EE059 – Mike Jesowshek

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Tony Winyard 0:00
Exceeding expectations Episode 59

Welcome to another edition of the podcast where we help to give you ways to amaze your customers to give them amazing experiences which ends up in you getting more testimonials, better testimonials, more reviews, referrals, recommendations, read bookings and, and benefits to reputation far exceed the efforts that you have to put in in order to get all this and the work actually becomes far more enjoyable as well. This week’s episode is with Mike judge jazz oceanic and he’s an accountant we’re going to hear a lot about he’s going to dispel many of the myths around accounting. If you do really like the show, please do leave a review for us on iTunes. Maybe share the episode with anyone who you feel may get some some more value from this. Hope you enjoyed this week’s episode.

So today’s edition of exceeding expectations My guest is Mike Jesowshek. How you doing? Mike?

Mike Jesowshek 1:10
I’m doing great How you doing?

Tony Winyard 1:12
I’m very well thank you and we find you in Wisconsin how’s the weather in Wisconsin today.

Mike Jesowshek 1:18
The weather in Wisconsin is beautiful right now. So you don’t say that too often in Wisconsin we have fall in spring. I really nice. It’s just a good time to be in Wisconsin. Summers a little bit hot and winters are brutal. But right now we’re in our fall season. So it’s, it’s really nice weather.

Tony Winyard 1:36
And so Mike, so you’re in, you’re in accounting, is that? How long have you been involved in doing that sort of thing?

Mike Jesowshek 1:43
Yeah. So you know, I’ve been an accountant for quite some time, but I started an accounting firm about seven years ago now. Prior to that, I was on the accounting side and in many different business ventures and a couple of companies I owned and sold. So I was on the accounting side of those but Seven years ago, I went full time into just focusing on, you know, that accounting piece and helping other small business owners.

Tony Winyard 2:07
And so what was it that got you into it in the first place?

Mike Jesowshek 2:11
You know, I started running businesses at a pretty young age. So I was running businesses in high school. And I, as many business owners are, you never know, kind of when that’s going to fall off. And so being young, I said, Well, I still have to do this school thing, just in case things don’t work out. I have a backup plan. And so I went to school, and I just really enjoyed kind of the financial side of things, you know, at a younger age. And so when I went to school, I was like, you know, I think I’m going to make this, this change into focus on accounting. And so when I did that, as I was kind of still running businesses on the side, I started to get more in depth into those businesses and on the finance side of those businesses. And so that’s when I said, You know, I think you know, where I want to take future ventures and things like that is into this. accounting and tax side is my main kind of service offering.

Tony Winyard 3:05
And has it been what you expected? Or is it been quite different?

Mike Jesowshek 3:10
That’s, that’s a good question. So, you know, typically a lot of people take this approach when they’re when they’re an accountant, they work for a big public accounting firm, and then they they go public, or they go to a private company, and they just everyone kind of takes the same steps, if you will, in kind of their career, and I did a little different approach. So I started out owning a business, and then opened up an accounting firm with no prior experience being in an accounting firm. So I always say that’s kind of a blessing, and it hurt me as well. So a blessing is that I don’t bring in a lot of that baggage and things that people don’t like about working in public accounting. I didn’t bring that along with me because I didn’t have that. But the downside was is I had to learn a lot. So I didn’t know you know what client expectations were, I knew, know what I kind of wanted as a client and as a business owner, but I didn’t know how that correlate to all business owners. So it was it was a really big learning experience, initially trying to understand, you know, how those public accounting firms work. But I think that that’s still kind of the beauty about it. So it’s been a great ride. It’s been, it’s been a lot of fun, especially now that we’re more developed. And we have had those things under our belt where we, we know how we want our firm to be, but again, I call it kind of a blessing in disguise is that we didn’t have to bring in that that traditional idea of what accounting looks like for a business. We didn’t have that. And I didn’t bring that in. You know how accounting firms typically work. We create our own we create something new, and it’s just a much more innovative way to do things that way.

