61 ⎸ Building a Bookkeeping Business to Sell with Blake Oliver

If you've been in our space for even just a little bit, you've probably heard of my guest from today. His name is Blake Oliver. He is the cohost of the cloud accounting podcast. He is the founder of earmark CPE. He is the Accounting Community Advocate for Relay Bank. And I finally have him on my podcast today to talk about his entire journey.

So if this is something that you've been wondering about for a while and like, why is he everywhere? What is he doing? How did he get here?

You're going to want to tune into today's episode. It's a very casual conversation— I feel like I've known the guy forever because, well, I've been listening to the cloud accounting podcast pretty much since it launched so if that's you too, sit back, relax, and enjoy today's conversation with Blake Oliver.

In this episode you’ll hear:

• How Blake built a bookkeeping firm and sold it in 5 years
• What he does with his free time
• His current project
• His role at Relay Bank

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Transcript

[00:00:00] If you've been in our space for even just a little bit, you've probably heard of my guests from today. His name is Blake Oliver. He is the cohost of the Cloud Accounting Podcast. He is the founder of Earmark CPE. He is the accounting community advocate for Relay Bank. And I finally have him on my podcast today to talk about his entire journey. So if this is something that you've been wondering about for a while and like, why is he everywhere? What is he doing? How did he get here? You're going to want to tune into today's episode. It's a very casual conversation I feel like I've known the guy forever because well i've been listening to the cloud accounting podcast pretty much since it launched. So if that's you to sit back, relax and enjoy today's conversation with Blake.

[00:00:53] 

[00:01:22] Serena: All right. Welcome to the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast. I'm super thrilled to have you here by the way, because when I first started my business, I think your podcast, the cloud accounting podcast was one of the first ones that I started listening to. 

[00:01:37] Blake: That is so great to hear. Thank you so much. 

[00:01:40] Serena: Have to shout that out. So with that, will you please introduce yourself to our audience? 

[00:01:45] Blake: Happy to. I am Blake Oliver CPA. That stands for two things. It stands for certified public accountant, but it also stands for cello playing accountant.

[00:01:54] Serena: Oh, I was not expecting that. 

[00:01:56] Blake: Your listeners who are not watching this on YouTube or wherever, if they're just listening, they will not see the plaque that I'm holding up. But I will describe it. It is a gift from my father-in-law. Upon earning my CPA. He sent me this, it says Blake Oliver, CPA. And below that it says cello playing accountant. 

[00:02:15] Serena: That's pretty awesome. 

[00:02:16] Blake: Yes.

[00:02:16] Serena: That is pretty awesome. I don't know if I can come up with anything clever to call myself instead of a certified public accountant.

[00:02:24] Blake: So the reason of course for that is that I am a career changer. I was a musician. I majored in cello performance at. A fancy university called Northwestern and ended up graduating. No actual talents, other than that, really. And so it was in the middle of the great recession. Being a freelance musician, which is what I was, was not a good gig at the time. And so I picked up tutoring and then I picked up bookkeeping, the bookkeeper at the company I was working at just quit one day. They tend to do that sometimes. I mean, it happens. Right. And and then I became the bookkeeper and, and that like, so I actually had a whole career as a bookkeeper for, I guess, like five years.

[00:03:10] And I went back to school and started studying accounting and eventually got my CPA and I had a small firm of my own. And then was fortunate to sell that. Went to work for a couple of technology companies doing product marketing. Which is basically in my case, like doing webinars, talking to people, going to conferences, writing case studies, you know, that sort of thing. I really enjoyed that because as you can tell, I like being on stage. This is like a thing, right? As a musician. And so that was like a way that I could do that while being part of the accounting world. So I started a podcast about four years ago called the cloud accounting podcast and that grew and grew and grew. And we started getting advertisers and I was able to quit my full-time role. And do that full time. Like just be a podcaster, like last year. 

[00:04:00] Serena: Wow! I was, I kind of wanted to know the background of, well, I already told you I wanted to know everything, but that was kind of one of the things I've always wondered is like was the cloud accounting podcast, just a passion project initially?

[00:04:14] Blake: Yes. It was purely, let's just do this once a week and see what happens. And my employers tolerated it. I always made sure, this is always important. If you're doing a side project, let your employer know. And get them to sign something that says that this is my property. Yeah. And so I had that, so I was doing that on the side the whole time. And so then when we actually went to make it a real business, we could. And I do that with my co-host David Leary who spent 20 years at Intuit on the QuickBooks side. And so he comes to it from the side of. I come to it more from the side of bookkeeping, accounting, we have a ton of people in the cast world or the bookkeeping world that listen. And yeah, it's a lot of fun. 

[00:04:57] So I'm really happy to be talking to you because I feel like bookkeepers get this you know, they like understand the technology and the accounting go together. And sometimes when I go talk to other CPAs, especially folks that are a little getting up there in years. They just don't. I mean, I went to the AICPA Engage this past year and they were still doing sessions on like, what is cloud? You know? 

[00:05:22] Serena: I remember when I worked at a CPA firm, it was more than what year is this? 2022. It was more than 10 years ago. And I was a staff accountant. So basically a full charge bookkeeper, but I had some experience under my belt, so I was a staff accountant. And I remember our firm owner talking about going to this conference. We're gonna talk about cloud accounting. And actually we had transitioned to a paperless office, in Tucson, Arizona, which you're in Scottsdale, right? 

[00:05:48] Blake: Yeah. I'm not far from there. Yeah. 

[00:05:50] Serena: Yeah. I'm in Prescott. So I'm not far from you. 

[00:05:52] Blake: Oh, awesome. 

[00:05:53] Serena: But yeah, it was in Tucson and we had a very small CPA firm, and all of our clients were local, but we still did everything paperless for the most part, like internally. But our clients would still come to sign the tax documents and all the things, but it's just funny that like, we did have one or two clients on QuickBooks Online, back there, and it's like first iteration and it was horrific

[00:06:16] Blake: Oh, yeah. Yeah. The first one. Well, that's why I did Xero. So I made the switch to the cloud from QuickBooks desktop in like 2009, I wanna say? And so it was terrible. QuickBooks Online was not good. I was using Bill.com QuickBooks online. Is it okay to say that? 

