The Wize Way

Episode 124: What High-Performing Leaders Do Everyday In Their Firm

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2

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In this episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, Kristy Fairbairn and Thomas Sphabmixay explore the daily habits of high-performing leaders in accounting and bookkeeping firms. They discuss the importance of dedicating one hour each day to personal development, focusing on areas like leadership, marketing, and technology. 

Thomas emphasises the value of staying sharp and continuously learning to lead effectively. Kristy highlights the significance of maintaining clarity and alignment with long-term goals through daily non-negotiables like reviewing KPIs and energizing the body. Listeners are encouraged to structure their days intentionally, balancing work and personal growth for sustained success.

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Speaker 1:

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!

Kristy Fairbairn:

But in today's session, we are looking at what high- performing leaders do every day in their firms. So we're going to cover leadership, obviously in the first part of today's call, and then we'll have our usual breakout room which, again, depending on the number of attendees who come along, we might just keep it in the main room or we might move into some smaller breakout rooms. It just depends on how it flows. But you will still have time to ask any particular questions, either around today's topic or outside of today's topic. So we will dive on in with, Thomas.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So, Thomas, yes, it's an important task you do every day that has a great impact on your business.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

That is taking one hour a day to do research, to make sure I'm learning. I'm expanding. I'm really trying to study in that one hour as much as I possibly can and consume as much knowledge as possible and try out lots of different angles and think about a lot of different things so that when I'm actually performing in the presence of a team I'm able to be a lot more effective.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

So I don't really find that I can really do anything if my team is not on. I find that I'm only able to steer the ship if there's, the boat is operational and powering that day and I can steer the boat in different directions, but I'm never taking control of it. So it's really important to me that when I'm afforded the space, I really use that one hour and I try and learn as much as possible. And hopefully, you come in the next day and people are thinking you know, did this person read light years of information or something, or where did they go? So you know that's I find my duty as a leader and also has the greatest impact on the business as well.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yeah, we were having a bit of a chat before we opened up the doors, weren't we, Thomas, about the importance of the clarity of what that one hour a day is going to be filled with. And, yeah, for you at the moment and for the last little while, it's very much been on educating yourself in areas to grow your business, and the impact of that has been great with the success of your marketing, your website development, so you can really measure the outcome of that investment in time. So it's been really great. But I think I encourage those on the call today and those who watch the replay to really be laser- focused on what you wish to achieve from that one hour a day.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Don't just spend an hour reading something not relevant or just reading for the sake of reading. Be laser- focused on what you want to achieve. You've got particular areas, Thomas, that you want to learn more in, so you are committed to that time. So you know, can you just give us a little bit of you know background on how you've identified the areas you wanted to learn and apply in?

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Yeah, I have to have Ed to thank for a lot for really helping me think about this one towards the end of last year and actually the whole year last year. If it's one thing he got me to focus on last year was thinking about what my core strengths were, and I felt they were in marketing, human resources, technology, and the basic financials of the company, and in each of these areas I actually enjoyed learning and doing more of and I like seeing the tax side of the team and the compliance side of the team just do their thing. Okay, just I've, you know, committed enough brain power, like the capacity planner, planning out like a million different ways. But my passions are mainly in those four areas. So I try and balance my skills in each of these areas as if they were like subjects in a school. Okay, I know Ed says if you're weak in one subject, forget the others. I'm not talking, these aren't the others. These are the subjects that I'm good at and I prefer to be good at all of these ones. And if I feel like I'm not putting as much attention into, say, the human resources as I'm marketing, I'm going to start reviewing more resumes. I'm going to start reviewing more resumes. I'm going to start planning out what the next set of graduates or the next set of roles for a few people might look like. I might increase the amount of one-on-ones I'm having with a team, and then recently, I'm added into the mix technology, and so I'm managing API developers, we're managing web developers, and UI design. So it's a whole different skill set and we're producing a whole different set of things for ourselves and for our clients.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