Tony Winyard 4:50
And so therefore, because from the sounds of things, you had quite a different approach. Were any of your clients quite surprised the way you were doing things differently to how other people have been doing? Thanks for them.

Mike Jesowshek 5:01
Yeah, you know, I think, seven years ago, when we started the firm, it was completely digital, completely remote. All of our clients were scattered around, you know, the United States and we had employees scattered around and, and that was in nowadays, you hear that a lot back seven years ago that was, you know, extremely not common, and even now, it’s still probably not as common as it should be. But even then, it was even more uncommon. And so a lot of our initial clients were in that kind of younger generation very tech savvy people that you know, had that mindset where Yeah, I can, I don’t need to go see my accountant every time I need something, I can actually work digitally with them. So our clients were, I think, looking for a solution like that, but there just wasn’t much available out there. So it was it was kind of a new age to that digital accounting.

Tony Winyard 5:57
And now I says a lot more people using online platforms, you know, such as zero and whatever, is that something that I’m that you mostly do?

Mike Jesowshek 6:06
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So it’s kind of funny storey in the US. There’s a software called QuickBooks. And that’s pretty much what everybody uses. And we started using that its cloud based. And when we started from we started using QuickBooks. And we, we just didn’t really enjoy the software. We had a client come to us that was already using zero. And at that time, zero was brand new to the US. And so we adapted were like, wow, this, this is awesome. And so zero, just like QuickBooks is also a cloud based software. And that was our key, we needed to find a software that we could run our company’s books, that was 100% cloud based, because our clients would be located everywhere. So we needed something that they were able to access whenever and wherever they might be, that we could also access at the same time and so we’ve been about a 90% zero firm since almost the beginning and Yeah, the cloud software has been a huge, you know, driver to to what we do.

Tony Winyard 7:06
So all your clients, are they only use in on cloud software? Or are they some still preferred or kind of traditional methods.

Mike Jesowshek 7:14
One of our requirements is it’s got to be cloud based. So there’s ways you can work around if someone has a desktop programme or something like that, you can obviously, you know, buy software where you can access their computer, but it’s much more clunky. And so one of our requirements we set off the bat is that we need our clients to be in the digital space, we need our clients to be cloud based. And if if they can’t adapt to that, then there’s probably a firm that’s going to be a better fit because everything that we do is cloud based and virtual. So, you know, that’s kind of one of the requirements that we have.

Tony Winyard 7:48
So for anyone who’s listening who may be, you know, they, they have their own business and they’ve never yet migrated to always, you know, clouds, cloud accounting. What Would you say to them, why should they consider it? Why is it better than the methods, you know, the traditional methods that have been used in the past?

Mike Jesowshek 8:07
Yeah, you know, the biggest thing is that you can access it anywhere, anytime. And it’s a live instance, everyone’s looking at the same thing. You can share it with your accountant, you can share it with financial advisors, you can share with other team members that might need access to the financials. So that’s, that’s the biggest thing about the accounting software is the ability to use it, look at stuff wherever it is, and everything is live. There’s no having to download backups, there’s no having to go back and look at certain, you know, certain versions that you had in the past. You don’t have to continue to download everything. And it’s just continuing to evolve. A lot of people stick on a desktop platform because, you know, the cloud accounting software oftentimes isn’t robust in itself. But the beautiful thing about that is that there’s other add on software is all these software’s kind of are able to come And talk to each other, that if you’re looking for functionality that doesn’t come standard in a cloud based package, there’s likely an add on partner that is able to provide you that same you know, what you’re looking to what you’re looking to do that you can do on the on the desktop version. So it just creates collaboration, just huge being able to collaborate, and work wherever you are. And you know, we always encourage people to say, as you’re looking at this as the way things are changing in technology is becoming so big, that ability to work wherever and wherever, whenever and wherever you are, is huge it in this cloud accounting and embracing your account of the cloud is one important step to kind of make that change your business.

