Acquired three businesses, founded a few more. Former international diplomat. Scaling a high-performance Tax & Accounting Firm.
Joined November 2011
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Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
One thing I've noticed on X is how many people with enormous followings present themselves as sophisticated business operators, then make sweeping claims about systems they clearly don't understand.
As a CPA, accounting and taxation are easy examples.
People see AI categorizing transactions and conclude accounting is little more than data entry.
But what about investor capital, partnership allocations, financial reporting, audit trails, tax basis, depreciation, and the differences between financial and tax accounting?
These systems exist for a reason. Among other things, they help protect investors, partners, and shareholders from being taken advantage of.
The same goes for taxation. People love discussing how to avoid paying taxes, but rarely acknowledge that tax revenue funds the infrastructure, legal systems, and public institutions that make private wealth creation and protection possible in the first place.
I'm all for better technology, lower costs, and eliminating unnecessary work. But it's remarkable how confidently people advocate dismantling systems without understanding why they exist.
And this isn't confined to accounting or finance.
The more you understand a profession or business, the easier it becomes to recognize the gap between the expertise someone markets and the operational experience they actually demonstrate.
There's also an enormous difference between accumulating personal wealth and building an organization that creates lasting prosperity for others.
It's great that you've accumulated a $1 million net worth.
But have you built something that employs 100 people, develops their skills, supports their families, and gives them the opportunity to accumulate $500,000 in wealth themselves?
Those are two very different accomplishments.
Human capital isn't just something to replace, automate, or extract value from. It's something worth developing and investing in.
And the institutions that support it are worth understanding before we tear them down.
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
There are two types of people in this world: those who’ve sweated payroll, and those who haven’t.
Happy Friday to everyone waiting on a big customer payment on Monday so Tuesday’s payroll funding clears. Hope you get some rest this weekend.
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
One of the easiest accounting services to price-shop is a tax return.
One of the hardest things to price is the mistake your CPA prevented or the opportunity they helped you see.
That’s why comparing accountants by the return fee misses most of the economics.
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
If you're comparing CPAs solely by tax return fees, make sure you're actually comparing the same service.
$3,000 for compliance and $10,000 for year-round advice aren't competing prices.
They're different products.
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
I've been asking a lot of business owners what their outlook on the economy looks like right now.
Overall, most are cautious. They think tariffs and the war are driving costs up 30% or more in some categories, or they've seen discount requests triple this year in the wealthiest zip codes they serve, or they're seeing banks micromanage construction financing like they're more scared than the developers. A few think we've been in a middling recession since 2022. Others think we're in a vibes economy right now.
Even still, most of their businesses are still growing just fine. Though I do wonder if it's just the people in ScalePath/my network.
Would be curious to hear other people's opinions and observations.
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
⚡️The global financial system is running a controlled demolition of fiat currency purchasing power and almost everyone in it knows but nobody is allowed to say it out loud.
The numbers in this chart are not a warning sign that something is about to go wrong. They are evidence that something has already gone wrong and the response is to keep the appearance of normalcy by issuing more debt every year regardless of conditions. The 2026 numbers are not a forecast of an upcoming crisis. They are the operating procedure of a system that is already in crisis but has chosen to manage it through gradual erosion rather than acute correction.
Every central banker knows this. Every treasury official knows this. Every senior financial executive knows this. They cannot say it because saying it would accelerate the thing they are trying to prevent. The system depends on confidence in the currency. If the people running the system publicly acknowledge that the currency is being systematically debased to manage debt obligations that cannot be paid in real terms, confidence collapses faster. So they manage the debasement quietly while publicly maintaining that everything is fine.
This is the actual social contract of late stage fiat. The people running the system know what they are doing. They know it produces a wealth transfer from savers to asset holders, from wage earners to capital owners, from the middle class to the wealthy. They do it anyway because the alternative is worse. The alternative is acute crisis, banking collapses, sovereign defaults, and political upheaval that could end the system entirely. Slow debasement is the lesser evil from their perspective. They choose it knowingly and they refuse to discuss it publicly because public discussion would prevent it from working.
The middle class is being quietly liquidated to keep the system functioning.
That is not a controversial statement among people who actually understand monetary policy. It is the operating reality. The wealth that the post war American middle class accumulated through wages and home ownership is being slowly transferred to asset holders through inflation and debt expansion. The mechanism is invisible to most people because it operates through the gradual reduction in purchasing power rather than through any visible confiscation. But the effect is the same. The middle class gets poorer in real terms every year while the wealthy get richer in real terms every year.
This chart is one more piece of evidence of the mechanism running.
The wealthy understand this and position accordingly. They hold scarce and productive assets. They borrow at low rates to buy more of those assets. The debt they hold gets inflated away while the assets they hold appreciate in real terms. The math is simple and it produces the wealth concentration that everyone notices but few people understand the mechanism behind.
The mechanism is the monetary system.
It is designed to transfer wealth from those who hold currency to those who hold assets.
That is the function. Not a bug.
The global debt crisis is set to get even worse:
Total sovereign and corporate bond issuance is estimated to rise to a record $28.8 trillion in 2026.
That would mark the 4th consecutive annual increase and would also DOUBLE the average pre-pandemic levels.
Corporate debt issuance is set to surge to a record $6.9 trillion, while government debt issuance is expected to rise to $21.9 trillion, also an all-time high.
By comparison, governments and corporates issued $23.7 trillion of debt in 2020, during the pandemic.