What I'm doing now is something Ed has always tried to instill in me just to be a good leader. You really understand that it doesn't matter what. As long as that domain of the skill is within your strengths, then you will be able to lead a team in that area too, and I've been inspired by a lot of the firms I've worked with past few years. Their ability to just go into other capabilities within their own firm and establish those in order to build infrastructure is very inspiring, and so at some point, all your needs are taken care of in the business. You're not a mess, you're not frightened all the time, you're just learning and you're expanding your skill set, and it feels like the time I'm spending now is highly impactful, highly fulfilling time, and I come into the office and I get to see the results and my team thanks me, they go, thank you, they call me GM in the office.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

In June, we had a 100% increase in leads, okay, and I'm really happy about that. You know, I'm happy if they come to me and I'm happy about talking to them about. Here are the potential graduates we're going to hire. They're all magna cum laude, cum laude type people and I'm selling them like I want the best and brightest into our company. So these areas I find very fulfilling. I find wherever I'm personally lacking now, regardless of the company. I would spend that one hour because I find that the company itself has just got all its basic needs met. So I'm going to chart you know, charting the way forward. I know how.

Kristy Fairbairn:

I think that's a great point. I remember when I first joined Wize Growth you know one-on-one mentoring program Thomas, and you tasked me with writing my job description as the CEO and, oh, I didn't like the task. It was hard. I didn't like the task, it was hard. I didn't know, I had absolutely no idea what to put in that job description and then we broke it down and you gave me a little bit of space to get over the pushback and really identify what the things as the firm owner, as the CEO or the COO or you know whatever executive role that you have what are the things that play to your strengths in that role? And then identifying that, what areas do you need to strengthen to deliver in your role? You know that can be a great way of working out what areas you need to develop your skills around and pick that one area to improve on over the next three or six months.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Maybe it's a really great question that Ed put to you where do you shine? You know, if we think of how our team members work when they're in flow, everything comes with ease and they can just move from one thing to the next, but when they come from a place of force. It's really uncomfortable. There's pushback, it feels rigid, it's not comfortable. So, looking at yourself and your leadership team, how do you create a space of flow and what are the things that create force? They may flow for other people. So it's not to say that the things that Thomas shines in are necessarily the weakness of his leadership team, but there may be areas for them that they shine in and Thomas doesn't.

Kristy Fairbairn:

You know Thomas's senior client manager is fantastic in her role of overseeing the team and ensuring that things are done. That's not the area Thomas wants to be doing. So thank goodness he's got a great senior client manager in that position. You know each partnership you want to look at how you can create synergy. You don't want to be same same, you want to be different. So when you do your performance reviews with your senior team, looking at their strengths and weaknesses and identifying how they might support another to be in flow, really looking at that big picture and encouraging not just firm owners to have this you know time in their diary to work on the business but looking at your senior team in the areas that they need to be accomplishing. Thomas, we touched on this earlier too, didn't we? Sometimes we still find our client managers or production managers are struggling to delegate the work to push it down. But there are more senior things they need to be doing non-billable but business development to do. So you know, we had some thoughts about how to overcome that obstacle.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Yeah, you really first want to sit down with your managers, and your team, and have them consciously think about their time, quadrants, and things that they should be doing for the long term and not doing for the long term, because things that are quad A flow down through the firm from the partner, and so it's all well and good that we've done our own quad owners list, but now to do it with your actual managers is the actual execution Okay. So that is the simplest way for you to be able to actually kill a lot of your quad activity items at once is to follow the same process with your client managers because that exercise is designed to have people thinking big and a lot all at once and looking at things from an overview. So train your client managers to look at their time and judge it and critique it and then, once they can see their time, teach them about what it should look like, okay, when you were a, about what it should look like, okay, when you were a graduate. It looked like this, but as it evolved it became like this. So guide them, be a mentor to them, and teach them that now that you're a client manager, it means that you need to have time to lead. So you need to carve out a bit at this time, a bit at that time, or how about the bottom parts of this production form that is sitting on your plate? So encouraging them to make smart choices about what ends up on their plate is going to help. What you're doing is you're communicating to them your expectations as a leader for their role, rather than micromanaging them about the things that they should be doing. Okay, so if you can teach them to understand their tasks the same way we've been taught to understand our tasks as owners, you'll find that now your team is being managed from the bottom up, and being managed from the bottom up simply just means your team has a brain and they're willing to use it. So that's the first thing. The audit has a lot of flow on benefits. The audit is the second approach. So that's the carrot approach. The second approach is okay. So that's like the carrot approach.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