Tony Winyard 9:45
And D Are you aware of any sort of statistics to say how many people are now using cloud based software and how many are not

Mike Jesowshek 9:54
I don’t have any, you know, like, actual statistics. You know, I had to throw a guest. So there you see more and more these days that people are moving to the cloud. But I would say, you know, maybe 60% are in the cloud 40% are on a desktop type software. But I, there’s no validity to that kind of stat. So I, you know, don’t back me up on that. But, you know, it is something that is really catching on and people are starting to move to it. But there is a tonne of businesses out there that are still stuck in kind of that traditional way of doing things, just waiting till they have to make that change. But I think you see a lot of these desktop software’s there, you know, it’s a desktop software, they’re creating online platforms, they’re creating cloud based platforms. So eventually, I think you’re going to see a lot of the software companies almost forcing their customers into the cloud because they know that’s where the movements going to be. And it’s hard to maintain a software that’s on a desktop as well as a cloud. That’s two different very different pieces of software. And it’s just hard to maintain. When you have clients spread out, so I think you’re going to start to see almost the software companies, not just accountants and other, you know, vendors, but the software companies almost forcing people in that direction.

Tony Winyard 11:12
Do you think there’s some reluctance by some people to take the step to cloud based accounting because of phase of hacking and so on?

Mike Jesowshek 11:21
Yeah, no, I think that that’s definitely a case. And, you know, what I always say is that, you know, clients come to us to ask us about security and things like that. And the companies that are running these cloud based software there are they are massive, massive companies, that likely your data is actually more secure on something like a cloud based platform than it might be on something that’s on your personal computer that can be corrupted, it can be hacked into and itself. And so yeah, that’s always an issue especially for you know, businesses that are kind of stuck in there in the in the old ways of doing things or don’t want to make that change. That’s kind of the one recent That they kind of lean back on. And, you know, I don’t know if they really believe that that there is no security in the cloud based software, or if that’s just kind of their reason for not making wanting to make the change. But yeah, you know, that’s definitely an issue that I see people around, you know, bring up.

Tony Winyard 12:17
Before we started recording, you were telling me a couple of storeys, and there was one about the client, he saw a massive payment to the IRS comes through you want to tell us about that?

Mike Jesowshek 12:25
Yeah, so it was kind of funny was that it was a client that we weren’t doing any kind of tax work for. We were just doing their financials, bookkeeping, that type of stuff. And I saw a big payment come through to the government. And I said, you know, hit the client up and said, What was that for? So Well, that was a, you know, a tax payment. And you know, the first thing I said was, you know, there, what kind of tax strategies have you implemented, we saw, you know, the basics and I said, that size of payment. There are so many different tax savings strategies that are available and you know, We come into this issue all the time. And that and that’s a lot of times when we’re helping clients is we’re introducing tech strategies that they’ve never heard of. And it’s textures that we talked about with all of our clients. But I think the big thing comes into it is that these tech strategies, one can be sometimes hard to explain to, oftentimes, they’re hard to implement. Now, not all of them are hard to explain or hard to implement. But a lot of times higher and tax strategies are hard to explain are hard to implement. And you know, what we see as many prepares or many accountants, they don’t want to go through the hassle of that of trying to explain this to them trying to get their client on board to these tax savings available. So they just resort to kind of not introducing it to them, or fear of that the clients going to say, I’m not interested in that and then they might look at the account differently. But the point being is that there are so many different strategies out there available to small business owners of all sizes, whether you’re very big or very Small, no matter where you’re located, there’s going to be attack strategies that you can implement. It’s just getting that mindset with business owners that you don’t have to be extremely wealthy to get tax savings. They’re available to everybody. And it’s just kind of finding out a way to learn about those tax strategies. So, you know, that was one client that we had, we were able to cut his tax bill in half the next year now, that payment in that year that was already filed. And so we could have implemented those tax savings for that big payment that went out. But the year was already over. So it was too late to implement something like that. But it’s just, you know, the idea of being proactive. We look at tax in a lot of people look at taxes, and they think, well, taxes are something that you file at the end of the year. And that’s what taxes it’s it’s it’s our goal is to change the mindset of a business owner and say taxes aren’t just tax filings. We call tax filings is sending me formation to the government’s. That’s what a tax filing is. But where real tax work is done is in the offseason, when you’re implementing these strategies, so that when you go ahead and file those taxes at your end, or whenever you might file your taxes, you’re filing that information. And you already have the savings in place prior to that, because you implemented them ahead of time. And so that’s just the idea is, is we’re reinforcing with clients the idea of tax planning, preparing for tax savings, instead of just always looking backwards and just doing tax filing, where it’s just information reporting. There’s no tax savings available very little strategies you can implement at that time, because it’s the period is already over.

