The Wize Way

Episode 65: Wize Factor Chat: Bryant Zwart - Calyx CPA

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 1 • Episode 65

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Ever wondered how three friends from different backgrounds could come together and create a thriving accounting firm that runs without them? 

Join us as we chat with Bryant Zwart who shares their inspiring story of building Calyx CPA and working towards a self-sustaining business. Discover how their unique skill sets and diverse perspectives, along with their strong friendship, played a crucial role in the formation and success of their accounting firm.

In this engaging episode, we delve into the steps they took to implement the Wize Method, from understanding the team concept and communication flow to setting up client and employee feedback systems. Get invaluable insights on the evolving mindset of leadership, the importance of having a clear vision, and their experiences in hiring and letting go of team members. Plus, learn how their fun-loving attitude and personal hobbies, such as outdoor activities, watch restoration, and spiritual exercises, contribute to their overall success and work-life balance. 

Don't miss this opportunity to be inspired by Bryant's journey and possibly spark your own entrepreneurial adventure!

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PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 4 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm:

1. Take the Wize Accountants Scale Scorecard – Find out your potential to scale and the next steps you should follow – Start Your Scorecard

2. Download our famous Wize Freedom Strategy Map for FREE - Find out the 96 projects every firm owner must implement to build a $5M+ firm that can run without them - Download here

2. Need to Hire right now? Book a 1:1 FREE discovery call with our WizeTalent hiring coaches to help find your next team member the Wize Way – Click Here

4. 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

Speaker 1:

You've got to master leading yourself. So that's about self-discipline, that's about experience. That's about controlling your feelings, so you've got to lead yourself. 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-pull practice to a business that runs without them. I hope you enjoy and subscribe.

Wize Claudia:

Well, thank you, Bryant, for joining me today, and for making the time to come and talk to me. We are doing this because you and the rest of the Calyx CPA team have been great members at Wize. You've been engaging with us for a long time, so we wanted to ask a couple of questions to find the Wize factor and know what made you a client in the first place. And now you are part of our Wize Tribe. So I would love to ask you like go from the beginning and ask you a bit about Calyx CPA's background and ask you like when did you start the business and why was the reason that this business came to life?

Bryant Zwart:

Well, it was originally Justin. He had his own tax business and worked as an accountant at a local accounting firm one of the bigger local accounting firms and I didn't like it.

Bryant Zwart:

You know, I didn't like just being an employee and I could kind of look out into my future and it didn't seem like it was very good like I was just going to be working for a long slowly working my way up, you know, and super long hours and you know, tax work in accounting work was kind of a grind, And so I quit that job and initially I was looking to start my own little firm, you know, just on my own. And I'd known Justin before I had worked with him in the past. You know, I was just looking around and I got in touch with them and I said, Hey.

Bryant Zwart:

I haven't seen you in a while, and what are you doing? And we had a nice talk and we talked a little bit about the possibility of doing something together.

Wize Claudia:

Okay.

Bryant Zwart:

I think it doesn't really feel exactly right for either of us, but there was something missing.

Bryant Zwart:

Then we went to a business conference together for Xero the annual XeroC on and we were talking there and you know, and I said, Hey, I had a really good friend at the old job that I was at, who's still there. He was super smart. She was, like you know, one of the rock stars. As you know, they want to promote her and everything. And we were good friends, we were cubicle mates. She was like cubicle climbing. So I said, hey, you know what she joined?

Bryant Zwart:

We did a new business with the three of us like I think that would be really exciting, and he was interested too. So then I got in touch with her and she was interested, you know, and a couple of months later she said, okay, let's do it. So then we started this business together and it was mostly Justin's clients, so it was his client base. So Jamie and I essentially kind of bought into his business and then we started the new business together. We just went third owners, and so that was the origin and I think that was in August, I think, of 2019.

Wize Claudia:

Oh.

Bryant Zwart:

Either 2018 or 2019, but I think 2019 because that would have been one year, two years.

Wize Claudia:

Oh, okay. So that's a very interesting casualty because maybe, like Jamie, came in to bring something different to the team and the female touch, yeah, so that's kind of rounded out. Yeah.

