort of leverage to sell you on what he wanted you to do. And so he's like, oh, this is just an acting job. You're basically getting on the phone and painting a picture that you're this Wall Street tycoon. And I'm like, oh, is that right? It's just acting on the phone. Perfect. Done. Let's do it
So I did that. And then again, very long story short, I ended up actually doing pretty well. The years went on, I was 21 now working as a stockbroker on Wall Street, and I was convinced by my then girlfriend's brother as well as my own family that I should still go back and get a degree in something just to have something to fall back on. So I left that business and went back to school and got my accounting degree. And along the way I said, well, I should give this a shot since I've just put in a lot of time and effort into getting an accounting degree and Wall Street will still be there. And so there we were. And then a very long story, very short again, and I don't know how in-depth we want to go but I'll give you the simple version for now.
I know time is limited. I decided I needed a significant change in my life. And so I ended up coming to California but for very different reasons than I originally intended and started over and worked some temp jobs and eventually landed at a very large publicly traded company, moved my way up, worked as a senior revenue accountant for them, and then I went to a CPA firm. And then little by little I started my own company because frankly I just hated working for other people. And I came to the conclusion that I was unemployable because I couldn't stand having to listen to other people, especially when I didn't agree with the way they did things. So that's how Nerd Enterprises was born, quite literally. And then I just kind of carved it out. I was like, let me figure out what I really like to do and leave out the stuff I don't like to do or delegate it. I learned that early on, do what I'm really good at and the stuff I'm really good at tends to be the stuff I really enjoy doing. And when I don't enjoy doing something, I probably suck at it anyway, so I should give it to somebody else.
Lauren (04:53):
Yeah, it's delegate or die syndrome. So I totally hear you on that. What you built is pretty amazing. I know you do a lot of consulting work for different businesses but you've also got this community. Can you tell us a little bit more about the facets of the business you've been able to build and why you've invested in these different wings of building out these offerings?
Seth (05:16):
So a lot of it just happened organically, really just figuring things out as I go. So years ago I had a guy I partnered up with and we started a website based on a course I had written. It was like a bookkeeping basics course, and he had the marketing expertise. So we came in and we started building a whole business and I developed a bunch of other courses. And again, long story short, he and I parted company, and when we did, I actually walked away. I said, you know what? You keep the business. We just did not agree on how we did a lot of things, kind of the same old story, same reason I didn't like working for other people. And I said, I can own it. Maybe it's me. Maybe I'm just not a good team player or something. So I said, you keep the business, I'm going to go do my own thing. Excuse me. This got me out of any kind of non-compete or anything like that. We didn't sign anything formally. We just said we're going to part ways so I go my way and they go their way.
And so I'm sitting here one day going, all right, I need to rebuild. I'm still going to do courses and things but I'm going to do it on my own. Question is where do I start? What do I do? I don't want to deal with all the headaches that seem to come with having a subscription-based site because I knew what he was struggling with. It was just constant, especially as the business grew and we had a lot of subscribers and I can't find my password. It's amazing to me how many people still did not know how to click that password reset link at the login screen. Anyway, so I just said, you know what? I don't want to deal with that. And I knew about the site Patreon and I said, you know what? I can kind of structure it through that. I'll create different tiers. I'll offer different course content. I'll put the videos up on Vimeo so I can make them private and only give them access to people at the right tier. And this way they handle that business part of it. If somebody has trouble logging in, Patreon handled it,
And I did that for a while until I got tired of it because obviously I was paying them a fee on top of the processing fees for the payment processors. And so eventually I said, okay, it's growing big enough that it's worth it for me to spend the time now and deal with the headache of running my own subscription site. And meanwhile, I had to establish these different tiers, one of which was based on $97 and up. I built out an official sort of name for a program that I called Accounting Business Academy but it was based on that tier from Patreon. And I kind of just ported them over and said, look, you're going to get all the same stuff but new platform and login.
Lauren (07:48):
Better bells and whistles, much better whistles and so forth.
Seth (07:50):
And the 97 please.
Lauren (07:52):
Just to break, what was the threshold that you go, okay, I know you talked about it got to big enough point to move it out. Was it based on just the volume of individuals? What was that threshold for you?
Seth (08:08):
I think the threshold was, again, very organically. It was based on a feeling like, I don't want to pay all these fees anymore that I'm paying to Patreon plus waiting for them to pay me out.
Lauren (08:18):
It wasn't a community size. It was more of kind of where you were, you saw the evolution of where it could go.
