The Wize Way

Episode 128: The 3 Barriers to Growth- Leadership, Logistics and Marketing

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 128

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In this today's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, Tim Causbrook, Thomas Sphabmixay, and Kristy Fairbairn discuss the 3 barriers to growth and share their experiences and challenges in overcoming these.   

  • Leadership- The Wize Blueprint 
  • Logistics and Systems – The right people on the right seats of the bus 
  • Marketing- Pricing and Packaging your services 

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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. I hope you enjoy and subscribe!

Tim Causbrook:

So today's is on the three barriers to growth. The theme today is really performance, measuring the performance of your firm, and we talk a lot about growth and WizeG rowth, which is what I head up, and Wize Mentoring in general, and really we're looking at the barriers to growth today, which might seem like a negative thing, but you've got to look at what the blockages are. As Ed Chan, one of the founders would say what are the blockages holding you back from growing? And if you can look at what they are and really hone in on those ones, that's how you get that path to growth.

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, so the three barriers to growth leadership, logistics and marketing. So, Kristy, just to pick your brain for a minute. The first one there, leadership, is one I'm really, really interested in. Can you explain to us in your own firm, or in the firms you work with, how you observed um leadership or lack of leadership, um being related to growth, and why leadership is important?

Kristy Fairbairn:

it's a very vague topic that a lot of people might have certain associations with, so I'd love to hear you just get us started on that one yeah, you know, team, even what we spoke about the other day in how I see the difference between management and leadership in Dr. Stephen Covey's book where he talks about the manager takes the team into the forest and they just start cutting the trees down.

Kristy Fairbairn:

They're not really sure what they're doing, but that's the task at hand for the day, whereas a leader goes in and take the ladder with them. They take the best tools and they first go up and look ahead to build a strategy for the best way for the team to utilise their skills and time. And that's sort of the difference. We don't want to just be managing people ahead in any old direction because we want to get things done. We want to have some strategy behind us and look ahead by leading and creating leadership within our own teams as well. So it's not just headed up by one person. Everyone has their own level of leadership and accountability within the team, whether they're leading their own performance or they're contributing to the leadership and skills of the entire team. It's really important to really look at it from a big picture focus, not just a small day-to-day focus.

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, I think with leadership, I like how you said it's about building up leaders in your firm as well, and I love how you make the distinction between leadership and micro. You know, or managing, but you know, people who micromanage tend not to be good leaders. Leaders, absolutely, this is this. Don't you think this is weird kind of thing about leadership? And I've really learned this from working closely with Ed and Jamie, we've been privileged to do that, good leaders make other leaders and bad leaders do not make other leaders does that? Make sense.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yeah

Tim Causbrook:

I think you kind of I just want to tease that out a bit.

Tim Causbrook:

That was a point you were kind of saying.

Kristy Fairbairn:

I think even we've had some great conversations with Thomas and Eng about empowering your team members in the training that you provide them, in the processes that you give them, to be successful in the work that they're doing. It's really important to empower your people to be the best version of themselves in your business because it allows them to grow personally and to deliver even better for your clients.

Tim Causbrook:

And you mentioned clients there as well. One thing Ed is fond of saying and people on the call have probably heard him say it before, maybe multiple times is if you don't manage your clients, they manage you, and it's not some kind of Nietzschean power struggle that he's kind of evoking there, you know. Could you talk a little bit about what leadership looks like, Kristy, with clients?

Kristy Fairbairn:

Yeah, absolutely.

Kristy Fairbairn:

It's providing stability and structure for the clients that they don't live in a world of chaos when they have you as their accounting or bookkeeping team.

Kristy Fairbairn:

You know it's a great example for us in Australia. Coming up to the end of financial year, we're already able to prepare in our firm the end- of- year work items for some clients because we've put ahead a schedule and a strategy and the clients feel confident and comfortable that they're taken care of. They understand how to work with us to achieve their desired outcomes instead of being reactionary and you know there's nothing worse than a client chasing you up for something because you hadn't, you know, articulated it to them or you hadn't communicated with them that their work is being done, that it to them, or you hadn't communicated with them that their work is being done, that it is on the schedule. We want to show them that we're proactive and we're planning ahead, and they can then mirror that in their own firm sometimes, because they understand how great it feels to be supported by the right team looking after their financials, they can better deliver to their own client base as well. So it has this really great ripple effect.

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, I don't know about other people on the call, I don't know enough about you, but for me, something you said there, Kristy, reminded me of this. For me, I was hesitant to lead because I didn't think my staff would like to be led or associated leadership with, like micromanaging. I didn't, you know, I didn't think the clients would like to be managed, so to speak, and one of the things I learned pretty quickly was that actually most people do like most employees do want strong leadership. They do want to be led because if there's a vacuum, who's in control? The loudestest voice? They don't have the whole picture. Even the best meaning staff in my experience don't have the bigger picture and they can't have the bigger picture.

Tim Causbrook:

So again, it does become a bit of a struggle and I've seen this in times. Toxic work environments are really a vacuum of leadership and people start jostling and so it's. I think what is it? So he's like bad leadership or lack of leadership is very, very damaging. Or people in a position of manager who don't know how to manage or don't want to manage. Again, it causes bad management.

Tim Causbrook:

Bad leadership causes a lot of damage in firms. So we really do have if you're an owner or if you're, you know, in a management position in your firm, you really have like an obligation really to get better at leading and a lot of. There are so many symptoms that come out of bad leadership, so many symptoms that come out of good leadership. You know, a lot of people right now are worried about retaining staff because it's so hard to find them and they just throw money at them or they just say work from, work whatever hours you want or work wherever you want. You know when, really, what the employees in my experience are looking for is career progression. That's leadership. Building out the team. So there is career progression. Having those conversations every six months at least with the staff about what their career progression is, that's leadership.

Tim Causbrook:

But kind of managing everything so close to the chest that people never really get the responsibility and accountability to progress in their careers. That's not leadership, Even though someone's kind of in charge there. It's kind of like that tyrant model you mentioned. Stephen Covey. Yeah, yeah, sorry.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Well, just more to that too, Tim, that you said you know, with holding everything close to your chest or having a clear pathway for career progression for team members, when you have a vision, when you have your big, hairy, audacious goals and you know where your business is going, you can take your team along the journey with you.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So they understand that right now, in your business, today, that higher level position may not be available, but within your plan, within your goals, there is progression to join the executive team, to join the leadership team, to be a team leader in a production manager role or senior client manager role. It doesn't have to be available to them right now, but being able to have that conversation with them because you have a clear growth plan in place or a clear vision, is really important. I know for us, we're still in our first team and will be for a while, but I have my senior production manager earmarked for my second team and he knows that that position is there for him when he helps me fill out our first team fully. So you know, it's really great to be able to have those conversations with your people because you have that clarity.

Tim Causbrook:

And I think an element of that which we could tease out a little bit further before moving to the next one is it's a medium to long-term focus, kind of what you were talking about. There was that long game and again, I think that's an absolute core to being a leader is being long-term focused. It's investing in the balance sheet and my client managers, who aren't owners in my own business, they now talk about making investments for the years to come and that's, you know, that's longevity, that's people sticking around, that's retention and it's also, you know, it is also them being good leaders. They're setting it up so the following years can be even better than this one. So yeah.

Tim Causbrook:

Moving on to logistics, Kristy, we talk a lot about systems at Wize, a heck of a lot about systems building a system, having extraordinary systems so you can have ordinary people or average people who can then achieve extraordinary results, withdrawing so that all the IP isn't in one person's head, and getting that IP documented, building that blueprint, basically to run the firm, and having the right tools for that. Could you speak to a little bit how you know and you could pick one or two of your favourite systems? We've got so many now and Wize, but maybe one or two of the systems that you implemented in your own firm which made the biggest difference for you and in terms of allowing you to grow. We have an open-ended question there for you, Kristy.