[00:06:35] Serena: Oh yeah, my, my audience knows I'm full on Xero here at my firm. Like I have a lot of people in the audience that obviously are in QuickBooks, but I joke a lot about like hating it. Right? Like it's just, it is what it is. 

[00:06:47] Blake: Well, that's why, when, when David and I started the podcast, it was like, I was the Xero guy. He was the QuickBooks guy, but now they're so similar. It's like Pepsi, Coke, it's your flavor, whatever you like. Right. That's what it is. And so I don't fight those battles anymore. Like it's whatever you want, you can do what you want. I personally think that Xero has a much better cash accrual engine 

[00:07:06] Serena: For sure! 

[00:07:08] Blake: That's where a lot of issues happen with QuickBooks, but that's super nerdy and most people don't care, you know?

[00:07:13] Serena: Yeah. I care. And side note, anyone listening, if you're helping any SaaS clients, software as a service, typically they wanna see accrual financials, but they also wanna see cash basis stuff. And so you have to just switch them. There's no getting around that. 

[00:07:28] Blake: and I did that for a client. I put 'em on Xero and I had a whole strategy where we ran everything. We booked everything cash basis throughout the month. And then we would do journal entries at the end of the month to do the accruals and deferrals. And so we could switch between accrual and cash basis reports and they all tied out perfectly. You can't do that in QuickBooks. 

[00:07:49] Serena: I don't even know if you can do that in most ERP systems. Xero really has like their direct cash flow statement. Like amazing. We can never even figure that out in corporate with the system that we had, like, we were recreating the wheel and I'm like, how did Xero figure this out and Great Planes didn't? 

[00:08:06] Blake: It's because Xero had actual CPAs writing code. Like Peter Wen is an example of that. He was at Xero in the US when they started, he was one of the first dozen employees and he's a CPA. And he was guiding a lot of that development and, you know, unfortunately, most tech companies serving accountants and bookkeepers, don't do that. They think, you know, it's like this arrogance in the tech world, and I know this cause I've worked for technology companies now. They think they know everything. 

[00:08:35] Serena: Yeah? 

[00:08:36] Blake: And they try to tell us what to do and, oh man, that does not go over well when you talk to accountants. Like listen to your customers? Anyway. 

[00:08:44] Serena: Yeah. I feel like they just see dollar signs. 

[00:08:46] Blake: Yeah. Yeah. And so we've we see this now, like the latest one, I don't know. Have you heard of digits? 

[00:08:51] Serena: Mm-hmm 

[00:08:52] Blake: Yeah, so they've come in with their $100 million and their flashy marketing. And now they're like, we're gonna turn bookkeepers and accountants into advisors with our tools. And I'm thinking to myself, I've heard this spiel before. Many companies have come-- 

[00:09:08] Serena: Deja vu. 

[00:09:08] Blake: And they're building the product as they sell it. And I just think it's really funny because I don't see CPAs running this company. I don't see a bookkeepers, like on the development team. And they're literally in their product forums asking customers, how do I build this kind of report that you want? I mean, that's good that they're doing that, but I don't know. it is funny, right. The founder of course founded a company called crash analytics, which is like for app crashes. And now he's gonna like reinvent how we do financial reporting. I mean, kudos to him for being brave and stuff like that, but still come on, you know, it's a little bit arrogant, isn't it? 

[00:09:43] Serena: Oh, good old tech companies. All right. So. I'm also a musician, which is just really funny. Like, I feel like there's a lot of accountants that are musicians.

[00:09:52] Blake: I think so too, especially classical. I don't know. What do you, what do you play? 

[00:09:56] Serena: Yeah, I grew up playing trumpet and I taught myself guitar and I also played drums and now my biggest favorite pet instrument is my ukulele. 

[00:10:07] Blake: Well, that's nice. Cause you can travel with it, right? 

[00:10:09] Serena: Yeah.

[00:10:09] Blake: I played the cello. So that was the most inconvenient instrument to play in school. I had to buy a seat for it on the airplane. Sometimes they would hassle you, the security people wouldn't know what to do. I'm like, let me take it out, they're like no we have to-- 

[00:10:21] Serena: It's not a body. I swear. 

[00:10:23] Blake: I know. Right. And yeah, so good. Good. I wish I picked a smaller instrument. But you know, I do have to say that the ladies loved the cello when I was younger and that alone, right. I didn't have a lot going for me other than that. So thank you cello for being something that, that got me through.

[00:10:43] Serena: Awesome. Okay. So one of my questions for you was, cuz you mentioned that you built a bookkeeping business and you sold it. 

[00:10:52] Blake: Yes. 

[00:10:53] Serena: And I'm pretty open with everyone in my world. Pretty much that like that's my vision with my company is to sell it. So I want to just kind of like hear, is that something that you intended from the beginning or did you like partway in, you were like, maybe I could sell this or was it completely like random someone came to you and was like, I wanna buy your business, and you're like, oh? 

[00:11:17] Blake: So there were a few stages. Okay. First stage was, I just needed to make money. So I was freelancing. Yeah. Second stage was, I discovered the Xero apps and ecosystem, and I realized we could do this all from home, anybody anywhere I had that revelation that a lot of people now have.

[00:11:35] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:11:35] Blake: Just before a lot of people in the us. And I saw it was working in Australia and New Zealand, and I said, I'm gonna build. A accounting, bookkeeping, startup, and we are gonna take over the world. So I actually got an investor with some angel money that L allowed us to hire and I wanted to be basically what pilot is. I had that dream and I built it for several years and we got it to close to a million dollars in annual revenue. Which, you know, I would say that's like the big milestone for a firm. 

