From SAAS to Service: Lessons from Taxdome CRO Petar Iliev

Speaker A: Hey folks, welcome back to the Psilosophy podcast, uh, where we're going to talk about the world of sales and philosophy. But you know, we also like to meet with entrepreneurs that are forward thinking and innovative. And today I have someone just like that who I consider a great friend and someone who's a phenomenal partner, not only to myself, but to my brother Hector. You know Peter Iliev from Taxdome, who's the Chief Revenue officer. Super excited to have you man, and grateful that you're, you're joining today. And we're going to have a conversation not just about the product, but we're actually going to talk about more about your leadership, your experiences, your background and you know, the knowledge and wisdom that you've shared over, over these years. And Peter, I know that you're, uh, an entrepreneur who's been in the world of technology and successful at other startups and have worked for other major corporations. But for those of you who don't know a little bit more about you, could you share anything else that will be helpful for our audience?

Speaker B: Of course. So first of all, hey everyone, appreciate having me. Carlos, I always appreciated our collaboration, partnership and friendship over the years. It's been a while and I'm super happy that you started this successful podcast. Now, uh, always love to listen in and now finally being part of it. It's super excited for me and I appreciate it a lot. A little bit about myself. Sure. Um, my name is Peter, you hear already my German accent. So I'm originally from Austria, born and raised. And after university I worked for Siemens, you may know it, the big, uh, manufacturer in electronic. And then I had my own startup. We did POS systems for restaurants, which mobile ordering. We grew this quite well in Europe. And then, you know, I took a little break, tried to refocus myself and now I joined Taxdom. It's my fifth year now with Taxdom. I started the expansion in Germany in the Dach region and then around Europe. And now I'm leading up the whole, uh, revenue team from marketing to say over sales to CS and education. I'm trying to grow the company as much as I can.

Speaker A: Yeah. And it's just so impressive to see the trajectory that it's taken off. And I'm certain that not only with the background and knowledge that you have with Siemens and with uh, the other models and businesses that you've sold in the past, how much has changed over the course of five years? So a couple of things. One is we met when you were probably just coming on Board to Taxdome and Hector who is a, if you know, a famous YouTuber in the accounting field and I'm a non accountant and you're a non accountant, but we still serve this same ecosystem and there are a lot of creative ways we look at the model. One thing that I remember, uh, from you that I'm grateful for is that I was coming, starting up in essence to try to become a partner and try to build some sort of collaboration. And you were so open and willing to share ideas to help me scale up. So for that I'm super grateful. And since then our partnership has flourished. Taxdom customers have benefit from it. Taxdome has grown tremendously. But there's a lot of in that growth certain that you've probably seen. And I want to start with pricing. Like Taxdome's pricing started at a certain point and now has gone to, it has evolved to different places. And the parallels that I want to connect this to is accounting professionals who are the ones who I support. Hector support. And this year with Reframes conference being pricing with confidence, we're helping accountants become more like less scared about wanting to change their business model and their pricing model because we know that the environment changes, technology changes, the needs of the customers change. And you, you guys have to be bold enough to also make those changes. I know that there's some consciousness in when you make a, uh, pricing, there's a reason for it. Some of it is business, some of it's because the value that you are providing exceeds the investment that they're making. And I wanted to kind of just pick your brain around what comes to mind for you. Like what are the signals you look for before you decide, okay, we need to change the price even though we know it might go up. But like, what are the reasons why it makes sense to do so?

Speaker B: Absolutely. So I want to start with the Austrian saying about pricing. And it says next coast is next vert, which means in English, what doesn't cost anything, it's not valuable. And I feel like it's such old school farmer saying, but it means everything, you know, what you approach and how you put the pricing on a service. And it follows a core idea which pricing is a reflection of confidence and not just costs, is a big picture. And at Taxdome, for example, we approach pricing as a strategic growth level where it's not a financial function, but we really want to drive growth with it. And when we look at how we structure our pricing, we look at it from let's say 3, 4, let's say the first one is product maturity. How well is our product development? Are new automation features coming? For example CRM capabilities, any new feature which replaces another tool? This is the first signal. The second signal I would say customer outcomes. Are firms growing faster because of us or more? Or you know, are they seeing a potential what they haven't seen before? So do we really give this significant value to our customers? And then the third part obviously is the market alignment. Where do we sit versus competitors and the perceived value. Like you know, people talk about it the whole time, uh, ah, this is expensive, this is cheap. You gotta, you gotta do your research and understand where, where you aligned within the market. So I would say those three signals, you know, give gives you a very well indicator of if you should be raising prices or not.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And you know. Yeah, please go ahead.

Speaker A: Yeah, I was curious around like what, what kind of. Of course, uh, anything to change prices. Not everyone's always going to be happy with that you're going to be met with. Is there anything that you've learned along the ways where maybe some things weren't perfect that you said, okay, well you know, next time we do something like this, here's what we learned. That would be also like a lesson that would be helpful for those who want to approach price increase. That makes business sense.