Seth (08:23):
Yeah, and I'm sure that was largely driven by the amount of people I was accumulating, and ultimately I wanted to get it on a platform I truly owned. So did it on WordPress with a subscription plugin, and eventually I was guided actually by a colleague to move it to Kajabi, which is what my site is built on now, because that's just an amazing platform that's built for course creation and just content creators and you manage the whole thing. All my emails go out from that system. It's beautiful.
Lauren (08:56):
Okay, so you've got this pretty amazing community you built, and I know you do consulting work as well. So can you tell us who is in that community?
Seth (09:12):
It's mostly accountants and bookkeepers. I've got a sprinkling of business owners who aren't accountants per se but they just feel like they get value added but very, very minimal. It's almost exclusively accountants and bookkeepers who are looking for my guidance to help learn the tools and systems and strategies and processes to help grow and run their practices better. A lot of them have the same struggles. They're up to their eyeballs and work but aren't really making enough money. If you look at the money by itself, it might look good but when you compare that to how many hours and energy they have to put in to make it, it doesn't really feel like a lot of money. And so they want to learn how to scale and just do better and have more freedom. And by the way, the name 97 and Up just stuck. People liked it. Even my wife was like, yeah, it's a catchy name. You should just stick with that.
Lauren (09:57):
It's easy to pronounce all those things, simple. Okay. So accountants and bookkeepers, and you've got this community. Are they leveraging the content you built? It sounds like it's evergreen content from a while ago. Are you doing community groups and conversations? Is there a forum? What kind of bells and whistles are inside of the actual community itself?
Seth (10:18):
So they get access to a bunch of courses for free. That's just included with 97 and Up. They get deep discounts on any new courses. I have a series of courses called Bulletproof Bookkeeping. So these are major in-depth courses and they get deep discounts on those. We do two weekly calls. So we do a call every Tuesday and Thursday at 11 a.m. Pacific for an hour. And some of them I have open so people can just come and ask questions and we answer them. Others I have planned topics for and it's funny, bringing things forward to 2024, I'm actually using ChatGPT alot to help me outline the content. I would never dare have it write the content for me but I love having it write the outline for me because then I go in between the lines and fill in the details. Just saves time.
Lauren (11:01):
Yeah, I hear you on leveraging that. Okay. So tell me more about this community. You've got all these super in-depth offerings. You've got these calls that are going on. What are the common threads of questions you see that are coming up over the years? Is there a common set of questions folks are asking or their deep dive need? And what kind of things are you seeing as trends within the community you’ve built?
Seth (11:27):
So there's two kinds of major camps I want to put the topics in that I get asked most from the accountants and bookkeepers and the major camps are based on being in two different places. So a lot of them, of course, want more clients and their struggle is with how to get more clients. Accountants and bookkeepers notoriously I want to say rely exclusively on word of mouth and referrals. And some do very well that way. And so it works, it's fine. But in my opinion, humble or not, it's just leaving too much in the hands of the universe. And I prefer something more systematized. So I know I have a process that involves doing something to encourage the universe to drive those leads my way. You know what I mean?
Lauren (12:12):
To be able to pull them in and say, hey, I'm over here. I can do really quality work and be able to validate that trust out in the marketplace. So one camp is basically, I need more clients. How do I get more clients? I'm assuming you as well as the community itself is helping to pour into those answers.
Seth (12:30):
And by the way, it's in Slack. I've tried the experiment of using all these other platforms. When Salesforce bought Slack, I got worried they were going to kind of crush the small guy because Salesforce typically deals with such big businesses. And so I left Slack for a while. I tried Mighty Networks, I tried Discord, I tried a bunch, and I landed back on Slack because none of them quite measured up as far as I was concerned. It's funny, it's one dumb little feature that really drove me back that I really missed, which only Slack seems to have where I can go into a message and click the little ellipsis and say, remind me, and I can choose in an hour, three hours, on Monday, or customize the time I live by that I would drop so many balls if it wasn't for that feature. Discord doesn't have it. That one feature alone I think drove me back to Slack.
Lauren (13:18):
User experience. Yep, yep. Okay. So pouring into those, are there any kind of automatic advice you're giving to folks looking to get more business? I know you mentioned earlier this kind of automation, let the universe know to pull you in. What kind of conversations are you having or at-large recommendations you're seeing for folks where they are wanting to pull in that business?
Seth (13:42):
So number one, of course, and I've tried to work around this a bit because the number one way I'm naturally going to tell people to bring in clients is based on what I've done, which is produce content, videos, blog posts, podcasts. There's so many different ways to do it but a lot of accountants come back to me, excuse me, and say they're just not going to do it. They don't have the personality, they don't want to get on video, they don't want to turn their camera on. I say, fine, then keep your camera off but you can still do a screen share video and teach a thing in QuickBooks online or something. I mean, that's really how I did it initially; I took the questions I was being asked most frequently by my accounting clients and made videos about them, frankly out of laziness because I was tired of writing out the same answers in emails. So I made a video and said, here's a video. It'll do a much better job of showing you what to do than I can do in a wall of text for you.