[00:12:09] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:12:09] Blake: If you can get to that much annual revenue, then it's pretty easy to sell it. And also you could just scale it from there.. But what I discovered as I went from zero to a million, was that the hardest part was the people hiring and retaining other bookkeepers. And every time I had turnover, it created a ton of friction in the business. Meaning just now I gotta deal with the clients. Now I gotta deal with all the stuff that comes with trying to transition a book of business.

[00:12:37] And I realized that because bookkeeping is still very relationship oriented. Even when you automate a lot of stuff, it was never gonna scale like a technology company. And I think a lot of the tech companies that have come in now and are doing this, like Pilot, maybe they still haven't realized that. That's what happened with Scale Factor.

[00:12:58] I don't know if you've heard about that collapse, but they were a technology company. They sold themselves like a software as a service business, and they were basically doing bookkeeping and they went belly up. And they, I have it on rumor ,that they were hiding their cost of labor. Down in OPEX and not putting it, you know, above the, not calculating it in their gross margin like we are supposed to as service businesses. And so I think the investors figured it out, you know, and it went under. 

[00:13:28] But to get back to like my story, I realized that this was a problem and that I could be successful and grow a, a very successful business, but it wasn't gonna be like, you know, a tech company, I wasn't gonna be a tech founder kind of thing. And I started to just get kind of like tired of it. And so I met a CPA firm owner who wanted to get into the bookkeeping business. He had a tax practice and kind of didn't know how to scale the bookkeeping. And he basically said, I'll merge you in and make you a partner. And so I took the offer.

[00:13:58] And I think anybody who's done a merger realizes that the first one you do, you don't ask all the questions. You don't figure out everything that's gonna happen. And so I wanted to leave after about eight months. I wasn't happy not being in control anymore. Fortunately, we had negotiated and I highly recommend this to anybody. If you're gonna do a merger or a sale, and you're gonna stay with the company. I negotiated an exit. I prenegotiated an exit like prenup so if I wanted to leave, I would get to take a certain amount of money and get that paid out to me. And it was prenegotiated and we would both be happy with that. So I did that. And so I got rewarded for what I have built and I was able to go off and now, you know, I did the tech thing I told you about, and I, now I'm doing the podcasting thing. But I think I forgot what your original question was.

[00:14:46] Serena: That answered it because I was just asking, like, was that your original vision? Did it just kind of happen, right? 

[00:14:51] Blake: Yeah. I mean, the original vision was very ambitious, and then it sort of scaled down. and then I kind of got disillusioned. Which I think happens. When you're building a business like this, it is a roller coaster ride. I mean you have highs and you have lows. And I had days where I was like, dancing, like literally dancing right around the house. And then I had days where I was just like, I just want to like burn it all to the ground and go get a regular job. 

[00:15:17] Serena: I think we all, like, I think that's a normal part of entrepreneurship, honestly. The trick is to try to be less wanting to burn it to the ground, like less frequently than you feel good about it, right? If the scale tips to where most of the time you wanna burn it to the ground, something has to change . 

[00:15:37] Blake: In retrospect I do regret selling when I did, I got, I got paid fine for it. Right. But I could have gotten a lot bigger and I'd be very wealthy now I think. But at the same time, I wouldn't have had all these opportunities that taught me a lot. Yeah. So, and now I really enjoy what I'm doing and I think that'll be really successful, you know? So like, I'm glad it worked out the way it did.

[00:15:57] But I would say also, if you're in that place where you're building a firm and you've got like half a dozen employees, it's a very scary place to be. Because if one person leaves you're really screwed, you need to get to like a dozen, get to 20. And if you get to that point where your team has redundancy built in then you really start to see the fruit of your labor, but there's this, there's this tough part. You start at one person. And as soon as you add people, everything is really hard and it doesn't get easier for like years. And that's why most people, I think fail. I mean, I wouldn't say most people fail, but a lot of firms they give up. Right. And it's because of that. That Small firm's basic under 10 is so challenging.

[00:16:38] So I would say either stay independent and just be a freelancer or say, I'm gonna try to scale past 10. And if you're gonna be smaller than that, make sure that you're working with people, you know, and trust like family, friends. You don't wanna have employees at that size where if they decide to, leave and not take care of things that you're gonna be in big trouble. And I had some of those things happen. Right. And then I spent months cleaning it up. And it just sucks to be dealing with unhappy clients. That's not fun. 

[00:17:07] Serena: Oh yeah. 

[00:17:09] Blake: If you're a people pleaser like me then 

[00:17:11] Serena: I think most accountants are people pleasers.

[00:17:13] Blake: I think so. 

[00:17:14] Serena: I think that's part of the job description, but do you think that part of disadvantage for you was that you wanted it to be like a tech company and not just a bookkeeping company and be okay with the bookkeeping margins? Do you think that was part of it? 

[00:17:30] Blake: Yeah. I mean, I think that was it. If I'd had different expectations going into it. Yeah. Like now if I did it again, I would know exactly what I to expect and how long it would take, and how much money it would take. And, you know, I would just say like, if you're gonna do this, it's really good to have a lot of savings, cuz it's gonna take a while before it really starts to pay off. And I didn't. 

[00:17:47] I will say that thinking like a tech company really helped me because I didn't have any preconceived notions about how to do it. And so we did really good digital marketing. We built a system where I was able to extricate myself from the client service. So by the end of the three, four years, I was not doing any client work whatsoever. I didn't even know the clients who were coming on board. I had no contact with them. I was just sitting back and collecting a check And I know that's the dream for some people. It was definitely pretty cool. But to do that, you have to like spend a lot of time documenting processes and building task management and all this stuff that you gotta do as a business owner. And then of course you do all that and then you get to deal with HR issues, right? 

[00:18:33] Serena: Yeah, like that's one of the conversations I had today with some of my students is like, they asked how much time I spend in my firm. And I'm like, not very much like actually meeting with clients, less than a couple hours a week.

[00:18:48] Blake: That's awesome. 

[00:18:48] Serena: The most time I spend is pouring into my team. So when you get to the point where you're ready to hire people, you have to know that that's where you spend most of your time. 

[00:18:59] Blake: I agree. I agree. And create the redundancy, create the systems, create the feedback loops that allow you to know whether they're doing their job and doing good work. Because people need that, right? You can't just hire people and say, go. They will fail. Most people will fail. 

[00:19:13] Serena: Yeah and the people that will succeed at it are just gonna become entrepreneurs.

[00:19:18] Blake: Exactly. They'll be like, this firm isn't offering me anything that I can't do on my own. I'll just go do it on my own. Right. So yeah, and keep it simple, you know, like we did bookkeeping, bill pay payroll. We didn't do sales tax. We didn't do tax. We just did those three things. We did 'em really well. And we served a certain size client. Those are great businesses. It really is. 

[00:19:39] Like actually when I left my full-time gig to do the podcasting thing, I actually thought about starting a new firm and documenting it from scratch as like a podcast project. I still have that idea and actually, I found someone. Who I think's gonna do it. 

[00:19:52] Serena: That's cool. 

[00:19:52] Blake: And so now I'm producing shows, right? So we're gonna turn that into like a show and people will tune in to hear the journey and learn from the mistakes and all that. And so that's how I'm gonna get to do that again. 

[00:20:03] Serena: That's cool. Yeah. I feel like. Bean Ninjas did something similar when they did the merger at an acquisition, but it might have just been like a small series. But that's... that's kind of my plan, cuz like my vision is to sell my company. So like I'm gonna record everything like during the process and not release it till everything's done.

[00:20:25] Blake: So do you share your numbers? Like where you're at? Like where do you wanna go? 

[00:20:29] Serena: Yeah. So my vision is probably to sell at that point, like at least at a million in revenue. Yeah. If I can maintain the margins that I have right now, I will be able to get three X, the revenue, you know what I mean? 

[00:20:41] Blake: Yeah. That's awesome. 

[00:20:41] Serena: But yeah, it's a lot of intention and strategy behind how you price and the clients you bring on and the team you bring on, like, it's intense, but that's, what's gonna make it attractive. For a buyer or a acquisition. I don't know if I wanna do like a merger, cuz I just wanna exit when I'm ready.

[00:20:58] Blake: Yeah. And the key is, if you're not doing the client work and you can demonstrate that to an investor, then they'll be confident in acquiring it and letting you go. Right. Letting you leave. Otherwise they're gonna want to tie you in for a long time, which if you're an entrepreneur and you like being the boss, it's not fun to have an investor as your boss or some other firm as your boss, as I discovered I was like, Oh, yeah. I'm not in control anymore. This isn't so much fun. 

[00:21:23] Serena: Yeah. And I've seen that from the corporate side, as one of the accounting team members when the acquisition happens and when the CEO is discarded, like multiple times. So I'm like, I've seen it from internal, operations. So I know what to expect there. I know myself, I will already have been removed enough that it won't be an issue. So I will just collect my check and move along. But anywho! So the reason, the way I actually got you on this podcast is through relay because you are-- what is the thing that you're doing with them? 

[00:21:58] Blake: I am the accounting community advocate for Relay Financial. 

[00:22:03] Serena: All right. 

[00:22:04] Blake: It took us a long time to-- 

[00:22:05] Serena: I didn't wanna screw it up. 

[00:22:06] Blake: No, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we took a long time coming up with that title, so gotta get it right. Basically I am their on call accountant to go talk to the accounting community. So they call me up and they say, Hey Blake, we wanna do a webinar and let's pick your brain on what kind of topics do accountants wanna hear about? And then I'll host it. 

[00:22:27] We do this series called Gearing Up with Relay. We just ended our first season and it's a video series where I interview a firm owner, and in each episode we talk about one challenge they had and how they solved it. And you can go just search, Relay, Gearing Up. You'll find it. You can subscribe to get the second season when it comes out. That's been a fun one. It's sort of like a hybrid of like a video series and a podcast. Everything's like both now. 

[00:22:52] yeah. Uh, when I do hear thoughts about how we can improve Relay from accountants and bookkeepers, I passed those on to the team. They asked me for feedback occasionally on the, on the product, like the 10-99 reporting thing. I got to talk with Henry who's the lead product guy. And he asked me a bunch of questions. So hopefully that works for everybody that see that export CSV thing you can do. 

[00:23:14] But yeah, it's the way that I pay the bills while I build my own app, which is called Earmark CPE and that's a mobile app that gets you continuing professional education for listening to podcasts. So I do the Relay stuff and then I plow all that into development of my app. And it's a great relationship because I use relay personally for my podcast. I use it for Earmark. I recommend it to everybody. I think the founder Yusuf, who was at Hubdoc, he was employee number one at Hubdoc is awesome.

[00:23:46] He's like a tech guy. I just it's funny. Cause I just spent like 20 minutes bashing technology companys, but there's some really good people in tech, in accounting and Yusuf is one of them. The people who stick around. I don't like these people who just come in and they're like, we know nothing about your industry, but we're gonna fix everything that's wrong with it. Right? Yusof has been in this space for like a decade and really building products that help accountants and bookkeepers. And we ran into each other at a conference we're saying hi. And he was like, Hey, what are you doing? And I told him I was leaving my company. He's like, we should talk. So that's how that happened. 

[00:24:19] Yeah. So I love working with Relay. Everybody should go sign up for Relay, get your clients on Relay. It's awesome. 

[00:24:26] Serena: Yeah. I'm constantly shoting it from the rooftops, which is why I wanted to have you on. So they recently released a partner certification or accountant certification. 

[00:24:36] Blake: That's one of the things I got paid to do. Yeah. Yeah. Now you're reminding me. Thank you. Yeah, so that's a, like a two hour certification. You can get a badge to put on your website. You can be a relay certified banking partner. And the idea behind that was to teach accountants and bookkeepers how to advise their clients on banking, because it's not something we are really comfortable doing a lot of the time, but I think is super important. And I dunno about you, but I had clients all the time asking me, Hey, I hate Chase. I hate Wells Fargo. I hate B of A, what should I use? And I didn't really have a recommendation for them, and now I do. 

[00:25:12] Serena: Yeah, so absolutely. And it makes like, it, it makes our jobs so much easier. The clients that we have on Relay, their bookkeeping is clockwork.

[00:25:22] Blake: That's right.

[00:25:23] Serena: Because we have access to the statements and we can go dig into Relay to figure out if something's funky. Like the feeds have only broken once the whole time I've been working with them. And it only, I don't know if it happened to all the clients, but it definitely happened in my own books. But seriously, over the past, however many years we've been working with them for that only to happen once that happens monthly with other bank accounts.

[00:25:49] Blake: Oh yeah. 

[00:25:49] Serena: So it's like every month we're getting our client on the phone to have them reauthenticate the bank because it's, you know, It's probably also a bank that doesn't have statement only access. So we don't have access to it. 

[00:26:04] Blake: And setting up new accounts. I started a new entity for the production company that I'm starting with David Leary and I got my EIN letter. I went into Relay. I'm signed up as an accountant there. So I just added myself as a client. And then I went in as a client and I started onboarding as if I were a client. I actually hadn't seen what that looks like from that perspective. So I was eager to try it. I just did this like yesterday. And within 10 minutes I uploaded my driver's license. The articles of incorporation, the EIN assignment letter and boom! Account was set up. 

[00:26:40] I mean, it's just spectacular to be able to do that and we can open all these different checking accounts for every show that we produce, cuz we're producing podcasts for different people. And so we sell ads on a show and then we can move the money into that account and make sure that we don't spend it before we've given out the podcast host's share. Okay. Cause we do a rev share with the host and like, I just love having that ability to never have to go into a branch and be able to do all that. It's great. They're doing great things.

[00:27:12] Serena: I think I met Yusof at BKX last year. And yeah, great person. It was awesome. And I'm proud to be a certified banking partner. 

[00:27:22] Blake: Awesome. 

[00:27:22] Serena: I was like, that's awesome. As soon as I saw the email come out, I was like, I'm just gonna try this out and see what it is. And I was done within an hour or two maybe and got the badge and everything and and then I reached out to you guys. I was like, Hey, do you wanna come on the podcast and talk about it? 

[00:27:37] Blake: That's awesome. Well, thank you for, yeah. Thanks for having us on and thanks for having me on. Representing Relay. Yeah. I should have worn my relay shirt. I know I've got mine. 

[00:27:46] Serena: I'm not wearing mine either. But you are wearing your cloud accounting. 

[00:27:49] Blake: Cloud accounting podcast shirt. It's okay. Because most people are gonna listen to this as a podcast, so I'm good. 

[00:27:55] Serena: Yeah, we are good there. So what is next for you? So you briefly talked about Earmark CPE. That's what it was called, right? The app? 

[00:28:04] Blake: That's right. Yeah. Go on, have it app store, you go on iOS app store, apple app store, Google play. You search for Earmark CPE, like financial earmark and you'll find us. What else can I say about it? It's free. You can get one CPE every week for free. Now I know that if you aren't a CPA. You probably don't have a continuing professional education requirement, but even if you don't, it's a great place to find new accounting and bookkeeping and tax podcasts because we try to get as many of them as possible on the app and Hey, you know, like you can go and take courses and take a quiz and you can learn without having to check the box. 

[00:28:41] Serena: Yeah. That's honestly, like sort of genius when I was getting, I think it was after I got licensed and I was looking at CPE stuff. There was-- it's come a long way, but also still hasn't and I always thought it would be really nice to get CPE for listening to audiobooks or podcast or whatever. Cause I've been a podcast listener. A long time ago. Like pretty much when they started, I feel like . And that's always how I would consume content while I was working. And I felt kind of the same way about the study courses for the CPA exam is like, you had to be in front of a computer.

[00:29:16] And I hate, I just hate that. Like I'm in front of a computer all day. I don't wanna go home and be in front of the computer again to study for my exams. So I feel the same way about CPE and. I feel like I had the thought of doing what you're doing and you stole my idea. 

[00:29:31] Blake: Oh, well, great minds think alike.

[00:29:34] Serena: Yeah. But I never did anything about it. So I'm glad you're doing it though. Cuz that's the thing about ideas and I'm gonna get a little woo here in a second, but like you'll have an idea at some point in your life where if you don't action it, someone else will action it. Even if you never talked about it.

[00:29:49] Blake: Yeah. Yeah. Well, and I'm not the only one who does this, you know, there's another company in Canada called Lumi Q. Oh, that's doing podcasts CPE. I feel like there's a lot of room in this market for different approaches. Like they're more like a Netflix where they produce all their own content. It's like super high quality. It's an expensive subscription cuz you know, you're paying for what you get. For me, we're more like a YouTube where it's, you know, anyone can create a course. I wanna make it like super easy for anyone to take a video they made or a podcast. And then. We wrap it in the CPE course, and we do that. Like, you can make one for free. So if you have content-- Listeners, if you have content like a podcast episode, or a YouTube video, we just have to make sure it meets the minimum length requirements because of course NASBA rules are time based. So it has to be like 40 minutes at least. 

[00:30:41] Serena: Okay.

[00:30:41] Blake: If you've got like 40 minutes of content, Contact me, blake@earmarkcpe.com we can put it up on the app as a course, and you can help other folks learn what you know. And so I wanted to make it like a community thing. That's the idea. 

[00:30:58] Serena: That's really awesome. I didn't realize that we could submit content.

[00:31:01] Blake: Yes. So like this show. This show could be on earmark for CPE credit. 

[00:31:06] Serena: Let's do it because I have lots of accountants and bookkeepers listening to my show. 

[00:31:10] Blake: All right. And we do one for free for all of our authors. So just you tell me which episode or episodes to get to that minimum requirement you have and send that to me. And we'll get it up on the app, like in a couple weeks. 

[00:31:22] Serena: Awesome. So you do one for free-- 

[00:31:25] don't do 

[00:31:25] Blake: this one though. Cause there's way too much of me on this app. 

[00:31:28] Serena: Oh, that's okay. I have some ideas. So one is free, but for like the audience, if someone has say, I don't know, four hours of content that they're teaching inside of their firm to their team for example. 

[00:31:44] Blake: Yeah. So if you want this to be internal to your team and you don't want it to be like available publicly, that is on the roadmap. We're gonna create that. So you could have a private channel and then only your team would see that.

[00:31:57] Serena: Okay. 

[00:31:58] Blake: And you could offer them CPE. I think that'll be really helpful too, for like the mid-size firms where they have internal trainings, and you could make, you could basically make your onboarding. Like CPE eligible. 

[00:32:11] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:32:11] Blake: Or like all your weekly trainings that you do CPE eligible. We don't have that now though. But, but what we do have-- 

[00:32:16] Serena: That actually, wasn't what I was thinking, but that's really awesome that it's coming down the pipeline. Kind of what I meant was like, if you already have the content that you're providing your team internally and making sure that your team's educated on certain stuff and you want to share it, like, what does that look like if someone has more than one course?

[00:32:33] Blake: So we have a DIY template. It's an Excel sheet, of course. and you just fill that in. It has everything that we need to set up your course in the app. I find that if I have to listen to the whole thing and then make the template, it takes about two to three hours. So if you've already, if you already know the content, cuz you made it, budget an hour to fill out the template, make the review questions. There's like eight, multiple choice questions you gotta make that takes the most time. You just send that our way and we put it on the app for free.

[00:33:02] So like you could actually put every single episode of this podcast on Earmark and we won't charge you a dime. The idea is just that we wanna get more people using earmark because we do have a subscription that unlocks unlimited CPE. So right now, the way it works is you come on the app every week, you get a free credit and that's enough for most people. Like most people don't need more than one a week to hit their requirement. Right. Which is for me 40 hours of a year. But let's say you've got a deadline coming up and you didn't-- 

[00:33:34] Serena: That's the case for most of us, let's be honest. 

[00:33:37] Blake: You need to get 10 hours. then we have a subscription to unlock that. So it's not throttled. And then that's a hundred dollars a year. So still really, really affordable. Like I wanted to make it as cheap as possible because I want as many people as possible to be able to enjoy this. I mean, we all win when we share knowledge. Right? So my hope is I wanna get a hundred thousand people on this app and if I can get like 10,000 people to pay a hundred dollars a year, I've got a million dollar a year business and we can actually run this company forever on that. It's not that expensive because we've automated all the issuance of the CPE certificates. It's self-study like, it's not like we're putting on webinars every day. So that's, my dream is I wanna build another million dollar business, but this one is CPE. 

[00:34:23] Serena: That's awesome. 

[00:34:24] Blake: And, and we can make the world a better place. Right? Improve the quality of CPE, you know, the CPA societies kind of like do a lot of the CPE or the, a CPA and they try hard. Right. You know, I know they're trying, but it's just like, it's been the same for like 30 years, you know?

[00:34:41] Serena: Yeah. So it's a new generation of accountants. We're expecting something different. Yeah. 

[00:34:46] Blake: We've already got, you know, our first 50 subscribers, we launched it this month. We're 5% of our way to our thousand subscriber, initial goal. 

[00:34:55] Serena: Awesome. 

[00:34:55] Blake: And we've got 2,500 registered users on the app. And so, yeah, I think there's a, hopefully hopefully it's gonna work. And if it doesn. It wasn't that expensive to build it. So well, relatively anyway.. Cuz my developer is in Pakistan. My CPE manager is in the Philippines. We're a global company. I mean, this is the way a lot of firms are moving too, right?

[00:35:18] Like I know a ton of firms using labor. Or staff, they're hiring staff in, I feel like calling it using labor. It's like just not the right term. Cause these are people, it is like building offices in Mexico and in the Philippines and in India. And like, it's the only way we're gonna overcome this labor shortage that we have here in the US. Yeah. So. I'm doing it myself too. 

[00:35:41] Serena: Cool. Well, that's really exciting to hear like what your vision is for Earmark. I just love talking all business things, so that's exciting. And now my wheels are turning . 

[00:35:50] Blake: I like talking about the numbers, right. When people care about the numbers. And so I do try to be public with that, share it. Right. I mean, you know, we're not a not for profit, but I think it's like if we treat our members right. And we share and we're transparent then people will support us and yeah, we're all looking to do the same thing in the end, I think.

[00:36:10] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:36:11] Blake: Absolutely. Awesome. So I'm probably gonna have to put some of my podcast episodes up on earmark.

[00:36:17] Now you have to, I see. This is my trick too. I come onto podcasts and then I pitch earmark and. I get a commitment on the recording and now it's like, you gotta do it right. You can't not do it.

[00:36:27] Serena: Yeah. yeah. Fortunately though, only my interview podcasts are the ones that usually ever hit that 40 minute mark. My solo ones are shorter. 

[00:36:35] Blake: Oh, we can bundle those. 

[00:36:36] Serena: Oh, okay. 

[00:36:37] Blake: Yeah. So we could like, and I did this with like I think I did it with Ryan Liz's mm-hmm podcast, which is like really short.

[00:36:43] Serena: Yeah. Hers are super short. 

[00:36:44] Blake: Yeah. We just bundled like five episodes together. 

[00:36:47] Serena: Awesome. Yeah, very cool. Alright, so that's your current project. It's hopefully more profitable than just passion project. 

[00:36:56] Blake: Hopefully someday 

[00:36:57] Serena: yeah. So where should people go to connect with you? There's lots of different ways, but what's the best place? 

[00:37:03] Blake: So you wanna learn about Earmark, which I just talked up earmarkcpe.com or just download the app. Mm-hmm from the app store. Personally I am @blakeoliver.com and you can connect with me on Twitter and Instagram and LinkedIn. I am @BlakeTOliver on all of those platforms at Blake T as in Thomas Oliver. And yeah, I just started like I made my Instagram account public now. Mm-hmm like, I just like finally did it and it's kind of scary, but at the same time, it's like, I don't know fun. So I'm posting more on there. So follow me on Instagram. 

[00:37:43] Serena: Yeah. Well, I think a lot of my listeners are on Instagram for sure. Cuz that's where I, I mostly hang out there. Yeah. Well maybe, maybe I'm wrong about my listeners. Actually. I have no idea, but that's where I hang out. So I think if you're gonna find people to do the earmark thing specifically, CPAs, that's probably a good place to do some stuff. 

[00:38:04] Blake: Yeah, I think so. Twitter is like I've heard Twitter described as like a cocktail hour. Mm-hmm 

[00:38:09] Serena: I'm not Twitter. 

[00:38:11] Blake: Twitter's fun. So like cloud accounting podcast is a news show. Mm-hmm , you know, it's current events. So Twitter is like the place to be for current events. Like you wanna get all the breaking stuff. Right. So that's why it's good for us there. We talk about it. You know, LinkedIn is of course the buttoned up professional networking site. It's becoming better. Yeah. But yeah, Instagram. Is just, you know, I had to get used to like, I don't know, I'm I'm 30. How old am I? 38. I had to get used to like recording video of myself, you know, holding my phone as a selfie camera like that was not natural. 

[00:38:43] Serena: Yeah. but you like being on stage, so you just look at it as a stage. 

[00:38:47] Blake: You just gotta practice, you gotta do it. And like the first hundred episodes I made were not very good. Of the podcast. Like it takes a long time to get good at anything. And so you just gotta like do it. And what I say to myself is just if it's not good, then thank you to the algorithm. Nobody will see it. 

[00:39:04] Serena: Yeah. 

[00:39:05] Blake: So it's okay. If you're putting out garbage content it's okay. Because nobody will see it and you do something good. People will see it. So don't worry about it. Right. Nobody cares. When you're scrolling through your feed, You like, see something that you kinda skip through, like, do you think about it? No. Nobody thinks about that. They'll just skip . Yeah. It's like, 

[00:39:25] Serena: Yeah. That Blake T hall over guy. Yeah. It's like his Instagram is horrible. 

[00:39:31] Blake: yeah, his lighting's bad and can't hear him and it doesn't know how to, it took me forever. You know, the thing that, that was hard? This is when I started to realize I was getting older is like the captions. I couldn't figure out how to put captions on my videos. I was like, how does this work? Like the, the filters. You know, like I finally figured it out, unfortunately, like my kid's only seven, so I don't have like a teen to like, show me how to do all this stuff. Like, I'm kind of jealous of my co-host. Yeah. Cause he's got teenagers and they can just like teach him. 

[00:39:58] Serena: I do too, but she does not willingly share that information. 

[00:40:03] Blake: Oh, that's the other problem. 

[00:40:04] Serena: She just watches from the sidelines and replies to my stories and tells me how cringy I am. 

[00:40:09] Blake: Laughs at you cringe. I want a t-shirt that just says "I'm cringe", you know, like, I don't know what or just cringe.

[00:40:17] Serena: Yeah, I don't think adding captions is that complicated. 

[00:40:20] Blake: Well, it was, it was like trying to do it after the fact, you know? Oh yeah, yeah. You couldn't do it after the fact for a while. 

[00:40:25] Serena: And then they have glitches occasionally where you can't. 

[00:40:28] Blake: This was, this was a little while ago now. It's easier. I feel like when people first started doing that, it was hard. 

[00:40:32] Serena: And not everybody gets features that are new either. And then you just think that you're stupid, but you're like, no, I literally just don't even have that button. 

[00:40:40] Blake: It's a crazy world we live in, but I don't know. There's just like, what's great about it is the ability to connect with people all over the world. Right. The things that are horrible about it are also, what's great about it. It's like, The horrible thing is now you're comparing yourself. I'm like so glad I'm not a teenager in this era. You're not just comparing yourself to everybody in high school. You're comparing yourself to everybody in the world. That is crazy and it's gotta be depressing, but now, also you can like meet all these other people who have the same interests like you and I, we would not be doing this 10 years ago, like it didn't exist. Like there, there was no way unless we both ended up at somehow the same conference in Phoenix, we would never meet. 

[00:41:22] Serena: Yeah. And so I'm gonna be at a conference there tomorrow, actually. 

[00:41:26] Blake: Oh, well, you know, if you got some free time, let's get a coffee or something.

[00:41:30] Serena: Very riveting. It's a tax conference, which I honestly have no business even being at, but I need some CPE. 

[00:41:36] Blake: Oh, this for CPE. Well, you know, there's an app for that now. 

[00:41:39] Serena: I know I've already registered and I just wanna get out. So we're going, we're gonna go. I'm gonna-- 

[00:41:46] Blake: where is it? What resort is it at a resort? Is it at like, it's gotta be at a resort, right? 

[00:41:51] Serena: Where is it at? It's at like a convention conference. 

[00:41:57] Blake: Oh, is it a convention center?

[00:41:58] Serena: It's like the,

[00:41:59] Blake: it's probably not a fun conference then. 

[00:42:00] Serena: No, it's one that I used to go to when I was at the CPA firm desert Willow conference center in actual Phoenix. 

[00:42:08] Blake: Oh, 

[00:42:11] Serena: he he's Googling it people.

[00:42:12] Blake: Yeah, this is the beauty-- 

[00:42:13] Serena: So it's just an all day, summer CPE seminar with some sales tax updates and some other updates I probably don't even care about, but I'm gonna get the CPE. 

[00:42:21] Blake: All right. Well, Hey, you know, on your way back from Prescott or on your way back from the conference, mm-hmm on the way up north. So like, Look me up. 

[00:42:32] Serena: All right. 