Speaker B: Yeah, no, I like it a lot. So first of all, changing increasing prices is always easy. It gives you a kind of feeling of anxiousness. You know, you get anxiety and that's absolutely okay. So how do you remove anxiety? Well, you go and directly dive into the topic and start asking your, the people who are actually affected by this price change. So beforehand I uh, would have never reached out to customers when we raised prices. When we did it uh, at two times before this time when we raised the prices in January, I actually did my own homework. So I literally communicate, I think over 50 customers and talked to them and told them about the price increase. And then I understood how do they feel about this. Around 30 or 40 customers in, I actually realized that I'm talking to the customers who know me, you know, who have a relationship with Mirrored. So what I actually did is I went to 10 customers of ours with very low NPS, so who actually not currently satisfied with, with Taxdom with our product and introduced myself. They didn't know me before, I mean maybe from a webinar or something. And then I told them about these changes and the feedback obviously was totally different. But you got to stress test this, you know, would I pay this if, if I were a Firm owner, would I pay for this if I'm a uh, unsatisfied customer? So you got to ask yourself this question and obviously directly ask your direct audience who will be impacted by this and then see what the feedback is.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's really good. And real quick, you were talking about NPS NET Promoter score, which is, you know, how satisfied are they currently with you? Continue. Sorry.

Speaker B: Exactly. And maybe, you know, people think that our price pricing increase, you know, was, was reactive but it isn't, you know, it was months of, it was months in the making to do this research to understand what plans, how do we also attract the new market as we go up market, how firms which uh, have a much uh, bigger team will be attracted by this kind of pricing. So you really do need to do a lot of research. And in the end of the day we have more than 10,000 customers. Mhm. And if you have 40 of them commenting on social media that they're unhappy about this, if you look at it from the data perspective, then you're actually doing quite well. And as we all know is, and here's the big difference now, as we all know, people always complain, but I think what sets us apart is that we even care for the very last one as much as they complain. We will make sure that they're uh, satisfied after all this price increase. Something what I realized is you can't ask for more unless you're truly delivering more. And then you must sure agree.

Speaker A: Um, there's a couple of things that I do say to customers and in the accounting world where I could also say it's like accountants are so frustrated with wanting to charge more because well, first they're, they're, they're frustrated that their business is, they're always stressed. Right. They're overwhelmed, I call it overworked, overwhelmed and underpaid. And it's a self inflicting wound because they haven't taken a look at their business paused. Like what you're doing and you're saying how much more of the profits that you guys generate do you go back into product? And I know that you've talked about this, that you are a, um, you have the ability, because you guys are not, you don't have outside investors to make strategic business decisions around where do you want to invest rather than just taking all the profit you reinvest back into feature development. If anything, out of all the practice management software in the accounting space that I at least have kind of played around with, you guys are constantly releasing new features. And I know that you talked about the dilemma of do we, do we improve the existing features or do we keep on bringing out newer features to stay competitive, to be able to enhance the ability of the firm owners, just, just more things that they can stay within the same practice management. But that's something that a lot of people don't understand. That the fact that you're developing so fast the product enhancement and it increases the value of the customer outcomes that you're going to create for them. Thus it makes sense for you to raise the price because relatively it's creating more output for them, more better results for them. The accounting business owner doesn't realize that they're every year going to conferences to learn how they can better serve their clients. Every year they're think they're reading up on new IRS regulations and studying how they can provide better financial reporting and better quality product for their clients, yet they don't want to raise their prices. So I think there's, there's this thing that's stopping them. I think what's different of course is you are a huge organization. You have a physical product that you deliver where they have uh, something that's not tangible. But I guess what message could you share with, you know, accounting professionals who, who hesitate with raising their prices because sometimes they do have to transfer that business like the investment of having a taxdome or a practice management or these tools is a cost to do business when they want to have an accounting professional. What would you share?