Tony Winyard 15:47
Are there to your knowledge, any I mean, eight, so in my mind, I don’t know much about the accounting world. And so I would have presumed that every business would have an accounting is that the case or do something Businesses think they can do it without the need of an accountant.

Mike Jesowshek 16:03
There’s a lot of businesses out there that don’t have accountants, it’s the idea of is that they feel that they can do it themselves internally. And a lot of times, that is the case, you know, if someone has that background where they’ve, you know, have had experience with either accounting, bookkeeping or tax filings, it’s definitely something that can be done themselves. So, you know, there’s, I would say, many businesses out there are doing their bookkeeping themselves, not necessarily taxes all the time, but some are often doing their taxes themselves. And it’s just, you know, kind of that idea that that, you know, they think it’s something that might be fairly easy to do. And what we always tell clients are, is that when we look at bookkeeping, it’s easy to us because we’re experts in it. But to them, it might not be so easy, you know, most clients that come to us that are doing their own bookkeeping or doing their own taxes. On the bookkeeping side, we’re finding errors in it to be fixed. On the tax side, we’re finding strategies that are being implemented that could be to provide more savings. And so it’s just having that professional do it. And, you know, the third thing is that, as these clients are spending time on this bookkeeping, which is oftentimes something that they might not be, you know, very experienced in, or if they are, their time can be spent doing much better things within that business. You know, I didn’t start an accounting firm, to do the marketing for that accounting firm. You know, BN. So that’s kind of the keys is, we encourage clients to focus on the things that’s going to make their business grow, going to get their business to where it wants to be. And those items that they can, you know, offload on their plate or take off their plate that can be ran by some professional for probably cheaper and maybe even in in provide a better output. Those are things that should be Let go so that you can take spend most your time to expand your business and really get your business to where it wants to be.

Tony Winyard 18:08
And you mentioned a few things. So you know, commonly misunderstood issues. I mean, that was the one you just talked about a bookkeeping isn’t so necessary. And another one you were talking about tax savings on only for the rich.

