The Wize Way

Episode 148: How to Run A Discovery Call For Your Accounting Practice┃Questions to Ask

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 148

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In this week's episode of The Wize Way Podcast for Accountants and Bookkeepers, Brenton Ward, Jamie Johns, and Ed Chan share their insights about the need for a discovery session for every accounting practice. 

Find out how to run a discovery session, how having the right mindset is important in doing so, and the list of best questions to use for every call you will have that will best work for your business 

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4. Book a 1:1 Wize Discovery Session – Spend 30mins with our Wize CEO, Jamie Johns, a $7M firm owner who is ready to give you his entire business plan to build a firm that can run without you – Find out more here

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- poor practice to a business that runs without them.

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, first of all, it's really a mindset. So for me with with working with Ed, first of all, was the mindset that my business can be an investment. Because I think you know there's a lot of business brokers out there and and a lot of theory out there that you work in a business to sell it. There's a lot of business coaches out there, for example, in a particular franchise that I won't mention, but they all talk about the one purpose of a business is to build it up and sell it. So when you start talking to Ed, it turns that theory on its head and says, okay, well, if you can get a better return on your business and set up your business in a way that it can get a better return on investment than property or the share market. So Ed's argument is why do you sell it? And it's purely focused on results.

Brenton Ward:

So that resonated with you, or were you questioning the fact? Given that at that point in time, your business was fairly heavily built around yourself, would you say?

Jamie Johns:

Well, it was like a lot of guys who start out like myself and like Ed did, it's all built around you. Ed talks about the butterfly catcher versus the garden that attracts the butterflies. So you know, in the early days we all grow our businesses just by sheer referrals and we do all the. You know, we do all the grinding and the minding and the finding. And if you take the finder out of it, then you know you often don't have the referrals and you don't have the growth. So Ed really, in the discovery session, really turns a lot of traditional thinking on its head and solely focuses on really two factors. One, can your business give you a good return on investment compared to other asset sources? And secondly, can you set up your business to run without you? Now you know, if you don't have the right mindset to believe that your business can run without you, then you really need to get to stage one.

Jamie Johns:

You know stage one is, I think Dr. Stephen Covey talks about, you know, private victory and public victory, or there's two creations. So you've really mentored you to say, well, it can be done. You know, I've done it, this is how it's done and you've got to get it through your mind first. That's the first thing, but the second thing is purely focus on a business sense is let's get a good return in investment on this business and you go to work every day, as Ed said, to work on the balance sheet. A lot of us, including myself and other accountants, you know, as soon as we have more staff, more systems, more procedures, we think of it as P&L. We think, oh, that's an expense, oh, that's just another expense. So you've really got to change your whole mindset around working on the business and building an investment over the longer term, not the short term.

Brenton Ward:

So, yeah. Ed, can you give anyone watching who would like to undertake their own discovery session with themselves now what the steps would be to really get that underway? Yeah, Absolutely.

Ed Chan:

It's not that difficult. You just have to ask yourself if it's a husband and wife team, just ask your wife and yourself what you want your lifestyle to look like when you're 65. What income do you want to earn when you're 65? What amount of work do you want to do? Then, based on that, we work backward from there. So, and then we then design that business instead of just letting the business take you wherever the wind blows, so to speak, that you actually design your life, you design your business and you design the kind of income that you want and the kind of lifestyle that you want. I mean, I personally wanted more choices in my life and I knew that the only way I could get more choices in my life is to have a passive income. And the best way and quickest way to build passive income is to invest it back into your own business and structure in such a way that it runs without you. And that's what I've done and it's achievable. We're in the right kind of business.

Ed Chan:

The problem is that there have been some very good marketers out there who've sort of brainwashed us into thinking that compliance is dying, us into thinking that compliance is dying and compliance isn't a very good product and people don't value it, and so forth and so forth, but compliance is the only business that's growing. They're also saying that it's dying, but it's not dying, it's actually growing. It's growing because our population's growing by 250,000, 300,000 a year and our immigration policy is quite healthy. So whenever skilled migrants come into this country, they all get a job and they all need to do tax returns. So the compliance pie is growing and I keep saying that's a great business model because that's the only business model that I know, that the government drives business to your door because it's illegal not to do a tax return. It's recession proof and all you need to do is to or we need to do, is to manage it efficiently so that it's profitable and we don't need to go chasing for new business.

Ed Chan:

The business is pretty close to annuity in nature. So what better business can you have than the government drives it to your door and it's as near annuity as you can get and the pie is growing. And as long as there's tax in the country, there's always going to be tax changes. Whenever there are tax changes, you always need an accountant. So there's been a lot of confusion created by a lot of people out there and generally, they're picked from people who had a vested interest. They were either trying to sell you their products or sell you their services or something, and they misrepresent what our industry is and because of that it's created a lot of confusion and that's led a lot of accountants to believe that at the end of their working life, they need to flog it off and get as much as they can and not retain an interest in it.

