Hold onto your hats, folks! It's time for a rip-roaring journey on our latest podcast episode: "Tech That Will Make You Sh*t Loads More Money"! 🚀💰
Amy and AJack are here to hold your hand and walk you through the wild world of income maximisation and cost reduction, with more laughs than a koala in a eucalyptus forest! 🐨 We're unlocking the secrets to financial liberation and a wealthier lifestyle, all thanks to the power of technology!
Picture this: you're cruising through the Aussie accounting landscape, turbocharging efficiency like a kangaroo on a caffeine high and ensuring you're rightfully compensated for your talents. But wait, it gets better! Technology swoops in like a superhero, streamlining workflows and supercharging service delivery to pump up that bottom line faster than you can say "g'day"!
Amy and AJack spill the beans on game-changing tech solutions that carve out precious time for you to focus on what truly matters: making more money OR more freedom, haha!
So grab your mates, grab a cold one, and tune in to the podcast that's revolutionising Aussie accounting one laugh at a time. Follow us on social media, spread the word, and let's make sh*t loads more money together!
AAAAA IS PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY OUR SPONSORS Content Snare | Organised content and document collection without the back and forth. Stop getting lost in emails, messy hacked-together systems and confusing shared docs. Content Snare is like a checklist for your clients with automatic reminders.My Prosperity | Easily collaborate with your clients. Ditch the back and forth emails, attachments, printing an BVO Pro | Revolutionise your appraisal and valuation processes with cutting-edge software, simplifying the process, revealing business value efficiently and encouraging strategic planning for growth and success.
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Your squad of award-winning accountants, tax wizards & biz visionaries, perfectly tailored to elevate your biz. Let's soar together! Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street | Bringing clarity, time & ease to your practice. Your accounting systems, people and processes working together. Simply. Seamlessly. Mayday | Revolutionise your finance teams multi-entity month end through real-time accounting
Hold onto your hats, folks! It's time for a rip-roaring journey on our latest podcast episode: "Tech That Will Make You Sh*t Loads More Money"! 🚀💰
Amy and AJack are here to hold your hand and walk you through the wild world of income maximisation and cost reduction, with more laughs than a koala in a eucalyptus forest! 🐨 We're unlocking the secrets to financial liberation and a wealthier lifestyle, all thanks to the power of technology!
Picture this: you're cruising through the Aussie accounting landscape, turbocharging efficiency like a kangaroo on a caffeine high and ensuring you're rightfully compensated for your talents. But wait, it gets better! Technology swoops in like a superhero, streamlining workflows and supercharging service delivery to pump up that bottom line faster than you can say "g'day"!
Amy and AJack spill the beans on game-changing tech solutions that carve out precious time for you to focus on what truly matters: making more money OR more freedom, haha!
So grab your mates, grab a cold one, and tune in to the podcast that's revolutionising Aussie accounting one laugh at a time. Follow us on social media, spread the word, and let's make sh*t loads more money together!
AAAAA IS PROUDLY BROUGHT TO YOU BY OUR SPONSORS Content Snare | Organised content and document collection without the back and forth. Stop getting lost in emails, messy hacked-together systems and confusing shared docs. Content Snare is like a checklist for your clients with automatic reminders.My Prosperity | Easily collaborate with your clients. Ditch the back and forth emails, attachments, printing an BVO Pro | Revolutionise your appraisal and valuation processes with cutting-edge software, simplifying the process, revealing business value efficiently and encouraging strategic planning for growth and success.
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Your squad of award-winning accountants, tax wizards & biz visionaries, perfectly tailored to elevate your biz. Let's soar together! Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street | Bringing clarity, time & ease to your practice. Your accounting systems, people and processes working together. Simply. Seamlessly. Mayday | Revolutionise your finance teams multi-entity month end through real-time accounting
What are you doing first, I'm excited to hear what what's going on.
Speaker 2:
I'm excited because today we're talking about tech that will make you shit loads more money, and there's just everybody likes money, so that's why I'm excited. I want to talk about all of those things that are going to make us more money.
Speaker 1:
Oh, okay, so we've got to define shit loads, then, do we? Yes, all right. Finally.