The second approach I have is a stick approach, and the stick approach is I'm just going to keep putting my foot on the gas on this marketing and I'm not going to let it up. I'm very confident about how the human resources are flowing in and how technology infrastructure can handle that. So I know, as a leader, what we could be doing, and so you're just going to have to trust me, and the ride's going to get a bit rocky, but it's just I'm going to open the floodgates and we're going to sit on this boat together and you just trust me, we're going to go down. It's going to be a bit rough, we're going to go down, we're going to make it through, I promise, and going to go that we're going to make it through, I promise. And so I think there has to be a balance. You have to work with people, but I've seen companies that are too nurturing and then the staff become a bit soft. All right, so then you're going to be a bit tough, but you can't be all tough because then there's chaos.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So almost like it's the balance of building up the emotional banking camp with your team members.

Kristy Fairbairn:

We talk about that with clients, but you also need to pick it up with your team so that they trust in you as the leader, that the direction you're taking them in is with thought and consideration, and that you've done the risk analysis and you're ready to give it a go. You know, sometimes as entrepreneurs and firm owners, we can have a crack at things that aren't guaranteed to work out. But at least we've given it a go and we're continuing to try and shift the needle forward and keep on moving. Not every attempt works, but we pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and keep going To have our team continue to come along the journey with us. We do need to make sure that we're communicating over-communicating with them so that they have that faith and confidence that they'll trust you, no matter what direction you go. Yeah, one of the other things we talked about earlier. It feels like we were all having this great chat before you guys all joined us. Sorry, but as well as so.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Thomas has a great idea and a great point too. When there's an area that he really wants to learn in and develop his skills in, that's what he's focusing his one hour a day on, but it may be for others, I know for me. I'm clear on what my goals are and what I want to achieve in the next five years. And so reverse engineering that down to what do I need to achieve this quarter to be on track to that goal in three years. And then what do I need to achieve this quarter to be on track to that goal in three years? And then what do I need to achieve this month to be on track to that quarter's goal? And then down to the week and day. So that can be a big task.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Some people prefer to start just from the beginning rather than the end, but, as we talk about here at Wize, begin with the end in mind. Should all know your ideal lifestyle. Should all know your growth plans. Where in there are today's actions going to achieve it? So be really clear on that plan and that's your one thing in your one hour a day to be working on. If it's not in alignment with achieving that goal, it's not for today. Maybe park it for six months' time or two weeks' time, whatever it is, but be really intentional with where that hour a day goes.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Often we meet new firms who come into the wise fold and an hour seems like such a long time, but really it's not. You've got 23 other ones in a day. We're asking for one of them to shift the needle in your business to achieve your ideal lifestyle. I'd give five if it meant that I was going to get there, you know, successfully and sooner. So really, it's only one hour a day. There will be a little test at the end of this how many people have their one hour a day blocked out in their calendar? So, Thomas, I'd love to dig in a little bit more as well into the daily non-negotiables of a high- performing leader.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Sure, so a really great framework. I've based my five daily non-negotiables around. Probably is best explained by the Wize framework of daily non-negotiables. All right, and everyone can apply this. Okay, once I heard it, you might be doing some of these already too. But the first one is your KPI dashboards, at all moments, need to be up to date and relevant to you. Okay, so to give you the peace of mind that you know what's going on, you need to be able to see and know what your KPIs are at any given moment, at all times. Okay, that's what's truly going to help frame you to make the right decision for whatever's going forward.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yeah, that's in having our Fab5 up to date. You've all got a Wize Hub having that Fab5 up to date. Don't be the plumber with a dripping tap, the accountant or bookkeeper whose month end isn't closed off for two months. You know, treat yourself as an A-class client. You are the most important client of your business. Your book should be closed off early into the new month. Your assistant CFO should be updating your WizeH ub's Fab 5 by the 7th of the month or the 10th of the month.

