Profit by Design: CFO + CPA for Builders

Allison O’Baker and Priscilla Thomasevich share how a CFO–CPA duo helps builders organize their books, budget with intent, and protect margins. We dig into chart of accounts vs. cost codes, fixed vs. variable spend, tax levers and accounting methods (cash, accrual, completed-contract), and when to lean on a bookkeeper, controller, or CFO.

Connect with: 

Allison O'Baker: https://aodataflow.com
Priscilla Thomasevich: https://sawgrasscpa.com

Show Notes: 

0:00 Cold open: why money talk matters
0:35 Mics up & episode setup
1:01 Allison’s lane: outsourced CFO
2:25 Priscilla’s path: CPA to builder
15:50 How the CFO+CPA duo works
20:04 Chart of accounts vs cost codes
28:42 Method matters: completed contract vs accrual
33:46 Benchmarks: spend on marketing & growth
40:16 Team roles: bookkeeper, controller, CFO
50:00 Takeaways & wrap

Find Our Hosts:
Reece Barnes
Matt Calvano

Podcast Produced By:
Motif Media

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to builders budgets and beers. I'm Rhys Barnes and I started this podcast to have real conversations about money in the building industry, the wins, the mistakes and everything in between. I believe builders deserve to feel confident about their finances, and that starts by hearing from others who've been through it too. This industry can be slow to change, but the right stories and the right tools can make profitability feel possible. Let's get into it. Alrighty. Team mics are hot. We're live, not live, we're recording. But I really appreciate both of you coming on builders budgets and beers today. Let's just go ahead and start with Allison Priscilla, you guys giving the listeners a little background on yourselves and a little intro. Who wants to go first? Who wants to go first? Allison, Allison, you go first. So my name is Allison o Baker. I am the owner of ao Dataflow consulting. I am essentially an outsourced part time chief financial officer for businesses that are maybe too small, that don't need full time CFO, but also still deserve to have that expertise and helping build your business, everything I do is based under the concepts of trying to help you organize, simplify and scale your business. And I tend to kind of niche a little bit with clients that are in the construction trade space, law firms or marketing, advertising agencies. And I come with a background of 20 plus years of corporate finance, accounting, project management experience. Very cool. I always like to ask just from corporate I mean, this is like a trend. You know, a lot of small business owners come on the podcast. A lot of them have corporate backgrounds. Who are you with? Who Where did you get your experience from a corporate standpoint, I have worked for a lot of different industries in the corporate space, where you're in investments with BlackRock. Worked at Siemens energy three different times. They kept letting me come back and try different roles and a wide variety there. And those are probably the bigger names that people may know. Okay, cool. So investments at BlackRock, Siemens a couple of different times. Very cool. I love it. Thank you, Priscilla, your turn. My name is Priscilla Thomas sevich. I'm a CPA. I started my career out of college working for Deloitte, one of the big four accounting firms, and I really enjoyed it. It's the most glamorous of CPA jobs. However, after a short period there, it's a lot of work, and I didn't feel that connection to people, you know, the owners of the business were stockholders. So I really wanted to get back to my roots, which was small business tax preparation that I had done before college and during college, and work with entrepreneurs. My husband is an entrepreneur. We own a construction company together, thomasovich construction, here in South Florida. And so I really enjoyed that connection. So after a few years of working, you know, for big firms and companies, I started my own practice. I've been in business since 2007 and now I specialize in tax reduction strategies as a tax planner, yeah, okay, so coming up on 20 years, congrats, and I can't imagine that you have a lot of builders that want to reduce taxes. I feel like there's not a lot of them out there, right? And, well, everyone wants to pay their fair share. But over time, I've seen a shift in what people think is their fair share. 100 right? Early in my career, it was a little bit of a different climate, politically, and, you know, in the country, so now people are looking to take charge of their own finances. You know, totally, totally, no, I love it. I so a we've got, we've got a lot of, we've got a lot of lineup here. We've got, we've got, we've got some, some subject matter experts, for sure. I love it. Okay, so let's, let's go ahead and dive in Allison, and just for the listeners here, obviously, considering, you know, we've got a fractional CFO, we've got a tax and CPA accounting expert here, a lot of what this conversation is going to be revolving around is going to be how to make your business attractive to buyers, and then how to effectively plan for tax strategies when it comes to selling your business. So I guess I'll just kick it off. Allison, I mean, like, what would you say is just, you know, kind of the high level summary, the too long didn't read before we get into this, in terms of you. All builders should build their financial framework to sell. Yeah, exactly. So I come with the experience of working with a lot of companies that have been poised to sell or private equity ownership, so I understand what those potential buyers and valuations are looking for. So it's really about with constructions businesses and trades businesses, of being able to start showing a breakout in your revenue, of what is recurring versus project based, and how to actually then show also the backlog of a contract is very important as well. You want to make sure that you're starting to get very clean