Earmark Podcast | Earn Free Accounting CPE

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Echo Zhong: [00:00:00] The way I see it is AI creates capacity, but it does not create demand. I think it is the job for us as the advisors to identify, demand and and capture them.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:15] Are you an accountant with a continuing education requirement? You can earn free Nasba approved CPE. For listening to this episode, just visit earmark.app in your web browser. Take a short quiz and get your certificate. Hey everyone, I'm Blake Oliver. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm here at gusto next with Echo Zhong. Echo runs her own firm, Zhong and Sanchez. And she's been a CPA for over 15 years. This morning she did the live demo of Gusto's new Multi-client MCP Gusto's pitch is that when software handles payroll, your firm gets its hours back to do advisory. But when echo freed up her own payroll manager, the hours didn't quite go where anyone expected. So today we're going to talk about automating payroll. And then what's next. Echo welcome to the show.

Echo Zhong: [00:01:06] Thank you Blake. Glad to be here.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:08] All right. So before we get into this demo that you did on stage, which was super impressive, by the way, I want to know about your firm. Tell us about Zhang and Sanchez. Like, who are your clients? Where are you? What do you do?

Echo Zhong: [00:01:22] Cool. So we're a boutique CPA firm located here in Cupertino, California. We primarily serve modern entrepreneurs. So they could be bootstrap SMB owners or VC backed startups in the Bay area. We're right across the street to YC. So we actually serve a lot of YC companies and neo companies. Um, so, so yeah, and we're a full service. We do accounting, tax and advisory. Um, and, uh, yeah, that's, uh, that's the firm.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:51] So walk me through this task that you automated today, uh, with Claude, like, what is it? What does it do? Paint a picture for those of us like and just assume, you know, like we know what Claude is, right? We all chatted with the chatbot, but like, like, other than that, we don't know.

Echo Zhong: [00:02:07] Okay. Um, so in short, this is a task that we have set up in Claude to automate our, um, our pay run every week. And also it, it can update the cash flow forecast automatically for, uh, for the clients that we deliver advisory for. Um, basically what it looks like is, uh, once we run the skill run the task, Claude will go in and check all our inboxes and try to figure out which client has sent in the hours for processing, who hasn't? Or maybe there's, um, there's additional hires that needs to get input or maybe a deadline is coming up. We haven't got the info yet. We got to follow up with the client, basically highlight all these information for us to take an action on. Um, and we can automate that action and approval process so that we can actually get the payroll ready for approval, and then we can either approve it directly in cloud or in gusto, depending on what you feel comfortable with. And then additionally, for, for people who are familiar with the cloud workflow, obviously you can then go from there. You can download the Payroll Journal report in an Excel format, and you can tell cloud to update the cash flow forecast based on all these numbers you've run. If there's additional contacts in the example that I shared, a client of ours, they made a new hire and it's based on it's had the same pay and schedule as one of her existing employees. So we can easily just drop that context into cloud so that cloud can automatically update the cash flow forecast, call out the additional assumptions for us to review and edit before we ship it to the client. So all that is is built into this, this task workflow. So, um, doesn't matter who go in and run it. Like it could be me, it could be anyone from my firm. They run this workflow and it will just deliver consistent results.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:08] So you're doing all of this in cloud, like you're not having to go into the gusto interface to do any of this.

Echo Zhong: [00:04:15] Correct. If you if you set it up, obviously there's permissions set up where, uh, you can give, you can basically, depending on your comfort level, you can, you can say, I want all the approval to happen in, in cloud. Um, you know, like, but, but basically we're, yeah, we're able to actually execute all of this without leaving the interface of cloud.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:37] And you said it's set up so that your team can run it. Is this like a skill that you've created in cloud? Is it a scheduled task? How do you do this?

