The Wize Way

Episode 127: How to Build a Sustainable Business with The Wize 7 Division Organisational Chart

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 127

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In today's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, Thomas Spabmixay and Jamie Johns dive into the nitty-gritty of building a successful accounting or bookkeeping business with Wize Mentoring. Jamie Johns takes us through the seven divisions that form the foundation of a thriving firm.  

As the business grows, the challenge lies in transitioning from wearing all the hats to delegating effectively and becoming a leader. Jamie shares valuable insights on leadership, investing in people, and the importance of showing results. The seven divisions discussed include the board of directors, marketing, sales, production, quality, office admin, and financials.  

Join us to learn how these divisions contribute to building a business that can run without you.  


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Wize Mentoring:

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

Thomas Sphabmixay:

Look to dive into undefined the nitty-gritty. Let's dive into the seven divisions. If you've been part of wise mentoring before, you probably would have heard us go through the seven dish visions. But it runs so deep and the way it's able to explain the scope of a Wize firm and what exactly we need to do to build it up and what sort of leaders we need to put into each division becomes so clear when it's all laid out before us. And, Jamie, if you'll be so kind to take us through the seven divisional org chart and how this aids us in basically building up a business that would run without us, and perhaps in going to these divisions, what are some of the barriers in setting up these divisions and that could ultimately affect our growth as a firm.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, thanks, Thomas, Everyone. I know when you start out you have to wear all the hats, so I started my business from my home office.

Jamie Johns:

Anyone the same, whether you buy a firm or you start it yourself definitely have to wear all the hat. You're the cleaner, you're the receptionist, you're the admin person, you're the marketer. I used to joke because I was the director. I was the director, the shareholder and the employee. You just won't have to wear all that.

Jamie Johns:

So I think, Thomas, the biggest barrier is, that as your firm grows, you have to change professionally. I know that I had to change how I thought about things. That was a bit of a challenge. So I think they say, by the time you're about 25, you're pretty set in your ways.

Jamie Johns:

Thomas, you've really got to take stock of how you used to do things, and, as Ed says, we're all born out of production, most of us. I started in bookkeeping. My career was I started in bookkeeping and then started teaching people bookkeeping actually and then ended up becoming doing. I did management accounting and then did public practice in the end, and that's how I got into what we do today. But yeah, the thing is when you start is realising that you have to delegate. So you have to delegate effectively and then, when you delegate, you have to lead people, you have to mentor people. I think leadership can be learned as long as you're open to it, willing to change, and that was the biggest thing that Ed helped me with was just leading the team. Ed has all these fantastic sayings like seek the facts, pick your battles, don't have videos behind your eyes, don't get paranoid all these. We're putting a book together on this, aren't we, Thomas? All those things are really really helpful. Another thing was Ed would say sleep on it. So really big decisions. So when you're hiring people, never hire quickly, do it slow. That was a massive lesson there. And then we got WizeT alent. Quickly run through the divisions, your division, one board of directors. If you're the owner of your firm, you'll pretty much sit in that seat the entire time.

Jamie Johns:

But that's very strategic. You must think strategically as an owner of your firm. So you really should be at least monthly looking at your figures. When you scale your firm up to past a million dollars or whatever your long-term goals are, make sure that you, as the owner of the firm or the general manager or CEO, make sure you keep looking at the figures and then, once you get senior client managers, at least sort of monthly or at minimum quarterly, if not monthly look at your Fab5 and if you don't know what the Fab5 is, make sure you do a deep dive into the videos on Fab5, because leadership is all about showing people the results of their actions. That's really, really important. I couldn't stress that enough as a leader. See, when you're the owner of a firm, you should be at a helicopter level. You should be up higher. You should stop cutting the wood and standing up and looking over the forest to see where you are. That's so critical. So you've got to do that as a leader. And particularly when you've got client managers, you must show them the results of their actions as well. So that's really that sort of at the board of directors.

Jamie Johns:

And then, of course, back in the early days, I didn't do any marketing, I just got referrals. Once you want to step back from being the butterfly and become the butterfly catcher, Ed says that we need to create a garden of butterflies, sort of thing, in the marketing. When you're starting out, often you won't do much marketing, but as you get bigger and if you want a healthy source of leads, it's good to do marketing. So these days, for example, we have a full-time person who just does the marketing at Sky and they're in the Philippines. Once you get to a certain scale, you can definitely step back from marketing and you can even have someone that's very strategic at marketing as well. There are so many things in the Wize Vault around marketing third-party testimonials, you can enter business awards. You can get testimonials from your clients as well. So there's so much work you can do in marketing. It's great.

