The Wize Way

Episode 85: The 12 Wize Tips of Christmas (2023 Edition)

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 1 • Episode 85

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In this week's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, Brenton Ward, James Johns, and Ed Chan are in the festive spirit as they unwrap The 12 Wize Tips of Christmas.

In Part 1, they explore the intricacies of PROCESS (How to design your firm) from the Wize DRS Model, providing invaluable insights into optimizing business structures and processes. 

Part 2 delves into the critical realm of PEOPLE (How to recruit the right people), offering secrets to assembling the perfect team. 

Finally, in Part 3, the spotlight is on PERFORMANCE (How to scale your accounting business), with strategies to effectively grow your accounting business. Don't miss this opportunity to implement actionable tips and elevate your business in time for the holidays. 

Tune in now to scale your business with The 12 Wize Tips of Christmas!

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PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 3 ways we can help you fix and grow your accounting firm:

1. 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 at 1:1 FREE hiring assessment with our WizeTalent recruiters to help find your next best employee locally or offshore – Click Here

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

Ed Chan:

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.

Brenton Ward:

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. What we're going to do, guys, is we're going to talk about the 12 tips of Christmas, but before we get into that, I want to say hello to our resident Wize mentors, Ed and Jamie. So, Jamie, how are you doing?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, good thanks, brenton.

Brenton Ward:

Ed. How are you doing?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah.

Brenton Ward:

All right. So we're constantly developing our intellectual property and our secret source in the background, and one of the things we've been focused on this year is really understanding what the sort of core strategies is that we focus on and that we talk about when it comes to building a firm, a building a business that runs without you. We've tried to distill it down into a nice simple model and this, for anyone who's interested in these sorts of graphic models, is called a genius model, if you go and Google genius model, with some great videos on it, and it could be really helpful for your own business. I found this a really useful exercise for us. But the genius model basically identifies the core thing that we're trying to help you guys with, which is right at the center of that graph, and that's freedom. So a business that runs without you is the goal, but the ultimate goal is to give the business owners or the firm owners, and their team freedom to be able to live the life they want to live and have more choices and just basically not have a business that's completely reliant on you. And then what does that mean? That means more time, more money, more meaning, but how are we going to actually implement that?

Brenton Ward:

When we look at the Wize way of doing things, we boil it down into three areas Design, which is all about building the foundations and building out the blueprint for a business that runs without the owners. Recruit, which is about implementing, installing, and leading a high- performing team. And then scale Once we've got the design and the recruit functions right, how can we then transition from growth into the scale and really see the business take off in a leveraged way, in a way that's not completely reliant on everyone doing all the heavy lifting? So what we thought would be a really cool way to end the year is to share a tip. So we're going to hit, add up and I'm going to put him on the spot.

Brenton Ward:

So we've got nine core areas here. So we're going to get nine core tips from Ed in this session, and then what I'd like to do is for each of the areas the three remaining tips to round out our 12 tips of Christmas we're going to get from you guys we're going to talk about or look at one specific tip head one piece of mentoring advice that you can give on the design function of building or developing out the growth blueprint, so really building the business on a blueprint designed in a way that allows the owners to remove themselves from being in the business to working more on the business. What is your one piece of advice that you want everyone to take away?

Ed Chan:

Thanks, Brenton. I guess I've talked about this in the past. But when you want to run a business and a good business you need obviously good people, then you need good systems so that everybody knows what they're supposed to do, and then you've got to provide good leadership because you can have the best people in the world, you can have best systems in the world, but if you don't provide good leadership, you can all go pear- shaped. So that's a just quick bit of advice on that area.

Brenton Ward:

Okay. So in terms of the blueprint itself, when we talk about the wise withdrawal journey, helping business owners remove themselves from each of the seven divisions in the Wize seven- division chart. What do you have in terms of advice for getting everyone on the same page in terms of working in the flow in those divisions and helping the owners remove themselves from working in the business so they can work more on the business?

Ed Chan:

Yeah. So when you build a business, you need various different skills and often owners say to me I wish I could find someone just like me. And you don't want someone just like you. You want someone that compliments you. And it's not like school where if you're good at maths and you're bad at English, you get someone to choose. You're on English to get your English up at work. You stay away from the things you're not good at, so you hire somebody that does the things that you're not so good at so it compliments you. So what you end up with is one plus one is five.

