THE AI-FIRST FIRM · ISSUE 5 · SEP 25, 2026 · ~9 MIN READ
Why everyone at your firm gets a different AI answer
You might be losing clients in the email you send after the discovery call. A job candidate just showed me the fix, and it got him hired.
TLDR
→ The follow-up that wins a hire also wins you a client
→ Put your prompts inside the workbook so everyone gets the same answer
→ 4 days after our workshop, one attendee saved $7,000
You're reading this on the web. The AI-First Firm goes out free every other Friday, and you can have the next one in your inbox.
🔧 Behind the Build: the follow-up got the job
Quick one on our AI hire first. He's been heads down on security stuff which is extremely important and... also a bit boring for readers as he moves a lot of what we've built over to Azure. More on that when there's something to show you. So this one's about our newest hire.
Kevin started Monday as our Brand & Content Marketing Manager, and I am tremendously excited. Almost 200 people applied, and instead of a round of interviews after the pre-screens, everyone got the Creative Assessment from Issue 3 and provided the prompts they used to do it. 10 finished it, and I only sat down with people whose work I'd already seen (human in the loop here).
So the work got a handful of people into the room but what set Kevin apart came after the interview, and in a second I'll show you how the same thing works on your clients. On his own, he went through our website and sent us a short note about what our website was already measuring, what it was missing, and how he'd show us every month whether our marketing was actually working. Nobody asked him to. Then, with the Claude 101 Workshop in Toronto already sold out, he offered to come help at the workshop for free, before we'd made him an offer. I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for people showing this kind of initiative.
189 applied, 10 did the work, 1 started Monday.
The work got him in the room. The follow-up got him the job.
Most follow-ups are about the person sending them, “thanks for your time, excited about the role”. His was about us. He'd already started doing the job, and it's very hard to say no to someone who's already doing the job without being asked.
And you can use that same move whether you're hiring or selling.
When you're hiring, leave room for it. Don't script every step after the interview, and notice who comes back with something you didn't ask for.
When you're selling, do it yourself. What I mean is, most of us follow up a discovery call with a thank-you and a proposal. Try sending back 1 or 2 things you noticed first, like an account that doesn't reconcile, a deduction they've been missing or a cleanup they didn't know they needed, and they'll know what working with you feels like before they've paid a thing. Prove your worth to them in a simple way.
What to do with it. Pick 1 prospect from this week and send them 3 things you noticed, what's working, what's missing and what you'd do first, before the proposal.
🧰 THE TOOL I ACTUALLY PAY FOR
Nobody on my team hand-codes a vendor bill anymore
Float sponsored this week's issue, and they were a lead sponsor at my Claude 101 workshop last week. We run YBL on Float too, which is what makes the line above true.
I'm excited to mention that on October 1st, Float's Bill Pay, Send Money and International Payments will become one product, called Payments. Any vendor, anywhere, by EFT, ACH, wire or card in 20+ currencies, with multi-level approvals.
Pay vendors with a Float card and earn up to 1% cashback, plus 2.5% on funds held on Float to make payments.
Would I go back to 3 bank portals and a spreadsheet? Not a chance.
Payments. Simplified. One place for every payment your business makes.
See what lands on October 1 → floatfinancial.com
📋 Worth Taking #005: put your prompts inside the spreadsheet
Put your firm's prompts inside a spreadsheet, not in everyone's head.
At the Claude 101 workshop last week, Ash Lamba named one of the biggest problems in firms right now. Everyone's using a different prompt, so everyone gets a different answer.
His fix for a catch-up job is 1 Excel file (but you can use something different if you like). It’s a great idea. For his firm, the transactions, balance sheet, P&L and trial balance go in, a tab of standard prompts sits right beside them, and the output lands back in the same file. The holdco gets the holdco prompts, the investco gets the investco prompts, and the simple ones get the simple ones.
In practice you're uploading the client's bank statements as CSVs alongside that workbook, so the raw data and the prompts arrive together.
So the answer stops depending on who ran it that day.
The Prompts tab, right beside the numbers. Demo file, fictional data.
Ash didn't share his exact prompts, so the image above shows the starter set I'd put in that tab if I were you. Run the first 4 on every file, then add the line for the entity type.
What to do with it. Build 1 template for your most common catch-up job, add a Prompts tab, and make it the only way anyone at your firm starts that job. Check that you're on a plan that's right for client data before a real file goes in.
💬 Reader Question: where do I even start with rules and Claude skills?
“I’m wondering how I set up my own set of rules and skills. I will figure it out, but it would be helpful to understand where and how you began the process.”
A skill is a task you repeat. Take 1 job you do every month, write the prompt that does it well, and run it until you like what comes back. Then tell Claude to open the skill builder and save that chat as a Claude skill, so next time you name it instead of writing it out again.
A rules doc is what Claude needs to know before it starts. Don't write it, get interviewed for it. Pick 1 client you know cold, ask Claude to interview you 1 question at a time about how their books get done, and stop when it could do them without you. Then have it write that up, and keep it with the prompts from this week's Worth Taking.
▶️ Now Playing
The 5 Stages of Scaling an Accounting Firm went up yesterday. I used to say “30 people” the way some guys say horsepower, and it's the first thing I had to unlearn. It walks through all 5, from solo to a manager managing managers, so you'll know which one you're in and what has to happen next.
The 5 Stages of Scaling an Accounting Firm → youtube.com/@MikeLibbey
📰 In Other News
Last issue I said Claude was up next in the volley. Called it. Opus 5.5 landed Tuesday, and the headline isn't a smarter model, it's a cheaper one, about 40% less than Opus 5 on typical work. Nice.
This week everyone's talking about Muse from Meta. I tried it to book a flight to Vegas and it did everything I asked, right up to asking me to click the button to book it. To be clear, it would have booked it but, I’m admittedly nervous. When do we let it click for us, on the 1 booking where a misspelled name means you don't board? Are you comfortable with this yet?
4 days after Claude 101 in Toronto, someone who was in the room saved $7,000 with something we taught that day. The best part of the day was hands down the people. Intuit QuickBooks posted about the day, and so did Karen and Andrey and many more (thank you all!). This industry runs on community, and I'm just doing my part to give back.
If you didn’t know, LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude etc) are the new Google for finding an accountant, and most firms haven't noticed. Atul Patel in Accounting Today said, “the partners who start now are competing against almost no one.” Ask ChatGPT who you'd hire for your niche in your city and see if you're in the answer. CHECK NOW!
💬 Question for you
What's the best follow-up you've ever received, from a candidate, a vendor or a client? Reply with 1 line, I'll only ever use your initials.
See you in two weeks.
Mike
PS - My younger brother's wedding was on Saturday, and in true Libbey fashion, my older brother and I didn't do a typical wedding speech, we roasted him REAL GOOD. Don't worry, we still love him.
Mike Libbey is CEO of YBL, a fully virtual Canadian accounting and VCFO firm. On YouTube (@MikeLibbey) he shows the tools he has built and what running a firm actually takes, and he posts every weekday on LinkedIn. He is quietly building TaxPilot for Canadian tax firms on the side. Reply to any issue, he reads them all.