Jamie Johns:

Sales is one of those areas that, as your firm grows, it's probably one of the biggest steps to remove yourself from. Traditionally the client managers, the senior client managers, and the assistant managers look after the sales. So when I went through that process, it was a matter of just putting the senior client managers in place and helping double back in the meetings, micro-training them, thomas, so that they know exactly what to do. It just takes time. It takes time. I had a call yesterday with someone about how to get trust and loyalty from their team and the way to do it is spend time. You can't demand trust and you can't demand loyalty. So you must spend time with them, and when I say time, you must spend hours with them. You know you can't just ring them every day and say you know what are you going to get done today. Like the daily huddle is one thing. That's just one aspect of its loyalty. People want to grow in their careers, they want to succeed in their careers and the way to help them is to micro- train them.

Jamie Johns:

And micro train doesn't mean five minutes. Micro training means going through a set of procedures and policies, and investing in people. I couldn't stress that more to everyone here today. Invest, invest, invest in people. But not just five minutes here and there. It doesn't work like that. That sort of leads on to sales where you can pull yourself out of sales. Invest in people. Same with production. Micro-trained people have standard operating procedures, checklists, and again teach your senior client managers that they have to invest in people.

Jamie Johns:

Middle-level management is the hardest to fill anywhere in any organization. So your role as a firm owner is to create a leadership level underneath you. That's really a challenge. It's a bit like Ed says it's always easier just to do the work yourself, isn't it? And you should never say, oh, it's quicker if I just do it myself. That's just like the hamster on the treadmill it just keeps stressing it. Invest in people. When you invest in people, you'll win their loyalty and you'll win their trust. You have to earn it both ways. You're moving through this org chart here, Thomas, and then you sort of get up to quickly win a lot of firms.

Jamie Johns:

If you're not doing that, make sure you survey your clients when the jobs get done of how they're going, and then provide that feedback to the people that are doing the work. You know that are responsible for the client, the client managers, office admin. Division six is a great one and sometimes firms have their bookkeepers and accounting accountants doing too much admin. So make sure that the admin people do the admin, the rest of the team do what they're supposed to be doing. You want to make sure that people in division three and four are getting a level of productivity. It doesn't matter whether you're fixed fee or not. You must measure efficiency. But you don't want them doing admin. So it's really good to hire. One of your first hires can potentially be an admin person. You can just take or do a list of all your admin tasks and then you can delegate them effectively and invest in them to do the admin.

Jamie Johns:

And I did that. Early days probably the first couple of years of my firm had an admin person. And then division seven, which is really critical, I would say, not only just to do your own internal books but that's important, of course, but make sure you get the fab five done. When I'm speaking to people, mentoring people, or helping people, I will absolutely do a sprint I would say, Thomas, a sprint to the Fab5. I see people's eyes light up when I show them the Fab5.

Jamie Johns:

And then, once you've got senior client managers, once you've got people in teams which is really important then their results, their facts, are in the Fab5. That's a real breakthrough, like the epitome of saying oh wow, does that person need to set a budget for you? Yes, they do. They have a budget, they are in charge of the team, they set the salaries, so forth and so forth. As long as you empower them, give them some leadership training. I remember years ago Ed came to our office and we did some leadership training.

Jamie Johns:

There are different types of leaders. So each of those divisions, Thomas, has their own challenges. But I think one of the big challenges, once your firm gets to the right size, you've got trusting and loyal staff. One of the biggest steps is division three, once you get client managers. That changed a lot for me, changed a great deal as you develop each team. As each team sort of gets to 500,000 or 600,000, each team will have its own challenges as well. Not everyone's different like a robot. The different client managers have their own personality. So then, as the leader, you can help them overcome their own challenges as well. But a lot of the things that Ed taught me were out of the book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. That's a great resource. We've really taken Ed's, taken that and a couple other books like the E-Myth, and really just Ed's made it fit for Wize Mentoring and helping people.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

So I really love the seven divisions because not only does it show you the different modules that are needed to build up a wise firm, but it's also the things that aren't here that are important to that, Jamie. You might often see in other accounting firms they might set up like an IT department or some sort of funky department and funky roles, and all of a sudden they're saying where's my profit going?

Jamie Johns:

this is like a ladder. So these seven steps lately we've been calling the seven steps to freedom it's like a ladder, these are like the backbone. Those seven steps are like the backbone and that's a great graph. Years ago true story, Ed might remember that I said to Ed this is many years ago now, Ed I said, Ed, how do I move myself and my firm? And then Ed took me on a journey and he actually said it to me, I think, on the phone. And then I got a graphic designer, Ed you might recall, to draw this up. And I remember you say Jamie, you remove yourself from admin first. That's really easy. You can get someone else to do admin. So I thought, right, that's a good point, I'm going to list all the admin tasks and get someone else to do them. And then next one was production. And so away we go, production and then managing. That was more tricky again. So you can follow all those steps down there everyone. And that's exactly how you do it.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

And something to point out Jamie, is that perhaps everyone, every firm's withdrawal journey might not always look the same, but definitely, admin is one of the simplest and easiest to be able to get ourselves out from.

Wize Mentoring:

Yeah, 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 on the next episode!