The Wize Way

Episode 95: Wize Factor Chat: Shayan Rashid - SRJ CPA

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 1 • Episode 95

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Apply here: https://forms.zohopublic.com.au/wizementoring/form/WizeGrowthDiscovery/formperma/xWwns0wTLoKShmR0jlg0VMaW0FHVQ-V4UdDDecy9aYM
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Imagine transforming your practice from a time-consuming juggernaut into a flourishing enterprise that scales new heights while granting you the freedom to pursue your passions.

In this episode of The WizeFactor Chat of The Wize Guys Podcast,  we had a conversation with Shayan Rashid, a Partner - Chartered Professional Accountant at SRJ Chartered Accountants Professional.

Shayan shares the astonishing evolution of their business through mindset shifts and culture that enabled him to not only welcome over a million in new work but also embrace the art of saying 'no' to potential clients who weren't the right fit. It's a narrative that celebrates the small, yet significant strategies that collectively catalyzed her practice's success, and it's brimming with insights that every practice owner can apply to catalyze their growth.

In parallel, he lifts the veil on his own experience of stepping back from the nitty-gritty of everyday operations to focus on strategic growth and partnerships. By assembling a stellar team and crafting effective systems, I've liberated myself to engage more deeply in basketball, coaching, and travel, all while mentoring the next wave of entrepreneurial talent. Our conversation is not just a reflection on our personal journeys; it's a blueprint for aggressive business expansion and a testimonial to the liberating power of a well-structured business. For those hungry to reshape their business and life, our episode provides the motivation and the methodologies to make it happen!

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3. Book a 1:1 Wize Discovery Session – Spend 30mins with our Wize CEO, Jamie Johns, a $7M firm owner who is ready to give you his entire business plan to build a firm that can run without you – Find out more here

Wize Mentoring:

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time-poor practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Wize Claudia:

So, Shayan, as we were chatting before, I wanted to give you a warm welcome and thank you so much for making up the time to sit down with me and talk a bit about how your firm has progressed and why you have the Wise Factor. You have wanted to talk about your progress ever since you started with Tim, so I'll give you the floor so you can share all the insights and your experience while working with Wize Growth.

Shayan Rashid:

Okay, awesome. Yeah, thank you for connecting with me.

Shayan Rashid:

And yeah, I've had quite an incredible experience in our firm since we joined Wize and you know, before the program there were a lot of materials that I saw online some of the I guess videos and some of the documents that were prepared on the various social media channels and they all just made sense to me.

Shayan Rashid:

I was like, oh yeah, this is perfect, oh yeah, that makes sense, oh, that's what we need. And then from there I just knew that you know, you guys knew what you were talking about and you knew exactly what the issues we faced were and how to deal with them and it was like solutions that I'd never seen before that made sense in terms of the problems we were facing. So, once you know, I had a chance to go through the materials and sit down and understand them. Then I reached out right away and we got started and, yeah, it was a lot of factors that went into the decision, but I knew that the investment was worth it, based on some of the knowledge from the informational materials and when we had our initial call and everything made sense and you know, it was perfect, fit for us and what we wanted to do with our firm and where we were and, you know, give us a lot of knowledge since we joined, to sort of scale our firm to the next level.

Wize Claudia:

That's awesome and I'm so happy that you felt like it was a fit. Since the first moment, I wanted to ask you something, because you are giving me the context that you were finding these resources useful, but what was happening in your firm at the time that you felt like you needed help? So which one of these resources felt like it was what you were trying to do, that it was a fit for that, like which area of your firm you wanted to improve then?

Shayan Rashid:

Yeah, for sure. I think we always had the ability to bring on a lot of work and you know, each year if we added a couple hundred thousand, two, three hundred thousand, four hundred thousand, it was like, oh my gosh, this is a ton of work to do and we'd have to stop taking on leads at a certain point because we just had too much work.

Shayan Rashid:

It was always a good problem to have, but we were never able to scale the way we wanted to or based on how many leads we actually had available. So we were seeing no to a lot of people. I saw the team structure. I saw the sort of organizational structure videos or maybe it was like these one- pager documents it just clicked to me. I was like, oh yeah, that's our problem, you know like teams are not strong enough and not structured the right way, and this makes total sense in terms of how it should be structured. So, yeah, that was our main challenge is that we didn't know how to structure. We didn't know how to set it up so that we could take on more work, build capacity, and build the teams to scale.

Shayan Rashid:

We always wanted to scale in this sort of trajectory and at a strong pace, but we weren't able to just because our teams weren't set up correctly. So that was huge for us and you know, because of that, in this past year, we probably took on over a million of new work, and before like that would be, you know, not even possible for us. So we had the lead we all held. It just confirmed that. You know, we are able to take on a ton more. It's just a matter of needing the right structures.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, and with what you were saying. So you were doing the flat and shallow team structure instead of the deep and narrow one.

Shayan Rashid:

Yeah, exactly.

Wize Claudia:

So when you started implementing all of this this is a question I ask most of our members because I feel like this is something that also happened with them I wanted to ask you. So the technicals and the team structure and all of these profitability and scalability resources are some of our strongest values at Wize, but we also have the mindset part, like the coaching part and culture in your firm. Do you feel like there was a mindset shift since you started working with, or it was aligned with, what you were working on before?