Speaker 2:
That's really funny. All right, maybe we don't need to define that per se, but what we do want to define, I guess, is like, why do we want to make more money? And you know there are definitely people that are going to possibly listen into that and go. It's not always about the money and maybe it's not always about the money. Maybe it's that it wants you know it's going to maybe give you more freedom, it's going to give you more choice. So, whether it makes you more money or it gives you more choice to do things that you want to do that's what today's episode is all about is, like you know, tech that will actually provide you with choice oh, we just wanted a title that you'd click on.
Speaker 1:
So now we're here. You don't have to make a shitload more money if you don't want to, you know. I think absolutely that's important. It's like it's not life's not only about money. But if you want, if you understand why you want more or need more or feel like you deserve more for what you're doing, that's what we're here. You know. We're here for that.
Speaker 2:
So I think that's important place to start.
Speaker 1:
Now we move down to say, okay, so let's agree, we're trying to make more money, for whatever reason. You decide why you need that. What are the levers? How can we make more money? There's I mean, there's countless ways to define that, but when I say levers, I'm talking about what are the things that we can pull, because that's a limited number of those that can actually turn the needle.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, so we can obviously get paid more because you know you can do more. So, for example, efficiency. So if we can do more, if we can be more efficient, then we will have more time to possibly service more clients, provide more services, get paid more. It basically means that you know you can deliver more services realistically, right. So that's one of them.
Speaker 1:
Getting paid for what you do is another one. I think this is a classic case. You know so many accounting firms, accountants, you know we love our clients, we want to serve them, we want to help them, and what does that end up? With us working till 11pm at night on weekends to try and get stuff done for them.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, just remember, the industry is not a charity, that's right, you know you are.
Speaker 1:
You're doing great stuff. You deserve to be paid for it. So get paid for what you do. I think is another key element of this.
Speaker 2:
Getting paid for new stuff, so new services that you might provide for clients. Getting paid by new clients is another one. Yeah, winning new clients, winning new clients, doing, you know, providing new services for clients. That's another one.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, absolutely, and I think there's probably some just other stuff cost cutting. You know X, y, z that we can touch on at the end if we have some time. So no, I like that. I think that sets it up really nicely. So we're obviously focused on the tech here, but there's always going to be elements of people process that underpin that. So you know, as we go through we can kind of get into each of that.
Speaker 2:
Yeah.
Speaker 1:
In terms of where I want to start, let's begin with that efficiency piece. So you know you've already got clients. We're not asking you to go out and sell them more. We're not asking you to do anything crazy here. We're just saying can we get the work done more efficiently? Free up your time and then with that maybe you can go off and and serve some more clients, figure out some new services, whatever else, from there yep so how do we do that?
Speaker 2:
so I think that that comes down to a lot of things, but, interestingly enough, I think there's also a lot to be said for your processes and your procedures. Typically speaking, I mean from an app stack perspective, I think a good place is obviously having an integrated app stack. So if you're not using an all-in-one product and you're using a multitude of different apps out there, making sure that they are actually all integrated and talking with each other, you know things like you know, if you're using the Xero ecosystem, making sure that the push and the pull and the integrations between the apps are actually logical, removing as many apps outside of your daily operation, your client lifecycle that don't talk to another piece of you know tech within your tech stack. Essentially, that's one of them. So app integrate, like just make sure you've got your apps that are actually integrated. Another one is client lifecycle, generally speaking, like one of the ways that you could consider and this is not technically, you know, app related per se and it's something that I'm actually just kind of throwing off the bat, something we didn't chat about Sorry Jack, on the fly, I chatted about this one but the way that you, you know, from an efficiency perspective, the way that you actually run your client life cycle.
Speaker 2:
Is it proactive or is it reactive? Is it your client? You wait for your clients to do things. You know. You go backwards and forwards with asking queries. You wait until you get to the end of the job to bill a client. You um, you know. Then you wait for the invoice to be paid and you wait for the documents to be signing and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 2:
Is it reactive or is it proactive, where you actually proactively contact the client to call the work in? You provide them with a fee up front. You possibly even take payment up front. You front end the whole process as opposed to back end it, because ultimately, most clients already you know how much you're going to charge your client, whether you charge based on whip or not, because it is rare these days that I've ever come across an accountant who actually charges for every piece of time like based on a true whip perspective.
