 Would you say that an accounting is a relatively flexible degree? So what I mean by that is, let's say, you know, an 18 year old who's about to go to college thinks they want to go into accounting because they want to become a controller, for instance. So that's their goal. They want to become a controller. And then a few, you know, a few years down the line, they change their mind, right? They, they, they work a little bit and they're like, okay, I don't want to be a controller anymore. Would it be relatively easy for them to go in a different direction? Yeah, yeah, and that's a great question. So the flexibility that exists within accounting, it's, it's there, but it's the limited flexibility to the realm of finance, right? So what I've seen, you know, the three major buckets, I'd say in accounting is either taking sort of the controllership route. If you realize that that's not really what you want to do and you realize you want to do more of the strategic finance, you know, more of like, you know, say, you know, planning out the future, the financial future of the company. So that's more, that's more on the sort of the FPNA or financial planning and analysis. So that's sort of the second bucket that you can easily transition to from a controller to FPNA or financial planning and analysis. And then the third bucket is going to be now what's becoming sort of, you know, an extremely lucrative and health market, which is financial systems. So this is like we talked about earlier, this is someone who can combine the know how of programming, the different, the various financial platforms and software and how to tie this all together and make systems talk to each other and make things more efficient, less prone to error and faster. And so, yeah, so the flexibility exists in transitioning between these three major buckets, controllership or the accounting. And then you have the strategic finance or the FPNA and then you have the financial systems. This is the three buckets of work and then the other flexibility that exists. And I've had colleagues in the past go to work for the government. So, you know, for example, there is a popular program with the FBI in working as a special agent in the accounting field. Right. So this is one of forensic accounting, you're, you know, investigating, you know, corruption and government officials. A lot of times you're overseas and it's, this is very glamorous and it's a lot of people, you know, pursue it. You need to have a certain requirement in terms of age, in terms of you have to go through some, I think physical tests to get through it. The other thing that you can do as well is work for the UN. So, you know, I've had a colleague go from a controller to working as a treasurer for the UN. So there's a lot of positions open, open up with the UN more difficult to get into the private industry for sure, but the flexibility is there. So I'd say there's a lot of flexibility within the realm of finance to move between, you know, accounting and finance positions. Hey guys, Shane from the future here. I really quickly wanted to mention, because for some reason I forgot to in the video, Bill has some phenomenal resources for anybody who wants to become an accountant and I'm going to include those at the top of the description down below. So definitely check those out. Got it. So would you say that maybe compared to other degrees or other types of careers that, you know, an accounting degree would be one of the more flexible out of all of them or would you not say that? You know, like to objectively say that, you know, because I've only had the one career, right, in accounting. Yeah, that can be kind of difficult to, yeah. But I guess I guess I'm judging from, you know, looking at, because I have friends who are engineers, doctors and different, and different walks of life, different, you know, different kind of career types. And the flexibility that I've seen in my career has been great enough to say that it's been higher than even what they do. You know, if you're a doctor, your choices are either working in a hospital as a doctor or, you know, having a practice. You could go work for a private company and research. So, you know, you can tell here that the flexibility in both in accounting and also in all of these other fields is what you make of it. You know, plus, and this is really important, what other skills can you combine with this to become something else? So, you know, take accounting or finance and add communication skills, someone who's a great communicator, right? And you can easily become like a financial motivational, you know, motivation person. So, or a financial coach. So, the ability to be flexible exists. It's just what you can add to it and combine, combine another skill set with finance or accounting and, you know, reinvent yourself or something else, you know, that exists. So, yeah, this is, I would say that's great flexibility compared to like other careers. Got it. And then what type of, I know this can be a pretty difficult one, but what type of person or personality or, you know, natural traits do you think would be good for someone that goes into accounting? Yes, good question. So, you know, by definition, just from my own experience working in accounting, you know, if you're sort of personality type, your personality type is an introvert and sort of, you know, thrive more in an environment where you're dealing with a smaller group of people. Accounting is very well suited for you. If you are going to be someone who, you know, does really well with working with, you know, talking to people all day, you actually are happier when you talk to other people all day, then accounting might not be the right career path for you. So, the one area of, you know, in between or a gray area here is if you get into accounting as a mean of getting into strategic finance. When you work in strategic finance, you need to be sort of the extrovert type who is going to be talking to everyone from sales, engineers, you know, around the company. Pretty much every function around the company you need to be communicating with as a finance or a strategic finance person. So, if your personality type is an introvert, I think accounting is going to be very well suited for you versus extrovert. For that, I think, you know, more strategic finance role will be much more well suited. So, for someone who is maybe on the fence between, you know, finance, accounting, some of the other business degrees, or maybe even someone who doesn't know if they want to do a business degree at all. They're just looking, you know, around a different degrees. What would you give, what would be your best advice for someone, for a viewer to find out if accounting would be a good career path or getting an accounting degree would be a good degree for them to get? Yeah, great question. So, I think