All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
Scaling Success: Tech to take your Firm from $1M to $3M
Discover the blueprints to growing your accounting firm's revenue from a solid $1 million to a thriving $3 million! Amy and Ajack are setting up the stage with a candid discussion on the ambitions that drive such an epic scale-up, aligning with both your personal vision and your firm's strategic objectives. It's a journey through the crucial decisions and calculated risks that pave the way for substantial growth. With the right mindset and actionable advice and tech, we're revealing how to navigate this transition smoothly and effectively.
This episode is all about embracing a culture of innovation, updating the tech stack, and implementing marketing strategies that resonate with your target audience. And remember, regular, incremental advancements can lead to monumental growth, so go get 'em!
So strap yourself in for this tech adventure and join us as we dive deep into the strategies, tools, and mindset shifts needed to skyrocket your firm’s success. Let's gear up, get tech-savvy, and watch your firm soar to new heights!
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David Easton (@davidjeasty) | Insta...
hi amy, hey jack, how you doing I'm pretty good, thanks, how are you? I'm awfully hungry.
Speaker 2:I mean because we're talking about growth I mean, I know we're talking about, I know it's nearly, I know it's nearly dinner time, but why? Why else you hungry?
Speaker 1:I'm hungry to take firms from 1 million to 3 million in revenue. Oh wow, that's just such a yeah, yeah, okay terrible transition. But hey, we're here, we're talking about it.
Speaker 3:Yep definitely.
Speaker 1:Let's do it.
Speaker 2:So we're talking about leveraging tech to take your firm from the one mil to say three mil mark basically. So it's probably the next growth hump. I would sort of look at A couple of months. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Maybe a few years.
Speaker 2:We'll give you a few years Give you a few years.
Speaker 1:I mean that is something to discuss, I mean along with how quickly you want to make that transition which is obviously something to consider is why you want to grow 100%, and we did. Obviously. The last episode was on growing from 500K to a mil Yep. We probably could have asked the same question of why.
Speaker 3:Are you sure you want this?
Speaker 1:Because there's definitely people out there who get themselves caught up in a business that they don't even want to be running anymore. They enjoyed the entrepreneurial lifestyle, being a sole trader doing their own thing when they wanted. Then they hire a team. Now they're responsible. They're going to hit the payroll.
Speaker 2:The stress rises.
Speaker 1:Please, please, only do this. If you really want to. Yes, and you're prepared for what is going to come with that.
Speaker 2:I would agree. I would agree with that From personal experience.
Speaker 1:I would agree. I would agree with that From personal experience.
Speaker 2:Likewise personal experience. Yeah, exactly, let's really work out why you want to grow and make sure you're comfortable with that first point.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so we won't go into the details of you know how do you figure out what you really want in life and all of these things? Ali and Andrew do that very well, but make sure that you're not just doing this arbitrarily, that there's some reason why it needs to be. You know why do I need to triple my numbers here? Um, you know, maybe you've got some big, lofty aspirations, some big goals for your life. Maybe you just love being challenged. It's an ongoing thing.
Speaker 1:That's cool but, whatever it is, make sure there's something there, some purpose. And then from a time frame perspective I mean I'm sure there's firms who have grown from one mil to three mil in 12 months. I'm sure there's others who have taken 25 years to make that. So the rate at which what we're talking about matters will be impacted by the timeframe that you're working towards. You know, if you're on a 25 year timeframe to triple well, you could probably not really do much.
Speaker 2:And you would just organically grow over that time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, whereas if you want to make this happen in a short window, then you're going to have to make some changes. You're going to have to put some serious improvements in place to scale at that rate so those are a couple of things to consider before we even discuss how.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And yes, how do you technically, what does moving from $1 million to $3 million actually look like?
Speaker 2:Well, before we get to that, just another quick thing around the. If you are looking to move quite quickly, there are obviously shout out to some of the great accounting-focused business coaches out there in Australia who very much specialize in things like these, like Amanda Gascoigne, Brad Turville, Wise Mentoring. Definitely contact Slipstream Group, Go and speak to somebody that can coach you through this, because that's you know, and there's other people there who have been through it. Oh yeah, and there are others as well, by the way.
Speaker 1:Oh, there's other people, but within those, groups there are a lot of other directors, partners, firm owners who have made it through this journey already. So I think you know hearing from us great, fantastic. Keep listening, but at the same time, speak to your peers. You know there are awesome people out there who have done this and are super generous with their time, willing to help others go through the same stuff.
