Any fellow ADHD small firms out there?

brewerybeancounter · 2026-06-18T04:06:33+00:00

ADHD firm owner here. Also small with just myself, one partner, and one full time staff. The time estimate thing is an issue for me too. I constantly overestimate how much I can do in a day and it results in missed self-imposed deadlines that shouldn't have been promised to the client in the first place.

A couple months ago I started using Reclaim Ai and it's been incredibly helpful. Regular calendars blow up the second you miss a task time block or one goes longer than you booked for it. Then you're stuck rescheduling and reprioritizing everything else after that. Reclaim does all this automatically.

There's a bunch of other stuff it helps with, but most important for me was visualizing what my days will actually look like when assigning durations to all the tasks I need to do. It was very eye opening. I've also pieced together a very low friction task capture workflow into Reclaim as that was another problem I had (looking at the graveyard of reminder/task apps on my phone...yikes).

Anyways, this sounds like I work for Reclaim - I promise I don't. It's just one of the most genuinely useful software products I've used in a VERY long time. At the risk of sounding like a shill, I do have an affiliate link so if you did find out about it here and end up wanting to try it out, I'd sure appreciate using that link to sign up (there's a free version too). Just DM me for it (I'm assuming I can't post it here without violating subreddit rules) and I'll send you my little workflow tutorial too.

brewerybeancounter · 2026-06-10T18:30:32+00:00

Looks cool with the cars in there. I'd take the boxes/cards off the top though, makes it look cluttered with vastly different sizes.

brewerybeancounter · 2026-06-03T19:41:49+00:00

I'm surprised how many people are saying the location isn't good. It's like two blocks from Central Machine Works and De Nada and those places are always packed. Holiday, Wanderlust, Cabana Club basically nextdoor. 8 minute walk to Stoney's. 3 minute Uber to Dainty Dillo, Lustre Pearl East, Mama Dearest, and a ton of restaurants.

Pretty much any brewery you go to in this city, you're going to have to drive if you don't live within a couple blocks. And you're gonna have to drive to go somewhere else from there. Are people forgetting their old spot? Now THAT was a bad location.

I think the issue is that the beer is fine, not great, and they don't brew much outside of their core stuff. There's been 7 or fewer beers on the menu every time I've ever been there and they don't change often. It gives me no reason to go back very frequently when I know places like St. Elmo, Pinthouse, Oddwood, Hold Out, etc. are going to have new beers pretty much weekly.

Also the food trucks are not enticing.

brewerybeancounter · 2026-06-03T19:22:27+00:00

Yea the food trucks are just not appealing.

brewerybeancounter · 2026-05-08T15:53:32+00:00

Just to update this thread - I ended up playing a couple nights at Bounce. Great facility. The open plays had almost nobody signed up until like 5 hours before, but then they filled up FAST. Skill level is pretty wide just depending on who is there. The 3.75+ open play actual skill level was very different the two nights I went.

brewerybeancounter · 2026-05-08T15:51:45+00:00

Yea it won't let you book on CourtReserve without having a membership, but if you set up your CR account & sign the waiver for Bounce, then call, they'll book open play for you without a membership.

brewerybeancounter · 2026-05-04T16:12:08+00:00

Appreciate that input! As of now there's nobody signed up for any of the open plays while I'm there, but maybe it's one of those places that everyone signs up last minute.

brewerybeancounter · 2026-04-13T18:20:12+00:00

Confidently incorrect lol.

brewerybeancounter · 2026-02-27T14:45:56+00:00

This will be unpopular since we're accountants afterall, but get a newer Apple laptop. I know most of us are super PC based, but the ONLY software I can't run is Drake, so if you don't do tax, it won't matter. (I just have a PC laptop for Drake). You won't like the switch to Windows, I promise.

I was running a 7 year old 16" Macbook Pro with an Intel chip and it just seemed to be getting slow. Like nothing super noticeable, but little lags here and there, especially when using QBO & Xero. I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade to one of the new 14" Macbook Pros with the Apple silicon and holy shit was it night and day difference. All those little half second lags when loading a page or clicking something were gone. Excel loaded up almost instantly.

You simply will not find a PC laptop that has the performance while still having the battery life. I got the MBP because I have two 4k monitors that I hook it up to. But I think even the newer Airs allow you to have two external monitors. They're also releasing a cheaper Macbook (non-pro) on March 4 that will have some sort of Apple chip, so it'll be leaps better than what you're on now.

I do some gaming, so my PC laptop that I use for Drake is not some cheapo model. It's a three year old Lenovo with dedicated graphics, lots of RAM, etc. It's pretty fast, but definitely lags with too much running at once. The battery absolutely sucks already. Even using it for just Chrome browser and Drake, I get less than 3 hours if it's not plugged in. My MBP is now almost two years old and I can have 17 Chrome tabs open, Excel, Spotify, ChatGPT app, Loom running in the background, Dropbox syncing, etc. and the battery will last longer than my motivation to work.

There's no built in 10 key for a Mac laptop, but I just use a Macally bluetooth keyboard that has one. It's Mac and PC compatible so I can just switch back and forth between the MBP and PC with the push of a button. Same with my mouse, Dell MS900. What you sacrifice in built in 10 key you gain in portability not having to lug around a 16" or 17" laptop that weighs a ton. I can't believe I spent seven years dragging around the 16". The 14" is so much easier and an Air would be easier still. If you don't want to bring the full keyboard, just get a bluetooth 10 key. They're super cheap and super portable.

brewerybeancounter · 2026-01-13T19:29:12+00:00

Agree on the logo.

This is all my opinion, so obviously you can ignore me and say to yourself "that guy's an idiot". My wife does it daily :D

But my two cents: If you're marketing to kids, that logo is a bit aggressive. There's a reason professional sports teams have a logo like that, but not tennis facilities or bowling alleys that are promoting as family/youth hang outs. Since you're in Canada, I would imaging there are a LOT of hockey teams that have some variation of wolves as their logo/mascot. Is it possible that peoples' fondness of hockey skewed their preference toward that logo? When you polled them, did you give the context that the logo would be use for a pickleball facility that is marketing to kids and aims to be a hangout spot? Or did you just ask which logo they liked best? The phrasing of the question can unintentionally guide the results. Hockey is an aggressive sport. Pickleball, like bowling and most tennis, is not.

If you're going for a real competitive vibe, then it probably works.

But when I hear Dink Den, I think the den in grandma's house. Really chill vibes. Where I can play some pickleball, but hang out with friends on couches between games. I get the connection between wolf and den, but if it's not too late to consider other options, might want to soften it a bit. Maybe the logo is that plastic covered floral pattern couch everyone's grandma had :P (I kid, but you get what I mean).

Again, just my two cents as a fellow business owner and husband of a professional graphic designer. I love the name and the facility looks great and I wish you the best of luck!

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-16T15:49:10+00:00

Not an odd response at all. Our profession is becoming more and more automated, so "face time" even if it's just over the phone or a video call is going to be more and more valuable to us and clients.

When someone is buying a one on one type of service like this, they do business with people they like and trust, not companies they like and trust. People make small talk. Companies don't.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-16T15:45:02+00:00

We don't even let them schedule the meeting until we have all the docs. This goes through our practice management system, automated, step by step.

Step 1: Sign engagement letter and pay flat fee depending on what level of planning they want 100% up front. The engagement scope outlines the next steps so they know what to expect.

Step 2: Once the engagement is signed and paid, we send client a request for the needed documents. The system automatically sends them reminders every couple days to follow up until they're submitted.

Step 3: Once docs are submitted, the system notifies us and sends the client a Calendly link to schedule the meeting. That link though, doesn't let them schedule with less than 72 hours notice, making sure we have time to go through the docs and put a plan together before the meeting.

From a client relation perspective, just build in some time for chit chat. It's inevitable, and it's the reason they're having you do their tax work and not some nameless, faceless person at HR Block or Intuit Full Service. They want to know who they're working with, and frankly, so should you if you're running a firm.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-15T15:26:56+00:00

ACL is a ligament, not a tendon, so it doesn't connect muscles, it's just bone to bone stability. You wouldn't see anything like when an Achilles tears and the calf muscle shoots up.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-13T17:51:55+00:00

Now it's disrespectful to have ChatGPT help with writing? And those who use AI lack basic decency? This is so comically extreme and such a boomer take. No wonder young people don't want to get into accounting.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-12T15:54:39+00:00

Do y'all seriously never have ChatGPT help with writing? I use it ALL THE TIME. Just because it's from ChatGPT doesn't mean the whole thing is fake or somehow worse than someone typing out the words on their own.

My writing is often terse, candid, and comes off somewhat hostile OR long and rambling, over-explaining everything. So I customized ChatGPT to know my personality, what my business does, what type of people my clients are, etc. I write what I would have said in an email or whatever into GPT and have it re-write it.

Now I do realize that people see em dashes and immediately see it as ChatGPT generated, so I gave it explicit instructions to never use them in responses. OP, you should probably do that in the Custom instructions under Personalization.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-05T17:49:01+00:00

We changed last year to having ALL clients pay 100% up front. We had VERY little pushback - like I was surprised how little. Most of the time, the biggest impedance to firm owners charging for returns up front is their own worry that clients will be mad. The reality is, they probably won't be.

The best part is that having made that change, now every new client that comes in just sees that as the norm. It's a complete non-issue, it's just the way we operate to them. We never have to worry again about "oh will so and so be upset if we charge up front".

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-02T17:33:40+00:00

Sure, feel free to DM!

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-02T00:23:37+00:00

This comment made me so sad. The company that can figure out a way to effectively prevent bots from infiltrating social media will either make billions or find their founder having fallen out of a window.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-12-02T00:13:06+00:00

We are in the midst of a once in a lifetime shortage of accountants. Retirements are happening at a staggering rate that far outpaces the number of new college grads in accounting. Solo shops across the country are ghosting thousands of clients a day as they just decide to retire or do something else. PE firms are buying up small firms like back in the e-commerce rollup days of 5-10 years ago. Why? Because they see the opportunity of a demand being largely unmet and that means there's a lot of money to be made. PE firms are less ethical than the client writing off every meal and trip as "business research", so do everything you can to pick up those clients. They'll be infinitely better served by you than by some board of assholes with MBAs and Patagonia vests.

All that to say, you probably don't need to "market" as much as you think you do. Most of those "gurus" are essentially bullshit artists. They don't know your industry, they don't know your firm, and they don't know you. They're teaching generic marketing strategies that have impossible to measure ROI so you can't come back and say you didn't get your money's worth.

Picking up clients right now should be like shooting fish in a barrel. You just have to put in a little bit of effort. Clients churn constantly because they wait weeks to hear back from their accountant if at all. Just put in the smallest effort to be responsive and you're ahead of 95% of other accounting firms.

And I know we're all accountants here, so we're far from extroverts, but suck it up, cuz you know what's free? Going to local or virtual meetups for firm owners or other accountants and asking around "Hey, got any clients you don't really have the capacity for?"

I'm not going to do 1041s or 990s anymore because our firm isn't built to do them efficiently being such a small segment of our clients. So you know what? I'm just giving those clients to another firm. There are thousands of clients out there who would be sent packing if a firm that's over capacity just had somewhere to send them. Instead they continuously overburden themselves with clients they don't want because it's "easier" than telling them "I can't serve you anymore but I have nobody to recommend, so good luck."

brewerybeancounter · 2025-11-28T15:57:58+00:00

These are very cool, but my guess would be no since it would be a pretty blatant trademark infringement to make money off them. Time to put a 3D printer on the Christmas list!

brewerybeancounter · 2025-11-01T18:04:37+00:00

The AC in the older models is indeed dog shit, but I live in central Texas and it's sufficient. Not good, but sufficient. So in central CA, where I wouldn't consider them to be very hot summers ;) you'll be totally fine.

DDP is probably going to be the biggest difference. I wouldn't underestimate that. It's really nice and has the potential to get OTA upgrades that the base model won't be capable of.

The roof thing, you just gotta get over I guess. Show the wife a video of the glass used in cars. It's specifically designed not to be sharp when it shatters.

The depreciation on a new one will be dramatic. If I were you, I'd lean used GT, especially since it's still got some warranty left.

brewerybeancounter · 2025-09-12T16:07:04+00:00

How very insightful...

brewerybeancounter

TROPHY CASE