Lauren (14:33):
Yes, I hear you.
Seth (14:35):
So anyway, you can fire up your Camtasia with your screen and don't turn on your camera. That's fine. But the other thing is the time. And that brings in the other problem. The other question in the other camp that a lot of them have, which is I'm up to my eyeballs. I can forget about taking on more clients. I need to figure out how to manage the ones I have and keep everything organized.
Lauren (14:52):
That's scalability,
Seth (14:54):
Especially in accounting, you have so many important deadlines. It's not like, look, let's face it, if a marketing company misses a deadline for producing a blog article, it's not the end of the world. I mean, it's one article.
Lauren (15:06):
It's going to be okay.
Seth (15:08):
Yeah, exactly. But if I miss a sales tax deadline for a client, that costs the client money, a lot of it potentially. So there's a different kind of level of pressure for accountants and bookkeepers to make sure they don't drop any balls. And so that's the other camp where I work with them. And a lot of times a classic thing people will look to do, and this is not just for accountants, this is for any kind of company, is they see they don't seem to have capacity. So what do they do? They hire people. And that actually makes the problem worse because if you hire people into a non-system, all you're doing is amplifying the disorganization of that system. And so now you just have more disorganized people.
So usually the answer is not hire somebody but let's dial in the systems. Let's take inventory. I've made a very thorough study recently, actually again, of David Allen's “Getting Things Done” so I could use that to inform how I work with accountants and bookkeepers and say, first let's just inventory every little thing that's pinging and dinging at your brain that's causing you stress and let's get it out of your brain and into, I don't care if it's on an actual piece of paper, just get it out of your head. And really what that all points to is they don't have a good system, they don't have a process. And the biggest mistake they make, and I suspect this is also beyond just the accounting industry, is they get the project management app and they think, oh, now I've got the system. But the problem is the app is not the system.
Lauren (16:41):
That's right. It's the organization that goes into the system.
Seth (16:43):
Yes, the system has to exist devoid of any apps. Then you use the system to figure out how you're going to execute using the app as the tool you use to execute the system. And they miss that. So they go from app to app thinking it's the app, and yet it's that definition of insanity being in the same place and expecting different results, doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Lauren (17:05):
Yeah, I love “Getting Things Done” too. I've read it several times and one of my favorite takeaways from it is if it's going to take two minutes, just go and do it. If it's not, then put it on your list. It's just simple rules to be able to keep things going because you go, oh, this isn't going to take me that long. Two hours later you're in it, and then everything else is just shuffled around. So I want to back up. So you've got this amazing community. We've got kinds of different camps of conversations or questions that are coming out of it. You're also on the consulting end too. You're talking with businesses of all different sizes, I'm sure, different folks, and are there stair step themes you’re also seeing at different junctures of business, either from revenue size or employee count or what have you? I'd love to hear what themes you hear coming out of those consulting conversations.
Seth (18:02):
So yeah, I think this is where it gets interesting because you're right to point out the size of the business and then how that drives the nature of the question. So the smallest businesses, all they care about really is how much money did I make and how much do I owe in taxes? And I never really liked working with clients on that level. I just felt like I wasn't adding a lot of value. And so eventually I reached a point where I would interview a prospect and if I got the sense all they cared about was getting a P&L and a balance sheet so they could get their return filed, I didn't want them. I'd pass them to somebody else.
I wanted clients who wanted to really strategically use the accounting information I could compile for them. And so that made a difference. And for that, you're talking about your micro businesses that are doing say from a hundred thousand a year maybe up to half a million gross revenue. Just to kind of illustrate the point even further, years ago I had a client at this level, she probably did just about a hundred K a year. I used to try and encourage her to look at the balance sheet with me and she's like, no, no, no, I don't care. I just want to see the P&L. I just need to know how much money I make — until she got audited. And she was just randomly selected for what they call a desk audit, which means nobody's going to come in person; they're just going to request information and we send it in.
