Ditching Hourly

DH 383 Jason Staats
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Introduction and Guest Welcome
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Jonathan Stark: Hello, and welcome to Ditching Hourly. I'm Jonathan Stark, and today I'm joined by very special guest, Jason Staats. Jason, welcome to the show.

Jason Staats: Hello. Hello. Thanks for having me.

Jonathan Stark: We are gonna talk about a whole bunch of stuff today related to packaging your expertise and pricing it in very interesting ways, monetizing your expertise in many different ways.

Jason's Background and Career Journey
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Jonathan Stark: But first, Jason, can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Jason Staats: Um, well, I'm an accountant and before people click away, um. That. I mean, that's been my background is working in accounting firms ever since college. And then eventually I, I bought a couple accounting firms and last had a team of about 40, um, two years ago I sold back to my partner and for the last two years I've been doing, I mean, it's similar to what you do, whatever you would call this internet grift.

That's been my full-time thing the last two years, just creating helpful stuff for other people that own and run accounting firms.

Jonathan Stark: Yeah. And Jason, if you're not familiar with Jason, um, he's kind of a rock star on LinkedIn and, uh, went on tour recently in an actual bus. Is that right?

Jason Staats: No, but we did do a lot of AI imagery of a bus and people were disappointed when the bus was not real.

Jonathan Stark: Okay. Yeah, the AI stuff is absolutely hilarious. So let's just go in sort of a timeline basis. So, um, a lot of folks are really familiar with the concept of, of being like an accountant or an engineer or a developer or something like that inside of a firm. And then the idea of buying the firm or buying another one.

This is all like things that people maybe don't want to. You know, necessarily, it's not the thing for them, but they understand the concept of it.

Transition to Online Content Creation
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Jonathan Stark: So maybe starting from there, what was the first thing you did when you moved into the, the make money online Grift. So like, like what was, where were you at mentally?

Like you sold the firm, presumably you had some cash flow there, some liquidity from that, and then like what made you go in that direction?

Jason Staats: I mean, I started it long before I sold the firm, and it was, I don't know about you, but I, I mean, I never sat up in bed one morning and said, honey, I think I wanna be an accounting influencer. Like, that was, that was never a sentence that I've uttered. Um. But I was running an accounting firm. Uh, honestly, it all started very humbly.

I wanted to learn, honestly, I wanted to learn email marketing at one point, and this was like peak back in, like I feel like peak email marketing time. And so I just started this newsletter. It was kind of an accounting tech roundup and did that for six to nine months, and it was kind of stuff I was doing already on my own.

And so I just wanted to roll it up and figured I'd share it with other accountants.

Early Challenges and Successes in Video Content
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Jason Staats: Learned a lot, but then one week I did like a 92nd little loom video overview of the most clicked tool from the previous week. Put that at the top of the newsletter, and it was 90 seconds of just me talking into my laptop webcam.

And that got three or four times as many clicks as anything else in the newsletter that week. And so I did a video the next week and the video the next week, and then the production value is up and we start posting 'em on YouTube and. I mean, so we, we got more into the YouTube path from that and eventually the content kind of evolved from tech selection for accounting firms to like automation, like sort of no code development, how to make an a p, I called it QuickBooks.

I kind of niche stuff like that on YouTube. I probably wasn't until. Launched a, I launched a community kind of, um, circle had just came out. It was definitely before the big community wave, but I launched that to maybe 60 people. But at, at the time, I was running a $5 million accounting practice. So like, this was not, this was like a fun little side thing.

Eventually, over the course of the next year or two, it started to look more like a legitimate business. I had my third kid at that point in time, so kind of that mental math of priorities, they were all kind of shifting and I just kind of decided, you know what? Like this, I may actually really be able to help a lot of people doing this, and if it doesn't work out, I can always go back to being an accountant.

Jonathan Stark: Right.

Jason Staats: We rolled the dice on it. My, my wife, bless her heart, she, I mean she married a guy that was like just working for some dude's accounting firm and you know, you buy a firm and it's like you won the game. Like that's the ceiling, that's the limit. And that's where a lot of people find themselves, where they're like, oh, I'm at the top of the mountain, but now I'm gonna go and do this other weird thing.

But I dunno, we kind of just went for it, realizing we could always go back to what we were doing before, but I, it's, I would have not regretted a day of it.

Jonathan Stark: Right. So that's amazing. There's a bunch of spots I wanna jump in there. So let's go back to something tactical. Um, I love that you just sort of, you're just like, ah, I'm just gonna throw a Loom video in here. And you're like, wow, that gets a lot of engagement and I'm just gonna keep doing it. And then you said the production values started to go up.

That is a surprising stumbling block for a lot of people. So there's two things I wanna point out to the audience. One that you started with low production values and it worked anyway. And then, and then. And then I want you to sort of, if you can remember, what did the air quotes, production values going up start to look like?

And how did you, uh, presumably you didn't do that by yourself, like how did you sort of staff that up, or, or did you? I.

