What's Next For Accounting? - Issue #125

Author

Jason Staats
March 07, 2024

✅ 8 Things Your Office Needs

We dedicated this week of the podcast to office setups. Desks, computers, monitors, lights, plants, furniture and so, so much more.

Here are 8 non-obvious things your office needs:

  1. CO2 Monitor
    Did you know CO2 levels over 1,000ppm make you lethargic? Poor ventilation may be hurting the productivity of you & your team. Here’s the monitor I use.

  2. Desk Hooks
    You’re making good use of the top side of your desk, but how about the underside? I have my battery backup, computer, a 24 plug power strip and 4 hooks mounted to the underside of my desk. A desk hook may be just the gateway drug you need to start optimizing your underdesk.

  3. More Light
    Bright overhead lights trigger feelings of alertness, especially early in the day. OSHA recommends 500 office environments, 750 lux in factories, while neuroscientist Andrew Huberman recommends “as much light as you can safely have”. This cheap light meter will tell you if you’ve got what it takes.

  4. Wheels
    Casters on your desk give you the flexibility to re-orient your desk throughout the day. Because I have everything mounted to the underside of my desk, and a single power cord coming off the desk, I can be wheels up in about 20 seconds.

  5. This adhesive cord holder
    Stick it to the leading edge of your desk, so within reach you have all the cord types you need. It beats tucking them into a drawer or having cords hanging out on the desk.

  6. A Stool
    Everybody talks sit-stand but don’t sleep on the stool lean.

  7. (Good) Monitor Arms
    The right monitor arms clear up desk space by removing monitor stands. You can even get by with a less deep desk as a result. But don’t go cheap 

    or they’ll drive you insane.

  8. Canned Air
    That keyboard has seen some things. Keep some canned air on hand to send those pizza roll crumbs into the stratosphere.

What did I miss? What about your office setup could you no longer live without?

💎 This Week's Sponsor

Check out Jason’s 5 minute demo video 👇👇

💰 Specialization Of The Week

Landscape Design Firms
Annual revenues $500k to $4M.
Key Pain Point: Project-based accounting and client billing practices.

5 ways to build this one from scratch:

Post Sponsorships
Search "how to start a landscape design business" and you get a huge number of articles. Get in touch with the author to find a way to support them, and get a mention in high-ranking articles

Associations
Partner with groups like the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) to develop content around compliance & accounting headaches

Events
It looks like the ASLA runs trade events nearly every month. Searching "landscape architect trade shows" yields a huge number events, even ones likely near you. It looks like my state has their own equivalent of ASLA

Content
There are a number of good sized YouTube channels on the subject of landscape architecture firm-building. Find a way to support them or sponsor some content. I'm seeing around 5 landscape architecture podcasts that are publishing regularly as well

Schools
It looks like you can get a degree in landscape architecture. Work with leading schools to develop programming & support alumni

Landscape architecture not your thing? Here are 50 more specialization ideas.

📅 This Week

  • The big news was how fun talking office setups was on the pod:

    • Monday - Desks - Pod | Video

    • Tuesday - Computers & monitors - Pod | Video

    • Wednesday - Peripherals - Pod | Video

    • Thursday - Lights, chairs & everything else - Pod | Video

  • I ran through 19 trial balance apps for accounting firms with limited success

  • Here’s a song you can send your client when they ghost you

  • TurboTax and H&R Block tax chat bots give answers that are wrong or irrelevant as much as half the time

  • A new language model from Anthropic is outperforming GPT-4 in nearly every way - Available on Claude’s $20/mo plan, the new model Opus has been really good in my initial testing

  • There are Turbotax offices in Fortnite

  • Zapier (finally) introduced error handling

  • Each Friday we do an open Q&A on running small firms - I publish it on the podcast feed (audio & YouTube) - Hit reply with questions on all things firms & tech and I’d love to see you tomorrow morning

😍 From The Community

My private peer networking community Realize for firm leaders, now capped at 500 members.

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