Fishbowl is part of The Team Brolin Starting Lineup, because it is a great solution for my clients who have inventory needs. Plus, the team at Fishbowl rocks! Join Nate Flake and I on this week's podcast episode and at the Fishbowl Summit happening Sept. 28 & 29!
Hello everyone. And welcome to the DM disruption. I'm the host Dawn Brolin. I'm a certified public accountant certified fraud examiner, and the author of the designated motivator. We're here to help motivate you to take your practice to the next level.
Have you considered outsourcing your client's payroll? Well, I did. And I went with ADP. The resources they provide along with their partner program became the premier outsourcing payroll solution. We as practitioners already deal with a ton of compliance, keeping up with payroll. It's an, a value added solution that I should be focused on.
You've considered outsourcing before. Reconsider it today. Choose ADP to be part of your starting. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the BM disruption. You know, I love to talk to all of my fellow colleagues and accountants out there and just try to help improve processes, make great recommendations and do whatever I can to just push out some information, to help everybody in the community.
We're all in this together. We're all going to survive together. And today's episode is sponsored by fishbowl. Fishbowl part of the starting lineup, because fishbowl for me is a great solution for my clients who have inventory needs, obviously. Right? And so today we have Nate flake on the show today to talk to us about an upcoming summit and all the good things that are happening at fishbowl, but also in the accounting industry in general.
So, Nate, hello. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. I don't want them to be on this for awhile. So this. It's gold. Are you kidding fishbowl? So it was really fun cause I was just out there a couple of weeks ago or a few weeks ago, whatever timing it is at this point, but, um, and love to see the operation that was so fun.
And we went, had a great dinner so much. Uh, but it was so amazing. And then I got to ride in your really cool, awesome. I don't want to, you call it a truck car. It's not car.
No. Yeah. That was fun. Thanks for coming out. Yeah, we, we had, uh, we had, yeah, we for the, for the filming of, um, our upcoming summit and you're kind of a local celebrity here, everybody here in the office knows you and the sort of stories, you know, everyone's bombed, they weren't in Vegas. For the, for that conference with us.
And I'm like, you know, she did beat me in corner. I did legitimately. So, which is most important thing is about winning. It's about the fun. Oh, so Nate, so tell me when, when you I'll tell the audience, I guess people who are listening, when is the summit? Tell me about it. What motivated you? Like tell me everything.
Why are you doing it? It's cetera. And then obviously we'll have post the links to be able to yeah. Yeah, for sure. So, like I mentioned, Don was one of our awesome speakers for the summit. So we have a virtual summit coming up and, uh, September, uh, September 28th and we'll have we'll, we'll give Don some registration information once we're going to start marketing for that, but essentially end of September, it comes out.
So this is the inventory management and growth summit. Uh, It's going to be completely virtual. So it'll have like a live launch date is September 28th that you can kind of watch it and what would be a live fail. Right. And then you'll, you'll be able to access it for 30 days. So we obviously know that nobody wants to sit and watch a full straight day of videos and speaker.
So we're going to make it kind of a easy to digest a little bit, you know, people can go through. Pick a topic, pick the speaker, we'll have headshots bios of everybody. Um, but yeah, kind of the motivation behind it. We, we just, there's no one really doing, um, anything inventory management related in our space right now, as far as like virtual events and even like in person, I can't wait till we can do, you know, a core in person event it's focused strictly on SMB inventory management fishbowl tends to join all these.
Conferences, you know, we have scaling new Heights comes up, that's coming up. We have QuickBooks connect every year, of course, with our friends at, into it. But there's no conference that's like focused on inventory management. Um, and so we're trying to really give everybody the tools in the SMB space to grow.
And this conference is kind of unique because it's going to cover. Kind of everything and like an SMB tool kit, right. Marketing, um, you know, your, your section that speaks to, you know, how, if you're, if you're in a calendar and you're running a small business, like how do you grow that? How do you, how do you get out of the rut and how do you, especially after these last 18 months to kind of get out of that space a little bit, that Headspace, um, we have speakers that are like from the.
Awesome. E-commerce Amazon sellers that know how to grow there. We have food and beverage companies that have scaled their business, you know, to their best numbers, to date during COVID. So we're just trying to really give everyone tools to say, Hey, we realize that's kind of a weird time and it's different time, but like, there are still people out there killing it.
So let's figure out how you can do that. And so it's going to be free. Um, we have some awesome speakers. We have, we have Damon John, um, you know, FUBU and from shark tank. Everyone knows him from shark tank as well. We've got MLB players, Dell Murphy from Atlanta Braves, which is the colors you're wearing right now.
You're repping the brave scholars that, yeah. And so we have some, um, people from like experts in the industry, right? Uh, a chief, um, or sorry, a click click rate optimization company called spiralize, like, how do you make your website? Optimize for cooking. Like people don't tend to think about that when you're starting a business, it's kind of last on your list.
Right. Um, you know, how do you supply inventory? How do you get your e-commerce shop set up? So we're going to kind of be covering all sorts of topics in this thing, and it's going to be fun. There's a QuickBooks panel. Um, there's a marketing panel. So, um, anyway, so there's a lot of, I kind of went online, but there's a lot of stuff to digest there.
It's going to be. Yeah. You know, and I think that certainly in the inventory space, you've got your offset. Small is relative when it comes to inventory, because you can have a client who has, you know, maybe only 10 products, but they sell them, you know, the millions of volume-wise. Right. Um, and so I, I know that one of the things that I've seen before and in the past, I've seen where people are just trying to like always do these little shortcuts or work arounds to try to.
Uh, business manage their inventory. And really when you're doing, I'm just going to say it, Nate, if you're gonna do things, half-assed, don't do them at all. It's just, it's just inventory is like the biggest asset for most small and mid size businesses and their inventory based. Right. And so they are the manufacturing and they're doing, you know, retail inventory that is their baby.
Like. That asset in and of itself is so valuable. I mean, think of the purchase prices and things like that, that inventory asset has got to be managed and utilized in a way and tracked in a way that the client still sees that value on the balance sheet. You know, the health of the balance sheets, the most important thing.
And right now most people feel kind of unhealthy on their balance sheet. Right? Yeah. It's crazy. It's crazy too. Cause it's kinda goes like it's kind of like counter intuitive to. Well, I'm like a scrappy business. I'm trying to cut costs where I can, I can't afford a software like fishbowl. Right. I'm not trying to like, just shamelessly promote fishable here, but like any, any, any software QuickBooks.
Right. But it's, it's counter, it's kind of counterintuitive because you're, you're doing actually, you're wasting a ton of money on scrap on inventory, on. When I was started, I've been official for eight years now. I started in the training and implementation team where I would go out to warehouses and train them, Hey, this is how you use fishbowl and we're going to download it.
We're going to train the whole team. And it was always like shocking to me, how little companies knew about what was actually going on in their own warehouses, you know? And you have story control guy or, or girl, or whoever's, whoever's out there running the shop, but they like have a, they say they have an idea.
And then you're like, okay, let's do a physical count. Like. 12 months ago, you're like, oh, okay, well that's for problem. Number one. But like the amount of money you're wasting on scrap and just stuff expire, especially in stuff that's perishable. Right. You could have paid for a software like fishbowl 10 times this year.
Right now it's kind of, it's kind of. Yeah, you're scrappy, but you have to be smart with your investments. Like, imagine that this was your own money and you're investing it. You want just like pray that it would work, you know, like you have to be on top of it. And so the people that have really gone ahead this last, you know, two years are people that are implementing systems or people like your starting lineup, you know, and things like that as well.