Jason Staats: I, the only staff I added, I pulled in an editor earlier than most people would just 'cause I had the money, I had another business and so I could afford an editor and knew I shouldn't be dabbling in that. But like to your point, people were watching it before the production level was good. Now people will watch my stuff and it's intimidating.

They're like, wow, I can never do that. And it's like, well, you weren't watching back when it sucked. And, um. One of my favorite quotes is, um, quantity has a quality all its own. So

Jonathan Stark: that's good.

Jason Staats: I was, for 18 months, I was running a 40 person accounting practice. I actually had two kids in this window of time, and for those 18 months, I published two YouTube videos a week, and at the end of that 18 months I had 500 subscribers.

Why would anybody do that? Like why on God's green Earth would you keep beating your head against the wall? I learned that I enjoyed making video, like I was not a theater kid. I was not a media kid growing up. I was none of those things. But video became this fun outlet. Where I was motivating, 'cause I, I knew I was helping people, but I, it was also kind of a creative outlet.

It was scratching an itch that I wasn't able to scratch at the accounting firm. And so I, I stumbled into a thing that is really hard for a lot of folks, but almost didn't feel like work for me. Like, that was, that was, um, something that I found about myself and I like, it's left me just so convicted that if you can find what that is for you.

And I mean, that could be talking with people. Great. Do an interview podcast, could be writing great. Like that thing that, uh, you can do and, and you just love doing. Like that is a gift if you find that. Um, and so ultimately, like how did I get good a video? Now people watch video stuff. They're like, wow, you're a natural.

It's like, I've just spent more time and money on video than anybody else in our space the last five years. And, and that's how it got good.

Jonathan Stark: Yep. Okay. So the takeaway there, I think for the dear listener is like, just start, it's gonna look ugly. I mean, our, my early podcast, 'cause I feel that way about podcasting just for audio podcasting and going back to early stuff, it was like. It's not good. It's like, it's tense, it's stiff. Uh, it's, but you just, you just go through that phase and if you crank out enough of it, you can't help but get better at it.

Um, and then, so I don't, I don't even want to get into, I know a lot of people are like, well, who'd you hire first? And what did they do And how many, what time did you post? And all that stuff. It doesn't matter. I don't think it matters. I think you just crank it out and do it and see what works. Uh, from essentially the whole thing is a test.

And like you said, if it's a fun, creative outlet, it has a reward unto itself.

The Importance of Writing and Speaking
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Jonathan Stark: Um, but I'm a, I'm a huge advocate for people running authority based businesses, which everyone listening is basically like some kind of professional who's really good at what they do, but they probably charge by the hour and they just do the activities of their craft on a, you know, hour by hour basis.

If you wanna move into higher premium fees or value pricing or really, um, high price productized services, there's two things you really would benefit from getting better at, no matter what you end up doing in the future. And that's speaking and writing and negotiating too. But, but speaking and writing is what we're talking about today.

So like. Whether it's video, whether it's audio, whatever it is, like you, it really helps to get better at speaker live events. It really helps to get better at speaking, articulating your ideas and writing helps you, in my opinion, helps you crystallize your ideas so that when you are talking about them, you can be a little bit more clear for the people that you're trying to help.

So do you know, honestly, I I, what writing are you doing, if any? It's, to me, it's just like all video all the time, but I'm probably just missing something.

Jason Staats: I mean, I'd say everything I do is writing video at the end of the day is writing, um, when you're putting together like sort of produced YouTube videos and. Podcasts and stuff like that, like we're 600 episodes into a podcast. That's about just over an hour. Three of 'em go out a week. Um, at one point we were, we were doing 30 minute podcasts daily, uh, and we did over 300 in a row of those.

Um, and it was because. I knew if I committed to that, the person on the other side of that would be very good at, at um, getting to a point faster in as clear way as possible. And like that's the power of writing is just clarity of thought. people are like, wow, you know a lot about this stuff. You understand it really well.

It's like, no, you probably just spent more time thinking and writing about it than. Than most people have. Um, so yeah, I, I don't know.

Building Authority and Professional Visibility
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Jason Staats: It's you, you, if you think about the people that you most look up to, and especially in professional domains, they can be really good at what they do, but the only reason we even know they exist is because they're prolific at adjacent things like writing or speaking or being persuasive and all that.

And that's why I think technical subject matters are the best people to do this, even though it's kind of cringe and uncomfortable. Um, in the accounting space, I mean, I say unless there are people like me doing what I'm doing, then all the education we'll have access to will, will be put out by software vendors.

And that's not a timeline.

Jonathan Stark: Right, right, right. Wait, let that sink in.

Jason Staats: any of us wanna live in. Like, that's, that's awful. Right? And where most people get stuck, and this is what's keeping more people in our space from getting into what I do, which has become a cool business, where, where people get stuck is they're like, ah, well if I, if I hang up the sticks, if I don't do that, if I don't actually do that thing myself anymore, how can I advise people on how to do it? Right. You can't actually advise people unless you do it. So I at a dinner party not that long ago with, and one of the guys there, uh, was an attorney. He's a COO at a big legal firm in New York City, and he's telling me all the problems that he's struggling with from like legacy partners and change averse people, all these different things.