Kristy Fairbairn:

Look honestly, a deep and narrow team has been the best implementation into our business, because I was just in a foundation planning session this morning with a new Wize Growth member and we were talking about the benefit of a deep and narrow team, of not just how it provides stability in your own business but also for your team members. When they know there's a system and process in place and the load is shared, there's an interdependence within the team, they don't feel so bad if they need to take a day off because they're sick or if they want to book holidays. They know that the work will be done. It's less important on one person being there every day because the team has a system to follow and whether that means the work gets to be 70% done because the senior is out for the day or week, there's still a system to follow. There's a process in place.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So, really implementing checklists, and processes in our business for every work item to be known how to be done by anyone that comes into the business yes, they need to have some skills, some training, but systemizing your business so that anyone can complete the work and also to provide the stability for people who are coming in new and they're unfamiliar, knowing they've got the support of great systems makes it a much easier transition to feel a part of your team far sooner.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So you get to see new hires in their best light quickly. And you know we talk about slow to hire, quick to fire. If we haven't given the people the right processes to follow, we might fire the right person at the wrong time. They might leave because we don't have the stability and structure. I think of how you know I've lost probably some people who could have been really good because I lacked the systems in my business. We didn't have a clear pathway to getting the work done consistently or how to measure and manage. So you know, the more you can invest in the logistics of your business, the more stability you can provide for the people and the processes and, again, the overall outcome for the clients.

Tim Causbrook:

Totally, and it's a classic example of a Quad 2 activity, isn't it? It's not urgent to build systems, but it is very, very important. And, um, you know, um, as is so often the case, quad two activities tend to be like what ed calls balance sheet plays, not P and L plays, and it's really easy, you know, with cash flow pressures, rise at cost of living pressures, which is, yeah, it's really hitting us in sydney now, I went a few times recently, like just this week, and it was gobsmacked by how much like milk costs and ice cream and stuff. But yeah, it really is important to make these balance sheet investments for the long run.

Tim Causbrook:

There's a bit of gold nugget here and that is that you don't own your clients. They can walk at any time, although they are kind of it's the goodwill in your firm. You don't own your staff. Thank God we don't have slavery, at least in Australia and America. So you don't own your staff, you don't own your clients. They're your two biggest assets. You don't own what you own? Your brand and your systems, your IP, and they're the two things that accounting firms tend to ignore the most, you know. So, again, Ed's been running his firm or not running it. He hasn't been running it for the last. You know good time now. But his firm's been running for 30 old years. It hasn't been the same people running that firm. You know hasn't had he's had a lot of longevity, don't get me wrong. But over 30 years have different people come in there and run that business and you know people come and go and if all the ip and all the ways of doing things and best practice is locked up in people's heads when they go, it causes chaos. Chaos if it's not documented. So, um, whenever you're putting out a fire, doing a quad one activity, an urgent and important activity, as Dr. Stephen Covey calls them he's like the patron saint of Wize, really Whenever you're putting out a fire, try to do a Quad 2 activity as well.

Tim Causbrook:

I've been encouraging all the firms I work with in one-on-one mentoring to put it on the agenda for the weekly meeting and review whether or not there was a void in your practice, in your sop list that that that would have, um, if it was filled, would have stopped that fire from occurring. So there's preventative actions as well as um reactive and if you can try to do preventative at the same time as reactive and make it. How do you make court too urgent and important? You do it in a weekly meeting. Put it on agenda that it's now urgent. You're looking at it every week, you know um. So yeah, don't, don't um. Just echoing everything you said, christy just yeah, really don't um, really don't put off investing in your business.