Ed Chan:

Now in the withdrawal journey, the seven divisions. As you will know, that is why feels to do the tasks that are required in those seven divisions, and the journey that the owner should be going through is to withdraw themselves from each of those divisions, and the first division they should withdraw themselves from is administration. So to hire somebody to do the administration, you need to find someone that's really good in administration, because everybody benefits from a really good administration person. Then continue to withdraw yourself from the production doing the work. You then withdraw yourself from the KPIs monitoring, running the KPIs, the reporting, and the financial reports of the firm itself, and then you withdraw from the sales function to eventually just sitting in the order directors.

Brenton Ward:

Okay. So, Jamie, in terms of your tip on this topic, what's one thing you'd like to share with everyone in terms of helping get everyone on the same page with the growth blueprint? So how to grow a firm in the right way? Business by design rather than by default, rather than letting it happen.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, thanks, Brenton. My tip for that one today is to have meetings. So the meeting rhythm and routine for me in the growing Sky was always about just the meeting, so that the daily huddles that the teams have, and then the weekly managers' meetings and then a higher level, your board meetings. The reason is so important is it gets everyone on the same page and you can never over- communicate. You know you're better to over- communicate than under- communicate and if you're over- communicate just gets everyone on the same page and everyone heading in the same direction.

Jamie Johns:

But if you don't have your meetings, if you don't have that daily huddle, you don't have that weekly meeting or even the monthly office meeting and your board meetings, it'll just cause chaos and everyone will be going everywhere. There'll be no logical priorities. So the biggest tip on that one is, in terms of designing your businesses, make sure that you have the meetings, the meeting rhythm, and the routine. You know, a bit like the sun goes down every night, some comes up every day, it's just like following the seasons, it's just that cyclical meetings. But I can guarantee if you drop the meetings, if you don't have your meetings, if you don't have your weekly managers meetings and so forth, then the wheels will fall off. So yeah, my biggest tip on designing a business and keeping everyone on the same page is that glue is the meetings and having those strict agendas on the meetings and someone leading the meetings. So that's good leadership.

Brenton Ward:

Awesome, perfect. So that is tip number one develop your growth blueprint. Now let's look at tip number two in the design function, which is turning on your performance dashboard. So probably reiterate that none of the ground we're covering today is new stuff. This is all getting back to the fundamentals of how to build a business that runs without you. So let's talk about the importance of installing and turning on dashboards in the firm to be able to keep your finger on the pulse of the health and the start of the business.

Ed Chan:

Yeah, there's an old saying if to be able to manage it you've got to measure it. If you don't measure things, you won't be able to manage them, and we've come up with five key performance indicators, which we call the FAB5, and it's in the Wize Hub. So everybody should have the Wize Hub and if you haven't got your Wize Hub, then just send an email through and we'll send it to you. But in a Wize Hub, everything that you do culminates in these five KPIs and if you have these KPIs in front of you, you'll feel in control, without needing to be controlling, because you don't want to be controlling of the people that you work with. You want to empower them so that they know exactly what they have to do and they get on to do it. And it culminates in the scoreboard if you like. So it's a bit like playing a game and you end up having a scoreboard. The five KPIs that we focus on are fees. So your actual fees each month and year to date. So we measure the accumulative fees to date because one month could be out and then you make it up in the following month. So over a three- month period gives you a better indicator of how the business is traveling, rather than just one month on its own, and we measure that against last year's month and year to date and also against the budget that we put forward as what we're trying to achieve for the next year. So we measure that and we make sure that we're on track. Then the second KPI is EBITDA your profits and your cost of goods sold because the biggest expense item on your profit and loss statement is your cost of goods sold, and if you lose control of your cost of goods sold, your profits will disappear. And if your profits will disappear, there's a domino effect. You can't pay your wages, you can't run the business if your profits are there. So it's in everybody's interest to ensure that the boost that lays a golden egg, which is the business that you're working for, is profitable and it's running well, because if it's not running well, then everybody loses. But that's the second bit, it's your profitability.

Ed Chan:

The third one is your cash. If you don't have cash available, then you can't pay your bills and often a business can be quite profitable, but if it doesn't have any cash flow, it can still go into liquidation if you can't pay its predators. So cash is really important and cash is either with your work in progress or your debtors, and if your cash is all locked up in those two areas, you won't be able to pay your bill and you just have to owe someone more than $1,000 and they can apply for liquidation on you. So it's really important that you're on top of your cash flow. You've got the systems in place to make sure that it's not all locked up with the debtors.

Ed Chan:

The fourth one is your fees. So a business needs to be growing. If you're not growing, you're dying. There are only two states for a business. So you want to be growing. So you need to be measuring the new fees that are coming through, and you also have to be measuring the fees that you're losing, because if you only focused on the new fees, you might be growing. You might be thinking that you're growing, but there's a leakage there and it's leaking out the back and it's the net. The net that's most important and it also helps you work out what capacity you need. So if you're getting a net growth of $100,000 a year, that tells you you've got to hire another person and make sure that your resources are keeping up with your growth.

Ed Chan:

And the very last KPI is your net promoter score. You've got to make sure your clients are happy and research shows that clients or customers expect businesses to make mistakes. But what defines us is not the mistakes we make but how we address those mistakes and how we respond to those mistakes. And the research shows that if you respond really, really quickly, not only do you keep that client but you turn that client into an advocate, a promoter of your business. They'll go out and refer people to you, and extremely expensive to try and get a new client is much cheaper and easier to retain, and these things apply. So it's important that we're on top of how they're feeling and if they were agreed for some reason, that we address their grievances as quickly as possible. And the only way that you know that is to run surveys and measure NPS the net promoter schools on how they're feeling.

Ed Chan:

Often when I talk to firms they say things like oh, I don't want to hear anything negative, but you've got to change your attitude because you can't see that as a negative. You've got to see that as an opportunity to improve your business. And you know it's funny, we have different in Japan. They've got a culture of looking forward to complaints, because Australia, we hate complaints, we hide away from that. But in Japan, they've got this thing called Kaizen, which is continuous improvement, and the only way they can continuously improve is to get feedback from your clients. And the last one is, of course, you know you make sure your staff is happy and the issues are addressed, and you're not just paying attention to the clients but you're also paying attention to your staff because your staff is one of the biggest assets in your organization. And you've just got to make sure that you know those five KPIs are trending in an upward direction, and then everything is under control and you'll feel in control without needing to be controlling of anybody.

Brenton Ward:

Perfect, Jamie. Just to add to that, you've been spending the last 10 years or so getting to a point where you're automating those fab fibers we call it as much as possible. You know we've gone a certain extent with the Wize Hub, with the SharePoint dashboard, but anything to add in terms of, you know, maintaining those dashboards, making sure that they're kind of kept up to date or anything around that piece.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, the biggest piece of advice I can give is to make it a priority. You know, if you don't make measuring your firm a priority then you're not going to know how it's going. So you know, while you've got the tools there, you know, and if you don't use it then that's no one else's fault but your own. So you've got to make it a priority to measure those five things, Brenton, and to put in systems, to put in tools in place so that you can actually measure it for the better of the firm, for the better of the team. Because you know, if you don't have a handle on each of those five KPIs, you're going to be deficient in one area.

Jamie Johns:

Really, those five KPIs came out of years and years of experience with myself looking at what to measure in the firm and also with, you know, with Ed, Building and running Chan and Naylor. So those five KPIs are critical and I think don't miss any one of them. So make it a strategic decision and a top priority to actually spend the time and the effort to actually measure each of those KPIs, Because if you just push them to the side then you're really missing the whole point, because you know what you can measure, you can manage and it gamifies your business and it shows you who's good at what they're doing and who's not so good at what they're doing so that you can then help them or support them to be better at their job. Yeah, my advice is to make it a top priority, if you are a decision maker in your firm, to measure those five KPIs, because they won't just happen unless you make it happen.

Brenton Ward:

Perfect, good advice, I think. The third one, to round out is the design piece, which is, you know, we're fanatical about installing extraordinary systems, ed, so extraordinary operating systems. If we were to pinpoint and highlight part of this methodology of installing and building extraordinary systems, one piece of advice for everyone to take away, to focus on next year on this topic, what would it be from you, Ed?

Ed Chan:

Sure, there are hard systems and soft systems. Okay, so hard systems are things like, you know, zero and mild and practice admission and those kind of things. So, yeah, they all work pretty well. And you know, it doesn't really matter which one you picked, they all do 80% pretty well. So it's a bit like if you're playing golf if you buy a better set of golf clubs, it might improve your game a little bit, but what really improves your game a lot is the soft systems, the culture, the process, the leadership on yourselves, the culture of no blame. Now, don't create a blame culture. Focus on solutions. Focus on playing the ball and not the man, the no- bypassing policy. You know empowering people to work, be productive. And you know, focus on output, not input. So focus on productivity. So don't focus on, you know, politics and political points, scoring and blaming and that kind of stuff. Focus on the output, focus on the solution. And if you can get those things right, then you create the soft systems that will propel your business to greater heights.