Pretty much everything you would expect as a COO at a, at a, at a, a legal firm. And I was like, do you, what do you think the other firms in New York City. Are struggling with right now. He's like, oh, I know. It's all the exact same things. And I'm like, how many other COOs at these firms do you know?

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.

Jason Staats: He's like, he's like, I don't know a single one of them.

Like imagine, imagine if he just had greater access and greater transparency into what all those people are doing. I've now become ignorant to the day in the day out of running the firm and the way that I used to, but what I am, what my eyes have been opened to. I think in the last three years I've talked with more accounting firm owners in the world than anybody else,

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.

Jason Staats: and I've got my head up kind of thinking at a different level where everyone is like, wouldn't it be nice if I had that amount of time to think about strategy and sort of big picture stuff?

And it's like, awesome, I can do that for you. Like there's gonna be things that I'm ignorant to, but I can also unlock like a level of learning and understanding that people otherwise wouldn't be able to do if they didn't have the flexibility that I do.

Jonathan Stark: Right. Yeah. So I was just, uh, just to pile on that, I had a, I had the same feeling early, early when I first started, when I was switching from, you know, coding for a living to more consulting and the exact same fear. I heard it from someone just the other day, and. You know, yesterday I was on a phone call and with a guy who's very technical.

He's an entrepreneur, but he is extraordinarily technical and he, he keeps up with it and he's like on the cutting edge of AI pipelines and all this stuff, and he was just dropping jargon that I didn't even know what he was talking about. I, it was like I was never in software. But it's like you said, you're operating at a level where.

The latest JavaScript framework and like knowing the API to, you know, the latest, whatever AWS or, or OpenAI, uh, API is like it's important for what they're doing, but it's not relevant to the bigger picture strategic stuff.

Jason Staats: yeah.

Jonathan Stark: And honestly, I think part of that is what keeps technicians in the Michael Ger, uh, Michael Gerber senses, technicians.

Technicians. And the, the problem that a lot of technicians have, no matter how good they are, is they don't have enough leads. Or if they have enough leads, they're overworked in their profits are too low. Like basically those are the problems that technicians have. 'cause they don't know how to run a business.

They only know how to, you know, develop amazing software or do tax return, whatever, you know. Uh, on the accountant side. So they're great at that. And I was one of, I was exactly the same way when I first went out on my own. I was like, oh, I just need to get better and better at accounting or software development or FileMaker at, at the time.

And, uh, that doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't actually help. It just makes you, especially if you're billing by the hour, you just get faster and better so you make less and less money and. You go through clients so fast because you're fast, that you have to get more and more clients to make the same money you made last year.

So it's a, it's like, it's the hourly trap. But anyway, enough of my soapbox.

Jason Staats: no, I mean, I, I, I think the day that Al Gore flipped the switch on the internet, we all. Uh, our problem changed from being like, how do I, how do I just meet more people here locally that I can work with to, we now have a distribution problem, like we have a tremendous amount of reach in a way that's never before been possible.

And whether you've got room for 10 clients on your list, or a thousand clients on your list. All likelihood, and as a technicians like this is kind of their core problem in my mind is until you reach the day, until you reach the client list where the problems you're solving for them, those people feel those problems more acutely, you know, than anyone else in the world.

Or they like, they'll pay you top dollar. They're so like, they will write you a check bigger than anybody else you've ever worked with, with an even bigger smile on their face because the problems you're solving are so painful. Until you've found those 10 people in the world who are most pain by the problems you solve, then we ought to be investing somewhat in our reach and people being able to discover us, right?

Like so many of us are professionally invisible, where we just do this

Jonathan Stark: that's a good line.

Jason Staats: And it's like, well, where are, where are we actually showing up? Like, how is anybody gonna know you exist? I've put out. Over 300 videos on YouTube now. Um, and people in the accounting space who watch my stuff, like when they talk to another accountant who doesn't know me, they'll be like, how do you not know Jason?

But if you look in the analytics, every single YouTube video that we publish, uh, at least once a week, right now, every single video, uh, around 50% of the people who will watch that video, that's the first time they've ever seen me. After publishing for three or four years, like the world is just bigger than our monkey brains can get our heads around and we don't realize like just how much distribution's actually, what's blocking us.

Jonathan Stark: Yeah. Uh, back when I used to do the business of Authority with, uh, uh, Rochelle, we define the word authority as a recognized expert. So you can be an expert and know you're good at what you do, but if, like you said, profe, if you're professionally invisible, hell, we have a title. That's a good one. Then what difference does it make?

You can be, you can be amazing all day long, but you need to get clients. And to your point, what you really want is the clients with the super expensive problems that you can solve with a wave of your magic wand, and they will gladly pay you top dollar because you solved this expensive problem that they couldn't solve any other way.

