Adam Larson: 00:05

Welcome to Count Me In. In today's episode, we sit down with Jon Morris, the CEO of Fiscal Advocate Inc. What you didn't know about Jon is that he's a serial entrepreneur who grew his first company, Rise Interactive, from the grounds of 40,000,000 in revenue. Jon shares his remarkable journey of scaling in a digital marketing agency, the lessons he learned about choosing the right industry, and why having the wind at your back can make all the difference. We dive into John's transition from marketing to the world of accounting and FP and A, where he's now leveraging technology and AI to revolutionize financial operations.

Adam Larson: 00:38

John reveals how hiring anically minded professionals for finance transformed his marketing firm, why investing in r and d sets his new company apart in a crowded market, and how he's reimagining CFO services with AI powered tools. With honest reflections on growth, decision making, and the future of finance roles in an AI driven landscape, Jon brings a wealth of practical insights for leaders, founders, and anyone building transformational business. Tune in for a conversation packed with real strategies and actionable advice. Well, John, thank you so much for coming on the podcast today. And I'd kinda like to start from the beginning of your kinda your career.

Adam Larson: 01:18

You built a company from, like, 0 to 40,000,000, launching, you know, your accounting and FP and A business. So kinda walk me back through that journey. What is scaling something from scratch kinda teach you, and especially as you're building new things now?

Jon Morris: 01:30

Yeah. So I started Rise Interactive as a digital marketing agency. I won $10,000 in a new business plan competition at University of Chicago. That was my seed money to start it. And over 16 years, we averaged 75% growth per year, grew it to, as you said, $40,000,000 in revenue.

Jon Morris: 01:48

First of all, and this is probably one of the most important things if someone's listening to this that made me successful, was having wind at my back. And what I mean by that is the amount of money at that moment in time that was leading traditional TV advertising and moving to digital marketing was fairly massive. So the demand for my service was greater than the supply that existed. And so as much as I want to take a ton of credit for executing well and doing all these brilliant things, if I was in an opposite industry and I did not have wind at my back, it would be much harder to scale and grow. And so that's the first thing I always tell people is, you know, pick an industry with wind at your back because there's a saying that c players in an a industry will outperform a players in the c industry every day

Adam Larson: 02:43

of the

Jon Morris: 02:44

week. So that was thing number one. I think the second thing that really helped me scale was a long term view. When you go to business school, they really teach you go out, raise money, sell the company in five to seven years. And I had a twenty year time horizon.

Jon Morris: 03:00

I didn't make it twenty years. I only made it sixteen. But my view is I wanted to build something special, and I wanted to build a great company. And I really wanted what I sold to be amazing, something that I'm proud of, something that my clients are proud to say that they work with us. So I think that was the second big thing.

Jon Morris: 03:17

And then the third thing that really made us unique, it doesn't sound unique today, but we were one of the true pioneers of taking a data driven approach to marketing. I would interview tons of people that were in the marketing space to have an analytical approach to how we analyze data. What I found was the talent wasn't there at that time period. You know, a lot of times people went into advertising because they didn't want to do math, And I was looking for people who wanna do math. So I recruited very heavily from the finance industry.

Jon Morris: 03:50

And all my leaders eventually turned into amazing digital marketers, but I trained them from scratch. And I recruited investment bankers, hedge fund managers, traders, you know, a whole series of people from the financial industry because I couldn't find the financial or the or the data driven acumen that I was looking for in the marketing space. So I think those were a few things that made us unique. I would also say I had a very aggressive approach. I wanted to scale and grow a big business, and you'll get into, like, how I started, you know, Fiscal Advocate, which is a, you know, accounting and FP and A company, which has nothing to do with digital marketing.

Jon Morris: 04:30

But, you know, we understood the benchmark numbers, and we understood how to use that to our advantage in terms of how other people were spending their money versus how we could spend our money more intelligently. And so we were constantly very focused on how is our competition spending their time and money? How do we spend our time and money more effectively? And that led to a lot of our growth.

Adam Larson: 04:52

Wow. There's a lot of questions that come to mind as you tell me that. But I had one thing that pops in my head. What was that conversation like when you were talking to somebody who may not have been in the industry that you're pulling them in? You said you're pulling people from banking, from from finance and accounting.

Adam Larson: 05:06

You're pulling them into this new space. What were those conversations like as you were trying to say, hey. You can apply your skills here in this new industry.

Jon Morris: 05:14

So a couple of things. I I was fortunate in timing. So, you know, a lot of our a lot of my employees came from the trading world.