Ed Chan:

But naturally, if you don't have systems in place and if you built the business around you, then you have to sell it.

Ed Chan:

There is no other option.

Ed Chan:

So what I'm saying is don't run it like a partnership, run it like a corporation where we separate ownership from your labor, from your skill.

Ed Chan:

In a partnership model it doesn't work because just because you're an owner, you think you've got a say in everything, even though you may not have the skills or the experience to get involved in certain aspects of your business. But because you're a partner and you're an owner, you have a say in everything. And it doesn't work. And if you turn it into a corporation where you separate the skills out from the shareholding, some people are more CEO, some people are more coo, and some people are more CTO or CFO. And if we each stay in our flow in our area of expertise and let each other run our areas and then hopefully together you'll produce a profit and then you pay a dividend based on your shareholding, that works much better and I've proven it and it works and it's much more effective than a partnership model. And I'm not talking about the structure, I'm not talking about the legal structure, I'm talking about the management, the way you run the business.

Brenton Ward:

Yeah, okay, so going through that process, Jamie, what were the highlight moments for you coming out the back end of that discovery session and what? What was your sort of realigning focus from that point?

Jamie Johns:

Yeah, the main thing to mention Brenton and I know this will resonate with you, know, hundreds of accountants i s the realisation t hat you don't have to be the central person to run the firm. So it's almost a humbling process. You've got to realise that the firm can run without you. That's the most important concept to realise, because when Ed shows you how that can be done that's a real choke point in the discovery session that he'll show you how that can be done. Um, and the other thing is, I think you know Ed mentioned is, once you realize how that can be done, then it's really important to get that structure and foundation of teams and operational systems in place.

Jamie Johns:

One of the things you've always said is you know it's okay to scale, but get your foundations right first, because otherwise you're going to scale problems. So I'd been down that path, I'd try to scale and, um, I tried to do this and tried to do that um in my own business and I was only scaling problems. So it's really, really important for the accountants and the and the and whoever's listening that you get those foundations right and, like Ed said, even though you're a small business act like a big one, you know. So put systems and processes and people in place, even if you have to wear a lot of hats at the start. Make sure you get the foundations right, because if you don't do that and you go to scale um, then you're only going to scale problems.

Brenton Ward:

So if we talk about the discovery session, where we're at this stage because I know we're going to get into the foundations and the systems and the processes at this stage. I think we want whoever's watching to take an opportunity now to take stock of where they are and to really follow those steps that Ed outlined before really start to look at your business from an investment perspective. Where do you want to be when you're 65? What? What lifestyle do you want to be living at that stage of your life, and how is your business going to provide for that? Can it provide for that? And in its current form, is it going to be able to do it? If not, we need to start putting some numbers on that, that future position, and start working backward from there to really kick this journey off. Is that fair to say, Ed?

Ed Chan:

Absolutely you hit the nail on the head um, you just got to design your life and that's all. It's all there to be designed, designed because of the industry we're in. It's annuity in nature. The government drives it to your door and we deal with accountants who are reasonably easy to deal with. They're educated and easy people to deal with and you know the systems are all there. We just got to put everything together and it's all quite achievable.

Jamie Johns:

Great.

Brenton Ward:

So, for everyone watching, this is your opportunity now to really take some time.

Brenton Ward:

So, whether you're going to do it straight away or you're going to lock it into your calendar now, take some time to, even if you have to rewind this video and go through those steps that Ed outlined just prior, just earlier, in terms of what you should be doing to really take yourself through this discovery process. Now there are also some continuing videos from this video, in which Jamie and I will dive into some of the other areas of the discovery process that he went through. But really at this stage, pause the video, stop the video, and spend some time understanding where you'd like your life to be when you're 65, and is your business is in a position to get you there. If not, we need to recalculate some numbers and start working backward from there. Ed, thank you so much for sharing that part of your journey and the journey that you started your firms on. I think it's a brilliant place to start and, Jamie, looking forward to hearing more about how you took Sky Accountants through this part of the journey as well.

Jamie Johns:

Absolutely, yeah. Yeah, perhaps I'll go first, but, yeah, we'll have a lot of exercises and tasks that, as you said. So, we'll have a lot of exercises and tasks that, as you said, Brenton, will help people really dig down into the details of this process. You know Ed's outlined some of the bigger concepts that we do, but we'll certainly take them through the detail so that they can, you know, wash out what we need to achieve in this section of the course. Yeah, Brilliant.

Ed Chan:

Ed, yeah, thanks, and thanks for having me, Brenton. It's an absolute honour to share some of the things that I've experienced with everybody, and I look forward to continuing to do that.

Brenton Ward:

Ed, the pleasure is all ours. We look forward to hearing more of your learnings in step two, but for now let's begin with the end of mind, or at least go through our discovery session and really understand where we want to take our business. So until the next video, spend some quality time doing that. Thanks, guys, thanks.

Jamie Johns:

Brent.

Brenton Ward:

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 on the next episode.