Speaker 2:So I guess you know how do you do this Like let's you know defining scale. I mean you can probably. I really hope that there are firms out there that understand scale. Jack, would you like to give a bit of a definition of that one?
Speaker 1:Well, you're trying to produce more from the same or you're trying to make something. If I'm putting in $1, I want to get $2 back. That way, if I spend $100, I get $200. It's double. Every dollar I put in, I'm getting double back.
Speaker 2:Yes, but you shouldn't be doubling the effort at the same time, correct?
Speaker 1:correct? Yeah, so two components there, absolutely. And and it's it's the lifeblood of building software, because in software you invest a lot up front. You know you build a whole product and that can take years, but then that that one thing that you've built can serve hundreds of thousands, millions, billions of people.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:And so that's absolutely a great example of scale. It's the one thing that I built once now returns me time and time again.
Speaker 2:And it's much harder to do in a service-based business, obviously, Like it's much harder to scale a service-based business, but it's still possible. I mean, there are things that we're going to talk about in this episode which you know just basic streamlining your processes and procedures, things like that. Like you know, we'll talk about the tech that you use. Obviously, that's the whole point of today's episode, but I appreciate that it isn't as easy to scale a service-based business as it is to scale a tech business, for example, or a product-based business?
Speaker 1:Oh, absolutely not. No accounting firm is ever going to be able to serve a billion people, yet there's Facebook doing that. So, like yes, absolutely, they're not the same. I think, having the understanding and considering what things you might be, able to productize.
Speaker 1:You know there's elements of an accounting firm that can be productized. You know a good example of like a small level scale where, okay, maybe it doesn't need to be one person delivering something to a billion people, it can just be one to 10 rather than one to one. So if you used to run advisory workshops for clients and they paid you $3,000 for a day and you did the advisory workshop and it was one-to-one, well, what about an advisory workshop for 10 people where they all spend $500? It's a completely different market now, because it's not one-to-one, you've opened up this offering to another set of clients, but that total revenue for that day is $5,000, not $3,000. So that's a different way to think about. Well, actually, my time.
Speaker 2:What if you just still charge them the three grand, though? Just putting it out there.
Speaker 1:Oh, each of them. Yeah, well, feel free, just saying.
Speaker 2:No, you are living.
Speaker 1:You're playing 3D chess.
Speaker 2:Like, why are we dropping the price for more? Anyway, it doesn't matter, we digress. Okay, so you can obviously grow the number of clients. You can grow your services. So you could offer new services or you could deliver more services to the same clients. You could enter new markets of servicing. So like, if you're currently you know if your client base is in one particular genre, you could expand on that and or go down a different path if you're niching, essentially, like there are lots of different variations of this one.
Speaker 1:Charging more, charge more, as you just said.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So charge your existing clients more, not just to charge them more, but maybe to get better value for what you're you know. Get a better return for what you're actually delivering them already.
Speaker 2:But just generally speaking, if most accounting practices out there just put on an extra 10% rise, for the majority of your clients they won't even bat an eyelid. Like you know, we actually had a conversation with someone today about this and she said you know everything, all of the services that I'm using, that I'm paying for these days, they've all increased their prices and you know just, things are a bit tight at the moment. I was like, yep, I understand. Out of curiosity, have you increased yours? Oh no, no. Out of curiosity, have you increased yours? Oh no, no. But you're a service, yeah, and I'm not saying that just because they have, we should as well. That's not where I'm going with this, but for the most part, I see a lot of firms out there that are dramatically undercharging. So we're not charities. Just remember that we're not. We're not running a charity, no absolutely, absolutely and and yeah.
Speaker 1:So, as you kind of alluded to, there are places you can go for advice on this kind of stuff Some fantastic people out there, so they'll analyze your business much deeper than we are right now. Yes, Then the next element I want to consider is the kinds of situations you can be in as you enter this journey. So I think there's three there's. I've come to $1 million deliberately. I planned to get to this point. We've grown maybe slightly faster or slightly slower than we planned over the last few years, but here, we are?
Speaker 2:We're at $1 million Fantastic.
Speaker 1:I now want to put my plan in place for the next $2 million and bring myself up to $3 million top line. Then there's the people who are like I've been on $1 million for years. I can't seem to get off the ground. It's like I'm stuck in the mud. And then the third one is I have got here like by accident. It's just happening so fast and I haven't been at a blink.