Kristy Fairbairn:

What policy do you have in place to make sure your numbers are prioritised by your team and that your assistant CFO is getting that data in as quickly as possible? For you and I know for Sky, they're almost updating it weekly, if not daily Sometimes, particularly when they're really looking at their growth and you know they're doing acquisitions and betting down. Changes need to be sharpening the saw constantly. So if it's more than a month out of date, it's too late. What can you do about it? You know, if you're not reviewing your FAB 5 until the 25th or a whole month and a bit afterward, what changes can you make to course correct? Or what celebration did you miss out on? Because the moment's gone by. So I think that that's a really great daily, weekly non-negotiable to make sure that your FAB 5 and any other KPIs you have in your firm are up to date and current.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Exactly, it's the Fab5. It's hard to make good decisions. You don't want to make a decision without your Fab5. And that one hour, Kristy, I like to spend at least one hour working on the business and I find that that hour for me now is pretty much spent making decisions. Working on the business for me is either saying yep, go ahead, that looks about right, go ahead, or here are the next steps, or here's the next set of directions. So I try to make it so that if I'm giving my next decision I'm working with people that would see the next few month's worth of tasks and what I've said if that makes sense and that takes time to train people up to be able to understand you that way and be skilled enough and to have enough in their skill sets and their tool sets to be able to work with you there. But I try to work with people that if I'm speaking with them, they're always getting the next few months' pictures from my decisions on that particular area, and there are thousands of areas per division. So that's how I try to work on my business. So that's what the second one I'm spending one hour on my third item.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

I usually also have one priority, however, that I need to focus on, aside from all the things that people are throwing at me. I find that making decisions for an hour works to build the business, but what I need to do is prioritize. I need to be able to prioritize learning the next steps. A lot of what counts on the next projects actually requires me to understand the technology and the tools for the next steps, and if I come into the office and I'm not able to give someone the next set of instructions because they're finished with one phase of the project, then I'm not going to know what to do. So it could be taking a look review over the AFR top 100 accountings list. Okay, I might look over the previous years and then see if the landscape's changed there. Has their services changed or have industries changed? So I'm kind of just focused on that.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

That's how I move the projects forward in my firm if I can maintain my knowledge. There. I can ensure that my research can inform the strategy because I have a team that understands strategy now and I just need them to count on me for that research so to feed your mind, I give myself the freedom to learn about things that don't relate to moving a project forward. It's imprisoning to only learn about things that I needed to move a project forward, and so you need to get space outside of that. So I'm feeding my mind, really, with cooking. I'm reading about food, I'm reading about hotels.

Kristy Fairbairn:

That is Thomas's favorite subject food.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Yeah, I want to be able to talk about something else, okay.

Kristy Fairbairn:

I'm surprised you don't have software for restaurants, but it's a great point.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

I mean, okay, I watch a lot of things a lot. There's this one guy and he just visits fine dining restaurants all around the world. He's a Michelin chef himself and he reviews it and I find that very fascinating. I'm feeding my mind in another, completely different domain, and I can't help but make relevancies between what they do sometimes and what we do in our industry, in that we can learn from how meticulous they are, how much they care about their customers, like how much control they display. That's really fascinating. So for me, feeding my mind is the fourth daily, non-negotiable thing I do. And finally, it energises the body. Jamie would say this a lot and I would a lot and I would agree and Ed would agree. Anybody would agree that it helps.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