Tim Causbrook:

And like all investments or the investments that I'm used to, it's incremental improvement. We're not talking like Bitcoin or crypto or whatever it is. It's not like this. It's incremental improvement. It compounds, is what happens. It compounds the more you invest in it. It is invisible money balance sheet play, but it does pay dividends. That's the paradox there. So I hope that makes sense. I'm using a lot of, I guess, accounting language there metaphorically, but I think, with the crowd here, that's that that should be um well received so in the right room, yeah yeah, yeah, I hope that makes sense.

Tim Causbrook:

Putting it that way, it really makes sense to me. Yeah, the McDonald's effect yeah, Ed talks about McDonald's sometimes. Yeah, and Samee's definitely drinking the Wize juice there. Yeah, Ed always says you could have, like you know, basically 16, 17 year olds running a restaurant. You know how incredible is that.

Tim Causbrook:

And everything can be systematised, even if you have a lot of advisory work or a lot of high end type work, a lot of more complex work. You complex work. You'd be surprised by how much you can systematise when you put your mind to it. You don't have to do it in a vacuum. We've got heaps of tools at Wise with the Wize Hub, which just gets better every month. Jamie's just updating that thing, filling it with IP, and heaps of tools in the Wize Vault as well. So don't reinvent the wheel. Leverage off decades of trial and error that ed and jamie have done in their own practices and really turbocharge, the results from that.

Tim Causbrook:

So, yeah, the last one is one that we probably don't talk about enough here at wise um, uh, Kristy, marketing. Um, could you talk a little bit about? We're talking about growth and I think leadership and logistics and systems. They're really foundational to growth. You can't grow sustainably without that solid foundation of leadership and logistics. And that's actually how we do it at Wize we measure.

Tim Causbrook:

You can't manage what you don't measure. So you have to be looking at the Fab5 at least monthly. You know, in the new WizeH ub, um, before you're ready, you have to be using the capacity planner to make sure you're maximizing the productivity out of your staff, to make sure you have the right charge out rates, to make sure you know the margins are correct. You don't want to scale chaos, because if you scale chaos you get more chaos. It doesn't automatically, at some threshold, start to be good.

Tim Causbrook:

So let's say that we're a few years down the track, however long it takes, and we've kind of implemented these things. We're happy and we want to grow. Can you give us a little bit of a taste? So, Kristy, and Thomas as well, if you want to jump in on the importance of marketing and the spirit of having a system and not having it be done by you, maybe the difference between marketing and the traditional way that firms grow, grow, which is very partner, partner- oriented, that'd be great I always think back to what it says of creating a garden that attracts butterflies and not needing butterfly catches.

Kristy Fairbairn:

When you create a garden, a great marketing stream, then you will have consistent leads coming into your business. You will have consistent referrals coming from other clients that you have, or even potential clients. They may not be ready but they've seen your marketing material and when they're catching up with a friend at a barbecue on the weekend they say, oh, have you heard of Brooklyn Associates or TMS or Business Oasis that? I think that'd be great because you're always front of mind and you know we talk about. We don't own our clients. They are at risk of someone else's better marketing material taking them from us.

Kristy Fairbairn:

So there is an element of internal and external marketing as well that you want to look at Internal, to maintain the relationships you have, keep your clients up to date. There'd be nothing worse than they get a really great marketing newsletter from another firm that tells them things that you should have told them. You should have been proactive in letting them know about deadlines or changes to regulations, but instead they open someone else's email. So I always want to be looking at how you can build out the stickiness to existing and potential clients in your firm, and I know that it's definitely a topic that Thomas is very passionate about.