Speaker 1:And like you don't realize it, but you're just an exceptional salesperson. Every person you talk to just loves you and just wants to work with you, and so it's just happening faster than you could have prepared yourself for. So we want to kind of tackle all three of those.
Speaker 2:Yes, what about the ones who are stuck in the mud? Okay, the ones that are stuck in the mud, there's probably a number of reasons for that. Sure, there's always a number of different reasons for that. If you're stuck, I would say that potentially if you haven't transitioned, like if you're not in the world of cloud-based apps and you are more on the server-based application stack, that's possibly one of the reasons why you're listening into this episode, because you're like I can recognize that the tech that I'm using is outdated.
Speaker 2:It's probably a bit clunky. It's not as easy to use. I might've been using it for quite some time. I'm not necessarily attracting the right team members anymore because they don't. They only want to work on new cool tech. Um, ultimately, you know, getting work out to my clients, it's just slow and clunky, like you may have. You know, you may be earning a little bit more than the mill market, but you've just kind of been at that. You might be at the 1.5 mil mark sort of thing and you've just been at that point for so long and it's there's. There are a lot of firms out there that are sort of stuck in that server-based tech situation still, and therefore one of the reasons why they're looking to transition and or that they should consider like transitioning to cloud-based apps, is because it will, you know, take you to that next level.
Speaker 1:If that's what you're desiring, if that's what you're hoping to achieve, I think you're right in calling out that if you are on old technology at the moment and you're in that range, then absolutely like have a look at what you could be doing and what you could be delivering with some newer tools, some newer tech. There's some massive efficiency gains to be had there, as you said, around talent Really important stuff to be thinking about. If you're going to this next level, if you have all of the tech in place or you feel like you do, but you're still stuck, well then once again, it's probably a non-tech problem.
Speaker 2:It's probably a matter to be People and process problem. To be honest with you, it's always a people or process problem. If it's that, reason.
Speaker 1:So if we then go and say, okay, all right. So I know we've only slightly touched on that, but let's focus on the two personas who are growing here, and I think we can talk to them both, even if they are slightly different. One's a little bit more planned and one's a little bit more organic and rushed potentially. Where do we start? How do we take the next step?
Speaker 2:I think the first thing is, whilst this isn't tech-focused, it is one of the points that needs to be taken care of is what Do we have the right people on the bus? Do we have the right blend of accountants? More so, something that I see time and time again do we have the right support in place from an admin, whether that's a practice manager, a client services manager, a receptionist, whatever that admin role looks like? Do you have a strong person in your admin team that you trust that can support you and your team to actually get things out the door? Basically, because that's usually one of the things that is holding back a lot of firms is not having the right support in place. And then, yes, there's also that do we have enough actual accountants in place? I appreciate that there's.
Speaker 2:You know we can talk about this topic until the cows come home. There are lots of options around human beings and what you can do from an outsourcing perspective, hiring, that kind of thing. Don't want to go into too much of it, but, yes, there is definitely the people element of it. So you know you need to have, I guess, the right people. That's step one.
Speaker 1:The next, it's hard to do, though, attracting good people. I think most firms are struggling with this and and something a lot of people question I suppose the more visible accountants on is why do you spend so much time talking to other accountants or going to conferences or you know like? Why do you do this? Like you're not winning work from it?
Speaker 1:you're winning employees from it, though, like investing in the community, and investing in the accounting industry is where accountants hang out. So, like a little tip is to like be present at those things. That's part of your employer brand, and I'm not saying it's a silver bullet to solve all your capacity and employment issues, but like hey, it's something to think about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, agreed with that one. So I think there's something that you need to have like. Reasonable processes should be in place. You need to consider that.
Speaker 2:You I would hope that a firm that you've got to the mill mark you've got your process and procedures in place. Are they a hundred percent clear and concise, and is everybody following them? I'm going to probably say that they're not. That's probably why that you're struggling with this. However, at least the majority of your processes are in place. That's what I would hope. But you know getting your team on board, any new team members that do come on board, making sure that when you do get them on board, that they are on board with the growth that you're actually hoping to achieve, that your current team understand what you're growing and what you're trying to achieve as well, where you want to take the business. That's a big one. So some internal marketing around, making sure that there's transparency around what your business goals and aspirations are and a plan in place as well. How are you going to get them there? Like, what are you going to get?