If in business you have the mental sharpness of an athlete, okay. So if you have the mental sharpness of an athlete, things are very quick. See what a person could do in an hour. The average person might take a month. So in a day, that person can get it done in eight hours what a person could do in eight months, and I've seen a ratio that wide in my time. Mentoring too, you can move very quickly or you can move very slowly and if you energise your body, I absolutely think it keeps you sharp.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Okay, you need to feed your body properly, energize it properly, nurture it properly, and then be sharp. People need you to be there and switched on. If you're feeling any pain or yawning, it doesn't really inspire confidence in your team. They need you to feel absolutely fired up the moment they call you and it's in that one- hour block that you're working on your business for them and they call you. They need to feel like there was a really great reason they called you because this person is about to say something to you and you're going to be busy for the next few months. So you have that energy behind you. It really passes on to your team. Okay, and Ed would say your team is only 80% as energized as you are. If you want them to be 80%, you need to be a hundred percent. If you want them to be a hundred percent, you need to be 120%, and no one's 120%, it's his point.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yeah, it's a great point too, and you know we talked about it on a plane the suggestion. Well, the recommendation is to put your oxygen mask on first. If you're not looking after your health your physical health and your mental health with those last two, then you know you cannot be the leader that you aspire to be. If you're not running at your optimal potential, then you can't give to your team in the way that you want to. So, really looking after yourself and as a little tip for your feed your mind, you can download the Kajabi app on your phone. I know a few people have already and you can listen to all of your Wize resources in there. So you can have us in your ears while you're on your walk for 30 minutes or while you're on your jog, so you can be doing two of your daily non-negotiables together.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

But, you know, just pick something that you really want to be feeding your mind with while you nourish your body, hey, I love it actually the person I was thinking of when I said, yeah, getting it down on the ball.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yeah, so thank you, Thomas. What would our suggested one thing be to make sure that they have actioned? And it might be if you've done this, do this or just all do this, what would you suggest?

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Yeah, I would suggest going to your calendar and starting there. Okay, your calendar is. It's just one place, okay. And to help you, every night I set an alarm about 10 minutes before the start of a new calendar event the next day and it will ring 10 minutes and that means you finish something and then you can go make a coffee. And then the thing rings and you have to go back. So keep yourself accountable, prepare for the next day and you're going to win a match. The next day has to be like a match you're going to play. There is everything you could do to finesse the next day to make it to your advantage, and that's every day.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Okay, and the degrees are very minor. At the end of the day, you might only be able to correct 1%, and that's okay. In your team, it feels like you're only changing 1% a day, one degree a day, rather, okay. You're turning this thing like a thousand times and it changes half a degree. Okay, and you have to make a choice. Do you really want to end up here, because you will make half- degree changes for the next few months? So look at your calendar, find a space, and be sharp, because at some point you will have covered all these basics that we've been teaching Wize, okay, and you will be working on advanced things. And what does it mean to work on advanced things? It means working on something consistently that might be niche a million times and you need to know that you've made the right decision. So there's a lot you could be putting your mind to, okay, and so look at your calendar, find that you have the space in there for the reading, the exercise, the one on your business and on yourself yeah.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So get those daily non-negotiables in your calendar, mark out that one hour a day and, if you've already done that, get really clear on what your one thing is, that you're focusing on, what is your one project, and then reverse engineer that back down to the daily task that you're doing. So you know, it's the start of a new quarter. For those of us in Australia, it's the start of a new financial year. What do you want to be achieving in this first quarter in North America? What do you want to be finishing in this third quarter of the year before the run home to the final one? And then work it back, knowing that if you want to reach these sales targets, this net profit target, what do you need to be doing differently than you did in the last quarter? So there's a starting point for you. Okay, thank you all so much for joining us today, and have a great rest of your week.

Speaker 1:

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