Mike Jesowshek 18:20
Yeah, yeah, in the bookkeeping isn’t necessary. There’s a lot of clients that, that their bookkeeping is basically once a year. So they know, okay, we have to file a tax return. And so we’ll gather all of their bookkeeping, all of the transactions, all their data, right before that tax filing, put it all together and then file their taxes, and then not touch it again till next year. And that’s, you know, really, you know, one problem that we see is that bookkeeping isn’t just for tax purposes. bookkeeping is an idea of where you can see financials and see how your business is performing and adjust from it. So we look at you Take your bookkeeping. That’s that’s all prior data. So we do bookkeeping for last month. That’s private data. But we can take that prior data and use it to our advantage and implement strategies, whether that’s a marketing strategy. Or if we did a marketing strategy, we can see, how did that strategy Do you know, how did was a good Should we do it again, when people aren’t doing their bookkeeping and are unable to see accurate financials, they’re running their business off of a bank account. And it’s really, really hard to see how your business is actually performing, and make changes and adjustments to improve your business. When you’re just doing enough of a bank account. You don’t know really in depth of where your money’s going. You don’t know where you could maybe cut costs. And that plays in very well to that tax savings are only for the rich. So many people we talked to are you know, they say, Well, I don’t make much money. There’s no tax. Yeah, there’s no taxes I can save and that’s, again, very false. Now the rich might have more tax saving opportunities available, there might be more strategies available to them, because a lot of tax strategies take a lot of funds in order to implement. But that doesn’t mean that there’s nothing for people that aren’t rich or making less money. So, you know, a client that’s just starting out, there’s a strategy that we can implement for them to save on taxes for clients that have been in business and are just raking in sales and profit. There’s lots of strategies we can implement for them, too. So, you know, our thought processes strategies are not just for the rich, their strategies that the rich are using, that the startups can be also using the same exact strategy

Tony Winyard 20:43
to audit any situations where you have clients who are operating internationally. And if you have a countries around the world, where you would then need to know something about other countries tax regulations, or is that not the case?

Mike Jesowshek 20:58
Yeah, that happens a lot. In in, you know, generally so what in the US that we call accounting firms, there’s always the Big Four, and the big for our firms that are located across, you know, across the world, in every country, there is a big four offices for kind of main accounting firms. And those are the companies depending on size, you know, we always recommend if you’re a pretty large company, that have businesses in various different countries, you’re going to want to find a firm that has experience in multiple different countries. And so you know, in Europe, it might not be as big of a deal because the cut the countries that are working with many of them, and they’re in the more closer proximity. But in the US, it’s the US laws really hard and it’s hard for us to know, laws and other countries. And so for firm our size, you know, we’re relatively small, we have international clients, and for those international clients, we manage their us operation So we’ll manage the US tax their us bookkeeping, the operations that happened for the company located in the US. But then we always recommend have someone that’s local to you or that is, understand your home tax law that’s able to manage, you know, the core company that’s being operated and maybe structured in whatever country they may be in.

Tony Winyard 22:24
There was another store you were talking about, about clients receiving financials and having no idea what they mean.

Mike Jesowshek 22:30
Yeah, so, you know, a lot of clients or even work with accountants or doing the bookkeeping themselves, they see financials, they see an income statement, they see a balance sheet, they see these financials, but they don’t understand exactly what they mean. They see numbers on paper. And so what we’ve implemented is a way to help unfold those for clients and say, here’s your financials. We’re going to send you the financials, so you can view them but along with that, financials, we’re going to include a video where we’re walking you through a screen share video, we’re walking you through all those financials to help you understand what these numbers mean. If we see an expense account or an income or something fluctuate dramatically, we’re going to point that out and say, Hey, you might want to check into this sales doubled or sales, you know, we’re cut in half, Is that normal? Is there something that can be done to to change that is there you know, or an expense and expense doubled this month? Or expenses are continually rising in this advertising category or this legal category? Is there something we can look into there? So it’s taking those numbers and bringing them to real life and saying, numbers are good, and they tell us a lot of information. But we have to go deeper. We have to do a comparison of those numbers and we have to see trends that are happening in today. That information to tell a storey. So we’re telling a storey about what’s going on with the business. legal expenses could be increasing 10% every month. But the you know, what they’re actually needing legal help with is staying the same. And so then it’s like, okay, let’s look into why that’s happening. Let’s see if maybe we’re being double billed. Let’s see if maybe, that whatever is causing the issue, it’s looking at trends, and seeing if we can explain them. And if we can’t explain them, that we need to change something, or, you know, a lot of clients in that same situation, we had a software, you know, a software expense category. And we’re running through this video show, okay, client here is your software is again continually to increase. And they said, well, let’s look into that software. Let’s see what it is. And so we drill down into it, and we see seven software packages, that they’re not even using it and haven’t used for over a year, but they’re paying a monthly subscription for them and That’s the key is, is finding things like that, because we can cancel those. And we can save hundreds of dollars fairly fairly quickly by by cutting something out that we’re not even using anymore. So, you know, the idea behind it is that when we’re looking at our clients, how can we take something that can be confusing? Whether it’s financials or taxes? How can we take some of those confusing, break it down and show the client, the storey that’s within those financials. So they can again, help their business succeed, take their business to where they want to be, and really kind of expand without that financial knowledge or that that breakdown of it. They might just be looking at these numbers say, Oh, we had a profit this month sounds good in the paper goes away. But there’s other things that we’re hitting inside there, that could have really assisted them in in some other area of their business.