Brenton Ward:

Perfect. I love the hard system versus soft system, and there needs to be a plan for both of those, doesn't it? So, Jamie, what's your piece of advice on this topic?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, quick and easy. Brenton is to develop standard operating procedures. Develop your videos that are critical and have one central spot that's in an organized manner for all your how- to. This is how we do it at our firm. And if you just record, you know, use something like Snagit or Camtasia, just record everything that you do and get all that intellectual property out of here and into your system, which will actually by default become an extraordinary system, because you'll have it all recorded and when someone starts you can say I'll just watch these 10 videos and this is how a business runs in this particular area. So a quick answer is SOPs yeah.

Brenton Ward:

SOPs and just to extend on that, my tip on that is and I'm late to the party on this but loom, l-o-o-m. com is awesome for like screen capture and either being able to share a link for the screen capture it's all cloud- based or you can download it. There's a subscription if you want all the fancy bits to it, but it's probably one of the easiest capturing pieces of software I've used this year. So get on loom. com if you need something to capture stuff on your screen. All right, I want to hear from you guys.

Brenton Ward:

So who has got a design win for me? So, whether it's, you know, you've had a massive shift in the way in which you run your business in terms of business by design. Rather than letting run you If it's around extraordinary systems, if it's around your dashboard, you've got a humming. Who's got a good story for me that we can share before we power on to recruit Thomas? You're up. You were talking to us about yesterday, like you know, the transition and the transformation of your firm over the last two years. Give us a quick snap sound bite of business by design for you guys now.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Yep. The number one priority for design is to just keep it simple. If it's not simple and intuitive, then you know staff aren't going to pick up on the clients, they're going to be confused about how they interact with you. So the short part is just keeping it simple and that way things will flow much better. And then if it's complicated, when things break it's hard to fix, it's hard to know where things, where you should be looking. But if it's simple, it's just it takes care of itself.

Brenton Ward:

So we are moving to recruit. It took me ages to find the right photo to represent a deep and narrow team structure, but I think it nailed it. Reigners in the right formation deep and narrow team structure. You can tell I had a lot of fun putting these slides together, ed. We all should be very familiar with deep and narrow team structures. But your one tip around deep and narrow team structure and getting this right, is because it is one of the hardest pieces of the puzzle to get right. I don't even think you can get it right completely because it is always changing but tell us your tip.

Ed Chan:

Yeah, it takes a few goes at it. As Carmen said, sometimes you think you might have got it right and then you sleep on it or something else happens and you realize you have got to tweak it a bit. It is a constant tweaking of teams, but it is only because people are complicated and they are different and they have got feelings and emotions and they have got strengths and weaknesses and the dynamic is quite difficult to pin down in black and white terms. However, the deep and narrow team is all about utilizing complementary skills in order to manage the traffic flow in the organization. What kills an organization or a business is the amount of traffic flow that comes through, and the traffic flow is made up of production traffic and communication traffic, and clearly, some of us are better at communication than we are at production and others are better at production than we are at communication.

Ed Chan:

If you have a flat team structure, you are expecting that person to be able to be everything to everybody, and that is not correct.

Ed Chan:

Now you might get some people like that, but it is generally the minority.

Ed Chan:

The majority of us, including me, have strengths and weaknesses and I know what my strengths are and I know what my weaknesses are.

Ed Chan:

So the deep and narrow team identifies our people with their various different strengths and weaknesses and, just like a team, just like Proto, where you have got a leader who has different skills and the others have their roles in that team just like a sporting team, you know, you suffer, you have got a fullback and a winger who is quick, and we all have our positions because of our strengths, and it is exactly the same in the run of business.

Ed Chan:

So we have to be able to manage both those that communication traffic and the production traffic and we need to have it in a deep and narrow format so that we are complimenting each other and what you end up getting is we end up getting 1 plus 1 is 5 through working together as a team. So, rather than having a flat structure, we have extraordinary people. If you have a flat team, you are a champion team, whereas if you have a deep and narrow team, you have a championship team, and a championship team will always beat a team of champions, and hence the reason why we have a deep and narrow team.