Bryant Zwart:

To round it out Like just the two of us together. I know that each of us kind of brings a different skill set And it was also nice Jamie's younger, Justin's kind of in the middle and I'm the oldest, so it also makes there's just more dynamism, you know. And also having one woman is really nice to bring it in, not that it couldn't be two women, I remember, but just have the mix.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, exactly different levels of knowledge and a little knowledge and age and it.

Bryant Zwart:

So we fit together. That's very good. We enjoy each other, we're friends, we hang out outside of work, just think, outside of work. So like Tim's always saying I love working with you guys because we're fun together. you know A lot of time business partners will kind of fight. You get us all three together. It's like a fun five.

Wize Claudia:

That's so great to hear. I love to hear that because really it does happen with partners that it's kind of hard to get three heads in the same place and it will forever be like that. It's the attitude that counts, like.

Bryant Zwart:

Well, we all really want to work our way out of the business as much as possible. Maybe, Justin, because he just enjoys Like he's our sales engine and he likes talking to people, He likes doing sales and so he enjoys that bit. So he would like to continue to do that but work himself out of all the rest of the stuff. And then Jamie and I would just like to have more free time.

Bryant Zwart:

Yeah, that was a big part because you were asking about what attracted us to why. And that's what why is kind of all about. It's like, do what you want to do. If you want to work in the business more, then work in it. You know, if you work as a manager, grow it or whatever.

Bryant Zwart:

If you want to work, less, then do that Exactly Like Ed starts with the Steven Covey thing of starting with the end in mind. You never click the first section. That made a lot of sense to us. Yeah, exactly Right here. So that was a good thing. I'll let you ask the questions.

Wize Claudia:

No, that's perfect. That's great.

Wize Claudia:

So now fast forward a little bit in the timeline. When did you guys start Wize?

Bryant Zwart:

I think it was relatively soon. It was within the first year.

Wize Claudia:

Oh, okay, so very, from the ground up, you decided that you wanted to.

Bryant Zwart:

Yeah, you know all of us, especially myself and that's maybe one of the things that I bring I was saying to Justin and Jamie. I was, like you know, we need to get this thing organized, like we need to have kind of a system so we can actually have like a running business, you know, versus just the traditional models, like a partner with their book of business and they're kind of doing that people help them.

Bryant Zwart:

But they're really involved in kind of doing all the work. And I said I don't want to be strange, I'm in an accounting business but I don't want to be doing all that much accounting for the next 25 years. And so we used to figure out, like, how do we put it together?

Bryant Zwart:

We were starting to we were doing that, and I think, Justin, he's always got his eyes out for new things. He's the most entrepreneurial of all of us We're usually having to reign him in who has new ideas and things. So he's always on the lookout for stuff and he came across Wize.

Bryant Zwart:

I don't know how he came across it, but he just came across it. We're looking at it. I think we got that original pamphlet whether it was paper online, I don't remember but it looked really good. We were like it looks like they were saying everything exactly like what we wanted to do, but know how to do it all. And this was like Oh, someone's already kind of got it exactly figured out, like I don't need to reinvent the wheel.

Bryant Zwart:

So it's like this is exactly what we want. You know, they're saying these are, we have all the systems and, and what was really interesting is that they were actually doing it.

Bryant Zwart:

You know a lot of business coaches will say like, okay, you need to do this and do that, that they aren't actually doing it. I was like, Oh, they own accounting firms. This is how they're accounting, this is how their first instructions. So it seemed like there's just basically, you know, a blueprint or map and all we have to do is implement it, which is itself not that easy, but it's a lot easier than coming up with it all.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, and basically, when you are in a position where you are jam-packed, you are not thinking about growth, you're just busy, straight up busy, and when you have free time to not think about the business, you don't want to think about improving the business. So, basically, if someone gives you that's the way I see it like. For me, when I started working, it was like this is great, this is genius, like how are you helping so many people with this things these and just like a simple letter to ask something To a client. But it's a lifesaver. It saves time in that sense. So, yeah, it's cool that you share that and that, thank you for sharing that. I also wanted to ask you so, down the timeline, when you've already started, wise, justin, Justin the two of you convinced about Starting something like this. What were your first steps? Where did you start from? was the first change that you could see? where you said, okay, this might be it.

Bryant Zwart:

Well, you know, it was just following the wise method, basically, because they've got everything kind of laid out step by step, and so we met with Ed and Jamie originally.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah G OGmentors O entors , G Omentors mentors.

Bryant Zwart:

Yeah, they were so mentors. I wish we had been a little further along when we started, actually, because then we could have taken, I think, even more, advantage meeting with them. But they essentially were just taking us through the steps, you know, in the first literally hand, holding us through it with the Excel sheet, typing the answers and stuff at the same time. So they were like dragging us, not dragging us because we were willing, but literally like pulling us, there you go.

Bryant Zwart:

So the first thing was just beginning to start to understand the team concept and the communication traffic like the traffic flow communication that Ed talks a lot about and just understand the deep and narrow team concept and starting to understand that and And then also starting to have a real broad plan for, okay, so where do we want to be in five years, what income do we want to have and how much time do we want to spend on the business? That's basically the starting point. So they're saying and I think we wanted.

Bryant Zwart:

At the time we were saying we would like about 300,000 a year each and be working minimally on the business or not much on the business. So it's like, okay, if you want that, you need about three teams minimum, each doing a million or a little over a million and revenue. That's kind of been our goal for us since the beginning. and And we're just now getting kind of two teams in place, or second, we're just starting to close to getting two proper teams running. But that's taken us a while.

Bryant Zwart:

We've been maybe slow, I don't know. I'm sure some people are a lot faster, and maybe some are slower, but I wish it had gone maybe a little faster, Just the implementation stuff. Yeah, it's a matter of doing business going, you know, but we've got now quite a bit more people from the Philippines, okay.

Bryant Zwart:

Like we've gone through a lot of hiring and letting go and hiring and letting go. I think maybe that's one of the hardest parts. Like that's what Ed talks about when he says the stable terminals. you know people that really fit your business and fit in the culture and are going to be there for a while so that you can invest in them. And then you know, as they get better and better, like the whole business just really starts to click at a certain point And I think we're starting to see the beginnings of that happening.

Wize Claudia:

Wow exciting. it's t's It's really exciting.

Bryant Zwart:

So a lot of work is slowly getting taken off of my plate. It's super encouraging to actually see it happen. But to get there you go through hard times. you know we had someone who wasn't working out. it's easy to get discouraged, yeah. So at times, I think we've all gotten discouraged in different ways. but we keep at it And that's where the regular coaching I think helps a lot. Meeting Just meeting Tim each month gives us an opportunity to like talk about what we've been up to And he's invested, you know. so he knows And he's like, hey, how did that go, how did this go? And it kind of just helps to keep your eye on the longer vision that we are moving in a certain direction.

Wize Claudia:

That's great And I love to hear that because I was just wanting to ask you what you said about the culture So you set up a culture, and you set up a team. So do you feel like before wise you were running for a year or so with your firm before wise And after wise there was a new concept, a new vision? Do you feel like there was a mindset shift for the three of you or for yourself, like in the sense of leadership or how to handle teams, and more on a personal level than on a managerial structure, accounting firm level?

Bryant Zwart:

I would say mindset. That's just, you know, still continuing to evolve is the notion of leadership, what really is leadership. So I feel like I'm still learning about that. You know, because you think about leadership, and one thing is just like setting a good example. I've always known that the organization is going to operate based on who's leading it and what they're holding that stuff. I think the bigger thing that I'm still evolving into is that bigger vision. So that's where I'm starting to see how that's connected to leadership.

Bryant Zwart:

Because if you're in a leadership position, the idea is you have some vision right, because you're kind of on a perch, you're raised above the others, so hopefully you see something. It's kind of like if you were leading people across their terrain, you know, and you need to be able to look up, see like, okay, I know there's a trail that way, but follow me right, like having that, that sense of vision. I think that's still something I'm kind of evolving more and more into, like what really is our vision? So maybe that's a mindset that's starting to, but what really is our vision? you know where we really headed.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, that's perfect, I think it talks a lot about that.

Bryant Zwart:

I'm still learning.

Wize Claudia:

So in which part of your journey, with all this leadership and then your firm structure and everything where do you feel like Wize, has impacted in a bigger Which area of the business have you seen a bigger impact on?