Tony Winyard 25:53
So you always are looking for ways to do things that the client wasn’t necessarily expecting it and That way how you differentiate yourselves from competitors?

Mike Jesowshek 26:04
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you know, there’s kind of two approaches you can do. You can just be the person that’s, that’s sitting in history. So your tax season comes, you’re filing a tax return, and you don’t do anything tax wise until you find that next tax written financials income, you can just send them over to the client every month and, and move on. And that’s an easy way. And we’ve done that we’ve been there before. But we sat back and said, there’s something missing from this piece, you know, just filing a tax return just doesn’t seem enough. You know, the clients were having to tell them how much tax they have to pay and it hurts, or their business is continually losing money or their profits continuing to go down. And we’re not telling them why we’re not at least giving them insights and what might be doing it. And that’s when we made a change. We said, we got to do this differently. You know, we can’t just be here being a compliance house for our clients. We can’t just file tax returns and have accurate bookkeeping. We need to take that step further and how can we help them live their dream, grow their business, get to where they want to be see tax savings? How can we be proactive and everything that we do to help our clients along this business journey? You know, we’re entrepreneurs ourselves, we’re business owners yourself. And we understand that this, it’s, it’s tough. It’s not an easy thing. But there’s things that I’ve learned through the various business ventures and our employees have learned through their various careers that can be that we can give to the client and help them along that journey. So that experience can be so much better for them. So yeah, that’s a big differentiator for us is that we’re very proactive. Our goal is you know, if our clients are not succeeding, or not successful, we’re not successful and we take that to heart is something that we really want to help our clients along with their growth in not just be a compliance house again. Not just being a compliance officer, all we do is prepare financials that that are accurate, which is very important, and file a tax return, which is very important, but going above and beyond and taking that next step for growth.

Tony Winyard 28:13
And how have clients been reacting to that? Because I guess they’re, they’re not used to that kind of service from an accountant.

Mike Jesowshek 28:21
Yeah, you know, it’s something that they oftentimes are a little bit shocked, you know, when we started doing the video things with financials, we had clients, you know, Republic community, like, that was awesome, you know, how can I do that? How can I have that every time and, and so it’s things like that. We said, Well, we are doing every time because we notice it’s something that you need something that you want. And so clients love it. They’re able to, you know, they look at us is not just someone that does their compliance work, someone that keeps them out of jail, but instead someone that keeps them out of jail, but we’re also helping them grow and live their dreams and so We’ve had a lot of clients come to us just really liking that idea of taking that next step further.

Tony Winyard 29:09
And so therefore, I would imagine your you’d get quite a lot of referrals because of that approach.

Mike Jesowshek 29:14
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, it’s it’s kind of that mindset is that if you’re happy with what you’re with a service provider, you’re obviously going to tell your friends and family and the people that you love, you’re going to tell them, Hey, this is where you gotta go. So, you know, we’ve much of our growth, our firms been around for seven years, and much of our growth has been strictly from that idea of past, you know, other clients referring like minded business owners to us. And you know, that’s great. And, you know, a lot of our other growth has come from, how can we provide value to clients without actually maybe being their client yet? So how can we provide value to a future client that they’re going to say Hey, this is a company that we got to work with. This is someone that we need to work with because of Look at all this stuff they have given me. I wonder what their clients see because there’s stuff that they’re not giving us yet. And so that’s that’s been our other kind of success for growth.