And that's, you know, the, the message at the end of the day. DM disruption episodes is really to just give more information on how we, as the practitioner can improve, whether it's internally in our own infrastructure and our own apps that we're using. And of course integrated, this is the way to go. But also those apps that we may not use internally, like fishbowl, I don't have inventory at my, in powerful accounting, but I have clients who.
And so I need to make sure that I am up on the applications that not only solve for maybe the immediate problem, but have the room to grow as the, as the businesses grow. And I think that that's something, sometimes we think short-sighted, we don't think of the end game first where we sit at about, let me put the bandaid on it right now.
And that's, that's the worst way to think about it because you're, you know, what's going on. I sell them some crap there, say, oh yeah, that looks really easy. We can enter a bunch of inventory items. Oh. But that doesn't sync with anything. Oh, sorry. You know, you manually do that for awhile. You'll save a hundred dollars, you know, like that's a big deal.
So yeah. So tell me, so I know that, um, you know, you guys are really out there. You're doing, and you also have a. Solution called Quarium connected with fishbowl, which I think of course, if you didn't get the pond. Cause I don't think I got it. I'm usually pretty darn we thought that's a super, super clever.
It is clever each of the aquarium basketball, but just Quarium take off. The, a aquarium was very, very hard to fight with SEL. So we decided to drop the, just get rid of one letter. Yeah, we have enough people out calling us right now, already asking how, what size of fishbowls they can buy. And so we're like, we don't want to do that mess again.
We're going to start ordering aquariums from you guys. We should partner with someone now honestly, and send them leads and do something, but someone could benefit from it or just start our own actual fishbowl company on the side. That would be awesome. So yeah, you guys started querying them, which is a great hosting solution and we actually just got somebody on board and, and we're, we're working with that.
And, um, and so did that just stem from, you know, just common sense that it was. Yeah, so we we've been offering, so like Fishbowl's a desktop solution. We have an online solution. That's six months old, very recent fishbowl online. Um, fishbowl itself is a, it's a. You know, it's an install software. You install on a server locally, usually in the warehouse.
Um, and you know, I've seen some of these server rooms. They're bad news. I have. I've been to these warehouses where. Yeah, it's in the closet over there and you open it up, just binder worms, you know, there's just a little red light blinking in the corner. You're like, there is the server, you know, often here for a couple hours, you know, barely any internet connection.
And so we have companies that were in that situation that were like, Hey, we don't want to go fully cloud because that scares us. We also want the security of being local. So we kind of, we kind of have been doing hosting on the fishbowl side for probably three or four years now. Um, and essentially what that is is people we host your fishbowl and QuickBook.
On a remote server and you get in through the remote desktop connection, you know, that's just a little shortcut on your desktop. You clicking it, it opens up as if you're on a whole new computer. You got a fish bowl on QuickBooks. We've been doing that for four years. It's been an awesome product and people love it.
We manage it. It's a, it's a, it's a pretty low monthly cost for them. And they buy a fish bowl as a package. And then they paid just for this hosting. We've only been doing that for fishbowl and QuickBooks. And so we kind of started getting into more of the QuickBooks space, fishbowls sales, QuickBooks now directly work USP.
And, and we started sending, you know, people would buy QuickBooks from us and then they're like, okay, Hosting. And we're like, well, we have hosting, but you have to be a fishable customer. Then we realized like, why are we doing that? We already have under structure. Like, we'll just create a separate thing.
That's for QuickBooks only. Right. And so there's tons of people out there. Um, I'm not going to promote them and say their names, but you know who they are. So we're like, we're going to do this. And, and so we've been selling now hosting under the aquarium brand, um, for almost a year now. And it's been awesome.
Right. And so. Some of the, some of the things we we did too, which is kind of the advantage of being like, not the first movers you get to learn from people's mistakes. Once you kind of get the train rolling, it's hard to dissect it, but we were able to kind of build off of missteps. And so, you know, one of the cool things, and we spoke about this in Las Vegas, Don, but we have a partner portal that lets a CPA or accountant go in and see all of their clients' machines are virtual machines.
And click into them instead of having to call the company and say, Hey, can I get on company ABC's QuickBooks today? And they're like, okay, wait for about 30 minutes and then make sure you have them on the phone. And then you get into work. And then five minutes later, you hang up and they call you back and say, Hey, I forgot to do one thing, QuickBooks.
Okay, let's start this train again. You know? So we have those partner portal that allows you a one-time permission from the client. Just say, Hey. Yeah, of course. You know, Don does my books for sure. She can get into my thing. Here's my written permission on file. And then from then on you have access to get into their remote server anytime you want.
Right. Yeah. That's so awesome for the accountants. It really is. I think that, you know, obviously. I said this I'll say the 7 million times. And I'll say it every time. Is it when you are making a decision that you should be going into the cloud with a hosting solution, which everybody should be doing FYI, I don't care if you're using QBO.
I don't care if you're using, you know, online subscription services, which, uh, many people are doing. That's awesome. But how secure is your computer? That's been sitting in your office and you know, you've got all your passwords, memorize, all this stuff, and somebody comes and sits at your desk. Like, hello?
It's worth the security and we there's, there's a lot of rules around, um, security, and we actually had a great conversation with secure ex, um, a couple of weeks ago. I think it was. Yeah. And talking about the liability for tax practitioners and people with a P 10, you've got a P 10 or your tax practitioner and you, um, you know, you're going in and doing that kind of.
You have to have a security plan laid out and you know, so being able to rely on your security plan, we'll be able to say, Hey, I've got a hosting solution that has all the protocols in place to protect the client date. Credit cards. You know, if you're an accountant, you have access to everybody's financial life, you are their doctor.
You've got it all. So that's when the, we've got to think about it as practitioners and I love and I, and I've seen, you know, I love it. I've got my own profile, all set up and I can see my clients. I can see, I, I don't have to wait to get in. I can just go in and do my work and I don't need to wait for a data file or.
Oh crap. Like I can just go in and do my job. And I think that, that, you know, I just, I had a great conversation with Seth Feinberg, just in general about what's going on out there. And we are all looking for solutions to make us more efficient, but also I don't have a problem jumping onto somebody's books while I'm sitting on the beach.
Right. But I can't be tied to what the guy always been saying. It was kind of giggling about last five years that the computer is now the new volunteer. Yeah, right. It used to be your spouse or your partner was volunteering, but now it's the computer. And so how are you setting yourself up for success?
And that's what corium can solve for people. And that's, and that's what we're here to do. Doesn't need a motivator. DM disruption is here to help solve the pain points that you're living in here and now. And so, and make changes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. And I think it was crazy. We were, I mean, at dinner you had brought up that whole QBO thing.
Like we're huge advocates of QBO, Cuba, advanced. Obviously people want to move to the cloud, which, and they should, if they can, you know, and if the capability's there, hell yeah. Do it. Right. But I didn't realize even, and you had brought that up like people, a lot of times people are like, oh, I have QBO. I don't need query.
You actually don't have that security, like logging in just straight up from Google Chrome or from edge or whatever. Firefox, not, that's not NSA level security. You know what I'm saying? Like, You need to get behind some type of security metrics and some uptick time. And our, and I can talk nerdy specs. I can't talk nerdy specs, but I have someone who can, if you have questions at all, but we have all that stuff on our website to our aquariums website.
So it's something you don't really think about. Well, I have QBO, so I'm good. Well, not really like get the social server, then you can get onto Chrome from the hosted server because your IP address. Uh, you know, it's, it's not static. It's always changing. Yeah. You know, and that's really, that's another hard thing where a lot of it and, you know, we're all busy, busy practitioners.
We're all. I mean, we're overworked, everybody's overworked. We get that, you know, we're having trouble finding additional staff. We're having trouble with getting through the IRS. I mean, all these things that are just like EV you're like, feel like you just get whacked in the face with a board every five seconds.
Right. And so the more that we can stop and say, okay, Number one, we better take care of the things that are number one in our practice, which is protecting our clients. That's our job as the accounting professionals. So if you're like, oh, bah humbug on the whole local computer going on to Chrome, I don't need that.
I don't need a host for that. I can just talk myself to late. And then you're like, oh crap. And your whole practice is gone, man. You get half local level. You're done just, yeah. Uh, and then at that point you're like, I'll spend any amount of money to get that bag, but it's too late by then. Right? Like we need to be proactive, not reactive to things.
And so that's what we're that, we're trying to message that now. And even with fishbowl too. And I, and I'm, I know, I keep saying fishbowl inquiry I'm cause obviously I work here, but this is with any solution. Like you need to be way you need to be, oops, sorry. That was probably super loud. I just have not walked on the mic call, so, but you need to be proactive with their solutions.
I mean, especially with how fast everything's moving now. You know, we, we see e-commerce companies that go from Kickstarter to, you know, 20 million in the first year because they're making all the right moves. And it's crazy me, you know, like we have local, one of our, one of our customers is dots pretzels, which started down just tiny gas stations.
And I don't know if you've had thoughts and this is, they did not want me to say this, but you need to get on their website and order something in Walmart. Like there. And that was like a six month, six month, like from no one knowing who they were too big box stores. And we kind of were there to be that, be that kind of supplier to help them get with our software and get everything lined up and forecasted.
And, and that's not just, that's not a unique story. There's like hundreds of companies that are making the right steps and investing in the right. And they're blowing up. It's, it's crazy. And it's hard to, it's hard to tell someone when you work for company, Hey, you need to spend this money, but it's like, I'm almost like want to take a step back as a consultant and be like, you need to spend this money.
Like, this is what you're going to, like, I love your product. I eat them every day or I, I, you know, I used PopSocket or whatever it is. Like some people drink it that turns out to be really, really cool product that blow up. Yeah, most people then blow up by accident and then blow out by luck right there.
Right. That's and that's it. And when in the book that as a motivator for accounting professionals, I talk about that, the fact that we need a foundation. So we, as the practitioners need these foundations, we need, we need to know what we need to know, and we need to mostly be compliant. That's our number one mission is to protect our clients and be compliant.
And in order to do that, we have to take steps and we have to invest. And it's just like anything else. And so with a client, like a warehouse or a restaurant or anybody that's trying to maintain or track that those inventory figures. Yeah. If they don't have, they've got some of them, they got brick and mortar, they got to stay up storefronts, but they also sell online with e-commerce.
If you don't have. All of those stores connected and the, you know, the cloud is its own store. If you don't have all that stuff, connected people are ordering things or things going backward, or you don't people do as soon as I go to cause I'm like, oh, I really want this. Oh, it's on backorder, close that website.
I'm going to go to a different one, buy it somewhere else. You know? And that is a, that is an epic failure for those of us who are consulting like you and myself, Nate and we're telling clients is what you should be doing. We can literally put them out of business on our own. I mean, that's just. Yeah, right.
So be careful. You've got to be careful when you're making those. Yeah. You have to be in alignment and it's not just, I mean, I like what, when, when Don and I first met as like all three years ago, four years ago. Yeah. I liked that. She, I mean, I'm going to tell your horn to your own a little bit for you here.
I liked that you just don't like sell yourself to the highest bidder, right? Like you're. Hey promote our company and then we'll give you 50 grand, you know, and then see you later. And you're like, oh, I haven't vetted you. Like, you don't do that because you it's a reflection directly on you. Right. And so I think like, as the practitioner, too, or as a CPA or a CFO consultant or whatever you are, it's crazy how much, at least to me.
Cause I'm not one of those things. It's crazy how much the client trusts you. Like, Hey, here's my baby that I made. This is my company. Will you hold this? And try not to drop it like, right. And so there they give you so much trust. Like you don't want to just, oh yeah, go Google it, like go Google inventory management.
Like hopefully it works. Or like, yeah, quick quick is pretty good, but like go like good luck with that. Like tax software, just like any of them will work. Like yeah. Like it's not like you go to jail, but no big deal. So yeah. So it's hard. It's hard to like. Portray that message without seeming self-serving, but like this reflects directly on me, this direct reflects directly on you Don like as a practitioner, it's almost like your reputation as your most valuable asset, right.
A hundred percent your integrity. And it's like, well, this reflects on me. Am I going to tell you to go use some Joe Schmo software? Just because they gave me, wrote me a check, like, you know, that's crazy. Yeah. You know, and that's one of the things that I put that I put in the book, of course. The conversation of not only vetting what you don't know, ask your.
There are so many Facebook groups I've joined more of Facebook groups in the last month, just going out there and want to see what the conversation really is happening out there. And you'll see that people who have used fishbowl or use, I use assert tax software or I've used carbon for their, for their practice management.
We'll be able to tell you if it works, doesn't work, um, you know, vetting some tax planning software right now, and I'm going through that process to see. Cause I just want something more than what Lil cert offers. So I want to go find something maybe even just a little bit better. And there, I know Intuit's developing their own product right now.
I just got the email this morning. I don't know if it's in beta. I'm waiting to hear back from them. You know, it's about those of us. We're going to go out there. Cause we want to find the best solution that works best for me. Like I want it to be best for me because if this, if this butt is in that seat in there, it better be making money.
Oh yeah, for sure. Better be getting work, done it better. Be making sure I file stuff on time. I don't have time to play games. Right. Except for softball games. And Cornel, right? Portal's better. Cause you have one hand for a drink, play softball. You're just, you're gonna have to get one of those hats with the straws.
You're going to have a cocktail or you're playing softball, but you know, at the end of the day that. That's the mission. The mission is to give you all the listeners whoever's listening. I hope it's if it's one person and it helps you in your practice and then this was all worth it, how can we make sure we establish a foundation for ourselves first?
Cause it's just like the whole thing of putting your mask on before you help the person next to you type of thing. And that's what we need to do as practitioners to make sure our house is in order. And our foundation is solid so that we can help our clients build their own founding. Yeah. And so you're right.
I mean, going through making sure that the, whatever you are recommending is successful, a successful recommendation of sex, successful implementation, which is a whole nother ball game. And I say to my clients, listen, I can do this for you, but why not let the people who develop the product and know it way better than I do do the implementations.
That's what I love about it. It's like I can hand you cause you know what, just like you said about your. Yeah, our small business clients, that's their baby, their businesses, their baby. And I get that because this is my baby. Right. But if I can say. I'm going to, Hey, Nate, I'm going to give you one of my babies to hold and I need you to implement the software.
It needs to be a really great experience or this hosting solution or whatever it may be. I know they're going to get the best service from fishbowl. They, I don't, I don't even deal with, I always tell people, well, I do QuickBooks. Okay. I don't need to be an expert at 80 other accounting softwares. I don't want to be just like inventory management for me.
I don't need to be an expert in any other inventory software because of. No fishbowl. I trust fishbowl. I trust the people at fishbowl. And I think that, that the partner program, the relationship. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, I mean, you guys developed the partner program to support the accountant accounting professionals from a commission base.