Speaker 2:
So you're already giving them an upfront price. So therefore, you know, just just give it to them at the beginning rather than at the end for the majority of work not all work so you know they are things that you could consider from an efficiency perspective which completely change the way that you run your internal operation, but also speak to the point of well, that creates efficiency, therefore, that creates capacity and it potentially creates more money as well, because you know, and it's all the apps that you basically use. So yeah, practice management apps, what have you found?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, no, I think I mean, when it comes to tech, in this space, I absolutely I'm like well, your practice management systems, your tax tools, your accounting softwares are where you and your team are spending most of your time. So probably the biggest bang for buck in terms of, if you're not being efficient right now, look inwards at those tools. So Inwards at those tools. So if you're not on a Carbon or an FYI equivalent kind of practice management solution, definitely have a look at those. See if you can integrate that or implement one of those, because they will be game changing for you if you're not leveraging them.
Speaker 1:
If you are on those already, the reality is most people aren't getting the most out of those systems. So, reinvesting a little bit of time and effort to say, where can we get another 10, 15, 15 out of these tools that we're already paying for, by the way? So let's leverage that. I think. In terms of the integrated app stack that you were talking about, uh, figuring out, you know there are a lot of apps that speak to each other, which is fantastic. You know you've got your few signs that integrate with a whole bunch of them. Content snare here, there, everywhere. But you've got other tools as well that might be in your process that might not work together as seamlessly. So plug and play with zap here as well. So when it comes to the actual tech for you to be more efficient, I look at those big players mostly because they're going to be the way you and your team are spending the most time, so getting the most out of those.
Speaker 2:
And then, yeah, connecting the systems that aren't currently speaking to one another practice tools like uh, additional tools as well, like account kit you've already mentioned content snare, seamless. Those are additional tools which obviously bolt on to certain things which provide really great efficiencies, like account kit. Their compliance tools are amazing, like there are other you know applications out there that do amazing things when it comes to tax planning, like I know that the feature within the change GPS toolkit, also awesome, that kind of thing. So there are some really cool additional outside practice tools that create a lot of efficiency. Therefore, you know again more time.
Speaker 1:
Essentially, and then I think the other component to this is, if you're sitting there thinking oh, I think we're pretty good with you know our time and efficiency and all these kinds of things. Well, you can leverage tech as well to track this stuff and internally report a little bit better.
Speaker 1:
So you've got tools like Dashboard Insights, atani, link, reporting, even within XPM. You've got reporting as well, power BI, of course. So if you're not using those tools, have a look at that, see, see where you are tracking, how productive are you, how efficient are you, and then maybe that will help bring to light hey, we can be doing better. Now let's look at our tech stack. Let's look at where we can be improving and it's and it's more.
Speaker 2:
It's not so much to micromanage your team, just take that one on board. This is more around how can I get the best out of my team. And it also identifies other things like am I actually charging my clients enough? So I might've equated four hours for this job, but actually the client's file was a piece of crap and therefore you needed six hours. But the team's have we been efficient and therefore, have I quoted it correctly? Have I allowed enough time? Just, it also highlights that. So it's not just to highlight whether your team's efficient or not. It's also to highlight potentially potential other areas of your processes as well that you could improve on too.
Speaker 1:
And there's so many knock-on effects of this or second order benefits. You know we talk about efficiency purely as a play on time, but yeah, as you're kind of alluding to, there's other elements here around the team, especially like tech can be can make you more efficient, can be can make you more efficient, better processes can make you more efficient. But empowering your team you know they are the ones delivering the work are they, you know, getting frustrated by the tools they're using every day? Are they being slowed down by them? Because ultimately, if they are, they'll get frustrated at some point. Then you've got another problem on your hands. So let's, let's get your team up and running, let's get them working like a well-oiled machine, and I think you've. You know you and your team as a whole will get paid for more because you've got more time. You can do more.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, definitely. Um, what about getting paid for what you do? Okay, and let's just go back to that the accounting industry. You're not a charity, so you should be getting paid for what you do Because, my goodness, the service that the accounting profession provides, the knowledge, the support, the advice that is provided to clients, is ridiculously good. So I think that value proposition and understanding what your value proposition is to actually get paid for the service that you are providing needs to happen. But you know, talk to me through, talk to me about that. Like you know, we want to.