Tony Winyard 30:17
We had a guy on an earlier episode of this podcast, I forget about 20 or 30 episodes ago called Kirk Bowman, who is very big on banging a drum about value based pricing. And he’s, I think, I believe he works with a lot of accountants. Is that something that you guys do?

Mike Jesowshek 30:36
Yeah. So we started our firm, we didn’t want to be stuck to the hour. And so we’ve never done hourly work unless it’s a very rare occasion on a project we’ve never done before, or something like that. We’ll do hourly work. But you know, value billing is huge. I wouldn’t say we’re more of a fixed or flat price. Same model, and not as much value and I would love to get to more value place model. It’s a tough transition. So very good services, we’ve we’ve started to move that way. But all of our clients are on a flat monthly fee. So there’s no surprise them, they know exactly what they’re paying, they know exactly what they’re getting. They don’t get any surprise bills or anything like that at the end of the year at the end of the month. And so that’s one thing that’s big. But the value pricing piece is something we’ve solely been trying to implement, especially when we’re when we’re talking about these high end tax strategies. If we’re saving a client half of their tax bill, that might be worth a higher fee for the work that we’re completing with them, even though it might not have been a whole tonne of work. But we’ve put in the work ahead of time in training in understanding a strategy that sometimes it’s hard to understand that value piece, because to us, it might seem easy, it might seem quick, but we we oftentimes forget all The training all of the education, all

Tony Winyard 32:02
the things that we did to put into learning that strategy for it to be easy to us. Yeah, absolutely. And it was a couple of other things. You know, before we were talking about a commonly misunderstood issues and everyone you mentioned was workers can be independent contractors.

Mike Jesowshek 32:22
Yeah, and that’s, that’s one thing that’s kind of key to us is that a lot of a lot of small business owners have a worker that comes in and and there’s a big thing between employee or independent contractor. In a lot of businesses, small businesses, especially those that are just starting out. Put everyone is an independent contractor, because it’s super easy. It’s super simple to do. They don’t have to withhold taxes. They don’t have to do any of that kind of hard labour. But what they don’t understand is that can actually come back to bite them in the end because if they are an employee, but they’re treated as independent contractor, there could be a lot of back taxes. Is penalties, fees, things that need to be, they’re going to come back to bite them, because things weren’t done correctly in the beginning. And that’s, you know, again, what we say is, do when you’re setting up a company, when you’re first starting business, no one knows where their business is going to go. You know, the people that have multibillion dollar businesses they don’t, they didn’t know from the beginning, they were going to be that big. But setting up things correctly from the start, will help you get to that growth. And you know, what, if things don’t work out, at least you can say we did things the right way. And so you know, that that whole idea is, when you starting a business, when you’re getting into it, ensure that you’re setting things up properly from the beginning, because that’s going to help grow your company, where you’re going to end up, it’s going to have an impact. If you have independent contractors for the first 10 years of your business, and now you’re super successful and you find out, whoops, they should all be employees that could take you up Your business in the day. And so it’s planning ahead. You know, even though you don’t know how successful your businesses where it’s going to go, what it’s going to become, do things the right way out of the beginning, so that when that massive success comes, you’re not stepping back and trying to fix some of the things that were done incorrectly in the past.

Tony Winyard 34:21
Wasn’t a storey in the news recently about I think it was said there were some change in the tax laws in the States and the way that Uber works.

Mike Jesowshek 34:31
Yes, I think that that was there was a case out in California. And that was a lot on this independent contractor employees. And I haven’t found the case too deeply. But my understanding of it is that Uber was doing this doing something very similar all their drivers were considered independent contractors, not employees of them. And I think California was coming down and trying to mandate that these people are actually employees. They’re not independent contractors, and they don’t know what the official rules result was, but I believe it was around that idea of independent contractor versus employee. And that’s a great example. You know, and I’m sure they’ve kind of spent a lot of research into this in the beginning. But that’s an example of a company that, you know, that’s a lot if they have to change into employees, that’s a major shift for them. That’s a major project, because they have this robust, there’s such a big company, now they have so many workers for them, that that’s going to be a major change for them.

Tony Winyard 35:31
And is there any likelihood that other states will introduce the same thing?

Mike Jesowshek 35:37
Yeah, I would imagine again, I’m not too familiar with the case. And I don’t know if it is something that is going to be nationwide. My guess is that Uber as a company would probably make a distinguish, you know, go one way or the other. So if California comes out and says all your drivers need to be employees, and that was just California, my guess is that Uber wouldn’t make that determination across every every state, just for the fact that if other states see how it worked in California, and we can get some extra tax dollars in our state, the states will likely over time end up all requiring the same thing. So yeah, I envisioned that they would probably implement that across across company wide.

Tony Winyard 36:24
What are your general thoughts on next aid and expectations? Mike?

Mike Jesowshek 36:29
It’s, it’s looking over and above. So taking, you know, expert expectations are tough, because everyone you know, the first thing I believe you have to do is understand what the expectations are. In lay them out for clients, a lot of you know, when we bring on a client, every clients expectations are different. And our goal is to just get a general understanding of what is an expectation a client has, and I think you can’t necessarily exceed an expectation. Until you know what the expectation is. And so we spent a lot of time looking at the various markets that we work at the various clients that we’re dealing with and said, Okay, what are their expectations? What are other people doing? What is the, you know, 95% of the businesses are looking at accountants, what are their expectations from that accountant. And then we developed our services, our offerings, the way we communicate with clients behind that, to do it better, to find a new way to do it to not just follow what everybody else does, but do it in a way that people are going to be like, wow, I wish I would have found your years ago. And so it’s going above and beyond taking what what everyone is is what everyone is used to, and giving them something that adds so much more value than just what what they are expected.

Tony Winyard 37:54
If people want to find out more about you and your company where where would they go to

Mike Jesowshek 38:00
Yes, you can find you know our information pretty much on you know any social media platform or company name is called Jetro JETRO. My name is Mike Jesowshek. You can find the combination of those across all social media platforms and in various things like that, or they can go directly to our website. So it’s www.Jetrotax.com

Tony Winyard 38:26
Okay. And before we go I know there’s a quotation that you quote night.

Mike Jesowshek 38:31
Yeah, you know what, one of the one of the quotes that I have is the road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same. And, you know, we really bring that to heart and in the various ventures that we’ve been in, there’s been a lot of successes and there’s been a lot of failures, and that that quote, lives out to breathe. It’s, they look a lot alike. And the biggest thing is sometimes breakthroughs. And so you know, kind of another idea behind that is that breakthroughs come when you’re not expecting. And so those breakthroughs can be the difference between a massive failure and in a in an incredible success. And so that all it takes is one breakthrough to make that change to shift your focus to shift your business. And those roads before that breakthrough of a successful business and a failing business look very similar.

Tony Winyard 39:27
very profound. Well, Mike, it’s been, it’s been a pleasure chatting with you and best of luck for the future with you and your company.

Mike Jesowshek 39:34
Excellent. I really appreciate you having me on. It’s been a great time. Thank you, man. Thank you.

Tony Winyard 39:44
Next week is Episode 59. With Dr. Jacqui Taylor. If you ever been wanting to know maybe more about security online, she created a foundation called the Cyber Smart Entrepreneur Success Path and she’s done a lot of work with The World Economic Forum and many other governments around the world as well. So we’re going to find out a lot more about cyber security in next week’s episode with Dr. Jacqui Taylor, hoping you hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s show. Have a fantastic week and see you next week.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai