 Welcome to Life in Accounting, the Where Accountants Go podcast. Life in Accounting is the podcast for everyday heroes like you, working in the accounting profession. Are you ready to hear from accounting influencers, thought leaders, visionaries, and other professionals leading change in the accounting world? Then stay tuned for Mark Goldman, a CPA, the owner of Where Accountants Go and your host. Welcome to Life in Accounting. I was talking to a friend of mine, a friend of a friend, and he told me, well, your YouTube channel is really cool. I was like, what YouTube channel? And yes, you have 600 subscribers. Well, you know, what do you do? Like, well, I don't do anything. I was not aware that I have 600 subscribers. And yeah, you should look and do it. Hello, everyone. I'm Mark Goldman, a CPA, and your host for Life in Accounting, a podcast production of Where Accountants Go dot com. That clip was from a voice you may recognize if you're an accounting student or recently were one, I guess, it's Professor Mansour Fahat, a Fahat accounting lecturer. I had seen a little information about Mansour's online accounting videos in the past, but I hadn't realized how much content he had online until a listener brought him to my attention actually. The listener that contacted me referred to him as a celebrity among accounting students. So I obviously had to find a little bit more about this Professor Mansour Fahat. Basically, as you're going to hear in the interview, Professor Fahat has developed online accounting content videos on a multitude of typical accounting courses along with the typical areas of difficulty on the CPA exam as well. He started it in order just to help out his students, but now he has over 34,000 followers on YouTube. Just 34,000 followers, actually more than that. And they reach all over the globe. It's truly amazing. Also, I didn't want to do the podcast simply to tell his story this time, though. I also wanted to bring some additional publicity to all these free resources that Mansour provides. For those that are having any difficulty with their accounting courses or CPA exam preparation, you definitely should check him out on YouTube. It really is phenomenal how far he has went to help out future accountants all over the world. If you do feel like this episode is particularly valuable to you, please check out our website as well. You can find us online at whereaccountantsgo.com. Once again, that's www.whereaccountantsgo.com. With that, let's go ahead and get started. Here's Professor Mansour Fahat. Mansour, thanks for making the time for us today. Thank you, Mark. My pleasure. Wonderful. Well, for our audience, we have Professor Mansour Fahat on the line today. And Mansour was suggested to me by one of our listeners, actually, one of you. And she described him as, I kid you not, a celebrity amongst accounting students and young professionals everywhere. Obviously, I couldn't resist, but to do some research. And I found that Professor Fahat is not only serving his own students with an amazing amount of online study material, but he's also made it available to basically anyone, anywhere that may benefit from additional study aids. And it's all free. So obviously, I went out and searched out Mansour, and he very graciously agreed to come on the show today. However, I didn't do a lot of research past that because I wanted us to hear everything, you know, directly from Professor Fahat. So Mansour, before we get into all the resources that you have available for accounting students these days, I would like to start at the beginning. So, you know, we all get an idea of how your career was built. Sure. What initially led you to accounting as a possible career in the first place? Absolutely. Once again, thank you very much for having me on the show, Mark. Actually, I was not an accounting major as an undergraduate. I was a finance major. So accounting was not my topic, if you want to call it so. I was an undergraduate in finance. I went to a state school in Pennsylvania called Bloomsburg University. And I did not explore much outside the finance industry. And I still don't understand or don't know why I went for finance. I believe it was part of it during the 98-99-2000.com boom. Stock market was flying high. So the market was something that's very interesting for a business student. So I studied finance because studying finance is studying the stock market. So I was interested in the stock market and I'm still interested in the stock market. So that's how I started. So after I graduated, I started a job with city financial. I was a loan officer for six months, basically selling money in a sense. I did not like it that much. I wanted to really be in the stock market. So I applied for a job at Merrill Lynch, now it's Bank of America. And I became a stock broker. I got my CRE7, CRE63, and I started working at Merrill Lynch. I worked at Merrill Lynch for almost two and a half, three years. Right after the dot-com bust, what happened is we were laid off because the division that I was working at, it's called the Employee Stock Purchase Plan, was sold to another company and basically the other company laid part of the employees off and it was one of them. But during my time at Merrill Lynch, we were supposed to basically answering customer questions and basically handling customers' accounts. And I used to have a lot of questions about taxes. So customer would call and ask me, what are the tax consequences if I exercise my options? And we were trained to answer, well, guess what? The formal answer is consult your tax or CPA for that matter. We cannot give you any advice. And that kind of triggered something in my mind, like, what should have I have said? In other words, what are really the tax consequences? So I started to research the tax consequences of buying and selling stocks and exercising options. And this was actually my first exposure to the accounting or the tax work. Then what I was thinking about is, well, it seems there's a demand for the field because practically on a daily basis, I'll get two, three, four customers asking me about the same topic. What are the tax consequences? So I said, well, maybe there are people out there who are helping others and those are CPAs and accountants helping people and said, I really enjoy this. I really like helping people. It's part of my nature versus dealing with stocks, basically selling services. I like to help people on a personal level. And this seems like a personal thing to do. So after I was laid out, I was doing some research. What should I do? What's the next step? And during that time, Enron collapsed as well as WorldCom. And I used to read Wall Street Journal. I still read the Wall Street Journal, but back then it was all about Enron, WorldCom, all the fraud that was going on. And it was all accounting related that also triggered my curiosity about accounting. So I thought, you know what, maybe I should look into accounting. So I decided to go for my master's in accountancy. And this is how it all started. So basically part of it is the dot com crash. And part of it is the need, the accountant, the CPAs. And I'm sure you can relate to this. You help people on a personal level. Each individual is different. And I do like that personal relationship rather than having a company face. And accounting and taxes, you have a personal face. You always deal with the client and people on a one-to-one basis. And if you enjoy doing so, accounting is a great career for you. So that's how I started. I went back to graduate school. I went back to my former school, Bloomsburg University. And I got my master's in accountancy in one year. So basically I finished all my courses. There were 10 courses to complete the degree I finished them. And this is how I started my accounting career. So basically it was not, I am not your traditional student when I went to school. And I knew I wanted to be an accountant. And when I graduated, I went to the big four. Very not traditional story. Basically I find hard time actually finding a job because as a non-traditional student, and we can talk about this, and I deal with students nowadays, non-traditional, they find harder time with the big four or with the big CPA firm because they're looking for young, traditional, with no attachment to their social life. So that's basically how I started my career. This is how I started accounting as a career. Interesting. So the consult with your CPA answer to the tax advice question intrigued you and then also all the fraud going on, which is sort of on the audit side. I'm curious when you went to the big four, which way did you go? Actually, I did not go to the big four. I started working with a medium CPA firm. Yes, yes, that's why I wanted to share this experience because I wanted to let the non-traditional student know that be careful, you might find harder time getting into the big four because the big four looking to specify demographics, they're looking for recent graduate, generally speaking of course. So I did speak to some of the recruiters of the big four and they were frank with me. They said, we only hire from specific schools and I knew some of them on a personal level and we only hire recent graduate because you're not your traditional students. I was in the mid-20s, so they were not looking to hire me and I understand this. So I was looking at the medium-sized CPA firm. So I ended up working with the medium-sized CPA firm and this is where I really started my CPA career in a town called Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Pennsylvania. This is where I started my career as a CPA. Okay, okay. Take us through those accounting jobs sort of before you started teaching them. What were some of the highlights of your career as an accountant? What were some of the jobs that you feel like you learned more from? Actually, I'm glad I went with a medium-sized CPA firm. I'm glad I did not go with the big four because a medium-sized CPA firm, Mark, you work on everything. You do taxes, you do personal taxes, partnership, corporations, S corporations. You do compilations, you do reviews, you do audits, you do audits for profit, audit for non-profit. So this is what I enjoyed the most about my CPA firms because it was a medium-sized CPA firm. I had the chance to work on everything from preparing simple compilations to running a payroll, to actually going through an audit from A to Z for a small non-profit to preparing a tax return for a corporate, for a multimillion-dollar corporation. So this is what I liked the most, the exposure, the diversity. But I always wanted to teach as I was working in a CPA firm, I was teaching at the same time. So my teaching career was in parallel with my CPA career. So I was teaching as soon as I was out of graduate school. There's also a story why I started teaching. That's also another story. Maybe you're interested in hearing how I started teaching altogether. Yes, actually, I'm curious how you got into the education field and then also what the decision process was like for you to decide to do it full-time. Absolutely. So when I was in graduate school, we had to complete 10 courses. Of those 10 courses, eight of them were accounting. One was finance and one was stat. And in the finance course, which was something introduction to finance or corporate finance on a graduate level, the teacher did not really care about teaching. So the teacher would use the comp use. He was in his last year of his career, his tenure track, so he didn't really care. So the class was from six to 10 o'clock. I still remember every moment of that class. And the teacher would come in literally, Mark, he would put the PowerPoint slides on the board and he will flip through them. And he would say, do you have any questions? Do you have any questions? And he will be flipping through the slides. So it may take him, literally, I'm not joking, 20 to 30 minutes to go over the slides in a four-hour course. And he would already be coming in late, like 10 to 15 minutes, he will show up late to the class. So maximum by seven o'clock, the class would be over. And the students, it was a full class, it was MBA. We had a lot of MBA students, actually mostly were MBAs. I was the only master's in accountancy student in the class. So they would look at each other, like we did not really learn anything. So I suggested, let's go to the library and let's kind of teach ourselves the course. So as I told you, undergraduate was finance, I had my CRE 7, I had my CRE 6 and 3, I had three years experience in the stock market and I really had interest in financing because it was actually, I almost started my CFA when I was working with Merrill Lynch. So I had a little bit more knowledge than other students. So what I started to do, I started to teach the topic, I started to teach corporate finance for my fellow MBA students. And everybody liked it. So you have a good teaching style you should teach. They were telling me, yeah, you should go into teaching. And I wasn't just, I was doing it, just kind of to help them and help myself because I wanted to get through the course. He would sign a lot of homework without teaching us anything. So I did struggle, but I was able to explain the material and every Sunday we would meet in the library from four to 6 p.m. And I would run the whole two hours explaining the material to my fellow MBAs. So the idea of teaching started there, but I really wasn't, it wasn't part of my plan. But after I was done, after I graduated, I went back home to Eastern and Eastern Pennsylvania and I could not easily find a job. Once again, with the CPA firm because it was summertime, the CPA firms were not hiring. I was a non-traditional student. So the first two, three weeks I was really disappointed. So I started to go back, I visited my former community college where I started my college career, what's called Northampton Community College, and I spoke Northampton and I spoke to the dean. I was a good friend with the dean. I told him, have a master's degree, now can I teach here? I was just joking. He said, yeah, sure, why not, send me your resume. So I sent him my resume sometime early June and August 24th, I still remember that day. Three days before the school started for that fall, I don't believe 2004, I believe 2004. So he called me, he said, one of the adjunct cannot teach two courses. Will he be interested in teaching them? I was like, I have three days to prepare everything to start teaching in three days. I never thought in my life an actual course. I said, of course, I was not working at that point. I was still looking for a job. There were night classes, it's not a big deal. If I get a job, during the daytime, I could still teach at night. So I said, okay, I will take the courses. So I picked up two courses at night and I started my teaching career and just like that, in three days I had to prepare a syllabus. They gave me action, they gave me a syllabus but I had to customize the syllabus, I'd be familiar with the material and get started. And I was always only one chapter ahead of the students. So every week I'll have to learn the material, then teach the material, then the following week, learn the material, teach the material. So it was, I had, it was really time consuming and stressful, but I really enjoyed it and I really liked it. So this is how I started my career. And since that, since that time, which is fall 2004, I'm still teaching today the same community college on a part-time basis. They still give me one, two, and sometimes three courses a semester. So this is how it all started, basically. One adjunct got sick. They said, you know, would you be interested in teaching the course? I said, yes, I will. And I was crazy enough to do it and this is how it all started as a teaching career. So I started as an adjunct. Interesting. I don't know if it's common for universities and community colleges to have last minute needs like that, but you're actually not the first professor I've spoken with that was contracted within just a few weeks of the semester starting and then discussed staying one chapter ahead of the students. Yeah. Very, very common, especially in accounting, especially in accounting, because I'm familiar with the industry. So I had it happen to me several other times at other university, but I was more prepared. I'm used to it now. And actually you call me, I would never do it now because it costs too high for me. I will be doing something else with my time, but back then you are hungry, you are lean, mean, you want to do everything, conquer the world. Therefore you will take those courses. Nowadays I need my time, although I have more experience, but I don't wanna be under that stress anymore. It just don't need it. Let somebody else go through the system and improve themselves because I can do it actually. It's easy for me now. Sure, sure. So that's how it all started as a teaching career. Then I started working in the CPA firm at Bucknell City and Company in Bethlehem. So I was doing both simultaneously. Then I was offered a full-time job at the community college, but before I got my CPA, I turned that down. Literally said, look, we have a full-time job. If that's after two years teaching years, like we just apply for it and we're gonna give you the job. I said, no, my plan is to be a CPA. I'm not a CPA yet. So I turned down the job. Until then three years later, I was a CPA, there was a full-time position. I applied and this is what I got my first full-time job, teaching at the community college where I went to school originally. So I was teaching in the same class that I attended classes in, which is specifically financial accounting, my financial accounting course. Interesting. Around when was that? What year are we talking about? The full-time, I think I started full-time, is it on nine or oh 10? I believe it's spring. I believe I started spring time, spring 2010. Again, spring 2010 or spring 2009, I can't remember. It's definitely before 2011, but I don't know if it's on nine, oh 10. I think 2010, spring 2010. Okay. So how did FARHAT accounting lectures start? I mean, what did you? That's another interesting story. Basically, what I wanted to do, I always read my reviews, my class reviews. What are student complaining about basically like about the course? So I heard that complaint repeatedly that we don't have enough time to work exercises in the class, the actual exercises. So I was thinking, what can I do? Because I needed to explain the material and I did not have enough time that I can give them to work in the class, which is understandable. So I decided to find a way to kind of save more time in the classroom. So I started by recording lectures. Actually, there's actually before that, we had, I believe 2011, we had a bad winter. So one of my classes was canceled repeatedly. That's another reason. So I teach in a Tuesday night class and every Tuesday it snows and the class is canceled. Maybe it doesn't snow where you are, but on the northeast it snows on a regular basis. So the class would be canceled for like three consecutive weeks and I was really, really behind. So I decided to do something. So I started by recording, narrating my lecture on a PowerPoint slide. So basically the PowerPoints, they have a feature where you could record your voice. So it's a voice over the PowerPoint slide. And I send it out to my students and they really liked it because they would hear my voice and I'll explain the material, but compared to now it was a very primitive technology. But students liked it. Then as I was reading more and more reviews or evaluation from students, they wanted more class time to work exercises. So to take out class time, I needed to do the lecture some other way. Then I spoke to the IT department at my school and they said they have a system where I can record my voice over screen and I can give them access to that recording. So I started there. So I started recording my voice over screen and distribute that link to the students. So this way they can listen to the lecture before class if they chose to after class. And if I skipped something in the class, I said, okay, let's skip last 10 minutes and work on an exercise. I'll tell them, well, guess what? You have to view this lecture instead. So you will do this on your own. So this is how it all started. And it was very limited within my own community college. Then I was teaching another course at another university, Estradsberg University, at the State University. And I was teaching