Brenton Ward:

Perfect, love it, Jamie. Number one tip for deep and narrow teams?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, I think, Brent, if you run a deep and narrow team, it really follows what I call the Rule of 33, and the Rule of 33 is where a third of the time, you are always going to be teaching someone potentially who is under you like a new hire. And when you teach someone, everyone will know you really need to know your stuff and we all experience where you have sat with someone and you have to teach them how to do a particular task and the learning that comes from that is quite extraordinary. When you're teaching someone, when you're learning from someone, that's really the other third. When you're learning from someone above you in a deep and narrow team, that's critical, that you learn the skills so that you can do your actual job. And then, thirdly, often you'll be sharing with your colleagues Someone is at the same level, maybe on another team, about what your insight is, and what worked for you.

Jamie Johns:

So I think if you really do follow and the firms follow the deep and narrow team, you really fulfill that Rule of 33, which is learn, share, and teach. And I know for me personally that's been a great positive interaction with team members in terms of developing my own career and professionalism. So, yeah, it's the Rule of 33. And if you want more on that, just Google it. It's every there like learn, share, teach. And if you have a deep and narrow team, that's what you'll get in your firm.

Brenton Ward:

I love the rule of 33. Hiring our deep and narrow team getting really enthusiastic. The right people in the right seat on the right bus, heading in the right direction. Ed, number one tip on recruiting excited and high-performing staff?

Ed Chan:

The number one tip and everybody makes this mistake the pressure comes on them and they throw bodies at the problem. Just go hire people. Everybody makes this mistake and you end up with a flat team structure. The number one tip is to start with the plan. Start with the ideal team plan. What is that? What does that plan look like? So it's a bit like if you want to build a house, you don't just go and start laying bricks in the backyard. You go to an architect and you get the architect to design the plan that you have. Then you recruit people for those positions to build that ideal team. So bring the blueprint for the ideal team and then, based on that blueprint, then look at the people that you have in your organization, that you currently have, and you try and fit them into those positions and then you may have. If you're short, then you may have to recruit for those missing pieces.

Brenton Ward:

Perfect, Jamie. You've been doing a lot of hiring this year, helping a lot of firms do a lot of hiring as well. I think if we had to turtle up the number of people that the wise tribe have hired this year, it to be in the hundred, which is pretty cool. What's your number one tip for hiring? Great stuff.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, one of the things I want to bring with working with lots and lots of firms is some of the most obvious things. And you know there's an old saying high or slow. And when you're hiring, if people don't respond to your emails, if they don't fill out a form, if they don't give you the basic details that you need, then straight away that's alarm bells go on for me, and I worked with a lot of firms where the owners were really really keen to hire a particular person but they couldn't even get the person to fill out a form. They couldn't even get the person to respond. And some of these people that we're looking at, we're really really experienced people, highly qualified, like CPA, MBA, and all sorts of things.

Jamie Johns:

So it all comes back to attitude. If someone goes above and beyond to go for a job, then take the obvious things as a warning sign. If someone can't just complete a simple thing or respond to you, then the alarm bells have to go off. And so a lot of the firms that I dealt with, I think the owners were so close to the hiring process they couldn't see the light from the darkness. So if someone can't simply respond to basic things or fill out forms, then that's the biggest tip for me it all comes back to attitude. I don't care whether you've got three MBAs and 15 degrees. Attitude is the first thing and your attitude will reflect in how fast you respond and how fast and respectfully you interact with someone who's trying to feel a job.

Brenton Ward:

Yeah, absolutely. And I guess, just to add to that, I think it comes back to that extraordinary system because emotion can creep in with recruiting other people. But I think if you have that extraordinary recruitment system, that you've got the step- by- step process and everyone goes through that process, no matter what, no matter how you feel or how much you may like the candidate, the outcome will always be the best, as best as possible. So final tip in the recruiting piece is micro training versus micro- managing, Ed. You use this a lot, spoken about a lot in clinics, but can you just sum up this tip in itself?

Ed Chan:

Well, if you're a senior client manager or you're a leader in your team and you're managing people, then it's absolutely essential you understand that if you don't spend the time to micro- train them, you'll have to spend the time to micro- manage them, and nobody likes being micro in menus. So it's important that you put the time into micro- training them so that you don't have to micro- manage them. Micro- training is about delegation, not abdication, and there's a big difference between delegating something down and training somebody and abdicating it to them Now. Delegation is about making short instructions or giving them as clear. You've got the scope of words on how to do the job. You then follow up. The follow-up is extremely important rather than just telling somebody you never hear from you again. So to follow up, to incrementally keep them on the right path, because often they can go off. Over time they could go off in a completely different path.