So yeah, I mean that's, it's so cool because that's. All the exact same observations that I've made. I have different language for it, but those are the exact same observations I've made. Uh, so it's, it's always fun to see, feel like it's validated by someone who's found the same. Look. Are you seeing what I'm seeing over here?

Yeah, it's kinda the same and a totally different industry. Like I'll bet you not I'll, I'm just gonna guess 10% of my audience maybe has ever heard of you. And Yeah. So it's like, you know, I, I've heard Seth.

Jason Staats: that's a generous estimate. Yeah.

Jonathan Stark: I heard Seth Godin once say, like, he, you know, he was, he was talking to, I think it was a, a community and he was like, you know, everyone in here might, you might think I'm famous. I think he was answering a question like, oh, well I'm not famous like you, so how could I ever have a successful book or something like that.

And he is like, I'm not famous. You know who I am, but. He's not Kim Kardashian. He's like, maybe it's a hundredth of a percentage point of the people on planet Earth have ever heard my name or knew who I am or have read anything by me. You know, it's like nobody knows him, basically. It's a rounding error.

So, yeah. Anyway, so let's move into,

Jason Staats: fame is not a prerequisite to build an amazing business either, like it takes such a small number of people to find you and algorithms are actually getting better at like placing niche content. So it doesn't take, I mean, you don't have to be Kim Kardashian to run a cool, I dunno, civil engineering shop or

Jonathan Stark: Yeah, right. I was talking to an engineer yesterday and I was like, you only need 10 clients for, he's got like this idea for a subscription, sort of a fractional mechanical engineer type of thing, and I'm like, you, you only need 10 clients. Like they're, they're. 10 times, a hundred times that just in my little state in Rhode Island.

So, you know, it's like, you just need to find the ones. You don't have to be famous to everyone. You just need to be famous to the right people.

Jason Staats: Yeah.

Jonathan Stark: Cool.

Starting and Growing a Community
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Jonathan Stark: So let's move into the community a little bit. So this is, this is gonna be the selfish portion of the interview because I'm in the uh, middle, literally.

Today is the first, uh, after this call, I've got our first sort of office hours group call inside of Circle. Uh, and I started migrating people from Slack to circle earlier this month and it's taking forever,

Jason Staats: Yep.

Jonathan Stark: but, um. So what, what was the beginning of the community like for you? Because there, you know, I'm, I'm sort of kidding, but there are a lot of people listening who do like the idea of creating community and have a, the kind of business where it does make sense.

So can you give anybody, people that are thinking about doing it or just, just making those early decisions?

Jason Staats: Everybody loves the idea of a community, right?

Jonathan Stark: Subscription revenue, baby. Yeah. Yeah.

Jason Staats: But you know, it is just, uh, one more hamster wheel that you gotta run on, and it takes you away from what's probably the most important thing, which is working on your distribution. Like the path a lot of people go down is like, I make content, but now I'm gonna make this paid thing and put content behind this paid thing.

Cool. Now I got two jobs, and if every little bit of effort that you put into a walled off community could have instead been put into your reach. Like where actually should you be investing in that time? So my community, it got started with, it had kind of an initial launch offer, like most do where it's like half price.

If you get in by this date, and I'm gonna do this sort of like, it was actually an eight week like no code sort of automation series for accountants where. If you consider the price of being in the community two and a half months and getting eight hours of this education, that was an incredible value.

So it's like a no-brainer value for people that that were into that sort of thing. And then by the end of that eight weeks, I'm illustrating more the value of doing this stuff together, the value of sticking around and how you actually have a lot to learn from your peers. I would say. What most people build when they say I'm gonna launch a community is, is a fan club,

Jonathan Stark: Mm.

Jason Staats: um, is more what you would call like a coaching community, which is just like sort of one to many access to you, which to be clear is better than one-to-one access to you.

Um, I haven't been in my community in like, oh, there's no community listeners listening to this. No, it's not a big deal. I haven't been in my community in, in probably two or three months. I, I used to say I'd spend about four hours a week on it, but these days I just, I don't, I'm not really in there at all.

Um, and that wasn't how it started in the beginning, man, I was on that hamster wheel, like it was me just like dragging people along and, hey, it's a bit of a ghost town today. Like, anybody want to add some engagement? Um, and so like you, you struggle with this to sort of build it. Where we turn the corner is I ultimately got to the point where I realized I only want to run this community if the way that people get value is from each

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm.

Jason Staats: So nobody comes into the community with the expectation of access to Jason. Like they don't, they don't get any of that. What they're getting is access to a whole bunch of really like-minded folks who got there from my content. And when you get those people together and they're, they're like-minded and willing to be collaborative and all that, just like magic stuff happens.

And so in the community online, that's really cool. We see the in-person version of that at the workshops. You get a room full of people that are into the same thing and that's just like, the vibes are incredible, but. Uh, you gotta to like get a community off the ground. I mean, it has to have an amazing attraction offer and so you gotta start how you gotta start.

