📁 Plan Z

Oct 2

4 min read

Last year, my wife and I moved to the suburbs, and with more space came the chance to chase a dream: building a professional video studio.

If you’ve ever lived in New York City, you know how impossible this would’ve been. Tiny apartments, shared walls, and no room for piles of wood and soundproofing. Out here, I finally had the space.

Trying to turn my old NYC apartment into a recording studio

A couple of months later, I brought in an expert. He flew across the country to meet me, and we had a mountain of lumber delivered right to our townhouse. Everything was set.

Then came the text from my landlord:

“Hi Josh, I see a lot of wood outside the house. Are you planning to do any construction? Please note that no construction is allowed in the basement due to special zoning laws around flooding.”

Enter panic mode.

This project was a five-figure investment. The contractor was already here. Work was supposed to start in a few hours. And suddenly, the entire plan needed to change, fast.

It reminded me of a truth I’ve seen over and over in finance and accounting:

Amateurs might have a Plan B. Experts have a Plan Z.

They’ve seen every curveball before, and they know how to adapt when the first plan falls apart.

That’s where this week’s story begins.

The Confidence Gap

I’ll never forget one quarterly review early in my career.

I always dreaded those meetings, not because I feared bad feedback, but because the feedback usually felt generic and unhelpful. This time was different.

“I don’t see any confidence in the way you carry yourself here,” my manager told me. “I asked you a question and you said, ‘I think it’s this… maybe that… don’t quote me on it.’”

She was absolutely right. I loved what I was doing, and I was learning quickly, but I was afraid to attach confidence to anything.

Because confidence has consequences.

In finance and accounting, confidence means putting your name on the line.

If you’re a controller, it’s closing the books and standing behind the numbers even when auditors ask tough questions.

If you’re a tax advisor, it’s signing off knowing you didn’t miss a key requirement.

If you’re preparing materials for a board, it’s sending them out without needing to follow up later with a correction.

Clients don’t just hire us for accuracy. They hire us for assurance.

And assurance requires confidence.

But confidence isn’t something that you can just go out and acquire.

It’s something that needs to be earned.

The 20/80 Rule

I once had a strain in my chest muscle that wouldn’t go away, so I went to see a doctor.

“Let’s get you an MRI,” he suggested. “That should give us the answer.”

He looked young, probably early in his career, but he seemed sharp, and I wanted to trust him. So I got the MRI, waited weeks for the results, and came back for the follow-up.

“The MRI didn’t show anything,” he said. “I’m out of ideas.”

You’re out of ideas? I thought. After months of pain and hours of appointments, this doctor had nothing left.

It wasn’t until later that I discovered the real problem wasn’t my chest at all. It was my back. And I couldn’t help but think: if I’d seen a doctor with 20 more years of experience, he might have recognized it right away.

That’s the thing about expertise: it takes time.

The classic 80/20 rule says 80% of results come from 20% of effort. Learn the fundamentals of accounting, and you’re already 80% of the way to becoming a controller.

But the other 20%, the ability to see patterns, anticipate problems, and adapt instantly, takes 80% of your career to build.

You can’t hack that part. You earn it through repetition, mistakes, and experience.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know the drill: test, iterate, hypothesize, learn. It’s not a burden; it’s how you build a bulletproof career that no one can take from you.

I stood there sweating as my landlord confronted the contractor.

“Nothing is allowed to be hung on the walls. Do you understand me?”

Without missing a beat, the contractor replied: “No problem.”

Then he turned to me: “What if we build the walls six inches off the existing wall? I can attach them with screws and a few slight modifications to the design.”

I was amazed. In seconds, he had reimagined the entire plan. And just like that, the studio was back on.

And if you’re wondering what it looks like, here's how it turned out.