Ed Chan:

And often when I talk to very senior client managers who are managing staff, they say things like this to me. They go oh look, by the time I train them, I could have just done it myself. Or you know it's quicker if I just do it myself, or they don't know how to do it. Well, if they're thinking like that, you've got to snap them out of it, because eventually, if they just keep doing it themselves, you get no leverage out of that and they'll burn themselves out number one. Number two is that it ends up being too costly for the client if you use a really high- cost person to do very low- level work. So they often say to me my staff don't know how to do it, so I've got to do it myself.

Ed Chan:

Well, my response generally is you know, at some stage you didn't know how to do it either and someone had to train you and in the beginning, they would have given you something to do and you can only do 20% of it, and then they had to do 80% of it and then eventually you could do 50% and then 80% and eventually you could do 100%. So when you're training somebody, it's the same thing. You know initially they could only do 20% and you have to do 80%, then they can do 50%. You do 50%, then they do 80% and you do 20% and eventually they do the 100% and all you got to do is check it and review it and make sure it's correct.

Ed Chan:

So you've got to lead your team because often they work what I call they work in the P&L and not invest in the balance sheet. And you've got to get the balance right between just working in the P&L you know being efficient, getting to work out the door versus the investment in the balance sheet, because if you don't invest in the balance sheet then you're not going to be able to grow your business and develop. You know the juniors coming through and you know the holistic approach teams have to be trained up. So in an investment, your balance sheet requires the senior people to be trained, the junior people.

Brenton Ward:

Perfect, excellent. Such an important topic and I think it only benefits everyone by embracing this as well. Jamie, anything to add to that tip?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, I just think in terms of the micro- training versus the micro- managing is for everyone in a firm to have a buddy In that deep and narrow team. It's always great for the leaders of the firm to set up to say, well, look, you know such and such is your buddy, your go- to guy with the smaller you know technical things that you need to learn. There's nothing worse than not knowing where to turn to or even, in that sense, having two or three people as bosses where we get shared across teams and that type of thing. So, yeah, my biggest tip is for anyone who's in a firm to make sure you've got that technical buddy to go to, which will really help in your learning.

Brenton Ward:

Awesome, great, I see Sam Nodden. He said there, I like that one, I reckon. All right, I want to hear from someone specific, and it's one guest who I'm going to ask to talk about team. Can you give everyone a quick insight into what you guys have done and maybe one of the highlights of doing it?

Wize Tribe Member 1:

T-E-A-M. Together, everyone achieves more. Everyone on the team knows about that. We're all very important. There's not one person who has more importance than everyone else. We celebrate our wins. We have. So what we do to keep the glue and the momentum going as a team, is every day we have a cuppa. It's 11.45 every morning. It's only 15 minutes and we are. The rule is you are not allowed to talk about work.

Wize Tribe Member 1:

Awesome so that's really good On our Wednesday covers. Quite often we would have a wacky Wednesday, so we've had crazy hair days and lipstick days. Last Wednesday was a pajama day, so we came to work in our pajamas. We had backdrops of bedrooms. Also, at the end of every quarter because we're a bookkeeping company every quarter, like you know, we're just working so hard to get the information in and get everyone's lodgements done on time, and it's you know, we're really focused and it can be quite stressful. So the Friday after that we always have an end- of- quarter celebration. Until we had ours two weeks ago. We did a virtual escape room and we also played a game as well. So there are lots of sorts of things that you can do.

Brenton Ward:

So you're like locked in your bedroom or something, are you?

Wize Tribe Member 1:

Yeah, so it's fun like it's just a matter of just tapping into wherever possible, those 15 minutes per day. Not everyone can make it every day, but mostly we do get there and it gives us an opportunity to learn more about each other as well, and the cultures too, because we have six now in the Philippines, so, like you know, it's pretty much 50-50. And well, I think it's working okay.

Brenton Ward:

I want to talk about the scale section, which is all around sales and marketing and putting the business on steroids if you like. But the first area of scale is about attracting ideal clients to the firm and so getting a nice consistent flow of new clients into the business, either via referral or via digital marketing or something for them, a marketing activity. What's one tip that you've seen? You know really successful advice in terms of getting clients through the door?