Adam Larson: 05:24

Okay.

Jon Morris: 05:24

And with high frequency trading and where the computers were coming in, they were all of a sudden having trouble making money in trading in the way that they were used to be able to make. I had the benefit that there was an opening where people were starting to think about other opportunities for a career. I also had the advantage that I was growing rapidly. So as I talk to people and they see, you know, that the company is doubling on a year over year basis, you don't know of many companies that double on a year over year basis. So I had that going my way.

Jon Morris: 06:00

And then the third thing is I explained to them that they're gonna be doing the exact same thing that they've been doing. The only difference is rather than analyzing, let's just say stocks or investments or trends, they're gonna be analyzing media dollars. But, you know, I'd show them the math, and I'd show them that, you know, you're looking at click through rates and conversion rates and average order values and, you know, investing in this area versus investing in that area. And so, if you think about it, our whole approach, it was a big part of our brand, was we called it interactive investment management. Mhmm.

Jon Morris: 06:40

And the idea was that you were investing in one channel versus another channel or one campaign versus another campaign. And so I think I was able to bring those similarities and and relate it back to their world.

Adam Larson: 06:52

Yeah. That's really awesome. And I think it's encouraging too for people who might feel stuck in their current industry realizing that they can apply skills that they're learning right now in another industry. And it's just like, hey. The the the word problem might be different, but the math is still the same.

Jon Morris: 07:08

Yep. Do ever see the movie Cool Runnings?

Adam Larson: 07:11

Yeah. I love that movie.

Jon Morris: 07:12

You know? I love that movie too. But, I mean, it's very similar to they believe that they could turn track stars into great bobsledders. I believe that I could turn, you know, great finance people into great digital marketers.

Adam Larson: 07:23

Yeah. That's really cool. So the the accounting and FP and A space is not short of competitors, and you decided I'm gonna start something in that space. What kinda help me understand your thinking of what made the decision to invest heavily into AI and technology. Was that a calculated bet from day one, or did it kind of evolve from something you that you seem to keep running into?

Jon Morris: 07:41

So I would say the investing in technology was from day one. Yeah. From the investing in AI, I didn't know when I started this in 2020 of ChatGPT or the AI wave, so that came on later.

Adam Larson: 07:57

Yeah.

Jon Morris: 07:59

But, you know, I'm taking the same playbook. You know, if you think about what I did with Rise, I identified waste in media and redeployed it to areas that get you a positive ROI. Today, I'm doing the same thing with someone's finances. I'm identifying waste in how they're allocating their budget or their expenses and identifying positive ROI areas to help them grow. And as you said, I am no short of competitors.

Jon Morris: 08:27

There are tens of thousands, if not more, companies that do what I do. But I'll get into my competitive set in a second. The second thing is I don't have wind at my back where, you know, this is an area where I think the supply equals the demand Mhmm. Not where there's massive demand and limited supply. That is a unique component to this business.

Jon Morris: 08:53

What I would also say, though, is there aren't many 800 pound gorillas in this space. So, yes, I have a lot of competitors, but they all tend to be much more smaller businesses. And I'd say they're they're probably more fractional CFO versus CEO running a company, where I'm more of a CEO bringing what I think sophisticated business practices, trying to scale and grow this business. And so I think that's where it makes us a little bit more unique, where I'm doing the same thing. I know the benchmark numbers.

Jon Morris: 09:29

I'm using those benchmark numbers to my advantage. I'm making investments that my competition is not making. I don't know of many fractional CFO companies that are investing in r and d and technology and things that make them unique.

Adam Larson: 09:43

Yeah. So let's talk about r and d. You don't normally like, when I talk to software comp software owners and they're, you know, talking about what they're seeing in the industry, not many people mention, say, I'm I'm doing r and d. So what does that look like for something in this space, especially the FP and A space?

Jon Morris: 09:58

So let's just start with I mentioned tens of thousands, maybe more. Let's go with the hundreds of thousands of competitors. Yeah. We are all trying to do similar things. You know, in my area, I'm focusing mainly on marketing and tech service companies where there are hundreds of thousands of companies just in that little subset for me to go after, typically between 5,000,020 in revenue.

Jon Morris: 10:24

And I only care about three KPIs. How do I grow your cash, improve your profit margin, and have you on a revenue basis grow year over year at a faster rate? Those are the only three KPIs that I care about. And so when I start thinking about how can I bring technology and how can I bring AI to the table that gives me a unique story, then my differentiator over time becomes greater and greater and greater? And so, and I'm an incrementalist.

Jon Morris: 10:55

I have a twenty year time horizon. My next job, I probably won't have the age to have a twenty year time horizon, so I have to be a shorter time period. But I got twenty years of me for this one. I'm already six years in. And so if you think about I'm going up against companies that typically are smaller than us.

Jon Morris: 11:14

We're about 20 people today and growing really quickly. And we are investing in technology that helps our clients improve their cash, their profit margin, and their revenue growth. From a data driven decision making standpoint, it gives us something unique. We're unique in our focus, so we have a focused ideal client profile we go after. We're unique in that I think we have three KPIs that we believe really matter, and then we're unique in that we are building tools and processes and automation that allows us to do this better than anyone else.

Adam Larson: 11:44

So one of those tools that you'd mentioned to me when we first initially chatted was something called the AI CFO. And maybe you could talk about what does that look like, and what problem were you trying to solve? What did that early process of building that look like?

Jon Morris: 11:56

So, you know, speed of decision making matters. And, you know, I I can't tell you just myself how quickly I come up with questions that I want an answer to. And unfortunately, I don't sleep much. And a lot of times, my questions come in the middle of the night. And, you know, you might want to ask your CFO a question, but you probably are not allowed to call them at 3AM in the morning and say, hey, I was just wondering, you know, what was the delta between January and February's revenue?

Jon Morris: 12:29

And could you give me a detailed report on that, and could I get it in five minutes? And so, you know, by having an AI CFO copilot at your fingertips, you're able to get access to information. You're able to make decisions in a much faster way. And so that's an example of, you know, one element. But the other part is, you know, just the sheer volume of information that an LLM can process relative to a human allows you to get, you know, really detailed granular answers at a much quicker rate.

Adam Larson: 13:03

Well, and not many people would wanna answer the phone at 3AM. And, you know, if you wanna find that information at 3AM, I guess it's much easier to just type it into your phone or Yeah. Into your So when it come when we talk about Aon Finance, you know, accuracy is a huge conversation. You know, hallucinations, you know, where AI gives you an answer that's just wrong, but they confidently get to you. It's like, hey.

Adam Larson: 13:24

Yes. The sky is purple today because of this, this, and this. You know, like, oh, okay. I guess it does kinda look purple. You know?

Adam Larson: 13:30

How do you approach solving for the accuracy within the AI? And at what point did you feel like you had something you could actually trust?

Jon Morris: 13:37

So there are tools out there that need to do the processing of the math as opposed to the LLM. The challenge is when you're dealing with an LLM, you're dealing with the world of instantaneous feedback. And so we are we're not instantaneous. I mean, we're like a minute to two minutes for response time

Adam Larson: 14:01

Yeah.

Jon Morris: 14:02

But which to me, I think, is a more than reasonable service level agreement of how quickly you can get your information back. So at this moment, you have to trade a little bit of instantaneous for minutes as opposed to, you know, what used to take days or or weeks. But you have to learn when you build your tech stack and you build your infrastructure, where's the math gonna get done, and it has to be done in a place that can do it in an accurate manner. And then that gets fed back to the LLM to give you the analysis and the summaries and all the information that you kind of expect from a from your AI agent.

Adam Larson: 14:38

Yeah. That's interesting because, you know, I was reading I told you about this before, but I was reading an article that's, you know, said about 90 I think it was, like, somewhere, like, 90% of people who use AI don't actually fact check what's given to them. So what does that look like as, you know, you're you're giving this to your team and saying, hey. Here's this great tool. But at some point, somebody needs to does need to look at those things to make sure that it's accurate.

Jon Morris: 14:58

You know, you bring up an interesting point. I just read an article that has to do with computer programming as opposed to, let's just say, finance using AI. And it is said that the programmer's job now has turned more into fact checking code versus writing code.

Adam Larson: 15:20

Interesting.

Jon Morris: 15:21

And I think the truth is gonna lean more and more to your finance team is verifying the accuracy of the data. Mhmm. And, you know, understanding that it's gotta be a guide at this point as opposed to a law. Yeah. Use a calculator, nobody fact checks the results of the calculator.

Jon Morris: 15:44

They believe that it's done the math properly. The trust is not there yet. And so until that trust is completely verifiable, people are going to have to do some type of screening. But, you know, there's things that you can also use AI for where it doesn't necessarily have to be a 100% accurate. You know, I'll give an example.

Jon Morris: 16:09

We have loaded oftentimes tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of transactions as we do a quality of earnings analysis and asked for identifying anomalies or things that might be out of place worth investigating. And so it maybe brings up 500 things to check. Now it might have missed some, or it might have included some that are not worthy of checking. But, you know, it can narrow your focus to, you know, where you spend your time and where you choose to fact check is another element of how it can save you time.

Adam Larson: 16:44

Yeah. And I've also I've also seen a lot of making sure that you know what the source data is that this that the LLM is pulling from. So you're saying, you can't just make something out from this data. You know? So it's it's all about where it's pulling from so that it's not just grabbing some random factoid from some random place of the Internet, but it's actually you actually see where it's pulling.

Jon Morris: 17:06

And that was as we built our AICFO copilot, that was a big part of our focus was just accuracy. Yeah. So we spent a lot of time before we felt really good of the accuracy. And in the beginning, it wasn't very good. You know?

Jon Morris: 17:20

And we we learned that we were relying too much on the LLMs to do the math. And so we've identified all these tools. So if you think about, you have this database with all this data and you send it to a tool like a calculator that you could completely trust that will do the math properly for whatever you're querying. And then that gets then sent to the LLM with the final answer. So they're not changing the answers on you.

Jon Morris: 17:46

And so as that happens more and more, I think the common person will trust the data in a lot more realistic manner.

Adam Larson: 17:55

Yeah. Definitely. There's something I've been thinking about. You know, you mentioned fractional CFOs, and we've had a number of fractional CFOs on this podcast. And, you know, it's it's a very interesting process because a lot of companies don't have the finance team, they get that fractional CFO in.

Adam Larson: 18:09

And, you know, what you're talking about is this AI copilot, this CFO AI copilot, you know, and it can do a significant chunk of what that fractional CFO might do. So, you know, what does the fractional CFO become more powerful, or does it eventually make them unnecessary? Unnecessary? Like, what's your take on that?

Jon Morris: 18:24

I think it makes them more powerful. But I think that very similar to programming, the junior programmer is much more at risk than the senior programmer right now. Gotcha. And by the way, there's an interesting challenge with that, which I'll explain in a second. And I think that the analyst and the junior person that is typically crunching the numbers and getting the information is gonna be less necessary, but you're still going to need someone who's going to interpret all this information and make sure that you're coming to the right conclusions.

Jon Morris: 18:58

And then there's another element that the, that AI is not going to do, and that is create a sense of urgency. One of the things that I think is the most important thing of a fractional CFO is creating a sense of urgency to either fix a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. And so, if you get a report saying, Hey, you need to go cut expenses from this area or you're going to run out of cash in sixty days, it's not gonna follow-up with you. And I'll be like, dude, what are you doing? Like, we gotta take cash out right now.

Jon Morris: 19:34

Like, no. No. No. Like, go cancel your dinner plans. We're getting together tonight.

Jon Morris: 19:38

We're gonna go fix this problem. And I believe that's a big part of a fractional CFO or any CFO or head of finance department. And so until that sense of urgency exists, I think that that CFO role is going to be crucial. And, you know, there's also other aspects and elements, but the finance department in general might be smaller over time. But it's interesting.

Jon Morris: 20:04

I keep on bringing up computer programming. I forget what it was, but there was some new innovation in the world of programming where they basically said it's gonna be the death of programmers. And it was the exact opposite. It was that because they could do so much more, the demand grew.

Adam Larson: 20:23

Yeah.

Jon Morris: 20:24

And so what you might see is the demand for organizing data to get it into the LMs properly might increase because if you don't have your data organized and granular and detailed, the LLM's not going be very powerful. And then you might see the demand for the analysts and the insights that you could gain might grow because you can get so many more insights at such a faster rate.

Adam Larson: 20:51

Yeah. I was I was thinking about as you were talking about that that, you know, the junior person that you're saying, they're more they're more in trouble than the the senior person at this moment. But we're gonna create a vacuum if the junior person, like, oh, we don't need you anymore. But how are we gonna train that person so that they can become the next CFO? Like, there's gonna that be I

Jon Morris: 21:09

was telling you that you're you're creating this scenario where you don't need the junior programmer. But if you don't have the junior programmer, they'll never become a senior programmer. Exactly. But I also don't know we might see that we're entering a world eventually of all Vibe coders. And that the code itself is not that important.

Jon Morris: 21:30

If if you think about accounting software Yeah. And you go back to the general ledger, you know, there used to probably be jobs of people just literally writing every single transaction out. That job is just not a valuable job anymore. Like, that's been automated where you would never hire someone to manually, you know, record all transactions. Yeah.

Jon Morris: 21:56

And so, you know, the programmer skill set in actually analyzing the code, these LLMs might get so good that that's just, you know, not an important thing anymore. It it's more can you come up with the right prompts and can you vibe code in a way that creates brilliance and creativity?

Adam Larson: 22:18

Yeah. It's it's the junior person. Their their responsibilities are shifting to make them understand how to use that AI better so that when they become the CFO, they're actually like well versed in how to how to train the next generation and understand how to analyze it as well. It's interesting as, you know, there's a lot of skepticism, you know, when it comes to AI. We talked a little we talked about trust.

Adam Larson: 22:36

We talked about how powerful

Jon Morris: 22:37

Yeah.

Adam Larson: 22:37

LLMs can be. When you're in the room with like a CFO or a finance leader whose cost is about this technology that you're just talking about, what's the conversation that you have with them to help them get from skeptical at least to at least exploring it?

Jon Morris: 22:48

I'm not really having that conversation that much. You know, I'm doing annual planning. I think there's a lot more FOMO. Think people are really scared of missing out. You know, I do a bunch of annual planning and quarterly planning with people.

Jon Morris: 23:03

There's not a single company that I've met with, zero, that doesn't want to have AI on their roadmap for 2026. So a 100% of the companies I have talked to plan on figuring out what they're gonna do to invest in AI to make it so that they stay relevant as a business. So I I think everyone understands that if they don't do something, their business is at risk right now.

Adam Larson: 23:30

Mhmm. Well, it goes back to the age old, you know, like, example of, like, Kodak. Was like, we're not gonna get into digital. We don't wanna do in digital. And you can go up to Rochester, New York today and see all the empty Kodak buildings as a kind of a testament to that decision.

Adam Larson: 23:42

So it's like organizations kinda have to make that decision. We need to get we need to have some connection to AI. We need to utilize this technology.

Jon Morris: 23:50

And they created the digital camera. Yeah. Which I think is, you know, beyond amazing. But I'll tell you, I think the greatest innovation to the digital camera age was the camera phone. Yeah.

Jon Morris: 24:05

Just having the camera on like, most people don't need, you know, the most powerful camera in the world. They just wanna take a picture of their family, like, on a vacation somewhere.

Adam Larson: 24:15

That's true. It's meeting the need where it's at. Like, I had a night I had a pretty nice digital camera, and then I got a newer phone. And then suddenly, I'm like, if I take a picture of my phone, it actually looks a lot better than that camera does, and I it's a lot easier to just keep it moving. It's it's interesting how how the demand changes, but we have to adapt our organizations to meet that demand.

Adam Larson: 24:35

What does that look like as an organization has to make that decision?

Jon Morris: 24:38

You know, here's the part. We're all going into the unknown. Like, you you know, you're asking me questions about, like, is the CFO going to exist or not exist? And I've given you my answers. I think they will exist.

Jon Morris: 24:49

I think they'll be more powerful. I could be wrong. Right? You know, like, we're we're guessing on the future. And, you know, I, I'm making a bet of investing in technology.

Jon Morris: 25:02

But you know who's also investing in technology? Every major billion dollar corporation that has technology.

Adam Larson: 25:10

Yeah.

Jon Morris: 25:11

And this is one of the things that I I had as a goal for our team this year is we have certain platforms like QuickBooks and ClickUp, and we use the Google Suite. And my goal is I wanna be power users of all their AI functionality. How do they use it? Why do they use it? How can we be the best at using those platforms?

Jon Morris: 25:32

And then what's on their roadmap? So, a lot of people, when they ask me, Where should you start with AI? I'm like, Start with all the tools that you already use and just figure out what AI functionality because, you know, they're equally scared that if they don't make these investments that they're gonna get leapfrogged.

Adam Larson: 25:48

So there's a there's an initiative for these organizations to do that. So make use of what you're what you're already what you already have so that way you can grow your organization.

Jon Morris: 25:56

You don't have to spend any more money.

Adam Larson: 25:59

Yeah. You know, as we've been talking about this, it's interesting. I was thinking about your your organization. You know, you said the first time around you had a lot of wind behind your sales. This time, you don't have as much wind behind your sales.

Adam Larson: 26:09

What does that look like from a planning and a or, like, a planning organization as as a leader of as the entrepreneur or the founder?

Jon Morris: 26:17

Well, one of the things that I always recommend is you need to start off with owner's goals. What does the owner you know, a lot of times, like, don't know if you're familiar with, like, EOS or scaling up or any of these, like Mhmm. Models of how to create your business, and they want you to create a ten year goal or your BHAG, you know, your big, hairy, audacious goal, and I think they're missing a step. The step I think they're missing is defining what the owner's goals are before you bring in the leadership team. Yeah.

Jon Morris: 26:46

Because if the owner's goal is I just want a lifestyle business and I never wanna be bigger than I am, well, then your BHAG is not gonna be very big, hairy, and audacious. And so I wanted to build a rocket ship at RISE. I don't wanna build a rocket ship at this company. I want nice, sustainable growth. You know?

Jon Morris: 27:08

If I can grow at 20% per year consistently every year, I double every 4.8 years. That's a really nice business.

Adam Larson: 27:18

Yeah. It is.

Jon Morris: 27:20

And and that's what we're doing right now is, you know, so I'm I'm making investments in this industry where I do believe that the sophistication of how we run our business, the fact that we're focused in a specific niche where we have deep expertise, and I also bring a lot of credibility because of what I did at RISE plus the technology we're bringing to the table, is there is enough business out there with added sophistication of running the business that allows me to grow at 20 to 30% a year. And so that's that's my mindset. But I do think about it quite a bit in terms of, you know, there's two types of wind. The first type I already mentioned is the services that you offer. Yeah.

Jon Morris: 28:17

The second type of wind are the clients that you serve. And so I do spend a lot of time thinking about who I want to win as a customer. And I'm just going to give you an example. Our largest customer at RISE went from a 5 figure annual account to a mid 7 figure annual account. Now, are two things or three things that happened.

Jon Morris: 28:43

The first thing that allowed that to happen is they grew like a weed. So they went from a a publicly traded $500,000,000 market cap, $30,000,000,000 market cap company over the time period we worked with them. So by them growing rapidly, they needed to spend a lot more money. The second thing was we kept them, and that's not easy to do. Yeah.

Jon Morris: 29:11

Because when someone grows that rapidly, every single digital marketing agency in the world is trying to win their business. And the third thing which had to do with us keeping them is there was a little bit of luck that they were insanely loyal to their partners when they found a good partner. So they didn't RFP us every single year and, you know, where we had a a bunch of other fortune 500 companies where it was a company policy just by law just by the law of the company. Every three years, you were getting RFP ed. And so you had to fight every three years to keep your business.

Jon Morris: 29:49

So those were in our favor. So I do spend time, you know, I I'll be honest, I have some concerns because of AI of what's gonna happen to the marketing agency. You know, are there are the tools gonna be some become so powerful that people just start implementing their marketing services internally as opposed to hiring an agency as an expert to help them. And so because of that, we're focusing a lot on tech service, and we're looking at the specific type of tech that we think is going to have wind at its back so that we could have more case studies of companies that grow rapidly and bring us along with them.

Adam Larson: 30:29

Yeah. That's quite a story, especially, like, as they as they grew, they brought you along with them because that's not always the case. And to have that and to have that story to be able to tell that is an encouragement to others who might be growing rapidly saying, oh, I don't necessarily need if my whoever's I'm working with can grow with me, that's a lot easier than, like, taking the time to start a new a new relationship as well.

Jon Morris: 30:50

Yep. I mean, in general, like, I mean, there's different types of businesses. Some businesses are purely transactional and one time purchases. I'm a big believer in, you know, if you work really hard to grow your customers and win your customers, what do you need to do to keep them? You know, I have many clients that are multi year relationships with us.

Jon Morris: 31:09

Yeah. And it starts with deeply caring. I really, really care about our customers. I care about their well-being. I want them to achieve their financial dreams.

Jon Morris: 31:18

Some of them come to me in a bad financial situation. I think about the the sleep they're losing at night because of that and what I can do to help them get over that. And, you know, we've we've built, I think, a special company. We're still very small, but I think that for the companies that have stuck with us, we've really impacted their lives in a meaningful way, and that feels really good.

Adam Larson: 31:42

Yeah. I bet it does. Well, Jon, I just really appreciate you coming to the podcast, sharing your insights with our audience. I I've I've learned a lot. I hope they have as well.

Jon Morris: 31:50

Excellent. Adam, this has been great. I really appreciate the questions and have me on here, and I really hope your audience learned something that added some value.

Announcer: 31:58

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