the same course as I was teaching at Northampton. So basically it's the same course, same textbook. And it was an online course. And I was looking for a way to share my lectures from my financial accounting course with my Estradsberg students with the other university. So I did some research. I find out if I can somehow make an MP4 file, I can upload this MP4 file to YouTube. And voila, once you're on YouTube, anyone with an internet access can see your lecture. So that was basically a need to solve this problem because I was teaching this online course and I like to provide, I like for the students to hear my voice, to listen to my explanation. I don't like when students don't get anything when they take an online course. And this is how it all started. So I recorded that course, financial accounting, I posted online, and I basically forgot about it. For like a year, year and a half, I did not even know that I was unsure of the students watching, but at least I made it available to them. So a year and a half or two years later, I don't remember the specific time, maybe a little bit over, actually, it's over two years. I was talking to a friend of mine, a friend of a friend, and he told me, well, your YouTube channel is really cool. I was like, what YouTube channel? I said, yes, you have 600 subscribers. Well, what do you do? I said, well, I don't do anything. I was not aware that I have 600 subscribers. I said, yeah, you should look into it. So it was the first time I logged into my account. I saw that I had like hundreds and hundreds of comments people thanking me and asking me questions about the lecture, liking my lecture. I wasn't even aware of it because I thought that who's gonna find my lectures and be interested in my lectures? It was designed for my ESU students, East Thrasberg University. Then I looked into it a little bit further and the guy that told me about my YouTube, my own YouTube, he was a little bit tech savvy. So he knew, he said, why don't you change the names on your, the titles on your lectures? Because I was calling them like chapter one, part one, chapter one, part two, chapter one, part three. So they were not searchable. Nobody would be able to find them, they were just like basically you're putting a sign in the middle of the forest. No one, no one could. So I said, okay, let me do this. So I started to change the titles. I start to name them, for example, account receivable evaluation at that expense lecture. So I started to name them and I started to monitor the views. And suddenly in a month, I went from 600 subscribers to like 700. So that was good. I gained 100 subscribers in a month. That was very quick. Then I started to add some description to the videos. And I found out as I add description, I became more searchable and my views and likability is increasing. So it's like it gave me more confidence. So I started to more lectures out and code them properly. And I'm still improving on the process, but this is how it all started. Basically by, I wasn't even aware of it. But I still remember when I checked out my website, I had 600 subscribers. I still remember that number. I remember YouTube suggested that Rutgers University, I'm not sure if you heard of Rutgers University, one of the best universities in accounting, say top 100 in the nation. They also have an accounting web. So they have like Rutgers University accounting web. They have a YouTube channel. And at that point, they had close to 8,000 subscribers. So I had 600 subscribers. They had 8,000 subscribers. Today, I exceeded 34,000 subscribers and Rutgers stand at 27,000 subscribers. Matter of fact, Rutgers is one of my subscribers. So they subscribe to my channel, the university itself, as a suggestion for their students. I'm very proud of how I grew my YouTube for something that I wasn't even aware of to something like, it's interesting that people want to view, listen to my lectures, so let me do something about it. And I started to expand my menu, add intermediate accounting, add auditing, add advanced accounting, and it took off basically. And as I add more, the students, they kept encouraging me and giving me those likes. And then I created a website to increase the exposure to make it searchable on Google. And here I am. Wow. So have you stuck with just the college courses like intermediate auditing, advanced accounting that you mentioned, or are you starting to get into CPA review or other exam review materials now? Yes, again, that's another thing. It's like let the customer lead you, which is that's not really a good policy, but that's how it went. So I had many students that, for example, they would say, I'm taking Becker and I cannot follow their lectures. Your lectures are very helpful. I'm taking Roger CPA review. I'm not being able to follow your lectures are very helpful. I'm taking the CPA course. I was like, okay, hold on a second. I think there's a need. If I'm helping those CPA students, maybe I should kind of target that group. So I started to design some of my lessons for CPAs, people who are preparing for the CPA. So again, my original intent is to help. And you can tell from