Ed Chan:

Sure, it's referred to this. As you know, building a garden that attracts butterflies to us rather than going out there with a butterfly net to catch butterflies and building that garden, if you like, that attracts butterflies, requires an investment, requires time, and so forth. But the cheapest way to do it is through word of mouth. And if you get the narrow and deep structure going, then the senior client manager's role is not to do the grinding or to do as least grinding as possible, but to get in front of the clients to talk about strategy, tax planning, you know, advisory, and the more in front of the clients you can get yourself to, then they're going to refer more clients to you. So if you're busy, just sitting there doing the work, it's the wrong kind of work and you won't get any referrals. So word of mouth is the best kind of referral because it's free, all right, it's off the back of doing a job, so you're going to retain that client and then, best of all, they're so happy that they refer you another friend. So, the only way you can do that is to get in front of the clients. Now, the only way you can get in front of the clients is if you're not, you know, burdened down, bogged down with all the production work.

Ed Chan:

So you've got to have a narrow and deep team to get the work done for you, and then that flows through to use as a senior client manager to go and see your clients. And that's a very easy thing to do. It's not something that's difficult. It's a very simple, easy thing to implement as long as you've got the deep and narrow team structure in place. Work out your capacity, so every so you're running at about 10 to 15% over capacity, not under capacity, and then you should have that time to be in front of your clients. That's the senior client. And then the other way to create the garden attracts butterflies is to, you know, digital marketing. In this day and age, everything's on the internet and you know you've got to get your Google reviews up. You've got to make sure that you've got that side of your business working well, and that's a whole new topic.

Brenton Ward:

Yeah, awesome, Jamie, for everyone listening. If they wanted to start the year off with a bang and get a handful of new clients through the door, what would be your one tip on attracting ideal clients next year?

Jamie Johns:

I'll give you two tips. The first one just follows on with Ed saying like the people who are the finders in the team and that's their role is, get on the phone and call them best client managers that I've got, and then I've seen that work. I am just literally on the phone all the time Just talking to the clients.

Jamie Johns:

As Ed said, and because it's all about the relationships, the highest and best contribution is just talking to the clients. That's not actually doing the grinding work. So it's really important to have the team members, the production team, doing the work, doing what they do, working in their flow, and then the client managers, you know, literally on the phone or on Zoom or seeing the clients and just watch the referrals follow. It's all about relationships in this industry, yeah, and the more meaningful, the more interaction, the more that you can service the cost, the more referrals that you'll get and you'll just keep getting referrals. And again, it comes back to making sure that you've got the capacity to take the new clients on and to take the referrals on without pain. So, yeah, just talk to him on the phone that you've got to get the time to do that.

Brenton Ward:

Awesome. I'm a bit of a marketing geek so I love this area. My tip on this side of things would be not to expect overnight wins on new clients through the door from digital marketing. Digital marketing as a strategy is certainly a long runway and, as Ed mentioned, it's very much focused on building the garden. So when they're ready to do business with you, you're front of mind with them. So for anyone investing in digital marketing, don't turn the tap on and think you're gonna get clients through the door as an immediate response to that digital marketing activity. Bear with it, stay consistent with the activity, be persistent, test and measure and you'll certainly benefit over the long run. But I think all the quick wins in terms of client acquisition, and certainly in your own backyard with referral business there's just so much that you could be doing there. That would be the best place to start. All right. Tip number 10 monetizing your IP. Tell us your one tip about monetizing intellectual property and unique knowledge in a firm.

Ed Chan:

Absolutely there within your data, but you've got a goldmine that you're sitting on at the moment and that goldmine hasn't been mine, and what I mean by that is that you may have, you know, 20 or 25 different services that you could provide your clients, but they don't even know that you offer it. So, you know, prepare a monetization sheet, and what a monetization sheet is is that it's just a spreadsheet of a list of all your clients. So on the left- hand side and names of all the clients, and columns going to the right will be made up of all the different Services that you offer. So you might offer tax, but you may not be offering bookkeeping to them. You know you might want to add in the state planning or it's a whole lot of services that you could add, and On this matrix, if you like, of a spreadsheet, you just go through and you tick them off as they take up the services. You know, as a senior client manager, your eyes to talk to them. If they're not doing bookkeeping, you should be talking to them about, you know, taking on the bookkeeping and so forth, and you want this Monetization sheet to be completely filled out, whether it there's a tick on it or a cross on it, because it may not be appropriate for them, but you want it to be completely with a tick or with a cross.