Tim Causbrook:

You've got to hear us on something on this marketing drive, so I don't want to take up any more marketing talk thank you, that's helpful, Thomas. The floor is yours, bud.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

No I mean, we all have drank the kool-aid from Ed and Jamie. It's all about building up that garden attracts the butterflies. I mean, as far as marketing is concerned, I've seen firms basically take two quite successful approaches. Either you have the time and you get lucky and you find the right outsourcing company to work for, like a provider for marketing, and I've seen plenty of firms have great success just finding the right company that can pretty much just handle it all for you, you know, to handle all your digital marketing, and that can be pretty cost- effective too. And then other firms have been pretty successful actually building up an in-house operation within their firm. And the thing about building up that in-house operation within your firm is the way we approach marketing at Wize is no different to how we approach building the teams.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

In a production team. You still need a deeper, narrow design concept. You only accept it in the form of marketing. You know, in marketing, instead of a finder, you still have your finders, minders and your grinders, but in marketing, your finders are typically your strategy people. You know, when you come across a person who has the expertise and they have the knowledge, the best thing that you can get out of this person is that you want them to be able to train your own team. You want them to be able to lay out the plan for your firm. You don't necessarily want to pay marketing strategists to also complete the work for you. That's something that was drilled into our heads by Ed, the idea being that you want to sponge up all that good ip and strategy from the outside and bring it into your firm and now you've got something that can keep producing again and again and you only need to bring that strategist in to touch up. Touch up your strategy, give you the lay of the land and see what trends are moving forward. But look aside from the logistics and putting a marketing team together.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

I think what underlines all of this is the approach. In the first place, if you go about your marketing, you typically want to start thinking from your as foundational as your business model, like what sort of niche are you going to go after. What sort of industries are you going to go after? What sort of businesses are you going to go after? And if you can't define it in terms of, say, industry or professions, you might target certain motivations. You might be targeting people who invest in property as a means to create wealth. You might target people who grow their businesses through mergers and acquisitions, and I've seen heaps of successful firms target specific motivations, as another firm might. Would you know, targeting a niche. So you know, thinking from that point of view.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

First, because you can't actually make much progress, even if you paid another company to take care of the marketing for you if you don't know who your ideal clients are, if you don't even know about your offerings for those clients. You know you, if you don't have a product in mind and the actual clients in mind, then you kind of have already lost the battle, if that makes sense. So you get a niche or a segment of the market that you know you're going to go after, that you have your services offering for, and then you know whether you decide to go and have another marketing company do the work for you or build it in-house. I think you're going to find a lot more impact out of it and that was drilled into our heads constantly by Ed and Jamie.

Thomas Sphabmixay:

You have to have some sort of focus. You have to at least try to have some precision in terms of which market you're going to go after, because if you just approach it in a general sense, then you just pretty much run the risk of marketing your own firm as a commodity, as opposed to an actual advisor or a partner to your potential clients. They're going to see you as, oh, that's just another firm that provides bookkeeping or tax returns, as opposed to. I really want to work with this firm because they really know my industry really well. So I think we all have something a lot to add about marketing and happy to share more Tim.

Tim Causbrook:

Yeah, thanks, Thomas. And I think another element to it I forget all the time it's so important is that you're not just marketing your firm to potential clients, you're marketing it to existing clients and your website if it's website marketing like, for instance, was quite public you're also marketing to future employees and you know future acquisitions as well. It's, it's you, it's your reputation. Someone said, a brand is just a reputation at large, at scale. Brand is reputation at scale, right, so yeah, so make sure you are, um, putting your firm forward in the best light and not misrepresenting or underrepresenting yourself. Um, and yeah, take it, take it seriously, because more and more, you know, more and more of our life is going online these days. So obviously a lot of marketing is online. But also, if your niche is in real life, maybe you need to do some old school. You know real life marketing as well. So, yeah, it's a total big topic. We could do a whole series of like six of these clinics just on marketing, so we'll just leave it there for now.

Tim Causbrook:

But, in the spirit of scale, if all the growth up till now in your firm has come from you, how scalable is that if something happens to you or if you want to withdraw a little bit from it? Will the growth take her off? The answer is yes. You probably need to invest in marketing, as well as the other two topics from today. So yeah, look, I hope that was. It was a really quick kind of approach on all three of the barriers to growth there, so I really hope. Thanks so much, Thomas and Kristy. I hope everyone got a lot out of it.

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