Speaker 1:And to go from one to three, you're going to go through the most hiring you've ever gone through. Obviously, the team's going to grow a lot more than it is probably when you enter that one meal mark and so start to think I don't think it's a necessity at the beginning of this, but maybe towards the tail end of the three. Meal is your HR management processes, performance reviews, those kinds of things. How are we I know we're going to talk about this in a second like how do we know who's productive and who's?
Speaker 3:not yes, and how do we manage that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and how do we entrust our team? How do we grow them? We don't want to have a whole episode on just the team, but the team's obviously a massive element of growing from one to three.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So yeah, thinking about your HR tech, there's a number of them out there hr central, I think it's another one, um, but yeah, there's a number of hr related apps out there and and even if it's not tech related, get a good hr um provider as well, that's.
Speaker 1:that's another thought process on that one, I mean on that point around productivity, I think this is kind of the next stage to talk about as part of this. Growth is so, yes, team grow, the team have the right things around them. But also there's a mindset element that needs to shift, and part of this comes back to timesheets, time tracking, productivity all the traditional metrics that a lot of accounting firms have had. Um, and I think so there's two elements here. One is around your own mindset as a firm owner, and one is how that then flows back through the team. I know this is something you're quite passionate about so I'll let you go for it.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So I think, uh, when it comes to the team element, like we are big advocates of timesheets as one type of metric, not from a billing perspective, more from a productivity and profitability perspective, understanding that timesheets, like any other metric in business, is never going to be exact or precise, know that full well but it's a good guide and indication of what everybody's doing, essentially, so where they're working, what they're spending time on. If you don't do timesheets, that's absolutely completely fine, as long as you have other metrics in place that you can track and measure your team clearly, concisely and transparently so that the team will know what they're doing, where they're at from that perspective. So from a productivity perspective, workflow perspective we'll come to that one in a moment workflow but there needs to be something, some checks and measures in place to ensure that you are tracking and measuring your team.
Speaker 2:From a tech-based perspective, there are tools out there to track and measure that, so most practice management platforms have them inbuilt. If you want additional tools for measuring things, you've got link reporting. You've got itani. You've got dashboard insights. You've got power bi. You've got, as I say, you've got in carbon, you've got the power insights. I think that's what it's called. If it's not, you've got a really good insight in built in. All of the other practice management apps out there have inbuilt reporting good, bad, indifferent, they all have them and as you grow, you yourself will step further away from the day to day.
Speaker 1:So, yes, it's doubly as important because it gives you the oversight of what's happening and where people are at. So, yes, it's about are my team being effective, but also where are we at? As a, as a firm, are we moving things forward? Are we moving at the rate we need? Are our clients being looked after?
Speaker 2:And that does talk to the next point around mindset, around. If you want to grow your business, if you have been in the more traditional mindset of time cost billing, growing your business from the one mil to the three mil mark, it's going to be a lot harder to grow your business if you stay with that methodology. Now, that is that is a little bit subjective, depending on where you actually are located within your business, as in like where in Australia you're located, for example. If you're based in Australia and what services and what client mix you have, I do appreciate that time cost could actually be the right mix for you.
Speaker 2:There are some firms that it 100% works for, but for the vast majority of firms out there, if you stay with that traditional billing methodology, it's going to be much harder to scale. So, therefore, because you're going to have to throw a human being at the problem, basically because there's only so much time that you can bill for, therefore, more human beings are required in order to grow. So there has to be a consideration around mindset shifting and actually starting to change and moving to more of a fixed price, upfront price, value-based billing methodology for you know a large proportion of your work, because that's where you're actually really going to actually increase your revenue. But there are other things like it does make it easy to scale as well. That's the other thing, I think, from a mindset perspective, the shiny thing syndrome.
Speaker 1:Oh yes.
Speaker 2:Yes, we all suffer from this. I feel like a lot of accountants do suffer from this, especially the majority of business owners. So you do have to have a consideration around going to conferences. It's wonderful to possibly find new employees and find out about new apps as well, for obvious reasons and what's going on in the market and catching up with your peers and things like that. But don't get suckered into this. Oh my gosh, there's a beautiful new app there that's going to solve a problem for one of my clients. It's a big client at the moment. I've got that problem that needs to be solved. We have spoken about this before, but you know the shiny object syndrome thing. When you're wanting to grow your business, this is the time where you need to get a little bit more focused.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I'm absolutely one to try anything new that I find. But at the same time as I get older, you know, it becomes harder and harder because you're just like, oh, another one that's not going to deliver on the promise. And I think in the early days of Xero there was just so many cool new apps, it was a whole brand new thing.