Right. So. Can come and sign up for that. And what I try to tell people is when it comes to commissions, don't get yourself all hung up, that you're making money on a software and like the client, you know, it costs the client more. Cause you're getting commission as not at all, how it works. I don't know why hours, the way I look at it is when they do have a problem with fishbowl, if there's an issue or whatever they have question or there's a disconnection or something like that, I'll go in and do fix that for them.
Cause they know I'm still their mom. I'm their mother. I'm there. You know, there might be. And I'm still going to work with that, but I don't need to charge the clients was a matter of fact, think about partner programs in a very different way. Partner programs are there and meant to be a payment to you for you to help manage the relationship and manage these little onesy twosy, fix it ear.
And there's that you don't feel as bad about it cause you're taking it away from maybe billable work, right? Yeah. So I want people to shift their mindset on that. So tell us a little bit about your partner program. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you, you kind of hit right on it. Like we're, we're trying to. The accountant or the CPA build their practice.
Right? And so with, with kind of our partner program, we're doing that and saying, Hey, if you guys have somebody who has an inventory need or manufacturing need, like here are the couple of buzzwords of you hear them, or you look in their books and they're doing things, send them to us, we'll be on a call with you.
And so our partner program was kind of built like almost like a team, like, you know, the CPA or the, or the QuickBooks consultant calls us. We do a call with the client and. Which is good for the consultant. Cause then they can, they're like learning a little bit about fishbowl. Like they've sure, you know, seeing a demo, but they know just enough to be dangerous in the Senate to us.
And so basically we say, okay, yeah, let us do the demo. You kind of watch and make sure you're there because we want you there as well. But yeah, we, we basically take the, take the client all the way through the purchase of fishbowl. Um, Don kinda mentioned implementation official. I used to be one of those consultants where I would fly out to the company and work with them for two days onsite.
And then for another 60 days after I suppose unique because we, we, you get assigned a person with a name, right. You know, Hey, this is your guy. Nate's going to take care of you for the next 60 days. And after that, after you're live and using every day, then we have a support team that, that answers the call.
98% of the time life not live. They'll get back to you within 20 minutes. And that's our guarantee, which is not a lot of companies can say that. Well, the other cool thing about the partner is like we've helped QuickBooks consultants, Beverly lying. I'm going to give her a shout out DVX, right? Like she was our number one partner in 2020.
And, and we have these kinds of different commission breaks and stuff. And she kind of worked her way to the top tier and we helped explode her business and she helped fishbowl and it was kind of like a mutual relationship there. And. Mutually beneficial relationship. And I like Beverly so much that we ended up hiring her.
So she actually works for fishbowl now, but she's awesome. Yeah. I mean, we hired her old team and so, and so she now is like our QuickBooks. You know, with, with Casey, who's our other, we have a team of five now, and I'm not going to say if you do so I'll hire every everybody. But my point is like, you don't just go hire partners, right?
Like that's how well the relationship worked out and I've got, you know, 10, 15, just a, my channel alone, which was the QuickBooks consultants that I have great relationships with. Right. And I got, I got a client. You guys mind taking this? And let me know if it's a good fit. If not, no biggie, I'm not going.
You know, upset with them or give them, but it's awesome because we make the QuickBooks consultant look like the rockstar, right. This person knows everything, they know exactly their solution. And so we kind of have your one-on-one contact. So you get a channel manager assigned and we do cool promos and different, like, you know, we'll go to like conferences.
Like we sat and we'll do parties after parties for partners and things like that. And we have a lot of fun, but yeah, it's a cool time. And it's almost like a little. Yeah, we've kind of built of like this, this partnership program. So we don't know, it's like a two year old program where we've so far it's been great and we've really met a lot of awesome people.
So, yeah. And I would say just to kind of close on with that thought is. The solution providers are there to be an extension of your team. They're not there. You know, if there's anybody you should be afraid of as a solution providers to teal to steal your clients, which I don't know why people are worried about stealing clients anyway, just, that's never been, it's never even crossed my mind, but I know that the whole, you know, have that some people do have it in their minds, but the partner programs for all of the partner programs that are out there, they're all meant to be an extension of your team, which I think is awesome because I don't have to hire Nate to hang up.
Implementing inventory for my clients. I just go, Hey here, uh, implement, implement you, do your thing. And that's all great. And I think that that's that community that has been developed over time is that we're all in this together. We're all, you know, Nate's not trying to sell anybody. We're not here to sell fishbowl.
We're just here to talk about the concepts around partnering up with solution providers. Applications that can solve issues for your clients so that it doesn't, it's not something you're being burdened by, right? Because at the end of the day, if you're the accountant, you want the numbers, you want the figures, you don't want to necessarily know how to manage the inventory.
Do all of that. That's where you come up with a solution to do it. So. Nate, I just got to thank you so much. Um, do you have any final thoughts that you want to leave with the listeners at all? We try to keep it within 20 to 30 minutes. I don't want them to get bored with us, you know? Um, so I know I don't have any, really anything else to add.
I mean, thanks for having me on your. Awesome. And I know everyone kind of really respects you. And so I'm, I'm really happy that you have me on, and I'm excited to see you in our partnership grow and, and see how we can help people. You know, it's awesome. And there's, there's so many cool programs out there and cold tack that like, let's help each other, like you said, we're all on the same team.
So we're all on the same team, whatever we can do to help each other. But thank you so much, Nate, from fishbowl. My man, I've just loved it over the last three years. I still feel like, like I hadn't seen you in a while, but I felt. We just saw you together. So that means everything. And again, that's part of the relationships that you want to build with the vendors with the solution providers is, you know, Ooh, just get to know them.
Right? Yeah. Get out there, get to a conference, start to meet people. That's you want to grow your business, start partnering up and talking to people. Yeah. And that's the only way in really, we have people like you that, I mean, the partner program, like I said was two years old. I started the department. You know, like our signal took a chance and was like, yeah, go build it.
Like, I'm not giving you an instructions, do your own thing. And it was like three partners like you that were like, Hey, you know, let me introduce you to some people. And they kind of took us under their wing. And so like, we wanted to do that for everybody. And we want to build those personal relationships.
Like you go to conferences, you go to these events, like go to the after party. I know you're tired. Like. Those are worth in my opinion, more than the conference themselves. Right. You have an opportunity to go to dinner with 10 people and you don't know any of them. Absolutely. Yeah, go, don't go with the people you, I mean, I may love to hang with my circle.
Right. But you go and meet other people that you don't normally talk to and just approach people. If you're like, I want to talk to Stacy Kildow I want to talk to Maria Martinez. I want to talk to Hector Garcia. Heather's go people. We want to give you what we know, because we don't want you to have to go through the same pain we'd been through.
Um, and I think that that's one of the best things, but again, Nate, thank you so much. I know we'll have you on again. I'm excited for the summit. That's going to be awesome. We'll make sure we post out, get people registered and it's going to be an awesome event. I know a lot of people that were are part of it.
They're all great practitioners. Great people want you to be great. So, Nate, thank you again so much. Love my third, nothing like it. All right, Nate. Thank you so much. My friend we'll be talking soon. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Thanks guys. I hope you enjoy this podcast. Feel free to visit DawnBrolin.com in order to motivate you to improve your practice, wishing you all the best.
Have a great day.
Dawn Brolin 0:01
Hello everyone and welcome to the DM Disruption. I'm the host Dawn Brolin. I'm a certified public accountant, Certified Fraud Examiner, and the author of the designated motivator. We're here to help motivate you to take your practice to the next level. Have you considered outsourcing your clients payroll? Well, I did and I went with ADP. The resources they provide, along with their partner program become the premier outsourcing Payroll solution. We as practitioners already deal with a ton of compliance. Keeping Up With payroll isn't a value added solution that I should be focused on. If you've considered outsourcing before, reconsider it today. Choose ADP to be part of your starting lineup.