Bryant Zwart:

I think it's an impact right across the board. Basically, we're trying to implement the wise model. I mean we want our firm to look like the other guy's firms, we want it to look like Tim's firm and each one is a little different, you know right But we want it to look like Tim's firm and Ed's firm and Jamie's firm. We want to implement the full model. It just totally makes sense. So we're constantly oriented on that. Like we use all the same terminology production managers, client managers, and more and more everyone's on the same page, all the people that work here.

Bryant Zwart:

But we're aiming for those three teams And we've got two teams now and our initial goal is like let's get to those three teams. That's where we're, and we more and more like to implement all the other pieces, like the bonus system and tracking, client feedback, and employee feedback. They're like net promoter score, whatever, and all those metrics I mean. To us it's like as far as accounting firms go, that's what's cool about why those actual accounting firms. this is a great way to run an accounting firm And it's also built on that outsourcing. You know that we have the employees to show us. That's key And so wise, turns on to that. I don't think we would have done that on our own so well, because what do we know about outsourcing before? we started talking with her twice And nothing about it. Like Jamie originally took us on and you know he took us to the job boards and he filled out a job at the top grade.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, Jamie is the talent guru, the hiring recruitment guru.

Bryant Zwart:

So I think this was before you had the four lines, so he just took us through his exact process, what he does, and he did it for us like we watched as he was doing it.

Wize Claudia:

And then he went ahead and put it on paper and now he's helping lots of people with the same tools that he helped you back in the day.

Bryant Zwart:

So I think, that's amazing. Because yeah, the ad he put up is Rupa. That's who we got from that ad that he put up. He is the first person to start with us and she's amazing. She's absolutely amazing bookkeeper.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, I'm so glad to hear that everything's going well with her and the business itself. We would love to have you back at the masterclasses, so maybe when you're in the class.

Bryant Zwart:

I would love to come back too.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, we would love to have you back. I have one last question for you, Bryant because I know I have taken more of your time than I should, but I wanted to ask you more on a personal note. So you've talked about withdrawing from the business and having more free time. So what do you enjoy doing in your free time? Is there any activity, any hobby that you enjoy, or just relaxing?

Bryant Zwart:

But I really like outdoor stuff. Oh, nice, I do like to do trail work, to work on trails, I like to work in my garden, so I like doing outdoors. And stuff like mountain biking like mountain biking And I like working with my hands, so I like accounting stuff.

Speaker 1:

I'm not accounting.

Bryant Zwart:

but mechanic stuff like working with cars or a new hobby I'm starting as a watch restoration, repair.

Wize Claudia:

Oh, Chris watches. Have you seen this video? this guy makes online where he's fixing the watches.

Bryant Zwart:

Yeah, I've seen a few. It's fun because it's so tiny.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah, that's, and the tools that you use to all the tools.

Bryant Zwart:

Yeah, it's cool to watch as a mechanic. They're just so miniature and they got all these little gears and things that move around and stuff.

Wize Claudia:

Recently started doing this.

Bryant Zwart:

You started doing that.

Wize Claudia:

No, no, no, I'm asking you. So you bought all the little tools and then you got the magnifying glass.

Bryant Zwart:

Yeah.

Wize Claudia:

Wow, that's such a cool hobby Best one out of the list So you have to start a video page like I mentioned TikTok. Where is that going to lead?

Bryant Zwart:

Now I would say the theme would be what it's like for someone to just learn it.

Wize Claudia:

Yeah.

Bryant Zwart:

The idea is Hey, what's it like to just learn this new skill that just takes you on the journey of learning it. Because other people could learn it too? They want you to know. That's the kind of stuff I like to do. I'm thinking of doing, like starting to do, car-swapping a deal for fun, almost like a car broker. And then I like kind of spiritual type work like meditation and yoga.

Wize Claudia:

You want to introduce yourself to this or you've already done this.

Bryant Zwart:

I've been doing that for a long time.

Wize Claudia:

Oh, that's cool. So I do yoga as well.

Bryant Zwart:

I started recently doing these exercises from Saq Guru. Have you heard of him?

Wize Claudia:

No, I haven't heard that.

Bryant Zwart:

He's like a big-time pretty guru. that's well known. He does a lot of stuff on YouTube but he's a lot of like exercises, which are fun, that I've started doing a lot of different meditation exercises Like yoga with sound and yoga with breathing special breathing types of exercises.

Wize Claudia:

Wow, that's cool. So yeah, I'm going to look it up.

Speaker 1:

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