that, you know, one of the steps you can take is if you're in college and you're still kind of testing the waters and you're trying to look around and see what you should be doing, you know, taking an accounting 101 class is a good way to kind of see, you know, you're going to be stuck studying this for the next three years, right? So, like, you need to like it. So, taking, you know, an accounting 101 course is really good. The second thing you should be doing is doing your own research in terms of talking to people who are accountants and quite honestly doing what you're doing now if you're watching this video and kind of like seeing what it looks like to be sitting on the other side of the fence once you've kind of, you know, mid-career, you've put in, you know, a good number of hours and years learning, what does it feel now? You know, are you happy with the choice? Excuse me. So, this is the kind of thing you should be doing in exploring your own interest, you know, take a good class in accounting. Funny because for me, I didn't really want to major in accounting necessarily, but when I took accounting 101, that professor was just an amazing guy. So, you know, it's interesting what are the motivations, right? Like the guy used to speak so highly of his own, you know, private practice as a CPA and how much fun he has with it that he kind of convinced me to get into it. So, you know, I'd say, you know, taking a class and speaking to people is really important in kind of discovering in general what you want to do. I just from personal experience, I enjoyed accounting in terms of, you know, studying it and working in it. It's been rewarding to be someone who can, you know, open up the 10K of a public company and like really just know, you know, where to go and what to look for. So, so yeah, this has been my experience and I, you know, advice everyone to kind of like do, you know, watch, you know, watch interviews, you know, videos, try to get as much exposure to what it is really like to work as an accountant. There's even like things that you can see online on like the day in the life. I think the day in the life is really important to kind of measure, you know, if you can see yourself doing this for a career. So yeah, that's what I advise people to do. So let's say that someone was looking into a very specific position, not necessarily, you know, you specifically, but let's say they were potentially thinking about becoming a controller, setting that goal for themself. How would they go about getting in contact with a controller in such a way where they could maybe ask them a few questions, pick their brain to see if it's a good career path for them? You know, LinkedIn has been a good, like a good place for that, where, you know, sort of at the early on in my career, you know, people are just more willing to talk to you than you think. I think this is kind of a misconception that you think that, you know, no one has a time, which is true to some extent. However, you'll be surprised, you know, ask and you shall receive like ask for the advice, reach out and ask. So LinkedIn is a great resource and like reaching out to people who, you know, don't necessarily has to be a controller, but it could be someone who's an accounting manager or a city manager, director to give you some flavor, you know, especially if you wanted to get specific, like if you, for example, are, you know, contemplating whether you should get a position as, you know, a billing analyst, you know, getting, getting in touch with someone who is a billing manager or someone who's been doing it for a little while can be helpful and just knowing, you know, has this been, did this would really work out for you, did you learn from it and, you know, progress your career in a way that you thought you would. So yeah, I think it's a it's really, you know, a head and treasure to kind of go out there and look for, for these people to talk to. Don't be discouraged if you reach out to 10 people for only one person to get back to you. This is just a nature of things. People don't read their, you know, messages or inbox that often sometimes you just don't have the time for it, but, you know, asking and you should receive just like ask the question, reach out and, you know, you'll get some answers. Would you recommend maybe getting an opinion from several different people just so you can kind of get an idea, because sometimes you might ask one person and it's like they're super passionate about the career, you ask another person, they're not, not so happy about it. So it's probably a good idea to get an opinion from several different people if possible. Yes, absolutely. You know, I'll tell you like I, you know, I'm someone who's, you know, biased because I really love what I do. So I'll tell you that it's, it's fun. It's rewarding. It's awesome. I'll tell you all these things. You could talk to someone else who's having, you know, I've seen people who had like a mid career, you know, crisis where they want to, you know, get out of accounting and do other things because they found it to be boring. And so, yeah, getting some different perspectives. Yeah, that's really important I think. Is there anything else that I didn't go over? Any questions I didn't ask that you think are, you know, might be pretty important for someone who's potentially looking to get an accounting degree or become an accountant? You know, I guess like the, the one thing I'll add is the benefit of working in accounting is knowing the sort of the ins and outs of the numbers that go into the business. So the funny thing about it is like when you go to a company, you want to talk to someone who knows everything that's going on. You're likely to be, you know, looking at an accountant. You know, he's someone who's going to know, you know, sales expenditure, cash flow, financing, raising financing rounds or raising funds and all of these things, investor relations. And so, compare that to someone who works in, you know, whether it's the R&D or engineering department or in sales, most likely they'll know sort of like their realm of what they do. They'll be really good at it. However, someone who can tie everything together for you is going to be someone who's working in accounting, most likely. And so this is the one thing that sort of people don't think about too much. And it's important, right? Like when you know the mechanics of everything that goes on in the company, it makes you much more rounded, not only in your career, but also as, you know, when it comes to your investments, if you're like investing in the market, you know, knowing, you know, looking at the income statement and figuring out where the potential areas of issues are is really important. So that's one of the things that I'll say has been like a rewarding sort of attribute to working in accounting in general.