Speaker 1:Everyone was bringing on board any new piece of tech they could find. And then push comes to shove, time goes by and we realize that, oh, actually, only some of the you know the cream rises to the top. The best ones do amazingly well, but the rest of them don't. I mean, there's still that early adopter persona. We've had this conversation around what it means to be an early adopter, the risks and rewards of doing that. But I think for this stage of growth, as you're kind of saying, like it's it's, it's all well and good.
Speaker 1:If it's like a look, I'm interested in it and I value that personally, it's culture thing, it's a values thing. It's part of who we want to be as a firm is that we try new stuff and we continue to push the boundaries, because I think that is important if that's what your culture is. But if we're just talking pure functionality, then sometimes it can just be a matter of saying like, look, let's bed down what we've got, let's get the most out of it, and where something new comes along that looks good, let's analyze it, let's make sure it actually does what we need it to do. It's not just the shiny thing that we're implementing.
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Speaker 2:So, uh, the other one is obviously the next thing that we need. You know, if you're wanting to grow your business from one to three mil, um, finding more revenue, yeah, we kind of spoke about a little bit at the beginning around.
Speaker 1:Like you know, there's these revenue, I don't know. We had this seven components of revenue spreadsheet at the last firm I worked at and it was kind of saying like you can increase number of clients, you can increase the services to those clients, you can increase the dollar value of the clients, you can reduce the churn of your clients, you can add more services, whatever you know there.
Speaker 1:You can reduce the churn of your clients, you can add more services, whatever you know there's a whole bunch of factors that you can kind of play with, and that's exactly what this is. So if we're going from one to three, I think in our episode on 500 to one we were kind of saying you don't necessarily need to be doing that much drastically. You know, get your processes better, maybe add a team member like, and if you've got a market that you do well with, you'll probably be able to grow from 500 to a mil. But to go from one to three may actually mean, hey, I need to go outside of my comfort zone here and I needed, I need a new service. So it could be saying, look, I've never offered that advisory element, or I've never done the outsource finance function element, or I've never done, um, you know, tax advice on these matters.
Speaker 1:But maybe I'm hearing a lot and I'm referring a lot of that work to someone else. Maybe I could own that. And so you're looking at well, what new services can I do? Well that I could now incorporate? And also, what adjacent markets could I serve, because most people these days are starting a firm around. A bit of a niche could be location, where you're based. It could be that you're really into the arts, or really into tech, or really into whatever, um construction for example, and it's like, well, what are the adjacent verticals to that? So what I mean by that is what's next door.
Speaker 1:So if you're dealing with graphic designers. Well, maybe videographers aren't that far away, maybe makeup designers aren't that far away. You know, we're in that, we're in that space. Um, if you're in, uh, trades, well obviously there's a whole bunch of trades that you can get involved with. They're going to have nuances and details and differences and you'll have to learn that. But it's not completely starting from scratch. You get them, you get their personality you know, so you can kind of grow within.
Speaker 3:A.
Speaker 1:I suppose a reasonably controlled space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, and I think marketing in relation to this, doing external marketing around those services, so, like we, just you just talked about a lot of things that are supported by tech. So, from a marketing perspective, do you use um something like a mail chimp? Do you use an actual, traditional, more crm um like um active campaign hub spot um mail chimp and there's so many of them out there, there's heaps do something like that to help with that marketing that you might do. Do you engage somebody to to help you with your marketing? Um, like one of our sponsors, practice and pixels actually, um is is one of the options. Clarity street might have a service around that too.
Speaker 2:Shameless plug, sorry. Um, practice and pixels. I promise you probably do it way better, um, but uh, uh. So, as you know, there's, there's that aspect from a marketing perspective. When it comes to you just spoke about offering additional um services like advisory, there's a whole heap of apps around that. You know. You've got Ada, fathom, spotlight, clarity, hq, brief Brief, um, so many others are there more there's so many more.
Speaker 2:There's heaps of them. Uh, so you know they are some of the apps out there that you know might help support those. Those additional services um, disclaimer on that one don't just offer it to one client, find a number of clients to offer that, offer that service too.