Hey, everybody, welcome back to the DM Disruption. You know, I love to talk to all my fellow colleagues and accountants out there, I just tried to help improve processes, make great recommendations and do whatever I can to just push out some information to help everybody in the community. We're all in this together. We're all going to survive together. And today's episode is sponsored by fishbowl. fishbowl part of the starting lineup, because fishbowl for me is a great solution for my clients who have inventory needs, obviously. Right. And so today, we have Nate flake on the show today to talk to us about an upcoming summit, and all the good things that are happening at Fishbowl but also in the accounting industry in general. So, Nate, hello, thank you so much for being here.
Nate Flake 1:30
Thank you. Yeah, thanks for having me. I've been wanting to be on this for a while. So this is exciting. Thanks for lettin' me join yeah.
Dawn Brolin 1:36
Are you kidding? fishbowl so it's really fun because I was just out there a couple of weeks ago or a few weeks ago, whatever timing it is at this point, but um, and love to see the operation that was so fun. And we went had a great dinner. So much food, but it was so amazing. And then I got to ride in your really cool awesome. I don't want to call it truck. Car. It's not car...
Nate Flake 2:00
No, yeah, that was fun. Thanks for coming out. Yeah, we had. We had Yeah, we for the for the filming of our upcoming summit. And you're kind of local celebrity here. Everybody here in the office knows you, sort of stories you know, everyone's bummed they weren't in Vegas for for the for that conference with us. I'm like, you know, she did beat me in cornhole but...
Dawn Brolin 2:19
I did legitimately so she's most important thing is about winning. No wait a minute, wait a minute, it's about the fun. No. So Nate. So tell me when when you tell the audience I guess the people who are listening, when is the summit? Tell me about it, what motivated you like tell me everything? Why are you doing it, etc...? And then obviously, we'll have post the links to be able to access stuff like that.
Nate Flake 2:40
Yeah, for sure. So like I mentioned, Don was one of our awesome speakers for the summit. So we have a virtual Summit coming up in September, September 28. And we'll have we'll give Don some registration information once we're gonna start marketing for that, but essentially, end of September comes out. So this is the inventory management and growth Summit, it's going to be completely virtual. So it'll have like a live launch date September 28, that you can kind of watch it and what would be a live sale right? Then you'll you'll be able to access it for 30 days so we obviously know that nobody wants to sit and watch full straight day of videos the speaker so we're gonna make it kind of easy to digest a little bit you know, people can go through pick a topic pick the speaker while I've had shots, bios of everybody. But yeah, kind of the motivation behind it we just there's no one really doing anything inventory management related in our space right now as far as like virtual events and even like in person I can't wait to to do you know, a Korean person event though it's focused strictly on SMB inventory management, we fishbowl tends to join all these conferences, you know, we have scaling the highest comes out that's coming up, we have QuickBooks connect every year of course with with our friends at into it, but there's no conference that's like focused on inventory management. And so we're trying to really give everybody the tools in the SMB space to grow. And this conference is kind of unique because it's going to cover kind of everything and like an SMB toolkit, right marketing. You know, your your section speaks to you know, how if you're if you're an accountant, and you're running a small business, like how do you grow that? How do you how do you get out of the rut? And how do you Yeah, especially after these last 18 months to kind of get out of that space, a little bit headspace. We have speakers that are like from you know, awesome ecommerce, Amazon sellers that know how to grow there. We have food and beverage companies that have scaled their business, you know, to their best numbers to date during COVID. So we're just trying to really give everyone tools to say, hey, we realize it's kind of a weird time it's different time but like there's still people out there killing it. So right. Let's figure out how you can do that. And so it's gonna be free. We have some awesome speakers we have we have Daymond John, you know FUBU and from Shark Tank, everyone knows him from Shark Tank as well. We've got MLB players, Dell Murphy from Atlanta Braves, which is the colors you're wearing right now. You're repping, the Braves colors. I'll give you that. Yeah. And so the we have some people from like experts in the industry, right? A chief, or sorry, a click, click rate optimization company called spiralised. Like, how do you make your website optimized for clicking? Like people don't tend to think about that when you're starting a business kind of last on your list? Right? Right. You know, how do you supply inventory? How do you get your E commerce shop set up? So we're gonna kind of be covering all sorts of topics in this thing, and it's gonna be fun. There's a QuickBooks panel, there's a marketing panel. So there's a lot of kind of went online, but there's a lot of stuff to digest, there's gonna be it's gonna be a lot of fun.
Dawn Brolin 5:45
Yeah, you know, and I think that certainly in the inventory space, you've got your offset small is relative when it comes to inventory, because you can have a client who has, you know, maybe only 10 products, but they sell them, you know, the millions of volume wise, right? Yeah. And so I know that one of the things that I've seen before in the past, I've seen where people are just trying to, like, always do these little shortcuts or work arounds to try to help a business manage their inventory. And really, when you're doing I'm just gonna say me, if you're gonna do things half assed don't do at all? Oh, yeah, for sure. It's just, it's just, inventory is like the biggest asset for most small and midsize businesses and their inventory based, right. And so they're the manufacturing or they're doing, you know, retail inventory. That is their baby. Like that's that asset in and of itself is so valuable. I mean, think of the purchase prices and things like that, that inventory asset has got to be managed and, and utilized in a way and tracked it away, that the client still sees that value on the balance sheet. You know, the health of the balance sheets, the most important thing right now, most people feel kind of unhealthy on their balance sheet, right?
Nate Flake 6:55
Yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy, too, because it's kind of goes like it's kind of like counter intuitive to think, Well, I'm like a scrappy business. I'm trying to cut costs where I can I can't afford a software like fish ball, right? I'm not trying to like just shamelessly promote fish well here like any any running software, QuickBooks, right? Sure. But it's it's countering. It's kind of counterintuitive, because you're you're doing actually you're wasting a ton of money on scrap on inventory on you know, I've been in when I was started. I've been at Fishbowl for eight years now. I started in the training and implementation team where I would go out to warehouses and train them, hey, this is how you use fishbowl and we're going to download it, we're going to train the whole team. And it was always like, shocking to me how little companies knew about what was actually going on in their own warehouses, you know, you have Tory control guy, or, or girl or whoever's whoever's out there running the shop, but they like have a, they say they have an idea. And they're like, Okay, let's do a physical count like, Well, we did one poll months ago, you're like, Okay, well, that's for problem number one. But like, the amount of money you're wasting on scrap, and just stuff expire, especially in stuff that's perishable, right? You could have paid for software like Fishbowl 10 times this year, right now. It's kind of it's kind of like, yeah, you're scrappy, but you have to be smart with your investments. Like, imagine if this is your own money you're investing in, you wouldn't just like, pray that it would work, you know, like, you have to be on top of it. And so the people that have really gone ahead this last, you know, two years are people that are implementing systems where people like your starting lineup, you know, and things like that.
Dawn Brolin 8:29
Well and that's, you know, the, the message at the end of the day for every one of these DM Disruption episodes is really to just give more information on how we as the practitioner can improve, whether it's internally in our own infrastructure and our own apps that we're using. And of course, integrated is the way to go. But also those apps that we may not use internally like fishbowl I don't have inventory at my in powerful accounting, but I have clients who need it. And so I need to make sure that I am up on the applications that not only solve for maybe the immediate problem, but have the room to grow as the as the businesses grow. And I think that that's something sometimes we think short sighted we don't think of the end game first where we sit about let me put the bandaid on it right now. Yeah, and that's, that's the worst way to think about it. Cuz you're, you know what's gonna do you're gonna sell them some crap. They're gonna you know, oh, yeah, that looks really easy. We can enter a bunch of inventory items. Oh, but that doesn't sync with anything. Oh, sorry. You know...