the design of my YouTube, all my lectures are designed under a course. For example, I start a cost accounting course and I go through chapter one, chapter two. So I cover the whole course. So I don't stop until I cover the whole course then I will start advanced accounting. So I like to help the students. What I do, I put myself in the shoes of the students. If a student is taking advanced accounting, I want to capture them. I want them to listen to my lectures from A to Z. So I never thought about a CPA thing until maybe a year, year and a half ago, I started to think, well, if there is a demand, let me do some lessons, some multiple choice questions that would help those students because kind of they're the same because an accounting student eventually becomes a CPA student. So I don't want to lose them. So I don't want to lose them by year four. If I can provide CPA material, I have them for year five, year six, year seven. So that was my thinking. So you mentioned multiple choice questions. I know you have your own websites. So you have downloadable written resources like PDFs as well? No, I don't. I mean, for my PowerPoint slides, if I created any PowerPoint slides, if somebody asked about them, I will share it with them. Otherwise, the PowerPoint slides, if they're available online, I will show them what they are available online. Otherwise, I don't have any downloadable material. So I don't provide any material to the students. I only provide my voice and my screen, basically. Okay. What are some of the more popular videos or study it? For a long period of time, intermediate accounting was my most popular course. Two years, yes. But two years ago, I created an auditing course and a governmental course and now auditing and governmental because there's not a lot on auditing and governmental online. So they kind of exceeded, although they have less lessons in there, they exceeded in terms of views. So I'm very happy because intermediate was my best course for a long period of time. Now I have two other courses that kind of competing for spot one and spot two. And I tried that through my playlist. So I look, playlist is being viewed the most because YouTube tells you and for the past 12 months, intermediate accounting went to level three, auditing and governmental not for profit is, they rotate between one and two. But my most popular, and I think this is what made me really popular, accounting for income taxes, the third tax asset and the third tax liability because those lessons, they've been viewed for over 100,000 times. So those are like my most popular. They're the oldest too, they're a little bit old, but they're still, when I look at my standard, they're still the top 10. The balance sheet right now lately has been, number one, adjustments, number two, it changes from semester to another, but I do keep track of that. I'm sure you've saved some accounting majors that we're thinking maybe they should measure and something else. Tons, tons. I mean, I can tell from my, I receive many emails, like on a daily basis, maybe five to 10 emails people thanking me and people that post on my message board, you can go to my message board and Facebook and you can see it. At least 10 to 15 messages a day, people thanking me, you saved our life. Literally stuff like that. They propose me to run for president, some crazy stuff. You are God sometimes. So you could go on my YouTube and just type the word God and you will see some of the crazy comments that some people put. And obviously also a lot of people donate. I also have a donation button and a lot of my students, they donate money. So this is a revenue source for me basically. It's about donations, strictly donation. Okay. It confirms to me that people believe in my product. Yes. That's good that they're supporting it. I was curious, because I know it takes a lot of effort to get this on video. Absolutely, effort and time. I mean, it's a very time consuming and to upload and to make sure you're, and now I do search engine optimization, make sure I'm selecting the right keyword, the proper titles, name and the files, editing the files, and I do this all by myself. I have a volunteer, one of my YouTube subscribers, Carol, her name is Carol. She helps me a lot with, she's volunteering basically. So she does help a lot with the cleanup work. Okay. What are some of the lesser known resources that you have, or maybe anything that's new that people haven't noticed yet? I have an MBA course called Financial Reporting and I recorded that course on the fly. So I did not really did any search engine optimization. So I feel that's the most not lovable course on my YouTube. And I'm not sure why, but I find out it's not, I need to do some editing to the titles, increase the search engine optimization. Because when people go to my website, they're not really MBA students and I believe that's part of it. They're either accounting undergraduate or they're studying for their CPA. So they have very specific need for the knowledge. They're not looking for the theory part of the knowledge, which is it's a theory type of course. It's called Financial Reporting