Shayan Rashid:

I think that there was a lot we've learned from Tim and the rest of the team Jamie, Ed, Thomas, and the coaches in terms of how to improve our firm and mindset and growth and culture. Definitely, like every time we speak to them, we pick up a lot of information. We sort of tried different things throughout the years and we, you know, some things worked and some things didn't. Or, as you know, some of them, we tried off-shoreing. We used an offshore company and that worked and then it didn't. So you know, we learned to hire directly rather than using any offshore company. So there were small tweaks and that resulted in big changes for us. Or we have certainly tried things in the past and it didn't work out, and the guys at Wize explained to us, you know, the best practices and how to actually implement certain things. So there's a ton of knowledge and resources and guidance that you know. We think it's small, but they all compound and together it makes a substantial difference in any one practice.

Wize Claudia:

That's amazing to hear and I'm really happy that this happened for you, Because this is another question I had. So for that shy end that was not taking clients because the firm couldn't manage this work and all of that. So what advice would you give to someone who is in the same place you were again? That's part of what would you tell them.

Shayan Rashid:

I think that we have limiting beliefs in terms of what our challenges are and what we're able to accomplish. To think bigger and get the right coaches, get the right team in place because especially the people Wize have all been through it. They have optimized the structures so that you know you don't have to stop. The practice is not reliant on only one partner or two partners or you know a couple of people, and it allows you to grow it like any other business or corporation. You know it's free of time, it allows you to think bigger and it's an amazing tool to help you know change. You know not only your practice, but like your life, because you don't have to work or spend too much time in the business if you don't want to. You get to focus on what you actually want to spend your time on in the business.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, you mentioned something super important. I love that you brought it up. So we talk about this thing about building a firm that runs without you. You know, often in sessions like master classes and everything, we talk about this sentence building a business that runs without you. So how does it make you feel? Does it make you feel scared or excited? Is that something you're looking forward to? Is that something you see happening in the near future, or do you feel like you have to work a lot more towards that?

Shayan Rashid:

Yeah, I think that's a good question. You know, we've seen, with the structures we've implemented and all the things we've learned, that's why I said it is possible. And if you build the right team, put the right people in the right seats, then there's a lot of flexibility that comes with that. Whatever it once holds, if it's to sort of still be involved in practice, but at a limited role, or to only be doing, let's say, business development or partnerships, you get to. Really I've been able to sort of take myself out of it A lot of the work I'd say 75%, 80% of it and I can take myself completely out, but I still want to be involved in my team and train them up and be hands on a little bit, because I've freed up that time. I get to focus on growth and processes and business development and partnerships and joint ventures and a lot of really important things that can help take our business to the next level.

Shayan Rashid:

And I've told our team we want to take this as far as we can and really shoot for the stars here. So each year we want to do 50% to 100% growth. We don't want to sort of minimize our goals. We want to try to go as strong as we can and I think this year we already have signed maybe about another 25% to 30% more work than we did last year, and we're just at the start of our fiscal year. So I think that once you get in, you can see what other people have done and you understand that if you're committed to it and you put in the time and effort, you can easily change the trajectory of your business and your practice, your life, within a year. Like not even exaggerating, probably a year is getting a lot done.

Wize Claudia:

That's amazing. So I know the mentors, I know the trajectory, so I agree with you. It's possible to the message you sent out to the people who would see yourself in your position like three years back from now. I agree with that. You have to believe that you can, and that's basically something one of our first learnings, and wise like beginning with the end in mind. So I love that you mentioned that. So for our last question, now that you said you freed up time, I wanted to ask you, on a more personal note, what hobby you have, what activity you enjoy doing out of work that you now have more time to do and you, in the future hopefully, fingers crossed, you will have even more time to dedicate to that.

Shayan Rashid:

Yeah, that's a good question. So there are a couple of things. I love playing basketball, so definitely try to play basketball at least once a week, and I love coaching as well. So entrepreneurs, so cool.

Shayan Rashid:

Yeah, so through another organization, a part of an entrepreneurs organization in the Toronto chapter, you know I've had the option to be heavily involved there, where I get to, for the last year and a half year and half coaching a group of younger entrepreneurs are trying to make it into EO Toronto, our local chapter, and you know get to help them scale their businesses and grow their businesses and you know it's a big commitment.

Shayan Rashid:

It's at least, you know, five to 10 hours a month and you know that's time that I'm taking away from our business and or family and spending there. And you know I have the flexibility to do that. So I'm spending at least like 10 to 20 hours a month just working and meeting and connecting with other entrepreneurs and I have the flexibility to do so. So you know I get to work with some really exciting young people and look at others. You know even investment opportunities and travel. So you know my goal is to travel at least somewhere new once every other month. So get to do that. And now that we're also virtual, so going to try to start working remotely from small kids' places into will limit some of that, but you know they're in school, but the goal is to start taking them away and for extended periods of time and working in new places as well.

Wize Claudia:

That's amazing. That sounds like an amazing plan. And what you said about coaching I feel like the rule of 33% fits you like a perfect ring. So it was like when you started wise so you received mentoring and coaching and then you went on and empowered yourself to do the same with other people who want to learn. So I think that's a very amazing thing to do with your free time. Now you have time to teach others how to scale and how to become a better entrepreneur. So that's amazing. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun, enjoy it yeah.

Wize Claudia:

Anything you want to add in our chat and our conversation that I'm not asking you, or anything that you would like to say before we wrap up?

Shayan Rashid:

No, no, you got great questions.

Wize Claudia:

Oh, that's amazing to hear. Well, thank you so much for your answers and your time, and I'll see you around.

Wize Mentoring:

Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, please remember to subscribe and leave us a five- star review For more practical Wize tips on how to build a business that runs without you, head over to wizementoring. com/ podcast to download a free copy of The Accountants 20-H our Workweek Playbook. We've included a link in the show notes below. See you in the next episode!