Nate Flake 9:22
You manually do that for a while you'll save $100, you know?
Dawn Brolin 9:26
Like that's a big deal!? So yeah, so tell me so I know that um, you know, you guys are really out there you're doing and you also have a hosting solution called Quarium. Yeah. Connected with Fishbowl which I think of course if you didn't get the pond was I don't think I got it at first. I'm usually pretty darn sharp!
Nate Flake 9:43
We thought that's super super clever. That's clever each other aquarium, Fishbowl but just aquarium take off the A take the day off. Aquaria was very, very hard to fight with SEO. So we decided to drop the "A".
Dawn Brolin 9:57
Just getting rid of one letter. Look what you could do you?!
Unknown Speaker 10:00
We have enough people calling us right now already asking what size of fish bowls they can buy. And so we're like, we don't want to do that mess again.
Dawn Brolin 10:08
Like, where is our order of aquariums from?
Nate Flake 10:10
Aquariums, we should partner with someone honestly and send them leads and do something.
Dawn Brolin 10:16
Someone could benefit from it!
Nate Flake 10:17
Or just start our own actual fishbowl company on the side. So...
Dawn Brolin 10:21
That would be awesome! So yeah, you guys started Quarium, which is a great hosting solution. And we actually just got somebody on board and we're working with that. And yeah, and so that just stem from, you know, just common sense that it was...
Nate Flake 10:34
Kind of so we, we've been offering so like Fishbowl is a desktop solution. We have an online solution that's six months old, very recent fishbowl online, but fishbowl itself is it's a, it's a, you know, it's an install software you install on a server locally, usually in the warehouse. And, you know, I've seen some of these server rooms are bad news I have I've been to these warehouses where, yeah, it's in the closet over there, and you open it up, just bite or wham, you know, there's just a little red light blinking in the corner, you're like, there's a server, you know, in here for a couple hours, you know, barely any internet connection. And so we have companies that were in that situation that were like, Hey, we don't want to go fully cloud because that scares us. We also want the security of being local. So we kind of we kind of have been doing hosting on the fishbowl side for probably three or four years now. And essentially, what that is, is people we host your fishbowl and QuickBooks, on a remote server and you get on through through a remote desktop connection or you know, that's just a little shortcut on your desktop. You click on it, it opens up as if you're on a whole new computer. You got fishball QuickBooks, we've been doing that for four years. It's been an awesome product and people love it. They love that we manage it. It's it's a it's a pretty low monthly cost for them. And they buy fishbowl as a package, and then they pay just for the toasting. Yeah, we've only been doing that for fishbowl and QuickBooks. And so we kind of started getting into more of the QuickBooks space fishbowl sells QuickBooks now directly work USP and and we started sending, you know, people would buy QuickBooks from us. And then they're like, Okay, I need hosting. And we're like, well, we have hosting, but you have to be a fishbowl customer. And then we realized, like, why are we doing that we already have the infrastructure, like, just create a separate thing that's for QuickBooks only, right? And so there's tons of people out there. I'm not going to promote them and say their names, but you know who they are. So we're like, we're going to do this. And so we've been selling now hosting under the aquarium brand, for almost a year now. And it's been awesome, right? And so yeah, some of the some of the things we we did two, which is kind of the advantage of being like, not the first movers, you get to learn from people's mistakes, right? Right. Once you kind of get the train rolling, it's hard to dissect it. But we were able to kind of build off of missteps. And so you know, one of the cool things, and we spoke about this in Las Vegas, Dawn, but we have a partner portal that lets a CPA or accountant go in and see all of their clients machines or virtual machines, and click into them instead of having to call the company and say, Hey, can I get on company ABCs QuickBooks today, and they're like, Okay, wait for about 30 minutes, and then make sure you have them on the phone. And then you get to work. And then five minutes later, you hang up and they call you back as Hey, I forgot to do one thing, QuickBooks. Okay, let's start this train again, you know, so we have this partner portal that allows you a one time permission from the client to say, hey, yeah, of course, you know, Don, does my books for sure. She can get in my thing. Here's my written permission on file. And then from then on, you have access to get into their remote server anytime you want. Right? Yeah. So awesome for the accountants.
Dawn Brolin 13:42
It really is. I think that you know, obviously, and I said this, I'll say the 7 million times I'll say it every time is that when you are making a decision that you should be going into the cloud with a hosting solution, which everybody should be doing. FYI, I don't care if you're using cubio. I don't care if you're using, you know, online subscription services, which many people are doing, that's awesome. But how secure is your computer that's been sitting in your office and you know, you've got all your passwords memorized all this stuff. And somebody comes and sits at your desk like, hello, like, it's worth the security. And we there's there's a lot of rules around security. And we actually had a great conversation with Secure X. A couple of weeks ago, I think it was and talking about the liability for tax practitioners and people with a P 10. You got a p 10. Or your tax practitioner, and you you know, you're going in and doing that kind of stuff. You have to have a security plan laid out. And you know, so being able to rely on your security plan will be able to say hey, I've got a hosting solution that has all the protocols in place to protect the client data, credit cards, you know, if you're an accountant, you have access to everybody's financial life. You are their doctor, you've got it all. So that's one that we've got to think about as practitioners and I love and I've seen you know, I love it. I've got my own profiles. Setup and I can see my clients, I can see, I don't have to wait to get in, I can just go in and do my work. And I don't need to wait for a data file or any of the rest of this crap. Like I can just go in do my job. And I think that that, you know, I just had a great conversation with Seth Feinberg, just in general about, you know, what's going on out there. And we are all looking for solutions to make us more efficient. But also, I don't have a problem have jumping on to somebody books while I'm sitting on the beach. Right. But I can't be tied to what the guy always been saying and kind of giggling about last five years that the computer is now the new ball and chain. Yeah, right used to be your spouse, or your partner was volunteer, and now it's the computer. It's so how are you setting yourself up for success. And that's what aquarium can solve for people. And that's, and that's what we're here to do. Designated motivator. DM disruption is here to help solve the pain points that you're living in here and now. And so and make changes, right?
Nate Flake 15:51
Yeah, yeah, I think it's crazy. We're, I mean, at dinner, you had brought up that whole cubio thing. Like we're huge advocates of QBO to QB advanced, obviously, people want to move to the cloud, which and they should if they can, you know, and if the capabilities there, hell yeah, do it. Right. Right. But I didn't realize even and you had brought that up. Like people, a lot of times people are like, Oh, I have cubio I don't need aquarium, you actually, like don't have that security, like logging in just straight up from Google Chrome or from edge or whatever, or Firefox. And that's not an essay level security. You know, I'm saying like, you're gonna, you need to get behind some type of security metrics and some uptick time, you know, and our, and I can talk nerdy specs, I can't talk nerdy specs, but I have someone who can if you have questions, but we have all that stuff on our website to our aquariums website. So Right. It's something you don't really think about, well, I have QBO. So I'm good. Well, not really, like get this whole server, then you can get onto Chrome from the host that server. Because your IP address doesn't have you know, it's it's not static, it's always changing.