The Attraction Offer Strategy
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Jason Staats: But in my mind, the most scalable way to run a profitable community is to find an attraction offer that solves one problem only to reveal their next problem, which is solved by access to their

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jason Staats: So every service in your business, everything that you do, it solves some kind of problem. But almost always it reveals a new problem, a higher quality problem, right?

So you build an attraction offer to get people into the community. It solves the problem that they have, but the next problem, they then learn that they have needs to be solved by the other people in the community, not you, so that they stick around in order to have that problem solved by all the really smart people who are there.

Lessons from the Akimbo Workshop
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Jonathan Stark: Yeah, so I learned this firsthand when I joined the first Akimbo workshop 'cause I'm a huge Seth Godin fan. And, uh, I was really, uh, what was it called? The marketing seminar. So it was like, and it was, it was the first one I'd heard of. He already had the, uh, alt MBA that wasn't. That I didn't like the model that wasn't for me.

So I, I never did that. And then when the marketing seminar came out, I was like, oh, this is really speaking to me. So I, I jumped in there and he was explicit about like, I am not going to answer every single one of your questions. I'm probably not gonna answer any of your questions, but I'm gonna take questions and then I'll create a video to answer the group's questions.

And, and, uh, and so it was, so the expectation was set appropriately, and it was like a cohort based. Workshop where the lessons were dripped out like every day for, I don't know, a month and. I was shocked when I first got into it how much effort they put into, uh, first setting the expectation that if you don't contribute, you're not gonna get anything outta this and I'm not giving your money back.

Um, but also, and you know, he did that in sort of a nice way, but then it was also like they did tons of stuff to get people. Interacting directly with each other. So, so it wouldn't turn into this hub and spoke model where everybody just wanted to hear what Seth had to say about their personal problems and instead they, he would, um, I mean he had, there were other people in there like, uh, what do you call 'em, moderators or, um, community managers because there were like 1500 people in it and, and these, um, little birds of a feather like subgroups.

Came together and there were like two or three people that I was really like, that guy is cool, or She's awesome. Like, we, we clicked and I, I noticed it, um, you know, after dinner on a random night while the marketing seminar was still going on, I'd be like, I wonder what Alice did about that thing. And it wasn't like I wanted to go in and get the latest lesson.

The community was pulling me back in. It was fascinating. And I was like, highly aware of it. Um, so yeah. So, uh.

Building Community Retention
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Jonathan Stark: The other thing that you're bringing up that is a, I think a really important distinction is the attraction offer versus the churn busting, you know, the, the, the, what would you call that? The sort of retention,

Jason Staats: Yeah. Continuity offer.

Jonathan Stark: Yeah. So what, is there anything that, you know, that sort of marketing seminar story I just told, is there anything similar that you find yourself doing? Maybe tips for people that are trying to move through these phases of like, I'm basically gonna sell a workshop to get people into this community and then if I do my job, they're not gonna wanna leave kind of thing.

And 'cause mine literally started out called Group coaching in 2017 and it was totally, uh. That hub and spoke model, nobody really talked to each other. They just wanted to hear what I had to say. And it was a small group, so it made sense as it got bigger and cross pollination started to happen organically, it really felt like I changed the name of it because it felt like a place instead of like, um, access, you know, group access to, to ask me questions.

So do you, is there some parallel, I mean, I'm sure there's a hundred ways to, to a hundred tactics that you could use to do this, but what was the path for you?

Jason Staats: Yeah, people's, people's way into a community should, can and should be different than what keeps them there long term. Like especially these days, a quote unquote community, that's not a compelling offer. Like the, it, it sounds like something that takes work. The ROI is ambiguous. So still like having an offer that might be tied to you or the kind of the identity around the community to get them in is totally fine.

But then after that, if you think about what the rituals of the community are, they need to be, uh, oriented around creating as many touchpoints as possible. So what's the non cringe version of speed dating of. Pulling people into recurring meetups based on certain themes, throwing 'em out into breakout groups, so they're meeting a bunch of different people.

Um, I mean, the quality of the people and what they have in common is very important here too. Like the folks in my community own accounting firms, and there's over 700 of them, and a lot of them when they join the community don't know a single other person that owns an accounting firm. So to come into that, that's incredible.

They're like, oh my gosh, you people understand me in a way that even my spouse doesn't. So like, the energy's incredible. That's a very hard thing to replicate if I have a community for entrepreneurs, you know, or, you know, something, something like that. So, yeah, it, it's about like in the rituals of the community, how do we create as many touchpoints as possible so that that stuff can just happen.

Managing Community Dynamics
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Jonathan Stark: And at the point that you're at now, how many community manager type people do you have in there? Is this all set it and for, I, I can't, I know it's not set it and forget it, but what, in the spectrum of set it and forget it and you being in there every day, what is the, what are the mechanics at this stage for you look like?

Jason Staats: Uh, I have a GM that spends about a quarter of his time on the community. We have, um, one of the core things we do is mastermind groups, groups of like six to eight, and we have facilitators. And historically we have had members of the community be facilitators and we'll pay them to facilitate those mastermind groups.

There's, we put together 40 to 60 of these groups a couple times a year. So we'll, we'll spend a lot of money to, to have those be facilitated. We've tried. Um, un facilitated ones where you kinda leave it up to people to be adults and make that stuff happen. We have tried facilitated ones so that we provide the adult in the room.

We've ended up going with the ladder, even though it costs a lot of money, like the groups are just more likely to, to do well if you've got somebody there. Uh, but for the first time now we're hiring folks. Um, like for the community, we're hiring three people. Halftime. With them coming in to do the facilitation, but also just kind of get more involved in community stuff because we really need to start building the team for the future of continuing to grow what we've got.

But like staffing wise, it has been, has been very, very light.

Jonathan Stark: Cool.

So is there, were there smaller things that you did that you found beneficial in terms of like increasing the flywheel and attracting more people, or was it Yeah.

Jason Staats: Yeah, the baby steps were like more of those rituals being managed by people that weren't me. And so like in the beginning when you're launching it, like you doing whatever it takes to just get a critical mass of people in there to make it useful. Um, but then over time, like as you're figuring out what are the monthly rituals need to be and the things that people will continue to come back for, and that, I mean, that's.

That looks like just testing a whole ton of different formats and like, well, people are RSVP into the this one, but how many people actually show up? And like over time you keep the best stuff and drop the stuff that doesn't work. But just getting more of those rituals to be managed by other folks, um, that's taking more of the weight off of you, but it's also decreasing the expectation that the value's gonna come from you.

Which is isn't, there's a version of this where that's what it is, and that's fine, and that's better than a one-on-one business model in many ways. But if you're trying to get out from under it, it is moving more towards how do I pull other people into programming? And so I used my network to pull in what I thought were a lot of the smartest people in the world to come run these recurring sessions.

Like I, I paid them well to do so, um, like reinvesting almost all the membership fees into like, just really, really good programming. Folks would come and be surprised they'd never heard of this person before, but they'd get a bunch of value. So it, uh, the, I guess the ego's kinda gotta take a back seat.

You gotta try to build the machine that's not, you know, where you're not sort of super central to it in order for it to get more sustainable.

Jonathan Stark: Right, right. Gotta share the spotlight, so to speak. In fact, dive out of the spotlight.

Jason Staats: Yeah.

Jonathan Stark: Cool. That's amazing. So, um. Any surprising downsides to running a community that people should watch out for? Maybe red flags they could look for?

Jason Staats: I mean, most communities flame out because it's just more work than people thought it would be. Um, and it's really hard to get busy people to show up. Um, yeah, I mean, the idea of it's glorious, right? It's kind of the holy grail, recurring revenue, but it's also a recurring obligation. This's just perpetually hanging over you.

Am I providing these people with enough value? And just that thing. Always looming over you and before you know it, that can kind of consume you, and then you end up being professionally invisible and no new people are finding you because you've, you've all of a sudden become totally consumed with what's happening behind a paywall, and then your business dies.

Right?

Jonathan Stark: Yeah, just that's the, exactly the same thing is just, well it's not exactly the same thing, but it's a parallel with people who, uh, have the feast famine cycle where they're drowning in client work. So they stop doing any more, they stop doing their mailing list. 'cause I'm too busy with client work and yeah.

So good point. I.

Jason Staats: So my job in my community is to find the next amazing person that can unlock something for you in the community. So like all of my efforts go into freely available content, all my time and attention goes into building distribution because the best thing that I can unlock for somebody in the community is like pulling their new best friend in, like pulling in really, really sharp people that will make them better if they become part of the

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm. That's great. No dust ups between members or, uh, political

Jason Staats: That's shockingly rare. I mean, the biggest thing is like you'll just have some folks where their written tone is just really abrasive in everything that they do. And so you'll have some of those people just 'cause they're out there. Um. I didn't wanna be the sole arbiter of like, is this okay or not? So we just, we made a little panel of folks that decide so that I can diffuse some, some of the blame or controversy if we're like, nah, we, this person maybe needs to go or this crossed the line. But a surprisingly small amount of it, I mean the people coming into this are like successful business owners. Um, I mean, there's. Really, in the grand scheme of things, they're amazing entrepreneurs everywhere from, you know, a half million dollar to $20 million businesses. So, um, these are, these are folks that can navigate the world pretty well.

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm. Okay. And what about people who are, uh, well actually I don't know if you have any kind of application or approval process. So like what about, what about vendors that kind of sneak in and they pay, you know, a monthly fee to kind of spam. The room. How do you watch out for that?

Jason Staats: Uh, I mean this, this, we, we hold this out as like the vendor free space. 'cause there's so many vendor communities now too. Um, this is the place where people can be transparent and truthful and share their experiences with that stuff in a way that maybe they may not feel safe to do in social media. So we have to be really careful, like there is no self-serve.

Kick the door down, get in their sort of way into the community, which has its downsides. Unless you somehow add a step in there, then there's nothing to stop. You know, somebody from going in and searching for their brand in the, in the community search and doing nefarious deeds,

Jonathan Stark: Various deeds. Yes.

Onboarding and Engagement Tactics
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Jonathan Stark: So what is your, what is your onboarding process? Do you open up, like periodically do, um,

like open houses and

Jason Staats: We're pretty much open year round, but we have certain things in, in the annual programming that lend themselves well to being like, great reasons for people to sign up then, uh, but everybody just has an onboarding call with, um, uh, the community manager and. There's a lot of really good stuff that can come from that, from like, you know, the getting them to commit to annual, to, you know, even just ex just going deeper on explaining like, here are all the ways that you can extract value from this.

We try, we go out of our way to make personal connections too. Like most of the people in the community are very happy to meet new folks and like get a group DM and be like, Hey, this person, uh, they work with vet clinics too, like connecting the two of you, or you had just brought up, you were struggling with this, it came up in this conversation.

Let me connect the two of you. And people are generally like. Cool. Would love to jam on these ideas with you, but it's nothing really more than a call. The way circle is set up is there is a way to fully self onboard, but when you get in, you have just like very, very basic access that essentially is just saying you need to complete your onboarding call and then the rest of the

Jonathan Stark: Oh, cool. Okay. So they, they, they purchase and then they're in, and they really don't have that much access until they. Until it's unlocked, after they have a phone call. Oh, that's very clever.

Jason Staats: You give 'em a little bit of stuff. 'cause like I don't wanna just throw 'em into a thing that's like, ah, you don't actually get anything yet, even though you're paying me. So they get a little bit of stuff. It's not the problematic stuff, it's more the like self-serve resources that I've developed, which it's not a huge amount of 'em, but yeah, to get like community access and go do masterminds and all of that stuff, you gotta hop on a call with somebody so that we can kind of do a vibe check.

Jonathan Stark: Cool. That's genius. That's a good one. Okay.

Revenue Streams and Sponsorships
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Jonathan Stark: What about, so I know a lot of people, um, do you still have sort of like a sponsor based revenue?

Jason Staats: Yeah, so about, um, so about 40% of the business revenues is media, 40%. Ah, 30% is community. And of the rest of that. Um, half of revenue is, is live events, though those have lost a tremendous amount, amount of money. And the other half of the remaining we're, we're so into the fractions now, um, is, uh, speaking, but yes, media is still a very big part of it, like sponsorships and all that.

I.

Jonathan Stark: Mm-hmm. Okay. So for folks, so I get, here's, here's the, here's where I'm coming from with this question. Uh, I teach people how to start podcasts and mailing lists, and they'll look at like, oh, well, like, ConvertKit's kind of expensive, or Kit is kind of expensive. Or I really feel like I need to pay an, an editor to do my podcast, but that's like $200 an episode and I really need to make this thing pay for itself.

So I know. I'm gonna sell ads to a brand new newsletter or a brand new podcast. And what would you say to that person?

Jason Staats: I mean the, the best, the, the best way to build your new business is to have a business already, which most people already do. So, I mean, if you're a domain expert, 200 bucks probably isn't gonna, isn't gonna break the bank. But also when you're someone who can normally command hundreds of dollars an hour, what are you doing?

Wasting your time with a brand that's probably gonna ask way too much of you for like chump change In the grand scheme of things, that's a very privileged thing to be able to say and position to. Be in, but that's also what makes successful domain experts, the best people to do this, is you are not selling out from day one as it were.

Um. But, and so like your time at the end of the day is the most important thing, and brands will happily consume as much time as you'll give them. There are good versions of this where, I mean, who has bigger marketing budgets than software companies? Like if there's a way where it's mutually beneficial and they can put what you're doing on blast, great.

But I mean, if you have a little rinky ink sort of thing. And to be clear, what I do is very rinky ink. I mean, I have 30, 35,000 YouTube. Subscribers. I only have 15,000 people on my newsletter, like by any normal standard. In fact, a quote unquote micro influencer on YouTube has a hundred thousand subscribers. But you've got two, 3 million subscriber YouTube channels and they can't go full time. And I have a team of 10 at 30,000 subscribers. So like you can do this on a micro scale that's still really valuable. You don't have to have these big vanity metrics for a sponsorship to be worthwhile. The bigger thing is the dollar threshold, like look at the rest of your life and the ways that you make money and hopefully this isn't the only way you make money and like.

Don't take that money, like, just 'cause it's impressive or it feels good to have a sponsorship or something like that. Like, um, just like all things, make sure that that hassle is worth your time and attention.

Challenges and Advice for Content Creators
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Jonathan Stark: So let's, for these people, can you drill into the hassle a little bit? Like imagine if you didn't have, now these are people who would not have anyone helping them with this. They'd be doing it themselves. Is there, is it easy? They just send you a check and magically they send you a check and an ad and it just, every, every, it's always perfect.