Ed Chan:

Firms don't do this and there's a huge goldmine. And they go chasing what I call the big ocean, where they could shoot fish in a barrel, which is their own database. They go fishing in a big ocean Instead of shooting fish in a barrel. Going fishing in a big ocean costs a lot more money than you know shooting fish out of a barrel. So focus on your database, create a monetization sheet, and Jjst implement it. The success will come in implementation, not in the idea. You know, 80% of the success is in implementing the thought, 20%.

Ed Chan:

The idea, so you know. So that's a very easy one to do. So, yeah, make sure you do it in the new year.

Brenton Ward:

Couldn't agree more, Jamie. Anything to add on monetizing IP?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, the biggest tip I could do is make sure, any time that you give a client a proposal, make sure you show them all your services. So I think packaging and pricing is a massive area that we can all improve. So, yeah, I just think always, any time you've got the opportunity to present to the client, do it in the form of packaging. You know, okay, I know this is the service that you want, but we also offer this, and this as well, and it's just dripping on the client. The client may not always take up. Like the second or third package, but sure enough, within a year's time or when the client's ready, they'll say oh, okay, I didn't realize it. You know you guys could do that, but I do now. So just offer in packaging.

Brenton Ward:

Awesome. My one tip on that is there's a fantastic book called Built to Sell by a guy named John Warillo. Built to Sell is a really, really good book on the topic of packaging up your unique offering. So get that one for the Christmas stocking, and do you want to try and pinpoint the best tip for anyone considering a tuck-in?

Ed Chan:

Sure, we'll start with the definition of a tuck-in. It's just buying a firm, going out there and buying a business, and you know, in our space is either a counting firm or a bookkeeping firm. The biggest mistake that firms make when they do a tuck-in is that they try to make too many changes too quickly. Okay, so when you do buy a firm, you've got the clients and the staff at a heightened level of suspicion, because people don't like change. All of a sudden, the vendor, the person who's selling, has made a change and they're changing the principle and the people that are involved with it at a heightened level of suspicion. They don't know who you are. You need to win their trust before you can make any changes. It's a long runway to win their trust.

Ed Chan:

The first thing you have to do is to build familiarity. So you got to get in front of them so that they know who you are and who your staff are. And then you've got to build credibility with them. Because you may get in front of them, you may introduce yourself, but who the hell are you and what can you do for me and are you going to look after me appropriately and properly? Once you build that credibility, then you build trust and only when you build trust can you make changes. So this takes a bit of time and I've seen people who buy, who bought firms and they don't get in front of the clients and then you know they just keep doing the work. They don't do the things that are most important, which is the relationship. So the quick tip that I have for you is that don't make too many changes too quickly. Just introduce it slowly as you've built trust and as you've built familiar familiarity with the clients.

Brenton Ward:

Perfect, Jamie. Finish us off with a tip on your master strokes of tuck ins.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, look, it's pretty much as Ed said. Out of all the things I can think of, I've done a few of these. I'll just give my reinforcer that tip don't make changes. Humans do not like change unless you've built trust with them and, you know, done this before. So I wouldn't start going to change anything until they get to know you and they understand that you're a Basic normal person, because when you do a tuck in, people don't know you are, so you know. I think it's probably a minimum of 12 months before you even start having discussions about any changes.

Brenton Ward:

Perfect. I think that tip alone could save anyone thinking about purchasing a firm Literally six figures in the first 12 to 18 months because it's just so critical. We've seen it time and time again go the other way when they don't abide by that process. So thank you, guys. We've got our nine core strategies rounded out at tips. All tell us one of your highlights of the year in terms of client acquisition, whether it's referrals, whether it's any marketing you've done. Give us one highlight to grow in your business.

Wize Tribe Member 2:

Yeah, brought on a few through referral, a few business owner groups where we're able to do some, you know, management, reporting and your compliance all wrapped up into a monthly fee.

Brenton Ward:

Obviously had a bit of time freed up so you could focus on that. So tell us about you and your team, when well you're you with us.

Wize Tribe Member 2:

Yes, I've got two amazing Filipino team members now who are senior accountants, so they've yet if just it's fairly recent, but they've freed up a lot of time, so it's been fantastic life- changing.

Brenton Ward:

Life changing Awesome. I like to hear that. Thank you for sharing. We are at the finishing end of that, so I hope you enjoy the 12 tips of Christmas. 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!