Speaker B: 100%. You know, there's a big difference between, you know, within pricing, between product and service based, uh, you know, um, companies. So I think everything starts first with confidence, you know, confidence in pricing starts with clarity in your offer. And I think why is it so easy for software service, you know, products to, to, to, to just adapt, change, increase pricing is because they very clear offering, hey, this is you pay x $100 per per year and you know exactly what you get or when you go to a, to buy a phone or a camera, that's what exactly. You know, when you go to Best Buy and it says, you know, Canon, whatever, and it tells you exactly X megapixel, you name it, right? So, and I think a lot of service providers, you know, like companies who, who are service oriented have difficulties with, with this because they, they say okay, I'm an accountant, that's what I'm going to do. And people don't know what is, what is included. So you need to be very clear and, and, and direct with what, with your offering. I love that so, you know, I can talk hours about this topic. You know, I've in, in, in the career with, at Taxdom. Um, you know, I've worked now and I feel like accountants. One thing I want to share is accountants undercharge because they think clients want, they want pay more. That's false. That's absolutely false. Let's leave it like this. Clients, they will pay for peace of mind. I want to know everything what's going on. Responsiveness. If I know that these people are always telling me, you know, hey, this is the next step, this is what's going on, this is, I'm missing, I mean peace of mind. Right. And a seamless digital experience. And this is something very important is to understand this. You are dealing with a uh, 28 year old freelancer who probably runs his business on his phone.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Like you, you are doing the accounting for someone who does nothing else than having a digital experience. So if you don't provide this also to him, then he will not value you because he compares with everything else what this 28 year old freelancer does. So this is another thing. And then the third thing uh, is connected to the clarity in your offer is that most firms that don't have a defined package, so how should the client see a defined value? Defined package equals defined value. That's how it works. If I offer a 1040 return for $2. I'm just saying any numbers. Let's say $100. If I offer 1040 return with two hours consultation sessions is 200. And if I offer 1040 with two consultation and I don't know, with a uh, meet and greet in person for 300 people will make question the value. But you have a different, a clear differentiator between those with a core value. Right?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: And this is also what we learned from our journey, you know, at Taxdom, is we had to learn what's communicated, what's included.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Why it matters, what is this value proposition you offer and what outcomes it drive. You know, very important is when I offer you two hour consultation within my pricing, what value you will you get out of it.

Speaker A: Right? Right. And what result too. Right. Because it's. A lot of people want to know at the end of this, what will I be able to know what happened? Especially when it. Sometimes with software there's some things that could be easy and clear to define, but sometimes in, in consultation or knowledge that you're, that you're transferring, you want to be able to do that. I've had to as a Taxdome certified Consultant go through that journey as well. Like when I first started, I'll just tell you very clearly here, I started with well I'm going to give you a 10 hour package. And I thought hourly, right. Which I think that's sort of the first way that a lot of people, the first mistake is they think in hours because that's why, you know, back in the day if you worked at a supermarket or a uh, fast food restaurant, they pay you per hour. I mean at least traditionally in the US So hourly basis always been something or salary or this note. But when you're designing an offer and a package to your point always thought about hours. Hours. So if it's oh based on the complexity it'll be 5 hours or it'll be 10 hours or it'll be 15 hours. So I would do everything by hour and that limited so much of the potential and it ended up again it's a self inflicting wound because I'm doing more work and getting less out of it and the client's getting way more value out of it. When I shift it from hourly more into what is the result that the client's looking to get and really understanding the quantifiable result that they will. 50 grand a year. But now you have this solution which back then you spend, let's say it's $1,000 a year for the software solution and then you spend two, three thousand dollars on the implementation. Just a random number here. What value will that create? Well if 50 grand could be turned into 100 grand, is that worth it? Now that's different. So shifting the, the inputs, the outcomes was a big, is a big mindset shift around that and for use the same I think you know, when faxdom first came about, you only had one offer. It was one, you have to prepay the license. I thought that was. That's good. It should be right because then it's you know, commit. I don't want you to be like one foot in a software such as complex like a practice management tool does require time for you to go through the learning curve. Counted that knew nothing about implementing CRM at uh, the scale you had. Took me three to four months to become a subject matter expert at it. Imagine a tax professional or a industry professional now having to separate a part of their brain to learn the technology part of it. It's, it's a journey and it requires to be fully invested in there. But anyways, I think we can, like you said, we can go.

Speaker B: There's one tip I uh, Always give accounting firms is package. Package your services like a product package. It's it. Tier them and give it a name. Yes, exactly. Give them names. The, the growth package, the safe package, the, the premium package.

Speaker A: That's it.

Speaker B: That they. You're not telling your clients anything new. They're paying. I don't know if you know, but you know there was a study about how many SaaS tools the average company uses and it was something like 270. It's crazy, just crazy. So you're telling them nothing new. Actually you're helping them because you're giving them something more familiar. And then once you have this set up, then raise prices every year like a clockwork. No.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: It's normal as.

Speaker A: Just as long as the lifetime value continues to increment, then the pricing should increment with it because ultimately the, you know, one is always going to be ahead of the other. Right. The price is always going to be a fraction of the value that's created. As long as the value is consistently being, you know, increasing the price should, should correlationally make sense to do that as well. Kind of like inflation. Right. But I want to transition now to what you were talking about, these like surveys and you guys did something really interesting where you, you conducted a customer satisfaction survey. And I really like that. I thought it was so valuable because it was with U.S. taxpayers. Right. It was a thousand U.S. taxpayers.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And there's a lot of great information. But if you were to share like the top two most surprising takeaways for you, what would you say those were around the questions that were being asked?