Dawn Brolin 16:56
Yeah, you know, and that's really, that's another hard thing where a lot of it and you know, we're all busy, busy practitioners, we're all I mean, we're overworked. Everybody's overworked. We get that, you know, we're having trouble finding additional staff. We're having trouble with getting through the IRS. I mean, all these things that are just like, you're like, feel like you're getting whacked in the face with a board every five seconds, right? Yeah. So the more that we can stop and say, Hey, number one, we better take care of the things that are number one in our practice, which is protecting our clients. That's our job as accounting professionals. So if you're like, oh, bah humbug on the whole local computer going on to Chrome, I don't need that. I don't need a host for that.
Nate Flake 17:35
You don't need it, it's too late. And then you're like, Oh, crap....
Dawn Brolin 17:38
And your whole practice is gone, man, you get hacked at local level, you're done. Just you know!
Nate Flake 17:45
You don't. And then at that point, you're like, I'll spend any amount of money to get that vibe, but it's too late by then. Right? Like, it's we need to be proactive, not reactive to things and so, exactly, that's what we're trying to message that now and even with fishbowl to like, um, I know I keep saying fishball inquiry I'm because obviously I work here but right. This is what any solution, like you need to be way you need to be oops, sorry, that was probably super loud. I just don't know what's on the mind. Call call. So, but you need to be proactive with your solutions. I mean, especially with how fast everything's moving now. And we have, you know, we see E commerce companies that go from Kickstarter to, you know, 20 million in the first year, because they're making all the right moves. And it's crazy me, you know, like we have local one of our one of our customers is dots, pretzels, which started out in just tiny gas stations. And I don't know, if you've had thoughts, and this is they did not tell me to say this, but you need to get on their website, order some Walmart, like They're unbelievable. And maybe that was like a six month, six month like from no one knowing who they were to big box stores. And we kind of were there to be that be that kind of supplier to help them get with our software and get everything lined up and forecasted. And, and that's not just that's not a unique story. There's like hundreds of companies that are making the right steps and investing in the right tech. And they're blowing up. It's crazy. And it's hard to it's hard to tell someone when you work for a company, hey, you need to spend this money. But it's like, I'm almost like, want to take a step back as a consultant and be like, you need to spend this money like this. You're gonna like I love your product. I eat them every day or I you know, I use POP socket or whatever it is like some little trinket that turns out to be really, really cool product that blows up, you know, those people that blow up by accident and then blow out by luck. Right? They made all the right steps.
Dawn Brolin 19:36
then that's and that's it, I think and when in the book that as a motivator for accounting professionals, I talk about that, the fact that we need a foundation. So we as the practitioners need these foundations we need we need to know what we need to know. And we need to mostly be compliant. That's our number one mission is to protect our clients and be compliant ourselves. And in order to do that, we have to take steps and we have to invest and it's just like anything else and so With a client like a warehouse or a restaurant, or anybody that's trying to maintain or track that if those inventory figures, yeah, if they don't have they've got some of them, they got brick and mortar, they got to stamp storefronts, but they also sell online with E commerce. If you don't have those, all those stores connected in that, you know, the cloud is its own store. Yeah, if you don't have all that stuff connected, people are ordering things are things going backorder, you know, people do so they go to something like, Oh, I really want this. Oh, it's on backorder. Close that website, I'm gonna go to a different one. somewhere else, you know, and that is it. That is an epic failure. For those of us who are consulting, like you, myself, Nate, and we're telling clients is what you should be doing. We can literally put them out of business on our own. I mean, that's just the truth. Yeah. Right. So be careful. You've got to be careful when you're making those recommendations.
Nate Flake 20:49
Yeah, you have to be and it's not just I mean, I like what when, when Don and I first met, it's like, all three years ago, four years ago. Yeah, I like that. She, I mean, I'm gonna tell your horn to your arm a little bit for you here is how close my years I like that you just don't like sell yourself to the highest bidder, right? Like you're not, hey, promote our company, and then we'll give you 50 grand, you know, and then see you later. And you're like, Oh, I'm invited you like, you don't do that. Because you it's a reflection directly on you, right. And so I think like, as the practitioner to or as a CPA or a CFO, consultant, or whatever you are. It's crazy how much at least to me, because I'm not one of those things. It's crazy how much the client trusts you, like, Hey, here's my baby that I made. This is my company, will you hold this infant? In? Try not to drop it like, right and so that they give you so much trust, like you don't want to just go Google it like go Google inventory management, like, hopefully it works or like, yeah, quickly, it's pretty good. But like, go like, go. Good luck with that, like tax software, just like any of them work. Like. Yeah, like, it's like, you feel like, you go to jail, but no big deal. Like it's so. Yeah, so it's hard. It's hard to like, portray that message without seeming self serving. But like, this reflects directly on me this direct, reflects directly on you don, like, yeah, as a practitioner. It's almost like your reputation as your most valuable asset, right? 100% your integrity. And it's like, well, this reflects on me, I'm gonna tell you to go use some Joe Schmoe software just because they gave me wrote me a check. Like, you know, it's crazy.
Dawn Brolin 22:25
Yeah. And that's, you know, and that's one of the things that I put that I put in the book, of course, is the conversation of not only vetting what you don't know, ask your peers go there's so many Facebook groups. I've joined more Facebook groups last month, just going out there want to see what the conversation really is happening out there. And you'll see that people who have used fishbowl or use I use the cert tax software or abuse carbon for their for their practice management will be able to tell you if it works doesn't work. You know, I'm getting some tax planning software right now. And I'm going through that process to see because I just want something more than what was Sir offers. So I want to go find something maybe in just a little bit better. And I know into it's developing their own product right now. I just got the email this morning. I don't know if it's in beta. I'm waiting to hear back from them. But you know, it's about those of us we're going to go out there because we want to find the best solution that works best for me like I want it to be best for me. Because for sure if this if this but is in that seat in there. It better be making money. Oh, yeah, for sure. Better be getting work done. It better be making sure I file stuff on time. I don't have time to play games, right? Or softball games and cornhole and cornhole right, the portal is better because you have one hand for a drink. Exactly. Softball, you're just you're gonna have to get one of those hats with the straws. You're gonna have a cocktail, or you're playing softball. But you know, at the end of the day, that's, that's the mission. The mission is to give you all the listeners, whoever's listening, I hope it's if it's one person, and it helps you in your practice, and then this was all worth it. Yeah, how can we make sure we establish a foundation for ourselves first, because it's just like the whole thing of put your mask on before you help the person next to you type of thing. Yeah. And that's what we need to do as practitioners to make sure our house is in order. And our foundation is solid, so that we can help our clients build their own foundations. And so you're right I mean, going through making sure that the whatever you are recommending is successful, a successful recommendation and sex successful implementation, which is a whole nother ballgame. And I say to my clients, listen, I can do this for you. But why not let the people who develop the product and know it way better than I do? You the implementations. That's what I love about it. It's like, I can handle it, because you know what, just like you said about your babies, yeah, our small business clients, that's their baby, their businesses, their baby, and I get that because this is my baby, right? But if I can say, Listen, I'm gonna pay Nate. I'm going to give you one of my babies to hold. Yeah, and I need you to implement the software and it needs to be a really great experience or this hosting solution or whatever it may be. I know they're going to get the best service from fishbowl. They I don't I don't even deal with. I always tell people I do QuickBooks Okay. I'm going to be an expert at at other accounting softwares. I don't want to be. Yeah, just like inventory management for me. I don't need to be an expert in any other inventory software because I know fishbowl, I trust fishbowl. I trust the people at Fishbowl. Yeah. And I think that that the partner program the relationship. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I mean, you guys develop the partner program to support the accountant, accounting professionals from a commission base, right? So people can, can come and sign up for that. And what I try to tell people is when it comes to Commission's, don't get yourself all hung up, that you're making money on a software and like the client, you know, it cost the client more, because you're getting commission is not at all how it works. I don't know how it works. The way I look at it is when they do have a problem with fishbowl if there's an issue or whatever they have question or there's a disconnection or something like that, I'll go in and fix that for them. Because they know I'm still their mom, I'm their mother. And they're, you know, they're my infant. And I'm still going to work with that. But I don't need to charge the client. So as a matter of fact, think about partner programs in a very different way. Partner Programs are there and meant to be a payment to you for you to help manage the relationship and manage these little onesie. twosie. Fix it here. And there's Yeah, you don't feel bad about this. You're taking it away from maybe billable work, right? Yeah. So I want people to shift their mindset on that. So what tell us a little bit about your partner program?
