Welcome to 97 & Up (2023)

Have I ever told you the story of how 97 & Up was born?

The program was originally titled, "Accounting Business Academy" but the name 97 & Up is what stuck.

This is the story...

It was around 2017 or 2018 and I was starting all over on many levels. I was also a little tired and burnt out and I didn't want to build a subscription site using WordPress. In those days I was still doing everything myself.

So I joined Patreon and set up my levels:

$5 and up to buy me a monthly cup of coffee and thank me for the free videos I put on YouTube. There were and continue to be many.

$25 and up for some exclusive content.

$50 and up for more exclusive content.

$97 & Up for exclusive courses and a private community.

Meanwhile I sat at my desk and decided to write an email to all of my "accounting friends." This was also the beginning of what now has become something of a phenomenon as far as my weekly emails that I continue to send out.

If you get my emails then you know they are very different from the typical boring marketing emails most companies send.

Practically every week people email me, not only to thank me for them, but to let me know that they actually look forward to reading them on Sunday mornings.

And I say, "great, because I look forward to writing them most every Saturday morning." Sometimes I write them earlier.

Back to 2017.

I decided to write an email describing what I felt would be the quintessential resource for accountants and bookkeepers.

Agility would be the key ingredient.

This meant I would need to be able to jump on a new concept, or application, learn it quickly and share it with my community.

This pointed to an online resource where I can put up videos and of course written content.

But I wanted it to be more than that. I wanted it to include a community where everyone could communicate with one another.

Slack was the obvious choice for the private community.

I refused to use a Facebook group because the organization of subjects in a Facebook group doesn't come close to what you can do in Slack.

And in the beginning I had to fight the people who wanted to post everything in the General channel because that's where everyone would see it for sure.

But eventually they saw the wisdom in why I was adamant about this.

It's about retrieval over transmission.

The "General channel" is faster now.

In an appropriately titled channel by subject matter will always be 1000% faster when you're looking for it later on.

There had to be structure.

I knew that over time, this would make for an incredibly powerful library of content. A research tool where even members who join today can read and learn.

In fact this was a comment I received just today (the same day I am writing this):

Back to the email I was about to write...

With my vision of this resource in mind I wrote an email to a modest list of my accounting friends to gauge an indication of interest.

The response was overwhelming.

So I built the program around my $97 Patreon level. The official name was, "Accounting Business Academy" but "97 & Up" was the name that really stuck and still does to this day.

Today we have all of the things I mentioned, as well as two weekly calls which are all recorded and posted up to the site in categories to keep it organized so you can find what you're looking for.

I am no longer on WordPress. My site is built on Kajabi which is so much better for me, for so many reasons. The biggest one is no IT headaches. No plugins to update. This lets me focus on doing what I do best which is delivering content.

Five or six years later, we're going strong. I've added a bunch of courses that are included with membership, and I always deeply discount my Bulletproof Bookkeeping courses for members.

Community

97 & Up is a community more than anything else. "Family" might be more accurate. The members are incredibly supportive whether you are a brand newbie trying to get your first client, or a veteran with years of experience.

People call me a "leader" or an "influencer" or some other variation on the theme, and I've never liked those terms. I certainly won't call myself any of those things.

To me if I call myself something like that, it lacks humility which means I've lost all perspective.

Followers and Leaders is an anti-social concept

It's a bit Ironic that social media is all about followers and leaders and yet by definition this is anti-social.

Being "social" is about making connections, and when I place people on the level of a leader vs those who follow them, that is a DIS-connect. It separates us.

It's the opposite of social aka anti-social.

In my world we are all the same. We're in this together, walking alongside one another. I am a human being just like you, walking through life one day at a time figuring this out just like you.

We are a community of teachers, teaching each other.

Everyone has their story.

Everyone has something to share.

Each of us has a choice to either listen and learn, or assume we know better and stop growing!

What will your choice be today?