that it's designed for MBA students. So that's my least popular resource. Okay. Again, I was teaching an MBA course and that's why I did start that course. Have you counted up how many videos you have out there? Absolutely. Over 12,250 videos as of today. Over that amount. I know that that's 1250 plus. Oh my gosh. Okay. And I build them over the years. I mean, and during the summer when I'm not teaching, I put maybe three to four videos a day, which is I teach during the summertime, but I have more flexibility. During the regular, regular season, I'll put maybe four to five a week at least. So you can say, on average, I put a video a day, on average, no less than a video per day. And you need to feed it. You need, because if you want to increase your popularity, your views, your followers, you need to keep your material up to date. Yes, definitely. You have to keep refreshing it. Definitely. So you're teaching. You have these resources out there as well, these videos, the supplemental material. In the interest of helping students, what mistakes do you think that some of the student body makes now, either in preparing or how they look at their college education? What do you think they could do better or change that would help them be better prepared for their career or certification? And accounting, it's a basic financial accounting course. Students don't take it seriously. They're right out of high school. They think, well, it's an introductory course. It cannot be important. And they're not very serious about school the first year or generally speaking, of course. And once they don't learn the basics, the basics, the debits, the credits, the financial statements, the adjusting entries, and as you know, Mark, in accounting, the information built. So you have to know A in order to know B and you have to know A and B in order to understand C. And when they skip or when they don't do well in those course, that weakness carries with them all the way until they become a CPA or until they are preparing for their CPA. So I suggest to the students that pay attention to your financial accounting course. Keep that textbook because you will need it when you take intermediate accounting. You're gonna have to go back to it and learn the basics before you can succeed in intermediate accounting. So that's one of the errors that they make. They underestimate the importance of an introductory course as far as academia. Okay, well, thank you. I wanna be respectful of your time and also the audience, I try to keep them within a specific timeframe for each episode. I wanna get to the final questions, final three questions I asked everyone. But before I do, is there anything else that you wanna make sure the audience is aware of before we get into the final part? The audience know that all my lectures are 100% free to them. Cause when I send invites only then to students, I tell them, I have this YouTube and it's all free. I mean, people, they're kind of big at all, hold on a second, free, there's always a catch. My lectures are free. My lectures on my YouTube, which is 1,200, over 1,250 and gonna be growing to 2,000, they're always going to be free. So I just wanna make sure your listeners knows about this, that it's free from my perspective. What is the most efficient way to find you online? Is it to go to YouTube or do you have a website you wanna point people to? I do have a website which is farhatlectures.com, which is my last name, lectures.com. And I have all my course, lectures organized by course, but my YouTube is the most up to date because sometimes I post something on YouTube, I don't have time to update my website. So sometimes that YouTube will have everything. So if you Google my name, if you YouTube my name or even YouTube accounting, farhat or farhat accounting, you'll always find me. So I'm pretty searchable at this point. If somebody puts my name on YouTube, they can find me. And if you do a Google search, farhat lectures, my YouTube and my website will come up. Or at least I hope so. You are a celebrity. No, thank you. I'm popular, that's all what I'm gonna say. I'm popular with students, I'm helping many students. And what I like the most about my channel, Mark, is it's not only serving US population, my US viewers are 65 to 70% fluctuate. And I have many viewers in Australia, in the Middle East, in Africa, third world countries, which is I really like this, I'm helping students all over the world. So I really, it's a good feeling when you receive those messages. The monetary value is not there, but the good feeling that you're helping people, it's a great feeling. Because I remember when I was a student, if someone would help me, I would be very appreciative. And I like that somebody, I'm helping someone. The fact that I'm right now, as I'm talking to you, at least on average, I have between 400 and 600 of viewers on my YouTube right now around the world. And that's a good feeling. And that's practically 24, seven days a week. Wow, that is amazing. Yes, you're doing a good thing for the world. Definitely. Thank you. Well, the final three questions, we probably should get to that because I do wanna go over with the time and I'm sure we can find you online. And for everybody that was listening to the URL there, it's just like it sounds, farhatlectures.com, very easy to find. Question I usually start with in wrapping it up is usually the easiest. From a career perspective, what's been your proudest moment? I think the success of my YouTube is my proudest moment. I mean, back that I have more and more viewers, more and more subscribers, I don't have a specific moment. And maybe when I passed my CPA exam, I don't believe in a specific moment. Your career is constantly progressing. And if you believe you have a good moment, it's just you're gonna have to do better the next time. So I cannot pinpoint a specific moment. It's continuous. It's continuous. Once you believe you reach a goal, then you might stop working as hard. So it's continuous. So I believe everything is a success story, not one specific event. I'm sorry, but this is my, you know, that's what I believe, so no specific moment. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Well, second question, tell us about a mistake that you made and what you learned from it, of course. But the bigger that you're willing to share, the better. Yes, I'm gonna talk in general terms, but basically when I started my career, I switched, you know, I spent only six months at Citi Financial. And I was an management trainee program. If you turn the clock back, I should have maybe stayed, give it a chance. I was an management trainee program. I was really interested in the stock market. I could just do some investments on my own. So I switched jobs. So don't switch job easily. Give a job two to three years, especially, and this is my advice, for accounting students. When you work in a CPA firm, the first two, three years of your life, it's gonna be hell. Don't give up. Don't give up. That's what I tell the students. Even if you don't like it, after two to three years, you're gonna be better. You're gonna be stronger. So don't give up that easily, especially if you get your foot in a CPA firm. Okay, it's gonna be tough, working the long hours, studying for the exam. But what you do in those two to three years, it's gonna determine how you look for the next 40 to 50 years. So even if you have to struggle, if you're not happy, if you don't have a social life right now, it's just temporary. You have to go through it. Okay, I think I made some mistakes where, you know, I was not very persistent early on, but this is what I would like to share with my students. And with everyone that's listening, don't give up that easily. And if you decided to give up, if you're in a CPA firm, find me, find my email, email me, send me your phone number, and let's talk. Beautiful. Absolutely. Well, last question, and then we'll go ahead and close it down. What is the best piece of advice that you have ever received? I would say remember, success is not an immediate gratification. So that's one thing, that's one advice I would like to give, and I'm gonna tell you what advice I got. So first for one thing, take your time, success takes time. That's one thing. Try to choose a career that's scalable. Now, this is very general, but I got this advice from a book, okay? And from a book called The Black Swan, it's written by Naseem Nikolas Salim, either The Black Swan or Anti-Fadule. I don't remember which one of his books, but he said the best advice he got is to find a career that's scalable. Basically, a career that's gonna help a lot of people. Like if you write a book, it's scalable. If you have a radio show, it's scalable. So I'll tell people, find something that's scalable that you can do on a large scale. Okay, for example, my YouTube is scalable. I'm sitting right now talking to you, but I am technically working for 400 other students as we speak. So find something that's scalable and take your time. Again, success is not an immediate gratification, it takes time, and success is measured by how many obstacles you overrun. So keep that in mind. And don't compare yourself to others. Others might have different circumstances than you do. So don't compare yourself to others. Just look at yourself and try to take it day by day, stay positive. That's what I would tell the students, and this is the advice I generally got. Beautiful. Actually, that's advice, not just the students need to hear, but that we all need to hear occasionally. Absolutely, wonderful. Well, for our audience, this has been Life in Accounting, a podcast production of whereaccountingsgo.com. If you haven't yet visited that website, please do so. We have links to everything that Mansour has been talking about, as well as all our previous 100-plus episodes now at this point. On that note, Mansour, is there any final advice you'd like to leave the audience with? Once again, success is not an immediate gratification. That's all what I'm gonna tell everyone. Beautiful. Success is not an immediate gratification. Wonderful. I think that definitely deserves repeating. Thank you very much. Well, thank you again to the audience for joining us. We will see everyone next week. There's more to come.