Nate Flake 26:28
Yeah. I mean, if you kind of hit right on it, like we're trying to help the accountant or the CPA build their practice, right. And so with with kind of our partner program, we're doing that and saying, Hey, if you guys have somebody who has an inventory need or manufacturing need, like, here are the couple buzzwords if you hear them, are you looking at our bucks, and they're doing things, send them to us, we'll be on a call with you. It's our partner programs kind of built like almost like a team like, you know, the CPA or the or the QuickBooks consultant calls us we do a call with the client and them, which is good for the consulting because then they can they're like learning a little bit about fishbowl like they've sure, you know, seen a demo, but they know just enough to be dangerous in the Senate to us. And so basically we say okay, yeah, let us do the demo, you kind of watch and make sure you're there because you we want you there as well. But yeah, we basically take the take the client all the way through the purchase of fishball. Don kind of mentioned implementation official, I used to be one of those consultants where I would fly out to the company, and work with them for two days on site. And then for another 60 days after, and suppose unique because we we you get assigned a person with a name base, you know, hey, this is your guy, Nate's gonna take care of you for the next 60 days. And after that after live and using every day, then we have a support team that that answers the call 98% of the time live, right? Not live, they'll get back to you within 20 minutes. And that's our guarantee, which is not a lot of companies can say that. That's normal. And well. The other cool thing about the partner is like we've helped QuickBooks consultants, Beverly Lang, I want to give her a shout out.
Dawn Brolin 28:04
I love Beverly, oh my god!
Nate Flake 28:05
Like DVS, right? Like she was our number one partner in 2020. And, and we have these kinds of different commission breaks and stuff. And she kind of worked her way to the top tier. And we helped explode her business. And she helped fishbowl and it was kind of like a, like a mutual relationship there and a mutual benefit, mutually beneficial relationship. And I liked Beverly so much so we end up hiring her. So she actually works for Fishbowl now!
Dawn Brolin 28:29
Which is awesome!
Nate Flake 28:30
I mean, we had her whole team and so and so she now is like our QuickBooks person, you know, with with Casey, who's our other, we have a team of five now, and not gonna say if you do so well hire everybody. But my point is, like, you don't just go hire partners, right? Like, right, that's how well the relationship worked out. And I've got, you know, 1015 it just in my channel alone, which was the QuickBooks consultants that I have great relationships with, right? And absolutely, hey, got I got a client, you guys might take in this and let me know if it's good fit. If not, no biggie. I'm not going to be, you know, upset with them or, but it's awesome because we make the QuickBooks consultant look like the rock star, right? This person knows everything they know exactly their solution. And so we kind of your one on one contacts, you get a channel manager assigned. And we do cool promos and different like, you know, we'll go to like conferences, like we sat and we'll do parties after parties for partners and things like that. And we have a lot of fun. But yeah, it's a cool time. And it's almost like a little family that we've kind of built up like this, this partnership program. So we don't know. It's like a two year old program. But we've so far it's been great. And we've really met a lot of awesome people, So....
Dawn Brolin 29:41
Yeah, I would say just to kind of close with that thought is the solution providers are there to be an extension of your team. They're not there. They know that there's anybody you shouldn't be afraid of as a solution providers to to steal your clients which I don't know why people are worried about stealing clients anyway, just that's never been an issue. never even crossed my mind. But I know that you don't have that it. Some people do have it in their minds, but the partner programs for all of the partner programs that are out there, they're all meant to be an extension of your team, which I think is awesome. Because I don't have to hire Nate to handle handle implementing inventory for my clients. I just go, hey, here. You do your thing. And that's all good. And I think that that's that community that has been developed over time is that we're all in this together, we're all you know, they, it's not trying to sell anybody, we're not here to sell fishbowl, we're just here to talk about the concepts around partnering up with solution providers, applications that can solve issues for your clients, so that it doesn't, it's not something you're being burdened by, right. Because at the end of the day, if you're the accountant, you want the numbers, you want the figures, you don't want to necessarily know how to manage the inventory, do all that. But that's where you come up with a solution to do it. So Nate, I just got to thank you so much. Do you have any final thoughts that you want to leave with listeners at all? We try to keep it within 20 to 30 minutes? I want them to get bored with us. You know...
Nate Flake 31:02
Yeah they're probably already like "this guy." So I know, I don't have any really anything else to add. I mean, thanks for having me on. You're, you're awesome. And I know everyone kind of really respects you. And so I'm really happy that you have me on and..
Dawn Brolin 31:14
Of course.
Nate Flake 31:14
And I'm excited to see you in our partnership grow and see how we can help people you know, it's awesome. And there's, there's so many cool programs out there and cool tech that like let's help each other like you said, we're all on the same team, so...
Dawn Brolin 31:25
We're all on the same team, whatever we can do to help each other. But thank you so much, Nate, from Fishbowl, my man. I've just loved it over the last three years, I still feel like like I hadn't seen you in a while. But I felt like I just saw you. Yeah, together. So that means everything. And I And again, that's part of the relationships that you want to build with the vendors with a solution providers is, you know, who just get to know them, right? Get out there, get to a conference start to meet people that's you want to grow your business start partnering up and talking to people.
Nate Flake 31:54
Yeah that's the only way in. And really, when we have people like you that I mean, the partner program, like I said, was two years old, I started the department, you know, like, took a chance. I was like, yeah, go build it. Like, I'm not giving you any instructions, do your own thing. And it was like three partners like you, they were like, hey, you know, let me introduce you to some people. And they kind of took us under their wing. And so yeah, like, we wanted to do that for everybody. And we want to build those personal relationships. Like, you go to conferences, you go to these events, like go to the after party. I know you're tired, like right. Those are worth in my opinion, more than the conference themselves, right? You're gonna go to dinner with 10 people you don't know any of them. That's gold! Do it!
Dawn Brolin 32:35
Yeah, go don't go with the people. You I mean, I may love to hang with mycircle, right. But you know, and meet other people that you don't normally talk to and just approach people. If you're like, I want to talk to Stacy Kilgo. I want to talk to Mariette Martinez, I want to talk to Hector Garcia, Heather's Saterly, people want, we want to give you what we know. Because we don't want you to have to go through the same pain we've been through. And I think that that's one of the best things. But again, they thank you so much. I know we'll have you on again, excited for the summit. That's going to be awesome. We'll make sure we post out, get people registered, and it's going to be an awesome event. I know a lot of people that were are part of it. And they're all great practitioners. Great people, going to be great, right? So, Nate, thank you again, so much. Thank you. All right, Nate. Thank you so much, my friend. We'll be talking soon. All right. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Thanks, guys. Talk to you soon.
I hope you enjoyed this podcast. Feel free to visit DawnBrolin.com in order to motivate you to improve your practice. Wishing you all the best. Have a great day.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai