Seventeen owners and not one had a plan

S H, yes, H. You got it. Thanks so much for having me, Nicholas.

Well, there's a lot to the story because I do a few things, but primarily I own and operate an accounting and business advisory firm in the Houston, Texas area. Although we serve the entire country, we are a boutique firm that focuses on small businesses, companies doing between a million and a hundred million a year, tradesmen, service providers. we love the restaurant business because I spent a lot of years in that and so did my partner. And so all sorts of businesses like that.

You know, I think our passion is really built around helping people. And so, you know, our motto is we help small business owners to build a financial legacy for their families through their small business. And so ultimately I know as much as I spent time, I I worked for 20 years for a large corporation and I and I loved it and they treated me well. However, I really love helping people, not companies. And so we chose the SMB market specifically because we truly wanna be able to work with people. We want to help them make decisions, and we wanna be able to implement the decisions without a lot of red tape.

I was. That was the beginning of my career. I started I was very fortunate. I grew up in New York City where You can pretty much do anything. And I at thirteen years old, I started working in restaurants and just fell in love with it. I really loved working in the restaurant. I loved the kitchen. even from an early age, I like cooking with my mother and just really always just had a passion for it. I also like eating. So, you know, there's that. And yeah, it be I became very popular with the ladies because I could cook too. So that was helpful going through high school and college. And then I know my bride and

I who are about to celebrate our twenty fifth wedding anniversary is very happy that I do most of the cooking. So

Man, I did. I I was very fortunate because I worked in both the back of the house and the front of the house over the years. And I think anticipating people's needs is really important. And I think I learned that from the front of the house. You know, when I was getting to talk to someone, I started to learn what they were asking, even though they couldn't communicate it very well. And I think like a big translation for me is when I work with most business owners, they're they're technicians of their trade and they understand that they kind of want an outcome. They just don't know how to communicate what that is or how to get there. And so because of my time in hospitality, being able to pay attention to people and anticipate needs and really understand the story behind the story, it really helped me in this business to translate what someone's looking for to truly understand what's going to bring them peace.

Yeah, I think it's evasive. I think part of the problem is that so many small business owners live out of their company. And so there's a lot of information that does not show up on the profit and loss statement, which I think is the most common un most understood document for business owners, but they don't understand the balance sheet. And if they don't understand the balance sheet, they don't understand how loans are affecting them from a principal payment perspective. And they don't understand how owners' extractions of capital. I can't tell you how many times, Nicholas, that I'll visit with a business owner. Their PL at the end of the year says like a hundred thousand dollars profit. And they're like, I don't have any money. And I'm like, Well, you took it all out throughout the, you know, you took five thousand a month to pay your mortgage, you took out money for your vacation at Disney. Like, did you not remember that? And they don't remember it because they didn't see it. And it happened in small increments over the course of a longer period of time. And so when they start to understand that and they can start to be presented with this information, it's so valuable to them because then they can dec make some decisions. I either need to make more money or I need to control my lifestyle, but it's not my business that's the problem. So it is very helpful.

You know, a hundred percent, kind of going back to what I was saying earlier, we serve people. And early on in my relationship with any new client, I really go back to the beginning of what financial peace is about and what what I was teaching children or or teenagers. And and what I love is when people understand that their purpose in their business is to financially support their household. And when they start to connect those dots, they start to make different decisions. And it helps them to drive further too, because they understand their purpose behind it better than just going to work every day. So many people start a business because they don't want a boss. I always laugh with that one because then they have a hundred bosses instead of just one. But but then they, you know, they want financial freedom, they want time freedom, and they don't have any of that because all they did was start a job. But they're their own person. So they they're just now running for everybody that they get a chance to make money with. And so teaching those things helps. But I also have kind of a philosophy as well that I don't believe in retirement. I believe that we're supposed to keep working, whether it be just teaching or doing something of value to the people that are are that we're surrounded by our circle of influence. And I have an 80-20 rule right now. And so for me, my ultimate goal is right now, I spend about 20% of my working hours teaching financial literacy for households. Teenagers are are great because most of them don't have a relatable conversation about money. I teach financial peace because it helps a lot of people. And I love doing that and giving back that way. And my ultimate goal, what I'll call retirement, is when 80% of my time is being given away and 20% I'm charging for. Cause I like the transaction. I like I like making money. I like, you know, working with people and and having a transaction occur. And so I think that I'll want to stay on with that forever. And fortunately being in an intellectual thing, and so long as my brain is working, I'll be able to help people.

Yeah, man, I think number one is just not paying in paying attention. I think that particularly so living in America, a very affluent environment, I think that we take for granted intentionality. You know, I think that very few Americans budget, which to me is a using a plan to make decisions versus just making decisions and hoping everything works out. And so I think the average person is just blind to what they're what they're really doing. And I think that a lot of people in particular love talking to teenagers about this. And I love showing them compound interest charts and saying, if we were just better at managing a little bit, just put a little bit away at an early age, you'll have a whole lot of bit later. And unfortunately, most of the people who come to financial peace class, for example, are not young. They've got 40 years of problems behind them and they're now trying to recover. versus a twenty-year-old who could put just a couple hundred bucks a month away and be a millionaire by the time they're fifty if they're just diligent on being proactive and intentional.

Well, I've implemented quite a bit on AI. And I think there's a few key things. Number one is it's making us better employers, because if we were able to teach employees to do these re repetitious tasks as clearly as we're talking to Claude and Chat GPT and you know other Google and other ones out there that are working right now, then we're gonna be much better employers. We're gonna be much more clear and plain about our expectations and what we're trying to accomplish as as correction. You know, when Claude sends you something back that's not right, you have no problem saying, hey, that's not right. But with an employee, a lot of times we're like, I gotta have this conversation with Susie. I'm gonna feel bad. She's gonna feel bad, but I just need to tell her to do it this way instead of that way. I think we need to have a lot more of those conversations. So I think AI is actually going to turn us into better communicators. And then I think that another thing is that it's going to minimize less valuable tasks. Because it's gonna create the ability to do repetitious things. I mean, I I use I use some of the tools for a lot of the repetitious things going on in my life. And so I was laughing with you earlier before the call too. One of the things my bride and I are are planning a trip to Italy. And so we started with Claude and said, Hey Claude, plan an amazing romantic trip to Italy for 10 days and this is the season we wanna go and this is what we wanna do. And man, it came back with some really good stuff in like twelve seconds. I mean, you know, it was just nuts. And so I love using it for that. Where I do believe that AI is going to take a lot longer to cultivate is really going to be the strategic components behind information. So what do I do with it now that I have it? And I also believe the one big gap for AI that I don't see it fixing anytime in the near future where we can find value is creating behavior change. What I'll learn is what makes Muculas tick, like what motivates you versus somebody else that AI is not going to pick up on inherently. And so when I can find that out, I can help you change your life, change your business, change your platform, change your future. And AI is not going to touch on that. So what I do know for sure is the value in commoditized work like accounting is going to continue to be minimized in value, where the value in in advising and helping humans to be the best human they can be is gonna have a much higher value than what we've experienced in the past.

That's right.

That's right.

Yeah. All the above, you know, I think one of the biggest use cases that I use it for is I use AI as an accountability partner. And so one of my ultimate goals is to make sure that we give a customer service level that's way above and beyond what the average experience is going to be in our industry. And by putting people's information in and then creating recall really helps me out a ton. so if I'm about to meet with Mikolas and I got to know him a little bit and I understand that he loves to have beer in Prague, then I would be able to recognize that and say, Yeah, right. And say, hey man, how How was the last you know, did you get down the street for Oktoberfest? Did you get to, you know, I heard there's some new beers coming out? Did you get to try something? And when we have those kind of things, I think exactly like what you said, it makes our relationship more connected and human. and so by being able to utilize AI as part of my memory and my accountability partnership, that's one of the number one use cases for it. the other thing that I definitely think you should be doing is definitely use it for repetitive tasks because Because I think one of the things I've identified with small business owners in particular is they don't spend enough time on strategic work because they don't have time for it. And so if we can create appointment setters, if we can create marketers, if we can create a lot of the things that we're spending countless hours on, follow-up, billing, invoicing, all those kind of things, we can edit it and we can review it before it goes out in a small fraction of the time, 10% of the time, that it would take us to create those things. And so the more of it that we're using for those types of things, and my my biggest advice is stick with it. Just like an employer. Employee, it needs to be able to make a couple of mistakes and work through some things so that it can learn and correct it. The best part is, like I was saying earlier, you can say, Claude, you really suck at doing that, and it's not going to hurt its feelings. You know, it's going to be, in fact, Claude's built to be like, you're absolutely right. I really suck at that. Sorry about that. Let me try this, you know, and and it'll come back and give you an answer that you're looking for, but keep working at it so that you can posture that. And if for some reason you're not getting the result you're looking for. looking for, ask someone else to give you some prompt ideas on how you can ask the question differently. Because typically it's the user that's creating the problem, not the system.

Yeah, it's amazing. Great tools.

Yeah, that's a great question. And so MSH was really created as an advisory service with an accounting backbone. And the accounting backbone is super important because we want accurate information. It's very difficult to provide good business advice without an accurate scorecard. And so the typical onboard for us is a chance to get to know someone and get to know their motivation. Although when we do discovery with them, that's typically the stage we're starting to understand because we only want to work with people that we're going to bring value to. And if all you want is accounting cleanup or some tax advice or something like that, I'll give that to you for free. I'm not that interested in working with someone long term because 100% of our clients are on a monthly retainer. So we want to talk to you all the time and we want to make a difference in your life and in your business. And so when we do our orientation, the first thing we're doing is prioritizing the most important things for the business owner. Is it growth? Is it cash flow management? Is it human resources? Exactly what is it so that we can get them to a scaling position? One of the caveats during Discovery is we also we only work with people who want to grow. We don't work with people who just want to maintain. And not because we don't like people want to maintain, but again, that value proposition is extremely important and we're not the cheapest in the market. And so if we're helping you to grow and we far surpass our retainer, it makes a lot of logical sense for you to do business with us. And you also get excited. You know, that we have great relationships with our clients because they're succeeding. They're finding success where they didn't before. At a level they never experienced in the past. And so when we get to know once their priorities are, then we set a clear action plan. In fact, I got a chance to speak at a small event this morning for startup business owners. And one of the most important things that I talked about was I said, let's get the 2027 plans done now and written. Because of course, I started with the question: how many of you, if I asked you right now to email me your 2026 plan, could send it to me? And there were seventeen people in the room, and zero were able to do that. And so because of that, I said, man, if we can actually document a plan, and there's been studies done to prove that if we document a plan have a purpose behind the plan, our likelihood of accomplishing our goals is far greater than if we just simply have some ideas in our mind on what we'd like to do sometime in the future. And so so we went through the exercise of doing that. And that's one of the next things that we do. We actually document a plan. So two things have happened. Number one, they can clearly visualize it. And number two, I understand their expectations of me. Very clearly, because if someone comes to me and says, I want to make a little bit more money, I don't know what that means. Like for me, it could mean a million dollars, and for you it could mean 10,000. And there's a big gap between those two. And if I went for the 10,000, but you meant a million, I would disappoint you. I would do a horrible job. And so understanding their goals, creating a documented plan, and helping them work through the plan is really how MSH works.

Yeah. So I think my first advice would be to get good advice. Right? Talk to some people. One of the one of the biggest disparities in the entrepreneurial world is loneliness. We feel like we have to do everything. No one will ever do it as good as we do, and no one understands it, right? No one understands us. And so I think if you can surround yourselves with forums like Mikulus' forum, where you can get connected, start to community with other entrepreneurial people. We're all a little ADD, we're all a little out there, and so we all have these ideas, and sometimes we just need the truth. And sometimes the truth isn't great. Like, hey, slow down, stop doing 17 things and do one thing really well. Then establish number two, three, four, and five down the road, but that's our entrepreneurial nature. And so it really just depends. And then when you can surround yourself with a few key people, someone who understands finance, someone who understands your technical trade really well, someone who understands technology, marketing, different things that you can really form around, we can all help each other quite a bit. as far as hardships go right now, I think I'm actually in a really good place, Mikolas. I'm very fortunate. my partner and I, after having sold the firm about a year and a half ago, we've already grown to the same size that it took us seven years to go to in 18 months. And so our growth has been really good. I would say finding key staff members is gonna be a challenge for us because that's probably the number one challenge that we have is human resources. And so we're actually in the search right now for a higher-end accountant to join our team and have some fun with us. And so that's probably our number one challenge right now. And I would say I think. think with most entrepreneurs with scaling, human resources is definitely one of the biggest challenges that that we face.

yeah. We learned a lot in the first go round.

Yeah, I think, you know, for me personally, MSH is one of the goals, but continuing to grow other things also is important for us and for me in particular. And so I'm I am growing an entrepreneurial group. and so as I build that forum, that's becoming very important in my life, bringing entrepreneurs together. it's similar to an executive leadership group, except it's built for entrepreneurs. So it's not the MBAs and it's not the, you know, the executives who work at super large corporations, it's people like you and me. Who have the day-to-day struggles of being an entrepreneur. And that's working out really good. So that's probably something that I'm extremely passionate about. And in the meantime, growing MSH to us means like I believe our goal is to double in the next 24 months as well and continue to stabilize our environment and help grow other consultants and advisors as well as other higher-end accountants who really understand small business, which is very different than corporate accounting. And so understanding how to help truly help. And I love we just actually two Thursdays ago we had a little get together, a little happy hour for our team. And I love sharing the success stories for our bookkeepers and our accountants to to share the success stories that our families are experiencing them because it really puts purpose behind the day-to-day work that can often seem monotonous. And so, man, if we can just help another twenty-five families become millionaires. That would be our purpose over the next twenty four months.

Every day we do something different now. You know, it's like, man, that's a loaded question, Mikolas. I think for us. my partner and I try and meet once a month for strategic conversations. And every month we're coming up with a little something different, whether it's just one more tweak on the engagement letter we've been using for seven years now, or whether it be the implementation of a new technology piece that's going to help us to provide a better quality product for our customers and continuously recognize our employees and our customers at an extremely high, hospitable level, very different than what the industry is.

Absolutely. They can find me on a few different places. in my email mic list, you'll find all of my links if you'd like to post them. I'm on LinkedIn is probably one of my most popular. I am on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. they can always go to our websites. I have a website that is msh. I don't know if I can share what that stands for, but it's make s happen. msh business solutions dot com. Or they can also find me at DavidMossberg.com. And my last name only has one S in it. It's M-O-S-B-E-R-G. And so it's DavidMossberg.com. That's another place you can connect with us. Both of those have contact us forms, and we love to interact and help people. So if indeed you need something, have some questions, we'd be glad to answer anything we can.

Thanks so much for having me, Nicholas. I look forward to another conversation in the near future.