As a percentage of GDP, global issuance is expected to increase to 23.3%, the 2nd-highest on record, only behind the 27.5% peak during the pandemic in 2020.
To put this into perspective, the 2008 Financial Crisis peak was 21.4%.
The world is borrowing ABOVE crisis levels.
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
TAX AI warning!
Spent two hours getting Claude Opus 4.6 to reconcile the K-1s for my LPs to my LP Distribution schedule. It was wrong 3 times before it got it right, the skeptical (former) CPA in me knew something was off in its replies.
AI is incredible for tax research, scenario modeling, and explaining complex concepts. But it is not your CPA. Even the best models will confidently hand you a wrong number and you could easily miss it unless you deeply understand taxes yourself. Long live CPAs! @patrickdichter @Chris_CayneQofE
lol Google rolling out periodic video and photo verifications of offices for gmb means all these people making fake profiles with temp offices are cooked.
Definitely catches most first time business owners off-guard. You'll typically have one in the winter and one in the summer. It averages out over the year, but if you're going month to month on cash, it can put you in a bind.
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
The best way to rank a Google Business Profile:
>Build citations
>Build backlinks
>Get a physical storefront address
>Collect as many reviews as possible (always best to collect at the job site)
>Respond to reviews in SEO format
Some secret sauce on the backend and you are COOKIN'.
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
A reminder that the work you're avoiding is probably what's necessary to make progress
The boring work sucks but it's a requirement
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
Here we go, finally time to announce what is next on my business agenda! 🚨
Read this in entirety, it’s well worth it if you have a service business or if you’re interested as a whole. I’m going to break this down in number format for easier reading.
1. Throughout the last 2 years, I started a house cleaning company from absolutely nothing and grew it to $1,000,000 in sales within less than 2 years. We now have roughly $65,000 in monthly recurring revenue and have virtually eliminated our paid advertising spend.
2. A MASSIVE portion of this success is owed to the time that I have put into growing our Facebook page and utilizing local Facebook groups.
NOT Facebook ads - this is strictly organic Facebook posting (completely free) in multiple Facebook groups that are available for just about every single smaller city within a larger service metro/area.
Think about each of these Facebook groups as a dedicated community meeting spot for those looking for recommendations.
HINT: If you’re a business owner, this is where your lightbulb should be flashing! 💡
THESE GROUPS = MONEY AND BRAND AWARENESS
3. And, without further ado, this is exactly what I am now launching as a service for other business owners.
I’ve absolutely mastered this. This is not something I’m taking lightly. I know what I do works because we’ve had thousands of free leads on our Facebook all from this specific strategy.
4. So, what is the offer I have for other business owners?
Simple. We will handle your entire Facebook page + Facebook group marketing for you every single day.
This is to include the following:
-Finding, joining, and effectively tracking any and all Facebook groups within your area that allow business posts. No limit.
-Responding to potential leads with the exact same aggressive pace that I do currently for my own business. Speed wins and I am as competitive as it gets. If we work together, you benefit from my drive to succeed.
-Creating content for your page, with your help of course. We won’t post anything without prior approval and we’ll create individual plans for what works best.
-Complete Facebook page setup and familiarization. If you’re new to this and have no clue what the hell I’m talking about, perfect! We can start you from the ground up as well.
5. EXCLUSIVITY. I am only going to work with ONE company per area in each respective industry.
This is a game of being better than every other company in your area and maintaining the highest level of professionalism possible (grammar matters, formatting matters, etc. You don’t want to look like a bozo with spelling errors or sloppy posts that look careless).
For that reason, and to reiterate this one more time, I will not be taking on conflicting clients in the same area + industry.
6. Who is this offer for?
I am niching down. Service businesses only. I will give advice to white collar professionals, restaurant owners, etc (because yes you can and should be doing this too), but I am doing what I know best and nothing else.
Painters, landscapers, contractors, cleaners, roofers, garage door repairmen, you name it.
If it’s a service, this strategy is for you.
7. Why am I credible?
To be brief, this is why:
-My company page has over 1,000 followers within 2 years. I’ll show you this directly.
-I was invited as a guest to be on @NeelBParekh’s podcast specifically about this, here’s the link: open.spotify.com/episode/781…
-My company’s advertising is now less than 1% of revenue. Facebook has done wonders for us.
8. Last point (and then a whole lot more to come on this in the future now):
👉🏻 If you’re interested, RT this and reply “Facebook”
I’ll be doing free consultations to see if we’re a good fit and answering all questions.
If you read this far, congrats and thank you!
I’ll be picking 1 person that replies & retweets this and will be working with them completely for FREE for 3 months to help get you started or further along 📈🔥
Jacob W. Bailey retweeted
Ari Emanuel is famous for making hundreds of 90-second phone calls a day
There's often no agenda, just "Can I help you with anything right now?"
It works. Ari's clients include The Rock, Oprah, and Martin Scorsese.
I've adopted the method for any project I'm on. A 90-second call every day with a key person.
On most it's a business partner; I'm launching 2 new businesses right now.
On others it's the main project contact – my sales rep, a key volunteer, etc.
There's one difference from Ari's calls.
I always have an agenda.
Makes it 90% more likely we'll actually stick close to 90 seconds.
Also worth noting I hate phone calls. That's slowly changing.
Don't text. Don't email. Pick up the phone.
If anyone tells you they know SEO right now they are full of it and lying to you. Don’t be fooled by so called experts. Right now no one knows anything about SEO.
Are there any towns in the US that have the SoCal vibe and weather without the price tag or politics?