Echo Zhong: [00:04:46] Um, this is a scheduled task. Um, but we also created skills that are that our team member can just, uh, cue the scale and run this process, um, in particular projects if they want to as well, because we share the projects within the firm as well.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:04] So it's pulling in the hours. It's, it's teeing up the payroll, adding new hires. And then you said something interesting about like updating a cash forecast. What kind of cash forecast is this? You know, are you using software to do this? Like, how does that happen?

Echo Zhong: [00:05:21] Uh, for this particular client, we've just been managing their cash flow forecasts and Excel spreadsheets. Um, obviously there are different tabs on assumptions and numbers. We typically do the 13 month cash flow forecast for this client, uh, just so they can be prepared for, you know, tax payments. Uh, or they can just have clear view on where their cash is going to be in the future. So in this case, um, we, we gave Claude the access to the cash flow forecast templates. So cloud can can locate that template and pull in the contacts and just basically upload, uh, basically update a new draft of that Excel template and submit it for our review.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:07] Okay, so you were doing all of this manually before without cloud.

Echo Zhong: [00:06:11] A lot of them. Yes.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:13] All right. So like, let's quantify this. I mean, if you can do it now, all in that chat interface and you're not having to like pull in these numbers, go into different systems, enter them, update the forecast manually, like what is the impact of this on time?

Echo Zhong: [00:06:29] I think there are two aspects to it. One is obviously for, for the time saved because obviously it takes time for you to, oh, find the client folder, uh, drill down to the folder that has the cash flow forecast template, pull it up, and then pull up the payroll report that you just run or like, or pull up that email that I forwarded to my payroll manager on that context and then factor all that in before you even manually updating the Excel sheet the correct way. And then once that's done, there's, there's still a review process that I have to go through. And you know, before, before this is all, you know, done and sealed up. So there's definitely the time factor I think. Um, I would like to say, I would like to think that we're saving at least 80% of the time just because we didn't have to scramble through all these contexts. Um, another aspect I.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:23] 80% of the time. So like roughly. Right. So like, what did, what do you think it took before if you had to ballpark it?

Echo Zhong: [00:07:30] Uh, depending on the, depending on what we're updating, obviously, if we're just adding a new hire, if we already have a good headcount tab set up, then, you know, maybe, maybe 20 minutes, half an hour, depending on who's doing it and depending on if they found that email that I send them, maybe it just slipped through the cracks. So there's a lot of overhead there. Um, but if it's more complex, for example, oh, they add a new hire. They wanted to do some scenario analysis. Oh, what if I, what if my sales go up or what. Because I hired this new person, my sales should go up. Like, what does it look like for me? Or, oh, maybe we're cutting back. Like sales has been going down. Like, what does that look like for me? If, if we layer in scenario analysis, that could be hours of work. But with cloud, those are those are just tasks that could easily be automated right now. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:28] So there's lots of different ways to set up an MCP, um, APIs M.c.p.s. Kind of the same thing, right? It's the way these apps talk to each other, right? What do you like about how gusto has set it up.

Echo Zhong: [00:08:42] Mhm. I'm, I'm very excited about the Multi-client MCP because I think most of the MCP s on the market right now doesn't support the Multi-client feature. And what that means in practice is instead of like setting each client up, uh, each, each client, its own project and its own connection, I can simply just do one connection to, uh, to gusto MCP and it has, and I can just give it access to all of my clients.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:16] All the clients under your dashboard.

Echo Zhong: [00:09:17] All the clients under that I have access to. So that, that makes it a lot easier because, uh, not only on the setup because like in the future when you're running agents in cloud, all you need to do is to call the gusto MCP instead of like, if I'm running payroll payroll for 50 clients, if I don't have the Multi-client MCP, I'm going to have to like run the task for 50 times versus if under Multi-client MCP, I can just run it one time. It will check all 50 clients for me. So I think it's a it's a pretty, pretty big game changer.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:53] So for any developers listening, go multi-client with your MCP. If you want accountants to be happy.

Echo Zhong: [00:10:00] I would be happy.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:01] Don't make us set it every an MCP server for every single client. Yeah. Connection. I mean, yeah. Um, so one of the things I've been doing recently with Claude is like, I have it reading my emails and like helping draft my replies emails. Are you in your inbox these days or have you gotten out of it?

Echo Zhong: [00:10:17] I'm, I'm not completely out of it. I think I'm trying to triage my email as much as possible. Um, I maybe like halfway there because, um, there's client work, there's maybe like growth initiatives, there's like different initiatives that sometimes it doesn't triage as much. I would like to get to the place where, um, everything gets triaged very accurately. And yeah, and the draft gets written like very, very personalized as well. Yeah. Have you found success in like what you had done?

Blake Oliver: [00:10:54] So here's my recommendation is, and I didn't invent this, I heard this from somebody else, but then I built it.

Echo Zhong: [00:11:00] Okay.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:00] I basically, I asked Claude to create a scheduled task that reads all of my emails on a nightly basis.

Echo Zhong: [00:11:08] Mhm.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:09] And then diffs them against what it drafted. So if like Claude drafts me an email in my voice and I have a skill for it, right. I've already I already built that, like, look at all my emails and create a skill to write in my voice. So now whenever it drafts an email, it writes using that skill. But it's, I'm still training it, right? So this, I created a scheduled task where, um, and I should also say the skill logs, every email that it writes for me into like a file.

Echo Zhong: [00:11:37] Mhm.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:38] So then the scheduled task goes every night and compares what I actually sent versus what it wrote, and then logs the differences in a file and if it notices a pattern, it updates the skill. Very cool. So it's like self-improving skill.

Echo Zhong: [00:11:53] Yep.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:54] And I feel like that is the big like next unlock is if you can get Claude, like learning from what you do and updating itself.

Echo Zhong: [00:12:02] Yep.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:02] It just improves, improves, improves.

Echo Zhong: [00:12:04] I like that.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:05] And that's how we get to the AI that destroys humanity. But before that, we'll get to the firm that like runs itself where they I. But maybe, maybe instead of destroying humanity, it will just decide to do all of our taxes for us. But that leads me to my next question.

Echo Zhong: [00:12:19] Okay.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:20] Which is gusto also announced they're doing business compliance like more and more of it, right. State registrations, registered agent, annual reports. This is all work that accounting firms have charged for in the past. Not everyone, but a lot of us.

Echo Zhong: [00:12:34] Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:35] And we built for that work. I mean, we built for payroll. We built for HR a lot sometimes, like with the AI doing the work. What happens? Like. Like what do like. What do we do if we're not billing for that time? Like, what are you doing for.

Echo Zhong: [00:12:55] I feel like I would like to think about the firm, um, as kind of like the adopter distributor, almost like in a way, or a distributor for the software or like we're embedding the software into our workflow. Um, where with the software getting better, we're actually delivering better services. Um, is kind of how I think about it. Uh, for example, with, I used to do like ten years ago, I used to do a lot of state registrations manually for my clients. I don't do that anymore because I could point to gusto and have that completed in gusto. Um, however, what we noticed with the clients is, you know, they still would like to have a point of contact who's just owning the job of state registration, state nexus and things like that. So we're continuing to be that point person to, to monitor the status, to take care of any issues because God forbid, the, the government, like dealing with the government is still a pain. So we're still playing that role of almost like orchestrating all these different tools that we have, except that, uh, right now we're not doing it manually. Maybe we're using gusto as a tool to, to deliver these type of services.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:22] Somebody still has to own it, I think. And you can't just hand it off to an AI yet. Anyway.

Echo Zhong: [00:14:28] Um, I don't, I don't think that's yeah, I don't think that's, that's the preference for a lot of the business owners because like, for them, they, uh, at least a lot of the, the entrepreneurs that we work with, they're optimizing a peace of mind. So compliance like state state compliance or the Nexus stuff like these are the things that they would like to just not think about, just like offload their brain on.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:54] So if you're not charging for doing those filings, though, what are you charging for?

Echo Zhong: [00:14:57] Um, typically, for example, for startup clients that we advise, like we would, we would kind of act like their fractional CFO. So like in the example, we, we talked about cash flow forecasting, but that's usually just the start of a conversation, right? Um, I would like to think that a lot of the times we become more of more like a business advisor to the business owners and their needs are all going to be very different, right? Because, um, maybe some people are thinking about retiring, exit planning. Uh, some of them are thinking about additional liquidity. So then we would help them with maybe lending or fundraising, things like that. Uh, or maybe they're thinking about expansion where we can help support them in pulling additional resources to, to do that. So I feel like we're playing more in, in that role, depending on the client, you can call that kind of like fractional CFO or COO, uh, or for some certain founders, maybe it's their personal finance that we can pull in additional resources for, um, at least based on our experience, uh, you know, for firm, it's still very much like a people business. People who come to us are people who would love to continue, uh, working with professionals on that type of work. And they would much rather work with a trusted advisor who, who they can develop a long term relationship with versus, um, a technology solution that's only probably solving one of your problems.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:32] But charging for that like is difficult, at least for a lot of accountants. So like, help me understand that more, right? When you're, when you're acting as like the CFO advisor to a startup and you're not charging them for specific deliverables or, you know, or are you like, how do you build that? Like, do you just come up with a number? You're like, it'll be this much per month. And like, that's how you do it. Like, how do you.

Echo Zhong: [00:16:54] I think depending on who owns the job, if we're owning the job, then I'm charging for it. Um, and obviously there's going to be my price if I'm owning the job. Um, but for example, if, if the owner, if the business owner is more like, okay, I know I can do this in gusto and I'm going to do it myself, then we would simply play the role of, oh, like, here's, here's the tools, here's the instructions that you can self-serve get this done. Um, but yeah, but if we're the owner, like, I think it's only fair that we, that we should be, you know, that we should be charging for that service.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:29] So it sounds like the future for the firm is good because you're able to do more for the clients. Let's talk about the staff because there's a lot of concern about, you know, people's jobs getting automated. And you had a story that you told on the panel about your payroll manager, correct? And if I were a payroll manager right now working in payroll at a firm, I would be a little worried.

Echo Zhong: [00:17:49] Like.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:50] After what gusto announced, right. Putting the hours from the time sheet into gusto is like, what.

Echo Zhong: [00:17:56] Am I going to do now?

Blake Oliver: [00:17:57] That's the job. So what happened in your firm? What happened to your payroll manager?

Echo Zhong: [00:17:59] I think honestly, I feel like at first she was really anxious to, um, there was a little bit of resistance at first when we were saying, oh, like, let's move to gusto. Um, but I think ultimately what, like what happened with the conversation is like, hey, like we're not trying to get rid of your job, but hey, like, do you even like enjoy doing data entry? You probably don't. What we're trying to do is let's, let's talk about what you, where you see yourself in 3 to 5 years, like what do you, what do you actually want to do? What's, what's, what seems interesting to you versus keeping things in spreadsheets and it. The answer had better be not, not be. I enjoy key stuff in a spreadsheet because that's. That's really hard to work with. But, uh, for our payroll manager, she's she's very.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:53] I just love data entry. It's like my favorite thing.

Echo Zhong: [00:18:56] That's, that's gonna be tough to work with, but like, I'm gonna be very honest here. Like if, if that's the person you're working with, that's a different conversation. But luckily our payroll manager, she's, she's like, very like, as, as much as once we got over the fact that, okay, we're not trying to fire anybody, all we're trying to do is to change a little bit of the way, way work, but ultimately it gets you to where you want to be more. So yeah, I think that once we started that conversation, it became like the conversation around, okay, like automating the payroll work and giving her more capacity to do more tax advisory work, uh, getting her more involved in on that side of things, um, just kind of happen more naturally. Um, but yeah, like I would, I would say it really depends on the person and the firm and probably also depends on the, the trust level or like the relationship that the owner has with their employees. In our case, we were able to work with this person, but sometimes like, like firms might find it helpful to bring out maybe like a change management consultant or like a third party just so they're not like, because, you know, like they, they can, they can kind of come at it together as a combined effort. There are different ways of for change management, obviously. And I think there are, there are a lot of really great people whose, who specialize in that. Um, so yeah, I think, I think if, if a firm is thinking about transforming way of work, um, you know, like talking to one of those experts could be a, could be a good first start.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:38] I like what you said about change management being important, right? Because I have noticed this about myself when I work with AI tools, and I'm curious if you had the same, the same feeling and it's this, it's that I have actually had to completely shift my mind when it comes to working with software because, and maybe this is just because I'm getting older, right? And so like the lessons I learned about how to work with tech from 20 years ago were different. Mhm. It was, I think the most important skill when I was in my 20s was being quick at user interfaces. Right. If you could learn the QuickBooks interface and we're talking like desktop era, right? Lots of options, lots of buttons, lots of forms. You were good at that. Then you could figure out how to do things right. It was all about mastering that. And now it's like the interface is going away. And so all of that skill is, is changing. And now it's like true, we have to learn how to ask better questions or, I don't know, it's like the potential is so enormous for what you can do with these tools, right? I feel like the hard part is actually like imagining a different way of doing the process.

Echo Zhong: [00:22:02] That's true. Yeah. And also like understanding what's happening, like underneath the, the system sometimes could be a challenge as well.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:14] Because we can't see it like all that background thinking, right? Yeah. It's happening.

Echo Zhong: [00:22:18] Like, like the ability to audit the results, the ability to kind of like audit the, like the chain of events that's happening. I think that continues to be something that's, I don't know, both companies and firms need to work together on. Um, but yeah, I understand the struggle. It's, it's definitely still. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:40] Well, you're working with cloud all the time, like, and you're on the cutting edge of this, right? So I just want to know for myself personally, but I'm sure our listeners would be interested as well as like, what is your, what's your biggest learning about like cloud right now, like, or just any of these, like, you know, ChatGPT Cowork. Right? Tools like, like what's, what are you excited about right now?

Echo Zhong: [00:23:03] I'm very excited about, I'm probably halfway there. Um, this is something that I'm still is still somewhat, um, unvalidated for me is whether everybody is going to be okay with chat being the interface. Um, because I don't know if I, if I think about ten years from now, is that a world where everything just happens in the chat? Um, or is it still like, okay, like we do some of the work in chat. Um, but we, we still go to go to different systems, maybe click a few things. Um, that's something that I, that I'm, that I'm still like unsure of. Yeah. So that's, that's something that I feel like is interesting.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:53] Could we be comfortable with a completely, you know, chat based system with no interface user interface?

Echo Zhong: [00:23:59] Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:00] I mean, if you think about it, that's kind of what accountants are though for our clients.

Echo Zhong: [00:24:03] Yeah. Because the ultimate maybe the ultimate shape of, you know, I would, I think that could be interesting to be the ultimate shape of the accounting firm because imagine, for example, um, it's, it's January 1st. Now you, you pull up a chat, you pull up a chat and, and just say, hey, like, send out all my organizers or like, send out all my requests for 1099 and things like that. And it just like, does all that for? For your clients? Yeah. I think that's that's kind of interesting. It could even be scheduled. I think that could be interesting. But obviously we're very I think we're, we're still kind of far away from that. Um.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:46] Well, I don't know, but I don't I mean, it's like it's doable.

Echo Zhong: [00:24:49] It's doable. I don't know how, like how widely adopted that that methodology would be, but I think that could be interesting.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:01] So I've kind of gone all in personally on, uh, on all this AI agent stuff. And I have like more scheduled tasks than I can even count in my sidebar. And I am now completely dependent on cloud work for everything. And I have started spending a lot of money on tokens.

Echo Zhong: [00:25:22] Mhm.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:22] Right. The bigger my system gets, the more knowledge it has, the more tokens it consumes. It's like it's weird. It's like the smarter it gets, the more expensive it gets. That's what I've found. So I want to know how much are you spending on on AI? Are you fitting into that $20 a month, $100 a month plan, or are you going over with the token spin?

Echo Zhong: [00:25:41] That's a great question. Um, we actually. Depending on the phase of development, we actually host some of the internally built tools, uh, in our code base. Um, but when we're prototyping on certain workflows or certain connections, we're prototyping in Cowork. Um, I.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:06] So you're saving on tokens because you're not doing everything with the AI.

Echo Zhong: [00:26:11] You're because it's more like, yeah, writing code. The way I'm thinking about it is like, okay, like the fastest way for me to prototype obviously is in Cowork. Yeah, I'm going to iterate on this a couple times. Then I'm going to tell my engineer to put it in live environments. Um, and he would probably, and he will have better ways to optimize for my AI usage than me. Um, at least that's currently the workflow. Um, but the way I'm kind of thinking about it is, um, comparing my token usage versus, um, versus the cost of actually hiring someone to do the work. Uh, as long as that's still cost beneficial for me. I think that makes sense.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:57] So you're like willing to spend tens of thousands of dollars on tokens, if that's what it takes.

Echo Zhong: [00:27:01] That means it's still saving me an army.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:04] So yeah, so.

Echo Zhong: [00:27:04] I think that would make sense. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:07] It's makes me think that, uh, these AI companies are going to actually potentially deliver the results that the investors are looking for with all these high valuations. I don't know.

Echo Zhong: [00:27:21] I think that's interesting because the way I see it and I don't I don't have a definitive answer to this because the way I see it is AI creates capacity, but it does not create demand. I think it is the job for us as the advisors to identify, demand and, and capture them. Um, for example, if, if you were a bookkeeping firm, maybe you can identify, you know, like tax tax needs for your clients and maybe, you know, utilizing some of the skills, we're bringing a partner who can help you deliver that together. Uh, or if you were running tax planning firm, like you can start providing more like financial analysis. Um, just like I think AI AI is certainly, I think, able to assist us in looking for the demand and capturing them. But I think ultimately it depends on people to, to find the demand, to find where the growth should be and then adopting UI to adopting AI to create capacity to be able to deliver those value. It's kind of how I think about it.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:39] I want to get your take on another idea.

Echo Zhong: [00:28:41] Okay.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:41] Uh, so the last 20, 30 years of SaaS has been startups creating software to sell to people to help them do a job better, faster, or cheaper.

Echo Zhong: [00:28:56] Mhm.

Blake Oliver: [00:28:56] That's the premise. Do you agree with me on that? Yeah. Yeah. Basically what it is.

Echo Zhong: [00:29:01] That is SaaS.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:01] Saas is a tool that a human uses to do their job better. Yep. Okay. The new cohort of startups in this AI world now, they're different.

Echo Zhong: [00:29:11] Mhm.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:13] And I didn't come up with this. I read this somewhere. I can't remember where, but if you look at all of them. The difference is they're still targeting the same function, right? They're targeting, I don't know, payroll or HR or they're targeting like accounting or sales or whatever. Let's use sales as an example. That's a good one, right? So we had like CRMs, pop up, cloud based CRMs and just take over in sales, right? Because now you finally have a system for managing all your prospects. It's in the cloud that integrates with everything. Okay. Yeah. But you still had salespeople doing the job, entering everything into the CRM system. Well, the new CRM isn't a CRM. It's the actual like AI doing the job of the sales rep.

Echo Zhong: [00:29:59] Mhm.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:00] So the theory of this is that like the new startups, they aren't just selling tools to professionals to do work. They're actually selling the work.

Echo Zhong: [00:30:10] Mhm.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:12] And I want to know what that means for our profession.

Echo Zhong: [00:30:15] Mhm.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:17] And that we're starting to see that startups that are actually selling tax and accounting and audit services.

Echo Zhong: [00:30:25] That's true.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:26] Done by AI. Yeah, with very few people.

Echo Zhong: [00:30:29] Yep.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:30] Like 10% of the people or less. Right. So thoughts?

Echo Zhong: [00:30:35] Mhm. And we can come back in five years and see if if my judgment is correct or not. I think fundamentally there are different types of people. There are people who, who want to work with people, and there are people who would rather self serve. I think that that's that's my fundamental assumption. And that's why my my assumption is for me, I will do my best to serve the people who want to continue working with people. And I think I, I don't know from what I'm observing, um, with AI coming up, I don't know. Conferences are getting bigger. There are more conferences popping up, there's more community happenings popping up. I feel like people are there's at least a cohort of people that are still looking for the personal connection. The. They will trust a person's recommendation, but they will probably never trust a self first recommendation. Even though if even though maybe the person they're trusting is using a software to assist their, their, their decision. But just like I'm talking to you, I trust you, Oliver Blake. Like I trust you. Therefore I'm gonna trust your judgment on things. Um, but it will be hard for at least a cohort person, right? Like, it will be hard for me to say to not verify what the results given to me from a software versus like this other person that I've listened to for years over podcasts or like had really helped me understand a lot of the happenings.

Echo Zhong: [00:32:28] And I think I would like to bet on that being the future, that professionals are still going to win out by having the ability to actually build human relationships, to actually build trust with their clients, and to actually build a personal professional network that can support the clients better. You know, like with more engagements, I feel like at least for me, I feel like I've made more connections with people who are focusing on different things, which actually made me a better advisor to a lot of my clients. And I'm hoping to do that more, you know, with more like minded professionals. And if, if that's the future, but like, obviously they can use AI tools. Um, and inevitably there's going to be a good amount of people who go to the tech solutions For self-serve, which I mean would be good for them. But if anybody would like to hear my opinion and they come to me, I would gladly serve them. It's kind of how I think about it.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:34] Well, I think that's a great way to put a bow on this conversation. Uh, like it's a, there will still be room for humans is what I'm hearing. And, you know, it's funny you say that because, you know, I do a lot of interviews, like remotely. And this is the first one I've done in person in a long time. And it makes a difference. Of course, this is totally different. And so there is this like human element that we can't eliminate completely. You know, like we're not going to have Westworld robots that look and, you know, you see that show. We're not going to have human, human replicant robots anytime soon. So we'll have that advantage. But, um, speaking of like, where people can hear more about you, like, where do you encourage people to follow you online or learn more? Like LinkedIn? Is that a good spot?

Echo Zhong: [00:34:21] Yeah. Linkedin. I'm, usually check my LinkedIn messages pretty frequently. Um.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:27] We'll, we'll put the link to your profile in the show notes or the description of this episode. Thank you to gusto for bringing us together here at gusto.

Echo Zhong: [00:34:35] Thank you.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:35] Gusto in San Francisco. Always wonderful to be here. I wish we could turn this camera around and show everyone the warehouse that we're in. Do you remember the year it was built like that? He was set on stage, like 1890 something. The warehouse. This warehouse? Yeah, it was a submarine factory.

Echo Zhong: [00:34:51] Yeah, yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:52] Like.

Echo Zhong: [00:34:53] It's amazing.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:53] Submarine dock. Yeah. The the crane is still on the, uh, on the on the rollers, like. Yeah, I wouldn't want to sit under that though.

Echo Zhong: [00:35:02] It would be a completely different scene. Come to the next gusto next event to see for yourself.

Blake Oliver: [00:35:07] Dustin X 2027. We'll see you there. Thanks for listening.