Well, looking at the auditor's questions, it was pretty clear to me what they were questioning because she had been in business for about five years. She was showing losses each year. And their essential question — they didn't ask this directly but it was evident from the questions they did — was how are you still in business running these losses? And the whole answer was on her balance sheet, which by the way, when you're a small business like that and you're just filing a Schedule C, there is no balance sheet. So they can't see that. But if I was able to show once, it was clear to me what they were going after; she had liabilities that equaled almost to the dollar the cumulative losses year over year. So I was able to basically put the picture together, and this is the thing about numbers for businesses as they tell a story, and this told the story of how she financed these losses based on debt. It's that simple. So anyway, it's interesting in that way. And then of course she got real interested in the balance sheet. After that she was like, okay, I want to learn about the balance sheet. I didn't even bother with the statement of cash flows.
But so then you scale up in size and all of a sudden, to me, it gets much more interesting because the questions get more interesting. Now they get more interested in how do I use this information to scale and grow? What kind of decisions can I make based on this? Okay, so if I look at your financial statements month over month, which I always insisted on doing, never just running it for the year in total but month over month. I want to look at trends. I want to look at the months where we did poorly, and then I want to understand why. And the clients, as you get to the million and up level, that's where they get interested in that stuff. And by the way, that's where they recognize a lot more value in what their accountants can do for them, which is where you can command much better fees. And also you get much fewer complaints. It's always the small clients that complain the most about your bill. At this level, they're like, I don't care, I'll pay you whatever you need. Just make sure I get the information. In other words, these clients at this level really want to save time and they'll pay a lot for that.
Lauren (21:11):
Save time and resources so they can make more strategic decisions zeroed in on the numbers so they can adjust and flex. And if you're able to be there as a partner, I mean, that's tremendous value, right?
Seth (21:21):
Yeah, that's where the value is. And I still, going back to the conversations I have with the accountants, a lot of it is they're still attaching value to the inputs of what they do. And people like me in the accounting space have been working really hard for years now to try and get them to disassociate value with the inputs and reassociate value with the outcomes. And that's so important because we were just discussing the real value is in what I can help the client do differently with their business. It's not in how much time it took to reconcile their bank accounts or how many transactions they had. I hate that. By the way, when people talk about pricing based on transaction volume, it's such a low value way to price your accounting service.
Lauren (22:02):
No, it's fair. So let me just back up again. So is your kind sweet spot in working with folks who are under the $5 million point, or how do you scale up with who you work with?
Seth (22:17):
At one point I actually established I wouldn't take on a company that wasn't doing at least a million dollars a year. But funny story, I got into e-commerce by accident. I had a client come in my door who had seen my videos on YouTube and was convinced I was the guy, even though initially I was like, I don't have e-commerce experience; there are people who specialize in that.
But he kept insisting. So I chose to take him on. When I started working with him, I want to say he was probably doing well over a million dollars a year. By the time we parted company because he outgrew me and hired his own internal accounting staff, he was doing a million dollars a month. So I mean, it's quite a range I was able to work with. But with e-commerce, that's not uncommon, especially with big Amazon sellers. So it's hard to gauge it only based on revenues. There are companies that do very high ticket deals but the transaction volume is low. So that could be a $50 million a year company and yet not a whole lot in the trenches, so to speak.
Lauren (23:23):
That makes sense. So it just really varies.
Seth (23:28):
And by the way, when you get to his level, the companies that are doing $12 million+ a year, again, the conversation changes because now you're likely dealing with a board of directors and other stakeholders where I'm answering to my client who's answering to them. And so when my client and I had this happen, I can be honest, when my client gets ripped a new one, quote unquote, because he can't explain the numbers properly, guess who else is going to have that same experience? He's going to come back to me; that's going to blow back on me. And I've had to have those uncomfortable conversations where it's like, hey, I'm sorry but let's address this and get it fixed. So now you're dealing with several layers as the accountant; you're dealing with several levels because you've got your client and then the people your client is answering to. And then at one point, I was working with companies who were going right up to the point of going public. What I used to say to them is, the day you have to do your first SEC filing, I'm out. That's above my pay grade. The buck stops there for me. I'm not doing any SEC filings.
Lauren (24:33):
That's fair. Oh my goodness. Well, this is so helpful. I appreciate you sharing, kind of like you said the mountaintops, just some of the themes you're seeing within your community, within your clients and what have you. I also just want to give a shout out to your content as well. Landing on your website, hearing your story, like I mentioned to you before, it's so human and so real. And you've got a podcast, Guide to the Galaxy, right? So super fun. I appreciate that realness. And also just you can tell there's that people-first educational piece to all you do. So I appreciate you sharing some of those lessons learned with folks.
Seth (25:10):
Thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Lauren (25:11):
And we'll make sure to include a link to your website as well. So this is great. Thank you again for your time and looking forward to just checking out all the great things you're doing and seeing more podcasts come out.
Seth (25:23):
Fantastic. Thank you.
Lauren (25:24):
Thank you.