[00:42:32] Blake: I mean, I work at home. I look for every excuse I can to like, get out and meet real people in real life. Like this office here. Like I, you know, it's like a cubicle prison in a way. Yeah. I mean, I love it. I love working at home, but also it's important to get out and meet people.

[00:42:46] Serena: Yeah. Which is basically why I'm going to this conference. 

[00:42:49] Blake: Good. 

[00:42:50] Serena: Even though I'm probably not gonna talk to anybody there, cuz I'm introvert. 

[00:42:53] Blake: Oh, yeah. You don't seem like it. 

[00:42:55] Serena: Yeah, I have my moments. Yeah. Today the switch is on cuz I've been doing lots of interviews and tomorrow I'm gonna be, well, that's gonna be rough cuz now I'm gonna be around more people and I'm gonna be exhausted. That's okay. 

[00:43:09] Blake: So yeah. So for me, like the difference I've heard between an introvert and extrovert. Extroverts are like energized by interacting with people and introverts get like exhausted by it. And I definitely do get, like, I love being on stage. I love performing, I love talking to people. But then like at the end I'm like wiped out. 

[00:43:28] Serena: Yeah. Yeah. I will feel like that after I get off the call with you, like for sure. I'm gonna be like, okay. Name. I need a nap now. 

[00:43:36] Blake: So my trick at conferences is if I stop. I, I like lose it, right? 

[00:43:41] Serena: Yes. 

[00:43:42] Blake: Then I just don't wanna go back. So my rule is I just stay, I go hard at the conference talking to people and I don't let myself go back to the room until it's time to sleep. And I try to do it all, like in a compressed timeframe. My trick now is I do two nights at a conference and then I'm out.

[00:43:58] Serena: Okay. 

[00:44:00] Blake: So I just do it like two days. 

[00:44:01] Serena: You don't get FOMO for not staying for the whole thing? 

[00:44:03] Blake: I mean, kind of, but then, you know, you can kind of figure out like what are gonna be the best days, and you try to go then, and I feel like that's the best for introverts anyway. If I do too much, I just like, I get exhausted and then I'm not having a good time. And then I don't wanna go talk to people and that's the worst feeling? That's like when I had, I had a telemarketing job, I don't know why anyone thought I would be good at that, but that was like, it's it feels like that. It's like, oh no, I have to pick up the phone again. And dial somebody. I don't know. 

[00:44:32] Serena: I can't even make my own doctor's appointments. Oh yeah. What am I doing? 

[00:44:35] Blake: Well, you know, actually today this is a really great place. The world is a great place for introverts now because we can, we don't have to call anyone really.

[00:44:42] Serena: Yeah. You can order your pizza online. It just takes twice as long , but it's worth it. 

[00:44:49] Blake: It is worth it. And you can just have now thanks to COVID. You can just have people drop stuff at the door and it's not rude. 

[00:44:55] Serena: Oh, that's true. 

[00:44:56] Blake: Right? You don't even have to answer the door when the delivery person comes.

[00:44:59] Serena: That is very true. 

[00:45:00] Blake: Isn't that funny? 

[00:45:01] Serena: Yeah. That that's funny

[00:45:02] Blake: in our grocery store, we can go to the grocery store and somebody will just bring it out to your car, put it in the trunk. You don't even have to like, look at them.

[00:45:08] Serena: Yeah, I do that too. Well, I have little kids so it's like, 

[00:45:12] Blake: That is fantastic. I wish we'd had that when Thomas was like an infant, like the worst part was having to like get him in and outta the car for everything. Now you can just have all the stuff brought to the car. 

[00:45:22] Serena: And you actually spend less on groceries cuz you're not perusing the halls or the aisles.

[00:45:28] Blake: How old are your kids?

[00:45:29] Serena: A four a six and a sixteen year old. 

[00:45:31] Blake: Okay. Yeah. Good range there. Is a 16 year old help?

[00:45:35] Serena: Yeah. She's pretty helpful. I don't force it on her though, because they're not her kids but if she wants to make some money, she can help. 

[00:45:43] Blake: She doesn't wanna pay rent. She can help. Right? 

[00:45:45] Serena: There's that approach, I suppose. 

[00:45:47] Blake: Yeah. There you go. It's like, earn your, earn your keep. I don't know. Yeah. I just got the one. Yeah. So he spoiled out of his mind. 

[00:45:54] Serena: Yep. That was well, that was her for 10 years. Anyhoo thank you so much for coming on the podcast and everyone got to be a fly on the wall for our conversation. And thank you for sharing your story. I was very curious about that. Even though I'm a listener of your podcast, I don't know if I've ever like, heard the whole entire story, just like bits and pieces of it. 

[00:46:14] Blake: Well thanks for having me on hope to see you in person and connect with you and yeah. It was a pleasure. 

[00:46:20] Serena: Yeah, you'll be a xero con right.

[00:46:22] Blake: I'll be a Xero con. 

[00:46:23] Serena: I'll see you there. 

[00:46:24] Blake: The Cloud Accounting podcast is officially media at Xero con 

[00:46:28] Serena: oh, 

[00:46:29] Blake: come say hi. 

[00:46:30] Serena: I will

[00:46:31] Blake: you know, we got stickers. We've got t-shirts. You can get one of these sweet cloud accounting podcast t-shirts to wear around Prescott. You said? 

[00:46:39] Serena: Yep. Perfect goes along with all my other accounting stuff. Tshirt. 

[00:46:44] Blake: Exactly. All your other-- 

[00:46:45] Serena: It's like all I wear today was the one day I didn't wear a hub doc shirt wear Xero shirt. 

[00:46:50] Blake: That that was the problem with COVID too is like, I ran outta clothes to wear cuz all of them got holes. You know? Yeah. So 

[00:46:57] Serena: All right. Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast and make sure you connect with Blake on all of the platforms or any of the platforms. Links will be in the show notes and we'll talk to you soon. 

[00:47:10] Blake: Thanks Serena. Bye everyone.

[00:47:12]