financial statements for your profit and loss and your balance sheet. So that is organized in a way that is very easy for those potential buyers or valuation experts to be able to pinpoint certain metrics that are common that they're going to look for, and that gets to be things like helping them understand it. They are not just buying your revenue, they are buying the whole financial story of your business, and where I come in, is to help you not be your transactional accounting person, but help you understand how to reset those structures in the financial pieces your business to make it ready for when your time is starting to get some valuation and buyer interest. Totally okay. No, this is, this is, this is going to be interesting. And I think the one piece, so I heard so and it was great. There's a lot of pieces there, but the pieces that stood out to me were the project based revenue versus the recurring revenue versus the backlog. Maybe not verse, but the combination of those three combination exactly, where do you see most builders, whether they're getting ready to sell or not? Where do you see them lagging the most or like not hitting the mark on those three the most often would it be like the recurring the project based the backlog? Where do you think they struggle the most to understand that? Well, it's definitely harder for construction and businesses to show recurring revenue because much of it is project based, which is why the project and completion and the backlog is so important for projects. But if there is any pieces, you can start showing that are more recurring. That is one thing that is definitely a high value area for buyers and valuations is looking at like what is more likely, the sustainable, recurring money that's coming into the business, because then they can it comes down to a little bit more of you're not as dependent on necessarily one big project to make your revenue for the year. Totally makes sense now, what like? What are just and I imagine that the different types of recurring revenue streams vary like business by business. Is this electric? Is this electrical company? Is this a vertical new construction company? But what are just some What are just some ideas that you have heard or that you suggest for builders to start thinking about to get that recurring revenue concept going in their business? I mean, if they have other pieces of their business that is not just straight project based, maybe there is some subbing out of areas. I actually might lean into Priscilla a little bit more for that. Of like, what have you seen in your experience with your construction business that might be able to relate into that? Yeah, you know, like everything else, construction often comes down to relationships. We build relationships over time. So for example, if you lock in with a franchise and they have an expansion plan for growth, then you might be the builder for the next 20 years. Or at least, you know that the current five to 10 year period to sustain to help them, you know, build through that growth. So that's one way with relationships. And I think another really Pinnacle area for general contractors is to have systems in place where the owner is not necessarily the critical person that must be there for things to continue. So as these relationships develop through franchises or otherwise. Maybe, you know, property managers that give you a lot of good leads for work, or realtors or architects. You know, we partner with many different people in construction, but with without that pinnacle person, the CEO at the helm, will those jobs still a come in and B, be completed, you know, as if the owner were there. I have never thought of it that way. And correct me if I'm like, misinterpreting this, but in terms of, like, a recurring like, viewing recurring revenue as basically building processes and systems to remove yourself from the business. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how they would view it. Like, if someone's evaluating your business to buy it, they're they're truly looking at this and being like, if we buy this thing and we pull John Smith out of John Smith construction, this thing dies tomorrow, definitely look at that. They will look at what your bigger clients are, and evaluate if the main person in that business or. Owner leaves. Will those clients leave because that relationship is dead? Then, in terms of the business structure of it, that actually is very much something that is looked at of and that's why, sometimes, when there's a sale, they might say, Okay, will you, as this key personnel, stay on with the business through a certain transition period so that they don't have that immediate drop totally I think that adds some weight to emphasizing the importance of building systems and processes in your business. It's talked about so much, but there's not really like a tangible why that's a pretty tangible why. Right after working with small business owners for 20 years, you can start to see the trends when you elevate yourself as not just the technician working in the business or the manager overseeing the staff. You elevate yourself to an executive role where you have the right team in place that works below, you know, the those executive owners, then it's sustainable for the long term, like a corporation. Totally, totally and view, go ahead. Allison, no, I'm just agreeing, yes, yeah, totally, totally, for sure. And again, like, I think this all makes sense on paper. But where do you guys see builders typically struggle with these concepts? Again, you could sit across the table from someone and explain this to them, they'd be like, this makes a ton of sense in the world. But where do they typically struggle making that shift, that initiative? Is it a mental shift? Is it's a mindset shift? Even in my own CPA firm, I was preparing taxes, so I had to make that shift that now I'm leading the team that prepares the taxes, so that I can concentrate on reviewing the tax returns for planning opportunities and similarly, you know, a construction owner retains those relationships, but starts to fortify by mentoring. You know, the next generation that's coming up that's going to lead that team. And you know, you would do that if that were your son or daughter. You would do that naturally, right? So it's some it's similar to that, even if you don't have a family, that construction company that wants to continue without you, you know the employees that you have can fill those roles for you. 100% totally. Okay. So I guess even like so, what is so? What is? What is your and your husband's construction company? Priscilla, what do you guys build? Thomas savage construction, we do both commercial and residential here in West Palm Beach, Palm Beach County, Florida, and our residential is mostly luxury custom homes. So we just wrapped up a project on two acres with over 15,000 square feet, four separate buildings, a beautiful model home. We're getting the pictures ready for the website. Soon, I'm gonna be checking them out. That's for sure. It's really awesome. We also build some things on the water. Here in South Florida, we have a lot of water, so some additions to, you know, very large homes already, and then on the commercial and we do medical, professional new construction. The office building that we're in is a new office park with three buildings, and we occupy one and restaurants and some franchises as well. Okay, so you, I mean, you guys are building just about everything. I love it, yeah, yeah. Um, okay, so even I can't imagine it just started that way. I can't imagine that. No, not at all, technician to manager and now to this. You know, great development, yes, yeah, for sure. Okay, so what were and how long have you guys been in business, since 2000 2002 okay. Okay, cool. And so with that said, I mean, what was, what was like, the learning curve from there, just like, so the builders can assimilate and hear it from, like, obviously, like, a very, like, strong accounting background. Husband and yourself are running a construction company. What was that learning curve like over that, that 25 years, it's truly been an amazing journey. I mean, we started, literally, mom and pop. I had a tiny little office so I could meet tax clients. And, you know, my husband was out in the field. He wore a tool tool belt. He, you know, oversaw construction, and we made a living, and we were happy. Over time he got, you know, opportunities to build bigger things. He needed more people. We. Utilize subcontractors a lot, of course, MEPs, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, of course, yeah, and, and we fortified relationships. You know, he always was really into the craft of building. And so his quality and his determination to get the job done no matter what, you know, we got a lot of work, quality work, completed, and people took notice of that. And after, you know, fostering all these relationships over time, we, you know, we really started to to develop a big, a bigger company and hire more people for the office. We had to move out of the little, you know, space that we had about six years ago. We got a bigger office, and then we outgrew that. So now we have our new office here in Lake Worth Florida. Okay, I love it well. And Allison, so you mentioned that you two work together quite often? Yes, yes. So our little backstory is Priscilla and I met earlier this year at a CPA Women's Conference. And I'm not even a CPA, but I crashed and and we just immediately kind of bonded, and she was looking to be able to start offering some CFO services to her clients, and we have just now created this kind of, you know, off paper partnership, and we are really enjoying the balance of what both of us bring to the table. It's been a great relationship so far. Okay, so you guys, I mean, this is, like, still, like a new relationship for you guys, like this, like, we're a year end, basically, okay, I wanted to ask because I was curious, like, in terms of, like, a framework and like, what would need in place for, say, Priscilla and her husband to sell their business. What would that look like? Do you work with them on this type of stuff? Does Priscilla just have it, you know, in the bag or, I guess, how would you like advise someone like Priscilla's company to sell. We're not selling. We're not okay, that's a good one. Why not? Why not? Well, first of all, I have a 21 year old son who's studying engineering, so he's ready to come in, yeah? Well, we want to let him go out and take his shot at engineering first, totally, you know, and see how that works out, but clearly, there's a great connection with construction and engineers, right? So over time, our dream would be that our son, Nick, would, you know, come into the family business. But ironically, we have a project manager named Nick who is also a great candidate for leading this company down the future, you know, so I'm not sure a true Plus, we're not that old, 20 year old company. About that is about what you want to do with the rest of your life. Okay, here's the sales pitch. I'm ready, Allison, but this is a big part of our identity, and I bet a lot of listeners could agree with that as well, totally, totally well. And also for your son, my wife, she works for a large contractor, a lot of engineering. It's kiwit They do a lot of engineering stuff. So if he's looking for places, keywords, an awesome organization, yes, okay. But so back to the frameworks. I think Allison, like, what would you advise, just some, like, some basic stuff that builders can look at. I know we talked about this a little bit, but just to get a little bit more in the weeds here, like, what are some, what are some of the frameworks of, like, reporting, metrics, investor valuations, like, what are some of those things that that builders should be keeping top of mind if they want to sell their business? Sure. So I'm gonna nerd out on my thing that most people don't understand. Which is the chart I'll really yen. If it gets too nerdy, I'll reel in. Which is the chart of accounts. So the Chart of Accounts, accounting system is essentially the list of general ledger accounts that make up your P and L statement in your balance sheet. I very believe, yes. I don't mean to ruin your train of thought, yes, but we talk a lot about Chart of Accounts cost codes and adaptive should builders be running their cost codes through their chart of accounts? Yes. Should they be tied to chart of accounts? Or should their chart of accounts reflect their cost codes? If I have a strict opinion on that, Priscilla, I'm sorry repeat that. So instead of having just like a singular, we'll call it cost of goods sold or cost of construction account, okay, should they have just one cogs account that their cost codes are mapped to? Or should, or should construction, right? So we have divisions of construction, yes, 17 there. There could be, I think, up to 34 or something. But we use 17 for general construction, and we match revenue. And expenses through the division codes, great. Okay, so you're looking at like, 17 line items or codes, yes, on a job, project basis. If you want to roll up your P and L, your profit and loss statement, then yeah, you don't want to bore the details there, the reader with the details there. So maybe you snap that up into one cost of goods sold. Yes, okay, okay, cool. And that's where I was always curious, because I think there's a lot of conversation on Chart of Accounts. I love that. That was, like, the first thing you brought up Allison, because that is so important. And like, we talk about, we talk about Chart of Accounts, we talk about cost codes. And, like, just understanding, like, what information does a cost code give you versus what is a chart of accounts give you, right? And how does everything play in tandem? Okay, I digress. But thank you. I wanted your take on that, yes, so. And essentially, it's like it really is starting with that, like splitting out your revenue by, like, what is project versus, you know, different types of things you should not if you're looking at your P and L and there's one income account and one Cost of Goods Sold account you're already failing and understanding the financials of your business. So you want to break those out in a way that it is gives you value in data and helps you see seasonality and trends, but not so deep that it is too onerous on the person actually doing the transactional accounting and categorizations. So it is very making sure that you are properly putting things in the cost of goods sold area. I come across a lot of companies, not necessarily in the construction business, but in other trades and other businesses that don't understand what cost of goods sold or cost of sales at all, and understand this direct cost to produce your revenue, and they just have it in operating expenses. And so, like, that's one of the first things I do is, like, we need to move these up, and then it's and then creating your operating expenses in more bucketed areas of categories, and putting it in a way that you are seeing your largest and fixed groupings first and then go down into more variable cost and more discretionary, and that helps the owners and the key personnel be able to start understanding where are the areas that we cannot have any impact on the expenses, and what are the areas where, maybe for having a little bit of cash flow situation or whatnot, that we can maybe, like reduce cost temporarily. So it's identifying it in areas and buckets that make it a little bit more easy for that. And to help you start doing a budget. And if you're not doing a budget, you need to do a budget. Yeah, Allison has been really instrumental with the clients that we work with together in showing them how to differentiate between discretionary expenses that you could abandon if necessary or change, versus fixed expenses and fixed costs that like rent that you're stuck with a contract, you know, and so that's been really helpful. And we pair that with the budget. So her work, you know, in the budget and forecast helps the clients to kind of plan for the future, yeah, so, and I'll just say a couple more metrics, and throw it over to Priscilla of then what I kind of help reset things in that way of the financial framework. Help them understand gross margin by their service lines. Help them understand EBITDA. EBITDA in gross margin percentage are two of the main numbers that a buyer is going to look at. And so help it gets so that your financial statements are clean in in that way, and also in a way that makes it easier for the tax preparer to find deductions and areas of where they can make some adjustments. So then I kind of help reset the things, help them understand the metrics, the analysis, do budgeting and forecasting, and then bring in, and then Priscilla's and her team are really the ones that like, Okay, we're going to take it to the next level and looking at the tax piece of it. So I'll throw it over to you. Yeah. So we take a look at your overall profit and loss, your tax returns, your balance sheet, to look for opportunities. What we really try to get to also is that I do a lot of listening to clients. I want to understand their goals for their future and where they spend their money, and then we try to determine, based on the, you know, the information that they share with us, perhaps there's a place where money is going after tax that we could rearrange to be become a tax deduction legally. Of course, you know, all within the the confines of the IRS Code, for example, if you're paying medical expenses outside of your tax deductions, because in in many such. Situations, they're not deductible, or they're not useful in a deduction, you can't reach the limit in which you need to reach to start deducting them. But there are some strategies we can implement at the business level where medical deductions for employees could be deductible. So you know, it could be something simple like that, or a more complex strategy, sometimes the entity itself, the type of entity you have, an S corp, a C Corp, a partnership. They all have pros and cons, and there's so much nuance in tax, meaning whatever works for you and your business may not be the exact situation for your neighbor or even your business partner. Sometimes, you know a business partner has a spouse who earns significant income, or they have losses that you don't have, whatever it is, everyone's you know, different customized and so we try to understand your particular situation, and then how does the tax code work best for you? Why does it have to be so confusing? I've spent my whole career trying to figure that out, right? I don't write the law. I certainly would never write something right? I'm just like, I'm saying. I'm just like, Gosh, why? Like, I mean, I feel like there's just, like, a lot of like, small businesses out there that would just be like, can you just tell me what I need to do? Or is that basically what you guys do after these conversations? Yeah, yeah, that's what you guys do. It's just together we can and if I can't, I'm part of a network of over 700 certified tax planners like me, so I can bring it to the larger group, and we can work on more complex issues together. Totally. Okay, cool. Okay, so with tax and all this stuff, so we just rolled out a whip feature in our product. I've been talking to a lot of, like, the top 100 accounting firms about, like, introducing whip to their clients to accelerate this. And from a tax and an assurance standpoint, it certainly has its like, interest points, obviously. Allison, you had talked a little bit about, like, budgeting and recognizing, you know, these types of revenues. How does WIP get involved in your guys' day? Is that a metric that you guys run, is that a report that you guys can I take this one, run it? Yeah, yeah. This is open forum. That's one of my favorites. And work in progress. We have a schedule. You have to follow the schedule. It's based on your estimate. If your estimates not great, if the estimated profit is not really accurate, or even if it was accurate, but things changed, it doesn't lend itself easily to forgive, you know, issues that come up later that may arise. Another thing we're allowed to do in tax is select our own accounting method, and so there's more than just WIP if you're talking about audited financial statements. This may not pertain to that, but for tax purposes, you can be a relatively large construction company and be on the cash basis of accounting if you choose to do that, so you would only pay tax when you have the money in hand, which is instrumental, especially in early years, especially if you take deposits. I'm sorry if you do take deposits, it's the opposite. Then you want to be on an accrual basis, which is something more like wimp there's also new a new legislation and one big, beautiful Act that allows for completed contract method of accounting, which is really exciting for us. I'm sorry I get excited about No, I want to hear more. Keep going. This is great. You're doing great, but completed contract method allows you to wait until you actually know whether or not you made money on that job in before you're required to pay the taxes. So they've, they've made some changes to allow more taxpayers to be able to utilize these different methods, and that might be part of your strategy that works, you know, to reduce your taxes today, to free up some of that cash so that you can make smart investments in either your business or whatever it is that you're looking to do, you know, down the road, totally. I mean, so obviously, like whip sounds like a no brainer, but why? Like, why? Why is whip kind of this, at least from my experience, why is it kind of like this, like, big elephant in the room? Like, people know what it is, but they don't really talk about it, or they struggle to get it, and they, like, don't really know how to make business decisions on it. Where do you see builders struggle with whip just calculating it, filling out those spreadsheets, understanding what it means. We start again. We start with the estimate. And you know, you do an estimate for two reasons, first, to try to figure out what your cost is, but secondly, to win a job. And you know, sometimes you're up against other builders and you really want this work. And you know sometimes your estimates, not the greatest, but you think maybe down the road there might be some change orders, we could pick up a little profit or, you know, whatever happens so, but we're stuck to your original estimate and your profit margin from that estimate. So, you know, it's got, but it's generally accepted accounting principles that requires that. So you know that that's our standard. When I said for audited financials, for CPAs, okay, but again, for tax, you have different options. And even what Allison does is more of managerial accounting, which is for the management of the business, so we could report within the company on a different basis, so that we really see things clearly, and then we only comply with audited financial statements or tax returns On a different method. Okay, so I guess, how do you leverage web Allison? Or do you in your world? I don't too much, because the where this is why Priscilla and I work so well together is because definitely more of the visionary, strategic and the setting the framework in the budgeting nerd. Okay, where she is that actual, like, transactional accountant and tax strategy person. So that's why, like, I'm not necessarily looking at WIP too much. I'm helping figure out where are your goals and where are we trying to get to. And let's build you an operational budget. But then also, let's put in some stretch goals of where you're trying to go, and then helping on a repeated basis of doing some reporting and and visually showing and giving the advice on how we're getting there. Totally okay, well, and so maybe that was short sighted on my end. Like, when you had mentioned budgeting, kind of to Priscilla's comment is, like, with estimating, right? Like, how much of that, like, of budgeting is estimating, at least in the construction world. When you talk about budgeting, like, let's give the listeners a little bit more detail in terms of what that actually looks like and like when you say operational budget, like, what is when you sit down with a new client, what does that look like establishing that budget? Yeah. I mean, obviously it depends on the industry. It's very industry specific. We'll talk about construction. Let's focus on construction. Yeah, I mean, like, so for the construction side, it really is kind of like mapping out, you know, one of the construction companies I work with, they're still on a newer end, and they are very dependent right now on when they get, you know, the upfront from the bank to be able to start a job. And then it's looking at whether, whether they are taking profits throughout, or whether they have to wait towards the end. So we kind of just talk through what does that look like, and kind of mapping out what we think the start time is going to be. How many months would that be? What type of other profit sharing payout may there need to be along the way? Kind of estimating them from their their estimation tools of what is the direct cost as well. So we kind of layer it like that, and try to be a little bit conservative in what we're putting in. And then it's really then where we can make a little bit more of a tangible adjustments, is in the operating expenses area of how much is the salaries? How much are we spending in certain other areas of professional fees, or marketing and advertising for the business? And really kind of helping them understand in those areas, what is the percentage of sales that you are budgeting towards those areas, and are those in the benchmark areas of where your business should be. So like biggest thing is always marketing and advertising if you are in whatever business cycle you're in, if you're in growth mode, that's a different set of percentage that you should be spending and marketing and advertising to be bringing in more revenue and pipeline. Totally, totally okay. What are some other like? So marketing, advertising, for sure, if you're trying to grow your you're trying to grow your business, you can invest more there. What are some other areas that builders should consider based on the season of business they're in? You know, those are some of the bigger ones. You want to also make sure that you're not spending too much in. You want to spend some on professional fees, right? You want to make sure that you are set up with people who are helping you try business. But if you're hiring consultants, and I will say this even for myself, I try to present myself in a way that I am not a cost center. For you, I make my turn myself into a profit center. You know, there's one client that I started recently working with a couple months ago, different in your. Street. But in the span of two months of working with them, those two months of what we originally budgeted for them in revenue, they surpassed it by like $30,000 so I'm like, right there. I'm already right if there is already paying for myself in value, and it's hiring people that are going to be that piece of you that are an investment in your business that you're going to get a return on totally go ahead. Priscilla, I think on this note, sometimes when you hire professionals who point things out to you and train you a different way of thinking, you start to automatically start thinking that way yourself. I noticed this with my tax planning clients, I point out things that might be deductible they weren't thinking about. And sure enough, a couple of weeks later, I get phone calls, hey, what about this? I'm going on a golf outing. I'm doing this, you know. Can we make this more of a tax reduction thing? Then, you know? So they're starting to think on their own, and I think that's what Allison's help does you know? They come into the meetings, they start to train themselves, to look, you know, at their financials differently, like a professional would. It's kind of like a training ground. It absolutely is, I definitely said that's a big piece of what I'm doing is trying to educate those key personnel on what to be looking for in their financials. And it does in the long run, I do. I get clients that come back and be like, Oh, hey, what about this? And like, Oh, hey, I noticed this wasn't right. What do we do with it? You know, like, and they get excited when they realize that they understand it more. And like, that's what brings me joy, is knowing that I am helping people understand and have financial clarity and more confidence in the numbers in their business. Yeah, and we're intimately involved in the details of a client's business, right? So there's not that many people who know as much about you as we do, and so we become kind of your partner, you know, and that's why, that's why it works so well with the mom and pop construction company between, you know, my husband and myself, and that's the same type of relationship that I strive to give my clients, something trusted, you know, something intimate, that they can share details And together we can discuss what the best path forward would be. So we become kind of a partner in your business, but you get to keep the whole business. Yeah, of course, of course, yeah, you guys aren't asking for percentages, or maybe you are. It really is personal, like you said it, and it's like we're trying to help them feel the emotions of money, because money is very emotional. Can be traumatic to certain people, but we become your trusted people of don't feel shame, and what you do know and don't know we're here to help and educate, and let's help you make the unemotional decisions on the money piece of where you're going, right? We might sound smart here, but you don't want me building your house. Yeah, we all have our skills. We all have our skills and 100% Well, and that's okay. So I think I've got two questions here. So like, first, how should builders be focusing on, from like a budgeting standpoint, what they do spend, call it annually, on professional services. And then the second is, is, where do you typically see builders become the most hesitant or resistant to working with you guys? Is it typically like they're not ready for that type of service? They're not thinking, Is there something you guys can do to motivate a really good example with a client we share who had someone in house, and they were relying on that person. That person left their job. And so what we did was come in somewhere close to the salary on a part time basis. They have staff in the office who's able to do the daily activities. This person that left their position was more of a controller, which is the person who oversees the accounting department, so we could come in as CPAs and help there, and if the price is reasonable, compared to what you would pay for a full time staff. There's no benefits. There's no real agreement. You know, we have an agreement to work together, but if at some point you move forward and you want to hire someone back into your office full time, you can replace the position with an employee. So, you know, it's very flexible. And again, no benefits. So I would say for accounting, outsourcing and overseeing financial information, you could consider what you might pay a controller, which would shift, you know, from market to market based on I. Okay? So a lot of a lot of it is just like understanding, even just like the the cost of the employee or the individual, right, and not having to oversee, you know, when you hire us at sawgrass, CPA, we have five different people on your team. So we have a, you know, staff accountant, we have a controller level person. We have Allison now as the CFO for our clients, and then you have me as well, and I left one out. We have two staffs so, so you get variety in case something happens for the day to someone, there's someone else to back it up. There's always a response. You know, we don't call in sick to the client, and so you get more without sourcing than you would. Of course, there are things that you can have an employee do that we're not physically there in your office. There is that exchange, but, but it works really well for the clients who are growing, maybe not quite ready to hire that full time. You know five different people, but they do need the work, you know. So it's a good way to get started. And through your budget, you're actually placeholding for those positions in the future. You're, you know, you're spending those funds make sure that it's comfortable before you commit and hire someone who's going to make it their life's work, and you're actually better value because you're getting, you know, five heads with different experience that are coming and helping you, versus one person in that role, right? And overseen by a seasoned professional, you know, and that I find my clients to be excellent business people in the field. They have good operations. They know how to run their business. They know how to make money, no doubt. But the financial part is often not for them, and that's okay, you know, we kind of speak both languages, and we translate what the numbers mean. The numbers literally tell us a story. The reason why Allison and I clicked was because I, you know, she came to my office, I opened the screen with numbers, and she explained to me what that meant, and I said, You are awesome. Thank you. I love it. I love it. Just need you to do my taxes and find me more savings. Exactly, yeah, actually, I think I need my taxes. You need to be done still too. So hello, we're at September 10 today. I know, I know. Is it September October? What is it? What are they doing? Individual filing deadline is October 15. But we're still within, you know, yeah, we've got time. Okay, cool. So I think, like, I mean, it's like, a really strong case, of course, um, I think in terms of, like, the budget that they should allocate for this. And I say this because I think, of course, like you mentioned, Priscilla, the, you know, more like the intermediary role of like a business that's growing but might not be able to build out the whole team or doesn't need the team, but I'm even thinking, like, even from like an advisory standpoint or just a service standpoint, how do you advise your customers to think about building in professional services into their budget, and what's reasonable for them to consider, like a software it could be anywhere from like, one To 5% of their overall budget could be allocated to software cost, right? I didn't know if you guys had a number or a suggestion for them to consider, of like, what's reasonable? I'm not sure. Yeah, I'm not sure it works quite like that. I think for us, especially if you have a pay applications, payment applications, AIA, document, you need a professional to help you with those types of documents for your building, your billing, rather and so, you know, if you have those bases covered in your office, you know that's great if you don't, those are really important Things that will hold you back from earning the money that your potential that you're able to do. So the way that we approach things, especially particularly with tax reduction, is that we look at the value we're bringing to the table, and like Allison said, it must be an investment if I can't save you any money in taxes. Well, then I'm not really worth a whole lot, right? So the value comes from when there's the connection and we can do something to save you significant amounts of tax, and then our services pay for themselves. Yeah. Okay. Have either of you seen adaptive, the product, our product. I attended the scbc last year, and I met you, and I did see it. I really wait we met, because I last year it was 2024 Yeah, up in Orlando, we went. We went for the Okay, great. I asked, just. Because, like, when you're when you're talking about, like, AIA, like, I'm just, like, still, we just rolled out. Like, AIA, you just rolled it out, because last year, yeah, do you have that? Yeah, yeah, we do. Now we talked about what I met you at this year's. Seb was like, I'm looking for a software that has that for one of my construction clients. They don't need it yet, but I wanted to see what it was going to look like in the future. Okay, well, we'll show you guys. Yeah, we'll bring it we'll bring it back around. We'll bring it back around, because we definitely have it now. And to your point, it's like, it's a huge challenge to do all these things, but that's just like, it's one of those. It's like a piece of the puzzle that prevents you from getting to where you actually need to be, from a tax prep standpoint, from a CFO advisory standpoint, it just gets these individuals, you guys, the information that you need to provide higher level service. Um, guys, I guess. I mean, this was a great episode, a What? What would you leave the users with? It's a little like you left him with a lot, but what's just like one piece that you would leave them with, or you would highlight, emphasize, urge them. How can they find you? We'll wrap it up with that. Well, you can find me at A, O, data flow.com, a, oh, not a, oh, it's like a, oh, it's not a, y, O, it's a, a. My name is Allison o Baker, so there we go. A as an Allison o as an O Baker, yes. Hello, yes. And you know, if you are it just more so if you are ready to take that next step of wanting to really understand the finances in your business and figure out how to get to the next place, right? I'm the good person to bring in when you are thinking you might want to sell in the future, or you really just want to understand where you're at and understand your numbers in more you know, tangible terms, that's where I can provide the value of helping you understand that and get to that place. Great. Beautiful Priscilla, so my website is sawgrass cpa.com and our construction company is build with T, C, i, t for Thomas evitch, C for construction Inc, we, you know, with sawgrass CPA, we really try to focus on what the client's needs are. Recently, we had a client who is looking to sell their company within the next three to five years, and so we took an approach, reviewing their tax returns, looking for strategies. And even without selling, we were able to reduce their taxes by $200,000 over the next year, right? And then these, these changes that we would make would fundamentally change the way they're being taxed. There are different strategies where we shift income to lower brackets. We look at their entity selection. That method of accounting could be quite a powerful tool. And we also look for hidden deductions, things that we would expect to see on your tax return for a company of your size, in construction, and we don't see those expenses. So you know what happened? Perhaps it's so hard to keep great employees, isn't it? Maybe you could add employee benefits. Of course, there will be a cost, but the tax savings might reduce the cost. There's even small business tax credits for some employee benefit plans. So we take a look at that, and then if this client does sell, we have another strategy that will help them reduce the the cost of the tax, cost of selling by up to $2 million so we're not talking about small things. We're talking about huge changes that we can make. You might be able to step away from your business almost tax free, and it's just a matter of getting in front of it and planning just like the building process. If you don't have great plans by a great architect who responds to your review comments quickly, then the whole thing falls apart, right? So you can have great intentions, but if you're just shooting from the hip, it's not going to work, you know, for the long term. But what we do is a proactive approach to get ahead of that, and we've seen excellent results. Our clients are really happy. I don't know why people wouldn't talk to you guys. I mean, these, these are like, these are big numbers. These are important things. I mean, I can, I just, I can just only imagine there's a builder out there just being like, I have no idea what this means, but I know that I need to talk to these people, like, because that's, that's, this is so important. This is huge. Cool. Well, I appreciate you guys jumping on. This was great. Right everybody. We will be posting more of this on Instagram. We will be posting where to find Allison and Priscilla. I appreciate you guys for hopping on. Thank you so much for taking the time out of your day. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, you're a great host. You've made us very relaxed. It was a pleasure. Just warm conversation. We have to cheers with our beard. But okay, I've gotten worn out. Yeah, I've got, I've got my Yeti mug. Cheers you guys. Yeah, we need to bring the beers back. But yeah, I don't know what I'm gonna be in. I think I'm gonna be for the International builder show is in Orlando. I think, yes, it is this year. We went to Vegas last year. Yeah, we were there. Actually, that was earlier this year, 25 Yeah, yeah. Well, we're splitting hairs at that point. It's already next year. We're already talking about next I'm already doing for next year. So yeah, yeah, excellent. That Orlando venue that they're having it at is a great place for a conference. Well, we'll have to get beers there, then we'll have to get beers there. And actually cheers if you guys are going, I imagine you are cool, alrighty. Well, I appreciate guys. I'll let you get back to it. And thanks for jumping on. Thank you.