Speaker 1:
I think there's definitely some elements here which are it doesn't come naturally to a lot of accountants.
Speaker 1:
You know we're technical people. We love helping. We're not as sales focused, we're not as like hey, you know I should be getting paid for this. It's an uncomfortable conversation for a lot of people to have, so absolutely. There's programs, courses, coaches, people like this who work with accountants to help them through that. But I think also just there are tech-enabled ways to make your life a little bit easier here that you can just have a better process, a better system, better piece of tech to support you, to make these conversations clearer, easier, and a big being clear on your scope, and I think that that if you and your client are on the same page at the beginning and it's completely out there in the open, black and white, this is what I'm going to do for you and this is what's going to cost, yep, it's so much easier to then have a conversation to say, hey, I can do this other thing for you too, but remember how there was this scope.
Speaker 1:
We agreed yeah this isn't on it, so this is what it would cost, rather than it be like oh yeah, you know, we'll support you for the next 12 months for this cost. Well, what does that mean?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I think there's something to be said, though it is a challenging one when it comes to if you are providing quotes through systems like Ignition, GoProposal, using the quoting function through XPM or Xero. There's lots of applications out there that obviously have engaged, through ChangeGPS, for example. There's loads of them out there. It's more about being concise, as you say, Jack, around what service you're providing, but also helping your team. Step one helping your team to identify what's out of scope, and there's a just to touch on this for a moment. I know a lot of business owners struggle with team members to you know, to highlight and articulate you know what's out of scope to clients. Maybe you're taking that step too far, so maybe it's just.
Speaker 2:
Step one in this process is just identify to me, your manager, you know partner, whatever it is that a client has asked you to do, something that you believe is not within the scope of the work. You don't need to do anything further apart from let your manager or the business owner know Whatever they choose to do with. That is the next step. At that point, you can also start, you know, having some sessions with your team around how to obviously have those conversations with clients if you want to take it to that next level. But step one, just identify if it's either in scope or outside of scope, and if you have a clearly defined set scoping of what you're actually doing for the client.
Speaker 2:
To begin with, that shouldn't be challenging. That should be really easy, as I say. Beyond that, though, it's up to you to obviously charge for that additional service or make that judgment call if you'd like to charge for that service, but with the apps that we've just mentioned, I think it's be clear and concise to begin with. Hey, there's also a new player that you told me about. What's that?
Speaker 1:
There is. I was just going to mention that because, as much as Ignition is, you know, has been around forever and I think it does a fantastic job as a market of accountants.
Speaker 1:
It's great when new players come, because it means there's some more competition forces, some more innovation and it just helps us all. So these guys are called Socket and helps us all. So these guys are called Socket and I think it's usesocketcom. At the moment, I believe, I think, they're UK based, so we'll see what happens in terms of their growth, but I just want to keep an eye out because I believe they're in this proposals area. Yeah, cool.
Speaker 1:
I mean something we didn't discuss talking about and I think we don't need to talk about for long because it's not super tech related but in terms of getting paid for what you do. Something to consider which I don't know if a lot of accountants do super well is getting paid based on value that they're delivering yes rather than based on.
Speaker 1:
I mean because we have this time mindset yes or have had this trained into us for so long. They're like oh, you know, time sheets mean this, which means there's write-offs, which means, you know, if we start to say what is this worth to a client, yes, if I say, oh, my goodness, you know, I've saving them $5,000 with this. You know work that I've done, or this tax plan that I've done, or you know, but it took me half an hour.
Speaker 2:
Yep. What is that worth Exactly? What's the value to the client? Do I?
Speaker 1:
charge them close to $50 because you know it was it was half an hour of work, or do I charge them close to the five thousand dollars which is the value I delivered? So it's, this isn't a tech question, this isn't a tech related feature or something like that, but it's just something maybe to let people think about because it is it's absolutely a valid way of charging. I think it's a really weird, strange thing to think about. Maybe you feel uncomfortable saying, oh, I did that half an hour piece of work, I'm going to charge five grand for it, but it it's that whole story of the, the guy who walks in and fixes the machine and his invoice says one dollar for the nail, nine hundred and ninety nine dollars for knowing where to put the nail. All that experience, your years of uni, your years doing your cao, your cpa, all of those interactions with clients, all of those spreadsheets you made, all of those tax plans you did led you to be able to do that in half an hour, so get paid for that.
Speaker 1:
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree, wholeheartedly agree not tech related though, so let's move on hell.
Speaker 4:
You know I'm massive. I'm a massive, massive fan of creating great experiences for people, whether that's my team, whether that's my clients or whether that is the accounting community. And one thing that historically has been really, really bad experiences for people is when you're asking for stuff from them. You know, is it a phone call? Is it an email? Have you sent them a letter? Did you get text messages? They want it sent via. That whole experience is often inconsistent, confusing and, for a lot of clients, can actually be quite scary and unknown, and that's why I'm a huge fan of seeing the work that Content Snare out there is doing in streamlining the process of gathering information and giving clients a bloody good experience, whilst it happens right, absolutely.
Speaker 3:
I'm so sick and tired of chasing clients to get the right info. This is where ContentStair just makes it dead simple to collect it. You can use it for onboarding, interview tax any type of form that you send out to clients, and there's a lot, isn't there?
Speaker 4:
Anything that you need an answer from?
Speaker 3:
Yeah and there's so much of that in our practices. So, seriously, get onto this one. With all client files in one place, your team can actually work on accounting instead of spending all of their time and email looking for documents.
Speaker 4:
Get on it bloody love that get amongst it, friends. Snare is where it is at.
Speaker 3:
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Speaker 4:
Isn't there nothing worse than working on a client, collaborating with others, and finding yourself having to go here, there and everywhere to be able to manage this client, whether it's documents in your document storage folder, whether it's using different video conferencing tools, whether it's information that's stored in hard copy or non-hard copy, whether it's dealing with other professional parties and just finding yourself not being able to do things efficiently? Well, friends, your solution is here. My Prosperity is an all-in-one client portal with innovative digital tools designed to increase practice efficiencies, scale client engagement and grow revenue. Now my Prosperity does a whole bunch of stuff. Some of the really cool features it's got are things like rooms where you can collaborate with other finance professionals to achieve any client goal. There's things like live data feeds, reminders, marketing collateral, automated reports, digital fact finds and so much more. This tool is fantastic for accountants and advisors and ensures that they can be servicing their clients as best as possible. So check out MyProsperity. You're not going to be disappointed.
Speaker 2:
Getting paid for new stuff, new services, new clients, new service offerings. So I think there's a lot to be said from a new service offering side of things, and I'm going to say this with a step one make sure you can get all of your bread and butter work done before you decide to offer new services.
Speaker 2:
So step two make sure that you have the capacity and the expertise to deliver on these services. So, yeah, so step two make sure that you can. You have the capacity and the expertise to deliver on these services, not just from yourself, but within your team as well. And if you don't have that, you have a plan in place to empower your team, to educate your team, so they can deliver on those additional services eventually. Okay, also, just with this, you don't have to offer new services.
Speaker 2:
By the way, you you actually you absolutely don't have to, but there are a lot of firms out there, I know, that actually do want to be able to offer more services, but they just don't have the time. They simply don't have enough time. So there could also be an element of maybe you should cull some of the crappier work so that you can offer new services. That is, again, not necessarily tech related, but something to definitely consider. But I guess, if we are going down the new service offering side of things, you've got the advisory side, and I mean, jack, in a past life you worked for a very heavily advisory firm. So what are some of the things that you found in that space?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that was really great work that we did there. I really loved that you get to sit down with your clients and actually help them to achieve their goals, rather than kind of be this person that they begrudgingly go to once a year to get their tax done. But each to their own, I get it. Advisory is not for everybody, but there are absolute. There seems to be a little bit of a move here from a tech platform side, and I think that's because for so long the market has been kind of figuring out what advisory is. Some firms have been doing it well, others have been trying learning.
Speaker 1:
There's been a lot of development here. You know, there's some other places that we'll refer to later that actually have spent a lot of time educating accountants as to how to be advisors, but now we're seeing a little bit of growth in the tech side around this. So you've got tools like Brief, ada, clarity HQ, a new one that I've seen recently is BVO Pro PopUp, and these are tackling advisory from different places, different standpoints. You could arguably put in your reporting tools within that advisory space too to say I'm advising you on your forecasts and we're having those proactive conversations about where you're going and how we're going to meet your goals. And look at these numbers and the trajectory. If this is your current assumptions and drivers, well, look, this is all you're going to get to. So let's have a conversation about how we can get you to where you want to be. So I think there's your fathom spotlights, castaways that are in. We can go into the details on them, but I think, just generally speaking, a lot of firms currently aren't doing advisory.
Speaker 2:
Yep.
Speaker 1:
Don't feel like you have to but, if you're interested in adding this as a service and, as you said, if you're doing your other work pretty well, briefs are a really nice entry point there. A to two just really simple tools that get you up and running with making your meetings more effective or leveraging automation and AI to present and produce reports on a regular basis.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, cool If you're not offering this service money for jam audit cover. That's another one. So there's some apps out there that obviously can help with that. There's Audit Shield, there's Audit Cover, there's Audit Safe by AppSium. That's another service, additional service offering. If you're not, I feel like there are a lot of firms out there that are already doing it but just to call that one out.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I think another one kind of on that line is like you know, I think it's pretty normal for firms to be doing bookkeeping or payroll. There seems to be your outsourced finance function. We're more than just an accountant who you speak with once a quarter. We're in your business every single day or every single week. So you've got a lot of tools that are helping there. Obviously, your employment heroes for payroll, your Dexts, your experts, your Maydays once again Fathom Spotlight Castaway Join Medano depending Once again Fathom Spotlight Castaway join Medano, depending on how complicated their reporting needs are, but just getting the work done for them, ticking off a lot of those execution tasks.
Speaker 1:
And I've also heard from firms that are saying I used to want to push that work away and get somebody external to do the bookkeeping or to do the payroll because I want to focus on advisory. But I've also heard the other way, which is say it's such an easier conversation if I own that work which is kind of tick box stuff for accounting firms. They're pretty good at this. It just means that I have oversight of so much more and I can see the opportunities that are being missed.
Speaker 2:
Corporate secretarial as well. Oh yeah, yeah, like that's again another money for jam One. There's obviously CAS360. There's now Infinity. There's Wave, I think, is another one as well. One thing that I would actually implore you all to do is look at how much you're currently charging for that service, because I can guarantee you could probably up the fee.
Speaker 1:
Oh yeah, on so many of your services.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, app advisory as well, then App advisory as well, then there's that as well. So you know, advising apps for and on behalf of your clients.
Speaker 1:
I think this is one where, like, obviously it's a good thing we wanted to put it down, but it is an absolute rabbit hole.
Speaker 2:
Yes, we get it.
Speaker 1:
Your life is not about understanding the billions and millions of apps on the ecosystem or any of the ecosystems. Hopefully we help a little bit. But to stay on top of all of these apps and know them to a degree you feel comfortable recommending them to your clients is tough. But a lot of firms have niches. They know hospitality really well or construction really well. So knowing the apps around that market, being able to advise your clients and say, look, this is the standard tech stack for a new coffee shop, that just saves that client a whole bunch of stress and effort figuring out what to put together and how it's going to work.
Speaker 1:
So if you do have the luxury of having a niche or an area of focus, building up a little bit of an app advisory offering around, that can be a good place to start. You know, if you're in AP, you've got Lightyear. If you're dealing with inventory-based businesses, you've got Unleashed and those kinds of products. Maybe you've got some. You know growing businesses. You've got businesses that are growing up and starting to run into some challenges with. You know Xero's limitations there. You've got ApprovalMax to go one way. You've got Wheel and Airwallex for the corporate card situation. So there's a lot of tools out there. Hopefully this pod helps to kind of bring them to light. But figure out the ones you really vibe with and, yeah, focus on that.
Speaker 2:
There's one other section that isn't necessarily app-related, however, given that we're talking about things that will make you a shitload more money, this is one of those options where, you know, investing a little bit to make a lot will actually, you know, greatly assist as well. And, as I said, these aren't necessarily app related, but they are different service offerings in the industry that we thought we'd just give a brief shout out to for all your consideration. So, outsourcing your staff, so outsourcing some of the work that you do. Looking at outsource providers there are many, there are a multitude of them. You need to find the right fit for you and your business.
Speaker 2:
I would like to suggest and recommend that, if you do have an outsourced option, really read the T's and C's, look at what you're getting into, know that it's just an extension of your team. Most of the time, you will obviously have to obviously educate that team member, make them feel part of the team, make them understand what your processes and procedures are. But you know there are some definite, you know really good options out there. There's seamless smsf, there's toa, there's sumo, there's count hq. As I say, they are just some of the multitude that are out there.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I've seen team up as well has popped up recently, yeah of course, of course, yep, but yeah, you find the right fit for you, but that's another way to increase efficiency. Therefore, that leads to obviously, you know, looking at getting a bit more money. What about mentoring?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think that whole. There is a big industry around accounting because I think it's a business model that's been around for a long time. So that means there's been a long time for people to build firms, run firms, exit firms, have success and then say, look, I don't want to do it again, but I want to help other accountants do it or other bookkeepers do it. So you know, you've got the Slipstream Advisors, you've got Amanda Gascoigne, you've got Wise Mentoring the Gap Clarity Street, wise mentoring the gap clarity street. Oh, look, little shout out for you. And there's. There's probably plenty of others that I'm that I'm not mentioning. But you know, if you do want some support, people have been through this stuff before. So if you kind of like, look, I love my clients, I love my business, I just want to make it better and I don't want to reinvent the wheel like pay.
Speaker 1:
You know the same reason your clients pay you to do stuff because you're good at it, yep, so some of these people are really good too.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and you know like why the Clarity Street one was in there is is not so much from a business coach perspective that's not what we do, as is more tech, more integration. It's also around advice and support for your admin team as well, so that's more where we're coming. Slightly different angle, but it's all about providing efficiency and creating that space essentially for you to actually grow your businesses in whatever way that you would like. The last one I guess I wanted to shout out is, even if you don't use apps, some of the most basic things that you can do to actually kind of look at ways to make a shitload more money. Are you charging enough for the work that you're actually doing? The answer is no, a shitload more money.
Speaker 1:
Are you charging enough for the work that you're actually doing? The answer is no.
Speaker 2:
Are you charging for all of the work you do? The answer is also probably no. Are you working with the right clients? No, if you're not working with the right clients, cull some, that's okay, you know. Be concise with your service offering, which we already spoke about. And, yeah, just get rid of the crap clients I think that's like I.
Speaker 1:
I appreciate the challenge.
Speaker 1:
It's so easy for us to sit here and say it um, you know, these are people you're going to have to have a conversation with at some point and it's going to be hard. But just think the rationally, logically, about the fact that you've probably I think it's a 2080. There's 20% of your clients that take up 80% of your time and 80% of your clients that take up 20%. Find more of that 80, get rid of that 20. And it just becomes. It might not move the top line revenue. You might drop your revenue number down for a period of time, but it will improve your profit margins at the bottom.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think that's a. Uh, that's probably a good place to leave it jack, but uh, any, what's your takeaway?
Speaker 1:
oh, good one. Uh, I mean, I think I think that not. Not. I love the new stuff, I love the idea of new service offerings, but I think you'll call out to say get your bread and butter going like a machine first and and you've got tools, you've got tech in your firms already. Maybe it can be better, maybe you can implement a few new apps, maybe you can connect them better. But get that stuff really seamless before worrying about the new stuff, as exciting as that can be fabulous, cool yep.
Speaker 2:
Thanks so much, jack.
Speaker 1:
Thanks, Amy.
Speaker 3:
Hey team. It's Ali and Andrew from All Aussie Accounting Adventures here. I hope you really enjoyed this episode with Amy and Jack. What did you think, andrew?
Speaker 4:
Oh, stunning as always, the two of them are brilliant minds and are brilliant communicators. So we hope that you have got some incredible learnings out of this episode and if you'd like to continue to follow us, make sure you check out our website. Find us on the socials you'll see Accounting Adventures, or look for All Aussie Accounting Adventures, wherever good stuff can be found, whether that's conferences, whether that's websites, whether it's podcasts or social media.
Speaker 3:
Remember to share it around. My friends Like review. We love that stuff, so come on, join the adventures with us.