Speaker B: I think overall I would say they're much more tech savvy and impatient than we think. Than we thought actually, because taxpayers, they see taxes as something uncomfortable. And what do you want to do with something which is uncomfortable, which creates anxiety? You want to get rid of it. So it's more clarity and fast turnaround you provide is better this for. And on top of that, as I mentioned, they're much more tech savvy as we think. Why? Because you as an accountant, you don't have to educate people how to use technology. Believe me, they learn this every day with their smartphones, with their computer, with their smart tv, their smartwatches everywhere. So I think uh, the main takeaway is that taxpayers, they're much more tax savvy and more impatient than firms realize. Why? Because, you know, doing taxes is something what you know, creates anxiety. And what do you do with things would create anxiety? What causes anxiety? Well, you want to get Rid of them. So you need to be to have a uh, fast turnaround on those things. And on the other thing is the tech savviness is you don't have to educate your clients how they use technology. Smartphones, smart tv, smart watches. Everywhere they have technology currently. You know, on the day to day they will get along with your technology too. And that's our, in our human nature that we always want to learn. We are curious. Curious. You know, what is our, what is my accountant now coming up with? Oh, that's cool. There must be a reason for this. So there are three stats I think you know, which surprised personally me. I would say the first one is that there was around 40%. I think I can pull it up. There was uh, 30% of clients of taxpayers would switch accounting firms for better technology.

Speaker A: Mhm.

Speaker B: So that's something like. And again, you know, we did this totally anonymous. We asked open questions like this is really out of this result that they would change for, for a better technology if the accountant doesn't deliver. And then something would aligns with what I see and how the generations are coming up and you know, millennials, 70% prefer to have uh, asynchronous communication, which means no calls, just messages or uploads or signatures or tasks. Everyone is so busy. Why scheduling something? Just tell me what I have to do and if I have a question, then I will come to you. And guess what this is when pricing comes in place because they have a request now you can charge, you deliver the basic expectations, but then if your client comes, hey, can I talk about this? Then you say sure, but you don't have the right package. Do you want to upgrade to the package where I offer two three hour consultation and that's when it comes in. Right. And the third, uh, I think what surprised me was over 60% want access to real time updates or you know, on the status of their return or documents. And this goes back to. They're more impatient.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Now imagine I send you something or imagine like this a client. You know us as people when we do something with the government or when we do something at the doctor, you know, we sent them something and then we need to wait. Uh, I hope this went through. I hope I sent the right information. So right documents.

Speaker A: It's mysterious.

Speaker B: If you give them real time updates that you're reviewing it then they will be much more relaxed. So that's why for example at text and we did this uh, client status feature.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: Where they can see, hey, it's in progress. It's planned. We are reviewing it. As a firm, you can set the custom fields of what you want to communicate in real time to your clients. And, and I didn't know how important this is for the taxpayers. But on the other side, I don't see. I don't. Once I read it, it was first very surprising, but then later, you know, it's it. Everything trains us there. You know, forget the pizza track and all these things. Think about, you know, Netflix. You watch an episode, you see exactly, you know, 10 seconds next. So everything is timed for you to know what to expect and what comes next.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I don't know if I learned this from you or it just came in my mind. But literally the way that I present that status to everyone, that feature about the client status is the pizza tracker concept. Because it's like when the pizza tracker thing came out, it's like everybody's always waiting. Like, you know, you're hungry, you're like, you want to get your pizza, but knowing that it's being baked and like, where is it in the process? And, and a lot of people really like the analogy of it. It's like, yes, we're not making a pizza for the client. But, but like you said, this is. You get. People get anxious if they don't know their status. And, uh, one, uh, of the things that accountants struggle with the most when they don't have a clear good process is learning how to cue their people, their clients. Right. Because they don't know where they are in the process. A bunch of people sending you a bunch of random documents and saying, we know when. What's my status? When can I get this done? So having the clarity of a process where they know their status, they don't have to always call you. And taking away that extra stress from the service provider is huge. So I absolutely love that.

Speaker B: Absolutely. And you know, you mentioned pizza tracker. Uh, but one thing I want to, I want to call out is the clients. Once you use technology, clients no longer compare you to other accounting firms. They compare you to Amazon. They compare it to Uber, they compare it to their banking app. This is where you all have this kind of communication on Amazon. You know, exactly. Hey, the, the order is getting collected or in.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Or the Uber is you. You're looking for a new driver. The. The Uber is on the way. Three minutes, two minutes. And all those delivery apps.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So they compare you with other technology and, and other products they use day by day. They're not.

Speaker A: That is world class, right? That is world Class experience.

Speaker B: And they don't compare with other firms because maybe that's why they switched to you, because you're offering a technology.

Speaker A: Yes. Right on. I love that, man. I'm going to switch the. Switch it up and surprise you a little bit. This is more about. Just to kind of make things a little bit more playful. But I am curious. I'm going to ask you just a lightning round, a few questions just about you. Just less about this, uh, interview. Just to kind of. Yeah. So people get to know you a little bit better. But I'm curious, what's your favorite sales or business book that you feel like, truly changed the game for you?

Speaker B: I love. I love Amp it up from Frank Suhlman. So he. Frank is a, uh, serial CEO, so he never founded the business. He just went from one business to the other. You know, servicenow, a snowflake, so. And made it $1 billion businesses. And why I love this book is all those entrepreneur books, sales, business books, they always are like, you know, how do creative. You know, how to think about these things. But his book Amp it up is about execution. It really tells you how to execute through something. And I just love it because I'm a doer. Uh, that's how I approach business. Like, build the strongest wall you want to have. I will knock it down. Like, if it's.

Speaker A: You're like, ready, shoot, aim. Exactly like ready, fire, and then aim.

Speaker B: Most of the times you have only one bullet, one arrow. So you bought. You better be fast because the others, they will be aiming and aiming. Maybe they will get close to you or closer to you, but you already. Most of the time, that's what stops

Speaker A: people from being competitive. Right. Is overthinking too much about what if this, what if that, and you're. You're already in, halfway through eating up all the rest of the market share because you're. You're learning as you go type of thing.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: Willing to be okay with the risk of that.

Speaker B: And, you know, like you mentioned the beginning, you know, we are bootstrap. We are private company. The others have over 100 million of. Of investments. We gotta be fast because they have all the strategic advisors. They have all the resources they can and. And have and need and want. We don't. We just need to be fast and as you say, learn by doing.

Speaker A: Yeah, Right on. I agree with that. All right, I got another question for you. What's a habit you can't live without? Boy, boy, uh, I know you like martial arts. I don't want to I don't want to feed that to you, but I

Speaker B: mean, you know, a habit. Yeah, I mean, I love contact sports. You know, everything, you know, like striking. I do jiu jitsu, I compete. I think a habit, I would say it's competing, you know, like, if it's with my fiance, with the dogs, who's faster at the car. Like, everything. I just compete with myself non stop. And I think, you know, it's. It's something beautiful because every little competition makes me better.

Speaker A: That's awesome, man. All right, so what's a phrase or a mantra that you live by?

Speaker B: I love that. It's also a saying from, From. From Austria. And translated it is. If you stop becoming better, if you stop get better. No, wait. If you stop becoming better, you stop being good.

Speaker A: Oh, yeah. Wow, that's deep. I like it. Yeah, it's. It's really more.

Speaker B: Always push, always improve. Because if you stop to improve yourself, you will. You. You will realize very soon that you're actually not anymore as good as you thought you are.

Speaker A: It's. It's the relentless quest for improvement. Right. Or for better, which is in, in Japanese, the, uh, Kaizen concept. Right? The continuous improvement. I agree, man. It's. We always got to be growing. That's because we're already physically, physiologically growing. We got to grow our mind and our, uh, m. Mindset and all that stuff. Okay, the last one is, if you could have a dinner with any entrepreneur or leader, who would it be? Alive or dead?

Speaker B: I don't know. So difficult. What I would love to do is, you know, like to have a huge dinner with all our customers at Taxdom. I think all the business owners, I think, you know, everyone has a beautiful story to share and I would love to sit in a huge room with all of them and everyone just, you know, eating their food, their favorite food, and then just talking because, you know, we know it at food. People come together. Uh, yeah. It creates this special relationship and I would love to have this to hear all their stories.

Speaker A: And you. And you guys do that when you go to conferences, which I really like. Right. I think it's such a special way to drive, uh, a different level of connection, and they feel appreciation that you're appreciating them. And it's just this real. And it's a more intimate setting. Like you said in food, people kind of tend to be more of themselves rather than a business setting. And you get to just know the person and the human behind things. So I love that. That's a great answer. Okay, I'm going to shift back. Let's shift back to the business and the conversation here.

Speaker B: Let's do it.

Speaker A: There's a, there's a, there's something that you mentioned in a recent podcast that has been scrap like itching in my brain. And um, as a consultant, but also as a user of a software, I'm sure that like you said, this is a dilemma that you're always faced with, with you have existing customers that want you to improve the existing features, but then you have these initiatives of wanting to roll out newer features and you can only prioritize energy into one thing or the other. How do you keep that balance of knowing that the right choice is the right choice. Like do you have filters or layers in your mind that you say this is when I know I need to uh, allocate time into listening to existing. Or we need to be edgy, we need to be innovative because if not, uh, the competition will eat us a lot. Like, where do you find the balance in that?

Speaker B: Uh, that's such a difficult question, I gotta say. If we would have figured it out, we probably would be as big as Amazon already or Google. I can tell you that this is probably one of the toughest and hardest parts as a software company. Where do you put focus on product development? There is a silent frustration growing among customers, among clients, among us human. And it's digital. You know, we want to adapt technology, but it's also difficult because it's not the way how we want to adapt it. So what do you want to do? Do you want to adopt now a new product, you know, adapt a new product where you want to use the newest phone, but once you buy it, it's not delivering what you expected. So what you're going to do now, will you now keep this phone and wait till they release a new software or buy the newest one? And I think uh, we human, we are split into parts where people, you would see them. I know I have my iPhone since 6 years and I just updated. Or the other person who buys every year, the new. Exactly. And you know, and I think this is where you, where you want to understand where, how early are you in the market? And I would say practice management is very early in the market. I mean modern practice management tools, you know, and clients, you know, our customers, they would expect, you know, mobile apps, you know, electronic signatures, client portals, status notifications, all this communication with the practice management market. I think we are around 15% in the market share. If you compare it to the top hundreds of Thousands of, of accounting firms. And if you look at the modern practice management tools, maybe they in total they have 30,000 customers. 40. And this is maybe like 20% of the whole market. So we got to realize that many firms are still emailing spreadsheets and chasing missing PDFs. So how you going to reach those people if you didn't reach them already with your existing feature, uh, features. When you go to release new features, more till you reach every single one. Till the last. Peter in a, in a small office somewhere in Austria thinks, all right, that's the feature I finally waited for to, to use a software for it. And I think, you know, this is where, where I think if you understand this kind uh, of, of difference between, you know, how much market share do I have, how much do I need to continue developing the product to continue making satisfying my market share, but still pursuing to grow my market share. This is, you know, uh, the difficult part. I think, you know, we are doing great there. Why? Because we have, I'm going to say this now. We have trained and we train our customers to tell us what they want to see because we believe the features they want to see will also enable our uh, our market share growth, of

Speaker A: course, which I love about that because you, I mean again, I use a lot of apps. You guys have it, the that feature roadmap and you have an upvote system. And I think that is so fantastic. I mean it creates a great solution. But you know that when you solve one problem, it also creates more problems, right? Because now you have power user communities that are now like, no, pick me, pick my feature. And it's like when you have, like you said, a small major minority of 50, 60 firms that are like, this is the ultimate feature that will change everything when it's hard to evaluate at scale. How do you know that that's the one that's going to help all 10,000 firms plus the new market share. And that's definitely a challenge.

Speaker B: Exactly. And I want to mention also in the end, after all this, you know, like, dilemma and so on, it's like, I think great companies listen a lot, but they don't get distracted because you can get distracted very fast if you go into every single use case. We get thousands of feature requests, uh, per year. So what we do is, you know, we bucket them. We bucket the uh, request into teams and ask, does this solve a real problem or is it just a band aid? It comes out. Yeah. So is it something which just makes you feel less frustrating or does it really Solve a use case a problem and then map it out in a long term vision. Like how can I build in this solution a big feature and then prioritize it or if no, park it?

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: So yeah, that's how we do it. We listen to our customers and we build for outcomes. I would say we build definitely for outcomes and not for, uh, a fast solution. We want really that once they use the feature, they should see even more value than they actually expected.

Speaker A: And you guys have been scaling at such a rapid speed and I know that you have some very aspirational goals where you want to go. And I'm certain that in your growth you've learned so much. Not just in product development and pricing, which we've covered, but I think about growing with, with the people. Right. With the workforce that you have. And m. I would like to see if maybe I could ask things about like what have been some of your learning lessons? Have you, as you're growing your leadership and your leadership skills and the, and so many things that has to do with the human component because you could talk about technology all day, but at the end of the day you do need humans to make the product and the brand and the scale happen. And some of those lessons that could hopefully be transferred to those who are listening here that are also looking to grow because a lot of firm owners that use Taxdome are growing too, and they're going to have to hire a team, they're going to have to lead people. What could you share around some lessons around leadership?

Speaker B: I just learned this recently. I'm not going to lie to everyone who listens in. I just learned this two months ago or, uh, three months ago, and it is mindset. So let me dive deep into this because I'm, um, I'm still so overwhelmed with how it changed everything, how I approach. So if you and me, we go out and let's say we have a beer and I tell you, no, Carlos, you gotta drink the beer with your left hand because then it tastes better. And then you're like, why should I do this? So maybe you do it when you, when you try someone to change his behavior because you always drink it with the right hand. You will do it maybe one time, maybe you will do it two times, but you will immediately confront, get resistance from the other person when you want to change their behavior. Because you say, no, I always drink it with my right hand, it tastes much better. But if you say, for example, you know, how do you change someone's behavior is you change their mindset. So if, if I want Carlos to drink with the left hand, then I say, well, I'm actually a lefty. You know, this is the tradition. This is like how the brewer of this beer made it with his left hand because he only had the left hand. So I create a story around it and then you immediately feel like, okay, this is something I want to align on mindset wise how I want to drink this specifically beer. And then I never have to teach you how to do it because you will always have it in your mindset already.

Speaker A: Yes.

Speaker B: And this is how I approach now at techstone, um, and the whole team and cross collaboration. Everything I do is mindset. So I'm super direct. Not always like it, you know, especially, you know, we Germans, we uh, Austrians, you know, we are very direct and confrontational. Confrontational. And it's not, it's not very common, for example, in American culture, which I learned very fast. And I always say I, I, I don't want, I don't need you to do it, uh, this way or that way. The only thing I want you to align with me is that you're going to work super hard and, and give everything you have into this that you're going to do and then I will always know that you, that you did a good job. And once we aligned on the mindset with the whole team, since then we've worked totally different because everyone comes to work to give their best and everyone relies on the other one because they trust the other person that we're going to do the best. So I think this kind of growth philosophy I just recently understood how to really motivate and align people. And it changed our culture, it changed the way how, how fast we work, how we communicate with each other, just everything. And was a great success moment for me as a leader, but especially for the company.

Speaker A: Yeah, there are, there are advantages and disadvantages with having a, uh, direct style, which is what you're talking about. The advantage is that you're very clear what you want, what you don't want. And so sometimes clarity, especially in leadership, is m most helpful thing in the world. And I'll tell you, I'm the kind of person that's not, not you didn't have a direct style when I was in leadership before and I'll tell you what I've learned from it when I was because the American way is very beat around the bush and do nice and like, can we do this? Instead of me saying yes or no, it's like, you know, let me, let me look into it. And I'll get back to you when I know the answer is no. But because you, uh, know I'm afraid to say no or they're gonna. Were the people pleasers, would they like me? Would they not like me? So sometimes being direct can work to the advantage, of course, the being direct and not necessarily explaining the why or showing the warm part of you of like, hey, look, I'm telling you no, because here are some business reasons that could be the help of knowing how to say no without coming off, uh, as rude or mean or whatever it means and all that good stuff. But absolutely, man. I think one of my biggest leadership lessons too, to your point about you can't make someone drink from a different hand or whatever until they are kind of bought in in their own mind. But there's this concept called self discovery which requires a lot of patience because when you are an individual producer, you can program something or build something and you have your own certain set of work ethic, your own belief system and the way that you do it. And I'm not saying you, you, but us. And then when we go from individual producer to leadership by default, we think that everybody should think the way that we think. Like, it's just uh, more of like when I was less mature in my, in my life, I was like, well, they should work as hard as I work, right? They should, they should do it until it, you know, they should do it with this work ethic and they should be as smart as I am. And not everybody is raised the same way that you're raised. So being patient and listening and asking questions and getting them to arrive at their own belief through that patience and asking questions. But still to your point, communicating clearly, this is our goal, this is our expectation. How you get there sure might be different than the way that I would get there. But to your point, as long as you follow our uh, company's expectations, I will trust you to get it done.

Speaker B: I'm going to, I'm going to cut you there because you said as long as you follow expectations. This is exactly what I realized is if you want us build a high performing team, you need to set the clear expectations. Because if I'm telling you we gotta, we're gonna put everything you, uh, we have, you know, into, into work. And this needs right now to be priority. But you come in and say, well actually I need to go at 4:30, I don't know, to do the barber, you know, then that's absolutely okay because then you're in a different Mindset and our mindsets are down the line. And then the beautiful thing is I say, Carlos, hey, it looks like we don't align mindset wise. And you want to be successful, Great talent, you want to be successful, we want to be successful. But this tells me that I cannot make you successful. So another company who aligns with your mindset will make you successful and you will make them successful. And I think this is a much better breakup conversation than anything else where you start looking into not meeting performance expectations. This and this. No, just think, go back and think about is this employee coming for the same reason, like 99% of the others?

Speaker A: If not, they are fit. Yeah.

Speaker B: Yeah. If not, then make them be successful somewhere else. Why? Why torture them? Why torture them? They don't want to be there. Right. To tell them.

Speaker A: And I mean, I know ethics is also a big thing. Right. Could you sense. And we won't share specifics, but I know that there have been some bad apples. Right. That have done things with the wrong intentions. And that's not part of the.

Speaker B: It' part of the game. It's part of the game, you know, everyone but.

Speaker A: And I also think that some of these lessons transfer to the kind of customers you want to write. If there's a customer that doesn't have the mindset that, that they know that they're working for a company that's innovative, forward looking, that's constantly looking to change and reinvest in itself. Because I'm sure you've got customers that also expect these crazy things out of a product, out of the small investment that they're making, or, you know, they're unhappy with the fact that things are constantly changing. There's probably a reason why they are where they are in their business too.

Speaker B: Exactly. But on the other side, you know, you got. Exactly. But on the other side, you got to understand this. If you have customers, I can tell you go to your loudest customers who are on social media or who maybe complain about your product or, uh, service. And look, when they signed up, 99%, those customers are the ones who were the three, four, five years with you. So if they hate their product so much, why they're still with you? Yeah, they just want you to become better. And that's how I, I see if people go and complain publicly about taxdom. I, um, see this as a motivation. I see this as inspiration. I see this, that we're not good enough for them. But they're still with us four years. I'm going to work now extra hard.

Speaker A: Sure.

Speaker B: To fulfill the expectation to that point.

Speaker A: I agree 100%. But if you have someone on the surface level that barely did a trial with you and hasn't even tried you out and, and they have kind of that entitlement, you know, sometimes with employees, they come in in the first three months and they're not aligned in mindset, you're like, what have you earned to either.

Speaker B: I'm not going to start the relationship where there's no trust, that's for sure. Sure.

Speaker A: Yeah. Certainly. Good man. A lot, a lot of good, uh, conversation there. All right, so I want to kind of wrap it up with this last question, which is, uh, looking at 2025 and your vision of where you want Taxdom to be headed. Not just from a scaling standpoint, but what are two to three focus areas that you could share, where you envision taxdome? Um, moving in what direction?

Speaker B: I mean, now I, now I need to be a sales leader. Right. So, I mean, first of all, you know, a little bit inspirational, you know, we're not building software. You know, we, we're redefining how accounting firms work. You know, like, we're building a software which your customers and their clients love using. And you gotta, you gotta think outside the box. You gotta be curious. And that's what we are still continue trying to do. Think about how we can build something where the accounting firm never thought this is possible. So this is definitely our vision. I love it. Priorities. So first of all, you know, it is a priority and it will always be a priority. The experience, the customer and the client experience. I always say, because I'm a formula one, uh, fan, I want to make every accounting firm look as shiny and good as a formula one driver. They sit in this car, they're the fastest people in the world. You know, like driving around, it's just prestige. That's how I want every customer to feel like when they use Taxdom. Um, it should be easy to understand. It teaches itself. It's intuitive. It provides this value every day on a new level. So this is something, the experience. We're going to be doing a lot of cool stuff there around. Um, the second part is you will see that we're diving much more into ecosystems. So we believe that we have grown very, very strong and we are happy with our growth, but it would have never happened without our partners and the people who promote us. So 2025 is definitely a year where we will be giving back. So we're redoing right now our, uh, partner program, our ecosystem LED growth program. And we will be giving back and creating new incentives without anyone asked for it. It's going to be double as good, three times as good. And we just want to finally, you know, now since we are, you know, bigger company, we can give back and want to reward the people who support us. Not only our partners, but also our customers. So we are redoing also our customer referral problem.

Speaker A: Great.

Speaker B: And definitely the third part is our brand and community. So, you know, we changed, we switched to our own community. White label community. I see our community, it's gonna. I want to grow it as the go to source for every accounting firm in the world if they want to know something. So right now it's closed. But I really want to make the. I don't want to compare it to something else because it should be the go to resource. If you, if you want to know anything about accounting and not only specifically about Taxdom, you can log in as a guest user and do something. So this is something I want to create the strongest community around there. And I don't force you to use Taxdom. See our community as the. Because we have the most customers in our competitors. Like, see this a resource where you can grow and learn. And on top of that, you know, our brand that we elevate the profession. You know, we celebrate the firm owners. Like I, I always said my dream is to have a, uh, super bowl ad. And the super bowl ad, I'm going to explain now how do you. How this super bowl legend be? And I'm gonna end this that way, if you're allow. So of course, imagine we go, let's say somewhere in, in Manhattan. And we go along the street and we, we see each other after a very long time. Hey, Carlos, how are you doing? And say, yeah, I'm good, you know, how are you doing, Peter? You know, like, I'm fine. So. And we go and say, let's grab a coffee. So we go along the street and one person passes and says, hey, Peter. And I say, hey, like, uh, oh, this was weird. Did you know this person? No. Then we walk around and say, hey, hey, Peter. You know, another person comes, hey, Peter, how are you doing? And say, hey, uh, nice to see you. How are you doing? And then like, uh, everyone knows, you know, and then another person, we go across the corner and then a lot of people, a concert comes up. They elevate me on the chair and everyone is screaming around me, Peter, Peter. And then everyone disappears on the next second and, and you come and say, hey, Peter, who are those People who are you? And I would say, well, I'm the accountant.

Speaker A: Nice. Oh, that's awesome. That's very cool. That's very cool. I like it. I love that. I love you. Ended it on a. On a high note. That's absolutely a really beautiful, uh, dream and vision. And, man, just seeing your trajectory, I. I see it all possible. And, um, you're an inspiration. I appreciate, you know, the generosity that you share with the community, with myself, with the partnership, with myself and Hector. And I love the last thing that you said, elevate the profession. Because what Hector and I are trying to do with reframe is to rebrand the profession and really is to elevate as well. So I love that we have alignment in our core common mission, which is to really help accounting be something that's so fundamental, to help reduce anxiety for taxpayers and those in the world of finance, but also just the help the professionals themselves deserve to have a better life. And we could do so much not only with technology, with Mindset, and all these other ways for them to just get what they deserve as great humans that they are, because it's a noble human profession of people wanting to help people really achieve greater things in life, you know, through. Through financial success and things of that nature. It's been great, man. Thank you so much for. For sharing your insights and your knowledge and your wisdom. I really learned a lot. I took a lot of notes, and it will be exciting to. For folks who are listening to this to see some of these great ideas and put them into practice. So thanks for being here. Thanks, everyone, for listening in. And in the show notes, I'll, uh, share with you how you can learn more about Taxdome, how to work with Peter. And of course, since I am a certified Taxdome consultant, how you can also work with me so I can help you put your firm into practice. And we'll go from there. Thanks, everyone.

Speaker B: Carlos, thank you for having me.

Speaker A: Take it.