Or is like, how much have time consuming would this be? How can it go wrong? Certain things that, that people wouldn't expect.

Jason Staats: that is the beauty of, of you being able to set that to be whatever you want. And weather brands will go for that. Like if I go to Notion right now. And I'm like, Hey, here's the deal. We're gonna do X, Y, Z. They're gonna be like, no, they're not. Like we've got our own way of doing this. But inside the accounting space, like I have the biggest, most mature influencer platform that there is.

So like we have the ability to be like, here's the ways that we work with brands. And it is very on rails. What we expect from you and, and how all of this works. That being said, we still do really cool stuff. We had a company do like a custom sticker pack with all these inside jokes of our content, and they got so many leads from that and people loved it.

So like we will do like cool sort of custom activations still, but at the end of the day, you, you, um. It's just like running into business or consultancy or anything like that. You just, you make the rules, you set the boundaries, uh, depending on how much control over the market you have. Brands will either be willing to play ball or won't, but, um, it's just like working with a client where they will take all the space that you give them

Jonathan Stark: Yep.

Jason Staats: unless you sort of define the rules.

Jonathan Stark: That's a great way to put it. They, they're essentially, they're, they're becoming a client. Yeah. And it, but you don't, they don't, I know people don't think of it like that. I never even thought of it exactly like that, but that is what happens. And it, and they give you a fixed fee and now they want, it's not hourly.

They give you a fixed fee and now they want everything they can possibly get out of you for that fixed fee. Of course. I've, I've heard others, you know, one of the classic stories that I like to share with people is I was talking to someone else who has a hundred percent sort of like morning brew kind of content, but for niche market.

Niche market, and you know, they, they place ads in these, these newsletters and he's like, he's like, yeah man, it's turns into a hamster wheel because like if somebody paid you a thousand dollars for an ad to go in Monday's newsletter. Well, guess what? Now I have to send Monday's newsletter, or now I have to do a podcast on Tuesday, and if I get the flu or I'm sick, you know, we're talking about one man shops here or one one gal shops.

It's, it's like a major obligation to something that really. Has no obligation other than you just like keeping up with your promise to yourself to like pump out a lot of content and all of a sudden, uh, turns it into a j. To me, when I heard that, I was like, oh yeah, I wouldn't want this to turn into a job.

Like I don't want my daily newsletter to feel like I have to do it. I mean, I feel like I have to do it, but I don't want to feel obligated to do it because Notion gave me a thousand dollars. So. Anyway. Uh, another thing that comes up is, uh, sometimes you make a mistake and the ad doesn't run in the right place, and then you have to give 'em a free ad and untangles, and there's scheduling and all kinds of issues that can happen.

I'm sure all of your, your team works that out behind the scenes for you, but it, it increases the complication quite a bit. So you better be getting paid really well if you think that this is a thing that you want to do.

Jason Staats: Yeah, I mean if to Jonathan Stark this, the progression you, the people end up going through is I'm selling inventory to, then eventually you're like, this kind of sucks. I would rather sell you an outcome. What's the brand want? What does success look like to them? Because there's a whole bunch of different surfaces that I could give this to you in in different ways and I can help you with your event and I can do this, and I can do that.

Is the outcome that's ultimately much more important than simply selling inventory. 'cause that just becomes an awful hamster wheel.

Jonathan Stark: Right. Cool.

Final Thoughts and Contact Information
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Jonathan Stark: Well, I'm looking at the clock on the wall. It's, I'm, I'm afraid we have to wrap up, but this has been super, super helpful. Thanks so much, Jason, for sharing all that information.

Jason Staats: Thank you for having me. Hopefully, I mean, I'm obviously, I'm an accounting guy, but hopefully some of this was universally relevant.

Jonathan Stark: Oh, I think so. Yeah. So where can people go to find out more about what you're doing?

Jason Staats: Oh, people don't wanna know more about what I'm doing. I, you can, you can search my name on any social media platform. You're just gonna see a whole bunch of inside baseball accounting stuff though. Um, I mean, you wanna shoot me an email? Everybody's got my email, Jason, at jason on firms.com. Like if you're building a creator business or you're like, I'm an expert in this thing, how do I go do X, Y, Z?

Um, generally I'm happy to shoot you an email and, and. Tell you at least anything that I learned on my journey,

Jonathan Stark: Very generous. Thanks for that. Alright, listeners, you heard it here first. Shoot Jay, shoot Jason an email if you have a question.

Jason Staats: it was, that was a terrible idea, wasn't it? No,

no. I mean, I'm

Jonathan Stark: number floating around.

Jason Staats: I, we've, yeah, we gave away a phone number, great marketing play, the world's first free accounting coaching service, and now 700 accountants have texted me.

Jonathan Stark: Wow. Very cool.

Jason Staats: Yeah.

Jonathan Stark: Alright, folks, we have to wrap up. So that's it for this week. I'm Jonathan Stark, and I hope you join me again next time for Ditching Hourly. Bye.