Speaker 1:But I think I think the core of this message is like I think, for this stage of growth, external marketing, getting yourself out there a bit more, you know, being seen going to events or using, you know it depends on your market, right? Yeah, if you're going after certain people, it's going to be social media. Others you're going to have to go to trade shows, others you're going to have to be, you know, sponsoring the footy club, like it really depends on who you're going after, um, but it's probably where you're going to like this level of growth is where you're going to have to really start to go a bit harder in that marketing element, depending on so many different things.
Speaker 2:But yeah, One of the biggest ones probably the last two that are on our list here is finding capacity to continue innovating and evolving your tech stack. Like that's probably the bones of this one. And then there's also the we'll get to this one in a moment, but how to become more hands off. We'll get to this one in a moment, but how to become more hands-off. But before we get to that one like having that capacity to continue innovating, like finding the capacity to spend time on tech you might have got to a certain level in your business where you're all tech-focused and then you get to a point where you're like, oh my God, we need to stop, stop touching the tech.
Speaker 1:Well, andrew just walked in and was saying to us, like I don't know a few minutes ago now, that this is. You know, illuminate was a fantastically innovative firm. And it still is Super tech savvy firm, but they're bigger now they're busier. They've gone through this growth phase that we're literally talking about, and so he's just kind of letting us know, like, hey, there's something to talk about, Is that you know, I think? I think we get caught up in not not finding time for this stuff.
Speaker 1:Like when you have to. You have to be deliberate about it. If you're not deliberate about it, if you, if you say you know, off cuff like oh yeah, we want to be innovative and we want to have good tech, we want to keep improving our processes, but all you ever hold your team accountable to is how productive they are and how much work's going out the door guess what they're going to focus on how productive they are doing the work if you value and reward and recognize when someone improves a process or identifies a new tool that they could be using, yep, that's what we're.
Speaker 1:Whatever you encourage is what who you are like as a firm so if you want to ensure that you don't. You don't you know, because otherwise we're going to be having this conversation at three mil to say, oh, I've got here, but I'm really struggling to go any further yep because at one to three you didn't put the, you didn't embed in your culture what you wanted. So I think you know, for me it's a cultural thing 100 it is.
Speaker 2:It's a cultural thing. Uh, I think some of the things that you can do around that is actually either having some champions or having a couple of people that are championing this, but also making sure that the team has not just a couple of people have that desire and you know that innovative culture aspect to them, but the entire team does, because there is something to be said for change, fatigue and feeling like we're just changing for the sake of changing or we're not innovating. But I don't think it's always the desire for change. It's actually just making sure that you're on top of the apps that evolve and do make tweaks and changes as well. So making sure that as the apps evolve, that you also evolve with those changes.
Speaker 2:Not necessarily implementing whole new pieces of tech yes, at times that's relevant to do so but it's more just actually making sure that you're on top of the tech that you're using. Are you using it to the best of its abilities? Are you looking at that new feature that they've just brought out? Does it fit with what you're currently doing? Do you want to adopt it? Do you not want to adopt it? Just actually having that time and capacity to actually look at it.
Speaker 1:I think is is something that needs to be good, shout out in terms of, you know, rewarding people, rewarding people for that, and I can understand that people don't want to go out there and run a marathon, right, like that's what, leaving a big change project to you know. Oh, we're going to leave this 12 months and then we're going to do it. That's what that feels like. It's like I'm waiting and there's going to be this marathon that I'm going to have to run, versus saying like no one wants to do that, everyone's okay to go for a little jog every now and then.
Speaker 1:so like let's implement change as it as it comes up like let's be open to that, yeah, and I think then it doesn't become this big scary thing yeah, um, cleaning up of your current tech.
Speaker 2:Obviously that's a big one. Um, cleaning up and making sure that you've uh, you know we spoke about in the last episode, but you know data integrity of your current apps. Um, we might we mentioned in the last episode, but you know, data integrity of your current apps. We mentioned in the last episode that you might have been thinking about adopting some of the the, some of the apps that you may not have, when we were at the sort of the 500 to a mil mark. Now it's at that point where, if you want that mil to one to three mil, it's now time to actually adopt that tech. So things like a document management solution, a true integrated document management solution that has automations in it, that can help you manage workflow, that has task management, those kinds of applications like your fyi, just calling it out there cough, fyi cough but there are others in there, depending on the size of your business, like there's obviously sweet files, there's obviously others that are out there.
Speaker 2:Um, you know it's time to actually implement that. It's time to make sure that you have a corporate secretarial platform corporate and legal which is actually integrated in with your practice management platform. That you should have an engagement platform that isn't just being used for those clients that are on a monthly engagement or isn't just being used for um software subscriptions, that is actually being used as part of the you know the daily process, so ignition, for example, being embedded into your actual entire workflow process and I think to this point something, something that's, that's showing in my mind like that, that risk, that legal, that you know making sure that you are doing things the right way this size of firm like, hey, we're a business, now we're an operation and you know you don't want to leave yourself open to.
Speaker 1:You know things going wrong, so having a proper engagement letter that is signed digitally like there's no questions asked. You know the client knows what they're getting. You know what you're giving. When there's a scope change, we change it. You know. It's not just like, oh yeah, you know it'll be fine, you know that's what it is at the beginning.
Speaker 2:I get it it's.
Speaker 1:It's nice and easy, but things change. You grow, the risks rise. There's more on the table, so there's tech that can help you to make sure that you're ticking all the right boxes.
Speaker 2:Some of the other ones are obviously signing solutions FuseSign, Anitra. Some of the others are data capture, so like whether it's onboarding, whether it's-.
Speaker 1:Yes, big one at the moment the onboarding.
Speaker 2:Like onboarding is a huge one. So there's Seamless or Content Snare for capturing, so checklists and capturing data and documentation Again, those two apps, especially Content Snare in that regard. Then you've got how to deliver the, you know the information to your clients at the end. So, enhancing that client experience, do you have like an app-based portal style situation and use something like MyProsperity, which clients can obviously get access to all their information, their documents? Like, how are you delivering those applications and that documentation via which apps?
Speaker 1:And it's another reason why, when you're in the earlier phases we mentioned it in our last one it's like what are the apps you're using going to scale with you as?
Speaker 1:you grow because if you're using trello and you're like I'm going to scrape through to a million bucks on trello, well, you're not going to scrape through to three million, so get in play because it doesn't have, you know, the user controls and permissions it doesn't have. There's, there's different elements to this. It's not all efficiency and optimization. Some of it is controls, um, some of it is you know oh, security.
Speaker 2:In that regard, thank you for the word control it is time to really consider how robust your security measures are in place as well, and making sure you have things like single sign-on security and overlay um, is it practice, protect or something like that out there password management and if you've got cards going out to the team as well, like there's some really good solutions wheel, air wallets, those kinds of things as well that you can easily roll out it just makes sense at this point, like it just makes life easier for you.
Speaker 1:So some really actually some really. I'm glad because this is a tech edition podcast, but you know there's so much more to growth than tech. But there are some fantastic tools out there that will help with this phase the.
Speaker 2:The biggest shout out that I would say here is stop using tech that doesn't integrate. I don't care how, I don't care how nice you like, like the user interface is, if it doesn't integrate and it doesn't enhance your overall operation, as in, you have a broken process and you have to throw a human being at the process to manage that, that component. Stop it, find, just stop. Stop it.
Speaker 1:Find, find, you know, find a piece of tech that actually integrates, because there's enough out there that does integrate, and you know it's just time that you actually do that in order to help you grow and I think my final comment which we I think you kind of mentioned it and and it's just a massive challenge that comes with you know, it's a personality change in a way, like it's not certain stages of growth suit certain people, like if you're an entrepreneur and you're amazing at getting something off the ground, you might not be amazing at getting it from one to three, yeah, so you've got to change, you've got to learn, and one of the biggest ones is being able to be more hands-off and trust your team, and that is so hard when you've done it all yourself before literally you can't expect them to be as dedicated as you.
Speaker 1:You can't expect them to deliver the same output as you. They'll be better at different things than you, are for sure, um, but they're not the business owner. They don't have as much on the line. So don't expect them to stay up at night and do you know everything for you.
Speaker 1:But but try to put the systems in place, the reporting, the you know, workflow oversight, whatever it is that you need to feel comfortable. Um, because you should feel comfortable, the stuff's getting done. You don't want to be like I have no idea where anything's at, because I trust my team.
Speaker 2:Like no, that's not a system. No system is not a system.
Speaker 1:Um so I think, just like understanding that, that what got you to one meal is not the same skills that are going to get you to three. Yes, 100% Love that.
Speaker 2:That was good. It's a great episode. Thanks, Jack.
Speaker 1:Thanks, amy, see you, bye hey team.
Speaker 3:It's Ellie 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 podcast or social media remember to share it around my friends.
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